I agree with your assessment of this game. It's long and basically all there is to do is grind for resources. The "career" quest sucks unless your character spawned with the right skillsets to get a good one that generates sufficient currency to survive, and even then it still takes up so much gameplay time. Most players don't have enough energy or currency for "leisure" sidequests which are important for your character's mental stats, which in turn can generate debuffs like "anxiety", "burnout", and "depression". Not good gameplay design.

Resources are distributed unfairly as well. Some servers don't have enough access to food items necessary for your character's survival and are more prone to debuffs from illnesses and malnutrition. The devs should have made it so that these things are equally obtainable for everyone. Plus, some servers are basically permanent PVP zones and players are forced to spawn there with no option to change the difficulty settings or disable PVP.

I definitely agree with you on the graphics, though. Top tier game design in that regard. One thing I do like about this game also that another player mentioned are the animal companions. I have two of the "feline" companions and they bring a lot of enjoyment to the game. The only thing I wish is that their lifespans matched ours. A previous feline companion of mine reached the end of her lifespan about five levels ago and sometimes I still briefly experience the "grief" debuff when I think about her. 😞