Day 1 player here, kind of old (50), and only interested in exploration.
I enjoyed v1 tremendously, still my favorite gaming moments to date.
So at a personal level, i’m only interested in terrain generation and the rendering engine, the rest doesn’t exist.
I never built a base, didn’t do the stories/missions (and will never if it involves killing creature for sport/money), never used any of the fancy gadgets
All i do and want is to play Creative and have nice walks on exotic environements with a sense of mystery and discovery to take pictures and memories, with vintage humanist SF books in mind (thinking Van Vogt, Clarke, etc.).
v1 (up to PF) gave me a lot of that.
Much less since the downgrading of the terrain generation to round hills, and i’m part of the old timers that think NMS has lost a bit of its soul.
But this game remains a unique and marvelous wonder in the gaming galaxy imho and i can’t help being attracted to it, patiently waiting for THE update that will bring back everything i miss.
That said, i understand the directions it took.
The two main features besides the story are now multiplayer and base building.
Whatever we think of them, they were and still are necessary to the game: multiplayer was the n°1 requested feature and was not negociable and bases provide half of the screenshots on this reddit so they are obviously now one of the foundations (pun intended) of NMS.
The other gadgets certainly add some colors to that soft, the living ships are beautiful, etc.
Everything’s all right, i can see why HG did and added what they did, and i’m thankfull for that: even if i don’t use any of it, the game simply wouldn’t be there anymore if it weren’t for those features.
My only real complain is that base building prevent HG to have the full liberty to reset the universe often, which in turn severely limits the evolutions they can bring to the terrain generation :-/
I know they’re trying to workaround that, but it can’t be the same as full freedom for them.
At its core, NMS is a unique jewel, i hope it remains true to this core, while adding bells and whistles for the more action oriented players, there’s room for everyone in this universe.
The reason for this post is that, seeing how many people regularly request PVP, combat improvement, melee weapons, war factions, etc, i’m wondering if there are many lonely hippie travelers on this boat.
Peace.
