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No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

polygon.com

121–130 of 176 posts

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what video game is low energy brain dead? they are designed to do exactly the opposite. sure, you may be sitting stationary in a chair/couch, but the endorphin rush from the game play is exhausting.

Lots of video games are low energy. Idles and incrementals, certainly. But I find things like Diablo to be pretty relaxing (or at least I play it that way), and tons of others. I can't really get into the FPS games anymore just because they _do_ require so much energy and attention.

i guess it's different for different people. for me, regardless of the game play type, it's exhausting. I can watch TV without issue, but playing games strains my eyes much much more than TV viewing. after an hour playing, i have to stop

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#122
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, it's more realistic. Unless you like playing hello kitty :)

Yeah no, I think I can easily play a game without.

Definitely not every game but a space rpg? It’s basically cutting out anything that humans genuinely find interesting on a primal level.

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#123
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no, I think I can easily play a game without.

Compare the videos linked elsewhere in this thread, the CP scenes are just so much richer. The starfield ones feel really fake imo.

I'm speaking more in general, not as a comparison between cyberpunk 2077 and starfield, there are plenty of games that do not have dark themes, and I don't think that any of that is required to make a good game.

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#124
post #120

I got tired of the core gameplay loop by about 85 hours. I had a decent home base (looked janky AF, but what am I, an architect?), one or two secondary bases, and a mid-size freighter. Once I got at least one of every variety of ship in a B-class or higher, there didn't feel like much else to aim for. I'd send guys off on freighter stuff to do quests, and then just kill time until they got back, sell their loot, do s…

The endless open world / survival / scavenger games are all like this for me. You learn the ropes, start playing well, and after a while go "now what?" In Rust for example people seem to wind up mindlessly picking off new players, or blowing up peoples bases to steal materials so they can... make explosives to blow up peoples bases.

An anecdote about Arma 3 Epoch mod.

Context: Arma is a milsim, and Epoch is a mod with basebuilding, where one can place a "frequency jammer" that creates a sphere around it where its owner can build a base (walls, doors, safes, etc), while others (non-owners) are prevented from building anything in the area.

A few friends and I played it for a while. Picked a server, built a base there, did some missions or just random squabbles with other folks, eventually got bored (or distracted by life events), abandoned it all, then repeated on some new server after a few weeks.

One day we were on a server where someone had managed to glitch the jammer underwater - easy to reach but it was considered impossible to destruct as it was out of reach of available firearms and explosives. We realized there was only one in-game weapon that was capable of firing underwater (SDAR), and it had very small damage numbers. Being really stubborn and persistent, we spent over 24+ hours straight, working in shifts, shooting at that jammer, while watching out for the base owners to ensure they can't get anywhere close to open the repair menu.

Upon the destruction of said jammer and announcing the victory, we all univocally decided that enough is enough and we've fully completed the game. Haven't played Arma ever since.

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of video games are low energy. Idles and incrementals, certainly. But I find things like Diablo to be pretty relaxing (or at least I play it that way), and tons of others. I can't really get into the FPS games anymore just because they _do_ require so much energy and attention.

i guess it's different for different people. for me, regardless of the game play type, it's exhausting. I can watch TV without issue, but playing games strains my eyes much much more than TV viewing. after an hour playing, i have to stop

I have the opposite problem; watching TV tires me out and makes me lethargic. I can't really get into TV watching unless it's a really solid show. Otherwise, I'm all about playing a solid game.

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#126
post #33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's not really a gamer, hearing "it gets tiring after 85 hours" as a negative blows my mind. 85 hours!

I've racked up over 900 hours on Team Fortress 2 and I'm still terrible at it. I also wonder what I would have learned or built in the time that I've played that game.

There are only three games approaching 1k hours or even exceeding it:

- Unreal Tournament (instagib)

- Stardew Valley

- Age of Empires 2

They all have one thing in common; they're extremely relaxing to play. Yes, even UT - I just turn my brain off and I stop thinking about life.

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#127
post #75

I got tired of the core gameplay loop by about 85 hours. I had a decent home base (looked janky AF, but what am I, an architect?), one or two secondary bases, and a mid-size freighter. Once I got at least one of every variety of ship in a B-class or higher, there didn't feel like much else to aim for. I'd send guys off on freighter stuff to do quests, and then just kill time until they got back, sell their loot, do s…

Yeah, very little of the things they've done since launch have fixed the obnoxiously repetitive core gameplay loop. And everything except the procedural planet gen is literal copy-and-paste. How about, for the next update, they add tons and tons of new buildings, POI, and activities? Maybe a bit more variety to the enemies? Or maybe a bit of lorebuilding on why nearly every fucking planet in the universe is populated…

There IS lore explaining mecha-PETA, and also all these oddities that you mention.

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#128
post #4

I love this game so much. First of all, it's kind of technologically astounding. You can get in your spaceship and take off from a planet and fly to another one and land, all without any loading screens. The planets themselves are sculptable isosurfaces (only to an extent, though; you can't drill a hole through to the other side) and littered with points of interest, unique animals and plants. It's quasi-social -- yo…

> fundamentally a mellow, solitary sandbox to play in however you'd like.

So a Minecraft competitor, basically? I can see that. I have played it and enjoyed it, I think Minecraft does it better overall but some variation is nice.

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#129
post #65
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. I was hoping for a persistent multiplayer and modernized Freelancer 2 but i got a very pretty, but mile wide and inch deep game. God what i would give for a modern reimagining of Freelancer 2...

It is only a spiritual successor, but have you been following Star Citizen?

Sca..ehm Star Citizen is such a weird subject. The game seem to be on a completely different timeline than any other game, so its hard to form an objective opinion on it. From one point of view it might look like vaporware on life support, but from another it might actually shape into solid game in a decade. We just have no real data to infer from, because no other game dev story comes close to SC.

I wish that game the best, and I so so wish for it to actually shape into something great, but at the same time I have given up all hope on it, and I still cant imagine investing a single dollar into it (I think they got more than enough money to make a solid game already).

Re: No Man's Sky just keeps getting better

#130
Spending last weekend playing and probably same for this one. I have to admit it is in parts quite fun game.

But soon it becomes obvious that while there is even too many things at one time all of them are pretty simple and then you come across the same thing, but in different place... So depth seems somewhat lacking.

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