Yeah I love the game now, not quite so much when it first released (though I still liked it even in the first state it was in at v1), but since then HG have really made the game everything I hoped it would be.

I have seen Sean Murray mention that there is more to come (beyond the current run of patching a major release).
Personally I just hope they now add something to the longevity of the game.

I mean beyond all the shiny new features and more complicated (but less time consuming overall) grind, there needs to be a long term objective. Maybe an extended mission or two which like the original Elite would pull dedicated players back to the game for years to come, in Elites case, that was quite simply to achieve the rank of Elite. But there were a few big missions to achieve aswell, I think you had to have so many kills before the first, then double the amount of kills for the second, then double that amount yet again .. The final (and multi-stage mission) took literally years RL to get to that stage.

In its current state though, NMS will keep me going for a few years relaxing exploration. Its unique to me in actually achieving the goal of being relaxing to play, even for all the family.

Right now I find myself itching to get home from work so I can fire up the game and do some exploration. I hadn't played it since version 1.3(?), I think, so when NEXT was released with the TPP feature*, I thought I'd fire it up again. Added some mods and 'cheated' (used the duplication trick) to get me a shedload of money, then just farted about for about 50 hours figuring out how things worked. When 1.55c was released, I ditched the mods and started a new game, now that I have a better idea how to do things. Having such a blast now.

*For some reason I thought, when I bought the game, that there was a TPP mode already. Tried playing it with the FPP but had to shelf it since I wasn't really liking it that much. TPP was really a gift for me.

Yep the dedication HG have put into major updates and patches for the same has been outstanding. In fact I would say they are a shining example some triple A devs could only aspire to follow.

100% Single Player - It is. Thats also my wish since this came out. The new Multi-player additions are only on steam which suits us GOG users who are wanting only a single player game, because the GOG Galaxy client does not support all the multi-player aspects of this game. And neither does the Offline Manual Installation files for the game (ie if you dont use GOG Galaxy, thats the version I use).

Anyone who wants multi-player right now needs to buy it from steam. Apparently one day the GOG version of the game will have multi-player, but personally I dont care if that never happens, it will get switched off in the games settings for network if / when it does.
Aah :), you wont have seen the Herding creatures and new AI behaviour yet then ?
Have a look at the link I gave in the first post, and read through all the different patch notes since 1.3, there's a lot to catch up on. HG are typing / programming code on steroids I think. Phenomenal amount of work done since then.

Actually, I've been following the patch notes since NEXT. And yeah, they've put a crapton of work into getting this game to what it should be. I'm quite impressed.

It means the promised Multi-Player option promised by the end of 2018 ISN'T here yet!!!

seriously though, why? 2 plus years?

It is actually, it's just in beta... you can play multiplayer by opting into the beta on Galaxy.