Take this with a huge grain of salt, because I come from Elite Dangerous as well as a few other space games (which I no longer really play).

While I agree NMS has its own emphasis (on base building, survival) and is not fair to compare to sim-like games (Elite, Star Citizen, etc).

One thing that has always bothered me, is the vastness of the galaxy in NMS, but I have no (or little) sense of place in the galaxy, and no "sandbox reason" to plot a particular course (other than maybe one mission sending me a hop away, or one of the general story lines automating my pathway). Additionally, I despise the UI and interactions of the galaxy map.. simply selecting a place to go, understanding its direction etc… I find it awkward and confusing.

If I'm playing it wrong, or just missing some details, so be it, I'm happy to hear suggestions.

My suggestion:

Allow for zooming out and interactions with the map that make me more positionally aware, allow me to bookmark better on the actual map (rather than just list of teleport spots from a teleport). Have the galaxy map sliced into named regions. Have economies, resources, mission types, rare items, compel me to explore and travel bigger distances and custom plot paths.. Basically anything that gives more purpose to where I am relative to my position in the whole galaxy (beyond just heading towards the center). (I understand that certain system types are more likely to have thing X, or Y… but it feels so random and always a jump away, still no reason to explore in the way that seems fulfilling to me)

No matter how enormous the galaxy is, it's kind of irrelevant to me if I don't actually care where I am (which in today's NMS I really don't), and don't have more reasons to plot pathways to known areas.

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