I feel like the same thing happens to other sandbox games too. Minecraft is one of my favorite games of all time and I could easily spend a thousand hours in a vanilla world and still find things to do, however the game gets constantly shit on by the community no matter what it does. They speedrun through the progression and then lack any creativity to do anything else in the game.
I personally love building bases and customizing and collecting things, which is a large part of the gameplay in NMS. I could spend hundreds of hours doing that but I guess some people just need a constant sense of progression and the game telling you what to do because they aren't capable of setting their own goals. Anyone who says NMS lacks content or things to do has barely touched the game.
I enjoy being creative to an extent, but I like to solve problems, so I naturally gravitate to something with a long-term goal to achieve like Factorio (I rapidly lose interest after launching a rocket though).
But a game can have 1000 hours of collectables content and still not be an enjoyable game to people. For example, I don't really enjoy collectables purely for the sake of collecting or building without having some sort of meaningful functionality. Every time I've tried to get into NMS (and when I ask others about what you can do in the game), I get the impression that 99% of the game is just flying/walking around, scanning things, collecting some random doodads, base building, and hoping to find a "cool" ship in a station to buy. Which is to say, the same things every base building survival game has, but in space.
I don't necessarily need forced goals, but I need things to work toward that aren't just collectables. For example, in certain other space sandbox games I can build up or destroy political factions. The universe around me dynamically updates in ways that actually affect me meaningfully. I can build up industry to harvest resources, refine them, and produce various goods either to use or to sale. I can have a goal of building all of the infrastructure needed to produce ships, or colonies, or what have you. With a larger industry, maybe some of the political factions try to attack me, so I then need to defend against them. I could build up a fleet of ships that handle defense and transportation of resources. I want to feel like the universe actually responds to my input.
I hopped back in a couple years later after a few updates, and agree that the quantity of content was pretty big. But the quality was not -- it still felt "empty", and never held my interest long.
Last year, the same thing happened. I hopped back on after a few big updates, probably spent another 10 or so hours on it (I think I started over), and felt like I had explored all there was.
I feel like all the criticisms it gets are valid. I agree that the effort of maintaining a game after 10 years is incredibly admirable, especially since ever update has been free. That's amazing. And the devs should be acknowledged for that.
But the game itself still feels largely empty. The progression feels mostly repetitive without feeling like you're really moving forward in a meaningful way. And, as others have said, the proc gen still feels "vanilla".
I probably won't hop back in after this update. I've learned, by now, that while many praise the new content, it'll probably just feel like more of the same to me.
This is the whole problem in a nutshell. I want a Game™ and they're providing "stuff to do".
In SaaS and YC, it's ship early and ship often, right? Is that absolutely not the case in games? Also, how true is it in SaaS? Genuinely curious here.
Stuff like this, it's why I often avoid big releases for the first year or two then go play it when it's on sale.
For another perfect game example - Star Wars Outlaws. Terrible, buggy release with obnoxious gameplay loops. They fixed it, now it's one of the better games I've played recently. You can go look up gameplay reviews from the last year to see people shocked at its reputation, it's a very good game now and arguably would have been a candidate for GOTY if it had released in its current form.
NMS really is an exception, that they sold well enough at launch that they can keep providing free major updates for 10 years.
Reception for both games is largely positive despite their poor initial response.
NMS is no crown jewel, but Hello Games did add multiplayer and held pretty close to the original vision that was offered. It's much more "fixed" than current Cyberpunk 2077 is, at least IMO.
Different strokes, I guess.
> Mile wide and inch deep is exactly the way to describe it.
Aren't you doing the same thing you're saying? Plenty of comments in this thread disagree with your assessment. If the game isn't for you, that's one thing, but it's a factually untrue thing to say "there's nothing to do, game is sparse after a few hours and novelty wears off" like many comments say. This suggests the person did not actually see a lot of the game, which is fine, but it's still not a trustworthy evaluation to me.
Every time I come back to the game and try a new update, the game is indeed sparse after a few hours, and the novelty wears off...
Some are, sure. But -I say as someone who enjoys the game for what it is and still pops in every now and again to mess around with it- there's not much game in the game. Like BoBaitlyn said, it's a sandbox game. It has always been a sandbox game, and there are some folks who spend a few minutes fucking around with the sand in the box, go "WTF, this is boring as shit. I'm out!" and are boggled at the folks who enjoy playing with all the sand.
There's nothing wrong with being boggled or talking about how much you hated the sandbox. Specific sandboxes tend to appeal to specific sorts of people... each one often has its own gimmick that will pull in different sorts of folks. Suggesting that most complainers are complaining from a position of ignorance when they're complaining about a lack of things to do in a game that doesn't have much game in it kinda sucks. I've been playing off and on since v1, and have played for about half of the major patches. Hello Games has added a lot of stuff, but they haven't really added in much game to the game, if you see what I'm saying?
The story and those quests will be rooted in building something. The space exploration will be rooted in finding a cool place loosely intended for your next base. The space battles and encounters will be part of the same core procgen survival craft cycle.
I won't deny there's probably only 20-40 hours of "real content" in the game. Most of what is there is shallower, or easilly missable, without the expedition(limited-time event) that launched it. A lot of things do seem like "grind X yourself, order team to do Y every few hours, fly to Z and talk to someone" which will get repetitive if/when you keep getting the same ones.
That still sticks around as people who've never played it comment & upvote the same things.
I've never played it. Just witnessing the cargo culting. If I were wanting to give an opinion on this post without actual information, the 'empty procedural generation' critique is exactly what I'd say, since that's all I associate with this game from the briefest commentary when it was released.
So the system is fairly shallow, since what you end up doing is just jump from system to system and buy and sell everything.
But if you want to get rich just find a few player farms and harvest. You will make millions in no time.
top comment is all about the game being empty
Missions: fly to randomly chosen planet in solar system and to same generated structure and find the object in the same spot as it always is in this generated structure. fly back. your crops are ready again for harvest, press x, x, x, x, x, x...
There's something interesting going on with certain kinds of activity - exponential progression and incessant busy-ness. It tickles something that shouldn't be tickled.
Incidentally, I can't place it, but Minecraft is an infinitely more enjoyable hangout and break/build stuff game than NMS. NMS is just very sterile to me.
It is like what if they were putting that undiagnosed hyperfocus into the local lawncare industry instead. Start off with a $50 mower at Level 1. Grind all summer gaining xp and unlocking more quests. Get enough for a riding mower with better DPS so you can do more lawns in a day and improve xp rate. Get enough to unlock a helper. Get two helpers. You stop mowing and its the helpers going out with your name on the side of the truck. Now you are a successful small business owner.
Same sort of mind that optimizes the in game meta could play the real life meta too. No one tells you about this when you are 14 years old though. None of your friends are doing this. There aren't forums and discords talking about this. Everyone's gaming though.
And it can be even a tar pit for smaller stuff than one's career. It is a big meme for someone to have say a beautiful base built in some game, really carefully done and really ornate, and the room they play in is an absolute disgusting disaster of trash and unclean clothes tossed everywhere. All in game chores done to a T of course.
I wonder if they won't add generative AI to create infinite stories/missions inside it, that would get rid of the 10K bowls effect.