After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....

[crazyroosterman]

how common are these robots? I ask mainly because from what I've seen you need to be constantly grabbing stuff and since those robots sound like they get pissy at you doing any of that that it might suck the fun out of the game for me if I'm constantly being forced to get into fights with them.

[Misery]

how common are these robots? I ask mainly because from what I've seen you need to be constantly grabbing stuff and since those robots sound like they get pissy at you doing any of that that it might suck the fun out of the game for me if I'm constantly being forced to get into fights with them.

They're everywhere, but it differs from one planet to the next.  When you land on a planet it typically gives you some info about it... telling you how common plants/animals are, and the temperature, and various other things, and one of the things it gives you info on is the Sentinels, how common or rare they are there and stuff like that.  So it can vary quite a bit.  The trick though is to simply pay attention to the things when they're floating around nearby, and choose your spots wisely.  They aren't exactly a stealthy group, it's obvious when they are hanging around.  Just be careful about where you do your thing.   They don't seem to appear in caves (though they absolutely will follow you into them if you've aggravated them).

Also worth noting that not EVERYTHING sets them off.  Picking flowers and such (something you'll do commonly) or interacting with special objects like monoliths doesn't irritate them, nor does taking loot from boxes (not AS common, but as these can be valuable you'll be seeking them out).  Killing animals gets them irked pretty fast if they see you do it, so having something attack you while Sentinels are around can be bad, unless you're careful enough to fire just enough to scare the animal off instead of kill it.  And needless to say, actually attacking a Sentinel causes an instant berserk response.

[Misery]

Okay, some more experiences thus far:

Firstly, I should point out a bit of a gameplay thing here.   Combat, on the ground... pretty clunky.   Now, it's absolutely possible this is an effect of the fact that I'm using a bloody controller for this.  I mean, really.   First person gameplay, controller.   So it's hard to entirely judge this.   But my experience with it so far, nonetheless, is "clunky".

Space combat on the other hand... here I was, thinking that this wasn't going to happen anytime soon... I'd wondered if maybe it was a bit too rare... when suddenly the ship went berserk with warnings, and BAM, pirates.  In comparison to ground combat this is MUCH faster and more exciting.  It's not going to be on-par with something like Elite... definitely not.  But is it fun?  I daresay it is.  Fast and chaotic definitely sums this up.  I came REALLY close to dying there; enemy pilots are very good at zooming around all over the place and not making easy targets of themselves, and are also good at shooting me, apparently.  It is possible to recharge your shields mid-combat, but this isn't easy to do; you have to open your inventory for the ship and pump resources into the shields (typically Zinc, so far).   This takes time, so you have to be careful about when you do it.  I was able to survive the battle and defeat the pirates mostly because the ship I'd bought was a combat vessel, complete with four weapon upgrades already installed.  But no shield upgrades, so I'm now on a quest to get the elements I need to complete this.   Either way though, I'm REALLY glad I bought a new ship BEFORE leaving the first system.  As many players have said, the starting ship is craptastic. It's expensive as all hell to buy a new ship, but it's worth it.

And following that bit of info, it's obvious that I did in fact figure out HOW and where to buy a new ship.  There's no big dealers or anything where you go and select from a pile of ships... that's not how it works.  How it works is you find other pilots that have landed somewhere.  They can be found in space stations, or in various types of places on planets (these are pretty obvious once you see them).  You can interact with the pilots, and buy/sell them things (each having their own inventories and things they want, affecting the prices on stuff), but you also have the option to buy their ship.  They ALL offer this.  You can have a look at their ship's setup and installed tech VS whatever you already have, so it's easy to make a comparison.  Ships are expensive as all hell, and money isn't the easiest thing to get in this game (this is a good thing, by my view; when resources are too plentiful, particularly money, in a game like this, it's a problem).   I saved up money for this due to a gold rush.  I mean an actual gold rush, in that I found huge lumps of gold on a particular planet; bloody lucky find.  Dug up TONS of it, sold it for massive amounts of money.   This still took awhile, but it was worth it to get the ship. 

The ONE thing I really, really, REALLY don't like about buying new ships:  You outright LOSE your entire inventory in your current ship when you do this.  It's just gone.  So if you have valuable stuff... and you will....  you need to transfer as much of it to your suit's inventory as you can before making the trade.  Or sell it, of course.  Fortunately, most places where alien ships can land will also have a trading machine somewhere nearby, I've yet to find a spot where this isn't the case (they aren't JUST found on space stations).   That's really the only complaint I have so far, when it comes to the economy and buying/selling stuff.  The rest of it is pretty well done.

Upgrading your suit is a totally different matter.  You have to find these "drop pods"... not an easy task... and those contain a suit "upgrade" that you can buy for a high price.  By "upgrade" I mean "new inventory slot".  When it comes to other types of upgrades, it's all about crafting and installing tech.  Tech does take up inventory slots, but these are things you really want.  There's tech for your suit, your ship, and your multi-tool (used for mining, shooting things, and launching bizarre grenades that aren't just for fighting).   There's tons of different types of techs, and you cannot buy these; you have to find their recipes.  After a time, you learn what sorts of places will have these, but finding them is never a fast process.  It does make the acquisition of new techs pretty satisfying when you get them.  Then all you have to do is craft them and install.   I like this particular game mechanic quite a bit.


So yeah, I've managed to leave the first system... I'll not spoil the events that you need to go through to do this... and have done a heck of a lot more ground and space exploration than I had at the start.  I also learned the value of asteroid mining.  And the value of not crashing into asteroids.  It is easy to crash into asteroids.  I recommend not doing this.

I also had one moment where I'm using the accelerator system to zoom forward at high speed, travelling in space above a planet (what I was trying to do was reach an extremely distant spot on a planet without it taking FORTY MINUTES, which is how long it would have taken if I flew through atmosphere), when out of nowhere, this huge pile of cargo ships just warps RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.  Like, nearly on top of me.  Absolutely scared the crap out of me.   Rather glad that nobody I know was around to hear my high pitched squeak of surprise.   I mean, seriously, I just about jumped out of my chair.   Needless to say this interrupted my space zooming.  I cant even imagine what the chances of this event occurring must be.  You'll see cargo ships and freighters warp into place every now and then, but for them to do THAT... yeah.  Didn't expect it, nope.

I also had one moment on the ground where I landed my ship on my own head.  Just... don't ask.  I have no explanation that makes something resembling sense. 

I also learned all the uses of the scanner, one of it's key abilities being the registration of new things.  You can scan animals, plants, and rocks.  These discoveries are registered into your data thingie (separate screen), and you can upload them to get some credits; this is a good way to earn them.  Eventually I managed to register 100% of stuff on a particular planet, and learned that you get a really enormous amount of money for doing this.  Needless to say, this is not easy to do.  I was lucky in that it was a planet that contained no hostile animals.   The horrible biting tentacle plants (no, seriously) were an issue though.

I like the scanning system overall... not just the registration bit, I mean the "wide scan" that flows over the landscape and reveals stuff.  Without this, resource hunting would be all sorts of tedious.  It's a good mechanic.

Lastly, I discovered how to buy new multi-tools.  This is the most obscure bit of buying that you'll do; I expect a lot of players take quite awhile before they figure out just how to do this.



So there, that's some more experience with the game.  Definitely enjoying it, particularly once I got it to stop crashing.  The crashes really do seem network related, I haven't had even one since turning that off.  I'm not going to put it back on until the servers have had a chance to stop being super stressed out.

[Mánagarmr]

Now, it's absolutely possible this is an effect of the fact that I'm using a bloody controller for this.  I mean, really.   First person gameplay, controller.

Are you insane? Why on Earth would you do such a thing? O_o

[Misery]

Now, it's absolutely possible this is an effect of the fact that I'm using a bloody controller for this.  I mean, really.   First person gameplay, controller.

Are you insane? Why on Earth would you do such a thing? O_o

Because apparently the very concept of allowing a console to use a mouse/keyboard or something like that still has yet to occur to developers in any way.

It is sad.  Truly sad.  And annoying.

[Cyborg]

Did someone delete my post?

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

Did someone delete my post?

Nope. We were doing some behind-the-scenes server maintenance so if you posted during the roughly 30 seconds the service was refreshing, it would have been culled automatically.

[Cyborg]

I watched the game on twitch. Looks boring. The only thing that seems interesting about this game is the sheer size of it, and the ability to basically pick up the kaleidoscope and see what it shows today. But none of the gameplay whether it be combat, collecting crap and turning it in, or the NPC interactions feel like they are contributing anything different than what we've already seen. Even the mining mechanic looks familiar and repetitive.

That's not even to mention the controversy around whether or not someone else can affect your game. RPS has more information on that topic.

I will be waiting for a sale and might not pick it up at all.

[Misery]

I watched the game on twitch. Looks boring. The only thing that seems interesting about this game is the sheer size of it, and the ability to basically pick up the kaleidoscope and see what it shows today. But none of the gameplay whether it be combat, collecting crap and turning it in, or the NPC interactions feel like they are contributing anything different than what we've already seen. Even the mining mechanic looks familiar and repetitive.

That's not even to mention the controversy around whether or not someone else can affect your game. RPS has more information on that topic.

I will be waiting for a sale and might not pick it up at all.

To be honest though, these things are exactly what should be expected.

I seriously cannot stress this enough:  This is a SURVIVAL genre game.  This, as a rule, is how these play.  You're going to do a lot of repetitious actions, there's usually very little (if any!) NPC interaction (if you're in a populated area, constantly dealing with NPCs... how is it a survival game?  Survival games happen in the wild, or in decimated areas... these are the only places where they make sense).  You have various needs that must constantly be tended to, things that must be sought out... it's what pretty much every game in the genre does.  I've never seen an exception (except for Starbound's bizarrely populated zones that you'll encounter every now and then, but those very definitely have their own unique problems), and don't really expect to.... until Arcen does theirs, that is.

Even the mining bit is what it should be.  Mining by definition is repetitive.  It's basically digging, after all... I cant imagine what anyone else expects from it.   Some players (such as myself) find this sort of thing very satisfying to do.  Lord knows just how much of it I've done over these years since Minecraft appeared, and I've honestly never really tired of it.

The game absolutely isn't for everyone, which is another thing I keep telling people when they ask me about it.  If they really enjoy games of this genre, this might be for them.  But if they are the sort of player that needs constant explosions or big set-piece moments... this game is a no-go, because it just isn't about that.


That all being said, there are definitely certain elements of the game that I genuinely think need to be worked on.   Combat, for instance.... I don't mean the way it WORKS, I mean the nature of your enemies.  Sentinels can actually make things very interesting, for instance, BUT, the basic Sentinels... which are the key to everything.... go down WAY too easily.  They are necessary for their buddies, the big bad bots, to even show up.  They need more HP, they need to be more evasive, or there needs to just be some wandering larger bots that show up sometimes.  Much of the threat the game generates on the ground actually comes from predators, as some of them hit like freight trains.   But it should be the robots that are the most dangerous.   And I hear that this is the case.... for the bigger bots.  But they just never appear because the normal Sentinels go down too easily.   I'd like to see this changed (or modded), and rather expect that it will be (since the problem is just very, very obvious). 

Oddly, games of this genre tend to have combat issues as a whole... why this is, I'm never entirely sure, but it does seem to pretty much always be the case.  Show me a survival game that has combat in it, and I can show you a list of complaints that I have with that combat, even if I end up having a decently good time doing it when it happens.


As for the controversy bit... it's seriously irrelevant.  At least for now.   The devs have expressed the desire to add proper multiplayer to the game later on, after the community expressed extreme desire for this to be the case, but for the time being, it is irrelevant.  My guess is that multiplayer will likely be the next thing to be tackled after the base building and freighter-owning are in the game (as those are the next things coming). 

Though, as the controversy bit goes, I personally don't think it's "controversy" or lies:  instead, it is bugged.  I'm just going to go on the record and say that the things the game does online are... kinda glitchy at times.   And the server is very clearly stressed to hell right now.  It goes down frequently. Those two things combined mean fairly obvious problems. They'll fix this in time (certainly before proper multiplayer appears) but I expect it to be a slow-ish process, as issues like this aren't easy to deal with.

[Misery]

SO.  SPACE BLOODY COMBAT.

I honestly cant tell if there's a really, really nasty bug here, or if it's yet another instance of the game not bothering to explain things, but....

You're supposed to be able to get targeting info on enemy ships.  And by targeting info, I mean a target lead, when firing at them.  So you can, you know, see where to shoot so your attacks actually land.

Originally, the game was doing this.

Now, I get into a battle with 5 pirates, which is tough enough... specifically, a battle I initiated by heading towards a distress signal (which apparently is a thing that can happen), and I get into the fight, enable the guns, aaaaaand.... no targeting info.  At all.  It just refused.  Needless to say, no damage inflicted on ANYTHING.  They cannot be hit without that; it's impossible.  PARTICULARLY on a bloody console, which I'm beginning to despise more and more as I keep playing;  seriously, I don't understand how anyone can play an FPS on one of these accursed things.   ....frankly I don't know how anyone can play MOST games on one of these.   There's a reason the damn things usually just collect dust for me.

Anyway, that fight attempt was.... extremely chaotic.  I will say it was exciting as heck; the structure that they were attacking had funky holes in it, which I kept diving through to get them off me long enough to recharge shields before beginning a desperate escape.   Full pulse drive is disabled during space combat, so there was only one escape:  the planet below.  This got pretty nuts as I'm diving straight at it with the basic pulse drive, needing over a full minute to actually reach atmosphere.   A lot of weaving to keep as much damage off as possible, while also draining the rest of my shield-compatible resources.   Nearing the last of those shields, I hit atmosphere, they're still coming.   If you're going fast enough you get that "burning up" effect going (though it does no damage, but it sure is cool), so that just made it more dramatic.   I'm still trying to get out of the way.  I finally get to the surface, and make what was probably the fastest landing I've done yet; the ship's shields were GONE by this point, and based on the structure HP, one more shot would have finished it.   Finally get out of the damn thing... ending combat, barely.... and am immediately attacked by a pile of sentinels, because why the hell not.  This wasn't really a fight I could win, so the last resort:  pumped a string of bolt grenades (the only way to destroy normal terrain) into the ground, and dove into the resulting hole, landing hard in the cave maze below.  After about 10 seconds the sentinels finally went away.

Now, I wont say that all of that escaping wasn't fun, because it was.  And stuff like that might be necessary at times even when targeting isn't bugging out, because it's absolutely possible to get overwhelmed.   But the fact that it did that at all is... very frustrating.

I also have learned that pirates have a much higher chance of targeting you and appearing if you have really valuable cargo.  So if you find something super valuable on a planet, and want to sell it, you might want to consider seeking out some place on the planet that has a trade interface, otherwise you risk attack.


Now, I begin a quest to effectively get the ship back into flying shape; the technology stuff isn't damaged, but the bloody thing is in no condition to risk even a bit of danger.   Zinc, I need zinc badly.   Let it be known that zinc is actually really important, if you want to not explode in space.  Flowers protect your ship, thusly, since all zinc comes from yellow flowers (unless you buy some of course).

I'm just lucky that the combat happened just above the planet;  you CAN get attacked during full pulse drive movement, which is.... bad.   There's no escaping from that, because the distances to anything are too far to ever reach without re-entering full pulse drive.  But that happening seems a lot more rare (has only happened one time so far, and it was just two pirate ships that time).


So.... yeah.  That happened.

Considering the game's tendancy to not explain a damn thing, I really need to try to figure out if i'm missing something with the targeting thing.  Is there something I'm not activating, or accidentally turned off?  Or is it really a bug?  I have no idea.

Though again, the damn console doesn't help.  I'm going to be so glad for the PC version...

[eRe4s3r]

SO.  SPACE BLOODY COMBAT.

I honestly cant tell if there's a really, really nasty bug here, or if it's yet another instance of the game not bothering to explain things, but....

You're supposed to be able to get targeting info on enemy ships.  And by targeting info, I mean a target lead, when firing at them.  So you can, you know, see where to shoot so your attacks actually land.

Originally, the game was doing this.

Now, I get into a battle with 5 pirates, which is tough enough... specifically, a battle I initiated by heading towards a distress signal (which apparently is a thing that can happen), and I get into the fight, enable the guns, aaaaaand.... no targeting info.  At all.  It just refused.  Needless to say, no damage inflicted on ANYTHING.

I've seen this same bug on every stream after that person got a new ship with preinstalled beam laser (which is, like.. all of them?). Suddenly when they switched to plasma, it said "charge 0%" and "insert oxide" which quite a few of them commented wasn't a thing they could do. One even went into the menu and showed it, the weapon does not require oxide and can not be charged. But at 0% it doesn't offer targeting, the fun part when he fired the beam laser it damaged his own ship instead of the enemies. And while you can remove the beam laser, this does not fix the bugged plasma guns.... at 0% charge auto targeting thinks you are not actually able to shoot I guess?

So there seems to be a lot of brokenness in this Good thing I didn't actually buy this..  for once my tingly senses warned me of impeding overhyped mediocrity.

[Misery]

SO.  SPACE BLOODY COMBAT.

I honestly cant tell if there's a really, really nasty bug here, or if it's yet another instance of the game not bothering to explain things, but....

You're supposed to be able to get targeting info on enemy ships.  And by targeting info, I mean a target lead, when firing at them.  So you can, you know, see where to shoot so your attacks actually land.

Originally, the game was doing this.

Now, I get into a battle with 5 pirates, which is tough enough... specifically, a battle I initiated by heading towards a distress signal (which apparently is a thing that can happen), and I get into the fight, enable the guns, aaaaaand.... no targeting info.  At all.  It just refused.  Needless to say, no damage inflicted on ANYTHING.

I've seen this same bug on every stream after that person got a new ship with preinstalled beam laser (which is, like.. all of them?). Suddenly when they switched to plasma, it said "charge 0%" and "insert oxide" which quite a few of them commented wasn't a thing they could do. One even went into the menu and showed it, the weapon does not require oxide and can not be charged. But at 0% it doesn't offer targeting, the fun part when he fired the beam laser it damaged his own ship instead of the enemies. And while you can remove the beam laser, this does not fix the bugged plasma guns.... at 0% charge auto targeting thinks you are not actually able to shoot I guess?

So there seems to be a lot of brokenness in this Good thing I didn't actually buy this..  for once my tingly senses warned me of impeding overhyped mediocrity.

I never ran into that actually.  This was a "bug" purely with the game not showing me the target display (I could still fire just fine, and the weapons did what they were supposed to.... I just couldn't HIT anything).  And discovered later that there actually was no glitch; all I needed to do was fire off the ship's scan wave to get the targeting things to appear.  It would have been nice if the game had TOLD me this, but.... whatever.   From now on if something acts wonky I'm not going to assume it's a bug, but assume it's something I'm missing.   ....except what I'm calling the "insta-launch", which is the only REAL bug I've encountered.  Again this is the PS4 version, it's not the bizarre imploded mess that the PC version has started as.  The PS4 version isn't buggy/broken.  I'm glad I *didn't* wait for the PC version.  My impatience is justified.

As for the game as a whole, as far as I'm concerned this is bloody fantastic.  It's been YEARS since I've enjoyed a full-priced game this much. Or most indie games, to be honest. The whole thing is extremely reminiscent of EA's ancient "Starflight" game (which I had on the Genesis, way back when).  I remember being utterly enthralled by that as a kid (though I will say it had the absolute worst space combat I've ever seen), and NMS really plays VERY similar in an overall sense.  Without the part of me hating the space combat.   Pretty much everything about it is similar.  I haven't touched a single other game since this released.  Including Starward.  Which should say something, really.

I will say though, videos absolutely do not do this game justice.  Particularly with the really irritating way a lot of people are going through it.  SO many of them are doing the "ignore 90% of the game and just try to finish the all-important story without doing anything else".   Which is kinda like playing Minecraft, doing JUST the events to the Enderdragon (the game's win condition) and then whining that there's no content and nothing else to do.   Or doing the same in Terraria, or any of those games.


As always I'm blaming this on the current gaming landscape.  I know that if I gave the game to friends, they'd have the same "beeline to the center, whine about lack of stuff that they didn't bother to look for" approach. Provided they could even figure it out.  Incidentally, they don't understand games like Minecraft/Terraria/all of those, either.  The sorts of gamers that have been trained way too hard by the AAA games in recent years.  If it's not full of stupid cutscenes and setpieces, they don't want it.  And if it's not linear in some way, they get confused. Same lack of interest if the game in question doesn't have some long-winded story (and that's where *I* don't see the appeal, I haaaaaaate story-focused games; far as I'm concerned, the best story in gaming is "Blast off and strike the evil Bydo Empire!", which is literally the entire story of R-Type... just that one sentence.  Anything longer and I stop caring and/or paying attention).   Bah.   That's a whole other rant and/or topic that I'll not go into for the sake of everyone's sanity.

[crazyroosterman]

yea I've heard about the issue that no mans sky appears to have on pc including apparently according to tbs latest video that the k/m controls are terrible.
still ill give it a go after all that's why the refund systems in place not holding much hope for it being playable though.

[Misery]

Better to just wait for them to patch it, really.

Apparently it's *really* messed up right now.  Or so I'm told.  Havent actually seen it.

[eRe4s3r]

I will say though, videos absolutely do not do this game justice.  Particularly with the really irritating way a lot of people are going through it.  SO many of them are doing the "ignore 90% of the game and just try to finish the all-important story without doing anything else".   Which is kinda like playing Minecraft, doing JUST the events to the Enderdragon (the game's win condition) and then whining that there's no content and nothing else to do.   Or doing the same in Terraria, or any of those games.

I would totally disagree with you actually Minecraft is a gem because you CAN build what you want, you can install mods, and start building things you never knew you wanted. You can spend 5000 hours to build the most intricate castle ever designed with a behind the scenes in-game logic system running moving walls and randomly moving enemy spawners or just a nice looking tree house. Same although much more dumbed down for Starbound and Terraria. All these are games where you can substantially shape the worlds. Though these 2 are totally inferior to Minecraft. There is also FortressCraft Evolved, which I didn't play since it's "Evolved" moniker so yeah, but I would think that ranks 2nd to Minecraft.

NMS is nothing of that. It is not a builder game, it is not a sim. It is a... very fancy... walking simulator. The more you abstract the gameplay concepts the more you will see it. There is no element in NMS that is interconnected, races just exist, animals just spawn/unspawn, so do resources and sentinels, bases on planets, planets and entire systems. If you aren't there and don't intend to go back then they might as well not even exist.. because to the game, they are just background images.

So imo NMS is a pretty walking simulator. But it isn't a good game. Not even a finished game, actually. If it had been designed for the "exploration" crowd then it would not have so little to actually +see+ ;p