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No Man's Sky goes all Dead Space...

Started by surreal, July 16, 2020, 03:54:31 PM

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surreal

New update trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCT6L4R7bU&feature=emb_logo

Any still playing this?  They borked the keybindings thing which won't allow me to use the (admittedly weird) keys I like so I dropped it a few months ago, couldn't be arsed to see if there was a file I could modify manually.

It seems to me like there is almost *too* much stuff in there to get back into it now, so much it is throwing at you and makes you feel like you'll never do everything especially with the way the grind works in this game - I much preferred it when it was just easy open-world exploration.  Kind of have the same feeling with Elite:Dangerous, unless you've been in it from the start you're stuffed.

This looks quite cool anyway and nice to see they are still hard at work on it

Dewt

I still can't get over how much it felt like everything was happening in a single room. When you'd travel through space it was like it was just the same room with a vignette around the edge


BeardFaceMan

Been trying to get back in to this lately.  Managed to get a living ship but playing it for a few hours reminded me why I stopped playing - the game is a buggy mess. Theres a lot to do and a lot to enjoy about the game, but it could be soooo much better if they just sorted out a few core things rather than keep expanding and adding to the game. Updates are fun and all but not that fun when they're attached to a game that has so many little niggly things wrong with it. I'm seriously fucked off with having to go the long way around when fixing one of my frieghters because theres an invisible wall in front of the door. And having an underwater base that doesnt flood on the inside would be nice too.

Kryton

Yeah some of the quests are buggy and I think a bug-fixing update is due.
However it's a gorgeously ambitious game and much more fun than the likes of Elite dangerous (which pains me to say it).
I DO like the fact the devs are continually upgrading it without charging a penny. Other companies would have put all these updates in £16.99 DLC packs (looking at you Paradox).

Hasn't the grind been toned down and refined a little now? It's been a while since I've played it and would consider getting back into it.

My main gripe - Needs more planet types (lots more) and more POI's and such. Planets with varying biomes would be nice too.

Kryton

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on July 16, 2020, 05:00:56 PM
I'm seriously fucked off with having to go the long way around when fixing one of my frieghters because theres an invisible wall in front of the door. And having an underwater base that doesnt flood on the inside would be nice too.

Eurgh repairing freighters and the bigger ships is not fun. I'd much rather they have an option in which you could hire crew to do it for you and just pay upkeep or something or a fixed price to repair all.

I mostly enjoyed it, but there were too many moments where you'd land on some utterly fucked planet with fuck all resource on it and you'd be tiptoeing around, trying to find fuel so you could take off again and try and find somewhere easier to explore.

When the game is good it's genuinely brilliant, but there's so much frustration to be had.

Kryton

It's better than it once was though - I compare this to Starbound in some ways - It has huge sandbox potential, but fairly limited in what you can inside that sandbox besides quests, basic discovery and trading etc.

I'm still dreaming of my hybrid game that combines Elite, Star citizen, NMS and Eve online. One day...

Thursday

The resource gathering killed it for me just wasn't fun, but at the same time removing all that makes it an empty experience. It reduces every world down to a series of checklists. In terms of exploration, I soon found that even if the algorithms bring up something interesting, it doesn't feel meaningful, it doesn't feel like anything matters. It becomes too hard to pretend, too hard to immerse myself in the world, because the joins are too obvious.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on July 16, 2020, 05:11:38 PM
When the game is good it's genuinely brilliant, but there's so much frustration to be had.

Thats the quote that should be on the back of the box.

Things like base building and terraforming dont quite work, even just trying to create a flat area with the flattening tool is a nightmare, and half of the stuff in your base building inventory doesn't snap into place with the other half,  frustrating would be fucking right. Because these are the basics, these are the things you do when you dont have anything else to do, or inbetween missions. You spend so much time doing these things that to have them be broken or not working properly really casts a cloud over the whole game, its just good instead of being great. As has been said, great strides have been made compared to what a shitshow it was on release,  but yes, I would much rather have a huge bugfix update next instead of a content update.

MojoJojo

I did start playing this again at the beginning of lockdown and I was amazed by how much it had improved since I last played it about 3 years ago. You've got to give them some credit for still pumping out free game updates after all this time.

I think you're all being a bit down on it, the grind has been massively reduced, and I've generally found that just gently bumbling around gets me the resources I need. It might be bad if you try to focus on hitting the quests? I dunno. There are still amazing bits of discovery to be had.

Unlike Twed, I think the variety between planets is fine, but what bothers me is the complete lack of variety on a planet. Each planet has less geographical variety than Norfolk.

Trailer... initial thought was that I really don't want more combat because the combat is a bit crap, but then it says they've updated the combat so maybe it's not naff any more.

Thursday

I'm curious how they're still funding it at this point? Is it just that their budget is low enough that the initial sales still pay for it, and any free update tends to influence an extra boost in sales?
I don't think anyone would have begrudged them putting out some paid DLC at this point (Well actually, lots of "Gamers would, but most of the people that actually play the game, I mean) so fair enough.

MojoJojo

I've wondered that too. I think the answer is basically yeah, their budget is fairly low, and No Man's Sky made a shit load of money. $78 million on PC downloads alone in 2016, which must keep the lights on a bit. I can't find any info on how many staff they have, but they're not a big studio.

They have a new game coming out soon, The Last Campfire.

They've probably also figured that leaving No Man's Sky in a state would be the death of any future project they worked on.

It's why dickheads like Peter Molyneux and Denis Dyack can't find a pot to piss in these days. They over-promised, under-delivered and then doubled down.

MojoJojo

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on July 17, 2020, 02:41:24 PM
They've probably also figured that leaving No Man's Sky in a state would be the death of any future project they worked on.

It's why dickheads like Peter Molyneux and Denis Dyack can't find a pot to piss in these days. They over-promised, under-delivered and then doubled down.

Oh yeah, they definitely needed to do something to fix their reputation. To be fair, I don't think they are quite the same as Molyneux and co - their offices got flooded, so they went big to get a desperately needed advance from Sony, but then were stuck trying to make something bigger than they could and not knowing how to manage the hype they had created.

Honestly, how anyone could look at Joe Danger and have the expectations there were for NMS.

I guess it was the Sony money and the ridiculously unrepresentative preview video at a time when small, independent developers were putting out some ridiculously polished stuff.

Kryton

Quote from: MojoJojo on July 17, 2020, 12:47:38 PM
I've wondered that too. I think the answer is basically yeah, their budget is fairly low, and No Man's Sky made a shit load of money. $78 million on PC downloads alone in 2016, which must keep the lights on a bit. I can't find any info on how many staff they have, but they're not a big studio.

They have a new game coming out soon, The Last Campfire.

Pretty sure there's a famous picture of the developers announcing the game complete a number of years ago. I think it was maybe about 20 people in the office?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Interesting. No Man's Sky was one of the games that convinced me to choose a PS4 over the Xbone, so it was a mild pisser when it got slated on release. Maybe I'll give it a go at last.

Do you have to have a PSN account to get the most out of it?

Sonny_Jim

There's an online multiplayer element that I haven't tried, but from the looks of it, it just whisks you and a few compadres into a separate 'shard' to do a number of missions (read: box ticking exercises).

I've put in about 100hrs in on the PSVR version and yeah it's fun.  But fark me it's a bit rough around the edges and there's definitely an 'artificial difficulty level' in that to progress in the some of the missions you need to trigger what seems to be random events.  For example, when the living ships were released I spent about 3-4 days doing the busy work but gave up at the last hurdle when it wanted me to 'look for a monolith' or some shit.

It's painfully obvious that they've put up these stupid little hurdles everywhere so you don't 'finish' the game in an afternoon.  Going back to my Living Ship example, the tasks they have you complete are all on timers, so you can't get the ship quickly.  You have to log in, fly around for a bit hoping you trigger the next event, go find some resources, plug it into the gate, wait for the timer to expire, rinse and repeat 6 times.

Bleh...

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: Sonny_Jim on July 18, 2020, 01:47:38 AM
There's an online multiplayer element that I haven't tried, but from the looks of it, it just whisks you and a few compadres into a separate 'shard' to do a number of missions (read: box ticking exercises).

I've put in about 100hrs in on the PSVR version and yeah it's fun.  But fark me it's a bit rough around the edges and there's definitely an 'artificial difficulty level' in that to progress in the some of the missions you need to trigger what seems to be random events.  For example, when the living ships were released I spent about 3-4 days doing the busy work but gave up at the last hurdle when it wanted me to 'look for a monolith' or some shit.

It's painfully obvious that they've put up these stupid little hurdles everywhere so you don't 'finish' the game in an afternoon.  Going back to my Living Ship example, the tasks they have you complete are all on timers, so you can't get the ship quickly.  You have to log in, fly around for a bit hoping you trigger the next event, go find some resources, plug it into the gate, wait for the timer to expire, rinse and repeat 6 times.

Bleh...

Hehe should have carried on, that was the easiest bit of the whole thing (of course, actually using the portal and getting where you want to go is another matter entirely). Just put some nav data into a beacon, or upgrade a scanner on an exocraft to find one straight away. But as you say, the rest of that quest was an absolute cunt, I really do fucking hate it when they put stuff in a game that's impossible to work out so you have to put the game down to go look up what to do online, terrible game design. As is time-gating a mission for 24 hours half a dozen times in a full-priced game. That mission should have been done in 2 hours, instead it took a week. Now I have the living ship I'm looking for upgrades for it, which involves pulse-driving around systems in your ship and hoping for a random encounter. Absolute bollocks.

Anyone tried the abandoned freighter stuff yet? Hoping to have a crack at that this weekend.

Bently Sheds

I did an abandoned freighter last night. As I was in creative mode there was no danger of freezing to death or being eaten by the little bug things, so the peril aspect (which I guess is what these bits are all about) was lost on me. I suspect in normal difficulty or permadeath it would be stressful as fuck. It was an interesting hour or so, a little frustrating too, a nice way to keep the game ticking along a bit longer.

I also had to drop out of warp to trade with a passing Korvax dude - that was new to me, but then I've not played since before the previous update.

Captain Poodle Basher

Quote from: Bently Sheds on July 18, 2020, 08:56:27 AM
I did an abandoned freighter last night. As I was in creative mode there was no danger of freezing to death or being eaten by the little bug things, so the peril aspect (which I guess is what these bits are all about) was lost on me. I suspect in normal difficulty or permadeath it would be stressful as fuck. It was an interesting hour or so, a little frustrating too, a nice way to keep the game ticking along a bit longer.

I also had to drop out of warp to trade with a passing Korvax dude - that was new to me, but then I've not played since before the previous update.

Do you have to buy the coordinates from the NPCs in Space Stations before you can explore the abandoned freighters?

I came across two floating wrecks last night but couldn't land on them.

The passing traders have been added the update before last. Mostly dull but occasionally one will ask for help with materials or components to fix their ship. Same with the crashed ships on planets, I met a Gek who was just sitting there looking at his smoking jalopy of a ship. I patched it up for him and he flew off without even saying thanks. 

It's still buggy as fuck though. I was trying to browse component merchants last night on a space station but the menu was the one for the seller in a trade outpost. Planet information was knackered as well. I landed on one of those 'oddball' planets - a Foaming World with a single fauna yet the menu told me I was on a frost world with 6 species.

Bently Sheds

There's a bloke in a tent on the left side of the space station as you fly in. He will sell you a scanner for an exorbitant sum. You start it up in the station, launch in your ship & then hit the pulse drive when clear of the station. It will scan the system then give you an icon to follow.

ElTwopo

I've been playing this on and off during lockdown. There's a lot to do but it's ultimately all pretty shallow. I do enjoy it though, particularly if you just set your own goals rather than doing the usual stuff. I'm currently travelling around just to try and find the big fellars you see sometimes.

This guy let me ride about on his head after feeding him a bit:



Dunno what this is supposed to be? Dinosaur/nutcracker/tin opener/bottle opener?


BeardFaceMan

It's pretty crazy how many updates and new free content this game gets, it puts other studios to shame, it really does. Update 3.0 had dropped and I stopped reading through the patch notes after 10 minutes to have a break, it's fucking huge.

Bently Sheds

I updated this morning and had a spin around my bases to see what's different. One of my bases is now in mid-air and too high to jetpack to. The new jaggedy landscapes are great, mind.

Fishfinger

Quote from: Bently Sheds on September 24, 2020, 06:51:56 PM
I updated this morning and had a spin around my bases to see what's different. One of my bases is now in mid-air and too high to jetpack to. The new jaggedy landscapes are great, mind.

The base altitude bug has been patched now. I burn out on this game really quickly now, having played it from launch, but I still check out the new stuff and I have to say - on PS4 at least - this seems to be the most stable and least buggy major update they've ever put out.

I think my only real beef is that a lot of cool creatures are now 'extinct', e.g. on my planet with 8.3m dinosaurs.

The above doesn't read like a recommendation, but the simple fact that this update basically works I think bodes well for the game and Hello Games in general. It would probably be the first thing I try on a PS5.

Neomod

Just started playing this and I'm enjoying the farmville meets Elite nature of it. I don't have much time for gaming[nb]hence only getting an xbone now[/nb] and this is nice to dip in and out of for specific goals/tasks. Last night it was set up a base on this West Cork rainy green planet and make big cash finding dino bones.

Not only did the bones pay for the base I bought a shiny new fighter with the proceeds.


My starter ship from when I was a loser


War Bastard

Is there a way of renaming ships? Mine is still named after the previous owner.

Bently Sheds

In the ship inventory, top right is the ship name with a pen icon beside it. Click on that to change your ship name. Mine are all named after soap opera characters, so I have a freighter called The Phil Mitchell in which I park both The Len Fairclough and The Albert Tatlock.

Captain Poodle Basher

Quote from: Bently Sheds on September 27, 2020, 05:20:25 PM
In the ship inventory, top right is the ship name with a pen icon beside it. Click on that to change your ship name. Mine are all named after soap opera characters, so I have a freighter called The Phil Mitchell in which I park both The Len Fairclough and The Albert Tatlock.


My multi-tool is called Shooty McBang.

Just to say that every so often the servers get rebooted and your ship's name will be reset to the original. Doesn't affect Freighters though.

I've currently got a mission to take a picture on a volcanic world but I've not come across one yet. I did find a Swamp moon last night which was cool. That and plunged through the atmosphere of a planet but only got halfway to the surface, or so I thought, as I nearly smeared myself all over a Himalayan-sized peak lurking in the clouds.

Mobius

Found a volcano planet last night, was pretty cool. Loads of massive volcanos and one erupted spewing gas everywhere. Dunno if molten goes all over the floor.

Also saw a mini sandworm thing, but didn't see one of the giant Dune ones

Found a nice 'Paradise Planet' so i'm building a new base on there, but I want to go and explore further.

Still annoying running out of fuel/thruster/hyperdrive every 10 minutes.