I know I'm 3 days late, but comparing NMS to minecraft is a terrible example. Minecraft is not a game without an objective. It's basically virtual lego. Building stuff is the goal, rest, like procedurally generated worlds, survival aspects, yada yada is just elaborate (and yes, improtant but still ) window dressing. NMS so far looks like all of that window dressing without the underlying point.
When people start minecraft their ultimate goal quickly establishes it... usually it's to build a giant dildo from diamonds or something.
What will be the goal in NMS? Exploring? Why would I explore after I've seen the basic presets and figured out how generation ticks? It will be just boring recolored remixes of the same. It's not like I will find some place with some environmental story telling... there can't be any, cause it's all just randomized. No person with an idea of what happened here stepped in and set up a scene to allude to that.
So far, NMS still remains a beatufil idea done for it's own sake. My guess is, they are expecting people to stick around long enough to generate the purpose by generating a basic approximaton of a society. If that works, beautiful, you have a game which goals and priorities are fully and utterly generated by the community playing it. Maybe they end up competing in making mining corporations with employees and net worths and stuff eve online stuff. Maybe people really into rolleplay will create faux institues for observing and recording as many species of flora and fauna in the universe as possible... But doing all that alone will shatter the illussion in a matter of an hour or two... And if community does not embrace this, game is, in my opinion, completely fucked. So it strikes me as a bit of a gamble, with a bit of a catch 22.
