Not that surprising. Starfield is still in that awkward spot for Bethesda games where you have the base game, which is fine, but not much in the way of interesting mods. Meanwhile Skyrim has over a decade's worth of mods made for it. If you want to do something in Skyrim that isn't in the game chances are someone has made a mod for it. Meanwhile Starfield is just Starfield.
Let's not forget that Skyrim has TONS of cosmetic mods to improve upon the look of the base game. Base Skyrim can be pretty. Modded Skyrim can be stunningly gorgeous. There was a time when people mainly only used ENBs that gave it a dimension of realism for screenshots because it'd bring a system to its knees. Now people use similar levels to actually play the game with. This is what I'm waiting for to happen with Starfield before I buy it, so it might be a few years before I finally do. Until then my No Man's Sky still mostly scratches my scifi gaming itch.
Isn't it like this Bethesda's go-to move now? I mean, it always seems like Bethesda releases a thing that people are really excited for, then people are all like "It sucks!" but then 2 or 3 years later people are still playing it and enjoying it and saying "OK, it's not THAT bad..."