No Man's Sky

Mr_Muffin

How big are the planets? Like would it take weeks/months to explore the a single planet?

Ponster

Mr_Muffin wrote: »

How big are the planets? Like would it take weeks/months to explore the a single planet?

Days to weeks I'd say? The 'problem' is that once you land on a planet and look around you have pretty much on idea of exactly what it's all going to look like and there's little variation on the planet itself.

I tend to land and wander off in a random direction and as soon as my inventory is full I find a base where I can call my ship to come and pick me up and then move off to the next planet.

CiDeRmAn

Taylor365 wrote: »

A fishing rod!

As a Legend of Zelda player, a fishing rod and a range of fish to catch with it would make No Man's Sky into a must have!
Probably rename it "No Man's Lake (with flying space bits too)"

CiDeRmAn

Mr_Muffin wrote: »

How big are the planets? Like would it take weeks/months to explore the a single planet?

The planets are not planet sized, and there is a fair amount of fade in of details as you approach.
The scale is very impressive but, while there are marked differences between terrain, colour and other effects from world to world, the planets taken one by one are far too homogenous, with no real alterations from pole to pole.
It is probably an artifact of the maths used to generate the locations, but you don't have arctic, equatorial or temperate regions, no oceans and so on.

Thargor

super_furry wrote: »

In fairness to them, they did a great job in really saying very little about the game. They dropped enough nuggets to make the game sound like something truly ground-breaking and then left a hungry audience to fill in the gaps for themselves.

Thats complete bollocks, they've been caught openly lying right up to the release, if I could be bothered going back through this thread I had a 3 page argument about those demos with the giant brontosaurus looking creatures being pre-rendered cartoons not gameplay footage and it was all pure BS. Its a complete and utter grind-fest, theres no reason to play it once you realise how limited it is.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160816191001/https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4y046e/wheres_the_nms_we_were_sold_on_heres_a_big_list/

TPD

I'm still enjoying it, made my 5th jump and upgraded suit and ship to 20 odd slots each.

Finding performance much better today after installing nvidias new drivers.

Drexel

Think I've about 30 hours played now and I have to say I'm getting a bit fed up.

Gameplay is non existent. I've never died or come close to it. This was fine as I was enjoying the exploration side of things but I'm not seeing much variety in worlds at all. I've been reading and seems that not much changes as you get closer to the centre which for me is a huge disappointment. I definitely remember Sean saying things get weirder and weirder the closer you get to the centre. If the planets towards the centre are of similar variety to the ones now then what's the point?

Another thing is I feel really disconnected from the Galaxy. I don't really care where I am or what system I'm in. It doesn't really matter. The Galaxy map doesn't help. I find it awful to navigate. No system map except what's in the menu

Ponster

Drexel wrote: »

Think I've about 30 hours played now and I have to say I'm getting a bit fed up.

25 hours in and have similar feelings. I don't feel that there's much of a goal to be honest. I have a maxed-out exosuit and a 24-slot ship. I can melt pirates as long as there are fewer than 6 and when there are more as in a Distress Signal encounter it's only the ones that you aggro that come after you so easy pickings.

Everything feels too safe. Extreme conditions on planets are a minor hindrance, like an itch to ignore, rather than forcing me to change my behaviour; I farm sentinels for resources rather than being afraid of them.

Notorious

The conclusion to the Atlas story is possibly one of the biggest disappointments of my life.

Surely the team could've brought in a sci-fi writer to make the story even a little interesting.

Thepoet85

Notorious wrote:

The conclusion to the Atlas story is possibly one of the biggest disappointments of my life.

Yea, was absolutely awful, to even call it a conclusion would be over selling it (The irony!!).

Doesn't give me much hope of a decent ending to the entire game.

Glico Man

If anyone has the money ready and is looking to upgrade their exosuit in as short a time as possible, find yourself a small moon.

On my way towards a marker I saw at least 8/9 within a 4 minute flight.

Dave_The_Sheep

The galaxy map is terrible. I have no idea if I'm flying toward my first atlas system or not.

dreamers75

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

The galaxy map is terrible. I have no idea if I'm flying toward my first atlas system or not.

The 1st option is towards galaxy core, the 2nd is Free roam,The 3rd option is Atlas, the 4th is Black Holes (if you have found one). No idea that the 5th one is.

Go to the 3rd and move the waypoint in the direction of the atlas, thats where you need to go.

Dickerty

I need help on using a trackpad for PC play. There is no middle mouse button, so I cannot discard items, and cannot seem to remap that button...any ideas?

Hail 2 Da Chimp

I was thinking about getting this, seems like people are not really impressed with it.
Are there any redeeming qualities to the game?

Dickerty

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote: »

I was thinking about getting this, seems like people are not really impressed with it.
Are there any redeeming qualities to the game?

I didn't get into the pre-game hype, so I'm enjoying the blind exploration (with a few tips from some videos, here and reddit). The inventory management is a pain, but it's making me work harder to find ship and suit upgrades. I'm still really enjoying it, but early days...

d31b0y

Dickerty wrote: »

I need help on using a trackpad for PC play. There is no middle mouse button, so I cannot discard items, and cannot seem to remap that button...any ideas?

Try the middle click emulator from this page;
http://cybernetnews.com/helpful-tip-middle-click-on-a-touchpad-laptop-mouse/

Dickerty

d31b0y wrote: »

Try the middle click emulator from this page;
http://cybernetnews.com/helpful-tip-middle-click-on-a-touchpad-laptop-mouse/

Thanks, will give it a try!

Zillah

Notorious wrote: »

The conclusion to the Atlas story is possibly one of the biggest disappointments of my life.

Surely the team could've brought in a sci-fi writer to make the story even a little interesting.

Holy crap, yes. I did this last night. Got a little bored and had gone from only one warp reactor to having all of them adjacent, so I jumped from Atlas to Atlas for the last three in a row and...wow. Just wow. What a complete non-event.

That said, I like the story idea in principle, I really just don't think they had the resources to make anything of it. We don't see the 'event', there are no special effects, animations, or audio files...it's literally just the same assets we've been looking at with some description text...very sparse text at that.

The writing was at least decent, though, I'll give them that. I've read a lot of scifi and a huge amount of it - especially in gaming - in cringingly terrible, the sort of stuff you would expect from a 14-year-old. Whoever wrote the descriptive text in the game is at least able to handle the language at an adult level.

johnny_ultimate

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote: »

Are there any redeeming qualities to the game?

Oh absolutely. Its technology is a marvel and it's an aesthetic triumph to boot. At its best you will uncover the sort of moments of awe and loveliness that have very few parallels throughout gaming. The game also offers plenty of freedom in terms of how you play - personally, I think the game sings when you stop worrying about progress and just take the time to see the sort of environments, creatures and sights the galaxies have to offer. The writing is surprisingly sharp throughout, and it really perfectly captures a classic yet unique sci-fi atmosphere.

There are plenty of gameplay quirks, some more irritating than others. The game can become a grindfest easily if you let it, and more variety in terms of what you can discover at waypoints would be welcome. There is no doubt it needs updates and additions over the coming weeks and months to maintain interest, fix some issues. Some people have had notable technology problems (thankfully I haven't had a single crash yet). But personally I've spent more than a dozen hours with it and find it a flawed but fascinating and engrossing achievement that I'll be happy to spend plenty more time with, even before whatever updates are on the way.

CiDeRmAn

Yeah, the game comes into it's own when you stop expecting it to deliver concrete narrative beats and instead create ones of your own.
Visiting worlds, knowing that there's a lot that you have seen already and, instead, being treated to a gorgeous view and magnificent animals, as well as some frankly striking alien architecture that, despite it being procedurally generated, looks like it's been there a very long time.

There's a lot wrong with it, and some of it is broken, but the good moments are outweighing the dross at this point.
I think some of the more critical media on Youtube are very much the edited lowlights of the game, and it really isn't nearly as poor as they are making out.

I too am looking forward to seeing where the game goes from here, with games like X-Wing Alliance surely the high water mark for space combat single player experiences and one that could be integrated into the No Man's Sky environment with relative ease.

I would love to have one of those big old warships under my command, and have the chance to take a fighter, shuttle or transport out of it's hold, another thing that would transform the whole experience but require little more than a modification of the current game content to make happen.

It should make for an interesting 12 months ahead, and I'm happier to own the game and look forward than to not have it and p1ss down on it instead.

Venom

So last night I jumped to the next system on the Atlas path and ran smack bang into one of those space red alerts events which had 31 fighters attacking 3 battleships. After taking out a few of them I hightailed it to the nearby space station as 27 v me just aint my kinda odds

Was raging afterwards I didn't take a screenshot but after hearing so much guff about the game not having any big space battles, I was totally shocked to be in one so unexpectedly.

Danonino.

Flew to a new system 4 planets one moon, arrived in a barren wasteland but it had Murrine everywhere so mined it for a bit headed to the next planet over and again was very similar to many I was on before,

Arrived on the third planet and it was amazing, cold climate that went extreme enough that I ran out of zinc to protect myself with therm layer tau and for the first time was panicking trying to gather Iron to make shielding shards.

No life where I was and just very cold.
What I wasn't expecting was for the planet to be so diverse, there is a massive expanse of water separating a lot of it, it's also seriously deep, way deeper than any other planet I've been on. Made the breathing unit and harvested Iron diving to the floor and finding aqua spheres in caves for my troubles, must have made 50 shielding shards to survive the freezing water and keep underwater at that depth.

Herds of what look like space cows are on one of the islands along with smaller duders. They move together and all ran off when a storm approached which I never seen happening. On an another a different species of larger things lived and then the main land has everything togther. The islands are massive but the water separating them could be classed as an ocean I guess.

Couldn't find a trade post and I looked for ages, the depots ect were all really far apart and nowhere I found had an NPC which I thought was really weird as every other planet had em somewhere.

Had to fly up to the space station and outrun pirates looking for my aqua spheres to clear my inventory.

Just arrived on the 4th planet and it's another barren bore. I guess it really is completely random wether all the right circumstances line up for a deadly planet, but when it does you really see what they were going for.

If you manage to find it it's the Craggy System and the planet is Father Dougal ha ha

Grayditch

Some of the best puzzle in this game are fixing your own mistakes. I landed on a huge pillar of land and jetpacked down to get plutonium. Could not get back up to the ship. I had to create jump-holes on the pillar to accommodate the small jetpack bursts. Now of course I realise a lot of ways I could have done that easier, but the game is great for moments like that, especially early on.

Danonino.

Grayditch wrote: »

Some of the best puzzle in this game are fixing your own mistakes. I landed on a huge pillar of land and jetpacked down to get plutonium. Could not get back up to the ship. I had to create jump-holes on the pillar to accommodate the small jetpack bursts. Now of course I realise a lot of ways I could have done that easier, but the game is great for moments like that, especially early on.

If it's a cliff face you can jetpack against it to climb without worrying about jet pack running out

Oh and when running melee with R1 and then jet pack, you get a boost long jump. Game changing.

Grayditch

Danonino. wrote: »

If it's a cliff face you can jetpack against it to climb without worrying about jet pack running out

Yeah, I'm not proud as to how many hours I put in before I realised that.

OptimusTractor

Hail 2 Da Chimp wrote: »

I was thinking about getting this, seems like people are not really impressed with it.
Are there any redeeming qualities to the game?

It's Fallout in space. You're just wandering around collecting stuff.

Grayditch

It's nothing like Fallout, though.

OptimusTractor

Grayditch wrote: »

It's nothing like Fallout, though.

I find the grind in both similar.

CiDeRmAn

Fallout, and the related Skyrim, have scripted adventures in every corner, with side missions and, essentially, dungeons built by the game designers to provide a little adventure arc in the various nooks and crannies of the games, quests to drive you forward to gain experience both in terms of classical adventure levelling points and in the sense of gaining time with the games systems and getting simply better at playing it.

No Man's Sky just doesn't have this quality, and it's a pity as there are plenty of games, like the Diablo series, that have procedurally generated dungeon crawls at their heart.
It would be fantastic if you found one of the ubiquitous cave systems and, therein, had a little quest to the bottom of it with enemies and allies along the way, no reason why such a mechanic can't be built in, with inventory expansions and better equipment as reward.