Minecraft is a great example of what the survival genre looks like at its peak. Everything you do serves to help you accomplish your next goal, all the way to the final goal of beating the Ender Dragon. And then there are optional sub-goals you can set for yourself, like doing alchemy, making a mob farm, getting a Heart of the Ocean, getting an Elytra, beating a raid, finding treasures, automating your own production. All contributes directly towards making you survive better.
In NMS you reach the goal of surviving when you first unlock your ship. Once it’s fully repaired you embark on a fetch quest to walk and fly around gathering materials to craft the mystical orbs that mark the completion of the story, stopping once in a while to gather fuel for your ship, materials to fly to new kinds of star systems, and to talk to NPCs for some lore. But it’s not like the gathering of these materials really takes effort. There’s no spelunking, or braving a netherworld, or fighting back poisonous spiders while charting out old ruins. The most you get is that you need to craft a more powerful laser, and a special glove to collect some special resources that are, in fact, so abundant as to make gathering them no challenge at all. And everything else that’s in the game just exists on the side, optional distractions that don’t feed into the core loop. The only things that really affect your main game loop would be freighters, because they give you a bigger inventory, and this most recent update that adds mobile bases.
Minecraft also has a benefit that, when you run out of things to do, when you’ve beaten the dragon, collected everything, built your monuments, and done all that over and over until you’re bored, the game enables limitless new experiences through being so very customizable. Mods that turn the game into Factorio, or Diablo, or DayZ, or change how the world generates or how it all functions on the most basic level. Or if mods aren’t your thing you can join a server, and play with other people in all kinds of minigames. Standard SMP, or PvP stuff, or custom-coded challenges, what have you. NMS doesn’t have any of that, and while it does have multiplayer that doesn’t really change anything of the core gameplay. It’s still just “fly around and gather things,” but this time with another person along for the ride.
I think this is comparing apples to oranges. NMS doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on its survival elements because it’s not trying to be a survival game, its emphasis is on exploration. The survival elements are there as constraints that let you differentiate your exploration experience (ex. Hey maybe put on some radiation shielding mods or else you’ll be constantly applying uranium and life support). Yeah, you can speedrun the main quest because the main quest isn’t really supposed to be a massive burden. You can land, collect all the Special Red Rock that you need, and then jet off. But why? You took the time to come out to this planet, why not explore it?
Odd to read your description of the side content as distractions. Beyond how there are systems acting as complements to exploration (exocraft for ex) or are there to explore themselves (ex fossils), which id say directly tie into the core loop, it’s just weird to me to view gameplay as distractions. Morrowind directly invited the player to go explore things besides the main quest, and it’s regarded as an excellent move for encouraging player freedom. This just seems like an analogue to that where the game is inviting you to explore other systems to see how you like their fit.
As for what is offered to you after the end game… You get to keep exploring, like you’ve been doing and the game has been encouraging you to do the whole time. I don’t know what else to say – you got a can of beans, why is it a problem that it didn’t come with any tomato and some salad at the bottom?
(Though I’ll grant you that NMS would be kick ass with some mods, id love to see that!)
But you end up “exploring” the same stuff over and over.
Theres no reason to actually explore a planet - pretty much everything you want to do/see is taken care of at any random spot you choose due to the single biome planets.
You’ve got like maybe 6 different versions of flora depending on the enviroment type. If your lucky they give you a color change too so instead of all green tree A you’ll get a red tree A .
Now I know it can be explained away by the games lore, but when the main goal of the game is to explore it doesnt really help.
It doesn’t even matter how many galaxies/universes you jump to - it’s all still the same limited number of assets with the same limited color wheel.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Minecraft is a great example of what the survival genre looks like at its peak. Everything you do serves to help you accomplish your next goal, all the way to the final goal of beating the Ender Dragon. And then there are optional sub-goals you can set for yourself, like doing alchemy, making a mob farm, getting a Heart of the Ocean, getting an Elytra, beating a raid, finding treasures, automating your own production. All contributes directly towards making you survive better.
In NMS you reach the goal of surviving when you first unlock your ship. Once it’s fully repaired you embark on a fetch quest to walk and fly around gathering materials to craft the mystical orbs that mark the completion of the story, stopping once in a while to gather fuel for your ship, materials to fly to new kinds of star systems, and to talk to NPCs for some lore. But it’s not like the gathering of these materials really takes effort. There’s no spelunking, or braving a netherworld, or fighting back poisonous spiders while charting out old ruins. The most you get is that you need to craft a more powerful laser, and a special glove to collect some special resources that are, in fact, so abundant as to make gathering them no challenge at all. And everything else that’s in the game just exists on the side, optional distractions that don’t feed into the core loop. The only things that really affect your main game loop would be freighters, because they give you a bigger inventory, and this most recent update that adds mobile bases.
Minecraft also has a benefit that, when you run out of things to do, when you’ve beaten the dragon, collected everything, built your monuments, and done all that over and over until you’re bored, the game enables limitless new experiences through being so very customizable. Mods that turn the game into Factorio, or Diablo, or DayZ, or change how the world generates or how it all functions on the most basic level. Or if mods aren’t your thing you can join a server, and play with other people in all kinds of minigames. Standard SMP, or PvP stuff, or custom-coded challenges, what have you. NMS doesn’t have any of that, and while it does have multiplayer that doesn’t really change anything of the core gameplay. It’s still just “fly around and gather things,” but this time with another person along for the ride.
CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Good shot dude! I really want to like NMS, but it’s hard to go back to it. You’ve articulated the differences amazingly
malle_yeno@pawb.social 12 hours ago
I think this is comparing apples to oranges. NMS doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on its survival elements because it’s not trying to be a survival game, its emphasis is on exploration. The survival elements are there as constraints that let you differentiate your exploration experience (ex. Hey maybe put on some radiation shielding mods or else you’ll be constantly applying uranium and life support). Yeah, you can speedrun the main quest because the main quest isn’t really supposed to be a massive burden. You can land, collect all the Special Red Rock that you need, and then jet off. But why? You took the time to come out to this planet, why not explore it?
Odd to read your description of the side content as distractions. Beyond how there are systems acting as complements to exploration (exocraft for ex) or are there to explore themselves (ex fossils), which id say directly tie into the core loop, it’s just weird to me to view gameplay as distractions. Morrowind directly invited the player to go explore things besides the main quest, and it’s regarded as an excellent move for encouraging player freedom. This just seems like an analogue to that where the game is inviting you to explore other systems to see how you like their fit.
As for what is offered to you after the end game… You get to keep exploring, like you’ve been doing and the game has been encouraging you to do the whole time. I don’t know what else to say – you got a can of beans, why is it a problem that it didn’t come with any tomato and some salad at the bottom?
(Though I’ll grant you that NMS would be kick ass with some mods, id love to see that!)
thejoker954@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
But you end up “exploring” the same stuff over and over.
Theres no reason to actually explore a planet - pretty much everything you want to do/see is taken care of at any random spot you choose due to the single biome planets.
You’ve got like maybe 6 different versions of flora depending on the enviroment type. If your lucky they give you a color change too so instead of all green tree A you’ll get a red tree A .
Now I know it can be explained away by the games lore, but when the main goal of the game is to explore it doesnt really help.
It doesn’t even matter how many galaxies/universes you jump to - it’s all still the same limited number of assets with the same limited color wheel.