No Man's Sky

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Here is the E3 gameplay demonstration of No Man's Sky!

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[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Everything I've seen for this game has impressed the hell out of me and this did so even more. With galaxy that big I can see this game being hours upon hours of fun. Really going to have to pick this up when it releases.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

[Sledgstone 8,672]

This game is going to be massive. I'm going to find a moon and name it: Sledgerock. Now that I have this goal, I will never find a moon that hasn't already been discovered.

 

I want to see the biggest size ship that can be made in the game.. If I could make a star destroyer, death star or borg cube, I'd be so happy.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I've played this game for about 10 hours so far. Its hard to discribe what this game is. Its not an action game, it not a story driven game. Its a game you can play and relax. It's like a mix of Myst and Minecraft with a sprinkle of what Destiny should have been.

You start out on a random planet with a random starter ship. Apparently I was lucky enough to have a 14 slot starter, my friend only had 11 slots on his. Inventory management is a nightmare at first. You're ship is small, you suit only holds about 7-8 slots in which 2-3 are already taken up by technologies. Any tech you craft takes up a slot, any upgrade to that tech takes another slot. At first you don't really even need any upgrades. Space is precious. It steadily gets better as you have money. Making money is probably the most vital part of the early game. inventory upgrades can be found on planets and have to be purchased from drop pods. each upgrade goes up 10k units in price. I'm currently in the 30s and the last slot I bought cost me 220k units. Getting a new ship can be done in two ways. You can get lucky and find a crashed ship, or make an offer on a ship you see dock at a space station or landing pad. Making an offer seems to be the best way to go for more space, but its the most expensive way as well. The more wealth you obtain, the more expensive ships you tend to see land. A decent sized ship will cost you 2-5 million units. Finding a ship is free, you just need to obtain the resources to repair it. The drawback is that it seems to be tied to your current ship. I've confirmed it on reddit that ships you find will only differ 1-3 inventory slots... and thats +/-. Finding a ship with 3 more slots from your starter ship may be great, but plan on buying a ship, especially if you want to dogfight.

Most of the game is spent exploring ambient landscapes and mining resources. Each planet can be vastly different in what elements they hold. Iron and Plutonium are the most common that can be found on every single planet. Other isotopes and elements can be scarce to non existent, or insanely abundant.  I lucked out an found a planet where vortex cubes littered the ground. I made millions easily, while my friend found a planet where vortex cubes were on pedestals and the sentinels would attack if you took them... I eventually found a planet like this as well. When trying to carry all this wealth to sell, it can be cumbersome to turn a profit. Backtracking in his game is non existent. You can't make markers, and things are spread out erratically. The best way to go about keeping a TP marked is by not discovering it after you manage to ping it via another beacon. That way it stay on your map. Selling all valuables that you don't need is important because when you leave planets and travel in space, you can get scanned by pirates and then have to dogfight them. I'm pretty sure this is proced by having valuables on board... I've yet to be scanned when I've had nothing.

Outside of mining resources and selling precious elements and treasures, you can find knowledge stones and alien ruins. These will teach you a word and sometimes reward you with a tech blueprint. As you learn more words, alien merchants jibberish become decoded depending on what they say. A lot of alien NPCs will say a line and you are presented with choices. Getting the right response rewards you with tech, resources, and standing with certain alien races. You can also scan and discover species of animals on each planet. Some planets present the opportunity to get 200-300k units for discovering all the species and logging them.

The game does have a repetitive nature, and what little lore it has from ruin to ruin is interesting. The only difference is coming across the main goal of the game if you choose to follow it. (I'll leave that out due to spoilers). It's not for everyone, but I personally like it. Its different, and stress free.

The movement speed is pretty slow outside of the ship, but thankfully there is a trick that helps yo move super fast on foot.

 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Meh, after watching people stream it I'm not overly impressed with the game. Don't get me wrong it's beautiful (I love how all the planets look different and have different features, I especially love the mostly water based planets (they look so pretty)) but I agree with Matimi0 (he hasn't played it but has been watching others do so), it's all style and no substance. I love games built on the concept of exploring but I just don't like how it was handle here, it's like Minecraft but with less to do (or Terraria for that matter, a game I absolutely love due to the freedom it gives you). Don't get me wrong the game is absolutely a blast to watch someone else play, kind of like watching a Sci-Fi film/show. TeaWrex is absolutely hilarious to watch, he turns it into a whole chat experience (going so far as to treat his ship like a transport service, donning goggles and acting like a pilot. Fakes turbulence and everything). Plus inventory management drives me nuts, I already do it every day on FFXIV and that's infuriating enough. I'm also not happy that they pulled the multiplayer component from the game but I won't discuss the point, it's already being argued about everywhere on the net and honestly neither side has gained any footing.

I won't be picking this up but I'll continue to watch streamers play it as it's a fun experience, plus it adds a little spice into what I watch (I can only watch so much Overwatch, FF, and Destiny (yea I watch others play it, it's more entertaining then playing it). However I can watch Matt play R6S everyday). I might pick it up eventually but for right now it's not worth the price they put on it and honestly they need to add more to the game to get me more interested.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

It's def not for everyone. I'd say my favorite thing to do now it talk to Aliens now that I know a bit of their dialect. I had one that wanted me to punch him, so I did and he punched me back and gave me a multi-tool upgrade. A lot of the interactions can be generic, but every once in a while you get a good one. 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

 That's awesome and certainly something I have yet to see in the streams I've watched.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

@DeathscytheX Whats the largest creature you've seen in the game so far? I read that the biggest creatures, dinosaur sized, can be found closer to the center of the galaxy. Alot of people are wondering if anything really big even exists in the game. I've seen a few screenshots of a few large monsters, but nothing even close to skyscraper size or even remotely close to that giant sand worm from the trailer.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I'm currently on a planet with t-rex looking creatures. I have to kill them of their near mining resources because they are aggressive and hit pretty hard.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I can understand why they took the multiplayer aspect out of this game. I remember reading 2 years ago how when you paused or signed off, your ship and character would be stationed where you left and anyone else could come and kill you. That was a major concern for me. But right now I could destroy a lot of other players in a dog fight with the ship I currently have. And I got it for free. For a game based on randomness I've been given an amazing hand I could I only dream of in an MMO.

I've landed on four planets now that have just abundant wealth laying around. I'm currently on a planet that has spore sacs everywhere. I'm hauling in a half million units every trip to the TP. I've already maxed out my exosuit inventory slots, and now I can just save up for a 48 slot ship with all its upgrades. I was doing the beacon spam to find ships one slot better and just repairing the necessities for flight, but now I can just gain money fast for the final purchase. I haven't even scratched the surface of the universe. 

The game has too many design exploits to have multiplayer. I have my jet pack maxed to when sentinels get mad, I can boost jump away until they lose me and deactivate. If it wasn't boring, i could have had 100s of millions of units on the 3-4th planet I landed on. Once I get the ship I need, I'll visit a few more atlas interfaces and start heading towards the center. I can see how that guy that paid $1200 for the leaked copy beat it in 30 hours. He probably did the same thing I am doing. While the game is fun for what it is, I am starting to get bored doing the same thing on every planet. So I'm going to get my ship and speed toward the center to see what is there.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

RNGesus loves you. I think I might be a little too OCD for this game. I would explore every single planet. lmao. Every planet would take me a month to explore and then I'd move on to another one only to repeat the cycle of discovering everything there. On a more darker theme... do you think its possible to kill all life on a single planet? If you can evade the sentinels like you were saying, could you eventually slaughter every living thing on a planet? Or would the sentinels eventually go full armada on you to stop your killing spree?

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

18 hours ago, DeathscytheX said:

If it wasn't boring, i could have had 100s of millions of units on the 3-4th planet I landed on. Once I get the ship I need, I'll visit a few more atlas interfaces and start heading towards the center. I can see how that guy that paid $1200 for the leaked copy beat it in 30 hours. He probably did the same thing I am doing. While the game is fun for what it is, I am starting to get bored doing the same thing on every planet. So I'm going to get my ship and speed toward the center to see what is there.

This is the problem everyone is running into now, it's getting boring and there just isn't enough to keep anyone interested without starting a new game. TeaWrex is to the point that he's trying to do massive jumps just to get to the center, something that's proving difficult as most of his jumps are only 300 ly (and that's a 15 planet jump) and he doesn't want to use blackholes as they're random and end up damaging your ship. Honestly this is the problem I figured the game was going to have from the get go, to little to do once you get everything you need to get to the center.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Black Holes being random is what I was wondering about. Because I can get an alien to point out a black hole when I visit the space anomaly.. if it's random and sends me backwards, I'd be pissed.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

So yeah. The ending of this game is to get to the center of the galaxy and the game basically resets and you go to another galaxy. Zero ending. You keep all your stuff, but every single bit of tech is broken. I read you need 10 atlas stones to create a new galaxy. I assume if you don't, you just get sent to a galaxy someone else has created. Pretty shitty for a game I'm starting to feel is highly unfinished. I'm still having fun with it, but it's def not worth the $60 I paid for it. I haven't been to the center of the galaxy yet, but there are a lot of things that have become apparent playing even longer now.

The game is very vast. I've only run into 1 system discovered by someone else, and that was probably only because it was an atlas interface system. The most likely way you'll find a previously discovered system.

My main gripe is between the 3 races. Gek, Korvax, and Vy'Keen. I seem to run into the Gek systems lopsidedly over the other two. I know a ton of Gek words and can traslate 80% of way they say now, while the other two races I barely ever come in contact with. For every 5-6 systems of Gek I hit, I'll hit one of the other. Yet, I've managed to max out favor with all 3, so there is a bit of inbalance with how easy it is to max favor, while missteps barely make a dent when you lose favor sometimes. There really isn't much point to any of it anyways after the first 20 hours.

I say this because I gained all the blueprints the game has to offer probably within the first 10-20 hours of the game. There really isn't much point in talking to aliens outside of learning new words, because I always get "This blueprint is already known" every time now. None of them use the yellow metals that you can craft or find in rarity, and even some of the purple tier elements are never used. These things had a purpose outside of selling on the TP. Green items are labeled trade commodities, and were designed to be sellable treasures, the yellow labeled items feel like they had a different purpose that never made it into the game.

Honestly, once you get a 48 slot ship and max your inventory, you've beaten the game for all intents and purposes. you can lock up all the achievements, and after that you're just sight seeing. You could learn more alien words and what not, but outside of that, there isn't much else to do.

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I knew they were a small company, but I was hoping for some kind of plot to the game. They said it would be pretty much just an exploration game of an entire universe and then the hype train threw everyone's expectations all over the place. Thanks for your info on it. I always wondered why they kept saying "center of the galaxy" instead of "center of the universe" considering the game is the size of a universe. I kept thinking there would be an engine upgrade or there was some kind of massive stargate to travel between galaxies or something, but instead you get reset with a new game+ basically by going to the center of any galaxy.. and then another galaxy gets procedurally made. Eh. I know alot of people like simulation or survival games that have no plot like goat simulator, space engineers, Rust, etc. I honestly don't care for that type of game tho. I'll pass on No Man's Sky. The exploration aspect of it would be much more appealing to me if I actually saw more diverse life forms. Sure the life forms are diverse, but most of them look like random animal parts put together in some kind of horrific jigsaw puzzle and their limbs and featuristics don't seem to make sense based on the planet they are found on, evolutionary speaking. That and every picture I see always tends to be in the same color spectrum. Every creature seems to have yellowish, green or red highlights. When exploring an entire universe I always think of star trek or star wars. So many humanoid or intelligent species. But in No Man's Sky the only hint of other sentient species are those aliens that sit inside of buildings or some ships you come across in space from what I saw. Knowing that the only thing to look forward to in this game is to find more and more whacky looking creatures it's quickly loosing my interest.

The hype train really got No Man's Sky popular. It really is an indie game that got blown way out of proportions and got a price tag to match it.

I just watched this:

It seems so accurate.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Star Citizen came to light in 2013 and they are still in alpha stage. This game probably could have used 2 more years of development. I think there is a big problem with announcing games too early these days, and then trying to release them too early.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

These guys saw a big pay day and took it. Now that they got a huge influx of cash, they can make the real game they wanted to and now call it "No Man's Sky 2" and cash in again. Assuming that Hello Games doesn't get bought by another company. Watch Facebook buy them and have them make a VR only version for the Oculous Rift and every time someone discovers a new species it'll plaster it all over their feed like an annoying Farmville game.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I doubt they'll get a chance at NMS2. They'll have to make something completely different. People have even stopped playing it on Steam. Once I get my 48 slot ship, I'll probably stop playing too. Even at 96 inventory slots, inventory is still an ass. I haven't made half my suit upgrades just because of it. Upgrades should have never taken the majority of your inventory slots.

[Myk JL 1,731]

If I had any hype for No Man's Sky it was probably very little that quickly died off. That plus it didn't help that I got Rebel Galaxy for free or that Master Of Orion really grabbed my interest due to the Mrrshan.

ZP's NMS Review

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/116922-No-Mans-Sky-Review

ZP's ED Review

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9991-Elite-Dangerous-Review

Edited August 26, 2016 by Myk JL