That’s fine if you weren’t paying attention. It’s part of the talking points Sean Murray was making in the run up to the game’s launch. Would be easy to miss since it was only covered in Wired, The New Yorker, Stephen Colbert, and every gaming website ever. All that aside, it’s a really good idea which would make the game way better if they added it, which is the main reason I hope they add it someday.
The more they patch the game to emphasize base building and multiplayer, the less enjoyable it has become for me. The idea of coop multiplayer is so compelling that I can’t help but want to give it a try every time I play, but it’s not integrated into the main game AT ALL, and what exists right now is just so pathetic and broken. I think the success rate for our group completing missions without some kind of desync error or uncompleteable state is like 1 in 3. At the same time, it’s hard to enjoy even playing in solo anymore, because anytime a friend signs on I start FOMOing about trying to meet up in-game and “do something”, but there isn’t anything to do with other players other than break each other’s mission and quest progression so it brings everything to a grinding halt.
Anyway. It WAS “The Game For Me” before this patch, now not so much. I think NMS has stepped too far into the MMO waters and the devs are in over their heads. I wish they’d left well enough alone after NEXT and continued to focus on world building and exploration instead of whatever this is supposed to be.