After using primarily fighters for hundreds upon hundreds of hours of my main save, I had finally found an Explorer that I knew had to be my new main. Helped that a natural S-Class just kinda fell into my lap. Transferred all my tech and cargo over, but decided to ditch the positron and phase beam in favour of just a dual-weapon loadout with infraknife and rockets (my fav combo anyway).

After optimizing the layouts with the given SC slots, I was resigned to the overall damage potential being 20% that of my fighter, and the infraknife achieving only 50% of the DPS. I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

Holy shit.

In the next pirate freighter encounter, I finished off the freighter in half the time. I was still skeptical, so I took on a host of combat missions, including solo pirate missions from the Nexus, sentinel freighter battles, and various random encounters. The results were all the same – the Explorer eviscerated enemies with a terrifying efficiency and brutality that my maxed-out S-class fighters could only dream of.

I had read similar stories of such performances, but hadn’t experienced it first hand. But now I know and I can hardly go back to my fighters.

Now if they can only fix that bug so both of my outboard engines are lit up.

I’m not usually one to write down my grievances with video games, but the release of 4.0 was so disappointing I feel I need to get up on my soapbox and give my opinion, especially since others are telling those of us against the 4.0 update that how we feel is an overreaction.

I installed NMS when it was added to game pass, and since then I’ve gotten 500+ hours under my belt as an interloper. I’ve learned the ins and outs of this game. I’ve hunted for my perfect ship, spent hours reloading for an elusive S-Class freighter, and figured out adjacency bonuses to really unlock my gear’s full potential. Every update I’ve played has had me singing praise for NMS, and 4.0 sounded like it would be no different. It promised a streamlined UI, higher level caps, and major QoL changes. After playing it I feel lied to. 4.0 did not feel like the step forward it was supposed to be. Instead, it was more like three big steps back.

The new inventory system completely ruined the gear I spent so long finding, leveling, and perfecting. Over 2/3 of my tech upgrades were removed from my gear, upgrades I spent hours hunting for down in the depths of derelict freighters and across the galaxies space stations were rendered completely useless. I’ve seen people saying that we didn’t need our maxed out gear, and that this change wasn’t a big deal, and maybe they’re partly right. We didn’t need maxed gear, but we wanted it, so we put in the extra time and effort to level up our gear and perfect it and make it ours. Now it’s all gone, and the time and effort we spent is wasted.

To add insult to injury, the new UI makes it harder to try and salvage what I can from my equipment. It feels like a total downgrade from the legacy UI. The inventory tabs were cleaner, felt much better to use, and moving stuff around in them was efficient and easy. The new one-page inventory feels claustrophobic, and the page scrolls too fast on console to move anything around effectively. It’s been a pain in the ass to try and fix my stuff with this new “streamlined” UI, and I’m wishing I could switch it back.

This update broke my heart. I’ve loved playing this game, exploring its vast galaxies on my quest through the cosmos and leaving my small mark on the wonderful worlds I’ve visited, but I feel like I cant play the game in its current state. I sincerely hope Hello Games will do what they can to try and fix this, and in the future think about both new and old players when making updates.

As a final word, if you aren’t happy with 4.0, please don’t use it as an excuse to be rude to or harass the NMS devs. If you are messaging them, remember that they are real people with real feelings. With that being said, I’m done here.

Phoenix out.