I could most definitely be wrong, but yea it does look like HG freaked out at the rampant speculation. In guessing 4.0 really is switch + smaller Improvements, and then another smaller sized update coming in the near future? I do feel like HG may be shifting away from a huge content update yearly since Frontiers. Just my two cents though.
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God the twitter doom and gloom bots are out lol. i think the fact that it was a milestone update, got a lot of peopleās hope up (mine too, to a degree). But making NMS work for Switch must be daunting. Then MacOs later this yearā¦they took on a lot. I know we will still get stuff, I just hope it sells well and keeps NMS funded for another couple years. If thatās the sacrifice of a small 4.0 I can live with it.
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Iāve seen a lot of people crying about this, several people whoād post like crazy about 4.0 now posting about leaving NMS for a bit lolā¦
Iām glad HG arenāt pushing themselves way too much, 3 new platforms, especially the switch, are pretty difficult to add and maintain for upcoming updates. I do hope they take a bit of a break from massive updates for their sake for a bit, Iām all for not having a massive 4.0 if it means that development runs a bit stable with all these new platforms.
Hereās to 5.0, or 4.5 then maybe 
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So now we know NMS version 4.0 update occurs on Oct 7, and it occurs in conjunction with NMS Switch digital and Switch / PS5 physical edition releases. Only thing we donāt know is the size of 4.0 and its contents.
I speculate a huge āvariation overhaulā with a focus on variation between galaxies (but only if HG hired much of the art and animation out) with a possible multiverse (allowing universal terrain reset without affecting planetary bases; as prescribed in the multiverse thread) and much more, as much as two years in the making.
However, would it require two years to bring NMS to Switch, among all other ambitions? We donāt know! So our speculations may be more appropriate for a future 5.0, etc. We will have to wait and see this 4.0 update. Otherwise, Seanās tweets and blog posts feels like dĆ©jĆ vu, the usual statements before a major update.
Considerā¦
2022 has already been one of our most busy years to date
He always says that. Why? Because heās being reflective and itās always true.
The focus of 4.0 is our Switch release, an opportunity to introduce a new group of players into our welcoming community. More will follow
The focus of all other anniversary or ābig number changeā updates were, multiplayer (Atlas Rises 1.3), Xbox (Next 1.5), VR (Beyond 2.0), numerous ambitions (Origins 3.0), and numerous smaller āmajor updatesā all year every year, and yet somehow they always managed to still drop a āvariation overhaulā update, 2Ć bigger than each year prior. Only exception to this was last year, with no 4.0 āvariation overhaul.ā ā Thus, 2 years later: āWhatās 4.0!?ā ā So when Sean says, ā4.0 is Switchā and āmore will follow,ā certainly he doesnāt mean 4.0 is only an optimization patch for Switch, with maybe some bug fixes for PC and other platforms. That would be sooo out of character for such a small ambitious team like HG. Oh no, he means more will follow about 4.0.
Sean saysā¦
No Manās Sky Switch is releasing on Oct 7th
If so, it will break a two-year string of Wednesday releases. It will also be the first Friday release since August 9, 2016, the initial release of NMS. Thus, I expect 4.0 to release digitally on Wed Oct 5th, followed by Switch and PS5 physical editions on Fri Oct 7th. This would help prevent people from getting their hands on the physical editions too early and leaking out gameplay footage from the included major update version 4.0.
Otherwise, HG rewrites history and the future of speculations, forever.
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For a long time, I have wondered about the direction development of NMS is taking. Whilst I welcome the free updates (who could not?), they often seem aimless, and disconnected from the main thrust of the game.
Some of the additions are clearly implementations of features players have requested - but others are not. There seems to be little coherence between the various enhancements, and a lack of an overall plan. There seems to be no ultimate goal in mind.
The more I look at the current NMS, the more I see a big Skinner box. A research tool, in which participants willingly give their time and effort to test gaming and programming concepts. Back in the day, Microsoft Usability Labs used to spend millions to obtain this sort of consumer feedback. It seems to me that Hello Games have found a way to persuade millions of people to participate as test subjects - not just for free - but to actually pay for the privilege.
We know Hello Games are working on a new game. We know it is intended to be unusual and innovative. I believe the reason many of the NMS updates seem so disjointed is because they are actually field trials of programming techniques and concepts (not content - that would be too much of a giveaway) for the new project.
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I think thereās several aspects to this. A major one is that aimlessness had been built into the atmosphere of the game right from day one. There has never been a real āpointā to the game, and this was one of the things that caused a lot of confusion pre-launch. Iām sure we still remember the many youtubers being like āwell, this is all well and good, but what the hell do you do in this game??ā
One way in which this is an influence on ongoing development is that if you make things too tight, too integrated, a lot of people will start complaining about the aimless, chill nature of the game getting lost (in fact, this has already been brought up a couple of timesā¦). So they canāt just grab all the additions and integrate them in the style of an immersive sim where every mechanic has its use somehow at some point. That just wouldnāt be the same game anyymore.
Next, from the little that Sean has publically talked about their āgreenlight processā, is that basically there isnāt one. Sure, thereāll be prioritisation for the sake of resource allocation, but essentially the vibe I got was that the creativity of individual developers is driving feature development, not a design process or a vision or anything. As such, the largely disconnected individual features are very unsurprising. I get the feeling that like every 2 years or so HG makes an attempt of āstreamliningā things and integrating them better, and this has happened several times, and will probably keep happening in the future.
And last, I would agree, NMS is probably being used as a testbed. If their next game is in any way similiar to NMS that may allow reusing code, theyād be mad not to do it.
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I donāt think they are aimless at all. I bet they have a giant road map of features, and expanded features that they pull from. They keep improving various aspects of their game. Now there could be test bed features being used to test or improve there upcoming project. If it is the same engine, that only makes sense.
But Sean reminds me of someone who knows there are things he wants to add/doā¦ but he needs to go through H I J K to get to L . So even though he could technically jump past J or K he wonāt. Even if J is already in the game but, broken or buggy he will wait until he gets through H I first.
its not that unusual for coders to think like that lol.
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Iām sure they do. I suspect itās called āThe New Projectā.
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Could be. Either way I like new toys.
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As someone who has worked on a variety of āprojectsā for work, I can say that the most likely thing is that NMS is being developed the way it was intended to be developed but gathering data from it is a side bonus. Their target audience has grown and it seems this is because their updates are aimed towards different groups of individuals with the intention of expanding their reach and prolonging engagement.
The success and long-term relevance of NMS is more important than using it as a test-bed because the publicity they gain from the game allows them to advertise their upcoming game to a large audience for free.(and we all suspect their money is limited) and if they LOVE NMS, then they are highly likely to buy whatever they make next. So the game cant be focused on being a test-bed. It would need content to keep players coming back and loving it.
That doesnāt mean that they arent taking as much data as they can from the game though. Just that it isnāt in their best interest to just throw content at the game for the sake of another game.
My personal guess is that the team has a roadmap for future updates but the updates are mainly the HG team just having fun developing what they want to develop whether or not its connected to anything else in the game. And then some parts in the roadmap connect things or build on existing things. Which I personally like if that is the case. World building is big for me.
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My 2 centsā¦
Sean said a while back that Hello Games was now doing more things that interested the devs. While I donāt think enhancements and additions are limited to that, itās likely still a factor.
I think of the game as primarily exploration, but Sean said way at the beginning that it was the first area of emphasis among gameās 4 pillars (Explore, Trade, Fight, Survive).
Iām fine with them using player reactions and play of various parts of the game for research, but I donāt think thatās a primary reason for any enhancements.
Us 3xperimental folks are their testers.
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Yeah, me too, though Iām not enamored of how it has developed over time. I much prefer the earlier versions of things which were far more simple, understandable, and straightforward. Making stuff to make stuff to make more stuff to FINALLY make what you intendedā¦ Iām not a big fan of that.
But I like world building and helping people get on their feet. While about half the Fallout 4 community absolutely hates the settlement building aspect of it and just want to shoot things, I love that half of the game. I jumped on the Sim Settlements 2 mod which is supposed to streamline that settlement building thing, and it does to a good extent. It also has a storyline of its own which gets increasingly involved and engaging. But then for most of us, it gets brain cancer and parts of it begin breaking down, and we spend as much time trying to get it to work right as playing it. When it does work, itās brilliant.
So I like the idea of helping new settlements get on their feet in No Manās Sky. I just cringe at how many sometimes-weird steps are involved in getting from scrappy handful of buildings and adventurous citizens to a working village.
Iām also starved to death for some of that rich Lore in the galaxy to mean something in the universe. Our world is based on the foundations of prior cultures which died or grew into new cultures. Our history has significance to us, whether we realize it or not. NMS has a rich history to it. It has intriguing bits of information left in terminals and wrecks, communications, even graves of Travelers to impart information to us. But it doesnāt seem to amount to anything. The strange messages left by an increasingly demented traveler serve only to urge us to fly to the center of the galaxy - just so we can travel on to a whole new galaxy - which many of us donāt want to do. We have a galaxy right here in Euclid which we will never explore much at all, and I want to see as much of it as I can before my Last Days.
There is also the matter of the Waking Titan ARG with its tantalizing clues which no one has ever completely solved, and hints at the origins of ATLAS and the alternate reality we call home. My frustrations over the whole mess seemingly being abandoned drove me to write my fiction on here. Like me, the hero balks at the status quo and the lazy attitudes of the inhabitants to just let things be as they are forā¦ ever. When there was once a thriving galactic community with any number of races which were wiped out by the Gek First Spawn - why abandon all that? To see these Three Races just twiddling their thumbs, with the occasional word of a Vyākeen invasion of a Gek system which we never see, this drives the hero nuts. So one day he decides to do something about it, anything, and goes off half cocked into the wild nebulous yonder to see what can be done, if anything. And so begins my naive attempt to piece the Lore of the galaxy into a history which has something to do with the current situation, and might give him the clues to change things.
I was super excited to see the Frontiers update include settlement building, after writing about something similar in undocumented regions of the galaxy prior. It was almost like Iād read their minds. However, the crafting system and the things necessary to sound a settlement, as I mentioned, could be handled better. I wish the whole crafting system would get an overhaul, because it used to be fun rather than a tedious chore. In fact, the hero Nigel has only responded to distress calls from settlements, and upon dispatching the Sentinel threat flies off, rather than get involved in the ordeal of playing mayor to a bunch of half-clueless squabbling rubes.
I was intending to work on the story rather than play games today, but Iāve already run out of steam in the course of this post, so I guess after a nap Iāll be delving back into the Commonwealth, and saving settlers from miscreants - and the buggy system which makes it all runā¦ mostly. 
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Thereās probably a misunderstanding about the term āworldbuildingā involved here. Worldbuilding is a subcategory of writing in general, and describes the process of creating a setting, which usually consists of laying down rules, plotting out history, creating lore, etc.
It is not used to describe the process of building something in a game.
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Lots of people here donāt have English as their first language. To be honest, I donāt know what amazes me more - the high quality of the English that people do display, or the fact that we donāt have more confusion and misunderstanding .
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Indeed. I tend to forget, even though Iām one of themā¦ 
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And the fact those tend to be non-native English speakersā¦
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Yes! Me 3. More lore, lore galore.
(Gee, Iām a poet and donāt know it. )
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