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[Drizzlehell]

If you search for some YouTube videos about the game and its latest updates, many of them will be showcasing how much this game has changed over the years and what a crazy good experience it is nowadays.And a lot of that stuff looks really cool, admittedly. But then, whenever I see one of those and it piques my interest enough to reinstall that thing to give it another shot, I still end up shooting a mining laser at rocks and plants for 15 hours straight and eventually giving up because I feel like I'm losing brain cells on an endless feedback loop of mining resources to build stuff to go somewhere else to mine more resources to build more stuff to go somewhere else...

Unless I'm doing something wrong, the game is still front-loaded with the same boring ass content that it was five years ago when I first played it. Literally nothing has changed about it as far as I can tell.

I realise that you have to have some kind of a tutorial area at the start of the game but for all the crazy shit that I saw in those YouTube videos, did the developers even considered at some point to mix things up near the beginning of the game too, so that I wouldn't have to grow a beard trying to get to the parts of the game that are actually interesting?

 

[Nankatsu]

Is this a potentially excuse thread for Starfield's first 12h or am I seeing things?

 

[John Bilbo]

Yeah I've tried to get into this game too, but the beginning hours are a slog.

 

[Bernoulli]

Is this a potentially excuse thread for Starfield's first 12h or am I seeing things?

*12 threads

 

[John Bilbo]

Even now as typing this I'd like to give the game another shot.

 

[TommyCronin6969]

No matter how much they've improved ot added to the game its still the same game since day 1. They would have been better off making a sequel.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Is this a potentially excuse thread for Starfield's first 12h or am I seeing things?

 

[MirageMew2]

Expeditions are how the developers mix it up. I think the current one would be right up your alley. Complete them for cosmetics and it rolls over as a normal save when it’s over.

It’s been a while since I’ve had that fresh save experience but I remember the game opening up for me the moment I hit the Anomaly, the social hub of the game and where a large portion of the main quest takes place. As I gradually got wealthier, acquired more ships and a class A freighter, the options were wide open. To this day it’s a game I’ve spent 500+ hours in. The most recent update added trench runs and freighter battles. The scope of the game in 2033 is genuinely crazy.

No matter how much they've improved ot added to the game its still the same game since day 1. They would have been better off making a sequel.

This really couldn’t be further from the truth.

 

[Markio128]

It’s a game I love to play every once in a while because there is nothing else quite like it, especially in VR. If they announced a sequel I would be super excited. With some serious backing, they could really reach for the stars.

 

[Kakax11]

Yeah i needed a trainer to fly between planets without the need to harvest fuel for 4 hours

 

[LiquidMetal14]

I would use trainers or cheats on PC night and day. I'm a father and have little time uninterrupted.

Cheat your ass off.

 

[MadPanda]

I tried to get into it several times and got up fast. It's a game which sounds cool when you watch someone playing it in some short videos or read about people's experience but actually playing it wasn't compelling.

 

[Montauk]

Stills sounds and looks like a terrible game.

Tonnes of content has been added over the years, but the core gameplay looks as simplistic, tedious, repetitive and pointless as it was at the start.

Flying in and out of the atmosphere, the endless ‘unique’ and hideously garish planets and the all other original hyped features - all look like they get pretty old pretty quick.

Go back and watch the original videos criticising the games actual core gameplay (not all the sci-window dressing) and note how unbelievably shallow and boring the endless mining and looking for resources looks to play.

It’s still like that. At the start anyway. I couldn’t get much past the tedium of that the two times I’ve tried it, which were both after years of huge content additions.

 

[DryvBy]

In the difficulty settings, just put it at the pace you want. You can disable fuel needs for example if you're struggling during the intro.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Need a screen saver version where the game just plays itself in the background.
Or does that already exist?

 

[Montauk]

In the difficulty settings, just put it at the pace you want. You can disable fuel needs for example if you're struggling during the intro.

You can disable the mechanics if you find them tedious? Sounds well designed.

Combine this with the comment about using cheats to skip through the horrific slog and it definitely sounds like a compelling game.

 

[Red5]

I finished it on release, I thought it was good, but despite all of the added content over the years I've never felt the need to replay it. The loop is the same, very shallow, no character to it.

 

[Ogbert]

The NMS thirst from Starfield is delicious.

It’s a survival game with cool travel between planets. It’s absurd that the games are being compared.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

I have played it for about 5 hours twice, from the beginning and o just cannot see myself investing a serious amount of time in to this. As many others state it is just mine resources, build stuff and move on to mine other cool stuff to build more new items. The loop is fun for a while but long term it’s just not entertaining.

 

[Mr Hyde]

I've tried to get into this games several times, usually after they drop a cool looking trailer where they show off awesome stuff that's in the game. And every time I jump in, I discover that no matter how much stuff they cram into this game, it's hindered by the same boring ass gameplay loop. The core game is rotten, and no amount of cool content can fix that.

 

[M.W.]

No Man's Sky sucks. Always will.

 

[NEbeast]

Starfield didn't live up to the hype so now people are trying to bring down NMS? Give me a break.

 

[Montauk]

Starfield didn't live up to the hype so now people are trying to bring down NMS? Give me a break.

I think we’re allowed to talk about more than one game. Please don’t make this thread about Starfield; we’ve got enough of those.

Also I’m pretty sure that Hello Games brought down NMS themselves at launch 7 years ago, when it was shown to be an utterly vapid tech demo with gameplay as flat as a pancake.

Not to mention a story and ending (after a huge slog of repetitive shallow gameplay) was so nothing that people found it borderline offensive.

Thinking about it more, god, what a hilariously ironic comment.

NMS was massively, massively hyped up and was a gigantic disappointment. In fact I’d call it an infamously disappointing game.

 

[Eotheod]

Now playing Starfield, the combat from that game is exactly what I want in No Man's Sky. That is my only complaint with NMS, the combat fucking sucks. Give me actual decent shooting mechanics and it will all meld well together.

 

[Cashon]

Is this a potentially excuse thread for Starfield's first 12h or am I seeing things?

To me, this seems like someone who is feeling FOMO from the Starfield discourse, and tried playing something similar. Only to be disappointed.

 

[Drizzlehell]

The NMS thirst from Starfield is delicious.

It’s a survival game with cool travel between planets. It’s absurd that the games are being compared.

I played it before Starfield came out. Basically to test out the new PSVR 2 eye tracking support.

Also, I didn't even make the comparison in the OP, so leave that shit outta here, even I'm getting tired of hearing about Starfield.

 

[graywolf323]

in before the ban poll

in all seriousness one of these days I might try out NMS but it just didn’t seem like my kind of game before it launched even & it’s never gone quiet cheap enough for me to bite

 

[M.W.]

Starfield didn't live up to the hype so now people are trying to bring down NMS? Give me a break.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Before any one of you bastars makes one more comment about THAT GAME, this thread is solely motivated by the fact that I just watched this video and remembered my last attempt to play NMS, which happened to be about a week ago when the PSVR 2 update dropped:


Now shut up.

 

[Gambit2483]

I've put 20 hrs into the game and I've already gotten a new ship, heavily upgraded that ship with illegal parts acquired from space pirates, acquired a Frieghter after rescuing them from space pirates, been to several solar systems, and now building a new base and ground vehicle (while looking for people to recruit to my new Fleet).

And that's just within the 1st 20 hrs. I'm not sure what people want/expect immediately after hitting the start button...

 

[Clear]

Also I’m pretty sure that Hello Games brought down NMS themselves at launch 7 years ago, when it was shown to be an utterly vapid tech demo with gameplay as flat as a pancake.

And here we are, 7 years on, you're still salty about it!

Get over yourself. Hello redeemed themselves (not that a 10 man indie studio ever really needed to) about half a dozen times over since, and that version of the game may as well no longer exist.

 

[Alebrije]

Do not know wich NMS is talking about OP because fixing your ship and building a base takes less than 2 hours and then you are free to explore.

NMS is a better game than Starfield on exploration , ship combat , variety of races, technology, planets.

Starfield is better on quests and graphics but there is nothing more.

Bot games are good and have their plus and cons but if I have to choose one would be NMS.

 

[Drizzlehell]

I've put 20 hrs into the game and I've already gotten a new ship, heavily upgraded that ship with illegal parts acquired from space pirates, acquired a Frieghter after rescuing them from space pirates, been to several solar systems, and now building a new base and ground vehicle.

And that's just within the 1st 20 hrs. I'm not sure what people want/expect immediately after hitting the start button...

I don't get it. Then how am I like 12-15 hours in and all I did was to build a dumpy shack in the middle of nowhere and restore a hyperdrive to my starting fighter?

The most interesting thing to happen was when I discovered an underground cave system on one of the planets when I was scouting for some technology parts. I guess it's kinda impressive how deep you can burrow into the ground and I was feeling kinda adventurous in that moment, but I would hardly call this riveting gameplay.

 

[Montauk]

And here we are, 7 years on, you're still salty about it!

Get over yourself. Hello redeemed themselves (not that a 10 man indie studio ever really needed to) about half a dozen times over since, and that version of the game may as well no longer exist.

Every comment that I read from No Man’s Sky fans makes them sound like they have Stockholme Syndrome.

It’s been the same vibe for 7 years.

That version of the game doesn’t exist anymore in that form - but it’s still the core of the game to this day.

I’m sorry that the game was so bad that you still feel shaken and upset reading criticism about it 7 years later.

 

[Duchess]

One of my favourite games of all time (not a lie), but I agree with OP - when starting a new game, the tutorial goes on FOR HOURS! Oh my god ...

 

[PixelatedBeast]

Starfield didn't live up to the hype so now people are trying to bring down NMS? Give me a break.

Yeah, its pretty funny. The game that was celebrated and praised by gamers as an example of what it looks like when an dev keeps their promise and actually makes a game better, is suddently now boring, shallow and criticized for not being something different.

The key points and context missing here, is that the game was made in 3 years by a small team on a 500k budget. Its a survival sim with real space flying and exploration. I think we can give a pass to this game considering it released in 2016 and is still getting dev support. The game offers everything the developers promised and doesnt pretend to be an RPG.

 

[Kacho]

Do not know wich NMS is talking about OP because fixing your ship and building a base takes less than 2 hours and then you are free to explore.

NMS is a better game than Starfield on exploration , ship combat , variety of races, technology, planets.

Starfield is better on quests and graphics but there is nothing more.

Bot games are good and have their plus and cons but if I have to choose one would be NMS.

OP didn’t mention Starfield at all.

 

[acm2000]

It never gets interesting, that's the problem.

 

[Montauk]

Do not know wich NMS is talking about OP because fixing your ship and building a base takes less than 2 hours and then you are free to explore.

NMS is a better game than Starfield on exploration , ship combat , variety of races, technology, planets.

Starfield is better on quests and graphics but there is nothing more.

Bot games are good and have their plus and cons but if I have to choose one would be NMS.

Nobody wants to talk about Starfield in here. This thread isn’t about Starfield.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Yeah, its pretty funny. The game that was celebrated and praised by gamers as an example of what it looks like when an dev keeps their promise and actually makes a game better, is suddently now boring, shallow and criticized for not being something different.

The key points and context missing here, is that the game was made in 3 years by a small team on a 500k budget. Its a survival sim with real space flying and exploration. I think we can give a pass to this game considering it released in 2016 and is still getting dev support. The game offers everything the developers promised and doesnt pretend to be an RPG.

I guess the vibe that I'm getting from some of the other responses is that, because this is a sandbox game at its core, each experience will be vastly different. And it just so happens that for me, every time I've attempted to play this game over the years, I ended up shooting a mining laser at the ground for over 10 hours and eventually got bored. That's just what happened, what do you want me to say?

And it's not just a recent thing. Think of my experience with this game as something that I felt since the very beginning. My current disappointment with it is that even in spite of all the praise that it received for all of the content updates, from my experience the game is still front-loaded with some incredibly boring shit and they still didn't bother to change that.

 

[Edgelord79]

I find the game exceedingly easy to make money and upgrade. Hence the options to reduce profit in the menus.

If you are not into exploring and making bases, doubt the game will be for you.

 

[Kacho]

It never gets interesting, that's the problem.

This is the main issue. Some people can look past the flaws but for me, once the novelty of flying a ship on and off planets wears off there isn’t much that holds my attention. They added mechs which is awesome, but you’re still stuck on boring planets doing boring things that mean absolutely nothing.

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

No Man's Sky is just Minecraft in space. I don't think it was setting out to be the next RPG epic, which is totally fine. Also it's been 7 years, yes the game launched in a shitty state, I'm pretty sure the only people still talking about that are people not even playing it cause those that are don't give a fuck at this point. Enjoy whatever game you want to enjoy, this constant chastising for someone enjoying something you don't, especially a fucking videogame is ridiculous.

 

[Clear]

Every comment that I read from No Man’s Sky fans makes them sound like they have Stockholme Syndrome.

It’s been the same vibe for 7 years.

That version of the game doesn’t exist anymore in that form - but it’s still the core of the game to this day.

I’m sorry that the game was so bad that you still feel shaken and upset reading criticism about it 7 years later.

I don't, and have never owned the game.

I defend it because it should, by any standards, be a true "feelgood" story for the industry. A tiny indie team takes on a project of immense scope, and despite delivering pretty much what was promised, got absolutely shellacked because their non-media trained lead coder got thrust into the spotlight and ended up fucking up the messaging.

Following the sort of response that would make most devs embittered and cynical, they then spend the next 7 fucking years constantly expanding and enhancing the game at no additional cost. Resulting in a product now that by general consensus is vastly more and better than what was promised at the outset.

Once again; this is a tiny indie, not some corporate behemoth with an endless money supply to prop up their franchises.

And yet, as I pointed out, there are people like you who just have to shit on the game and anyone who likes or defends it, because... Umm, because ? I dunno, your opinion is so deathlessly important that you have to run your mouth about it any opportunity.

 

[Montauk]

Here’s a thing that I’ve noticed about defences of this game, particularly after the first few major updates: they are very flat descriptions of a list of things the player did.

I flew my ship around. I explored. I rescued a freighter. I built bases.

It’s in this thread too.

But there’s never any description of how the game is to actually play, in what sense it is mechanically compelling.

What the mechanics are and why/how they’re good. What the tension and interplay of the mechanics is. Are there meaningful gameplay decisions? When does the game ‘bite’ and challenge you? Where does skill come into the gameplay?

They never give you any sense of the gameplay and what is interesting about it. They never describe a gameplay loop that sounds intriguing or dynamic or, well, anything except that you do stuff. There is stuff to do.

There are a lot of planets. Some planets look like this. Some look like that. You can scan 1000000000 animals.

They talk about building bases. Why would I WANT to build a base in this game? What interesting and dynamic gameplay does they cause to happen? They talk about exploring. Why would I want to explore? Is seeing countless randomly generated planets compelling?

It’s been like this for 7 years. Then another update comes out and they all start adding new things you can do to their bulletpoint lists. Now you can carry a robot dog on your back. Now you have a jet pack to do a big jump with. Now they’ve added mechs.

Ok but what does any of that MEAN? Does it matter? How is that good gameplay? Where is the good gameplay? Why can none of them ever explain anything that makes this a good game (rather than what I suspect it is: an aesthetic obsession) in the way that say the Halo “30 seconds of fun” anecdote does?

 

[lh032]

my issue with NMS is that the whole game felt static, every planet plays the same.

There is still no random events/encounters in the game right?

 

[SmokedMeat]

Usually those people showcasing the cool new shit have a crap ton of previous videos on the game. It’s clear they’ve spent a ton of time with it.

It’s the same for other games. I’ll watch a video of a popular multiplayer shooter, and right from the start I know that person spent a lot of time with it to unlock all the cool shit they have. I’ll just look like a scrub.

But NMS is just one of those types of games that’s a big time sink. You’re either engaged with it or you’re not. If you’re on PC I’d absolutely look into trainers.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Snore Mans Sky vs Midfield

Who will come out on top?

 

[BouncyFrag]

The tedious inventory management in NMS was gaming kryptonite to me. It was like that at launch so I’m not sure it’s been improved/streamlined.

 

[Gambit2483]

I don't get it. Then how am I like 12-15 hours in and all I did was to build a dumpy shack in the middle of nowhere and restore a hyperdrive to my starting fighter?

The most interesting thing to happen was when I discovered an underground cave system on one of the planets when I was scouting for some technology parts. I guess it's kinda impressive how deep you can burrow into the ground and I was feeling kinda adventurous in that moment, but I would hardly call this riveting gameplay.

Play on a customized mode where you don't need as much resources for stuff like fuel and health. That Drastically cuts down on time you need for mining and farming for resources.

Also, try to travel to as many new systems as you can. (Almost) every time you travel to a new system you meet a new mechanic or resource that allows you to further advance.

For instance, I traveled to a new solar system and was immediately caught up in the middle of a massive space battle where the Frieghter was fighting off a squadron of space pirates. Once I saved them they welcomed me aboard the Frieghter. After I boarded and spoke to the Commander he damn near begged me to take over the Frieghter for him since I saved them. Now I have even MORE options to make money or refine new resources to make new Technologies (Cars, mechs, bases etc.).

Tl;dr - 1st Reduce resource costs to save time farming. Don't spend too much time in one solar system. The more you travel the more you will experience and advance. Also upgrade your exosuit's tech and cargo inventory space at EVERY new solar system's space station's exosuit station and call the Space Anomaly to do the same (the round space station you can call).