It's the nature of games trying new concepts. There's so many new problems to solve ('What if a planet generates a cave too deep to get out off?', 'How do we get AI to navigate this procedurally generated, complex terrain?' etc) that it is inevitable it would be much closer to being a tech demo than to realizing the full potential of the concept. So much of the time and effort that would be put into making the game fun would have been put instead into making the concept work.
I don't think they cut any content, as much of the content they spoke of probably never existed.
I personally think a lot of it existed, which is why Sean spoke about it with such confidence - but similarly to what a lot of ambitious developers experience, in the home stretch (like the last 6 months before launch) the reality of how little fits into a home console's pipeline really hits home and they had to downsize.
There were a handful of rumours during late 2015 about how badly NMS was running on PS4 and how much they were struggling with it. I'd put money down that all/most of the missing 'promised' features were originally there, but the PS4's struggles were to do with the realistic celestial simulation and other background features which they had to feverishly slice away to get it to fit on the hardware, resulting in the relatively rudimentary game we have today. A good example of this is Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us. Apparently literally months before launch, on both games, Naughty Dog realised they just didn't fit onto the consoles memory, and they had to start slicing stuff away. Apparently The Last of Us was majorly redesigned in some aspects. Luckily they're far more focused games so smoke and mirrors are easier to apply, and the studio has ten times as many staff.
I'm also sure we'll get a Destiny-style "the game changed so much in one year" articles in the next few months. There's no way the other employees (let alone Sean) are happy with how the game is souring on them.
I have over 900 hours in Destiny since launch and while yes vanilla was low on content, imo it had far more content then NMS. Just the VOG raid had far more content and variety then all of NMS. The fps combat is amazing plus the game has actual pvp along with a great PvE system. I actually felt a sense of as accomplishment with my raid groups when we finished each new raid. Vanilla Destiny for the lack of content had way more to do with variety then NMS. I doubt NMS will ever have the content Destiny currently has.
Sure vanilla was light on content and the world's to you with were barren but in NMS it's far worse. Combat is horrific, you see the same planet after 3-4 hours with the game, and for what ? I have read what the ending is and imo there is no point. NMS is the biggest disappointment this gen for me.
I need to hop back into Destiny, as I can imagine post-TTK it really shot up in quality.
But at launch it was an insult to my time. An absolute insult. I never even reached the raid and I had like 20-25 hours in. I heard the raid was good but I wasn't going to grind for 1-2 hours per day for two weeks (and it
was a fucking grind) to get there. That was an insult: "Play this boring shit for a really long time, literally wasting your time, and we'll give you a cool level". I know TTK fixed this, and good on them for it, but I
still have a bitter taste in my mouth about it almost two years later. At least with NMS I'm seeing new (albeit samey) content hour-on-hour (I enjoy planets for their unique oddities; there are still some resource types I haven't seen; still some lore I don't know about; and still the occasional super-weird creature I haven't seen). FWIW I'm 30 hours in and still seeing the odd new planet type to surprise me. There are surprises in there.
Regardless: I just wonder if NMS will get its Taken King update... They're probably adding a lot of cool stuff in the next few months - a couple of cool things already in the pipe apparently.
Really? I can honestly say that not a single upgrade item I found made anything significantly easier. All they do is speed up your zappers suction slightly.
Really? I get giddy whenever I find a new grenade upgrade (they melt through heavier Sentinels and factory doors etc), a new Warp Drive upgrade, a new Shielding Block diagram or a new 'valuable' schematic (i.e. items which sell for a lot, because they let you farm for simple elements like Carbon and turn them into valuables).
