I appreciate that the devs keep updating the game, but honestly I don't get it. Sure, there are a lot of planets. There's not any reason to one over another though. They're all procedurally generated with the same general stuff (yeah, you'll need to travel for specific resources). For me, it just feels like I'm wasting time, because it doesn't make you feel like you're doing anything meaningful. I can't be the only one who feels this way.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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While I wouldn't quite call it a Journey Game (a la Elite Dangerous), it is very much not about The Destination.
People play it because they like to play it. The idea isn't to build an endgame character who can do anything and everything. The idea is to build a lot of different characters that do a lot of different things and so forth.
And, grain of salt, but based on my own personal experience and non-rigorous polling of the discord and reddit, the vast majority of regulars are just playing it seasonally. A new update/season drops and a lot of folk hop on to play it.
But it speaks to the fundamental nature of live games/MMOs/whatevers. Some (probably most...) people want to work towards goals and check boxes off. Every single thing they do is a pop-up saying how amazing they are. Call of Duty is the most well known example but it is also very much why games like (ugh) Kingdom Come Deliverance do so well. Number go up and everything you do Matters because the game told you it does.
But there are the weirdos (yo) who... kind of just like playing games? We don't need a pop-up saying we are a good boy because we either make our own goals or... we just like the way it feels to play a game. The Elite Game genre (not to be confused with the Elite series... which are Elite Games) tends to be emblematic of this but it is also what made Arena Shooters so popular in the day.
I play a lot of Squad, which has no progression or anything that's tracked from match to match. I've also played a good bit of X4, which is a space sandbox game, where you mostly set your own goals. Factorio is also one of my favorite games. I'm fine with games where you set your own goals. I just don't get NMS.
I think part of it is that there's absolutely no friction when saying. For example, flying makes it impossible to crash. There's just nothing at stake and progression feels mostly pointless. If there was danger or a threat to defend against, I think that'd go a long way to making it feel like there's a reason to do what you're doing. As it is, it just feels like chores.
I don’t get how/why it’s still profitable for them to keep working on it - but I’m in full support.
It’s not to dissimilar to Minecraft in a number of ways, in a sense - there’s not really any drive to do anything in particular, it’s ultimately up to the player to do what they feel like.
It’s a literal sandbox, rather than a narrative experience. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, that’s perfectly fine!
But in MC there is a drive. It's not an extrinsic goal though, rather entrinsic needs. You need better gear, you need food (and maybe you don't want to spend time doing it so you automate it), etc. NMS has a notion of this, but barely. It's enough to say there is progression, but it doesn't feel like you're progressing.
That said, I barely got into base building. Maybe that's where things get good, but it takes far to long to get to that point that I'm bored by the time it's a real option.
I'm glad people like it. I just don't understand why.
I played about 75 hours of it back in 2019. Most of the time I was driven by the same thing that drives me to spend dozens of hours in open world RPGs wandering and finding stuff before doing the main quest. It also helped that it had good VR support, and I had just played a ton of Skyrim VR that same year.
But of course in NMS, there is no main quest to return to when things on the open road get slow. And you do not have the same had designed locations and loot to stumble across.
In retrospect I can see parallels with f2p games that are just an infinite numbers-go-up grind. The game is designed such that you do the same shit forever. (If my info is out of date though, I welcome corrections)
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Elite Dangerous:
I fell off E:D a couple years back because of a lack of progress and how FDev treats the suckers who bought the lifetime expansion pass (also I am not entirely sure if my VKB+Thrustmaster mess will work in Linux and am procrastinating...). But apparently space legs are still restricted to basically the tie-in FPS from EVE?
But nah. Hello Games did a HORRIBLE job of marketing this but the game that should REALLY be angry is Starfield. Because the Corvette system is just their ship builder but in a game where you can actually fly them.
Might just be a bit burnt out on games like NMS and Elite. A whole universe of unique but equally irrelevant rocks.
What fun stuff is there to do at essentially an end game status? NMS probably does manage better than Elite though, at least you can build a house or something. Or make your freighter hangar pretty.
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ITT: people vaguely complaining about NMS but not pointing to anything that's wrong with it.
Y'all know you can not like a product without something being fundamentally and at-its-core wrong with it, right? It could just be not your cup of tea?
I personally have been having a blast making my Corvette and am excited for the new expedition. The fact that I got all this stuff for no added cost makes me feel even better about the time I'll have.
People on here crying, meanwhile I'm flying around the galaxy in my Eagle 5 Winnebago
Did you include the fuel port in the glovebox in case you need to install any Liquid Schwartz?
Does it have raspberry jamming capabilities?
You got hyper-jets on that thing?
I love NMS for what it is. A sandbox. Some people don’t like playing in one. That’s fine.
Totally! Not for everyone and certainly doesn't have to be.
But I did hope that people who are making the leap from "I don't like NMS" to "NMS isn't good" would offer more to consider than the vibes not being there.
I'll be honest with you for me personally I just don't have the patience for the game. I just want to build my ship with whatever parts are in the game and explore. that's it. I don't want to mine resources, I don't want to wait in some random station for some random ship to show up that MIGHT have the part I want. I don't want to do any of that.
I barely made it out of the tutorial and forced my way through it.
Nothing wrong with NMS but I didn't want to play it the way it made me play it. I just want to build in peace and explore.
Fair enough. The creative modes are definitely worth considering, you can set build cost to zero, eliminating the waiting and farming. Survival aspects can also be tuned, so you can stand in storms and feel like a god.
That's fair! And for what it's worth, the game now offers a creative mode that alleviates the need to mine resources if that's not what you're looking for. That might be what you want out of it?
Yeah I know but you still have to wait for ships to show up to get their parts right? unless they changed it you don't have access to ALL ship parts right off the bat in creative mode do you?
Mile wide, inch deep. I've no doubt (as excited for this update as I am) that this will be the same.
Basically they just add a framework for new features and then leaves it there without building it out.
I've read "Mile wide, inch deep" often enough in this thread that feels less like a problem and more like a thought-terminating cliche to me.
Is it a flaw to have a lot of smaller things you can do without them needing to be complete experiences themselves? They're not trying to make a different game out of these expansions (except Light no Fire I guess lol), it's still going to be NMS at the end of the day
Yes, it is a flaw. Because those "smaller things" are little more than virtual fidget spinners.
They offer a few fleeting moments of novelty and thats pretty much it. They have little to no relevance to the gameplay loop or are opposed to the gameplay loop.
I can "build" a settlement that does next to nothing and I can't even design it the way I want.
I can build a base that is practically lifeless, but I have to be carefull because terrain will respawn. Or base foundations float on top of terrain.
And all the things I can build I'm lucky if theres 3 different skins I can choose from to try and make something "my own".
And then of course lets not forget about the near literal mile wide inch deep the games oceans are. Heres a submersible. We will force you to use it for a couple missions and then theres no real need or point to it. All the oceans are the same shallow boring experience.
Here im being slightly facetious but only slightly :
You've seen one ice planet? Guess what - you've seen them all.
One glitch planet- you guessed it youve seen them all.
Tropical planet - oh look this ones sky is a different color, but still the exact same type of tree as that other tropical planet 40k lightyears away.
I'm not gonna respond to all of that but I will say:
- I think there's a fundamental difference between something not being to your taste and something being flawed. This kinda just reads like you didn't enjoy your experience. That's fine, but that doesn't make the product flawed
- a lot of the problems you mentioned have been improved on over the past few expansions
- fidget spinners are fun, idk why you have beef with them lol
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My wife bought me the game and for years I didn't pick it up. Couple years ago I decided to finally give it a try.
I'm on my third playthrough and am making a sea base for fishing and deep sea exploration. All commanded from the bridge of my dreadnought. I haven't played in a couple months but am glad I get new things to do again. The amount of updates and changes absolutely amaze me.
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I just wish there was more to it. Every update adds more to do, but no reason to do it. Now we have a puddle as wide as an ocean.
There are two types of gamers:
Some see an open world sandbox and say "Wow, I can do anything!" and pick their own goals.
The other type says "WHAT it's pointless!" and wants some kind of arrow pointing at the next objective.
Cool false dilemma.
It's one thing to be given a sandbox, and another thing to be given a toy box. Maybe your imagination lets you take it as far as you need, but some people need more of a purpose to justify putting time into it as opposed to something more productive.
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I was about to dispute this, but I think its essentially correct. I for sure fall into the second camp, and while I despise the minimap bloat of a lot of newer games, I do want something that is going to guide my actions a bit. I want to like No Man's Sky so much, but playing it feels like work. Endless tasks with no satisfaction except whatever personal pride you happen to glean from a job well done.
There's gotta be a sweet spot between "I dunno, do whatever" and "here's a map of everything interesting, do it all". I think Breath of the Wild had a okay balance, but still not great. Maybe something more like Morrowind's "here's verbal clues, now go figure it out" approach
I like wow classic without the questie add on.
Quest reads i need you to go north of place and find x and bring it back to me.
So and so in y is looking for 15 of this item, find 15 of them i heard they are seen around z sometirms. Take it to them and I'll give you a cool stick when you're back.
No map markers just a map that you have to explore to unlock location names and a massive world.
The downside is it can take a long time to know what is where and where you're going for shit.
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This game and the developers deserve credit and support for what they created. I need to spend more time in that sandbox universe, I feel like I've only scratched the surface.
My biggest comfort game that just keeps getting more comfy! Been holding out on VR experience for Valve's VR device but it seems like it'll be far off - might as well jump back in.
I started playing NMS a while back, but I had zero clue what I needed to do. I guess I need to go back and check if I skipped a tutorial.
I played it until I had a star destroyer thing and then I stepped away and now I come back and I don't even know how to fly my ship or do anything I don't know what's going on I'm in Old Man
One of the best redemption arcs in recent video game story.
Maybe the only game that actually has a redemption arc?
I can't think of any other game that was so panned for so many things that turned it around like Hello Games did.
The only other games I can think of with any sort of redemption arc the main issues were because of bugs not swaths of missing features.
Cyberpunk 2077 would be another big one. A lot of the issue was bugs, but also a lot of missing content.
Okay but is the game fun yet? I hate all the procedurally generated bullshit. If you've seen one planet in this game, you've seen them all. NMS is somehow even more boring than Starfield. At least that game gives you something to do. A boring story is better than no story.
This game has added so many systems over the years, but it still just hasn’t really grown into anything of substance. It’s a game where the only real “thing to do” is mindless busywork. 200 new systems, all created to a standard of absolute minimum viability, none of them are very rewarding on their own, and none of them really create interesting interactions with each other. It’s like they every system was added with the idea that they’re optional, which makes them all feel unnecessary.
You can build bases now, but there’s no real reason to other than to do so. There are settlements you can become the leader of? But what that entails is essentially nothing. The game is designed from the ground up for you to move from planet to planet without lingering too long on any particular one, and yet they added a bunch of mechanics based around specific planets.
It’s a really bizarre product.
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Roomscale VR when?
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