I get to download No Man's Sky tonight!

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rollory
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 30, 2013 4:21 pm

Re: I get to download No Man's Sky tonight!

Post by rollory »

I didn't decide to buy this until a week prior to release. The game is exactly what they repeatedly described in the various preview videos. All the anger comes from people who obsessively over-analyzed the previews and hyped themselves into believing it would be more or different than it is and I really have no sympathy.

The giant list of missing features is about 60% plain wrong, 30% changed/cut features (pretty clearly for reasons of playability and accessibility and fun, from what I can see, which is entirely forgiveable), and 10% "yeah, they should have said they'd cut that before release". Even the often quoted multiplayer stuff is defensible: the PS4 and Steam versions (but not GOG, which is what I got) have people playing in a universe where other people have come through before you and others will follow and your sole contact with them is what you name things - so you get people finding planets named "no one will see this", or named after superheroes, or names with lists of minerals on the planet, or indications of where to find portals or bases or whatever - and it does, slightly, affect the experience and behavior of the players. It IS a multiplayer interaction, but a very tenuous one that actually accentuates the sense of isolation, and in retrospect it's pretty clear that's what Murray was aiming for although he didn't want to admit it. Problem is that's not what people understand when they hear "multiplayer", and a good chunk of the bad feeling derives from that.

I saw one person trying to argue a few days before release that it would be an MMO where you would just rarely meet people. I couldn't figure where he got that idea and it kinda worried me that I had missed something and might be getting a totally different game than I thought, but no, he was wildly off base. I think there was a lot of that - people taking specific words and phrases and convincing themselves the only possible interpretation must be X, Y, Z, and then being totally shocked when the reality didn't match up. Again, it's their own damn fault. There was a lot of talk about how the preview videos were from some different and better build of the game that got held back and they shipped a dumbed-down version instead - I couldn't figure that out, so I went through those things frame by frame and EVERY SINGLE THING in them is something that has happened to me in the game.

It's really too bad there was this wild explosion of anger but it really says more about the angry people than about the game or its quality.

Anyway. I'm really happy with the game. There definitely are a number of points where it could be improved or expanded, but there's enough in it right now to keep me entertained for quite a while. It has turned "what's over that next hill?" into a really solid game motivation mechanic. If you go into the game with the intent of grinding your way to goals as fast as possible, you will not remotely enjoy the experience; that sort of behavior means you skip and miss everything interesting the game has to offer. That's why all the reviewers are absolutely full of crap on this.

fredgiblet
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Posts: 983
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:02 pm

Re: I get to download No Man's Sky tonight!

Post by fredgiblet »

Arioch wrote:I never really saw what people were so hyped about. Procedurally-generated games by their nature tend to be extremely generic and repetitive.
Same. I saw the KS and was like "OK...good for you." and then everyone was furiously masturbating over how awesome it was going to be and I just never saw anything interesting.

Quazel
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 11:51 pm

Re: I get to download No Man's Sky tonight!

Post by Quazel »

Rollory, I've been reading articles on playing the galactic market to make your money in game, but I have resorted to poaching. Currently the planet I'm on has both Pearls and Poison Sacs. You can barely move there so many of the poison plants trying to stab you. So I'm shooting down a lot of sentinel drones as well. What method for currency acquisition have you settled on?

Also this planet has high rad levels and in the water is an order of magnitude worse. I have 3 radiation shields equipped and am still burning through minerals. (Locally I only need Iron now for the shield plating.) What methods have you found to slow the energy drain in hostile climates?
KIKITIK-27-TIKHAK-TIKKUKIT 2020!

rollory
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 30, 2013 4:21 pm

Re: I get to download No Man's Sky tonight!

Post by rollory »

I started off in a system where the station was offering double price on titanium, heridium, and plutonium, so once I decided to leave I made I think nearly 1 mil that way first. After bopping around a bit, partly on the Atlas path and partly Nada/Polo's black holes, I found a system that offered double prices on dynamic resonators and gravitino balls; I can build the resonators but not the balls, but they're a common trade good. So I made I think 3 mil playing the market that way, because I had decided I needed a much better ship (I had been doing everything in the preorder ship up to that point, including fighting pirates - with a couple shield upgrades and a +3 on the photon cannons, it's entirely doable, but I wanted to up the power a bit). Bought one of the random traders' ships to get to the high 20 slots, then searched crash sites for a while to upgrade a bit more.

I haven't been worrying about money too much. I just pick up the green trade goods as I come across them and sell them, and that covers my needs so far. Found one pearl planet and grabbed maybe a dozen total but I wasn't in any pressing need for lots of money right then.

My current goal is to visit lots of different systems and see what ship types are common there until I find one with the "right" look, so that I can finish upgrading to 48, then find a crash of that type so I can get my ultimate ride. Or maybe make 30-40 million or so somehow so I can just buy it from the owner. We'll see.

I also have a copy of a savefile with me parked right next to a portal. Every now and then I'll swap that in and try various things (changing multitool loadouts, especially - I've got stacks of all sorts of minerals and there's heridium columns nearby) to see if I can get it to do anything. It wouldn't surprise me if the functionality simply hasn't been enabled yet ... but it would be cool to figure it out if it IS active. Supposedly HG support's answer on that topic is "the portals are not broken".

My favorite planet is still the one I started on, although I've seen some pretty impressive others too. Mildly high solar radiation, barren desert of blue and brown stone, freakish plant life, several species of giant "stalker"-behavior insects, yellowish dusty haze obscuring the hills in the far distance by day and eerie cold purple moonlight by night. A great place to be marooned.

Regarding climate, I haven't had big problems with it - the worst was a place I named "Hoth" (for obvious reasons). I had scanned a beacon from space and it eventually pointed me to a crash site 6 minutes or so away. I had to dodge into caves a couple times to get out of the weather and let the suit recharge. I keep a stack or two of iron and when the hazard protection gets low, I build some shielding shards and slap those in - I think I had calculated that it was notably more efficient than just using minerals directly.

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