No Man's Sky

[tripredacus]

My first impressions of the PC version.

- the game is set to 30 FPS by default. I have read there is a way to change this but haven't yet.
- I am not certain if the game detects and uses the graphics settings appropriate for the system it is running on. This is something most PC games will do, determine what settings to use.
- VSync is set to on and it can't be changed to off from within the game. I typically play games with it off, but I don't have an option to test here.
- The music is nice but really I think I must turn it off. It has enough weird sounds in it that are distracting. This happens a bit in games, especially games that are atmospheric and the music interferes.
- The ship controls are weird. There are some control issues when flying on a planet/moon. One main one is that there seems to be some floating happening, where the ship will keep trying to put the nose up, or the control to aim down does not work. It may be a design of the game, as it feels like the ship is fighting against the control input. It could also be speed related, as I can aim down if I slow the ship down.
- the FOV is a problem and I need to look into changing it. When on foot, everything seems too zoomed in. When in a ship, you can't see the sides of the instrument panel unless you are using the pulse engine (I haven't warped yet).
- naming things is cool at first. The profanity filter does recognize words in other languages. Naming things gets old after awhile. I sit there thinking, what should I name this new rock I found? I had all these great ideas, but when I am playing, I can't think of anything. I think i will now just stick to naming systems, planets and waypoints, but not the plants and animals.
- I have found one invisible wall so far. It is in the space station. You can't walk into that open space behind the landing pads.
- Graphics sometimes have texture issues or tearing when the Steam Client achievement toast is triggered.
- Journey update can interrupt gameplay, for example, it can appear when in combat or other interaction, removing the HUD until the animation disappears.
- There is no tutorial mode for learning the controls. Some of the controls are not standard for FPS, and often I am pressing the wrong buttons. People saying the game is just like Minecraft must not have played much Minecraft. I was constantly pressing E to open inventory (fortunately E doesn't do anything) when it is actually Tab that needs to be used. There are no control tooltips for in menus. For example, you can cancel menu options by using right click.
- When on a planet and in the ship, the destination icon can go off the screen. Say you are flying to some part on the map, it has the time eta numbers on it. When you are too close, this icon disappears, meaning you can no longer see how long until you get there. This results in me landing too far away from destinations constantly. Just because it goes away (meaning it is under you) is not accurate enough either, you can still overshoot it during the landing sequence.

Overall the game is just fine. I ended up playing 6 hours in one sitting.

Now my main quest is to find Copper. I have searched on 3 planets and can't find it yet.

Hint/spoiler: There was reports on the PS4 version that if you accepted your pre-order ship prior to building the hyperdrive, your new ship would not have one. I prepared for this and found something that could be a bug. The hyperdrive quest is multiple parts, you build it and then you need to get the fuel for it. For whatever reason, my starter world did not have the materials needed for the fuel portion. So I gambled and went to the space station and then claimed my pre-order ship. After I transfer my items over, I see then that it gave me the fuel (I think it is called warp cell) in the new ship inventory and completed that part of the quest.

[kamikazekeeg]

Watching more of the footage they showed off a few years ago, I have to wonder how much is missing.  I never made it to the more lush planets, the ones that require you to have an upgraded hyperdrive to get to the different colored star systems.  They teased stuff like large crashed starships and giant dinosaur-like creatures, and monstrous snakes.  Has anyone gotten the upgrades to visits the green and blue systems?  With the randomized blueprint system, it could take forever to get the upgrades you need to even check on this.

And to sadden things further, here's all that was promised, but doesn't exist in the game, showing how badly overhyped the game was, not just by fans, but the developer too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4y046e/wheres_the_nms_we_were_sold_on_heres_a_big_list/

I think a lot of this shows that while they had big ideas, they had to cut significant chunks out of the game just to make a reasonable release window.  With everything promised, this game probably shouldn't have been released for at least another year or two at the very least.

[tripredacus]

I've found lush planets already by the second system I've been to. No to giant snakes, but giant other creatures have been found already. Its hard to tell on reddit sometimes, but if you just go into that section's imgur category, you can see them. I'm really not understanding why people are complaining about the early game stages, I think they are fine. It is not unlike an RPG where you get to a certain point where you are comfortable and the game feels much easier. In my view, the game just keeps getting better and better as time goes on.

The only issue I still have with the game is that sometimes my ship just stops moving and pressing the acceleration button doesn't work right away. It is like it stalled, but I haven't determined why it does this.

[kamikazekeeg]

I've found lush planets already by the second system I've been to. No to giant snakes, but giant other creatures have been found already. Its hard to tell on reddit sometimes, but if you just go into that section's imgur category, you can see them. I'm really not understanding why people are complaining about the early game stages, I think they are fine. It is not unlike an RPG where you get to a certain point where you are comfortable and the game feels much easier. In my view, the game just keeps getting better and better as time goes on.

The only issue I still have with the game is that sometimes my ship just stops moving and pressing the acceleration button doesn't work right away. It is like it stalled, but I haven't determined why it does this.

That's not really the lush people are talking about, which is more of what was shown off in the early trailers that people wanted to see.  You have to get hyperdrive reactor upgrades, which is the only way to get out of the yellow star systems, which you can only get by the random blueprints or getting lucky and buying or finding a ship with the reactors in them already.  I went to over a dozen systems and the variety is really minimal.  From what I hear, the high end planets do get more flora and fauna, along with more rare materials, but they aren't any different because what the procedural generation takes from is very small and limited.  This game is heavily chopped down from what it was said to be.

[kashell]

There was a review for it on NPR the other day. Based on all they said, as well as all I'm reading on here, this game sounds like a chore.

[tripredacus]

A lot of complaints seem to be people who don't want to work for anything to get their rewards. It would be like saying you wanted your level 20 spells at level 1 in an RPG.

[rayne315]

im upset with the real inability to play to the market in this game. every game that has a stock market system in it I always try to game it but when you buy from one trade station and go to another to sell you are looking at a much larger loss regardless of if the commodity is up in that system or not.

I no longer can say that the item cap is all too much of a bother to me now. for those that don't know there are there are places on planets you can find that can increase your carrying capacity (I think im up to 26 personal slots) only problem is you have to buy them for ever increasing credits. last upgrade cost me 110,000 credits for 1 slot.

also a friend of mine finally saw a ship with the max inventory slots in it for something like 14,000,000 credits.

also atlas stones why are you so bad? I got my first atlas stone and went to sell it... was only offered somewhere between 70-80,000 credits but they sell for 2.8M?? like I said before I thought this games market was supposed to be like the stock market, but instead it is a merchant buying your stuff.

[kashell]

Here's the review in case anyone is interested.

It just sounds like you're constantly having to do something without any sort of reward.

[tripredacus]

im upset with the real inability to play to the market in this game. every game that has a stock market system in it I always try to game it but when you buy from one trade station and go to another to sell you are looking at a much larger loss regardless of if the commodity is up in that system or not.

Going into full buy-low/sell-high mode doesn't work out. I tried it last night and ended up running out of money. So here is what I do now.

When I get to a system, or in the system I am now, go to the space station and use the market computer. Go into the sell option and look for which items have then yellow star on them, whether you have them or not. Those are that computer's premium priced items. Make note of them, and these will never change at that particular computer. Then those are the items you buy when green from other market computers and ship pilots to sell to that market computer. It is the same for all the market computers. Once you visit them, the premium sell items stay the same. You can do it for any computer you find, not just the space station one, but I try to keep it simple and only count that one.

You can even just buy the star items from the ships that come into the station, then sell them to the computer.

I now no longer will buy stuff from market computer because it is cheap. There is no "clearance" indicator on things it sells and I've not seen anything with a higher discount than 7%. There is no opposite equivalent to the star indicator for buying. I find enough stuff just mining or opening containers to get extra stuff to sell later.

Don't sell your Atlas stones unless you have more than 10.

It just sounds like you're constantly having to do something without any sort of reward.

It does partly fall into the same rut that Minecraft is in... where you can do anything you want or follow the quests. Do you want to go to the center of the galaxy/kill the ender dragon or just do whatever you want? GTA is this way too and I don't see so many complaints.

[soera]

It does partly fall into the same rut that Minecraft is in... where you can do anything you want or follow the quests. Do you want to go to the center of the galaxy/kill the ender dragon or just do whatever you want? GTA is this way too and I don't see so many complaints.

GTA has hookers. Most people will overlook flaws in games if they can interact with hookers. Most people will overlook flaws in hookers if they can interact in games with hookers. Its a vicious cycle.

[rayne315]

It does partly fall into the same rut that Minecraft is in... where you can do anything you want or follow the quests. Do you want to go to the center of the galaxy/kill the ender dragon or just do whatever you want? GTA is this way too and I don't see so many complaints.

GTA has hookers. Most people will overlook flaws in games if they can interact with hookers. Most people will overlook flaws in hookers if they can interact in games with hookers. Its a vicious cycle.

This ^

that and the fact that GTA is an entirely hand built world where everything IS NOT the exact same everywhere minus slight tweaks. there are places of actual interest on the maps there are better wepons to get there is fun sometimes meaningful, sometimes meaningless combat, actual quests/missions to do... mine craft is also different. regardless of where you go or what you do in the game you have the ability to meaningfully do things. whether that be remove all the grass, build mansions, trap the crap out of everything, build farms, etc. you are capable of permanently modifying the terrain to suit your needs, craft MEANINGFUL upgrades to yourself and your surroundings, etc.

[kashell]

It does partly fall into the same rut that Minecraft is in... where you can do anything you want or follow the quests. Do you want to go to the center of the galaxy/kill the ender dragon or just do whatever you want? GTA is this way too and I don't see so many complaints.

GTA has hookers. Most people will overlook flaws in games if they can interact with hookers. Most people will overlook flaws in hookers if they can interact in games with hookers. Its a vicious cycle.

Good ol' hookers. I remember the first time I messed with them in GTA III. You would go into a car, watch it shake, watch your health go up and watch your money go down. Of course, you would then run over the hooker with your car to get your money back.

Does No Man's Sky have space-hookers? It should.

[kamikazekeeg]

A lot of complaints seem to be people who don't want to work for anything to get their rewards. It would be like saying you wanted your level 20 spells at level 1 in an RPG.

It's not that, it's just that work is ridiculously boring.  In Minecraft, I'm at least working towards building up a cool home base, plus there's just more variety to do in the game.  In No Man's Sky, it's mostly just working to get more inventory space, which isn't very interesting.  Doesn't help that the one type of reward you do get, blueprints are randomized, meaning to get the ones you want, you'll just have to hope you are lucky enough to be given them.  The more likely outcome is that you'll just get a bunch of rewards you already had, making them not rewards anymore.

Now if this game had space-hookers...well it would still be a boring slog, but at least it would be a boring slog with space-hookers lol

[tripredacus]

It's not that, it's just that work is ridiculously boring.  In Minecraft, I'm at least working towards building up a cool home base, plus there's just more variety to do in the game.  In No Man's Sky, it's mostly just working to get more inventory space, which isn't very interesting.  Doesn't help that the one type of reward you do get, blueprints are randomized, meaning to get the ones you want, you'll just have to hope you are lucky enough to be given them.  The more likely outcome is that you'll just get a bunch of rewards you already had, making them not rewards anymore.

We must be playing different kinds of Minecraft then. I can't even see how No Man's Sky compares to normal Minecraft. I can see a comparison to Journey to the Core... but I think the amount of people who have played Journey to the Core is very small and also likely have no problem with NMS either.

[kamikazekeeg]

We must be playing different kinds of Minecraft then. I can't even see how No Man's Sky compares to normal Minecraft. I can see a comparison to Journey to the Core... but I think the amount of people who have played Journey to the Core is very small and also likely have no problem with NMS either.

Minecraft and NMS are both open world survival games.  That's all NMS is.  NMS just hides it's biomes on different planets, rather than interconnected areas you walk to.  In NMS you have to mine materials to survive, which fuels everything you do, and you craft upgrades, which is no different than upgrading form a stone pickaxe to an iron pickaxe.  NMS is a slicker package, but they aren't very different.  NMS is even planning to introduce base building.  From what I've heard of Journey and Abzu, they don't really share much with NMS.  Those are a much more contained, linear, experiences with mild puzzle elements, than what NMS tries to bring, even if you are flying to the center of the galaxy.  They are about creating a visually engaging experience, but NMS gets bogged down by the need to constantly get supplies and upgrades, which is then regularly hampered by damaging environments, hostile animals, sentinels, and space pirates.