It’s pretty amusing that this game went from over hyped to an absolute dumpster fire to probably one of the best space games ever made. One hell of a comeback story.
Honestly to me it’s more promising to see a game studio stick behind their game like this rather than having the initial game be good. A good studio will still have bad games, but knowing that a studio will stand behind their bad game and work on it until it’s good means a lot.
we just have to do some work on the overhyping a game and preorder part, but its looking like i might pick up this game
I got it off GamePass back in November 2020 for my One S and played it a lot. Work has kept me busy so I’ve had less time but I have bought it twice since then - once for PS5 and then when I bought my Series X.
It’s been worth it. I don’t play multiplayer much and I’ve missed most of the Expeditions but I enjoy it a lot every time I play.
You can follow the quests or not. I honestly enjoy exploring the different planets. The graphics are good. On my PS5 save, my home base is on a planet where the grass glows when the wind sweeps across it at night.
I’ll sit and just watch it throughout the game night.
I don’t see why it’s suddenly the best space game… The core mechanic seems to be the same as the original. Mine materials that are the same on every planet, so you can build space ships and better miners that take more materials and do it over and over again.
When I was playing on launch day, I had a really good first impression but it turned into disappointment, since all the planets had the same minerals. May as well stay on the first planet forever.
That is pretty reductive. Like, it’s a sim. You could describe just about any sim the same way. “You just do this thing to do that thing”. How is this any different from any other game?
I’m not saying it’s the best space game, but I had fun when I played it and it definitely didn’t just feel like I was mining materials just to mine more materials.
The problem is that NMS is very repetitive and bland. Learning alien words takes for-fucking-ever, finding freighter upgrades is one of the worst time sinks in the game, combat feels more tedious and padded out than that of Everquest, looking for “that one cool ship” or “cool looking weapon” is pure RNG and lucking out on it not coming as a C class, upgrading inventory space is either a system jumping time sink or “planetary exploration” time sink.
Nearly nothing you do in the game gives you a sense of accomplishment and, after 4-8 hours or so after first starting playing, you’re unlikely to look forward to any specific activity because “it’s fun”. There’s a lot “to do” but very little motivation to, like why even bother being the mayor of a settlement?
Even on permadeath the game offers no real challenge once you’re off the starting planet.
I think a lot of people are just very, very pleased with how well it’s being supported compared to its initial launch and how this game company has become an outlier in the industry. They conflate their love for the company’s business practices with the game’s mechanics. So while the game may be great, many subconsciously give it a boost because of its legacy.
Every planet doesn’t have every material you need for crafting everything. But a single solar system likely has most of it. There are key elements on every planet that are meant to make sure a player never gets stranded. I guess one could argue for that to be a game mode though if it isn’t already where you very well could end up on a planet and have no way to survive.
A lot of people like the gameplay loop from day one but the initial lies about how multiplayer worked was a driving force behind the unhappiness. Once that was fixed it was a shallow experience but a lot of people would have been content with it. Instead Hello Games keeps supporting it and putting out new content updates. There are still a lot of features and improvements people would like for the game and those very well may see the light of day with the passion Hello Games has shown for improving it. That’s why so many people think favorably of them. There are a ton of other bigger studios that would never show this level of dedication and community support.
I agree, they did the right thing and much more. But the game still doesn’t feel very fun. It’s missing a reason to do things beyond just exploration and seeing new randomly generated animals and colors.
I was hoping for it to have some Elite qualities where you would travel with rare cargo to make money, but it doesn’t even have any rare cargo or any demand for unique minerals on planets…
It’s not fun, which is the main problem. The devs have built a universe to explore but hasn’t accounted for that humans don’t think different shapes and colors are very interesting when it’s the same otherwise.
What, like Minecraft, still possibly the most popular game on Earth? I mean, all you do in Minecraft is mine the a couple of minerals that are the same on every seed, and use them to make better tools to mine minerals faster, and grow the same crops so you don’t starve, and do it over and over again.
but in minecraft it’s enjoyable!
not trying to be cheeky—i wrote up a long part about modding capacity and level of sandbox freedom etc., but i am sure you’re already very aware of that lol
so taking it as just vanilla: at the end of the day mining in minecraft feels relaxing and satisfying to me while in NMS it feels like a chore. i absolutely hate mining out ore deposits with a mining laser.
(breaking plants and minerals is kinda fun though)
like minecraft really nailed game feel
obviously this all depends on personal preference anyway, but if players have to do the same thing over and over again, then it needs to be very enjoyable in and off itself to do so.
Theres no suddenly about it. They took the well deserved heat after launch very much to heart and spend the next 8 odd years crafting it into the best space game out there imo. Best VR game too.
Its version 4.61 and, essentially, at least its own sequal. Its nothing like the launch day game.
Whoa, false scarcity, virtual goods tied to an online service, and nosebleed prices? What’s not to like?
Fwiw, you can get deep discounts CCU chaining ships. Ships can also be unofficially “sold” and “bought” after the fact. It’s done through gifting. For example, you can get the Hammerhead at the impound for less then half the price. The impound is also one of the higher priced sites to. There are also unofficial ships sales on reddit to that have even lower prices.
Edit-Looks like a time limited sale, nevertheless, SC-trades on reddit has some Hammerheads for around 500.
Wow, only $400 for a thing in a videogame? What a goddamn bargain, sign me right the fuck up!
I mean sure, but at the end of the day it’s a pretend spaceship, that you don’t own in any meaningful way, in a videogame that could go offline forever at any point that they deem it unprofitable to continue.
I can’t be alone in finding even the “deeply discounted” prices to be somewhat unreasonable. This is horse armour with ideas above its station.
probably one of the best space games ever made
Don’t stretch it. Maybe it could be #10 in a top 10, but when you have the likes of Elite Dangerous, Space Engineers, X4, Freelancer, plus little known indies like Empyrion Galactic Survival and Evochron Legends, it’ll hardly be anyone’s top choice.
Armada for the Sega Dreamcast is also better than NMS.
How so? Honestly asking.
One of those games I’m glad I bought at launch, although I’ve fired it up 3-4 times and struggled with the mechanics… it’s nice to know it’s still evolving and I can always start fresh again with the new content. If I wasn’t so deep into Helldivers I’d give it another go right now… but Democracy can’t wait!
Same. I keep picking it up every now and again but it really needs me to put a bit of time into it to understand all the new mechanics since launch. I’ll get to it one day!
I felt this same way until I jumped into the Omega expedition. It was an excellent crash course for all the game offers and I now feel way more comfortable jumping into the base game and doing whatever I feel up to.
Can you still play it? Been a while since I’ve played but last I knew the expeditions were limited-time thingies.
I tried the game two or three times sitting down with the “I want to play a space sim” mindset and could never get past the tutorial. Then the next time, it had clicked that it’s a survival crafter that just happens to have a space theme. When I sat down with that mindset and perspective on what I was in for, I suddenly throughly enjoyed the game.
The game just does a really bad job of showing you what it is trailers and other media. Sure, all the things it shows off are there, but they’re not the core of the game.
I waited to get involved until after the Echoes update last summer, and I truly enjoyed 100+ hours of the game.
It still does suffer from inevitably feeling really empty, with billions of copies of the same 4 different coloured/temperatured planets and 8 creature types, but it was still a heck of an experience.
and struggled with the mechanics…
Are you speaking towards the UI/UX, or the gameplay?
NMS development is the best redemption arc story in a long time.
The whole situation just made me believe Sean Murray really wanted to make a cool game but he got overwhelmed by the media attention and started running his mouth. Maybe he felt like he had to overpromise and say yes to everything he was asked? Hello Games was still an indie studio before it got all that attention.
If he had done it in bad faith it would have been much easier to cut his losses and run away with the money. Nearly 10 years of expansions wouldn’t come out of it if not for legitimate passion.
It also made their next game announcement pretty funny.
I think the fans & press deserve equal blame for the initial hype. At some point I saw a supercut of things Sean Murray said, then the resulting headlines and Reddit posts.
In an interview, the journalist asks: “Will you be able to play with your friends in a shared universe?” The answer: “Well…we hope that eventually there will be at least some multiplayer functionality, though maybe not on day one…like maybe you could explore one another’s planets or share pictures or something.”
Headline: “NO MANS SKY WILL LAUNCH WITH MULTIPLAYER!”
Reddit comments: “I’m already forming a guild, we’re going to play as bounty hunters chasing down other players who are pirates in glorious multiplayer space battles!!”
There were tons of examples of that. Journalists would poke and prod for a soundbite, take it out of context and exaggerate it, and the community would just go batshit with their expectations.
Well, with ship customization this game is finished enough for me to play it again.
That was the only thing left keeping me from being interested in the game. Finally, ship customization. Finally.
