No Man's Sky

[Bunk]

So, anyone have any clue how one gets "Atlas access" or whatever it is?

[Falconeer]

Looks like I am one of the lucky ones who got a game-breaking bug. Can't craft Warp Cells even though the game keeps telling me to do so. And no, I have not redeemed the pre order ship. Rage.

I was being dumb and whiny. Fixed.

[Surlyboi]

You have to run into some anomalous benefactors for the Atlas access. At least that's what got me my blueprint for one.

Word of warning. If you're thinking of buying that sweet new ship, don't charge up your warp drive in the current one. You can't move your charged warp core into the new one. I wasted a fully charged warp core in a system with almost no zinc. I spent hours scavenging up enough mats to charge my new engine.

[Yoru]

Okay, downloaded.

I have a flight halfway across the world in the AM. I was expecting this to be a problem; I was expecting something like Stellaris where I'd stay up until dawn drowned out my desklamp, stagger through TXL Terminal C to my godforsaken economy-class butt-space, then groggily awake in Abu Dhabi and be forcibly mingled with the great unwashed at the security checkpoint before my connection. I was expecting to spend the next two weeks gnawing at my return ticket and struggling to avoid spoilers.

I played for four hours. Now I'm going to bed, and neither of the above will be problems. They made a nice technology toy and then couldn't figure out a game, so they slapped a (very inventory-limited) crafting/survival veneer on it and called it a day. I didn't have a bad time, but I don't feel compelled to pick it back up.

This is the totality of my review.

(Also, fuck the sentinels. Terrible idea.)

[luckton]

I think Dunkey sums up the game nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgfxo3CLdNM

[Sir T]

The reviews on GOG are tearing it apart, almost all talking about performance issues. I think I'll pass till its optimised better. Looks nice though.

[Ginaz]

I think Dunkey sums up the game nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgfxo3CLdNM

It's getting shit on with the Metacritic and Steam reviews, too.  Glad I held off purchasing it.  I'll wait for it to be $15 or less during a Steam sale a year from now.

[Yegolev]

I would suggest that rarity of something depends on where you are, at times.

[Falconeer]

Pro tip: go into options and rename everything. Every system you have encountered, every planet and every creature you have discovered. It gives you money if you do. It also feel pretty great, but that's maybe just me. I love that every planet has its own list of achievements basically.

[Malakili]

I requested a refund. The technical problems made it literally unplayable for me. 3 crashes in the first hour and even on lowest settings the framerate would often totally tank despite the fact that I exceed all the minimum requirements without a problem.

A shame, really.

[lesion]

Pro tip: go into options and rename everything. Every system you have encountered, every planet and every creature you have discovered. It gives you money if you do. It also feel pretty great, but that's maybe just me. I love that every planet has its own list of achievements basically.

You can also just "upload" the data and get the reward.

This game is basically a more fleshed-out Rodina, but still not worth three times the price.

I would also like to say the entire QA team should be fired for not refusing to play after seeing those goddamn UI-skullfucking achievements ad nauseum. That's a mistake I wouldn't expect my grandma to make, and she can barely eat soup.

[Bunk]

Plays perfectly fine for me on a 970.

Its one of those games that is impossible not to immediately think "I wish it just had this and this and this..."

Plays like the super easy casual mode of Elite Dangerous: Horizons. Every bit of "realism" is not in this.

The Milestones are a right pain in the ass. "Yay, you walked another km! Lets interrupt what you were doing for a musical queue and widescreen cinematic, just like the one we did five minutes ago."
Still no idea what combat's like, only time I pissed off a sentinel was five minutes in, so I just ran. Haven't encountered pirates yet.

Slowly starting to figure out languages is kinda neat. So was finding a crashed ship to repair. I have the constant dilemma of wanting to go find better planets, but wanting to completely explore the crappy ones I'm on first.

I see no real purpose to the game overall, but I've put 5 hours of fiddling in to it today according to Steam. Halfway to what I consider bare minimum time spent to justify a purchase.

[apocrypha]

Okay, downloaded.

I have a flight halfway across the world in the AM. I was expecting this to be a problem; I was expecting something like Stellaris where I'd stay up until dawn drowned out my desklamp, stagger through TXL Terminal C to my godforsaken economy-class butt-space, then groggily awake in Abu Dhabi and be forcibly mingled with the great unwashed at the security checkpoint before my connection. I was expecting to spend the next two weeks gnawing at my return ticket and struggling to avoid spoilers.

I played for four hours. Now I'm going to bed, and neither of the above will be problems. They made a nice technology toy and then couldn't figure out a game, so they slapped a (very inventory-limited) crafting/survival veneer on it and called it a day. I didn't have a bad time, but I don't feel compelled to pick it back up.

This is the totality of my review.

(Also, fuck the sentinels. Terrible idea.)

Oh, you're alive! This is good.

[Yoru]

Oh, you're alive! This is good.

Ain't no games worth posting about, most of the time.

[MahrinSkel]

Well, given the performance issues on PC people are talking about, I guess I will wait until they fix them, or I upgrade my 870M laptop to something beefier. Might be time to dust off the old boat anchor and do the whole "gut it and start over" thing.

--Dave

[Yoru]

Well, my flight's delayed and there's nothing worth having for breakfast in this shithole, so y'all get some more NMS bile filtered through five hours of sleeping-on-it. Two things immediately stick out in my mind.

First, the UI is refried gopher ass. 99% of the time, the "push and hold" interact mechanic needs to get killed, it's just a waste of time. The inventory screens need a complete ground-up redesign; the icons are gigantic and yet show nothing. Access to the inventory is uneven. I can zap things freely between my suit and my ship if it's nearby, except if I missed the landing pad, at which point I can do it if and only if I'm not using the market or talking to someone -- that is, exactly when I want to be able to zap things around freely.

And I miss the landing pad often, because the camera is locked in a position that makes my fat bastard of a ship take up the bottom third of the screen, and you can't stop or freely pitch down, so precision landing is combination of luck and counting down a few seconds after my target disappears beneath the camera. Which has, by the way, the same sort of field-of-view I'd get when peering out a window at ADX Florence.

Subrant: the recharging mechanic. I kind of understand the need for something to supplant "hunger" in a survival game, but there's an umptillion things that need recharging and the UI for doing it is hideously bad. Recharging life support? Tab+Mouseover+Hit E+Mouseover Fuel+Click+Tab. Recharging my mining drill? Same deal. Takeoff thrusters? Same deal. My fucking shields?! Same deal. (And do it in combat!) And things need to be recharged every few minutes; apparently the future runs on iPhone batteries.

Second, half of the "experience" is obviously designed with pretty show-floor demos and promo reels in mind. The giant achievement stinger first and foremost, but almost every other interaction has some kind of slow-pan built into it: interacting with terminals, with aliens... using a fucking savepoint pans your view up to look at the landscape for half a goddamn minute. If any other game added a thirty-second save animation, people would be throwing their keyboards at the wall.

And none of this is going over the core problem with the gamespace itself. It's cool at first, but after three or four planets the patterns become apparent and you suddenly realize that this anonymous nowhere planet is basically the same as any other anonymous nowhere planet. They all have the same six or seven setpiece POIs scattered at the same rough distances (~2-3 minutes walk or 30 seconds flight apart), which all have the same "challenges" and offer the same "rewards". But maybe the sky is purple and there's a cow that prances around with its butt stuck out. (Which I managed to name, despite the profanity filter's best efforts, as "Bottsekks Bovine".)

You will never find anywhere special, because each place is just as special as all the others. It is procedurally generic. Welcome to Harrison Bergeron's Sky.

[jakonovski]

Ok so I obviously haven't played this, but it seems they made a procedural universe from an extremely limited set of variables and then normalized it to make sure nothing actually extreme spawns. When the actual fun part of procedural is the chance to encounter the extreme end. Like ten mile deep canyons and aliens who shoot plasma from their ass into space.

[Falconeer]

I don't know how much some of you think they have seen of the game. I have no evidence to prove that there is so much more to be surprised by, but there seem to be a light plot, there seem to be an end goal (with different endings), there seem to be languages that you can learn that will potentially open up more conversations and options, and there seem to be areas that are locked that eventually you open later not to mention the traditional powering yourself up to become bigger better and stronger. I am not fooling myself into thinking that there is so much more to come, but I am really not sure what everyone was expecting. As I said I helped myself by keeping expectations low, but in what is certainly a cute box there seem to be more to aim for than I would have thought. It pains me to say so but that's something Elite Dangerous couldn't do, which is provide a reason to continue.

[Malakili]

I'd certainly be playing and enjoying what's there if the game would run on my PC.

There seem to be two situations here. Mine, where I like what the game was offering, I just can't play it.  It might be that I came to this rather late (in the last month basically), so I think I had a rather fair view of what the game actually was. A low-key exploration/survival game.

On the other hand, there seems to be a segment of the disappointed playerbase who was expecting this to be something closer to what Star Citizen is promising, without quite so many absurdly promised features. This seems to be the population that is angry.

[apocrypha]

I would hope that the PC teething issues will be resolved, that patches will fix the worst of the performance & UI troubles, in time. It's day 1, this is the norm now, I don't get why anyone would be surprised by this. Similarly, bad PC ports and common. Good PC ports seem to be the exception. Why would anyone be surprised by this?

I do think there are a couple of issues beyond the current technical ones on the PC port though.

Firstly, while it may not be entirely Hello Games fault that this got over-hyped, it is entirely their fault that the hype was allowed to continue unchecked for so long. Sean Murray in particular has been saying things and answering questions in an extremely vague fashion for a long time now. It is only in the last few weeks that he's tried to back pedal on expectations a bit and he has on several occasions outright claimed that certain things would be in the game that it's clear now aren't, e.g. multiplayer. Yes, features get cut, things change, but being vague about them when you're under such scrutiny and the focus of so many hopes is unprofessional and the resulting backlash is, IMO, entirely deserved.

Secondly, they allowed the hype (and probably pressure from Sony, although that's entirely guesswork) to make them think the game was more than it is and set a price point that doesn't feel right for many people. If this had been released at a typical small studio, independent company price point of $20-40 or even if it had had a lower-priced early access period then I suspect that a lot of the current ire would have been dissipated.

F13 posters are, I suspect, generally unrepresentative of the general game buying population. I have nothing to back this up but my vague knowledge of what many of you do, your family situations, etc, but I'd be very surprised if as a group our average disposable income wasn't considerably higher than game buying populations as a whole. $60/£40 isn't a lot of money to many people here, but to large swathes of people in low income jobs or who's salaries have been stagnant for a long time now, full price games feel expensive. In the last 5 years I've probably bought 3 full priced games, and one of them was Minecraft at £15. And actually, one of them was Fallout 4 which I pre-ordered with a 20% discount!

Hello Games didn't dispel the undeserved hype their game was the focus of. That led to a lot of people paying full price for a game that they probably wouldn't have done if they'd had more honest information about it. I am guessing (lots of that in this post, I know) that they're getting a lot of Steam refund requests right now. I could add another overly wordy paragraph about the gaming presses part in all of this, but frankly I stopped caring about those shitclowns years ago.

[Falconeer]

18 months ago, Sean Murray answered 70 questions.

For the record, I haven't rewatched it but I think he said here that you wouldn't be able to play with your friends. He even said the game wouldn't be fun. HEH.

Fake add: with that said, I think there's a lot of fair criticism towards the game (Multiplayer vagueness for once!), but I disagree with the part about hype: I do not think Murray and Hello Games really did much to hype up the game. That's entirely on the players if you ask me, and Sony in this case. And I certainly don't think a company should spend any energy in trying to reduce the hype surrounding their game. Seriously, what? GUYS GUYS! STOP BEING EXCITED WE SUCK! Yeah sure. In fact, I am pretty sure they would have failed even if they tried because sometimes people just WANT to dream. Backlash or not, I am convinced they are for good reasons proud of the game they have made, and they are also filthy rich now on top of that.

[Sky]

I think it's a cool but imperfect game. I'm sure everyone at f13 would make an absolutely perfect game. Yoru excepted from this sarcasm, because he, you know, has actually made arguably the best minecraft mod :)

Speaking of Yoru's rant...you can refuel by 'moving' fuel onto the item, so I keep a stack of plutonium next to my suit. Still not an eloquent solution, but it's not too bad. Shield, on the other hand, should be rechargable same as a gun, because you'll need that in combat. Could be chalked up as a design choice to ramp up difficulty, so I give that a pass.

Honestly the only thing that has bugged me is another thing Y picks out: landing. Definitely needs a better landing mechanic. And possibly another pass on hitboxes, hiding behind/under structures while fighting sentinels can get a bit loose at times. Again, not a huge problem, but it needs another pass.

It's easier to write about the bad stuff, though. For the most part I'm enjoying it quite a bit and glad I got it. Right game at the right time kinda thing.

Very chill, relax and don't worry about gaming it too much. Wish I still smoked pot, would be perfect.

edit: I don't ever remember hearing anyone say it was multiplayer other than shared data ala Spore. Ever. It was one of the more entertaining things in the hype train, because if it had multiplayer it would've been the primary selling point and hammered over and over in press. That it wasn't puts the onus on morons who just want to believe something is true, and fuck those guys. Maybe now they can make America great again.

[Amarr HM]

For the record, I haven't rewatched it but I think he said here that you wouldn't be able to play with your friends. He even said the game wouldn't be fun. HEH.

At 0:59 he says explicitly says 'Yes' you can play with your friends and then follows up by saying you can play competitively.

I don't mind the lack of multiplayer myself, but the awful GUI and laggy framerate on a high end PC have induced me to request a refund and feel a little sad at the same time.

[Rendakor]

3 hours in and I'm on the fence about the game. A lot of the problems I have with it are UI related; the consolitis is very strong.

I'm not sure how to recharge my personal shields. Also, how does one get off the Atlas path? I'm interested in going a different route but I keep getting quest popups from Atlas.

[jakonovski]

I would imagine this is how Peter Molyneux became who he is: the discovery that you can make up all sorts of promises without having to keep them, and be rewarded for it.

[Teleku]

Yeah, this game is a big hit and miss.  Granted, I haven't had any of the technical issues you guys have.  Game runs great on my 1.5 year old system, almost no lag, near max settings.

You fight with the UI a ton, which is annoying.  Almost all of that is due to consolities though, so I can just blame that part on filthy console gamers again.  

The planets are varied and pretty neat.  Jumping up and down between systems is really cool.  I love finding all the random bits of technology, and slowly learning the words of the various alien races is neat.  I've always been an explorer at heart though, so ymmv.

Having said that....  there seems to be a criminally small amount of encounters.  Like, literally about 7 to 10 unique special events/features you can discover on a planet (there are hundreds of them, but they are just carbon copies of each other).  Unless it picks up as I progress, that is just mind boggling.  Maybe they just ran out of time, but a ton of their resources should have been devoted to the different special spawns that can happen on a planet.  Seriously needs over a 100 or something for a game like this.  That is also why I'm shocked at their hesitant support for modding.  Much like Minecraft, if you opened this game up to modders, the possibilities would be endless.  I'll hesitantly blame this on their decision to develop heavily for consoles as well.

No regrets so far, and I'm sure I can wring a few more hours out of it.  But unless they do a big post release content push, they desperately need to make this game as modable as possible to fill it with content.

[Sky]

Teleku, I do blame Sony for a LOT of stuff here.

That said, as an explorer and casual gamer, I'm really digging this one. I mean to sit down for a half hour this morning and 3 hours later had to pry myself away. Love the settings and style and there's just enough between the cracks to keep pulling me along.

edit: 8 hours into the game and I'm still in my first solar system (8 planets). Just having fun poking around mostly aimlessly.

[Engels]

I'm sorry for anyone having tech difficulties and I can understand the outrage around that, but I have been blessed with a virtually glitchless game. Also, all those bitching about how its a casual exploration game without a plot or a 'real' goal...did you even WATCH any of the available gameplay footage and massive advertising campaign? I went in with my eyes wide open and so far it has delivered on every single expectation that I had, and has even surprised me with some things I had overlooked upon first viewing. The language discovery for one.

I do see how it can turn into a grind, so I'll see how I feel in a week, but the pearl clutching mario cart gamers out there should just sftu already. The game wasn't meant for you in the first place, and you're just upset that a game got hyped that didn't fit your populist expectations.

[Venkman]

Glad I waited. Going to give it another week to see if they can work out the PC glitches. I'm very interested in it, but don't want to have a crappy tech issue that ruins it.

[Pennilenko]

Too busy playing it on PC and PS4 to complain...

[Soln]

argle bargle


Edit:  waiting on a new GPU card today to try on my 3 yr old PC.

[apocrypha]

but the pearl clutching mario cart gamers out there should just sftu already. The game wasn't meant for you in the first place, and you're just upset that a game got hyped that didn't fit your populist expectations.

Ugh, really?

I've watched this entire shit show from the sidelines, well aware from the start that it wasn't going to live up to the hype. But having misgivings about a developer/publisher claiming their game had features which it ended up not having, and not coming clean about that until the last minute is 'pearl clutching'?

If you're liking this game, then that's great, awesome. But a lot of people (I stress again, not me, this isn't self-interest, I've not bought it) feel that they've been misled by the devs and the gaming press, and that's not good for the industry in the long term.

And I certainly don't think a company should spend any energy in trying to reduce the hype surrounding their game. Seriously, what? GUYS GUYS! STOP BEING EXCITED WE SUCK! Yeah sure. In fact, I am pretty sure they would have failed even if they tried because sometimes people just WANT to dream. Backlash or not, I am convinced they are for good reasons proud of the game they have made, and they are also filthy rich now on top of that.

The line between what you've said there Falc and "It's OK to lie about your product in order to generate sales" is vanishingly small.

I've said this many times before, but games are no different from any other product. They exist to sell copies and make money. As consumers we should be afforded protection from deceptive business practices and gaming is not exempt from that. It's too easy to blame consumers for the failings of marketing and it's not a position I have any sympathy for.

This kind of shit is exactly why I've bought only three full price games in 5 years. I'm not sure engendering that attitude is sustainable for the gaming industry, unless all we want is more Pokemon Go clones.

[Rendakor]

I wish you could see what the reward was for certain things before accepting. I chose a gift instead of a black hole location from someone, only to get a duplicate schematic.

[01101010]

Fucking pirates.... 

[Teleku]

So found the station where I can choose to stay on atlas path, or find black holes to the center (or "free explore").  Stayed with atlas for now.  What changes with the other two ways?