The game looks very very good.
But that's all.

After 20+hours of gameplay I have feeling, that I am just in the same sector, but the parameters are different (mostly colors), and procedural generators are applied.

I am missing some special events and so on, after 10 hours you saw everything, game changes to repetitive grinding for money (to obtain new larger ship and multitool), I cant find any new technologies (looks like I know all), I am practically hunting for new words.

This game is missing the soul, there is no one, I understand there is background story, and I am reading all monolith and so on, but that is ridiculous small portion of game.

This game has great potential, but it needs more stuff to do:
First of all:
Space
this game is not in space, it is just one cube with random spawned spheres... called moons and planets (even these moons are exactly like planets but small... Other type planets? (Gas planets, where are the rings?)
where are:
white dwarves and other type stars, supernovas, pulsars, comets, asteroids, space monsters, nebulas, quasars, blabla.

They're hidden behind the warp-drive upgrades. Just getting the sigma upgrade lets you travel to red star systems, which turn the dial up to 11 compared to the yellow stars(the starter planets). After that there's white and blue stars of different sizes, judging by the classification so far. So qualified guess, the most extreme star-system I've seen is an M4 sub-giant red star (with the closest planet where the atmosphere consisted of ignited dust - only 300 red degrees, higher during storms). So presumably there are larger main-sequence stars, and also hotter white and blue ones with heavier pull, and so on.

I thought I was fast-tracking by farming blueprints on a particular planet, but I had to play at least 6 hours before I got to travel to the red stars. But I think you can skip this by progressing on the Atlas or Nada/Polo quests. Haven't seen the ingredients or the blueprints for the later warp-upgrades yet.

Not seen any supernovas or pulsars, either. And don't think they're in the game. Then again, once I got to the red stars, the rotation of the planets became noticeable, small planets had cycles that lasted about 15 minutes, gigantic nebulas enveloped half the planets... animals grew to twice the size, mountains sprouted out of the ground, and things like that. So yeah.. definitely not a very good design decision to "extend" the game this way. Or more likely to prevent people from "accidentally" traveling to dangerous systems.

Because the variation increased a ridiculous amount once I got to the older star-systems. Found a moon that essentially was one big slope into a sea. Could stand on the top of the mountain and see 20 degrees of curvature on the horizon, and things like that :D Pretty crazy. And there's nothing like that in the yellow systems.

Is it possible to approach a star?

When you`re on the star map you can click away from the waypoint so you are in free-mode. Then click on ANY star you see. It`ll tell you what that star is, and you can go to it, BUT you need to upgrade your Warp drive. You can travel to any of those dots- Any of them to get the really juicy stuff. Right now I`ve just managed to get plans for a better drive and will be going to one of those random stars soon.

A lot of people don`t seem to have figured this out.

Thanks but that is not what I am asking. Can you approach an actual star?

Oh you mean the SUN? I don`t know, never tried.

Why would you want to do that?

edit: ^haha, yeah, my thoughts too. Why would you want to do that :D :D ..I haven't tried. It gets really bright long before you get very close. And the suns seem to be very far off compared to the other planets.

(But judging from the way nebulas work and so on, I'm assuming that mechanically it's a dense luminous gas/particle-cloud. People say it's the skybox, but that's not the case in a traditional sense. Frankly, I don't think anything seen is technically static at all, even in the yellow systems where the sunsets take forever, etc.

Basically, the same way they've implemented black holes, probably, just... that you take damage and burn or something, instead of getting sucked through space. Weird that no one has tried crashing the suns, to be honest. Not the way I'd want to end my first trip to space, but still..).

I want to try it but the way the save system is, not sure I can risk it. Damn it.

First of all I'll say the game isn' t worth $60 USD. It is essentially a glorified terrain, plant, and animal generator with some other features minimally slapped on. You've got buying/selling resources, collecting alien words, upgrading equipment (exosuit, starship, muli-tool), some puzzles, and minor alien interaction. Other than the equipment upgrades, these systems are really basic. Personally I think the $20 - $30 range is a more fair price.

I think this game tailors more to players that like exploration versus those that favor a progression based game. It's fairly easy to upgrade all your equipment to max even on your starter planet if you have the patience and time. After you've done that, then all that is left is to explore.

The problem of most procedural generated games is making the content interesting. If you can't make the content interesting then you have to leave it up to the players to make it interesting. In order to allow that to happen you need to give them more options, which currently this game doesn't have.

I think about Minecraft, and how interesting the game would be if you couldn't build, and could only explore. I think it would be a lot less fun and not be as popular. The ability to allow users to create content and extend the game through mods makes the game more fun. I think that is what NMS is missing at this point. They've given us a good framework but haven't given us the tools to take it to that next level.

Now all that being said, I'm actually having a lot of fun currently, and I'm about 20 hours in. I'm still in my starter system even though I have the components to warp to another system. I've been taking my time exploring the 4 planets, learning the alien language, and upgrading my equipment.

I am making the game fun for myself but I can certainly understand how others could get bored quickly.

Yawn, mincraft again. Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft. This is everyone`s comparison of this game.

I never played that game, never touched it, partly because of the orgasms over it.

Glad I didnt. Or maybe I`d be bitchin` unhappily as well.

Honestly, the game could have been just the wireframes and heightmaps, and I'd still pay to see the solar system generation, and the transitions between atmospheric and space-flight.

Seriously, though - what's wrong with critics nowadays? Do people really not see how huge this really is? That even if HG released a shit of a game that was completely broken, that they have proven something impossible is actually doable?

What's next, that people say: "eeew, I like my games to have more corridors!". "Bleeah, this sequence isn't even made in maya, scripted and played back in fake res/framerate into a video-file, and then polished up in photoshop! How laaame!". "Oh, man, this game doesn't even have LOD blips! Can't even see the textures changing in the horizon all at once!". Or "dude, where's the freaking skybox, man? Everyone knows the universe consists of the earth in the middle, that the sun is three pixels wide like a lamp, and that the entire sky is a flat carpet with shiny glitter on them that reflects down to us when our eyes shoot out vision-beams when we look up!".

I mean, sure, it makes both flat-earthers and large publishers ashamed, and exposes any amount of "open world" marketing as complete bogus. It blows a hole in Jim Sterling's head (although that won't make a difference) and cuts his knees off (which also probably won't make a difference). But even if the game was just a tech-demo, just one tiny little part of the tech is still more impressive than anything a game-studio has done.

Sure, some of us have wondered about whether it's possible to maybe use search algorithms to resurrect the voxel clouds, and things like that. But HG actually did it, for real. Also, efficiently, and made it look good as well. Unlike literally everyone else who have attempted something similar with real-time reduction of rendering contexts depending on what's visible. Remember that, at least, when you complain about the lack of disco-lights in the space-stations.

And no, sorry, it's not Minecraft, for crying out loud. You're not building lego out of square blocks in a mountain, where the textures are 2x2 pixels.

I completely agree that it isn't Minecraft, and I wasn't trying to say it was. I was trying to compare NMS to another game that forces you to create your own story/content/goals, and Minecraft is the most popular example. That being said, they are completely different games in almost all other respects.

I've heard people say that NMS is "Minecraft for adults" which I completely disagree with.

Judging from some of your other posts I'm guessing you are a game dev or do game dev as a hobby. If that is true then you are able to see the awesomeness of what they have accomplished. I absolutely agree with you that what they've been able to do is great. Like I said, I'm having a blast with the game so far.

There's actually a surprisingly large overlap between No Man's Sky and Minecraft. A lot of people play Minecraft to build things, that's quite correct - but there's also quite a few people who play it for its survival and exploration aspects as Minecraft's world generation algorithms are surprisingly advanced. I mean, they even have randomly generated dungeons and fortresses and these look and feel pretty damn good - and they contain rare loot that you can then use to craft more advanced weapons, armor or other items.

Minecraft also has a working map on which you can chart territory wink wink nudge nudge - the reason why you see so many comparisons is that you can then use that discovered rare loot not only to improve your character, but also to upgrade whatever insane structure you have devised in your head (altho you don't really have to build anything).

You basically just said that you won't play a game because it might be better than another game you happen to enjoy, which is an utterly bizarre statement :-P