The gameplay is what you make of it. No one should be grinding away just trying to earn in-game currency unless you enjoy what you're doing.

You're right, the market gameplay isn't there right now, and what's there doesn't stand out from any other game in any sort of amazing way. So if that's all you're looking for in a game, Star Citizen isn't there yet and it's not the game for you. We're closer to a Sea of Thieves-like market/hauling gameplay and, in my opinion, that's not where the fun is at. Well, not unless you're doing bounty missions and picking out the most expensive cargo to salvage from downed ships, then sending a player ahead to scout out the salvage yard and make sure that it's safe to land and sell your loot.

With the current state of the game, most of the fun gameplay is to be had during events like JumpTown, Xenothreat, Raid on Orison, or the current Save Stanton event.

Last night I had a fun session, this is just one example of a typical night playing the current event mission:

I couldn't use my primary weapons (A super rare bug I haven't seen this bug in years) so I had to relog to fix it. Then I couldn't spawn a ship at the station I had landed at (rare bug by now and avoidable if you know why it happens). So, I ended up hijacking an abandoned player ship on a public landing pad (ships stick around forever once they're abandoned unless they get destroyed/salvaged/etc). I joined up with a group of 9 other random players and we crewed a capital ship so that we could take on one of the event missions where you go up against an NPC capital ship and their fleet (it took 3 tries just to leave because the station didn't want to release the docking port properly, and the ship would despawn if we didn't pull away in time). We arrived at the mission site and some other players in their capital ship were being hostile towards us (ramming us and launching torpedoes at us). Our ship was "soft-deathed" so we abandoned ship by hopping out the airlock and a few of us were able to board the hostile player ship while another of our crew was able to board the NPC capital ship. Our boarding parties were both repelled.

I had already rented a medium size ship and loaded a hoverbike on it earlier, so I pulled that out. The rest of the crew pulled out another capital ship. When we made it back to the mission site the hostile players had gone. So, we proceeded to take on the NPC fleet. Our capital ship tried unloading some torpedoes on the NPC capital ship, but the point defense cannons were too quick to take out any torpedo that had locked on, so they had to make close passes while dumb firing the torpedoes to get in some hits.

A few good hits on the ship later and we had destroyed some of the turrets, some of the point defense cannons, and completely broken off the main thrusters, effectively immobilizing the ship so that it slowly tumbled towards the nearby gas giant (the altimeter popped up on my HUD at least which usually appears once your close enough to start getting affected by gravity).

Another good hit and one of the front hangar doors had cracked open just wide enough for a tiny ship to fit through. I had been buzzing around on my hoverbike, so I took advantage of that opening and guided my way towards that gap as the ship continued to slowly tumble towards the planet. On the way I passed about a dozen bodies of NPCs that had somehow been ejected/clipped out of the capital ship (I think there's normally around 150 NPCs crewing the ship), this isn't a "pre-scripted" thing that happens every time you deal major damage to the ship.

I made it through the hangar doors, landed, and then I fought my way on foot from the hangar all the way up to the bridge where the battle outside was still raging as our capital ship unloaded the last of their torpedoes onto the ship. I could still catch glimpses of this going on outside as I passed various viewports/windows through the ship. I could hear the difference when the ship was hit at a location very close to me vs the other end of the ship. Again, this wasn't some "pre-scripted event", if an explosion went off nearby it's because the ship actually was hit there.

Eventually I found my way up to the bridge where I was able to take out the pilot. I then hopped in the pilot seat, droppped the landing gear and toggled what was left of any VTOL thrusters to completely stop the ship from being pulled any further into the nearby gas giant.

Although the mission completed successfully the moment I took out the pilot, I continued to explore the ship and take out any hostile NPCs on the way. By this time I had a leg injury and if I kept taking hits there my character would start limping along unless I administered a specific drug to push through it. I made my way through the mess hall, through a briefing room, through the crew quarters, the bathrooms, the armory, some prisoner holding area, a medical bay, etc. Some other players boarded the ship to get a look around. It was a fun night.

There isn't any other multiplayer game out there that lets me experience something like this at this scale. Being able to fly around an entire solar system, boarding capital ships without any loading screens or "magical teleportation" to get on-board. I can stand right next to the pilot and start pushing buttons on his dash/screens if I want to mess with him and the ship. I can try to jam whatever ship or vehicle onboard if I want to (even if it means cutting off the wings of a vehicle to force it to fit). I can load a tank on top of a ship or even use the equivalent of a space tow truck to fly it into battle if I really wanted.

The closest thing in this aspect might be Star Wars Battlefront or Sea of Thieves, but even then, in Battlefront you're locked into a specific battlefield and you can't control the capital ships. Even boarding the ships you're limited to a small confined area where the rest of the doors are conveniently locked. Even if you could get past them, there wouldn't be anything there. There is no danger of falling into the atmosphere of a nearby moon/planet during a battle. With Sea of Thieves there aren't any massive capital ships over there, it's not a space game, and you're limited to a small area with a few islands.

Sure, there are lots of games that have similar features to what Star Citizen has, and some of them pull off those individual features way better than what Star Citizen does (especially if we're using a single player game for comparison), but nothing combines everything in the way that Star Citizen does.