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No Man's Sky Cosmos

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Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#321

Post by vor_ »

JohnMakin wrote: post #34
big-chungus4 wrote: post #29

What are people on about, there is tons to do in NMS, tons of missions, expeditions, build bases, build a corvet, hunt rate parts, ships, rifles, creatures, manage a settlement, automate crafting chains, find a lucrative trading route, and this new update apps even more things. I'd never consider NMS anything close to empty, there is so much variety in the content

I think people are regurgitating takes from early in the game's development - the game of the last few years is absolutely nothing like the early one and I agree, there is a surprising amount of stuff to do.

Oh, I don't think so. The systems in the game are very shallow, and overall, everything is too easy, which makes the game feel bland. There are almost no stakes. That leads to a feeling of nothing to do because none of it feels worth doing.

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#322

Post by vor_ »

JohnMakin wrote: post #145
rc5150 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe you're discounting that people have agency and can decide that a game they are playing actively doesn't tick their boxes. I reinstalled it last week and put in about two hours before uninstalling again. Mile wide and inch deep is exactly the way to describe it.

> I think maybe you're discounting that people have agency and can decide that a game they are playing actively doesn't tick their boxes. > Mile wide and inch deep is exactly the way to describe it. Aren't you doing the same thing you're saying? Plenty of comments in this thread disagree with your assessment. If the game isn't for you, that's one thing, but it's a factually untrue thing to say "there's nothing to do,…

> If the game isn't for you, that's one thing, but it's a factually untrue thing to say "there's nothing to do, game is sparse after a few hours and novelty wears off" like many comments say.

Every time I come back to the game and try a new update, the game is indeed sparse after a few hours, and the novelty wears off...

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#323

Post by ghshephard »

helle253 wrote: post #5

It's amazing how, every time i come back to NMS, the whole thing feels like... nothing. It's a very cool and ambitious project, but there's fundamentally nothing substantial to it in terms of gameplay. It still feels to me, a decade later, more like a very very impressive tech demo than a video game

If you are interested in the sandbox element, and space, and building - but want character - Satisfactory pulled me in for roughly 1200 hours over three years. I"ve got the scenery, and new discovery's burned in to my brain - elements of the landscape are more vivid in my memory than a lot of real places I've visited.

What's interesting is that there is zero procedural generation - single world with about 20 Biome, each one with all sorts of character. Monsters are incredibly well balanced, and the sheer terror I got from the spiders (which I think are a tad OP - especially the ones that launch)_ triggered my fight-flight reflex (mostly flight) more than any other game I can recall.

The game can be played in so many different ways too - you can take the factorio/big factory build out approach and speed run that, or just spend your time exploring, or, perhaps best of all - watch hundreds of hours of Youtube Videos to get a sense of the architect aesthetic that some of the top players bring to it. Epic Tech Tree. Cute back story.

I consider it the greatest Sandbox/space game ever - I don't know if we'll ever see anything like it again.

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#324

Post by famahar »

kjs3 wrote: post #71
jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I have tried coming back to the game multiple times and every time I just feel bored and underwhelmed by the whole experience.

Yeah...I played it for probably a couple of hundred hours...and it wasn't that fun. In fact, it's boring. And I've come back a too many times because someone (like some of the commenters here) said "no, man...get the new update! It's a Totally Different Game!". So I jump back in, and it's different to varying degrees...and still boring. Just because there's "lots to do! new quests! rare items to find!", doesn't mean…

What made you play a game for a couple of hundred hours to then conclude that it is boring? I played the first release and put in roughly 100 hours. The first 90 hours were wonderful. Eventually I realized that I wasn't enjoying it as much so I put it down. But I would never call those 90 hours boring.

I felt like I got a lot of value out of it, and have fond memories of discovering interesting planets. I really view NMS as an artistic experience. I don't care for the gameplay loops. I played this game like an curious explorer. There are infinite planets, many feel the same but occasionally you land on something so special that no one else has ever seen.

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#325

Post by vor_ »

efilife wrote: post #273
kjs3 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noone said it was empty. Noone said there wasn't a lot of 'stuff' in NMS. What many of us are saying is that all that stuff doesn't make the game fun.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628715 top comment is all about the game being empty

The comment you're linking actually says that the game "feels like nothing" and that there's nothing substantial to the gameplay. It doesn't even use the word "empty."

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#326

Post by vor_ »

uzish wrote: post #63

I think facts would be helpful for this discussion: 1. Total Revenue - ~$500m-$700m 2. Copies Sold - ~15-20m 3. Steam Review Score: 84.36% 4. 40 Free Major Updates I don't know where the negative comments are coming from. Maybe players who played early. NMS is a great example of a developer who was devoted to their customer base, kept updating the game for free, and saw great market success in return. This is a story…

> I don't know where the negative comments are coming from. Maybe players who played early.

A lot of people simply aren't as enamored with the shallow gameplay, even in the current version. I'm not surprised that they've sold a lot over the years since they've been putting out free content updates year after year to lure people into reinstalling it every six months or so.

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#327

Post by michaelmior »

swat535 wrote: post #187
kjs3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much the perfect description of NMS. Every planet is 'different', every site on the planets are 'different', but not different in any meaningful way. Oh look...this planet has 4 legged animals that are green and bumpy and the last one they were brown and spiky...but they move the same and act the same. Yawn.

It's not just NMS.. the "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" is a plight of all AAA games these days. Ubisfot is a perfect example, look at their "Watch Dogs: Legion" for example. They decided to get creative and give you random characters generated by AI.. it turned out to be a disaster. Another one is their Far cry games, where they copy and paste the same events but slightly different, all over the map and call it a day. I t…

I personally really enjoyed Watch Dogs: Legion. It wasn't so much that each individual was very unique. Moreso the concept of being able to become anyone.

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#328

Post by vor_ »

t-writescode wrote: post #111
goatking wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone disagrees and I don't really see negative comments about the devs or the studio. The problem is the game itself, gameplay wise. It's just boring for many (including me)

That’s fine, it has a sustained concurrent players online of > 7k every day for the last 6 months [0]. Few games on Steam achieve that. While several people are complaining about a one-time-cost game with an absurd amount of updates that had a rough launch, thousands of people are continuously happy, the subreddit expresses joy. It’s okay to “not get it”; but at some level, this much hate and dogpiling over a game th…

What hate? What dogpiling? People are simply talking about how they aren't into the game and find it shallow.

I sense a lot of unwarranted defensiveness from certain fans of the game. Having sustained concurrent players on Steam isn't going to transform the game into something it's not for the people who just aren't into it.

I've relaunched it multiple times over the years when a new content update comes out, and I get the same feeling of shallow blandness every time and move on. The core gameplay simply does not do it for me.

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#329

Post by SwellJoe »

cchance wrote: post #318
SwellJoe wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best things about the game (and it is a good game at this point, they continued to add to it at a steady pace since launch) are the human written stories. But, once you've exhausted those human stories, it's like wandering around a few billion abandoned malls. Interesting the first few times, but grows boring pretty fast. But also, the worst thing about the human-written stories is that they're often transparentl…

The thing is they could probably have easily had the pvp and economy and soverignty of eve, and that would have been amazing

There really are a lot of things that they could do it with it, but they've already done a lot of things over the years; you can't say they haven't tried things, though I can't say they've always delivered a fun experience with the various experiments. They did pets and pet battles (boring to me), various building ideas (freighters and corvettes, bases, moderately more interesting), trading (I don't care for the implementation, feels detached), salvage, colonization (you become the governor of existing towns and make them run more efficiently and build stuff), etc. And, the worlds and critters got more varied several times over the years since release.

In short, I found it a very fun game until it wasn't, and then I had no reason to log back in. There are things you can do to make your own fun outside the story line; grind for a better freighter, find an build on interesting/valuable planets, find the coolest ships.

Once the story ran out, I was pretty much done, but even if you just play the story and then quit, it's still an excellent value! I got many hours of enjoyment out of a game I paid maybe $20 for. It's a hell of an entertainment deal. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it all the way through in recent-ish times. Even if you only play the story out one time and don't find any of the other stuff fun, it's still a very enjoyable game with hours of fun play at a good price that runs well on any decent system.

If I were a designer on the game, I'd find more reasons for human players to be in the same places at the same time and have their actions have a lasting impact in the universe. Riding in someone else's ship (which is what corvettes added) aint it, though. Projects to colonize specific worlds where anyone can stake a claim in a landrush type thing and maybe you setup competitive trade networks or battle for terrain or strategic resources or whatever, would be super fun, I think.

And, I wish space battles were more skill-based, as well. I've never played Eve, but I assume the space battles require skill and strategy and not just the biggest/baddest ship? So, if NMS got really good space battle mechanics, they could implement crazy cool space wars. But, they've got to shrink the game world for that to work (not literally delete the billions of planets, just give players a reason to all fight over one planet or system). Maybe competing for unique resources, like the spice on Dune.

I'll definitely try to find time to log back in and check out the new stuff. Whether it keeps me coming back after I try out all the new stuff and run whatever new missions/stories they've introduced remains to be seen. But, I don't think anyone plays it for the "billions of worlds" thing, because they're all the same after you see the first couple dozen.

Re: No Man's Sky Cosmos

#330

Post by bigyabai »

dansquizsoft wrote: post #302
Ars_Armegis wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of criticism from no man's sky, like this one, comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what no man's sky is, i fear... No Man's Sky really is just a sandbox game. a sandbox game doesn't need infinitely complex mechanics, it just needs to give you a blank canvas to do what you want to do... minecraft has like what 40 biomes, no man's sky has practically infinite biomes, is that not enough? you can build a u…

Oh, my mistake, now that you've explained it like this it is magically fun for me now.

I don't get the feeling that they're wrong. No Man's Sky is now more-or-less the game that was originally promised. Many people that bought it at-release are happy with the turnaround, myself included.

If the game doesn't appeal to you, then that's fine too. But overall the game fills an interesting and accessible niche beneath games like X4: Foundations and Elite Dangerous.

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