Exploration and discovery on an infinite level — an infinite number of things to see, and do.
Or might be at the top, if properly executed. We consume too quickly and bore too easily.
“You can code an infinite universe, but can you code an infinite number of things to do?”
I dare to say, “YES!” — 𝓓𝓻 𝓒𝓻𝓲𝓶 𝓒𝓢𝓓
The problem is what we perceive this to mean, “MORE OF THE SAME THING.”
- 100 hours:
“Exciting! Never seen or done that before!” - 600 hours:
“Seen it, done it, next update, please!”
You must be thinking I’m talking about visual aesthetics and adding more of everything. If only it could be that simple, but it’s not. We have this broken concept of exploration and discovery, but the solution is vast.
Clarification:
What do I mean by ‘planetary variation overhaul’ coming soon?
I am not simply referring to more of everything, because that solves nothing. The problem is how quickly we consume everything. So we have to spread everything out better, which ultimately involves adding more of everything. I’ll try to explain briefly: “EVERY GALAXY PROCEDURAL.” Every galaxy has to be made truly unique, (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%), every asset, aspect, what we see, hear, do, etc. and yes, what we “DO.”
What do I mean by ‘variation overhaul’ coming soon? — Far more than planets, to be sure. Stated simply…
“Variation Everything”
I explained these matters in full, years ago.
See Game Progression and then Multiverse…
Or we could let the legacy of our late Xxiou Games live on, as he did a great job of explaining to us what’s coming soon…
4chan leak
How much longer until we start considering this…
“An Official Leak of Future Updates”
Because everything from this supposed leak has either come true, or is coming true, or is close enough, including details about a new alien race (Was that Autophage?) and much more coming soon, like rivers, new waters, “the ability to revisit worlds of past eras,” which may be referring to the ability to revisit past update ‘universal terrain gen reset’ eras, (See my MULTIVERSE wish above), “a new enemy race” 
(quite possibly teased during the Prisms update with the inclusion of the Horrific Flesh-Helmet; See MULTIVERSE for details about this race), “storyline about the breakdown of the simulation, where Loop16 (Atlas) will be on its last minutes and seconds, literally and figuratively,” (quite possibly teased during this very update, when you consider the Atlas in the center of the Echoes Book Cover image; See image below), and so it goes on…
Does not the Atlas appear to be crumbling away, as if on its last minutes and seconds?
Could this be hinting at our next update and the final part of our ARG? — We shall see!
Yeah, last year I was a bit ahead of myself. — That ‘4chan leak’ had me thinking perhaps they were going to drop everything in a single 4.0 update. Specifically, that long overdue community-wide anticipated, “planetary variation overhaul” and/or otherwise “variation overhaul.” Of course, my thinking behind a “variation overhaul” is MULTI-GALACTIC, unlike most thinking “more of the same thing.” But I sure did question, “How?” How could they cram all that into a single 4.0 update? Were they to hire outside help? They’ve done it before, but on a smaller scale. — I long speculated Nintendo Switch, but remained unsure about the whole idea, because examining the matter it seemed not impossible, but highly improbable. But sure enough, what they dropped was the miracle of NMS on Nintendo Switch, Macintosh, “iOS coming soon,” and managed to squeeze a whole bunch more into all that year. — Certainly, HG work hard, and this is an understatement!
So who was our “Anonymous” 4chan user? - “Was that you, Sean?” - No, because they got a few details wrong, like the name of 4.0 being DOWNFALL (which ultimately became WAYPOINT, “another point along the way”) and were a little ahead of themselves in thinking, like I did, that they’d drop everything in a single 4.0 update.
So perhaps they really are a friend of HG, as they so claim to be, and maybe this was all planned out, as SM and HG’s way of teasing what would ultimately become 3+ years of hard work under development. 
Might they have wished to speak, to tell us of everything they were working on, but were too afraid to do so, because we might hold them to it? So they opened up through a friend, or an otherwise “Anonymous” SM, HG.
Might they have wished to release it all sooner, but could see it was all dragging on and would take more time? Bringing NMS to all these platforms and devices kept taking priority. Might they still need more time? Could that explain their delayed expeditions and an Anniversary update, being part-way through an ARG of sorts?..
“What lies at the end of an ARG?”, is like asking, “What lies at the end of an anomalous rainbow?” 
But regardless of what’s coming, I’m proud of HG and what we have, and can’t wait for what’s coming.