Don’t get me wrong – seeing action and life in certain places is great – but it is way too frequent and more importantly, it seems way too random. You discover an uncivilized planet at the edge of the system with a few relics from another era. You want to build your base and discover what is there, but every 2 minutes some spaceships fly around close to the surface… doing what exactly?

I would love it if planets and systems had more meaningful parameters for population/traffic density (for example, there is a huge trading platform, so more ships are flying around). But I also like to discover planets that have not been discovered, where you can have your own “edge of the universe” feeling. It is the same with the frequency of pirate ships or massive freighter spawns when you are in outer space…

it feels like the developers were afraid that the game would feel too empty and as a response just let everything randomly spawn everywhere all the time… Perhaps others like this, but for me, it is killing the immersion

Crash Landing places, Say you are in a fight with pirates in space but and they get your ship down to critical health. The engines start to go and you have to try and make a crash landing on a nearby planet. It would play out exactly like the beginning of the game sort of. Have you enter the atmosphere and lose slight control of your ship, having to guide it down to a place to crash land. Then when you hit the ground you begin the quest of having to repair it.

This would set up a fun and natural narrative for adventure and exploration as it may force you to go to planets you would normally pass up. If pirates shot you down you could even have a timer until they come and search for your wreckage to finish you off and take your cargo. You could make it so you need to hide your crash site so they do not spot you too.

Infected Frigates, add the possibility that some of your frigates come back from missions “infected” like the derelict frigates you can find floating in space. Forcing you to go investigate what happened to the crew of your frigate and cleansing the infection upon reach some sort of core. I think it if balanced right it could make things a little more interesting and adventure oriented in that department.

Amphibious Tanks Exocraft, For the longest time I have wanted to have a tank exocraft with treaded tires. Something akin to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-9uzLBtMtY. Make it so you can go through water on the surface but just very slowly like the amphibious tanks the military uses. A tank like that would just be fun to bounce through desert biomes and swamps.

Hive Mind Planets, Infected planets that have turned into giant living super organisms. Meaning that whenever you attack or mine something on this planet that is “infected” the entire ecosystem trys to kill you. Like it is trying to remove an infection or virus. I got this idea from a long time favorite sci fi game Unreal 2. In the game you land on a planet that has had life on it all fuse into a single organism that now covers the entire planet. From the game: “Acheron is the strangest planet in the sector. It’s a T-class world where the surface is covered by a single gigantic organism. Izanagi Corporation is slowly killing the creature as it terraforms the planet. The Izanagi forces have converged on a single dig site–perhaps an artifact has been found.”

I suggest having these infected planets in some systems, when landing on one you have to make your way to the center of the planet through a cave/dungeon that spawns on the surface. Once you reach the core you can destroy it which will make everything on the planet stop trying to kill you and become passive or normal towards you. Also have the planets shoot off infected “pods” to nearby worlds. When the pod hits the world it creates a biome of the infected planet which the player can use as a quest starting point to track down the infected planet. Also have more infected biomes spawn unless the planet core is destroyed.

Distant Smoke, Have billowing smoke off in the distance or other interesting phenomena that lures the player to investigate. Like the smoke from a station that was recently raided by pirates, a downed freighter etc.

Self Destruct Button for Derelict Freighters, When you encounter a derelict freighter give the option to self destruct it at the end forcing the player to have to race back to the entrance through all the danger before the countdown expires. This would make the experience a lot more fun and an exciting way to end the encounter.

I’ve seen some people post asking if the game is really as big as people say it is. To this I would say that most people probably underestimate the size of the game.

To give an idea I just recently started a new save (my 7th save not including the expeditions) and on all my playthroughs I have never encountered another random player on a planet or in space. Not a single time in the 5ish years I’ve been playing this game.

Another example, just yesterday I flew into a system that was discovered 6 years ago. Whoever discovered the system must have been traveling somewhere because they didn’t scan/discover any of the planets in the system. So 6 years passed with the planets being undiscovered despite the system being discovered until I rolled along. 6 YEARS it took for another player to finally come along and discover the rest of the system.

That is one of the main reasons why I love this game. Exploring and discovering new things is what I find the most fun in and with NMS it’s seemingly infinite.