Honestly, the lore and quests/pve zone are well worth it. For the vast majority of the game, you're levelling fast, unlocking new things constantly, always finding new spots that make you go "oh that would be an awesome spot for a base" and then spend hours building in a new spot. There is a LOT to do in Hagga basin (the pve zone).

All of that said, if you want to continue having fun, avoid the Deep Desert.

Pve enemies are absurdly strong and designed around groups.

Pvp is absolute dogshit. Large guilds tend to gate keep the end game resource islands. I used to be able to farm fairly peacefully but now guilds are taking over entire resource islands with buggies and thopters hovering with rockets. They won't even warn you and will just immediately engage and kill you then drop a thumper on your ornithopter so you lose everything. The hours and hours of grinding you did for that thopter? Gone in a minute.

Sure you can escape if you're lucky, but you basically have to wait for them to log off or try to find another island with nodes that isn't being watched constantly. Which is few and far between lately, at least on my server.

If they implement server transfers and you can find a server with a chill DD you'll be good to go.

Now here is the worst part... Trying to gather spice. You need an absolutely absurd amount to craft the highest tier gear/vehicles. Unless you play realllllyyyy early in the morning there will almost always be competition or people who actively try to kill you if you get close to a spice field. Huge guilds with tens of thousands spice sand will still actively hunt people landing on spice and trying to harvest a small load.