No Man's Sky

oof - this sounds bad. for months i've been feeling like it was going to be a flop but i was still hopeful.

if it was mid-priced and hadn't been super-mega-hyped for the last three years i'm sure people would be giving it a much easier ride

I'm enjoying the hell out of this. No crashes, no problems beyond me sucking at aerial combat like I do in every game that isn't Crimson Skies. The UI isn't great, and inventory management can be a pain like in every game (why can't I stack high price items? Oh right, you want me constantly selling stuff ASAP. Thankfully the planet I spent the most time on had scattered robo-vendors out in the wilderness). I was surprised about the inventory slot to interact with things, but I learned to keep a space open. Finding and buying a bunch of suit upgrade slots was a huge help. As was fixing up a wreck of a ship that had a 4 more spaces. I haven't seen signs of any other players yet.

After playing some more, I agree that this is godawful rather than just ordinary bad. The game actively discourages you from crafting because of the limited materials, the limited items that can be crafted, and the non-existent aesthetic or gameplay rewards (there's practically 0 terraforming and absolutely 0 building). Likewise, the game actively discourages you from exploring because you're forced to babysit meters (oxygen, radiation, life support, health, and so on) so you end up staying near your ship. I guess this isn't too much of a problem since everything looks identical and there's nobody to interact with (the space station in the tutorial literally has one NPC who is completely stationary).

So the main incentive is to get more inventory slots.

i played for a few hours last night and while it may not be a "good game" in the sense of um everything everyone is talking about, i am still thinking about it a lot and want to go home and play more.

never underestimate the power of a game i want to hang out in pulling me in

(unless it gets INCRED tho, don't expect it at the top of my c&p 2016 list)

same - i recognise it's pretty massively flawed but for the moment i'm enjoying pottering about on day-glo planets and feeding isotopes to tiny alien t-rexes (haven't seen any of them poop yet tho. sad!)

So the main incentive is to get more inventory slots.

Journey to the heart of the universe where you'll find A LOCKER

never underestimate the power of a game i want to hang out in pulling me in

This is true though, I'm still kind of itchy to get back.

One thing is that the main quest (which just seems to be a slow tutorial really, so far at least) keeps wanting me to jump from planet to planet but I feel like I'm getting most fun from just fully exploring/scanning/mining a single world. But I do that, and get to uncover a bunch of different building types/resources/etc as I go, only to find that the main quest, when I return to it, then wants me to do all those things again but without any of the fun of discovery.

what worries me is that this is just a really pretty starbound which was extremely cool and interesting for the first few hours and then you realize everything is the same (like hitting the 7th forest planet with the same exact dungeon facility) and there's no gripping storyline.

not every 'tech demo' game can be a donkey kong country or mario 64 i suppose

Game designed to appeal to everyone ends up only appealing to a lot of people.

Trade Wars 2002 with graphics

― ciderpress, Tuesday, August 9, 2016 5:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuck I loved this game so hard. this and the legend of the red dragon were my bbs JAMS.

Yeah if this was really trade wars w graphics it would be heavenly

No PTEOS? xp

all I remember from the last time I played trade wars was constant massive battles being fought over sector 420 while not much happened elsewhere

I was like 12 when I hit my trade wars peak and the game usually involved me getting my ass killed by other users =( I even paid like 10 bucks to get a printed out strategy guide to help out.

i guess eve is kinda tradewars w/ graphics but eve is so boring

Beginning to see a familiar pattern with 'space exploration' games

well at least FTL is 100% classic

and star control 2

privateer

Could never get the hang of FTL, though I felt in principle it was a cool game
Star Control 2 is still the gold standard in this sorta thing, really felt like a vast adventure/story that was mixed in well with the screwing around planet-hopping for resources

ehhhhh this game got tedious pretty quickly, think I've had enough. It's weird that they put so many survival gameplay elements into it when death can be easily avoided and there are no consequences if you do somehow manage to die anyway. the seamlessness of the universe is impressive, but babysitting limited inventory slots is just not fun. hopefully in the future someone will take the tech behind this and make an interesting game out of it.

Escape Velocity, nerds

Watching a couple of streamers playing this on Twitch, I'm astounded nobody has pointed out how numbing it is that every planet's palette is in high contrast neon. PURPLE GREEN!! ORANGE TEAL!! It also would appear that ground cover always evolves to photosynthesize the opposite end of the spectrum than all the other flora.

Escape Velocity, nerds

― El Tomboto, Thursday, August 11, 2016 7:34 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

best

how numbing it is that every planet's palette is in high contrast neon

this numbness is my favourite part of the game. this game is like asmr for my eyes.

ppl really trying to convince themselves that they like this game

or maybe people like it!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVpFUZlWEAAw6UR.png

we will find out tomorrow, when i play it

i think there's a game worth playing in here, i'm not sure i'll make it to the end but there's enough cool stuff to give it a go. that having been said if i had it to do over i'd probably wait to pay for it until the price was reduced.

Pretty much. $60 is steep for an indie tech demo, but I love exploration games, love procedural generation, and want to encourage this sort of endeavor. My Steam copy will be unlocked tomorrow, but in the background on this screen last night I had a guy who'd been livestreaming for around 40+ hours; he was first to complete the Atlas quest and he's racing to be the first to reach the center of the patched game. At the current rate, it'll be another 24 hours or so, or maybe his next session if he lucks out on some anomaly jumps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w43erB2g2DY

indie tech demo

basically otm, it's interesting in this context but this also speaks to its limitations. i'll be interested to see if the devs continue to patch in content or not

Sean Murray has said he expects the team to continue working on NMS for the next year.

http://www.videogamer.com/features/game_guide/no_mans_sky_story_guide_complete_guide_to_the_secret_third_path_ending.html

kudos

$60 is steep for an indie tech demo, but I love exploration games, love procedural generation, and want to encourage this sort of endeavor.

"want to encourage this sort of endeavor" kinda says it all

pc release seems to be a mess, doesn't run well at all for me compared to other recent games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1DJPm6eEow

ended up refunding it after spending an hour failing to get it to run with an acceptable framerate. may try again at some point if i upgrade my pc or they optimize it way more, but seems like ps4 is the way to play this for now if you dont have a high end video card

Ugh, good to know.

Ive started it on the PS4, but was dumped into an insanely toxic planet my exosuit could only last 5 minutes in, with basically no zinc to be found. I gave up and deleted my save and retried, its muuuch easier now. Havent got far yet tho. I like it, its kind of zen, I can see why others might not.

So to those like Allan who said resources were scarce and you had to stay near the ship? Thats just a bad planet generated. Chuck it, start again.

First evening in NMS was good, no hiccups/crashes on a modest PC (i7, GTX 760). 4 hours, 28 milestones, 2 systems, 7 planets, 12 add'l slots (22 ship, 17 exosuit, 10 tool), and 2 M units. Most units from farming a lifeless planet with towers of gold and caves of plutonium, so lavishly wasted plutonium for short hops between glittering outcrops.

I seem to have lost the plot with the Atlas path. I fear I may have to backtrack to the first system to scan down the next step.

Have you tried backtracking? I'm not sure whether it's impossible or just near-impossible but I've not managed to do it yet, previous visited systems just seem to vanish from the map for me.

WHat is this Atlas path thing about? I agreed to it with no idea what it does.

There are three game paths: To Da Center (feat Nada & Polo), an Atlas path, and a 3rd no one's seen yet...

It is possible to backtrack. I decided to name my systems "Sanpaku 001", "Sanpaku 002", etc. and I was able to go back to 001 to root around.

Escape Velocity, nerds

We've all moved on to Endless Sky: https://endless-sky.github.io