Minecraft.

I played Terraria for a bit and I kept getting into the headspace of wtf am I even doing playing the game?

Anytime I touched Minecraft it felt the same.

I've played other, similar builder/mining games, most notably satisfactory and DRG, both of which feel like they have more direction than Minecraft or Terraria.

I don't need much of a push to care enough to progress through a game; an interesting mechanic, a fun playstyle, interesting things to do and achieve... For the most part I'm really laid back when gaming. I don't really get involved in PvP at all, so anything cod/modern warfare/fortnite/whatever, I'm not interested in. I'd rather work cooperatively with people to achieve a goal. Even something like left4dead or counterstrike is pretty decent in my mind. Some competition is fine, but free for all and/or small teams in large battles (like with many Battle Royale games), when it's almost entirely PvP, no thanks. There's always trolls and people who take the game far too seriously, and those are the kinds of people I don't want anything to do with.

I struggled with Terraria because a lot of the mechanics were not obvious. There was a logical progression to get more powerful stuff, and even some fairly good quests and bosses to fight, but you either happen across them and you're wholly unprepared for the encounter, or you have to follow a guide to get the event started. It was a bit convoluted, and the game didn't really explain anything about what you needed to do to move forward. Minecraft feels like the same stuff. It's all exploration and discovery based, basically at random. I know there's some "end game" type stuff in the game, which implies there's progression, but idk, it's all kinds of obfuscated.

Compare with satisfactory, which is largely open, but has a pretty clear set of skill trees and progression. There's no "end" to the game, just endlessly creating items.

There's direction there. It's not a lot, and nobody is going to tell you how to get to the next thing, just that it exists and this is what you need to get to it. There's a hundred different ways to get to that objective, and you have to find your own way.

DRG is basically an endless grind of matches. Procedurally generated, which keeps things lively, but an endless set of essentially the same thing every time. You can get upgrades and cosmetics the more you play, but it's the same gameplay every time you get into a round.

DRG still has a better plotline than twilight.... I mean, Minecraft.

Just getting dumped into an open world with no idea what you can do, or what you should do, isn't really my jam. I tried with Terraria. No thanks.