I tried so many times to get into this game. The first 1-2 hours are always fun. But then it heavily wears off. The seamless transition from planet to space is wonderful. But the depth of the gameplay systems is just too shallow. At least for me, it does not tick the right boxes to keep me motivated. But I am happy for the developers and the fans!
I agree and it was the same comments on the hacker news article about the release too. Most people dont like a sandbox with no progression system, and specially when you can feel that the world is just different colors and different animal skins but otherwise the same.
Beautiful game but feels boring, and I guess it’s the lack of progression system and that everything feels like the same.
I definently need some constant goals set by the game to feel happy.
“Lack of progression system” is not accurate, because the game offers many different ways to progress the abilities of your character, your spaceships, your base, and the whole space empire you can build has now been bigly expanded. Also the Expeditions are large quests that give large rewards.
There is definitely a progression system in NMS. I remember different progression trees for your base, your character, your ship etc. The problem is that the impact of the progression is pretty low. This is a sandbox without meaningful consequences, which leads to the fact that after a couple of hours you already got to a point where anything else you achieve is just for the heck of it. You already got everything meaningful up and running at this point.
It is fairly shallow, yes, but it’s also open ended so you can set your own goals. It’s also pretty good for creative types, with building bases and ships and such. I have some 700h in it but spread over a few dozen saves, played during updates over the years, and very few go past the 30h mark. I also haven’t touched some gameplay elements so there’s that. But it’s a great game in shorter batches.
I never understood the base building if one main mechanic is moving on and on and on to explore. I may never have progressed far enough, but the base building is introduced very early and I never understood why I would waste resources on a base I’ll just leave behind.
Some people love to have a base they can revisit on a planet they liked. Some also build mining outposts for gold and whatnot. Bases are also useful for inter-galaxy travel.
I spent 40 hours looking for a cozy planet, but my corvette is my base.
I also basically have no progress in the install X component to your base quest.
Paradise planets are best for bases IMO. Having to set up all these different buildings in a planet where you constantly have to be indoors to not be losing life support resources is a pain in the ass and prevents you from bothering.
Yeah, I can definitely see more creative-minded people having a blast with this game. I‘m just not that type of person. The X series is more to my liking, I just wish they had the same freedom in terms of space travel as NMS. Or if NMS was more like X or Mount and Blade in space.
I tried to play this game several times and could never really figure out what I was supposed to do and why I was supposed to do it.
I am glad to see some good developers supporting their community. We need more of these.
There is a plot you can follow, but it’s not exactly a game known for its memorable plot. Like many other survival crafting games, the “what” you’re supposed to do is kind of up to you and your own creativity. It’s not for everyone, certainly.
Yeah I found that there was so much stuff going on that it made the world feel uninteresting. Every planet had aliens already there and life and ancient monuments.
What I liked about Elite Dangerous is that 99% of systems are boring and that makes the lagrange cloud/earthlike world/giant star really memorable
It’s been sitting on my hard drive for a few years. I just don’t want to go through the learning curve. I don’t have a lot of time and when I game I just want to hop in and go.
Are there any resources that can help me do that with this game? I’m not a huge survival/crafting fan. Can this game be played without getting too deep into that side of things?
I hopped in once when I first bought it and just felt like there was no direction to go.
I got it at launch and I love it, but it is not a game I am trying to finish, rather a place a visit now and then.
I played it before as a grinding game but you can easily play it as a casual game. There’s not really a defined playstyle for nms.
The missions from what I remember give you enough guidance on how to play. You essentially use your explorer tools (scanner, mining tool, combat weapons) to gather resources and explore the universe. Missions are there to guide you and give you things to do but you could just ignore most of them lol.
There’s aspects that are geared towards grinding like exotic ships, mine construction, sector economy, etc. but they don’t matter for casual players.
When they run an expedition it’s got a good set of quests to follow and usually accelerated progress from the rewards. There’s a new one with this update, not sure if it’s live yet.
There is no direction to go, it’s a sandbox, and discovery and exploration is pretty much the whole meat of the game. If you don’t like that, this is probably not the game for you. There are random events, there are questlines that eventually happen which you can optionally pursue, some of which get pretty in-your-face in case you’re worried you might miss them. Crafting and base-building is simplistic and mediocre. “Survival” is almost trivial on all but the very hardest difficulty settings, and even at the hardest difficulty and with willing suspension of disbelief it’s not really a fulfilling part of the game. There are a variety of other meta-systems tacked on too like language-learning, ship customization, fleet management and missions, settlements, universe-hopping, etc but these are just addons, they’re not the core of the game.
If you want a more “guided” experience you could try watching for some of the time-limited/seasonal expeditions they do as live-service events. Some of them are easier to follow than others, but they all sort of have a theme and usually give you a good workout in a variety of the game’s different systems.
I haven’t played in a few years, but to me exploration gets old fast. Visit a few dozen different planets and you’ve pretty much seen it all. Each planet a single biome with plants that look the same, just different names.
I would wait until their next “event” that they have after every update. That will give you kind of a hand holdy “tutorial” to bring you up to speed with the core mechanics, along with a direction to go. Plus during these events you can find lots of other players with cheaty bases you can quickly farm to get all the materials/credits you need with minimal grinding.
when last did you play it?
I played it while high earlier this year and managed to kinda figure it out because the tutorials were helpful enough
granted
I just wanted to build shit and kill shit, so I picked one of the easier game mode options
I think you can sidestep the more difficult survival/crafting mechanics if you want
that’s if my memory holds up
I might have been playing donkey kong or some shit
You can also mod the game, which can let you unlock items and progress faster in single-player.
No Man’s Sky is like Minecraft in the way that it has so much hate from people who either don’t “get why people like it” or say “it’s so shallow,” but the game is just full of charm and it is what you make of it.
It has a loose story, interesting lore, and otherwise a huge universe (heh) in which you just do what you want to do.
It’s space legos.
I love NMS, but it is shallow for the most part. Just like pure vanilla minecraft is shallow.
I’ve tried it several times through the years wanting to like it because it sounds like something I’d enjoy, but it just never sinks its teeth in.
And that’s okay. Not every game has to be made for me. I love that people love it and that the developers have worked so hard to deliver on everything they promised and more. I don’t enjoy the game but I’m so glad it exists for those who do.
I was hoping they’d fix coop being a janky mess.
I haven’t played in a few months, but my partner and I have a few hundred hours in co op. What did you find janky?
Also not OP. But i have tried to play multiplayer soo many times. But we have never been able to do it fully. Pirates that spawn are visible but only interactable for which player they spawn for. Bases are often out of sync, so we were not able to have a shared base. We tried with a group 3 times, and me and a friend twice, since No Man Sky Next.
Now with Bo Man Sky next, technically coop worked as none of those features I named were fully there for coop. But after that, nope. I do not understand why it has never worked. Each of our attempts are multiple sessions over multiple days/weeks. And then we would give up again.
I haven’t played in a bit, but every time i played with someone, our games weren’t in sync at all. I was fighting through a fire storm while my fried had a cozy stroll
That sounds like your friend was in a custom mode that was set to eaasier than you.
I build in Creative mostly now (2,000+ hours in) and have been visited by griefers that tried to shoot me (didn’t work, 'cos hello… creative!) and in one case, the guy came in surrounded by a cloud of VERY salty Sentinels that swarmed my base area and were chasing and shooting at both of us.
It’s quite irritating to get shot at while you’re trying to build something.
Once he cottoned on that I wasn’t killable, he checked out the build, gave a thumbs up and left and the Sentinels went with him, never to be seen again.
It’s definitely weird when different play modes meet, for sure.
Nah, I experienced that too. We’d be in the same location and one player would have a weather event while the other didn’t.
And yes, same difficulty setting, though that shouldn’t matter for multiplayer.
Not op but before I got fiber internet every game was janky, especially one with a heavier load like NMS seems to have
Going to the same location but seeing different world states, not consistently getting the option to travel to each other’s bases, not being able to have a true shared ownership base. Most of it worked poorly if it worked at all. We ended up giving up after a few hours.
Hm when was the last time you played? I don’t think it’s been like that for a few years now, when they had the last major multiplayer overhaul with the addition of a hub.
A year ago, shortly after the Corvette update I think. Which we didn’t play long enough to get to the Corvette
But can you eat the sun?
Darn. Now I want a Milky Way®.
I could offer Mars.
Can someone explain the sun thing? I read the article, all it says “yes you can visit, but it will be a perilous journey”. What was the previous limitation? What is expected now?
I’m used to Elite: Dangerous. Ed ships have three travel modes: standard sublight (~1,000km/h), supercruise (0-2000c) between system bodies, and hyperspace jumps (wormhole from anywhere to the orbit of the main star of a system). So, in ED, you can supercruise up to any star, though it gets hot and it has an exclusion zone that drops you to sublight in the edge of its atmosphere. You can’t sublight further as the zone stops you. For reference of distance, it feels like you’re able to fly under the solar prominence loops, though they fade by time you reach the graphics sprite.
ED stands for Erectile Dysfunction haha
Which is when your penis has an Eating Disorder (for blood).
ive reinstalled this game so many times. it’s always been pretty fun. I’m still waiting on the steam frame to do it again
I bought the game when it first came out. I didn’t really buy into the hype, so I wasn’t disappointed at launch. Fucked around for like 20 or 30 hours, then never picked it up again.
Is it finally time?
If you genuinely haven’t it played it since it first released, you are barely even going to recognize the game. It’s changed significantly enough that it could practically be a sequel by now.
This is me too, was fun for a few days after launch, then I lost interest. Must be many of us who are hoping the game will feel fun again.
Ok, fine, I’ll try NMS again.
Hell yes! Every 6 months or so I come back for another couple dozen hours of play. It’s added up to a truly disgusting amount of hours over the last decade.
Dammit, I guess I’m installing it again.
Can’t wait to start that expedition!
Holy shit!
