No Man's Sky - Early Impressions/Reviews-in-progress Thread

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Not the best start.

STagHuC.png
 
As much as people are disappointed in some of the game's flaws, I feel like NMS is a necessary game no matter how people feel about it. For its scope and size, it's a step in the right direction and I hope other developers take a critical look at it. Somewhere between this, Destiny's gameplay, Eve Online's MMO features, and Mass Effect's storytelling lies the perfect space game that people are constantly looking for. The Holy Grail of space games. Someone just needs to combine them all together sometime in the future to make it. Who knows, maybe this game will do it a year or so from now with updates and patches. However if not, this game is a big first step/push in the right direction.

Edit: To those who keep quoting this and telling me 'x game does this better than NMS' or 'procedural generation is bad', please look at the posts below.
 
Generalpsyduck said:
Its astounds me that games like this aren't released with mod tools.
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These days its usually because devs want to protect their bottom line with season passes or DLC. Best not let those pesky content creators make free content!

For NMS though its clear the core game is unfinished and has had things cut so having any hopes for mod support is a lost cause. Maybe one day, and then PC only.
 
brau said:
I would buy into it if tools to mod the game would be released with it. It would also be a smart move imo.
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If people are experiencing crashes with the vanilla game, that needs to be resolved first. It doesn't seem stable enough to be modded yet, but it's a great idea long term.
 
Audioboxer said:
These days its usually because devs want to protect their bottom line with season passes or DLC. Best not let those pesky content creators make free content!

For NMS though its clear the core game is unfinished and has had things cut so having any hopes for mod support is a lost cause. Maybe one day, and then PC only.
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Man this industry fucking sucks.
 
MrRemyJe said:
As much as people are disappointed in some of the game's flaws, I feel like NMS is a necessary game no matter how people feel about it. For its scope and size, it's a step in the right direction and I hope other developers take a critical look at it. Somewhere between this, Destiny's gameplay, Eve Online's MMO features, and Mass Effect's storytelling lies the perfect space game that people are constantly looking for. The Holy Grail of space games. Someone just needs to combine them all together sometime in the future to make it. Who knows, maybe this game will do it a year or so from now with updates and patches. However if not, this game is a big first step/push in the right direction.
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Great post and very true.
 
U-R said:
Looks like I cancelled my preorder right on time. I'll wait for a 10 bucks steam sale on this.

I feel it's an Assassin Creed 1 situation, where the tech itself was so complex that a thin crust of gameplay was built to put on top of it just to ship and nothing more. It's a great starting point for NMS2 though, i hope the game is successfull enough to warrant it.
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The game looks incredible boring pass the first couple of hours. I have been watching a streamer off and on the last couple of days and nothing looks much different.

Lets see what they add in the first big patch but right now this game does look like it is worth $60 in anyway.
 
Inviusx said:
Not the best start.

STagHuC.png
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That line from Jim is why I said I was surprised at his opinion. I feel the game has loads of personality.


FStop7 said:
We need to be able to chart the worlds we discover. We need to be able to easily catalog things we discover on those worlds in a quick searchable index that also includes the location of the system, the location of the planet, and the coordinates of our findings. An individualized codex that you build for yourself as you travel the galaxy. At the VERY least please add latitude/longitude to the planets so I can write down the coordinates of locations I want to revisit on a piece of paper.

These two things would really untie our proverbial hands.
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Not being able to chart everything is really disappointing. I thought it would be a no-brainer to have a log of all interactions, and extra note-taking with all discoveries. You literally have a photo of waypoints but no way of noting what's there/what it is or marking it to return there.
 
I'm very glad I purposefully ignored all the pre-release media besides the reveal trailer and its appearance at press conferences.

I've been loving it so far. There are a couple of gripes I have that are brought up throughout the thread (inventory space, animal behaviour) but this is almost exactly what I hope the game would be.

EDIT: For reference ~15 ours played so far
 
Exile20 said:
The game looks incredible boring pass the first couple of hours. I have been watching a streamer off and on the last couple of days and nothing looks much different.
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Because there isn't much past the first two hours. You will be doing the same boring grinding for better ships. The planets are dull. No planets have any civilization. No cities on planets atleast from what I saw. Nothing but abandoned settlement and once in a while one alien sitting alone in a room.
 
Gunslinger said:
Because there isn't much past the first two hours. You will be doing the same boring grinding for better ships. The planets are dull. No planets have any civilization. No cities on planets atleast from what I saw. Nothing but abandoned settlement and once in a while one alien sitting alone in a room.
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You are spreading so much misinformation it's just embarrassing.

You haven't even seen an
Atlas Station
have you?
 
Gunslinger said:
Because there isn't much past the first two hours. You will be doing the same boring grinding for better ships. The planets are dull. No planets have any civilization. No cities on planets atleast from what I saw. Nothing but abandoned settlement and once in a while one alien sitting alone in a room.
Click to expand...

The way I read this post actually makes me feel depressed for said alien.
 
MrRemyJe said:
As much as people are disappointed in some of the game's flaws, I feel like NMS is a necessary game no matter how people feel about it. For its scope and size, it's a step in the right direction and I hope other developers take a critical look at it. Somewhere between this, Destiny's gameplay, Eve Online's MMO features, and Mass Effect's storytelling lies the perfect space game that people are constantly looking for. The Holy Grail of space games. Someone just needs to combine them all together sometime in the future to make it. Who knows, maybe this game will do it a year or so from now with updates and patches. However if not, this game is a big first step/push in the right direction.
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Lol what a joke. Procedural generation is not the right direction, it removes the very necessary ingredient that is developer creativity when it comes to game design, whether in gameplay or world building.
 
Audioboxer said:
The way I read this post actually makes me feel depressed for said alien.
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It really has a depressed feel - it said one of my aliens was quivering in fear of me, and then it asked me for some money - I had an option to give it TEN dollars.
Heavy_D206 said:
You are spreading so much misinformation it's just embarrassing.

You haven't even seen an
Atlas Station
have you?
Click to expand...
I've seen one,
looks just like a space station with a pulsing monolith inside that gave me a red ball which I sold for 60 grand.
 
More_Badass said:
See that's the thing with reviews. A review, be it on this forum or from the mouth of your best friend or written on IGN or on someone's personal blog, is just that individual person's opinion of something, through the facets of their likes, dislikes, and the context of their life experience and preferences. It's not a assessment of quality or value. It's just someone telling you why they liked something and why they didn't, what they felt worked and what didn't

A review/score is a representation of someone's enjoyment of a game, not the quality of a game.
Click to expand...

And if a majority of the reviews from seemingly non-related people agree and, even more so, point to the same flaws, then that goes beyond the personal and is already a more or less valid assessment of the game/media. With NMS, it seems like more than a lot are in agreement that the novelty quickly wears off after you spend more than a couple of hours into the game.

Personally, I think this is what happens when a game gets overhyped by people -- and let's be honest here, this became overhyped by Sony fans the moment Sony claimed it as a console exclusive -- even as the claims by the developers (and a very small team at that!) make some people raise their eyebrows (there's a reason why some people were reminded of the whole Spore hoopla ). Didn't help either that the devs seemed to have been carried away by the hype. Instead of adding meaningful content to the game so that players' actions can have significant impact to the game, they're just adding lots and lots of content that, in the grand scheme of things, are all just meaningless slogs to fill out their promise of near infinite surprises. Kinda like Howard's promise of thousands of quests in Skyrim that ultimately ended up being going into different dungeons killing the same draugrs or something similar.

If this was announced as an indie console multiplatform game, or better yet, Early Access on Steam, I doubt the backlash would have been this severe.
 
MrRemyJe said:
As much as people are disappointed in some of the game's flaws, I feel like NMS is a necessary game no matter how people feel about it. For its scope and size, it's a step in the right direction and I hope other developers take a critical look at it. Somewhere between this, Destiny's gameplay, Eve Online's MMO features, and Mass Effect's storytelling lies the perfect space game that people are constantly looking for. The Holy Grail of space games. Someone just needs to combine them all together sometime in the future to make it. Who knows, maybe this game will do it a year or so from now with updates and patches. However if not, this game is a big first step/push in the right direction.
Click to expand...

I do agree with you. Yes, NMS is a necessary game.

Not only for the blueprint for games in the future, but also for diversity of games in the present time.

It's not like we have NMS style game each year, especially on consoles.
 
loganclaws said:
Lol what a joke. Procedural generation is not the right direction, it removes the very necessary ingredient that is developer creativity when it comes to game design, whether in gameplay or world building.
Click to expand...

Obviously complete procedural generation isn't the right direction, and that's not what I'm promoting here. However, a game that is fully crafted by a team from top to bottom will never be as big as No Man's Sky. The solution here is something in between. I'm basically saying if you actually had a procedurally generated solar system and then had individual developers and artists tweak enough on each planet to a good degree where things are varied enough to matter, you'd truly have something special. Clearly a big team would be needed for this, but utilizing the technology behind NMS would help as well.
 
MrRemyJe said:
Obviously complete procedural generation isn't the right direction, and that's not what I'm promoting here. However, a game that is fully crafted by a team from top to bottom will never be as big as No Man's Sky. The solution here is something in between. I'm basically saying if you actually had a procedurally generated solar system and then had individual developers and artists tweak enough on each planet to a good degree where things are varied enough to matter, you'd truly have something special. Clearly a big team would be needed for this, but utilizing the technology behind NMS would help as well.
Click to expand...

Game already exists, try Space Rangers 2 HD.
 
MrRemyJe said:
As much as people are disappointed in some of the game's flaws, I feel like NMS is a necessary game no matter how people feel about it. For its scope and size, it's a step in the right direction and I hope other developers take a critical look at it. Somewhere between this, Destiny's gameplay, Eve Online's MMO features, and Mass Effect's storytelling lies the perfect space game that people are constantly looking for. The Holy Grail of space games. Someone just needs to combine them all together sometime in the future to make it. Who knows, maybe this game will do it a year or so from now with updates and patches. However if not, this game is a big first step/push in the right direction.
Click to expand...
I like this post. Agreed.
 
MrRemyJe said:
Obviously complete procedural generation isn't the right direction, and that's not what I'm promoting here. However, a game that is fully crafted by a team from top to bottom will never be as big as No Man's Sky. The solution here is something in between. I'm basically saying if you actually had a procedurally generated solar system and then had individual developers and artists tweak enough on each planet to a good degree where things are varied enough to matter, you'd truly have something special. Clearly a big team would be needed for this, but utilizing the technology behind NMS would help as well.
Click to expand...

Well, even a really large team isn't going to be able to tweak 18 quintillion planets.
 
MrRemyJe said:
As much as people are disappointed in some of the game's flaws, I feel like NMS is a necessary game no matter how people feel about it. For its scope and size, it's a step in the right direction and I hope other developers take a critical look at it. Somewhere between this, Destiny's gameplay, Eve Online's MMO features, and Mass Effect's storytelling lies the perfect space game that people are constantly looking for. The Holy Grail of space games. Someone just needs to combine them all together sometime in the future to make it. Who knows, maybe this game will do it a year or so from now with updates and patches. However if not, this game is a big first step/push in the right direction.
Click to expand...

Wow... no man's sky is not the big first step... There are plenty of survival sandbox titles with procedural generation it's not even funny. Just look no further than starbound. It's basically No Man's Sky but 2.5d like Terraria.
 
I've played for a good 10hrs so far and man I wish everything wasn't so samey.

Best moment so far was an ice world that had a cave right near a trader platform. went into that cave and fount a ton of these green ! guys that gave me pearls. Best of all the robot proctors that spawn didn't come into the cave, just on the ground above. Made almost 2million clearing out that cave...


Getting bored of the gameplay loop already, warp, hit space station for suit upgrade, go to planet, visiting the same RNG buildings, get some shit, sell shit, rinse and repeat.


Wish the worlds had cooler things on them.

edit: also fount recipe for the suspended liquid stuff (50 carbon for 1 of them) so now I can warp fuel out of the easy shit u find on every plant, guess can just hope my way to the center easy now...
 
Steve Youngblood said:
Well, even a really large team isn't going to be able to tweak 18 quintillion planets.
Click to expand...

Sometimes I forget on this forum I have to triple check to make sure I cover all my bases when commenting. Basically I'm not saying a developer would need to work around 18 quintillion planets, but at least one system of a handful of planets and have them interconnected in a way. When looking at the new Mass Effect game coming out, I was disappointed to see that in the latest footage, while they brought the Mako back, you're still riding around in desolate areas with no structures, caves, etc around at least from the looks of that footage and I imagined what it would be like if something could be done to fix that. I don't have the answer but I feel like it lies somewhere in procedural generation(and maybe open modding).
 
I don't see how NMS is a "necessary" game when Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous already have those features in the dev pipeline, but on a much more intricate level.

When you consider these things about NMS's procedural generation:

-Planets don't really rotate
-Planets don't orbit stars
-Planets are single biome
-Skybox is static
-Moons don't orbit planets
-Planet gravity is the same across the entire universe
-Stars don't exist in the game world

You might as well just be warping to different zones on the same planet.
 
MrRemyJe said:
Sometimes I forget on this forum I have to triple check to make sure I cover all my bases when commenting. Basically I'm not saying a developer would need to work around 18 quintillion planets, but at least one system of a handful of planets and have them interconnected in a way. When looking at the new Mass Effect game coming out, I was disappointed to see that in the latest footage, while they brought the Mako back, you're still riding around in desolate areas with no structures, caves, etc around at least from the looks of that footage and I imagined what it would be like if something could be done to fix that. I don't have the answer but I feel like it lies somewhere in procedural generation.
Click to expand...
IMO this game would be stronger with only a few hundred planets, perhaps with better and richer content ON the planets. Things people could claim with a flag / icon or something. I dunno. It feels so impersonal at the scale it has currently.
 
If I'm interpreting these impressions correctly it's sounding like Hello may have been better off reigning in their ambition somewhat?

Like maybe focus on really properly fleshing out 30-50 planets as opposed to randomly generating 18 quintillion many of which have next to nothing?
 
MrRemyJe said:
Sometimes I forget on this forum I have to triple check to make sure I cover all my bases when commenting. Basically I'm not saying a developer would need to work around 18 quintillion planets, but at least one system of a handful of planets and have them interconnected in a way. When looking at the new Mass Effect game coming out, I was disappointed to see that in the latest footage, while they brought the Mako back, you're still riding around in desolate areas with no structures, caves, etc around at least from the looks of that footage and I imagined what it would be like if something could be done to fix that. I don't have the answer but I feel like it lies somewhere in procedural generation(and maybe open modding).
Click to expand...

Sorry, am multitasking on mobile. I think I may have misread your post.
 
loganclaws said:
Game already exists, try Space Rangers 2 HD.
Click to expand...

Mobius and pet octopus said:
Wow... no man's sky is not the big first step... There are plenty of survival sandbox titles with procedural generation it's not even funny. Just look no further than starbound. It's basically No Man's Sky but 2.5d like Terraria.
Click to expand...

Both of these games are also steps in the right direction but they have their flaws as well. If you both feel these 2 games are necessary then add them to the list. My main point is that we are really close to a truly amazing space exploration game, but we just aren't there yet. Having developers who are working on the next big space game taking a look at NMS, Terraria or even Space Rangers is the main idea. However, NMS should be a part of the conversation as much as these other games, because it comes pretty close to what everyone wants. Love it or hate it, I think it needs to be looked at critically. I hope you both understand where I'm coming from with this. I'm not saying NMS is doing things games haven't done before and I'm not giving it super high praise, I'm saying look at what it's done and critique it, analyze it, and see how a developer can do it better.

Collingwood said:
If I'm interpreting these impressions correctly it's sounding like Hello may have been better off reigning in their ambition somewhat?

Like maybe focus on really properly fleshing out 30-50 planets as opposed to randomly generating 18 quintillion many of which have next to nothing?
Click to expand...

Maybe not Hello Games themselves, since they were asking the question of 'how many' instead of 'how good'. I look at No Mans Sky like a science experiment of figuring out what they could actually pull off. They wanted to see if it could be done, and so far it seems like it has been done. What I want is for someone else to look at this experiment and make something better from it. Polish it to the point of greatness.
 
Collingwood said:
If I'm interpreting these impressions correctly it's sounding like Hello may have been better off reigning in their ambition somewhat?

Like maybe focus on really properly fleshing out 30-50 planets as opposed to randomly generating 18 quintillion many of which have next to nothing?
Click to expand...

Maybe different people are seeing different things in their games.

I've visited a dozen galaxies and around 20 planets and have all been wildly different in color palettes, terrian, and Ecosystems. The creatures you come across are also the most insane animals I've ever seen in my life. Flying Tentacle Headcrabs, Human-sized Ants with huge teeth, all the way to cute little baby dinosaurs.

I have no idea how people are saying the planets are boring.
 
Collingwood said:
If I'm interpreting these impressions correctly it's sounding like Hello may have been better off reigning in their ambition somewhat?

Like maybe focus on really properly fleshing out 30-50 planets as opposed to randomly generating 18 quintillion many of which have next to nothing?
Click to expand...
Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing
 
While I don't plan to purchase the game at launch (gonna wait for a PC sale), I'm actually glad somebody tried to make a game like this. I hope it inspires other devs/companies to take the concept and run with it.
 
Procedural generation is not the enemy! You can build a fun game around procedural generation, but first you have to build a fun game. Diablo is fun.....FTL is fun....Spelunky is fun.

The main problem in No Man's Sky is just that the core activities are not really that fun. It seems like Hello Games expected the thrill of exploration and the amount of content to be a substitute for fun.
 
Collingwood said:
If I'm interpreting these impressions correctly it's sounding like Hello may have been better off reigning in their ambition somewhat?

Like maybe focus on really properly fleshing out 30-50 planets as opposed to randomly generating 18 quintillion many of which have next to nothing?
Click to expand...

BUT 18 QUINTULLION PLANETS! The universe is INFINTE! You can discover and name YOUR OWN PLANET! Did I mention there are 18 QUINTULLION PLANETS??
 
Heavy_D206 said:
Maybe different people are seeing different things in their games.

I've visited a dozen galaxies and around 20 planets and have all been wildly different in color palettes, terrian, and Ecosystems. The creatures you come across are also the most insane animals I've ever seen in my life. Flying Tentacle Headcrabs, Human-sized Ants with huge teeth, all the way to cute little baby dinosaurs.

I have no idea how people are saying the planets are boring.
Click to expand...


Really? I get the color palettes thing but terrain and Ecosystems? I seen 20+ planets as well and besides the 1 I fount that didn't eat away at my shield at all times they have all been almost the same. Its either Cold, Toxic, Rads or Heat (light or heavy). The worlds have a hand full of repeating elements, the animals are the biggest difference but they really just look like someone hit a random button is spore or something.
 
MrRemyJe said:
As much as people are disappointed in some of the game's flaws, I feel like NMS is a necessary game no matter how people feel about it. For its scope and size, it's a step in the right direction and I hope other developers take a critical look at it. Somewhere between this, Destiny's gameplay, Eve Online's MMO features, and Mass Effect's storytelling lies the perfect space game that people are constantly looking for. The Holy Grail of space games. Someone just needs to combine them all together sometime in the future to make it. Who knows, maybe this game will do it a year or so from now with updates and patches. However if not, this game is a big first step/push in the right direction.
Click to expand...

NMS scope is directly related to why it doesn't have destiny's gameplay, mass effects story, or eve's MMO features.

You cant accomplish any of those things with the level of procedural generation NMS requires.
 
Collingwood said:
If I'm interpreting these impressions correctly it's sounding like Hello may have been better off reigning in their ambition somewhat?

Like maybe focus on really properly fleshing out 30-50 planets as opposed to randomly generating 18 quintillion many of which have next to nothing?
Click to expand...

This was obvious from the beginning, I just don't understand what got people so hyped about this level of random content. Outside of very constrained settings like Spelunky, random content isn't fun. It will be a long time before machine learning advances to the point where randomly generated content comes anywhere near approaching the ingenuity of a human creator.
 
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