Comment by SwellJoe
17 hours ago
The best things about the game (and it is a good game at this point, they continued to add to it at a steady pace since launch) are the human written stories.
But, once you've exhausted those human stories, it's like wandering around a few billion abandoned malls. Interesting the first few times, but grows boring pretty fast. But also, the worst thing about the human-written stories is that they're often transparently designed around getting you to visit more abandoned malls. The procgen infinity of space is almost a negative, even though it's the game's whole schtick.
I guess now that I think of it like that, it's really impressive they made a fun game despite having to make it fit a boring repetitive universe.
The thing is they could probably have easily had the pvp and economy and soverignty of eve, and that would have been amazing
There really are a lot of things that they could do it with it, but they've already done a lot of things over the years; you can't say they haven't tried things, though I can't say they've always delivered a fun experience with the various experiments. They did pets and pet battles (boring to me), various building ideas (freighters and corvettes, bases, moderately more interesting), trading (I don't care for the implementation, feels detached), salvage, colonization (you become the governor of existing towns and make them run more efficiently and build stuff), etc. And, the worlds and critters got more varied several times over the years since release.
In short, I found it a very fun game until it wasn't, and then I had no reason to log back in. There are things you can do to make your own fun outside the story line; grind for a better freighter, find an build on interesting/valuable planets, find the coolest ships.
Once the story ran out, I was pretty much done, but even if you just play the story and then quit, it's still an excellent value! I got many hours of enjoyment out of a game I paid maybe $20 for. It's a hell of an entertainment deal. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it all the way through in recent-ish times. Even if you only play the story out one time and don't find any of the other stuff fun, it's still a very enjoyable game with hours of fun play at a good price that runs well on any decent system.
If I were a designer on the game, I'd find more reasons for human players to be in the same places at the same time and have their actions have a lasting impact in the universe. Riding in someone else's ship (which is what corvettes added) aint it, though. Projects to colonize specific worlds where anyone can stake a claim in a landrush type thing and maybe you setup competitive trade networks or battle for terrain or strategic resources or whatever, would be super fun, I think.
And, I wish space battles were more skill-based, as well. I've never played Eve, but I assume the space battles require skill and strategy and not just the biggest/baddest ship? So, if NMS got really good space battle mechanics, they could implement crazy cool space wars. But, they've got to shrink the game world for that to work (not literally delete the billions of planets, just give players a reason to all fight over one planet or system). Maybe competing for unique resources, like the spice on Dune.
I'll definitely try to find time to log back in and check out the new stuff. Whether it keeps me coming back after I try out all the new stuff and run whatever new missions/stories they've introduced remains to be seen. But, I don't think anyone plays it for the "billions of worlds" thing, because they're all the same after you see the first couple dozen.
> But, once you've exhausted those human stories, it's like wandering around a few billion abandoned malls. Interesting the first few times, but grows boring pretty fast.
Ironically, that’s how I always imagined actual space exploration to turn out once the initial wonders are exhausted.
Space is huge, yes, and everything is kinda unique, but also not in a meaningful sense. Most of the continued amazement we associate with the idea of space exploration comes from human-written stories that fill space with a human variety that just isn’t there.