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No Man's Sky OT

ALIEN-gunner

By ALIEN-gunner
in The Spawn Point

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legend

legend

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, TwinIon said:

I picked this up when they announced the VR mode but I haven't put too much time in. Being able to carry an unlimited amount makes a huge difference. I'll certainly have to give it a go.

 

Just to be clear, it's not truly unlimited, just a huge increase that in practice should feel unlimited. The amount of resource you could carry in one slot went from 250 to 10,000; so a 40x increase.

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TwinIon

TwinIon

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I popped back into the game for a bit to try out the VR.

 

My re-introduction to the game reminded me just how freaking unintuitive nearly everything about it is. I couldn't figure out how to craft a basic commodity for quite a while, constantly getting lost in a tangled mess of menus. There isn't even a map of controls. You can remap all the controls, but the remapping screen doesn't even show you the default key. Apparently the transporter that I'd built at my base now required power to work, which seems like a real step back in usability. I also had just recently gotten a giant freighter, but I hardly recall what I'm even supposed to do with it. I'm considering starting over just to figure out how to play the stupid game.

 

As to the VR experience, it's somewhere between amazing and terrible. It's quite impressive that this is the full game in VR. No limits on what you can do, no need for a different save, just a decision to play in VR or not. It's great.

 

It's also a huge mess.

 

The HUD is always pointed forwards, which I guess makes sense if you're playing on a PSVR, but if you have a room scale setup it's incredibly stupid. This is a game where you're wearing a helmet all the time, having a HUD that is attached to that helmet, and therefore your vision, only makes sense. Then you get into the menus, which are already a jumbled mess outside of VR, are even worse to navigate in VR. There's nothing fun about navigating strange floating 2D menus in VR. Almost everything, from the way you change gun modes to the way you interact with objects is cumbersome or lacking. There are games that have done pretty well in this regard, but I think the rule of thumb in VR is to stay away from menus as much as possible.

 

Then you get to flying a ship, the experience that I expected to be the best, is still pretty messy. Inside my little ship there is a ton of detail, but you can only interact with the throttle, the control stick, and two handles on either side of the cockpit that do nothing. There are a bunch of visible buttons, but none are interactive. When I got an incoming radio message, I couldn't interact with the notification, I had to bring up some jankey menu to accept the call. Actually flying was mostly fine, but not great. Using a joystick with the Oculus touch controllers is odd, but it works well enough. For some reason there is no fine control of the throttle as far as I could tell. You can have it full ahead, full reverse, or in neutral. It seems like there could be an analog acceleration option using one of the joysticks if fine control of a throttle is too hard. There's also the issue of travel time. I imagine it's a function of how the game works or maybe it was even a gameplay choice, but traveling a few minutes on a screen is much more bearable than doing the same in VR.

 

This is a game that has been iterated on in very significant ways since launch, so I suspect that some of this will get ironed out over time, but right now it's hard to recommend playing NMS in VR for any real length of time. I might give the game another shot, and I might even try the VR mode out occasionally, but it's not the ultimate VR demo it could be. 

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TwinIon

TwinIon

Posted
Posted

I've actually put a decent amount of time into No Man's Sky since the update, but none of it in VR. I started a new save from scratch and I've gotten much further than my original save. The increased stack size of Beyond is an incredible improvement to the game, to the point that it's bewildering to me that it took so long for them to do. I've largely been enjoying the game, and I appreciate all that they've added to it, but it's still a really messy game.

 

Obviously it's a game about discovery, but intentionally or not, it's a game where you largely have to discover the basic gameplay mechanics as you go along. So many things that make incredible differences are either never explained, explained in entirely optional quests, or relegated to occasional tips that you might not get for dozens of hours, and might not even notice when they do pop up. It makes a quite impressive game into an often frustrating experience. 

 

Then there are the little quality of life issues that I can hardly believe have survived through years of refinement. How is it that learning languages takes so long, or that I have to sit through the exact same text conversations with every freaking alien to learn a new word? Why in the world can't I just sell a ship, and why isn't there any kind of ship market? Why is it that low level resources maintain such prominence forever? (I can be building the most advanced tech ever, have thousands of refined materials, but still need to go find more ferrite dust for some metal plates. Why not just let me build 5 of them from a couple pure ferrite instead?) 

 

There are also some pretty significant issues with the larger direction of the game. Why is it that the vast majority of in game progress is marked by storage space? How is it that this game about exploration is also trying so hard to keep me in the same place? Why is it that the only real barriers to exploration are resource consumption? After just a couple hours you have everything you need to go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything. On the one hand it's great, but at the same time, it makes the gameplay loop rather unsatisfying.

 

Again, I've put a bunch of hours into the game now and I've largely enjoyed it, but I think my time with the game is reaching an end. I was playing to level up my stuff so that I could go do cool things around the galaxy, but I think I've experienced pretty much everything in the process of getting more stuff. The sandbox of NMS is unparalleled, but it's still a really disjointed experience.

 

 

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Paperclyp

Paperclyp

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25 minutes ago, ARZ said:

I finally bought it....black friday sale :)

Looking forward to finally giving it a shot.

 

Have to wonder though...all these free massive updates, how are they making money?

The game sold really well initially. I think they're probably doing OK. Now I think they're partially trying to win back favor for their next project. 

 

I really like the game now. It's pretty fleshed out and just more smartly designed. I hope you like it. 

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Chairslinger

Chairslinger

Posted
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On 9/18/2020 at 11:33 AM, Pikachu said:

 

 

 

I don't even remember what update was current the last time I tried to get into the game. I thought It might have even been all the way back at Foundation, but judging by my trophy list I think it was Pathfinder.

 

I should really sit down and try to get into it. My inability to get into the game wasn't even like some people where I was disappointed with what the game lacked at launch. I just found everything really unintuitive like @TwinIon said.

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Chairslinger

Chairslinger

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Ok guys, I downloaded the 12GB patch to bring the game up to date.

 

I have a game save from August of 2018, which, as I mentioned before, I think was me giving Pathfinder a shot. Got 4 hours on that game save.

 

Any suggestions on whether I should try to use that file or just start new? I am leaning towards the latter because I don't remember anything about that game anyway and with so many subsequent updates I am thinking it might just be better to start from scratch.

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skillzdadirecta

skillzdadirecta

Posted
Posted
On 9/25/2020 at 11:33 AM, ARZ said:

Man, I haven't played this in a while, but have downloaded every update as it came out - so I INTENDED to get back to it, lol

 

BTW, that bridge you run across in the beginning of the video - no railings, VERY unsafe!

I haven't played this game in four years. Still own it though... maybe I'll pop it in at some point to see what's going on. 

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