Comment by danielbarla
10 hours ago
> is that not enough? what else do people want?
I've bounced off NMS several times, despite having tried quite hard to get into it. So, my take is based on ~20 hours of early game, from 2025ish. Probably the best parallel I can draw is to Elite: Dangerous, which I played for several hundred ours before getting bored of it. What I find lacking in both games is that there's no _meaningful_ emergent gameplay that spawns off the procgen. Everything is wildy different on each planet, yet very same-y, because none of the differences really play into each other. In both, one can discover random biomes and creatures, but it's not like they are inherently interesting, they are mostly just following the same scripts.
Contrast this with something like Dwarf Fortress, which takes a slightly more in-depth approach to procgen, one where things have history, and in many ways, things "make sense". Or Rimworld, where the game tries its hardest to conjure up a narrative for you, dynamically, but still in a sandbox. So, basically, NMS is a perfectly functional sandbox game, and I have huge respect for them for keeping on working at it for so many years. However, it doesn't scratch my "hardcore simulation / mastery" itch, and so far I haven't been grabbed by any of its story generation. It just felt like a long series of fetch quests and "collect them all" games.
I've looked at videos of Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld, neither looks interesting to me at all.
Yet I've spent hundreds to thousands of hours in Minecraft, No Man's Sky and Elite Dangerous.
> However, it doesn't scratch my "hardcore simulation / mastery" itch
Elite Dangerous is the most hardcore space game I'm aware of any I play several space games. I wish it did more fun stuff like No Man's Sky actually.
It sounds like your interest is in simulation games. I don't play those really much so I can't recommend any other than I guess Elite Dangerous.
> However, it doesn't scratch my "hardcore simulation / mastery" itch, and so far I haven't been grabbed by any of its story generation.
That's basically it. It's not a simulation. So if you want simulation, then NMS isn't your game. Maybe X4 might be better suited. Or maybe not.
Sometimes people forget that not everybody has to like every game :D
I feel like can also compare the difference to some rougelikes where the combos of random things can yield vastly different experiences but in NMS the randomness felt more like a skin - not affecting gameplay much.
> randomness felt more like a skin - not affecting gameplay much.
DF is a great comparison, because it speaks to the composability of properties and systems as a key requirement.
2,000+ variants that still funnel through one predesigned interaction system is not variety.
The variants need to actually compose with each other into meaningfully unique experiences / systems for the player, which is much harder to align.
I think the main difference in Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld is that the world happens to you, you have to respond to the events the game generates, while in No Man's Sky you happen to the world, you choose how to interact with it.
No Man's Sky is much more like Minecraft in that way, you have to make up your own goals, the game doesn't really prompt you in any way to do anything.