I agree. The beef I would add with those games is that they feel like theme parks. There's no real frontier. Elite Dangerous came close, it was a thrill to be the first one in a system. Genuinely don't know how you'd solve that, though.

One obstacle you have to overcome is that there has to be an investment that is risked by the players. There's not much of a cost to gank someone usually, or it's simply not allowed at all except in a controlled way. One thing that forces people into social cooperation is to protect against the potential for loss. As I understand it, confrontations with other players in EVE Online are dangerous because of that investment of time and/or money. That's part of what makes roguelikes and battle royales so compelling. That said, you have to balance it against being appealing enough to more casual players--how do you encourage investment without making it a boring grind or too expensive?