It's not just NMS.. the "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" is a plight of all AAA games these days.

Ubisfot is a perfect example, look at their "Watch Dogs: Legion" for example. They decided to get creative and give you random characters generated by AI.. it turned out to be a disaster.

Another one is their Far cry games, where they copy and paste the same events but slightly different, all over the map and call it a day.

I think these efforts more have to do with bean counters taking over the industry than game designers being lazy. I'm sure there are plenty of talented people working at these studios, but they are held back by MBAs.

Fallout 4's endgame with the autogenerated "quests" of defending settlements get boring extremely fast.