6 ms·

People keep saying that. I ended up biting the bullet after the latest "game changing" update. It's barely a game at all. It's still a walking simulator. The e

by remram 2y ago

People keep saying that. I ended up biting the bullet after the latest "game changing" update. It's barely a game at all. It's still a walking simulator. The environment is great, and there is some variety. But there is no objective or opposition, not even a story (a little robot tells you to do stuff). It's a sandbox, an engine one could build a game in (and they might someday?) They added some construction stuff, so the game will say "go and build a house" and you do that. Or "go build a blueprint machine" and now you have more blueprints. But what is any of it for? You can just sit in your cockpit. It all seems so pointless. Like they have seen other survival games and copied some mechanics over without understanding what makes a survival game. It is a really puzzling experience, I can't understand what they were thinking.

talldayo 2y ago
If you think it's bad now, imagine how bad it was for those of us that pre-ordered it. It was a dadgum mess back then. Most people are warming up to this game because they're delivering on the original game concept and still going the extra mile. No Man's Sky was criticized at launch because the gameplay was nothing like the trailer had suggested, and the updates since launch have really and truly fixed that complaint. No, there isn't EVA in space or serious FPS combat or even well tuned space dogfights. But none of that was really part of the original promise, and looking at the utterly derelict state of games that try to thread all those needles (cough cough, Star Citizen), I'm glad No Man's Sky went it's own way.
- Kye 2y ago
  You can walk out on to the outside of freighters if you install the right module. I forget which one, but I got a nice picture from the outside. https://bsky.app/profile/kyefox.com/post/3lgvtgt7zas2q https://bsky.app/profile/kyefox.com/post/3lgvtgt7zas2q
ziddoap 2y ago
>It's still a walking simulator. I don't know how many different ways to say it. We all enjoy different types of games! You obviously aren't a fan of sandbox games, lots of people aren't either. Or maybe it's just this sandbox game. That's fine too. But it is pretty objectively a great example of taking an absolutely abysmal launch and turning it into something that a decent amount of people (doesn't mean everyone!) still enjoy and talk favorably about. It still sells copies. It still keeps the lights on at Hello Games. I cannot think of a single other game that had such an awful launch that has, 10 years later, enjoyed mostly positive reviews. Cyberpunk might be the closest.
- Tarsul 2y ago
  I think the craziest turnaround story was Final Fantasy XIV, which was so bad at release that the following shitstorms meant that everyone expected it would go the way most MMOs go (soon forgotten). But not with Square-Enix (who had a money maker with their previous MMO Final Fantasy 11) who commited to revamping the whole game which took basically 3 years but in the end it became a really good game with a lot of happy players. (I have not played it myself so would like to listen to what players themselves say!)
  - musicale 2y ago
    FFXIV is an excellent game, with multiple exceptional expansions (Heavensward and Shadowbringers being particularly great) and a generous free trial mode that doesn't limit hours (!) and includes the first three games/expansions and a decent endgame. It also includes keyboard/mouse and controller support and cross-play across PC/Mac/PS5/PS4/Xbox. It's worthy of the Final Fantasy name, and Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of Final Fantasy) actually plays it as well.
- remram 2y ago
  I enjoy sandboxes. I like Minecraft, Terraria, etc. "Make a gold axe so you can dig further" is something to work forward. Make an anvil so you can craft new equipment to explore, sure. Here it's "make a qreblz machine because the voice tells you to". And then you can craft a wewrkz. Why.
  - efilife 2y ago
    nobody actually crafts golden axes and anvils are not used to created new equipment
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    Totally understandable. But I still think you've missed (or are just ignoring) the point of my original comment. I didn't claim it's an objectively good game that everyone enjoys. It's an objectively good demonstration of taking a shit launch and turning it around into a success story.
csallen 2y ago
This was my impression, too. I've been reading years of hype, so I bought the game a few months ago, and I was unimpressed. But the fact that it's kind of an objective-less sandbox wasn't what got me. I've played plenty of open world games and enjoyed them. In fact, even in games like Morrowind or Starfield or Grand Theft Auto or the like, which have big worlds and specific objectives, I've always found myself ignoring the quests and preferring to explore on my own terms. I remember hopping around in Morrowind as a kid, trying to become as powerful as possible, and seeking out baddies to best. Then in Grand Theft Auto I'd go on epic crime sprees to see how long I could elude the authorities. And in Starfield I built an incredible network of trading posts that spanned the galaxy to see how much I could enrich myself. What made these games fun is that, despite not following any missions or objectives, I was able to do impressive and interesting things and have fun. Perhaps that's possible in No Man's Sky, but in my first couple hours of playing, it didn't seem like it. It seemed liked I'd be going around doing boring and uninteresting things, and that it wouldn't be fun. So it's not that it was a sandbox that bothered me, but that it was a sandbox devoid of fun.
jmyeet 2y ago
It's like describing a bucket of random Lego pieces "not a toy". It's a game. It just might not be the game for you. Some people buy a Lego set, follow the instructions and make whatever the set is and that's it. That's fine. Other people will build out ideas with whatever pieces they have. Yet other people will buy specific pieces to build out some Lego vision they have, some of which are truly incredible. It's also like Minecraft. Are you just playing survival mode? Or are you playing creatively to build out some vision of a city or a building or even a computer? NMS is really self-directed play. The campaign is really just a tutorial. Are you going to go out and find and max out the best ships? Build an interesting base? Find a particular world to build your base on that has an aesthetic you want? That's up to you. I've put hundreds of hours into NMS although not for a few years. I first got into it after the Next update IIRC, which was a massive improvement at the time. What I'd like to see with one of these updates is way more attention on base building as I think that area is kinda weak. Flattening ground is awkward. Base components don't snap to wood/stone/metal components for some reason. They could do so much more with this.
- Kye 2y ago
  That's the same thing I wanted out of it. Give me Minecraft on pretty planets. None of the environmental mods for Minecraft come close to any random NMS planet.
scoofy 2y ago
I've never played it, so I really can't speak to the though, but my obvious comparison is Minecraft. I really think the deep lore of Minecraft does a lot of work. When you find a new and interesting random place to explore, it usually ties in with your view of the place you are in, and eventually you find your way to an ending of sorts. Another similar game from my youth that was the same was Wing Commander: Privateer. It was a sandbox, where a game suddenly appears after you've been exploring for months, but it's not much more than some cut scenes within the sandbox. I have no qualms with a sandbox game, but I'd prefer it were generally tied into a narrative, either in a lore narrative or with a direct story.
xiande04 2y ago
The genre is called "sandbox" or "simulation". See Minecraft, Garry's Mod, The Sims, etc. Not all genres are for everyone.
Rooster61 2y ago
> But there is no objective or opposition, not even a story (a little robot tells you to do stuff). It's a sandbox, an engine one could build a game in (and they might someday?) I've found a very different experience. There seem to be several main story threads to follow, as well as the addition of a few interesting sidequests (I'm in the middle of the one about hacking and reverse engineering one of the sentinels). And that's not even counting the expeditions they come up with from time to time. I particularly enjoyed working through the one that had the Normandy from Mass Effect as the end prize.
FumblingBear 2y ago
All of the other replies to you seem to give examples of other sandbox games that are successful / fun and suggest that maybe you just don't like the genre, but as an avid fan of sandbox games, and many of the other titles given by other posters, I still agree with you. No Man's Sky feels devoid of any personality or interesting content in a particularly unique way. No amount of updates will ever fix for me what feels like a fundamental gameplay loop issue. All of the layers of systems they've added with each new update still just feel __bad__. I'm glad so many have found a way to enjoy the game, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when none of them seem to address the issue of "collect arbitrary resources to build gear to collect other arbitrary resources ad nauseum" in a way that I just find fundamentally unsatisfying. I still understand that reductive description can apply to many of the other games I actually enjoy (i.e. Minecraft, etc.) but that's what's so strange to me about NMS—by all means, I __should__ like the game. But I still think it's a miserable experience devoid of any real meaning. Even if the point is to find your own meaning in the systems it provides, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels so much worse than any of the others. Maybe someone else can better articulate why it feels so bad, but to me, despite all of the work they've put on the game, it still feels so devoid of meaning.
- mebizzle 2y ago
  I think it is both an egregious example of the "farm this to craft this to farm this..." gameplay loop and that other aspects of the gameplay are too shallow to hold it up once you get bored of the crafting and building loop. And I say this as a fan of the game lol
  - parineum 2y ago
    I wouldn't mind it if building didn't seem pointless. You travel with your ship but build on planets that you are meant to quickly abandon. The exploration and building aspects are in opposition to each other so you can't really hop in between them when you get bored without starting over next time.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
1shooner 2y ago
I found it to be the grind half of a game, the chores you do to make the fun part more fun. But there is no fun part. The creative part is all prefabricated, and the exploration is very low-dimensional variation on templates that quickly blend together.
m463 2y ago
I got it about a month ago. I think it is janky. Everything about the controls, movement, camera is ... well it doesn't seem solid/decent. Maybe there's some sort of control-remapping or config file tweaks that can make it more tolerable.
h0us3 2y ago
Comments like this make no sense to me either. All video games are empty time sinks at the end of the day. It’s a matter of what people want their escape to look and sound like. Anyone expecting real world prestige for 100 percenting the last Mario? It’s all still literally accomplishing sitting on the couch only barely rising above passive consumption of entertainment. Asking “what does it all mean” to everything gets exhausting. Human existence is arbitrary; it happened because it could.
lithos 2y ago
Play during the events. Essentially you get a task list and set path to complete the event, mechanically just for some shiny cosmetic stuff and a really basic lore dump for the event. But the reality is that it feels like an MMO-lite due to the fact that everyone else is on the same handful of planets.

by remram 2y ago

talldayo 2y ago

If you think it's bad now, imagine how bad it was for those of us that pre-ordered it. It was a dadgum mess back then. Most people are warming up to this game because they're delivering on the original game concept and still going the extra mile. No Man's Sky was criticized at launch because the gameplay was nothing like the trailer had suggested, and the updates since launch have really and truly fixed that complaint. No, there isn't EVA in space or serious FPS combat or even well tuned space dogfights. But none of that was really part of the original promise, and looking at the utterly derelict state of games that try to thread all those needles (cough cough, Star Citizen), I'm glad No Man's Sky went it's own way.

Kye 2y ago
You can walk out on to the outside of freighters if you install the right module. I forget which one, but I got a nice picture from the outside. https://bsky.app/profile/kyefox.com/post/3lgvtgt7zas2q https://bsky.app/profile/kyefox.com/post/3lgvtgt7zas2q

ziddoap 2y ago

>It's still a walking simulator. I don't know how many different ways to say it. We all enjoy different types of games! You obviously aren't a fan of sandbox games, lots of people aren't either. Or maybe it's just this sandbox game. That's fine too. But it is pretty objectively a great example of taking an absolutely abysmal launch and turning it into something that a decent amount of people (doesn't mean everyone!) still enjoy and talk favorably about. It still sells copies. It still keeps the lights on at Hello Games. I cannot think of a single other game that had such an awful launch that has, 10 years later, enjoyed mostly positive reviews. Cyberpunk might be the closest.

Tarsul 2y ago
I think the craziest turnaround story was Final Fantasy XIV, which was so bad at release that the following shitstorms meant that everyone expected it would go the way most MMOs go (soon forgotten). But not with Square-Enix (who had a money maker with their previous MMO Final Fantasy 11) who commited to revamping the whole game which took basically 3 years but in the end it became a really good game with a lot of happy players. (I have not played it myself so would like to listen to what players themselves say!)
- musicale 2y ago
  FFXIV is an excellent game, with multiple exceptional expansions (Heavensward and Shadowbringers being particularly great) and a generous free trial mode that doesn't limit hours (!) and includes the first three games/expansions and a decent endgame. It also includes keyboard/mouse and controller support and cross-play across PC/Mac/PS5/PS4/Xbox. It's worthy of the Final Fantasy name, and Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of Final Fantasy) actually plays it as well.
remram 2y ago
I enjoy sandboxes. I like Minecraft, Terraria, etc. "Make a gold axe so you can dig further" is something to work forward. Make an anvil so you can craft new equipment to explore, sure. Here it's "make a qreblz machine because the voice tells you to". And then you can craft a wewrkz. Why.
- efilife 2y ago
  nobody actually crafts golden axes and anvils are not used to created new equipment
- ziddoap 2y ago
  Totally understandable. But I still think you've missed (or are just ignoring) the point of my original comment. I didn't claim it's an objectively good game that everyone enjoys. It's an objectively good demonstration of taking a shit launch and turning it around into a success story.

csallen 2y ago

This was my impression, too. I've been reading years of hype, so I bought the game a few months ago, and I was unimpressed. But the fact that it's kind of an objective-less sandbox wasn't what got me. I've played plenty of open world games and enjoyed them. In fact, even in games like Morrowind or Starfield or Grand Theft Auto or the like, which have big worlds and specific objectives, I've always found myself ignoring the quests and preferring to explore on my own terms. I remember hopping around in Morrowind as a kid, trying to become as powerful as possible, and seeking out baddies to best. Then in Grand Theft Auto I'd go on epic crime sprees to see how long I could elude the authorities. And in Starfield I built an incredible network of trading posts that spanned the galaxy to see how much I could enrich myself. What made these games fun is that, despite not following any missions or objectives, I was able to do impressive and interesting things and have fun. Perhaps that's possible in No Man's Sky, but in my first couple hours of playing, it didn't seem like it. It seemed liked I'd be going around doing boring and uninteresting things, and that it wouldn't be fun. So it's not that it was a sandbox that bothered me, but that it was a sandbox devoid of fun.

jmyeet 2y ago

It's like describing a bucket of random Lego pieces "not a toy". It's a game. It just might not be the game for you. Some people buy a Lego set, follow the instructions and make whatever the set is and that's it. That's fine. Other people will build out ideas with whatever pieces they have. Yet other people will buy specific pieces to build out some Lego vision they have, some of which are truly incredible. It's also like Minecraft. Are you just playing survival mode? Or are you playing creatively to build out some vision of a city or a building or even a computer? NMS is really self-directed play. The campaign is really just a tutorial. Are you going to go out and find and max out the best ships? Build an interesting base? Find a particular world to build your base on that has an aesthetic you want? That's up to you. I've put hundreds of hours into NMS although not for a few years. I first got into it after the Next update IIRC, which was a massive improvement at the time. What I'd like to see with one of these updates is way more attention on base building as I think that area is kinda weak. Flattening ground is awkward. Base components don't snap to wood/stone/metal components for some reason. They could do so much more with this.

Kye 2y ago
That's the same thing I wanted out of it. Give me Minecraft on pretty planets. None of the environmental mods for Minecraft come close to any random NMS planet.

scoofy 2y ago

I've never played it, so I really can't speak to the though, but my obvious comparison is Minecraft. I really think the deep lore of Minecraft does a lot of work. When you find a new and interesting random place to explore, it usually ties in with your view of the place you are in, and eventually you find your way to an ending of sorts. Another similar game from my youth that was the same was Wing Commander: Privateer. It was a sandbox, where a game suddenly appears after you've been exploring for months, but it's not much more than some cut scenes within the sandbox. I have no qualms with a sandbox game, but I'd prefer it were generally tied into a narrative, either in a lore narrative or with a direct story.

xiande04 2y ago

The genre is called "sandbox" or "simulation". See Minecraft, Garry's Mod, The Sims, etc. Not all genres are for everyone.

Rooster61 2y ago

> But there is no objective or opposition, not even a story (a little robot tells you to do stuff). It's a sandbox, an engine one could build a game in (and they might someday?) I've found a very different experience. There seem to be several main story threads to follow, as well as the addition of a few interesting sidequests (I'm in the middle of the one about hacking and reverse engineering one of the sentinels). And that's not even counting the expeditions they come up with from time to time. I particularly enjoyed working through the one that had the Normandy from Mass Effect as the end prize.

FumblingBear 2y ago

All of the other replies to you seem to give examples of other sandbox games that are successful / fun and suggest that maybe you just don't like the genre, but as an avid fan of sandbox games, and many of the other titles given by other posters, I still agree with you. No Man's Sky feels devoid of any personality or interesting content in a particularly unique way. No amount of updates will ever fix for me what feels like a fundamental gameplay loop issue. All of the layers of systems they've added with each new update still just feel __bad__. I'm glad so many have found a way to enjoy the game, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when none of them seem to address the issue of "collect arbitrary resources to build gear to collect other arbitrary resources ad nauseum" in a way that I just find fundamentally unsatisfying. I still understand that reductive description can apply to many of the other games I actually enjoy (i.e. Minecraft, etc.) but that's what's so strange to me about NMS—by all means, I __should__ like the game. But I still think it's a miserable experience devoid of any real meaning. Even if the point is to find your own meaning in the systems it provides, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels so much worse than any of the others. Maybe someone else can better articulate why it feels so bad, but to me, despite all of the work they've put on the game, it still feels so devoid of meaning.

mebizzle 2y ago
I think it is both an egregious example of the "farm this to craft this to farm this..." gameplay loop and that other aspects of the gameplay are too shallow to hold it up once you get bored of the crafting and building loop. And I say this as a fan of the game lol
- parineum 2y ago
  I wouldn't mind it if building didn't seem pointless. You travel with your ship but build on planets that you are meant to quickly abandon. The exploration and building aspects are in opposition to each other so you can't really hop in between them when you get bored without starting over next time.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

1shooner 2y ago

I found it to be the grind half of a game, the chores you do to make the fun part more fun. But there is no fun part. The creative part is all prefabricated, and the exploration is very low-dimensional variation on templates that quickly blend together.

m463 2y ago

I got it about a month ago. I think it is janky. Everything about the controls, movement, camera is ... well it doesn't seem solid/decent. Maybe there's some sort of control-remapping or config file tweaks that can make it more tolerable.

h0us3 2y ago

Comments like this make no sense to me either. All video games are empty time sinks at the end of the day. It’s a matter of what people want their escape to look and sound like. Anyone expecting real world prestige for 100 percenting the last Mario? It’s all still literally accomplishing sitting on the couch only barely rising above passive consumption of entertainment. Asking “what does it all mean” to everything gets exhausting. Human existence is arbitrary; it happened because it could.

lithos 2y ago

Play during the events. Essentially you get a task list and set path to complete the event, mechanically just for some shiny cosmetic stuff and a really basic lore dump for the event. But the reality is that it feels like an MMO-lite due to the fact that everyone else is on the same handful of planets.