No Man's Sky

guns innit. Apparently classed as "Fantasy violence"

i kind of feel like someone just invented the car and then all they thought to do with it was use it to transport horseshoes

“The coolest [moment] was about 15 hours in I ran up to a giant pillar of what I thought was going to be Heridium and to my joy turned out to be Nickel,” Fernandez. “My eyes were bugging out of my head. I honestly thought I had seen absolutely everything this planet had to offer and was pleasantly surprised.”

great quote from http://kotaku.com/the-no-mans-sky-player-who-still-hasnt-left-his-first-p-1785515562

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqPnKKGUsAAp4y_.jpg

this pretty much sums up my experience so far

https://youtu.be/3o5UGiYIutk

Can you sum up the summing-up?

it's just 3 kotaku people chatting about the for a few minutes, really excited about aspects of the game but disappointed that there are so many obvious ways it could be much better. a lot of the conversation revolves around the idea of what other games will be able to do in the near future, even if they just took the NMS template and slapped one more feature on it. for example, if you were allowed to build even basic structures that would then be discoverable by other players. even adding that limited multiplayer component (not being able to see or interact with other players, but just seeing what they built) would be amazing because it would make exploration even better than it already is. imagine if every 10-15 planets you landed on one that had a player-built structure that you could visit?

i'm sure that they'll add some more features onto the game over the next few months that'll keep people going for a while, but i'm really excited about whoever makes the next obvious steps in the genre.

Minecraft was pretty basic (and frankly, boring) when it first came out, and its changed a lot over time. I see potential for the same here. Not sure how user-added stuff would work with a procedural world? I might have to pick the coder-ex's brain.

Well the difference is that Minecraft wasn't really boring to a great many at first, and thats how it became popular. It had its base hook, ie creating and crafting stuff and even the survival part was interesting.

MC slowly improved the amount of items you can craft plus some nice UI treatment and general all round tidying up over the years.

Technically I don't see why that wouldn't be possible also with NMS but it doesn't seem to have a base 'hook' like Minecraft imo. It would need to transform into a completely different game.

So what does NMS need to change to improve, maybe should be the next question?

Minecraft didn't have three years of pre-release hype and a $60 price tag. Very early versions of the game were a bit boring, but Mojang have been adding stuff continually. Only last month they added a hefty update including three new mob types. I can't see Hello Games doing much more to NMS aside from balance tweaks unless it's DLC. Also there's the technical issue of changing the algorithms of a procedurally generated game without breaking the multiplayer side.

Plus they've started backing away from their original "all updates will be free" statements. Assuming this game will get better in the future is fine, but when it does it's likely going to need paying for again, and I'm definitely not planning to invest any more in a £20 indie game which I've already spent £50 on.

played this yesterday for a good bit. it looks gorgeous for a lot of it, making for at the very least a nice helping of eye candy.

i want to say things really started to seem samey after a few hours but we were stuck on the same 3-4 planets in that first system, so maybe it opens up later. really hoping there is variation in the space bases cos it honestly felt like the exact same 3-building base everywhere you go. also the planets seemed to have one or two kinds of animal and that's it, no matter where you go on the planet. again this could be entirely down to me randomly getting more barren planets. i dunno? also a letdown that the planets only have one biome.

still, it was a lot of fun to play, and blasting between planets is really cool, and just walking around or flying w your jetpack on these neon worlds is a good time. i do see where some of the criticism is coming from though.

A lot of people out there that are loving the exploration / graphical element of NMS. Their criticisms are that, particularly early in the game, there's a lot of boring crafting and slot purchasing placed as an obstacle to visiting new worlds.

Personally, I think the fundamentals of NMS are sound, but clunky. It does lack variety to match the planet visuals. All ships fly the same, every landing bay is identical, there are about 6 room interiors in the game, gravity is always 1 g. Scripted content is exhausted in about 60 hours gameplay (which seems a lot, but not for this kind of "ambient" game). First thing I'd do is permit player generated scripted content: NPC interactions, facility puzzles, monolith lore. This would help keep repetitive elements interesting, and there's no shortage of would-be authors willing to extend lore.

Yes but dicks.

the second and third star systems i visited had already been discovered which is a bummer and really took me out of the whole sense-of-wonder vibe. and that vibe is all this game has going for it because the halfhearted capitalism simulator bolted onto the lackluster spaceflight is even more of a bummer.

also idk who thought the sentinels were a good idea

• Doesn't every 1st person first-person survival/crafting game have token threats? They're not difficult to kill with upgraded weapons.
• Less than 10% of worlds have aggressive sentinels. On the other >90%, let the cop look you over (blue eye) and leave. Only pillage the local endangered gravitino balls or toxin sacs when you know you can handle them.
• On extreme worlds, sentinels are a reliable titanium source for environmental shielding. There, I kill on sight.
• Sentinels serve a narrative purpose defining the Korvax and Vy'keen cultures. I feel a little guilty every time I dismantle these little park rangers.

Ive found its easier to just run away from their scanning than bother to engage.

Only problem with running away is at some levels of sentinel aggression they'll call in support. In most cases, if you down the one scanning you and the one it calls quickly, that's all you'll have to deal with. It depends if you need the titanium for shielding, and I've been trying to get the extreme planet achievements.

I tried running into a shallow cave to avoid the trio (dog-sentinel + 2 flyers) that usually show up when you do environmental poaching of gravitino balls, vortex cubes, sac venoms, and albumen pearls, only to have them escalate to 5 star wanted with walkers, etc. The trick is to kill the dog (which poses the greatest threat) and one of the flyers, and grab more loot while tanking the last flyer, as additional sentinels won't be called for poaching if you already have a wanted level.

Aside: its probably not worth using black hole shortcuts offered by Nada if you have the Theta warp reactor. Even if it damages ship modules at random, I've now wasted hours repairing the Theta reactor damaged twice in consecutive black hole wormholes. And the repairs always require 500 emeril, 500 gold, 400 plutonium, 200 chrysonite, 200 heridium, 200 carbon, and 80 zinc, which can almost never be found on one planet.

so should i do the atlas path first? is that the best way to go about things?

You can always pick it up later at space anomalies.

I'd wait until you have the sigma and tau warp reactor upgrades, which will allow you to zip from Atlas interface to Atlas interface without pit stops. The major advantage of doing the Atlas path at one time is that its narrative includes accumulating 10 Atlas stones, and inventory slots are scarce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz0I7vWzxE

i found a crashed ship with only 14 slots but a (damaged) sigma warp drive in my 5th system so i'm trying to rehabilitate that now - is this earlier than i'm 'supposed' to get the sigma drive, or is that how you're supposed to get one?

AFAIK, you can get any blueprint at any time, without respect to current ship slots or progress in Atlas/Center paths.

As you may know, some things are scripted, like the order in which words are learned from knowledge stones. I believe the some blueprints are scripted similarly. The trick to getting these more "scripted" upgrades is to talk to onplanet NPCs, the ones you'll find at operations centers etc, most easily found via broadcast beacons (the tall antennas). By my 10th alien encounter I had the sigma warp upgrade, by my 20th the tau upgrade. The theta upgrade evaded me for a while until I encountered a Vy'keen smuggler around my 60th encounter.

I haven't bothered with wrecked ships, but because the number of slots in a wreck has roughly a 50/50 chance of having more slots than your current ship, some players have worked up from the entry ship to 40+ slot ships (which would normally cost ~30 million units) purely by farming wrecks.

Yep thats what we're doing. Its too pricey to do otherwise.

Haven't felt motivated to boot this up for a while now, so last night I admitted to myself that I was pretty much done with it, and read some spoilers for the different endings. Let's just say they completely validated my decision to put it down after 15 hours instead of sinking 100 hours into it.

PC players annoyed with flight restrictions may want to try the Lowflight Mod by Hytek.

i abandoned the quest for the center as well. i don't know the ending, i just know that every reference i've seen to it has been of extreme disappointment and sometimes anger

yeah i haven't spoiled myself yet, i just assume it's something like it makes you start over if you want to keep playing afterwards (might not be this at all, but i don't see what else would provoke such strong negative reaction)

my guess is that at the end the atlas god says something very atlas-y about being one with the universe and knowledge, and then you get access to new resource that lets you craft other resources at a 20% discount

have you folks been renaming all your systems/planets? i've just been uploading them with the default gibberish names as i figure until i get further inward no one's likely to ever encounter them anyways

i name my systems, planets, and fauna (sorry flora). but since abandoning the quest for the center, i've been spending a lot more time on each planet (and enjoying the game much more that way), trying to track down each species, so it's a lot more fun to be on a planet with customized names for everything.

for me, naming things is fun if the intended audience is yourself rather than an imagined stranger that might encounter it

btw i got my new pc yesterday and this game is really pretty in full HD with proper antialiasing/texture filtering

i think my biggest complaint with the game so far is that i wish the draw distance was about twice as long while surface flying, the pop-in distance for certain things is so short

this acid trip of a planet is my favorite one i've found so far: http://imgur.com/a/YYR8t

picture doesn't really do justice to just how many colors of grass there was

I've been to quite a few planets that reminded me of false color infrared photography.

Rather childishly decided to try pushing the profanity filter last night.

Planet Phucdat didnt pass muster. But planet Phuqdat did...

it would be cool if they let you change your view while flying your starship, so you could look at this ship you're supposed to care about

Ha yeah I was wondering aloud the other day if the thrusters on some ships change position (when landing and etc) then realised i had no way of knowing :(

Also how come you never see anyone getting out of their ship at the ports?

because the entire universe, all 18 quintillion planets, every single one of them, is full of lonely aliens who do nothing but sit at a desk every day, by themselves, looking at their ipads.

on the plus side i just realized that these aliens can be spun around using the right joystick as you talk to them. now there are quintillions of spinning aliens, at least in my universe

hahaha

because the entire universe, all 18 quintillion planets, every single one of them, is full of lonely aliens who do nothing but sit at a desk every day, by themselves, looking at their ipads.

wow a bleak fortelling image of or future irl?

our

No, we got it.

ok

Sounds like working in an office.

Gamer people are really angry at this game still huh

they are so angry!

honestly this game (and most games) would be improved 1000% by the addition of a no-resources, no-crafting, no-sentinel chill mode