When I play NMS my mindset is not the same as playing other games (playing it in VR also), let me explain:

– Flying on my ship: I tend to not use pulse drive, or deactivate it on purpose when 1-2 minutes close to a planet, I never get tired of the whole landing process, and then get a view of the planet biome.

– Taking it slow: I’ve finished the main quest line about 3 times already, my current save file has been the longest, the first 2 times I rushed for money and I think that kinda made things dull (worst mistake I think, is to rush for money, even more now that you can just change game modes and get anything you want if you wish to do so), this time I took things slow and I’ve been enjoying the game a lot more, A LOT more, even tho right now I have more units than ever before, I never got in a tiresome grind loop, and I never needed to, this game is grindy only if you make it grindy to be honest, you don’t even need to grind for power since most common multi tools will be enough to fight sentinels and kill them all, and if you need a powerful enough ship to kill pirates with ease, just get a living ship and get some good pilots on your squad (tho they are never that good, but hey any help is good!).

– Ignore gifts: not because I’m not grateful (I do think people ingame are very kind) but it feels kinda wrong and breaks the purpose of playing the game, again doesn’t bother me now, but had I taken those gift to sell and get easy money, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the whole process.

– Use my best-looking ship instead of the best one: I just love how my interceptor looks, and it’s black and red! it’s nowhere as good as my living ship, but dang isn’t it cool? and they hover!

– Not rushing to the center: I’ve been slowly traveling to the center, I’ve found some neat planets in the process, my favorite ones are the frozen ones, forever christmas.

– I rather warp using my freight: IDK exactly why I like it more than using a ship, but there’s something special about it, it’s like a home after all.

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Over all my experience with the game since my mindset has been like this, it’s been night and day in comparison, I think my 2 previous save games have been useful as a way to realize what kind of game I was playing, I think remembering my times with minecraft helped me to see why I always came back into the game but never got to know exactly why, and now I realize it, just sit back and enjoy the universe at your own pace, nothing is rushing you to any goal at all, don’t do annoying things because you think the goal will be good, do things to enjoy them so you don’t have to do them the annoying way.

And this is I think the problem many people have, not blaming it on them btw, a game can’t appeal everyone, it’s not a game about goals and many gamers want goals, it’s a game about what you would want to do given a universe to explore, same thing you do in minecraft, explore, craft, build, enhance, and maybe get to the ender dragon and then the exit portal (I’ve never done that just because I never got interested on it, even after playing the game for years).

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Just wanted to share my experience with the game with you all, and also ask you for your experience, maybe I’m not that odd of a player and someone else out there also do the same things, or some of them, or maybe you enjoy the game doing the opposite, it would be interesting to know!

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Sometimes NMS will give me a small existential crisis, not a huge panic attack or anything, but just a thought that comes and goes every once in a while when I’m playing. The game ha so many world that it would take the player almost 900 billion years to see them all. The game has about 18 quintillion planets after all. This makes me just think for a moment about how small we are and how impossibly have the universe is, and how we will never even leave our system in our lifetimes, and how the chances of this happening to anybody in the future are slim. We will never get to see any of this, we just get to see this tiny rock we live on. But about a minute later, this thought fades away and I continue mining for copper, waving to other players in VR, fighting space pirates, or whatever I was doing before. I appreciate NMS for giving us the chance to see all of this that we otherwise never would have.

TL;DR NMS sometimes gives me a small existential crisis where I am reminded about how big the universe is, how small we are, and how we will never explore any of it.

Now, since this is a discussion, have you ever felt this way while playing?