No Man's Sky - Minecraft with Adderall

[4090 Chad]

I am. 50 hours in, I've barely unlocked anything for base-building and just have a freighter, a squadron with two fighters, and three frigates. You can really do nothing for hours and hours and hours in this game if you put your mind to it.

Yea I have sunken a good chunk of time since I started, but one of my friends has already put in over 100 hours in a little over a week. I know the game is kind of polarizing with a lot people saying their is "nothing to do in the game", but this game really is what you make of it. I have been having a lot of fun at least.

 

[The Ugly One]

Yea I have sunken a good chunk of time since I started, but one of my friends has already put in over 100 hours in a little over a week. I know the game is kind of polarizing with a lot people saying their is "nothing to do in the game", but this game really is what you make of it. I have been having a lot of fun at least.

This is a true sandbox game, like Minecraft with space ships. The fun is just finding things, making things, expanding your fleet, learning the languages, and that sort of thing. There's not really this great, compelling story to play through.

 

[4090 Chad]

This is a true sandbox game, like Minecraft with space ships. The fun is just finding things, making things, expanding your fleet, learning the languages, and that sort of thing. There's not really this great, compelling story to play through.

The base building tech has been pretty impressive and definitely feels mature and refined.

My goals right now are to farm currencies, get a badass ship asap, start doing the expeditions with my friends.

 

[Mooger Meng]

This is a true sandbox game, like Minecraft with space ships. The fun is just finding things, making things, expanding your fleet, learning the languages, and that sort of thing. There's not really this great, compelling story to play through.

I'd say it has a "better" story about existential ponderings than Minecraft, if only due to Minecraft having one instance of any sort of narrative after you beat the Ender Dragon where No Man's Sky has them scattered all over the place.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

So the game is actually okay now?

 

[Haramburger]

So the game is actually okay now?

I'd say no-ish. Imagine if Cyberpunk 2077 had 8 more years of development time; it'd be more feature-rich but still the same game. I think they finally delivered on all their promises pre-launch and continue an interesting goodwill business model but I will never forgive Sean Murray being that fucking dumb enough to lie about the 1.0 features on TV and restickering boxes.

As a new player, it's neat to get directed to a crashed ship, as you're scouring it for salvage 4 bigass freighters cruise above you and you wonder if they're scouting themselves or confirming the crash on their end or just passing by, but it's not that well thought out. It's just empty procedural fluff. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.

The number one thing the game probably needs is other sentient life forms on worlds, in small bases to compliment the empty, abandoned buildings you find. Space stations are cool but it still doesn't feel like a "lived in" universe in general.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I'd say no-ish. Imagine if Cyberpunk 2077 had 8 more years of development time; it'd be more feature-rich but still the same game. I think they finally delivered on all their promises pre-launch and continue an interesting goodwill business model but I will never forgive Sean Murray being that fucking dumb enough to lie about the 1.0 features on TV and restickering boxes.

As a new player, it's neat to get directed to a crashed ship, as you're scouring it for salvage 4 bigass freighters cruise above you and you wonder if they're scouting themselves or confirming the crash on their end or just passing by, but it's not that well thought out. It's just empty procedural fluff. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.

The number one thing the game probably needs is other sentient life forms on worlds, in small bases to compliment the empty, abandoned buildings you find. Space stations are cool but it still doesn't feel like a "lived in" universe in general.

Compares unfavorably to Elite Dangerous (I own it but got overwhelmed and never learned to play it)?


I kind of think that what No Man's Sky needed was to be more like Sid Meier's Pirates meets Black Flag or to be more like Minecraft. It could have had small, baby planets, things that you can walk around in a gaming session, one biome worlds (though they're like that anyways, right?) and a set of premade mobs (instead of procedural trash) that are distributed such that you basically need to explore a full solar system or two to have access to all the resources you desire, and then the equivalent of temples and strongholds and crap scattered out amongst the stars to have a reason to keep charting.

Or a much stronger storyline than just "go to center of galaxy lol." Fuck, it could have been a roguelike where getting to the center of the galaxy and souped up to survive the Event Horizon and whatever sick alien lovecraftian stuff is inside of it is a challenge.

Or, it could have had some kind of world where things are linked together with systems that intertwine (that's like Sid Meier's Pirates), so like you said, ships have purposes and you can play around with cause and effect.

I don't think it benefitted in any way from having procedurally generated monstrosities or from having muh million billion stars (other than in the same sense that Minecraft is infinitely large). Then again, I actually am someone who plays Minecraft mostly just to map out huge areas.

 

[Haramburger]

Compares unfavorably to Elite Dangerous (I own it but got overwhelmed and never learned to play it)?

Haven't played it, couldn't compare. Once you can reliably identify and quickly make ship fuel and use that as a way to skip around a temporary home planet to collect word monoliths or scoop the mineral of your choice, the gameplay loops shrink and I'm not sure all the new systems are worth getting involved in. Flying ships feels halfway decent and I do like the subtle control in cruising a planet, crossing what feeling like an Atlantic or Pacific Ocean and cleaning out a new continent, the game handles scale well, which is rare. Transitioning from on foot, to flying, to going into and out of atmosphere and doing asteroid mining and skipping planets is neat, if you can devote an hour or three to the time involved in finely controlling it each step of the way. The only game I could compare this to would be Dyson Sphere Program, where you're a large mech but feel small in scale of the worlds you're industrializing, but otherwise you can walk around entire planets, and set up supply chains between planets to fill the gaps some have in resources to build the next thing you need. Satisfactory also trumps the basebuilding in No Man's Sky. Both games are conveyor belt factory management/engineering games, but if that's your jam they're both have much needed depth No Man's Sky lacks.

 

[Every One Procedural]

I recently got back into it just in time for the update and the new expedition. It's not a bad one, though pretty easy if you're comfortable with land combat. My recommendation if you start from a new save file in it (like I did) is to get your hands on a second multi-tool for mining, as tech slots will be a serious constraint for your special rifle. And also try and find a less terrible ship, the C-class Hauler you start with is very bad.

 

[std::string]

As a new player, it's neat to get directed to a crashed ship, as you're scouring it for salvage 4 bigass freighters cruise above you and you wonder if they're scouting themselves or confirming the crash on their end or just passing by, but it's not that well thought out. It's just empty procedural fluff. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.

If the galaxy was cut down to 0.1% of its size and enforced more player interaction there could've been something here.

The only exciting thing that ever happened was on my permadeath run where an AI-piloted gauler glitched out while landing and went full 9/11 on the trading post I was in, ramming right into my face and killing me instantly.

 

[Every One Procedural]

If the galaxy was cut down to 0.1% of its size and enforced more player interaction there could've been something here.

Do note, there are actually 255* galaxies. Most players just play in Euclid, because both methods of getting to another galaxy are long and arduous if you don't edit your save file. I appreciate what they were going for, but I agree that the size is excessive.

*There is a secret 256th galaxy, "Odyalutai", that's inaccessible by legitimate means. Ironically, because of this, it's probably more populated than the fourth or fifth galaxies.

 

[Haramburger]

So the game is actually okay now?

I'd say no-ish.

...The number one thing the game probably needs is other sentient life forms on worlds, in small bases to compliment the empty, abandoned buildings you find. Space stations are cool but it still doesn't feel like a "lived in" universe in general.

I take it back, this was better than expected, once I got about 20+ hours in and learned more about how the game is designed and what to look for/how to find things. I would now like to alter my previous review and say yes, the game is actually okay now.

There's actually ALOT of alien life doing their own thing, and while it's not super organic, it feels much more realistic than I originally gave it credit for. As far as a Star Trek, Star Wars vibe there's plenty of little outposts with one or two dudes living in it, doing guard duty or research or whatever, and the more you've fleshed out the language learning the more likely you'll pick the right response to them having a suit malfunction and them begging for carbon to fix their rebreather or sodium to fix their gun.

The missions are alright too, enough interesting actions of delivery, blowing up buildings, or chasing fugitives in a peaceful arrest or ship combat to justify factions, pirate systems, random hails from traders or pirates & bartering. The capital ships are pretty dank and really top off the space feel, as well as finding a settlement you get to mayor and develop the buildings and features on via votes.

There's very little need to ever min-max the combat chip system or technologies to fine tune your gun DPS or starship, if you find the repeatable loops to get lots of inventory slots and 80% of your gun, you're all set to just do whatever. I like the loop of revisiting systems to learn more words while taking on new jobs to drive me into new population areas, and regularly shifting from planetside/exocraft vehicles/starship/station/capital ship and moving in and out of warp. It feels good and looks good.

My biggest complaint now is that apparently no matter what kind of rig you have, the current 5.0 update broke the pop-in of alot of scenery and grasses, so the game looks like shit if you go fast on ground. You'll bang into asteroids too if you haven't had time for your system to draw them all in and changing your POV sometimes makes them blink in and out. That's a major problem but not gamebreaking in a low stakes game like this. I'm sort of interesting in looking for the organic ships and the one inverted mirror I need for a sentinel ship, but they're unnecessary hurdles for completionists.

The only exciting thing that ever happened was on my permadeath run where an AI-piloted gauler glitched out while landing and went full 9/11 on the trading post I was in, ramming right into my face and killing me instantly.

I've been playing on normal and the game glitches enough that I'll probably never play permadeath seriously other than to maybe do the achievement someday. I died once teleporting from my freighter to frigate, and somehow I glitched outside the safe area despite still being in it and died to 'cosmic rays" with no recourse. I reloaded to a few minutes prior but I'd be pissed on hardcore.

 

[King Vidiot]

Fishing has been added to the game with the Aquarius Update:

Hello Games probably created these mechanics to use in Light No Fire and then decided to test them in No Man's Sky.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

Fishing has been added to the game with the Aquarius Update:

finally, now its a real game

 

[Activelo]

The Worlds Part II update is out.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

The Worlds Part II update is out.

The more I scrolled, the more there was.

::

Time to install again.

And THIS is the kind of shit we'd like to see on updates...

Faster Loading

Cutting-edge compression technology reduces game file size by more than 10%, allowing for larger content updates without increasing download size or storage space consumption, and making all future patches smaller. Load times are up to 4x faster, and improved data caching reduces hitches during transitions, such as when flying from planetary atmosphere into space.

You don't see that very often in an update.

EDIT 2

FLAMETHROWERS!!!!

 

[Focken Kiwi]

Every time there's a new major update, I delete my old save file and start fresh. That gif on the No Man's Sky web page of the player diving underwater is amazing. He just keeps going... and going... and going... and... umm, where's the light? Underwater construction is suddenly infinitely more interesting now.

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

I just need to know where I can get those new resources and I can build an Emeril/Magnetized Ferrite base.

 

[Mooger Meng]

Faster Loading

Cutting-edge compression technology reduces game file size by more than 10%, allowing for larger content updates without increasing download size or storage space consumption, and making all future patches smaller. Load times are up to 4x faster, and improved data caching reduces hitches during transitions, such as when flying from planetary atmosphere into space.

Seriously? That's fucking great if true. Bless these speds for trying to optimize their zombie dream game a decade after launch.

FLAMETHROWERS!!!!

They're back?!
Oh, it's go time now, lads!

 

[plagiarismmaximum]

Are you still restricted to getting that one resource from shooting asteroids? All while non-hostile npcs spawn and fly into your crosshairs, to such a degree you can steer them?