Author Topic: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....  (Read 39125 times)

Offline Draco18s

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #165 on: November 28, 2016, 02:08:09 am »
So core loop remains identical, just harder and more grindy. Gotcha.
Looks like, here's one of the more long winded reviews from the 1.1 update:

Quote from: BlueLiquidPlus
No Man's Sky - v1.1 Review

Played Time: 3 Hours

TL;DR : No, 3 hours of painful grinding that lead to pirates and sentinels decimating me and losing everything over and over again.

------- My experience -------
A lot of people have written good and bad reviews, but with the v1.1 update and added survival I decided to take the plunge and go for it. I've spent the last three hours in a rage filled scramble of trying to survive in a hostile environment that just never gets better.

To begin, I ended up starting on a frozen planet... -75C at Night, and -50C during the day... which means I had to spend most of my time below ground scrambling to gather resources from a very unhospitable planet and constantly risk dying of no food. I honestly thought that this was just horrible luck, but it was going to get better once I got off that planet.

My first death was from the cold, but after that I stayed alive by playing it very carefully. Once I got all the materials and headed to my ship I made sure to stockpile extra fuel in the ships bays to ensure I'd be okay for a little bit (This is a mistake). I finally take off and soar through the sky into the blackness of space, and there I see a space station in the distance, some freighters off to the side, and several planets that could not be as bad as the one I was on (Wrong again).

Immediately I get scanned... Pirates. Well I don't have anything on me worth anything, right? Wrong. Pirates show up and decimate me, well okay may be that was just some bad luck.. RNG can be a cruel mistress. Respawn on the space station, I've lost everything in my ship (All that fuel and materials gone). FINE, I'll go to a non-cold world and try it again. I leave the station and move away to be scanned.. Pirates. Dead again. Restart.

I warp away to some Asteroids, cool I can gets some materials, but scanned. Pirates. Apparently my empty hold is worth SO much to them. Dead again. I warp out past the asteroids towards the closest planet that wasn't that frozen hellhole. I'm in orbit, Scanned, Pirates. Seriously? I turn towards the planet and dive towards it, perhaps I can lose them in the atmosphere. I careen towards the beacon on the planet below, and I see a huge clear area nearby and I land. WARNING HOSTILE SENTINELS LIMITED RESOURCES. Okay fine, this can't be that bad.

Sentinel attacks immediately as I chop down a tree, kill it, move 5 feet and another sentinel attacks. Well that's stupid, and another sentinel attacks. Killed it, ran, and another sentinel attacks and I die. Back to my ship, time to leave and forget this place... except... no landing fuel to take off because those pirates stole it all the first time they killed me.

Next 15 minutes is me hunting Plutonium down and sending it to my ship as fast as I can before the sentinels kill me, and finally I get enough, take off and head over to the beacon and land at it. Oh by the way, that 100% fuel you had? 0%! One lift off = total use of fuel. Hit the beacon, get told to head to an encampment 6 minutes away, and got attacked by two more sentinels. Back at the ship, hunting precious plutonium, all of my gear is broken (when you die your gear gets "critically damaged" and has to be repaired... this is your scanner, binoculars, and the Boltcaster (pistol) that I made so I'm down to my mining tool), and that's when I ran out of mining tool energy.

Start punching plants for Carbon to recharge the mining laser... here comes the sentinels... punch the first one down and then the second one shoots me dead. Spawn on my ship to a sentinel scanning me and engaging me.. this was the point where I just said screw it.

The new survival mode might be great, but I can't get past the beginning... you move and your life support system battery starts draining, run and it drains faster. I'm down for a challenge, but this is getting stupid.

Bottom line, I'd love to suggest the game to you, but I can't. I'm going to try again (I'm a glutton for punishment apparently), and perhaps a restart will change my mind (it better let me restart), but right now after three hours I'm too annoyed. It has a cool concept, and the survival mode could be great (less pirates, slower food loss, no more infinite sentinels appearing, and perhaps a more friendly intro system), but right now I'd just stay away.
-----

I know there's plenty of reviews about how you should stay away, pick it up for $10, don't buy it, and a bunch of reviews telling you the opposite. I took the gamble when it was 40% off to see how it was, and I found that it was literally like gargling glass and asking for more.

Offline Misery

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #166 on: November 28, 2016, 02:53:18 am »
3 hours is NOT enough to judge this one after the changes.  That looks like a review born purely out of frustration (which indicates more that it's not a game that suits that particular player, rather than actual problems; he didn't actually learn enough to even get an idea as to what the game's balance even IS right now). 

Though, honestly, if anyone is expecting non-repeating gameplay from a survival game... they're in the wrong genre entirely.  I still don't get why anyone expects otherwise.  It's like people STILL expect Elite Dangerous out of this game (no.... just no.  Seriously, no).  I mean, just... what.  Survival game = LOTS of resource gathering and management.  That's how it always is.  Those that don't like it need to just go buy blasted Elite already. 

I, personally, haven't found it grindy.  Though, I'm also doing decently well so far (but then, I'm used to hyper-difficult games, and this isn't up to that level) as opposed to dying every 10 seconds with everything taking a million years. Only had one death so far. 80 minutes to accomplish what some others (on planets extremely similar to mine, as I started on a *bad* one) have apparently taken 5+ hours to do.  But then, I'm not playing it like I used to.  I rather suspect that, surprise surprise, people are going into this expecting all of their old tactics to work (AKA, the ones that took no effort) and having their brains spray out their ears at the mere possibility that those tactics no longer work (what a concept THAT is... sigh).  Ah well.  Certainly not my problem, that's for sure.  I got exactly what I wanted out of it, so that works out well enough. 

This is where I'm thankful that it's NOT a multiplayer focused game:  Other people's thoughts on it have no effect on my own experience.  In full multiplayer, that can utterly ruin it (server population destroyed = no gameplay, in games like that, or gameplay with large holes in it due to those bits requiring enough players).  These days I don't bother with multiplayer, really.  Would have to deal with actual humans, who mostly I tend to hate.

That's a whole other (very, very long) rant though, the multiplayer bit.  Like, 20 pages, sort of thing.  I'd rather not totally destroy anyone's sanity with that.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #167 on: November 28, 2016, 05:47:07 am »
Yeah, I'll freely admit I don't understand the survival genre at all. It's just...work work work. Then again, I play Project Zomboid, but that at least attempts to emulate real life. As in an "alternate reality" where the zombie apocalypse actually happened. It also takes into account the most important part of survival: Sanity.
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Offline Mick

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #168 on: November 28, 2016, 07:54:49 am »
I didn't like "Chill" mode in 1.0 because the resources were everywhere and nothing was really dangerous. Survival mode in 1.1 in just stupidly tedious and random. I don't consider having to wait for 20 minutes in a cave for the day/night cycle to switch to be particularly compelling gameplay. I want difficulty in games to be about making hard choices, not determining how much paint you are willing to watch dry before you give up.

Offline Misery

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #169 on: November 28, 2016, 08:29:36 am »
I didn't like "Chill" mode in 1.0 because the resources were everywhere and nothing was really dangerous. Survival mode in 1.1 in just stupidly tedious and random. I don't consider having to wait for 20 minutes in a cave for the day/night cycle to switch to be particularly compelling gameplay. I want difficulty in games to be about making hard choices, not determining how much paint you are willing to watch dry before you give up.

You don't actually have to do that.

The problem it runs into though is that it's starting off a bit too hard for a lot of players... some are catching on but most don't seem to be seeing the options the game is throwing at them (as with a lot of games of this type, it's not exactly super obvious about it).  I haven't been waiting through night myself (this would be boring).  I can travel through the night on foot, but I make sure to bring shielding shards with (simple craftable things, instant thermal recharge), and I'll go at caves for resources whenever I see one (Iron is plentiful in caves, sentinels are not, and I can grab some carbon while in there too).  Either I can have the thermal thing recharge while in there, or if it's a deep cave, chances are there's another opening further down; can cross UNDER an area that I'd normally need to walk over.   If I get REALLY desperate with the damn "it's too cold" meter I'll dig a hole in some resource blob and sit in it for about a minute to generate heat that way.  Really similar to what I've often done in Minecraft when things went wonky, actually.   As I kept going though I found myself doing this less and less.   Currently where I'm at is that I have nearly everything needed to get off that blasted rock; just need one last journey to a specific spot.  And then I can get the bloody thing flying.  Have yet to die more than the once, though there have been close calls.

The real !!FUN!! will be actually leaving atmosphere.  I've seen that part.  Stuff gets loopy.


Quote
Yeah, I'll freely admit I don't understand the survival genre at all. It's just...work work work. Then again, I play Project Zomboid, but that at least attempts to emulate real life. As in an "alternate reality" where the zombie apocalypse actually happened. It also takes into account the most important part of survival: Sanity.

Ah, yeah, that game.  Always reminds me of Cataclysm:DDA.   Which I haven't played in ages, I suddenly realize. It's probably updated a whole bunch.

Offline crazyroosterman

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #170 on: November 28, 2016, 11:00:41 am »
I didn't like "Chill" mode in 1.0 because the resources were everywhere and nothing was really dangerous. Survival mode in 1.1 in just stupidly tedious and random. I don't consider having to wait for 20 minutes in a cave for the day/night cycle to switch to be particularly compelling gameplay. I want difficulty in games to be about making hard choices, not determining how much paint you are willing to watch dry before you give up.

You don't actually have to do that.

The problem it runs into though is that it's starting off a bit too hard for a lot of players... some are catching on but most don't seem to be seeing the options the game is throwing at them (as with a lot of games of this type, it's not exactly super obvious about it).  I haven't been waiting through night myself (this would be boring).  I can travel through the night on foot, but I make sure to bring shielding shards with (simple craftable things, instant thermal recharge), and I'll go at caves for resources whenever I see one (Iron is plentiful in caves, sentinels are not, and I can grab some carbon while in there too).  Either I can have the thermal thing recharge while in there, or if it's a deep cave, chances are there's another opening further down; can cross UNDER an area that I'd normally need to walk over.   If I get REALLY desperate with the damn "it's too cold" meter I'll dig a hole in some resource blob and sit in it for about a minute to generate heat that way.  Really similar to what I've often done in Minecraft when things went wonky, actually.   As I kept going though I found myself doing this less and less.   Currently where I'm at is that I have nearly everything needed to get off that blasted rock; just need one last journey to a specific spot.  And then I can get the bloody thing flying.  Have yet to die more than the once, though there have been close calls.

The real !!FUN!! will be actually leaving atmosphere.  I've seen that part.  Stuff gets loopy.


Quote
Yeah, I'll freely admit I don't understand the survival genre at all. It's just...work work work. Then again, I play Project Zomboid, but that at least attempts to emulate real life. As in an "alternate reality" where the zombie apocalypse actually happened. It also takes into account the most important part of survival: Sanity.

Ah, yeah, that game.  Always reminds me of Cataclysm:DDA.   Which I haven't played in ages, I suddenly realize. It's probably updated a whole bunch.
it cant be worse than don't starve in terms information clarity can it? that game literally tells you nothing I've got 52 hours into that game and I still haven't the slightest idea what those dentures I can pick up are meant to do.
which by the way if you haven't played it misery you really should it would be right up your alley.
c.r

Offline Draco18s

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #171 on: November 28, 2016, 12:15:59 pm »
3 hours is NOT enough to judge this one after the changes.  That looks like a review born purely out of frustration (which indicates more that it's not a game that suits that particular player, rather than actual problems; he didn't actually learn enough to even get an idea as to what the game's balance even IS right now).

Uh.
If a game is murdering me for merely existing (which a -75/-50 planet is going to do) then I'm already done.  The game has already decided that I should know what I'm doing and has tossed a problem at me, for which I may have the resources, but not the knowledge to overcome.

Minecraft is a perfect example:
You start early morning, no mobs are spawned.  You go around trying to figure out what you can do, punch some blocks, collect a few resources, try to craft some things, then sun goes down ten minutes later.  Now you're having to fight off mobs and in desperation you punch a hole in the ground and hide while you try to figure out how to craft a sword.

You're guaranteed to not-die for 10 minutes even if you stand still (unless the initial spawn missed land by a couple blocks, which I've seen it do on occasion).

Terraria and Starbound are similar.  Your spawn location is "safe" for a time while the player gets themselves oriented and figures out the controls, harvests some resources and pokes at various mechanics.  There might be some hostile mobs nearbyish, but they're not usually that dangerous. i.e. you're not going to die before you figure out how to fight back.

What I'm seeing of NMS though is a game that wishes you dead and will do anything to make it happen: hug you player.

Like seriously, what's with the pirates going after the guy with an empty hold?

Offline Aklyon

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #172 on: November 28, 2016, 02:18:40 pm »
Sounds like they got stuff done to make the game more interesting and then forgot to balance anything at all for survival mode.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #173 on: November 28, 2016, 02:33:49 pm »
Also, 3 hours should definitely be more than sufficient to form an opinion. Remember the "no questions asked" return period is two hours.

Offline Mick

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #174 on: November 28, 2016, 02:34:21 pm »
Sounds like they got stuff done to make the game more interesting and then forgot to balance anything at all for survival mode.

I think part of it is a middle finger to the players complaining the game was too easy (which was legitimate).

No middle ground apparently.

Offline Logorouge

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #175 on: November 28, 2016, 07:17:28 pm »
If a game is murdering me for merely existing  (which a -75/-50 planet is going to do) then I'm already done.
Wouldn't that include most of the survival genre? I don't think Neo Scavenger would be any kinder. (Or Better than Wolves, if you're into Minecraft) :P

[...] I think I might pick this up on sale in a couple of months. Discovering and naming random creatures on random planets sounds fun to me. [...]
And I did! And it was. The end. *credit roll*

I learned two things when I started playing:
1-There's a modding community for this game. So now my exosuit has a sassy voice (the default voice was grating on my ears) and I don't have to "charge" my clicks in the menus. The gen-affecting mods will be fun to mess with later on too.
2-I'm terrible at naming things. There's planets full of animals with stupid names now.

Anyway, so far so good.

Offline Misery

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #176 on: November 28, 2016, 08:00:38 pm »
Also, 3 hours should definitely be more than sufficient to form an opinion. Remember the "no questions asked" return period is two hours.

That bit is Steam's problem, it still isn't enough to form a real review of, well, MOST games these days, honestly.  I dunno about everyone else, but I never, *ever* read reviews that don't have at least 10 hours in a game. The one and ONLY exception is Starward, for obvious reasons (and even then, that's just out of pure curiosity). This all applies to both positive or negative reviews... useless if they're at that low point.  Some games just take too long to really "grasp" to get anything out of them... I can think of so very many like that.  These aren't the old days were every game was as simple as something like the first Megaman.   Which is probably why so many people loathe Steam's refund system.  I mean, think of something like, well, almost any of Arcen's games VS this system.  MOST of the games here take well longer than 2 hours to get a handle on for many players.  AI War, the flagship title, being damn near impossible to grasp in that amount of time. 

That's a whole other rant though.  I usually just advise people to pretend the awful refund system doesn't exist and make sure they're choosing their purchases carefully to begin with.

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Wouldn't that include most of the survival genre? I don't think Neo Scavenger would be any kinder.

Even Minecraft itself without mods technically does it:  Your hunger meter starts melting the moment you start moving.

Also, many roguelikes start an attrition kill process if you're going too slowly (and their concept of "slow" is kinda mean with that). 

But yeah, the survival genre does in fact pretty much ALL do it.  It's not exactly an unheard of feature.   If anything, it's expected.  Much of the time it's usually either A: hunger or B: weather related.  Many games use both.  Most are MUCH nastier than NMS is about it; at least in NMS, you can hop into a small hole or something to give your thermal whatsit a chance to recharge, and you're usually in perfect safety doing this.  Most survival games?  Yeah... good luck with that.  Chances are you'll only make it WORSE somehow.

Quote
I'm terrible at naming things. There's planets full of animals with stupid names now.

Ah, yeah, same here.  I'm used to just pulling names from a thesaurus (this is where all boss names other than Warden and Invader, and many enemy names in Starward come from, heh).  It takes too much effort to come up with a name otherwise.  I absolutely will just name something "Big freaking lump" without that.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2016, 08:04:55 pm by Misery »

Offline Draco18s

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #177 on: November 28, 2016, 08:53:59 pm »
Quote
Wouldn't that include most of the survival genre? I don't think Neo Scavenger would be any kinder.

Even Minecraft itself without mods technically does it:  Your hunger meter starts melting the moment you start moving.

The hunger meter is one of the things about Minecraft I don't like. I mean, I'm fine with the concept, there's just implementation details that I grouch over, like the fact that you don't regen health unless you're over 8.5 (9?) shanks, but because of the hidden "saturation" value that acts as a second bar, but which can have a non-zero value while your standard bar isn't full, and those two values don't add together for the regen.  So you can be 92% "full" and still not regenerating health.

Things like that.

Also, hunger can't actually kill you.  It can only take you down to 1/2 heart unless you're on Hard (I consider Minecraft to be generally well balanced on Normal, although the mob diversity could use some help).

Edit:
Hunger is actually a system I want to try and fix/replace, but don't have any solid concepts, unlike how I've been able to tweak other areas of the game.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2016, 10:31:40 pm by Draco18s »

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #178 on: November 29, 2016, 12:49:41 am »
The update information looks actually pretty good. I liek the idea of buying freighters that transport stuff for you from other planets. This gives the whoel game an economy, you invest resources (fuel or whatever) in finding planets, "claim" them, build resource extractors there, buy some freighters and let them ship the stuff to your main colony.

However, that you cannot freely create your base is a little... underwhelming. This might not be bad if it works similiar to Subnautica, where you can freely place corridors, rooms and whatever to your base how you like.
But the way how they show it seems more like the Skyrim version of "build your house". You simply buy the next upgrade/room for your house and it gets added to it. You may change what room exactly you want to have at that corner of the house but you are still pretty much limited to your options. And since they have a creative mode, I don't think this is a smart idea. Misery can proof me of course wrong int hat since he owns the game and I don't.

The other thing and let's face it, a too high difficulty kills the mood of playing the game. And no, don't give me the "it's a survival game" bullshit.
Survival game is not the same as harcore game experience. Look at Dark souls. Got advertised as hardcore experioence, everyone sees that it is that, no one complains.
Look at minecraft. It even HAS a mode that says "Hardcore". However, Survival is not the same as "this is so hard you have to fight for every inch to survive".
I could now search for a detailed explanation of the genre but I will just do it on my own. The survial genre fits some basic concepts.
You need something to sustain yourself. This "something" will deplet over time. If you want to refill it, you have to gather something. In most games this is "hunger" and you have to gather "food" to refill it. It could also be energy (like in Fortresscraft Evolved and I think in NMS as well).
Gathering the resource you need should not be a simple task but also not impossible. You don't know where said resource is at the start, you have to search it. It may take longer or shorter depending on how good you are at searching or how far away it is hidden.
There might be additional dangers, enemies for example or natural dangers, fire, lightning storms, stuff like that. Might also be traps or anything like that.
You have or have not an end goal. In order to reach it you have to live as long as possible, therefor survive a slong as possible.

Now, I believe that NMS has all that but the point is, the basic concepts do not state that the game has to murder you at every corner. It is rather that you MAY die at every corner but the game DOES NOT do so. While NMS does as teh review stated. And even you said yourself so, Misery, that the game is brutally hard, you even told it in the screenshot I saw that you died right at the start. This shouldn't happen. Being a hard game is great and all but a game shoudl also be FAIR. See Dark Souls again. The game is brutal. Teh game is terrifying (psychologically speaking) but it is also FAIR. You have a chance to beat all the bosses.
Making it POSSIBLE to surive is not the same as making the game FAIR. We could now try to argue what is fair but let's keep this short. In my opinion fair means, when every player get's the same chance of experiencing the game. Equal chances for everyone. That is not the case with this game it seems. And no matter how you want to put it, players get murdered for things that shouldn't murder them. liek pirates stalking a specific player endlessy despite him having no resources at all.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....
« Reply #179 on: November 29, 2016, 01:00:45 am »
Making it POSSIBLE to surive is not the same as making the game FAIR. We could now try to argue what is fair but let's keep this short. In my opinion fair means, when every player get's the same chance of experiencing the game. Equal chances for everyone. That is not the case with this game it seems. And no matter how you want to put it, players get murdered for things that shouldn't murder them. liek pirates stalking a specific player endlessy despite him having no resources at all.

I'd boil fair down to an atomic decision made when danger presents itself:

"If I die now, what am I going to lose?"
If the answer is ever "nothing" then the game is not fair.  I've had a fair few deaths in Minecraft where I wasn't really loosing anything (building a giant building, accidentally fall off the roof, and I collect up all my dropped items) but it wasn't a combat or other stressful situation, I never made the choice to die vs. staying alive.  There was no "shit shit shit hug hug hug, if I die now, I'm going to lose all my cargo! This took me hours to collect!" moment.

What I'm seeing in the reviews of the 1.1 patch is people dying to avoid problems.  "If I die to these pirates, I lose nothing and respawn in a better spot."  "If I die of exposure, at least I'll respawn with full hunger and can come back for the one steak I have left."  "If I just delete my game, maybe my starting world won't be on fire in a pit of acid."