Pifanjr

I've found that for me, I lose interest in a factory game the moment I have to scale up. It's when progressing through the game means copying an existing solution to a problem and pasting it (a bunch of times) somewhere else rather than coming up with new solutions.

In general, I get bored when I've figured out the solution to a problem but it takes a long time to get it implemented. Which is also why building conveyor belts is typically my least favourite part of any factory game and why I very rarely refactor my base.

I've never played Diplomacy, but I've had a very similar experience playing the Game of Thrones board game in person with 6 people. There was a lot of scheming, with people going off in groups of two to different rooms to make plans and boldly lie to each other. I really loved it. The person who organized it (and won) was active in model UN stuff and I think he went on to become a lawyer.

I've also played a similar type of game on a forum once, with the unique mechanic that you had to spend your resources to set up direct communications to other players. Which meant that there was a lot of hearsay happening, with a lot of lies being spread.

One of my favourite board game memories is from a 3-player Twilight Imperium game where I managed to maneuver myself in such a way that the other players thought I wasn't a problem any more. Which allowed me to snatch the victory right from under their noses.

I made this point earlier in the comments, but I think the main difference between Minecraft and No Man's Sky is that Minecraft does not push the players towards specific gameplay systems, while No Man's Sky does, making No Man's Sky feel much less like a box of legos and more like a collection of specific tasks/activities.

I think one thing that Minecraft does very well is that it does not push the player towards any of its game systems, which allows the player to make up their own fun. No Man's Sky on the other hand throws a lot of different game systems at you. Just having points of interests pushes the player into just going from one to the other instead of them exploring what might make the game fun for them.

I think the main difference in Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld is that the world happens to you, you have to respond to the events the game generates, while in No Man's Sky you happen to the world, you choose how to interact with it.

No Man's Sky is much more like Minecraft in that way, you have to make up your own goals, the game doesn't really prompt you in any way to do anything.

The procedurally generated planets and moons from Starfield are a bit like the radiant quests of Skyrim, they just pad the game time a bit with procedurally generated content. The main difference is that the radiant quests in Skyrim typically sent you to locations you hadn't visited yet within a hand-crafted world, while in Starfield the world around the locations isn't interesting and the locations themselves start repeating way too quickly.