Have a good look in the options. You can play multiplayer in NMS but turn off any PvP aspects - so meet other explorers without them being able to attack/damage you. You have similar control over any bases that you build/publish. As I said above, it makes FDev's binary solution look poor along with their inability/unwillingness to learn from HG/NMS.
The modes are all things to all players, which is the idea behind it. It only becomes an "issue" for the people playing open shocked about PVP happening or the people who want everyone forced into their choice of mode/style of play. As long as you make the choice that suits your playstyle everything's fine, trying to inflict your choices on others is where it doesn't work. Which honestly I think is a good thing.
I don't agree, this has not been my experience, and no matter how 'buggered' you consider it, NMS at least has narratives to follow - if you want to.
Build shed mission, build new shed next to existing shed you already made (because playing in sandbox) to complete mission but its not recognised, demolish both sheds and start again now recognised. Great that very thorough I only got half the stuff back though so I need to shoot the rocks some more.
Go raid nanites from nearby building you already raided, the game can't recognise it until you return to the building and step over the threshold then you get an instant mission complete but get to walk there and back twice only the second time is empty handed.
Race somewhere in your locked 3rd person playmobile car to complete the mission which is vital and has a dramatic timer, or just use your spaceship instead and take 3 seconds to beat the five minute countdown without having to drive in a straight line through the foliage as that's faster than going around.
Move your base now you've been playing long enough to know what you want nearby, mission targets remain on the old planet so the repetitive slog is now long distance repetitive slog.
Its not really that much of a narrative, kids TV characters hop about and make sounds and you play chase the icon and don't deviate or do your own thing or it breaks. No choices to make at all in the story beyond the obvious one chucked in as a tearjerker.
I'm not saying that there aren't irritations in the game, but they don't bug me nearly as much as they seem to do you.
I like to do my own thing which works in ED in NMS not so much. I just googled the base data mission to find out how I can finish it off because its very repetitive and I'm not gripped by the one sentence at a time story to find out its permanent and I'll keep getting those notifications to return (which I can't turn off).
It doesn't help that I like finding new planets having an explore plonking down the signal booster and going to the distress signals to find the signals with crashed ships don't have crashed ships even when the black box refers to the crashed ship still being there (I'm not on about the ones where the sentinels removed it). I googled that and apparently they get stuck parked way up in the air fairly commonly at an angle too steep to see due to clunky FPS mechanics.
The overall feel is very simplistic far too easy to become an overnight indium mogul and as a noob I shouldn't really be blasting sentinel walkers to pieces so easily or defeating pirate squadron nexus missions solo or nexus biological horror hunts where you just stand shooting from the roof and they can't get you. Its like they forgot we've got jetpacks.
Handing you a free freighter very early in the game seems jarring since you are grubbing about with your noob stuff planetside yet you've got your own fleet. The freighter mechanics themselves are so extremely simplistic and repetitive I'm not bothering going anymore since my mine pays much better and requires less faffing about with the text only missions.
Its just too easy and the only challenge I've found is stopping myself doing what I want so I don't break the completely linear story missions by being the wrong side of the galaxy due to wandering off into the sandbox or having equipped myself with something the game doesn't expect me to have yet and can't seem to cope with me having already.
6/10 being generous because SPACE !. I'll probably bin it soon, with no regrets its a nice little game worth the reduced price.