No Man's Sky was released 7 years ago yesterday (August 9th) on PS4 in North America, today (August 10th) on PS4 in Europe, and August 12th on Steam.
How long have you been playing and how many hours have you played?
I started around Beyond (2.0) and have almost 3800 hours played.
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.
Who is the someone NPC?
Nope, random rich players like myself, with more goods and money than brains lol. Although some of the updates added some very high price items, so last time I played, I made a pretty good dent in my riches.
So players can see one another now?
Oh ya, the hub is where all players can get together and group up.
Cool may start playing again.
You're talking about the Nexus aka Space Anomaly - "the Hub" usually refers to the Galactic Hub, which is a player-made, developer-canonized community.
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.