That has not been even my recent experience. Frankly even the industry patch just announced is disheartening to me. I've enjoyed playing up until now for the most part... but tbh I'm pretty sure I'm done for now. The market system is a huge disappointment, I do not believe that the changes they are making will fix that - simply force smaller groups of players and individuals to not play at all, and I'm probably going to take the next couple of weeks before Christmas to migrate what I -do- have to the Sanctuary moon and sit things out until 'release'.
If the status quo remains as it is, I won't be putting much else into the game at all. As a pre-alpha backer, I must say, I once again find myself extremely unhappy to find that the universal vision put forth by the games creator is not what he claimed it would be.
They're turning the gameplay mechanic into what essentially (imho) feels like a considerable amount of work. I can get a real life job and get paid to do that. All they've succeeded in doing is re-awakening my desire to play other games.