A bit of a vague title, but the truth nonetheless. I got in to No Man’s Sky somewhat late; a couple of expansions dropped, the tide already turned. No Man’s Sky was seen as a decent game, lots was achieved after launch.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun! The first couple of hours were mesmerizing, and I was excited to see what was to come. Fast forward about 50-60 hours, and I was already kind of done with the game. I was earning millions of units with an Activated Indium farm, something that was recommended to me by the many YouTube ‘guide’ videos surrounding this game. I had reloaded a Freighter battle almost 50 times and achieved a Capital S-Class Freighter. I had a massive farm that I used for nanites. I was maxing out my inventory and I finished building somewhat of a base.

Now what? That was the question I had, and it never really went away. Somehow I felt as if I didn’t really ‘complete’ the game, but I also no longer had a goal to work towards. I was earning an absurd amount of units, with nothing to really spend it on. I no longer had any motivation to engage in the vast majority of the systems the game had laid out, because why would I? The rewards gained from exploration were not worth it, I wouldn’t gain anything from it.

I briefly played on both a hardcore and a permadeath save, but after getting the associated achievements, I realized that the changes these game modes provided were not the changes I was looking for. If anything, they seemed detrimental somehow; on top of not having a goal once I set up a few farms somewhere, I now also had to fight a limited inventory system for naught but a level of tedium. If this was No Man’s Sky but difficult, I realized that I did not desire ‘difficulty’ in this game.

I stopped having fun, so I stopped playing.

Then, some time later, I realized that I messed up. I realized that No Man’s Sky, for all of its faults, is not meant to be min/maxed, at least, not for me. I hopped into the game again, determined to go against what I normally do in games like these. This time, I did not rush any sort of farm for mass units and nanites. I did not hop around systems to find the perfect S-Class Freighter. I did not look up any ship catalogues, or teleporter coordinates for valuable exotics or multi-tools. I even started roleplaying my traveler a little bit.

Man, what a world of difference. Suddenly, I find myself having something to work towards constantly. No longer do I skip over 90% of the content in the game because it’s ‘not valuable enough’. I get excited when I find a cool treasure that’s worth a lot of units, or when I find a crashed freighter somewhere. It’s fun to scour planets and systems alike for valuable targets, resources, and settlements.

This might sound totally obvious to a lot of you, but I can’t begin to tell you the epiphany I had when I started playing the game like this. This is what No Man’s Sky is meant to be. It’s not a space economy simulator, it’s a space exploration game. And though that is apparent everywhere in the game, it somehow took me over a year to realize that.

So to all of you who got bored with the game due to a lack of goals, or because making money/nanites etc. is ‘too easy’, try a different approach. Maybe you shouldn’t go for an Activated Indium farm. Maybe it’s best to delete that generous gift from some player in the Anomaly that’s worth millions upon millions. I’ve learned that when I try to game No Man’s Sky, I simply end up gaming myself out of tens, if not hundreds of hours of fun.

See you Space Cowboys…

Big patch on the Experimental branch today, these fixes should go public soon.

Including

• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Singularity expedition from converting into a Normal mode save after it was completed.
• Fixed an issue that caused the ship at the start of the Singularity expedition to be missing its Vesper Sail.
• Fixed an issue that caused Sentinel Interceptor ships to be worth 10x as much as other ships when salvaging.

Full List:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/275850/discussions/0/6516193260167070838/

Experimental Branch 15/06

• Players are now able to rebind movement to the cursor keys without that automatically resulting in them moving around while navigating the quick menu.

• Fixed an issue that prevented the cursor from rendering while re-binding controls in the Game Mode options screen.

• Fixed an issue that caused a number of options to be missing from the options menu, or some options to appear when they should not.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Terrain Manipulator menus to scroll the wrong way in VR.

• Fixed a rare issue that could leave player-owned Interceptor ships without any installed technology.

• Fixed an issue that could cause the starship’s landing gear to be incorrectly raised after save/loading within a landed ship.

• Fixed an issue that caused first-person cockpit exit animations to fail to play.

• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Singularity expedition from converting into a Normal mode save after it was completed.

• Fixed an issue that caused the ship at the start of the Singularity expedition to be missing its Vesper Sail.

• Fixed an issue that caused incorrect collision on outpost landing pads.

• Fixed an issue that could cause players to be ejected from the Multi-Tool comparison screen when attempting to pin repair instructions for a Multi-Tool they do not yet own.

• Fixed a rare issue that could cause players to be erroneously told their inventory was full when claiming the reward for “Wayfarer” milestone.

• Fixed a rare issue that could cause the galaxy map Mission Path to point to the wrong destination system.

• Fixed an issue that prevented starship distress beacons from animating correctly.

• Fixed an issue that could cause Multi-Tools belonging to other players to become attached to NPCs.

• Fixed an issue that could result in players becoming permanently stuck to the chair in the Guild Envoy’s area of the Space Station.

• Fixed an issue that caused Sentinel Interceptor ships to be worth 10x as much as other ships when salvaging.

• Fixed an issue that allowed too many Communication Stations to spawn on expedition planets.

• Fixed a rare issue that could cause the current expedition to end early.

• Fixed a Mac-only issue that caused large bases to be loaded very slowly.

• Fixed an issue that prevented some freighter engines from being correctly recoloured when choosing a new engine trail.

• Fixed an issue that could cause the depth of field effect to be applied far too strongly on some platforms.

• Fixed an issue that could cause black speckles to flicker across the screen during interactions that made use of the depth of field effect.

• Fixed a graphical glitch that could occur in the Atlas’ particle effects when playing on Switch.

• Fixed an issue that caused eyeballs to be positioned incorrectly within a specific Traveller-style head in the Appearance Modifier.

• Fixed a graphical issue that could cause the player to briefly appear while teleporting.

• Introduced a rendering optimisation for VR.

• Fixed an issue that could allow too many creatures to spawn when playing in multiplayer.

• Introduced a memory optimisation related to planetary creatures.

• Fixed a crash related to synchronising freighters in multiplayer.

• Fixed a crash related to the Multi-Tool.

• Fixed a hang related to reloading missions.

• Fixed a crash related to base part rendering.

• Fixed a rare crash related to the mission log.

• Fixed a rare crash that could occur in VR.

• Fixed a PlayStation 4 crash related to reporting bases.