I bought the pre release, got bored so quickly and never logged more than 2 hours for many many years. I thought they wouldn't actually keep updating it but they did which is very cool.
Now whenever I open the game to give it a try they force me to get all of this shit I don't want like a freight thing and I need to build a base and it's like dude I thought the whole idea was that you could do whatever you want, and then you force me to do all this tutorial shit that I don't care about? I can't get into it.
The tutorials should be optional, I wanna explore the universe with just my ship and be a drifter for a while before I find a home planet I like to make my base, I wanna worry about freighters once I've experienced the rest of the game not right away. I want to learn the updates at my own pace but it won't let me so I gave up on it.
I very much agree with this. There's a ton of tutorial-style messaging that it would be nice to be able to customize and turn off. I have hundreds of hours at this point, but I still can't pick up some map types - that I've already used - without the same tutorial mission about using maps popping up.
I agree bought the preorder and the game was nothing that they claim it was. So I quit playing. Now can't get into it. Makes you buy frieghters etc and the amount of money needed can't be obtained. I too just wanted to be an explorer.
Also they ruined one of my saves I had 100 hours on of building on a planet due to one of their updates.
So I don't play even though it was such an excellent concept.
Easiest way to make money, is to hang out at the hub, and someone will likely gift you products worth several million each to sell.
I also preordered, but I played long enough to amass some credits, and then learned how to dupe items, so money hasn't been an issue for a long time. It definitely makes it easier to come back to when you have a few billion credits.
Still, I think I've only got a couple hundred hours played. I want something to fight with my ship I spent hours upgrading (actually fight, not pathetic 1 shot sentinels). I don't get why they allow you to build such powerful ships, with literally nothing to use them against.
FYI, as long as you don't have one already, you get your first freighter for free.
After a reasonable amount of playtime, money is plentiful enough that those prices are an 'every Tuesday' kind of thing more than actually unattainable. After completing the main campaign and spending a bunch of time screwing around, at this point I have to store wealth as high-value items in storage, because selling a couple stacks will easily hit the wallet cap and selling more is a waste.
Exactly my case. Got bored quickly and tried coming back a few different times for big updates. Never got past all the tutorials. I had more fun for the few hours I was flying around to other planets when I first got it.
Started playing on Xbox when Next released, moved to the Switch version when that dropped. I probably have about 400 hours across both consoles.
I still get excited when a new update or expedition drops. Usually I'll end up putting in another 10-20 hours with every update, playing through the new content and exploring a few more star systems on my main save.
It's just nice to have a chill game to wonder around in, that's not forcing me to keep logging in every day to grind out missions. Even in expeditions there's usually loads of time to complete everything at a relaxed pace.
They've recently added far more difficult enemies. Combat could still use some work, but groups like the Galactic Hub (my civilization) host PVP competitions. Fighting another player is way harder than fighting a Sentinel.
Once my original save got to the endgame, I spent a lot of time maxing out my money, freighter, bases, etc. and contributing to the glyph exchange subreddits. After a while I stopped playing but would check back in after a major update. I didn't really play again seriously until the expeditions started. It's the game I often go back to when I don't have something else to play.
A lot of people find that civilized space is the thing that gets them to stay engaged in the end game. Helping to contribute to a community, helping new players, opening your own business to provide resources, stuff like that. I, of course, recommend the Galactic Hub as your first consideration for a civilization.
They said there are 4 Quadrillion stars and each has at least 1 planet you can land on. While true, each planet is one of ~8 variations and that's it. Like... snooooze. Then they just added shit like underwater bases which were useless.. or new underwater vehicles which were useless.
That's like saying a sandbox is only sand. It is what you make of it. It doesn't need to be deep if your imagination is. Granted, that won't be the type of game everyone enjoys. But for those who do enjoy it, they end up putting in 2,000 hours like me, and I've seen plenty of people with more hours than me too.
I preordered on Steam, and I actually enjoyed it even way back then. Never really got into the hype, so I guess I was never too disappointed with the launch. It's still a game I go back to just to chill. I highly recommend playing in VR if you have a headset.
I bought the pre release just a some days before the Steam release and played since, even if sometime I had paused for some months.
And I bought it again on GoG, mainly because it not force you to be always updated to play, so every new release I let the steam players to be the beta tester 😁
Give it a go on sale. It's one of the very few studios that went above and beyond to actually fix a PR fuck-up (and it was mainly that). Compare that to most studios with far more resources and reputation just throwing shit at the wall like Anthem and whatnot..