NMS is a trap, though. You need like 10-20h to realize how bad it all is, and then you simply can't refund it anymore.
My girlfriend had 3h playtime but still got a (very fast) refund.
Basically.
No Man's Sky presents itself as a "Long haul" where you need to put a lot of time into it to unlock and access the better parts of the game.
Yet 10-20 hours into it you discover! Nope! there IS no "good part" of the game. The slow tutorial section you been playing? It is the entire dang game.
It never opens up, never improves, never adds any real variety, and it doesn't reward you for playing the game.
Heck Flying Dice inadvertently gave away that you need 0-upgrades. The Grind IS pointless, or it would be if the grind wasn't 99% of the game's content (and you had psychic powers, luck, or read a guide that let you skip the grind)
Exactly. What's even worse is that it feels they did planned it to be that way once they realized they had no time to complete it.
On the beggining of the game, the distress beacon with the Atlas question makes you think your choices have an impact. It only impacts wether the Atlas call onto you initially, or if you choose to find it later on. By not doing the Atlas path you miss on a ton of words and free tech for no reason, and you can just refuse it later anyway.
Unless when I get to the galatic core this changes something, which I doubt.. but please don't tell me what's there. I just have an arbitrary goal of reaching it.
Also, even though certain techs only gets easier to find after your 2nd or 3rd jump, a player still managed to get all the slots for tool/suit/ship on the first planet, and only said that better tech gets extremely rare after exploring the first planet too much (I've noticed that too). The lack of connection between journey and progression seems very silly to me. Some people might say otherwise, but come on..you can do everything on the first planet? Meh.
The extreme connection between what you have and what is offered to you also pisses me off to no end. I had a 25 slot ship, discovered a VERY idiotic trick of dismantling your tech so the NPC ships spawn with less tech and MUCH lower prices (42 slot ships for 23-24 million instead of 47 million [when I had fully upgraded hyperdrive and engines]), so I farmed some Cubes to get enough money for a ~42 slot ship...except the game would only VERY rarely spawn 39-40 slot ships, because I had a 25 slot one.
To test that, once I got a 40-slot ship I saved and reloaded on the same station, and suddenly a bunch of 35, 40, and 48 slot ships became the norm.
I understand that you have to limit the player, so he doesn't find a 48-slot crashed ship for free on his first or second planet (crashed ship logic actually feels even more stupid to me)...but this is too lame. You could do this SO much better in SO many different ways.
It doesn't feel like an AAA-priced, 3+ year project. When it comes to actual gameplay and game design - forgetting about all the procgen and mathematics - it feels like a college project.
I'll keep playing it until I finish it, their new patch will make the game much less annoying to me on the technical side, but I'm full aware of all the stupidity.
To be honest, I've been obsessed with sandbox games for far too long. So when I saw the trailers for NMS, I thought "I'm getting too old for this shit. This space game will be the last one that I'll let the hype and atmosphere turn me into a kid again. And then I'll work on dropping my obsession and making games less of a priority in my life" - and then they pull a Spore 2 on me. Gawd dammit.
(But, hey..I finished Spore 3 times along the years and I don't usually replay games..at all)