There’s a disconnect there though. People have dedicated their time to this, and without at least a decent amount of depth it wouldn’t be able up keep their attention that long. If you’re not able to find the depth, or it’s just not your style of game, that’s totally fine. But clearly many people have.
Look at corvette building, as an example. If you just take it as surface level, you can bust out a ship and come up with a pretty okay design in an hour or 2. So that a few times and you’ve pretty much done everything you can. However, if you start messing around with glitch building and really diving into the excitement of recreating your favorite ships from sci-fi, or just seeing how far you can push things, you can spend dozens upon dozens of hours just building ships.
This same thing goes for base building, farm building, settlement development. And this is all on top of the story, expeditions, daily quests, etc. So yeah, it’s a sandbox game without one specific thing driving it, but that’s what a LOT of people really like about the game (including myself).
Jollyllama@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A good game doesn’t have to be that deep. As a matter of fact, I don’t have time to invest in a game (or show) that deep. Give me endless 42 minute episodes of easy to follow formulaic slop that I can watch as I cook dinner for the fam after getting off work.
NMS has found their niche of easy fun mini games in a vast somewhat predictable universe. They aren’t trying to capture players who are looking for the kind of deep stories and mechanics like you and that’s okay.
Another good example: My uncle is a father of 5 with a job who occasionally has time to jump onto NMS and run a quick mission. Over the last decade he’s racked up 1k+ hours of distraction. 10/10.
TalkingFlower@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A good game doesn’t have to be deep, but it has to be well-executed by a well-formulated concept.
ETS 2 is even simpler, and what do you do in there? You drive from point A to B, but the journey is the reward; it is fleeting, but it is a limited yet beautiful representation of Europe.
There are mountains of Diorama Builders trying to do exactly what the chill crowd want.
Those are way more honest chill games than a fanbase trying to claim to be the best space game, yet you do garbage collection.
I mean, sure, I love to turn off my brain as well when I watch Supernatural, but it is a shallow show despite its charm. xD
Jollyllama@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think it’s hard to argue that NMS is objectively not well executed.
They saw the lowest of lows at launch and clawed their way back to a 80%+ mostly positive rating with consistent 10k+ player count most days.
Some may not enjoy it and that’s their opinion but they are pulling more player numbers and higher ratings and most other 10+ yr old games.
TalkingFlower@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Appeal to popularity! Why do you think people like 6ix9ine instead of Beethoven? xD
Enjoy your slop!