• Hey Guest! Ever feel like entering a Game Jam, but the time limit is always too much pressure? We get it... You lead a hectic life and dedicating 3 whole days to make a game just doesn't work for you! So, why not enter the GMC SLOW JAM? Take your time! Kick back and make your game over 4 months! Interested? Then just click here!

Discussion No Man's Sky

Nocturne

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Okay, so I've sunk about 40 hours into No Man's Sky so far... and... it's okay. I'd LOVE to say it's amazing, it's stunning, it's spectacular, etc, etc, etc... but I can't sadly. No I didn't buy into the hype train and think this was going to be the best game ever but I did have hopes for something more.

What do I like? I like the exploration, I like coming up over a hill and seeing a vast plane in front of me with plants and animals wandering around, I like flying through space and dogfighting pirates, I like the interactions with the various NPC's dotted around and learning their language so I can help them. I also love the esthetic of the space ships and different bases, both in space and on land... that 70's scifi feel is strong in this one and I love it!

What don't I like? THE GRIND!!!! Seriously, the game requires a LOT of grinding. You have to wander for hours at a time to find decent minerals, artefacts, crashed ships and a whole host of other things. Not to mention that you are constantly having to find essential resources to maintain your suit, ship and weapon. I also don't like the proc-gen of the planets and the wildlife very much. Yeah, you can get some cool animals but you also get some really stupid ones, and in general they all fall into the same 4 or 5 types. The planets feel the same so far, inasmuch as they have no rivers, no oceans, and the terrain is all pretty much the same (although I do suspect that the closer to the galactic core you get the more interesting things will become). Oh, and the fact that the only NPC's you can interact with might as well be statues since they never move and just stay rooted to the same spot...

The funny thing is that even though there is a hell of a lot of grinding, and even though after travelling through 5 star systems and about 25 planets the general esthetic of the planets hasn't changed much, I'm still having fun. The game should have BORED me by now, but strangely I'm compelled to keep grinding and keep walking. I suspect it's because I am constantly thinking that there will be MORE later on, and the fact that as I progress I am finding things that weren't on the previous planet (even though it may only be one new thing in a whole star system), and I am also really interested in finding artefacts, learning the languages and finding out more about the whole "Atlas" thing.

So, that's my take on No Man's Sky so far... what about you people? You playing it? You liking it? What do you think about the proc-gen and the other points I raise?
 
K

Kransky

Guest
I'm in a similar boat as you. I'm enjoying myself, probably more than I should be considering the repetition and grind. I just really wish there was more to the planets. I feel like so far I've only had one experience that stood out as being particularly different to most of the others. I was on a particularly harsh planet, constant storms and extreme heat. I found a crashed ship that was better than my current one, not to mention it looked way cooler. The only problem was I didn't have all the resources I needed to fix it. So I probably spent about 2-4 hours navigating this planet on foot, frequently hiding out in a cave to wait out the current storm, before continuing my search for the resources I needed. It ended up being a pretty memorable experience, but I can't help but feel I'm likely to see some version of that again before long, which puts a bit of a damper on it.

I do enjoy collecting new alien words, in the hopes that someday I'll get to see a complete sentence. That's one of the more interesting aspects of the game, I think. It's just a shame there aren't more alien races. I enjoy the dogfighting too. My first meeting with a pirate was pretty exhilarating. My ship wasn't combat ready at all and I was sure I was going to be killed, but I just barely scraped by and it was a great feeling. Probably the most fun I've had with the game thus far.

The main issues I have with it are the repetitiveness and blandness of the procedural generation, I was pretty much certain before even leaving the first planet that there would never be anything interesting inside a cave, no matter how big and winding it is. Also the creature AI. Many just move around in a circle, while others scuttle about, seemingly at random. Sometimes with an assortment of different species being part of the same group. I haven't seen any discernible habitat for different creatures, outside of land, sky, and sea. None of them seem to have any goal, outside of moving about, or attacking you.

It might not sound like it, but overall I am enjoying it. There's just a lot of room for improvement. Assuming it gets continued support, I think it could be a much better game in about 6 months or so. But I don't regret having bought it now. I never truly bought into the hype, and I feel like I've been playing basically the same game I saw footage of prior to release. It's really not that different to what I was expecting it to be. It's probably too expensive, but I don't think that makes it a worse game than it would be otherwise, just a riskier one to purchase.
 
R

Roa

Member
I don't like the culture that has bred around it into a total mess of accusations of lies and other stuff. The user base is stupid and the dev is missleading at some points. The game looks as boring and generic as any other survival game. The only part that semi interest me is dog fights.
 
Nocturne

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Roa, I don't give a flying fig about the accusations or other crap, tbh. I bought it on the strength of it offering me the chance to walk around within worlds inspired by the books that I most love (ie: science fiction especially classic from heinlein or asimov, etc...) and as such, I am most definitely not disappointed. Yes, the game has flaws, but the flaws don't (imho) detract from the sheer pleasure of just walking around and doing your thing. It's certainly not generic in the sense of it being like other games... I'd say the mix of survival, farming, questing and exploration is pretty unique, but the planets and stuff DO feel generic due to the random proc-gen which (as Kransky points out) is not really tweaked enough to give plants and animals a feeling of "place" or the world's enough character. I do still have hopes that this will change (slowly but it'll change) as I get further in to the game however...
 
R

Roa

Member
Oh its not the accusations and information misshaps of the game. I already knew it wasn't going to be as good as they said it would. Its the breeding ground for steam babies. They are flipping out just like they did with new DOOM, which was actually a very refined and polished game, and it ran if you had followed the min specs and drivers. As for the game, I would probably drop no more than 25 for that type of thing. They get stale fast. I would like to experience it at some point though.

It just seems steam comunity is entitled to bitching and I can't stand most major releases anymore cause everything has turned into /v/. Its intoxicating and nobody is realistic.
 
Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
My opinion about this game:
I've seen some interviews with the creators and they seem like very incompetent people to be honest. Unsure, doubty, not totally honest and so on.
The game got overhyped and was overpriced.
It's an indie game in the clothes of an AAA game.

Yes, it's an indie game, and for indie game standards, it's a super good one.
The gameplay is repetitive, that means it's not for everyone, some people enjoy that, others not.

But the game is very atmospheric and "exciting" (what will you find next?), and even though a lot of planets/creatures are similar, in a new coating, it is still always exciting to discover them 2 me.
You could compare the game a bit to an atmospheric walking simulator sandbox explorer, something that is not for everyone, but I love that. A lot of people expected this to be more a space RPG action explorer, with elements from Ratchet y Clank and maybe WoW idk. Those game are more "mainstream" style, that means a larger part of the population enjoys it.
And I really enjoy walking simulators or atmosphere more then anything in a game. Why do I play Skyrim or Morrowind? Of course I love leveling up, the quests, stories, missions, difficulty, but always when I think of Skyrim/Morrowind/Oblivion, or boot it up, in my mind I have walking through the forests/mountains. I don't fast travel in those game, I play them for experiencing the world and nature around it, sometimes I just walk around for 2 hours without doing anything and then stop playing, and I enjoy that.

So yeah, the game itself is pretty good, but the people took it for another genre AAA game, and the developers, or at least the spokespersons are incompetent.

But I won't buy that for freaking 60EUROS WHAT THE FRICK!!!
I recently paid 25EUR for FINAL FANTASY X HD REMASTER, which has become (one of) my favourite game(s) of all time. And 25EUR was already a lot to me.

and yes I am 2 braindead to tie all of these sentences together into a proper text
 
Lumenflower

Lumenflower

Yellow Dog
NerdCubed puts it very well in this 'article' he's written, and I'll put it in short for those of you who don't want to read an essay. Every problem in the game is solved by itself - you need to recharge your mining laser? Mine to get fuel. You need to recharge your engines? Fly around and shoot asteroids. It's just like doing the tasks without having to worry about any of the fuel consumption, except a small percentage of every haul goes towards fuelling the very action you're actually doing.

That said, I kinda like it but can't see myself spending an extended amount of time on it. It sounds criminal to say it, but there isn't enough variation. Everything is procedural but comes out looking like the same planet with a retexture. I see a few buildings on the ground and I already know there will be a Vy'Keen inside who will teach me a word and then maybe I can browse the shop. None of the planets I've explored have captured me particularly. A game about exploration should give you the prospect of amazing, incredible things to explore - fantastical creatures with rich behaviour - and yet I feel like everywhere I go will be more of the same.
 
johnwo

johnwo

Member
I bought it, then refunded it in less than one hour... Like @Nocturne said; The grind...
Repetition is the name of the game it seems...

And yeah, I have a SOTA rig, but it ran @ <= 30 fps.
 
H

Heat4Life

Guest
PROs:
* Great Graphics
* Great Gameplay
* Great stuff lol
* you can even name the planet "poop".

CONs:
* Space smoke weeding not allowed
* Building like minecraft not allowed
* Bad Graphics
* Bad Gameplay
* Bad stuff lol
* You can't name foul crappy words on the planet you discovered like : **** <-- u know what i mean :l

You know what this No Man's Sky Video Game Needs?!
Darth Vader
 
NAL

NAL

ʕ ᓀ ᴥ ᓂ ʔ
GMC Elder
I've played an hour so far, about 20 minutes of which has been in the Pause menu either continuously replenishing my health, temperature management and resource... gun.... or repeatedly scrapping excess carbon and iron because snapping off a single twig or breaking a single pebble seems to immediately fill up my entire inventory. ಠ_ಠ

The game's alright, although I feel like it's not really my thing too much - alongside the inventory management (if I could horde, I'd be on cloud nine) and the stat management, the key locations felt way too far apart, planets get old fairly fast, and the process of going from planet to planet (managing the stats of your ship in the process too) was time consuming as well. It's also specifically a survival game, which I didn't really know going into it - again, not my thing. I prefer things like Minecraft where I can explore if I want to, or build a lovely house and never go more than a kilometre away from it.

I was given my copy of NMS though, so no comments on the price tag! :D
 
Nocturne

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
I must say that I was the same as you NAL to start with... first couple of hours were a bit of a disappointment and annoying as hell trying to juggle what need and make money and surviving, but once I started to get enough inventory space to actually hoard necessary minerals for survival, the whole game started to feel a lot less like a survival game and a lot more like a game of exploration and discovery. As for the planets being all very samey, they are to start with, BUT as I travel further towards the inner core, I'm seeing more and more interesting planets. Aquatic planets, planets with huge trees, snow planets, etc... and I'm also seeing variations in the fauna, as well as starting to find more variety in the resources (some of which are now protected too, requiring a bit of FPS fun!). I'm at the 50+ hour mark now, and I'm really, really enjoying it. Sometimes I just feel like exploring, sometimes I just feel like mining, sometimes I feel like being a pirate... and I can do all of them whenever I want! So, the game is definitely a slow burner, but if you have the patience I think it's well rewarding.
 
RichHopefulComposer

RichHopefulComposer

Member
Game is grindy crap with a bunch of randomly generated "worlds" that may as well all be the same for how "different" they are. I called this as soon as I saw the first trailer, but the public is incredibly gullible and/or stupid, so a massive amount of hype somehow built up for this game anyway. Nice to be vindicated after like two years of people flipping out at me for daring to doubt the second coming of Christ in videogame form though, lol.
 
S

seanm

Guest
If only everyone was as smart as you @RichHopelessComposer What a world that would be

But I do agree, I had low expectations about the game's main loop, and it delivered on those expectations.

In terms of an exploration game I'd say it looks pretty rad for sure.
 
S

seanm

Guest
http://steamspy.com/app/211820 steamspy says otherwise. Starbound was getting more players starting on July 23. Two weeks before No mans sky even released.


also with 1.5 million fewer owners, No mans sky has an estimated gross of 8 Million more than star bound. NMS grossed around 32million if the steamspy numbers are accurate.
 
Last edited:
R

Roa

Member
I was going by steams top trending current games. Not sure how relevant these 2 things are to each other.
 
S

seanm

Guest
Yeah it seems No man sky releasing was what gave starbound more people playing in a day, but not necessarily more owners.

The money thing was just interesting.
 
U

Unzips Crogre

Guest
For those of you still wondering what the game is actually like, allow me to spoil it for you.


Whenever you warp to a new "system" you automatically arrive right next to a space station and 2-5 planets that are all within the roche limit of each other, not that it matters though since everything is a static object. Regardless of which planet you decide to visit you will always encounter the same things:



— Observatories that give you a waypoint to ruins where you can learn a couple alien words.

— Outposts where you're guaranteed to find a multitool (mining laser/gun combo) which may or not be an improvement over what you have, savescumming lets you reroll

— Transmission towers that give you waypoints to crashed ships, unless you cheat to get infinite cash this is pretty much the only way to find ships better than the one you have

— Drop pods that allow you to expand your inventory by one slot at a time, becomes progressively more expensive to do so the bigger your inventory is

— Various prefabs that all grant you a random tech upgrade or a trivial amount of resources, some times they might have a trade point in them or they might translate another ayylium word for you.

— Beacons that can point you in the way of any of the above



All of these objects are the exact same no matter where in the universe you go and they blanket the surface of any object you visit, scattered about every few hundred feet from each other. On almost every planet there's some sort of atmospheric effect that ticks down your suit power over time, gets worse with bad weather and always disappears when you enter a cave or a building, the only difference between them is what color your suit's health bar turns. There will also be a couple sentinels that spawn near you regardless of where you go, no more than three at a time ever, that may or may not be hostile and deal a negligible amount of damage that in no way ever provides a challenge beyond the first five minutes of gameplay.



If you're lucky there could be some rare resource but unless you need it for a specific upgrade it's just going to waste inventory space. There's also such a small pool of models for the different resources that once you've visited one planet of every type (hot/cold/radioactive/whatever) you've already seen everything the game has to offer. All space stations are internally identitcal.



Since crafting is necessary to provide power for everything you do in the game your inventory space is the only thing limiting your exploration. Don't think however that it's a good idea to save up for a really good ship upgrade instead of wasting money on a bunch of intermediate ones since other ships spawn with inventory sizes relative to your current one. Same thing goes for multitools. Is this just the faggot devs artificially padding the game? I'd say yes but grinding for resources/money is literally the only thing there is to do in this farce of a game.



You could just fly around in space until pirates attack either you or a convoy of static freighters but the flight controls are so 💩💩💩💩ing bad you've got to suffer from some serious masochism to get any joy out of that. There are also only two weapons in the whole game which can be used for space combat and the only threat you ever face is running out of materials to recharge your shield with. I wish I were joking when I say I've played asteroids clones with more gameplay depth than No Man's Sky.
 
I

irvinmujcin

Guest
I buy for ps4 its was 70euro,for me waste of money its good game new idea but its like simulator i have more fun in simulator sim city.If i could see future that 70 i can help young developer on steam with they game...
 
RujiK

RujiK

Member
Slightly off-topic, but if anyone likes the exploration part of NMS, you may want to check out space engine. It's 99% simulation and like 1% game, so no grind, but no collecting or anything else.

You just fly through our real solar system and can land on planets, stars, whatever. Best of all, its FREE. Here are some screenshots.



MORE:







That galexy isn't a single entity. You can fly into it and and see that the "Gassy" looking stuff is actually individual stars.


 
Last edited:
pixeltroid

pixeltroid

Member
In the last few days I have been following the controversy surrounding NMS.

Some people are saying the devs deliberatly lied and showed pre-rendered animations to build hype and get more sales. I cant deny that the dev said in interviews that the game is multiplayer (when it wasnt), and also showed "gameplay" footage containing features that were missing in the final release. But was it really a conspiracy to dupe players?

- IMO Its not likely that an indie company would put their reputations as game designers on the line to rip people off.

- Also the basic idea of NMS was actually fantastic and you can tell the devs were really passionate about this project and were aiming for the stars.

- Why would anybody ruin a good game concept and their reps just to rip people off? They could make all the money in the world by seeing the idea through and working on the features.

^ Maybe this is where they slipped, perhaps due to deadlines, external pressure and time constraints.

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
T

Tirous

Guest
The problem is that they over-hyped the game, and many people still fail to understand the idea that sometimes mechanics need to be cut. Them cutting multiplayer was understandable, as no indie can juggle the 9 dimensional mess that a multiplayer NMS would be, yet people still so easily feel 'betrayed'.

Hype is a demons pact, it will grant your wish but it will also destroy you if you cant pay it back 100%...

Tis but the plight of a kickstarter-funded dev... you publisher is your consumer... and they often dont understand these things...
 
RichHopefulComposer

RichHopefulComposer

Member
Tirous said:
The problem is that they over-hyped the game, and many people still fail to understand the idea that sometimes mechanics need to be cut. Them cutting multiplayer was understandable, as no indie can juggle the 9 dimensional mess that a multiplayer NMS would be, yet people still so easily feel 'betrayed'.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's really strange how people get angry when you lie to their faces to take their money. :p
 
Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
I predict that this topic is going to be merged with the other NMS topic: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/no-mans-sky.5213/
The thing is, they probably didn't INTEND to rip people off. It's just that the developers, and that main guy were incompetent of properly showing their game, that main developer just made things up on the spot like a little kid, instead of truthfully telling "THIS is gonna happen, THIS is gonna happen, THIS not.", like a real developer should do. He was more like "ummm, yeah, this, [vague explaination], andd, umm, yeah like that," and so on. It is true that companies change things up in the developement, but then they are also clear about that, but this guy just made a lot of false promises, again, he didn't want to rip people off, he was just incompetent and bad in communication, and also a doubter, without a clear plan.

Another thing is that a lot of basic gameplay functions are disappointing, like a crappy UI / IU (dunno which one lol), all ships look the same, all vendors/NPC's look the same, it's a bit buggy, and can crash even on consoles, the story is supposed to build up but leads nowhere, it's overpriced for what it offers, the gameplay is extremely repetitive and the combat system is too simple, and the grinding isn't even THAT interesting, like for example Minecraft had rescource grinding and building and so on, but it was satisfying, here it isn't. The inventory is annoying for most people and so on.

But the idea is AMAZING, the planets are beautiful, and it is a truly relaxing experience if you have luck and encounter the right planets, and don't get bothered too much by the issues mentioned above. As an indie game, A FREAKING INDIE GAME, that would be 10-15EUR, and it would be a very good indie game, but sadly, this idea isn't made for indie, a very big company should make something as huge as this, even with the huge dedication and LOVE they put into this game, a 15-man indie game with an unorganised, chaotic and doubty leader it is impossible to execute the idea right.

And the ending is absolutely TERRIBLE, btw.

So that's why I give it a 6/10


EDIT: HOLY CRAP HAHA WHILE WRITING THIS TOPIC IT GOT MERGED HAHA!!!
 
pixeltroid

pixeltroid

Member
Another thing is that the game design team may have been inexperienced to handle a project of such a scale, involving Sony and whatnot. Maybe the devs could have expanded their team or at least outsourced work to make the multiplayer mode.

As for hype, Not every indie game gets hyped. I imagine it must be quite thrilling for a no-name indie dev to see that theres "hype" surrounding his project. Its a once in a lifetime opportunity. Its the time to make hay.

Sean saying "No multiplayer. Period." when asked about it could have killed the hype instantly and perhaps Sean did not want to risk that and lose the "limelight" for his game.

Now that the game is out, and people are angry about stuff, Sean should at least address those issues. I imagine it must really hurt to see people hating on something you put your heart into, and even worse being called a liar, but Sean not saying anything at this time isnt helping anything.

If people were trashing my work and if I had a response, I would let them know!
 
C

ConsolCWBY

Guest
You know, the problem with procgen is no one has of yet been able to make a true AI directed story. This, I feel, is the 'Holy Grail' of gaming. I mean, random is boring after a while. That's why experiments like NMS feel very limited. If a new story could be procgen-ed everytime the player needed something to refresh his/her interest, then a game like this would go down as THE all time great.

Unfortunately, the current state of this has made little progress in the last 10-15 years or so. It's always interested me though!
 
Yal

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
IMO NMS seems like the perfect example of why vaults are more limited than completely PCG stuff... no matter how nice building blocks you have, once they obviously repeat, the illusion is lost. Since all animals basically are reskins of the same same few patterns, they don't feel different no matter how they look. There are no huge civilized outposts to visit to ease up the monotony, no bosses, no real plot points...

TBH, I've had a similar problem with Starbound too. There is no real purpose to have multiple random worlds if they don't FEEL different, and it sort of boils down to being Terraria but with less variety in each world because they've spread the variety over each world biome. Starbound does a lot of things better than Terraria, like enabling ranged and AoE building/block manipulation, but their use of vaults feels very noticeable when you explore a ruin and discover ten copies of the same room. Exploration is all about seeing the unexpected. Seeing something you recognize from another area is all but.
 
jazzzar

jazzzar

Member
After seeing all the reviews about the game, i'm never going to spend 60$ on a game like this, i already have games that are far more fun than NMS (at least that's just me) but hey, from a developer's point of view, devs did a great job!
 
R

roytheshort

Guest
Yal said:
no matter how nice building blocks you have, once they obviously repeat, the illusion is lost. .
Click to expand...
That's why I occasionally throw an unexpected event into some of the simulations I'm running, a surprise visit from a friend, a sudden injury, a reply from a potential employer, things like that, otherwise people will realize it isn't entirely real.
 
Adrien Dittrick

Adrien Dittrick

Member
I think that the designers knew what they were going for with procedurally-generated content.
They were so thrilled by the whole "even we don't know what's in our game" concept that they forgot to fine-tune it for plot-reasons.
Right now I'mmaking my own procedurally-generated game, and I'll keep a much smaller scale with actual things to do everywhere.
 
Yal

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Squidi actually has a bunch of cool ideas on how to make better vaults (the guy behind 300 Game Ideas), I might add. For instance, have them be room templates that can be stretched to arbitrary sizes (within reasonable bounds) to fit in the region you want that particular type of room in, and if everything doesn't fit, subregions of the room are marked by priority to omit the least interesting room contents first. Another template idea basically was having an intermediate generation step between deciding what to make and actually making it to fine-tune things. And one of the first of the 300 ideas is using a "puzzle tree" to be able to put locked doors and similar barricades in a randomly generated structure to force the player to go through it a certain way in a way that can't render the area unwinnable. There's a bunch of moderate-sized steps that turns your random mess into something much more interesting. NMS simply didn't take them....
 
Ninety

Ninety

Member
As far as I'm concerned, Squidi is one of the most creative people working with procedural generation right now, at least in terms of conceptualisation. I highly recommend anyone looking to work with procedural generation to have a look through 300 mechanics.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top