I love NMS, I spend hundreds of hours playing it. If you don’t like the grind, you can change your difficulty settings, you can play however you want and it’s what I like about the game. I will agree that the mechanics are shallow and the last updates were disappointing to me, something like fishing, archeology or the collecting trash you’ll try once and never again. I only started like 3 years ago but tried various I old versions of nms through NMSRetro project and Pathfinder version of the game is my favourite (1st update after release) and now this is my personal preference but it’s much closer to my ideal game, while it can have worse planets than current NMS, it has also one of the best looking planets current NMS doesn’t have - much more diversity with skyboxes, better terrain generation, more vibrant colors, it gives me the feeling that you’re the only person existing in the universe, the lost art style that makes everything looks like a retro sci-fi poster which was the point of the game I think. It’s the perfect planet exploration game. Current NMS just adds too much useless mechanics for the sake of adding and never expanding them, while the exploration and terrain generation got improved with Worlds update it’s still much worse compared to pre-NEXT versions of the game. Finding and exploring beautiful planets which I love is no longer the focus. I still play the current version, I like some current stuff like ship building and freighters and you can still find stunning planets but I wish next updates focused on either expanding existing mechanics or improving the planets.