Hah. Same complaint I had about Elite:Dangerous. Lightyears wide, one inch deep. Gotta hand it to FDev, though, they really try to keep community goals happening.
The combat and ship customization (parts, not cosmetics) keep me coming back to ED over NMS. The core gameplay is somewhat samey with your options being combat, mining, trading, or exploration, but there is a bit more incentive. Players can now colonize their own systems, and powerplay is some complex bullshit that I occasionally participate in.
NMS is kind of a chill vibe, which I don’t mind, but I’m not creative enough to build ambitions bases so once I collected everything I was kinda burnt out. Also fuck fleet stuff.
Agreed. While it’s still pretty cool and I definitely respect their continued updates, I really only play for a few days every update then move on to something else.
Aside from the creative aspect to it, there really isn’t much keeping me engaged for long
Me too, pretty much, but I’m fine with that. Every couple of months we get a new content drop (for free!) and I go experience the new stuff, max out everything new there is to be maxed out, and then I can put it down and play something else. I appreciate that NMS doesn’t try to make itself my full time job or require such an asinine time investment that it forces you not to play anything else.
I think the only FOMO aspect built in to NMS at all is the expeditions, and even then you can replay them any time you want with a third party tool (on PC, anyway).
It’s one thing to be given a sandbox, and another thing to be given a toy box. Maybe your imagination lets you take it as far as you need, but some people need more of a purpose to justify putting time into it as opposed to something more productive.
Minecraft is a great example of what the survival genre looks like at its peak. Everything you do serves to help you accomplish your next goal, all the way to the final goal of beating the Ender Dragon. And then there are optional sub-goals you can set for yourself, like doing alchemy, making a mob farm, getting a Heart of the Ocean, getting an Elytra, beating a raid, finding treasures, automating your own production. All contributes directly towards making you survive better.
In NMS you reach the goal of surviving when you first unlock your ship. Once it’s fully repaired you embark on a fetch quest to walk and fly around gathering materials to craft the mystical orbs that mark the completion of the story, stopping once in a while to gather fuel for your ship, materials to fly to new kinds of star systems, and to talk to NPCs for some lore. But it’s not like the gathering of these materials really takes effort. There’s no spelunking, or braving a netherworld, or fighting back poisonous spiders while charting out old ruins. The most you get is that you need to craft a more powerful laser, and a special glove to collect some special resources that are, in fact, so abundant as to make gathering them no challenge at all. And everything else that’s in the game just exists on the side, optional distractions that don’t feed into the core loop. The only things that really affect your main game loop would be freighters, because they give you a bigger inventory, and this most recent update that adds mobile bases.
Minecraft also has a benefit that, when you run out of things to do, when you’ve beaten the dragon, collected everything, built your monuments, and done all that over and over until you’re bored, the game enables limitless new experiences through being so very customizable. Mods that turn the game into Factorio, or Diablo, or DayZ, or change how the world generates or how it all functions on the most basic level. Or if mods aren’t your thing you can join a server, and play with other people in all kinds of minigames. Standard SMP, or PvP stuff, or custom-coded challenges, what have you. NMS doesn’t have any of that, and while it does have multiplayer that doesn’t really change anything of the core gameplay. It’s still just “fly around and gather things,” but this time with another person along for the ride.
I think this is comparing apples to oranges. NMS doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on its survival elements because it’s not trying to be a survival game, its emphasis is on exploration. The survival elements are there as constraints that let you differentiate your exploration experience (ex. Hey maybe put on some radiation shielding mods or else you’ll be constantly applying uranium and life support). Yeah, you can speedrun the main quest because the main quest isn’t really supposed to be a massive burden. You can land, collect all the Special Red Rock that you need, and then jet off. But why? You took the time to come out to this planet, why not explore it?
Odd to read your description of the side content as distractions. Beyond how there are systems acting as complements to exploration (exocraft for ex) or are there to explore themselves (ex fossils), which id say directly tie into the core loop, it’s just weird to me to view gameplay as distractions. Morrowind directly invited the player to go explore things besides the main quest, and it’s regarded as an excellent move for encouraging player freedom. This just seems like an analogue to that where the game is inviting you to explore other systems to see how you like their fit.
As for what is offered to you after the end game… You get to keep exploring, like you’ve been doing and the game has been encouraging you to do the whole time. I don’t know what else to say – you got a can of beans, why is it a problem that it didn’t come with any tomato and some salad at the bottom?
(Though I’ll grant you that NMS would be kick ass with some mods, id love to see that!)
But you end up “exploring” the same stuff over and over.
Theres no reason to actually explore a planet - pretty much everything you want to do/see is taken care of at any random spot you choose due to the single biome planets.
You’ve got like maybe 6 different versions of flora depending on the enviroment type. If your lucky they give you a color change too so instead of all green tree A you’ll get a red tree A .
Now I know it can be explained away by the games lore, but when the main goal of the game is to explore it doesnt really help.
It doesn’t even matter how many galaxies/universes you jump to - it’s all still the same limited number of assets with the same limited color wheel.
Unfortunately the “anything” is limited by what the game allows. If “anything” isn’t what you find interesting, then you’re gonna drop the game pretty quick.
I was about to dispute this, but I think its essentially correct. I for sure fall into the second camp, and while I despise the minimap bloat of a lot of newer games, I do want something that is going to guide my actions a bit. I want to like No Man’s Sky so much, but playing it feels like work. Endless tasks with no satisfaction except whatever personal pride you happen to glean from a job well done.
There’s gotta be a sweet spot between “I dunno, do whatever” and “here’s a map of everything interesting, do it all”. I think Breath of the Wild had a okay balance, but still not great. Maybe something more like Morrowind’s “here’s verbal clues, now go figure it out” approach
Quest reads i need you to go north of place and find x and bring it back to me.
So and so in y is looking for 15 of this item, find 15 of them i heard they are seen around z sometirms. Take it to them and I’ll give you a cool stick when you’re back.
No map markers just a map that you have to explore to unlock location names and a massive world.
The downside is it can take a long time to know what is where and where you’re going for shit.
When I tried it a few years back there was this really strange field of view and input lag that felt really clunky when moving around the world. Anyone knows if that’s been fixed?
Oh boy do people love hating NMS. I get it. But like it or not, there is literally no game out there doing what this game does for its players at absolutely no additional cost.
For those who aren’t aware: The problem with this game has always been its fans. Not the players, but the fans.
"ThIs GaMe WaS aLl HyPe¡!” Then why did you hype it?
"iT wAsN’t WoRtH tHe PrE-oRdEr!” Then why did you pre-order it?
“It’S nOt EvEn A gAmE” Murray literally said it wasn’t a game, in 2015.
Not to mention it was a rag tag game dev studio who through that hype had their dream come true, did they’re best to deliver it, and have continued to work on it for over a decade now. People are human; and they’ve more than shown it wasn’t ever intended as a grift.
So far all my attempts have culminated in a freeze followed by a crash after one to five minutes of play during the tutorial sequence. Let’s see if that update changes things
I’ve tried two times to get into No Man’s Sky, because the concept is exactly something I would enjoy. Every single time I get stuck in the tutorial looking for some fucking broken ship on the other side of the planet and an inventory of random minerals.
I really don’t know what to think about this game. It definitely has come a long way, but to this day, it feels… Shallow.
It’s a sandbox game where building, crafting and trading are not great, not terrible. It’s also an adventure game, but the story is overall very predictable and combat is again, not great, not terrible. It’s a multiplayer game, except no, not really, since you don’t share quest progesss and almost never meet random people (if you aren’t close to the center of the galaxy).
I’m about 200h into it and still can’t tell you if I like it or if it just keeps me busy. I have high hopes for Light No Fire tho.
I would say that I enjoy the game and feel that the developers have invested a lot of effort into building a panacea of a game that is sort of low stress and maybe a little repetitive, but it gives me something to do, and I can set goals for myself that are… well, absolutely batshit.
My current goal(s) are to get my settlements to S tier (pretty close on this one), swap all my frigates over to supply ships (If you repeatedly assign the same ship to the same sorts of missions, it will level up just that stat, so you can have a supply ship that has a high combat stat, etc), and build resource bases so that I can automatically collect every kind of automatically collectible resource in the game. I’ve also visited about 20 universes, and think it might be fun to put a resource collection base in each universe (that I have the patience to visit) and then just go hang out at the anomaly so folks can use the teleporter to fling themselves to universes unknown.
Your mistake is thinking it’s a sandbox game. In my opinion, it’s barely even a survival game.
Sure, over the years they have added a lot of systems, but as you noticed, they’re all pretty shallow, and on top of that, have basically no interaction with each other.
First I’d heard of Light No Fire, wow yeah, that looks great. Honestly, I think their style lends itself more to fantasy than SciFi, this could be great.
During my first time playing it (not long ago), it was pretty obvious where new content was layered on top of old, mainly because none of it really works together all that well. It feels like there’s a lot of stuff to do, but none of it is all that cohesive
Also the building system is like pulling teeth (on console anyway). I can never get anything placed where I wanted it if my build was at all complex, particularly stairs as I can recall
It’s okay. As the other comments pointed out, it kinda feels like a really cool tech demo. Lots of systems to look at, but everything is disconnected. That’s what makes the game feel shallow. You can completely ignore most stuff without any consequence
I haven’t played in a while, this is piquing my interest again! I love how vast this game is becoming, more major gaming studios need to follow their example when it comes to rehabbing a game that came out initially as the worst version of itself. Still haven’t even gotten to the center of the universe, I might try again as the path is really weird.
ITT: people vaguely complaining about NMS but not pointing to anything that’s wrong with it.
Y’all know you can not like a product without something being fundamentally and at-its-core wrong with it, right? It could just be not your cup of tea?
I personally have been having a blast making my Corvette and am excited for the new expedition. The fact that I got all this stuff for no added cost makes me feel even better about the time I’ll have.
I’ll be honest with you for me personally I just don’t have the patience for the game. I just want to build my ship with whatever parts are in the game and explore. that’s it. I don’t want to mine resources, I don’t want to wait in some random station for some random ship to show up that MIGHT have the part I want. I don’t want to do any of that.
I barely made it out of the tutorial and forced my way through it.
Nothing wrong with NMS but I didn’t want to play it the way it made me play it. I just want to build in peace and explore.
That’s fair! And for what it’s worth, the game now offers a creative mode that alleviates the need to mine resources if that’s not what you’re looking for. That might be what you want out of it?
Yeah I know but you still have to wait for ships to show up to get their parts right? unless they changed it you don’t have access to ALL ship parts right off the bat in creative mode do you?
Fair enough. The creative modes are definitely worth considering, you can set build cost to zero, eliminating the waiting and farming. Survival aspects can also be tuned, so you can stand in storms and feel like a god.
Totally! Not for everyone and certainly doesn’t have to be.
But I did hope that people who are making the leap from “I don’t like NMS” to “NMS isn’t good” would offer more to consider than the vibes not being there.
I’ve read “Mile wide, inch deep” often enough in this thread that feels less like a problem and more like a thought-terminating cliche to me.
Is it a flaw to have a lot of smaller things you can do without them needing to be complete experiences themselves? They’re not trying to make a different game out of these expansions (except Light no Fire I guess lol), it’s still going to be NMS at the end of the day
Yes, it is a flaw. Because those “smaller things” are little more than virtual fidget spinners.
They offer a few fleeting moments of novelty and thats pretty much it. They have little to no relevance to the gameplay loop or are opposed to the gameplay loop.
I can “build” a settlement that does next to nothing and I can’t even design it the way I want.
I can build a base that is practically lifeless, but I have to be carefull because terrain will respawn. Or base foundations float on top of terrain.
And all the things I can build I’m lucky if theres 3 different skins I can choose from to try and make something “my own”.
And then of course lets not forget about the near literal mile wide inch deep the games oceans are. Heres a submersible. We will force you to use it for a couple missions and then theres no real need or point to it. All the oceans are the same shallow boring experience.
Here im being slightly facetious but only slightly :
You’ve seen one ice planet? Guess what - you’ve seen them all.
One glitch planet- you guessed it youve seen them all.
Tropical planet - oh look this ones sky is a different color, but still the exact same type of tree as that other tropical planet 40k lightyears away.
I’m not gonna respond to all of that but I will say:
I think there’s a fundamental difference between something not being to your taste and something being flawed. This kinda just reads like you didn’t enjoy your experience. That’s fine, but that doesn’t make the product flawed
a lot of the problems you mentioned have been improved on over the past few expansions
fidget spinners are fun, idk why you have beef with them lol
In regards to 1. I disagree - there are plenty of flawed things that are still my taste - just like this game is.
I can enjoy something and still admit the problems it has. I don’t need to ‘justify’ my enjoyment by pretending something is perfect or doesn’t need improvement.
That would be like saying a person I like has zero flaws or issues. Just patently untrue. EVERYBODY has something they need to work on themselves even if they can’t see it.
If you can’t tell the difference between constructive and destructive criticism that’s something you need to work on lol.
My wife bought me the game and for years I didn’t pick it up. Couple years ago I decided to finally give it a try.
I’m on my third playthrough and am making a sea base for fishing and deep sea exploration. All commanded from the bridge of my dreadnought. I haven’t played in a couple months but am glad I get new things to do again. The amount of updates and changes absolutely amaze me.
This game and the developers deserve credit and support for what they created. I need to spend more time in that sandbox universe, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface.
Well I haven’t tested it so I can’t be sure. Also depends on res. I might get decent frames at a lower resolution, 720p maybe, but that’s also a compromise.
I keep being enticed back to trying the game again with each new release but the gameplay just doesn’t grab me and there’s such a limited amount of story that it doesn’t get its hooks in me. I guess I’m just not a crafting/survival type.
They’ve released a ton of content and game enhancements since 5 years ago. I just picked it up a couple of months ago and I’m floored by how good this game is. Yes, it’s all randomized/procedurally generated and that’s why it’s so vast. The story is okay but not AAA amazing, but definitely check it out if it’s been a while.
Might just be a bit burnt out on games like NMS and Elite. A whole universe of unique but equally irrelevant rocks.
What fun stuff is there to do at essentially an end game status? NMS probably does manage better than Elite though, at least you can build a house or something. Or make your freighter hangar pretty.
I gave up on Elite shortly after launch. However, I do keep tabs on it on occasion. The end game of Elite is basically choosing factions to support and helping them take over star systems. Honestly, it seems at least intriguing. I can’t say the same for NMS.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
I just wish there was more to it. Every update adds more to do, but no reason to do it. Now we have a puddle as wide as an ocean.
Hah. Same complaint I had about Elite:Dangerous. Lightyears wide, one inch deep. Gotta hand it to FDev, though, they really try to keep community goals happening.
The combat and ship customization (parts, not cosmetics) keep me coming back to ED over NMS. The core gameplay is somewhat samey with your options being combat, mining, trading, or exploration, but there is a bit more incentive. Players can now colonize their own systems, and powerplay is some complex bullshit that I occasionally participate in.
NMS is kind of a chill vibe, which I don’t mind, but I’m not creative enough to build ambitions bases so once I collected everything I was kinda burnt out. Also fuck fleet stuff.
Agreed. While it’s still pretty cool and I definitely respect their continued updates, I really only play for a few days every update then move on to something else.
Aside from the creative aspect to it, there really isn’t much keeping me engaged for long
Me too, pretty much, but I’m fine with that. Every couple of months we get a new content drop (for free!) and I go experience the new stuff, max out everything new there is to be maxed out, and then I can put it down and play something else. I appreciate that NMS doesn’t try to make itself my full time job or require such an asinine time investment that it forces you not to play anything else.
I think the only FOMO aspect built in to NMS at all is the expeditions, and even then you can replay them any time you want with a third party tool (on PC, anyway).
There are two types of gamers:
Some see an open world sandbox and say “Wow, I can do anything!” and pick their own goals.
The other type says “WHAT it’s pointless!” and wants some kind of arrow pointing at the next objective.
Cool false dilemma.
It’s one thing to be given a sandbox, and another thing to be given a toy box. Maybe your imagination lets you take it as far as you need, but some people need more of a purpose to justify putting time into it as opposed to something more productive.
This guy thinks lawyer talk works outside of court rooms lol
This guy thinks logical fallacies only apply in court rooms lol
Hehe I showed your mom my fallacy
What’s your opinion on Minecraft?
Minecraft is a great example of what the survival genre looks like at its peak. Everything you do serves to help you accomplish your next goal, all the way to the final goal of beating the Ender Dragon. And then there are optional sub-goals you can set for yourself, like doing alchemy, making a mob farm, getting a Heart of the Ocean, getting an Elytra, beating a raid, finding treasures, automating your own production. All contributes directly towards making you survive better.
In NMS you reach the goal of surviving when you first unlock your ship. Once it’s fully repaired you embark on a fetch quest to walk and fly around gathering materials to craft the mystical orbs that mark the completion of the story, stopping once in a while to gather fuel for your ship, materials to fly to new kinds of star systems, and to talk to NPCs for some lore. But it’s not like the gathering of these materials really takes effort. There’s no spelunking, or braving a netherworld, or fighting back poisonous spiders while charting out old ruins. The most you get is that you need to craft a more powerful laser, and a special glove to collect some special resources that are, in fact, so abundant as to make gathering them no challenge at all. And everything else that’s in the game just exists on the side, optional distractions that don’t feed into the core loop. The only things that really affect your main game loop would be freighters, because they give you a bigger inventory, and this most recent update that adds mobile bases.
Minecraft also has a benefit that, when you run out of things to do, when you’ve beaten the dragon, collected everything, built your monuments, and done all that over and over until you’re bored, the game enables limitless new experiences through being so very customizable. Mods that turn the game into Factorio, or Diablo, or DayZ, or change how the world generates or how it all functions on the most basic level. Or if mods aren’t your thing you can join a server, and play with other people in all kinds of minigames. Standard SMP, or PvP stuff, or custom-coded challenges, what have you. NMS doesn’t have any of that, and while it does have multiplayer that doesn’t really change anything of the core gameplay. It’s still just “fly around and gather things,” but this time with another person along for the ride.
Good shot dude! I really want to like NMS, but it’s hard to go back to it. You’ve articulated the differences amazingly
I think this is comparing apples to oranges. NMS doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on its survival elements because it’s not trying to be a survival game, its emphasis is on exploration. The survival elements are there as constraints that let you differentiate your exploration experience (ex. Hey maybe put on some radiation shielding mods or else you’ll be constantly applying uranium and life support). Yeah, you can speedrun the main quest because the main quest isn’t really supposed to be a massive burden. You can land, collect all the Special Red Rock that you need, and then jet off. But why? You took the time to come out to this planet, why not explore it?
Odd to read your description of the side content as distractions. Beyond how there are systems acting as complements to exploration (exocraft for ex) or are there to explore themselves (ex fossils), which id say directly tie into the core loop, it’s just weird to me to view gameplay as distractions. Morrowind directly invited the player to go explore things besides the main quest, and it’s regarded as an excellent move for encouraging player freedom. This just seems like an analogue to that where the game is inviting you to explore other systems to see how you like their fit.
As for what is offered to you after the end game… You get to keep exploring, like you’ve been doing and the game has been encouraging you to do the whole time. I don’t know what else to say – you got a can of beans, why is it a problem that it didn’t come with any tomato and some salad at the bottom?
(Though I’ll grant you that NMS would be kick ass with some mods, id love to see that!)
But you end up “exploring” the same stuff over and over.
Theres no reason to actually explore a planet - pretty much everything you want to do/see is taken care of at any random spot you choose due to the single biome planets.
You’ve got like maybe 6 different versions of flora depending on the enviroment type. If your lucky they give you a color change too so instead of all green tree A you’ll get a red tree A .
Now I know it can be explained away by the games lore, but when the main goal of the game is to explore it doesnt really help.
It doesn’t even matter how many galaxies/universes you jump to - it’s all still the same limited number of assets with the same limited color wheel.
Unfortunately the “anything” is limited by what the game allows. If “anything” isn’t what you find interesting, then you’re gonna drop the game pretty quick.
I was about to dispute this, but I think its essentially correct. I for sure fall into the second camp, and while I despise the minimap bloat of a lot of newer games, I do want something that is going to guide my actions a bit. I want to like No Man’s Sky so much, but playing it feels like work. Endless tasks with no satisfaction except whatever personal pride you happen to glean from a job well done.
There’s gotta be a sweet spot between “I dunno, do whatever” and “here’s a map of everything interesting, do it all”. I think Breath of the Wild had a okay balance, but still not great. Maybe something more like Morrowind’s “here’s verbal clues, now go figure it out” approach
I like wow classic without the questie add on.
Quest reads i need you to go north of place and find x and bring it back to me.
So and so in y is looking for 15 of this item, find 15 of them i heard they are seen around z sometirms. Take it to them and I’ll give you a cool stick when you’re back.
No map markers just a map that you have to explore to unlock location names and a massive world.
The downside is it can take a long time to know what is where and where you’re going for shit.
There’s two types of gamers.
People who like sandboxes with the understanding that there are some toys / structures to play with.
People who just like playing in sand and don’t care if a sandbox is literally just a box of sand.
My exact feeling!
One of the best redemption arcs in recent video game story.
Maybe the only game that actually has a redemption arc?
I can’t think of any other game that was so panned for so many things that turned it around like Hello Games did.
The only other games I can think of with any sort of redemption arc the main issues were because of bugs not swaths of missing features.
Cyberpunk 2077 would be another big one. A lot of the issue was bugs, but also a lot of missing content.
When I tried it a few years back there was this really strange field of view and input lag that felt really clunky when moving around the world. Anyone knows if that’s been fixed?
They’ve fixed the fov (although maybe I used a mod) input latency was better than before but still not perfect.
Cool, maybe I’ll give it a shot again sometime
Look at these comments 🤣
Oh boy do people love hating NMS. I get it. But like it or not, there is literally no game out there doing what this game does for its players at absolutely no additional cost.
For those who aren’t aware: The problem with this game has always been its fans. Not the players, but the fans.
"ThIs GaMe WaS aLl HyPe¡!” Then why did you hype it?
"iT wAsN’t WoRtH tHe PrE-oRdEr!” Then why did you pre-order it?
“It’S nOt EvEn A gAmE” Murray literally said it wasn’t a game, in 2015.
Not to mention it was a rag tag game dev studio who through that hype had their dream come true, did they’re best to deliver it, and have continued to work on it for over a decade now. People are human; and they’ve more than shown it wasn’t ever intended as a grift.
No doubt! I didn’t really get into it until after update 4 or 5. But now it is just amazing that they keep going.
I think I’d like this game if the art style wasn’t so lame. But this I’m an old snobby sim player so I don’t expect many people to agree.
So far all my attempts have culminated in a freeze followed by a crash after one to five minutes of play during the tutorial sequence. Let’s see if that update changes things
I’ve tried two times to get into No Man’s Sky, because the concept is exactly something I would enjoy. Every single time I get stuck in the tutorial looking for some fucking broken ship on the other side of the planet and an inventory of random minerals.
I really don’t know what to think about this game. It definitely has come a long way, but to this day, it feels… Shallow.
It’s a sandbox game where building, crafting and trading are not great, not terrible. It’s also an adventure game, but the story is overall very predictable and combat is again, not great, not terrible. It’s a multiplayer game, except no, not really, since you don’t share quest progesss and almost never meet random people (if you aren’t close to the center of the galaxy).
I’m about 200h into it and still can’t tell you if I like it or if it just keeps me busy. I have high hopes for Light No Fire tho.
I go back to it like yearly, hoping it will stick and it never does. I dunno why. Too alien maybe? Too empty or soulless?
Someone about it just doesn’t feel right and I can never stick it out
Well, you’ve spent 200h on it, so clearly you must enjoy it.
Nothing bad with enjoying a shallow game.
That’s a really bold assumption lol.
I was about to say, I put 2000 hours in League of Legends and I’m not sure whether I enjoyed that either :D
I play it when I’m really depressed.
I would say that I enjoy the game and feel that the developers have invested a lot of effort into building a panacea of a game that is sort of low stress and maybe a little repetitive, but it gives me something to do, and I can set goals for myself that are… well, absolutely batshit.
My current goal(s) are to get my settlements to S tier (pretty close on this one), swap all my frigates over to supply ships (If you repeatedly assign the same ship to the same sorts of missions, it will level up just that stat, so you can have a supply ship that has a high combat stat, etc), and build resource bases so that I can automatically collect every kind of automatically collectible resource in the game. I’ve also visited about 20 universes, and think it might be fun to put a resource collection base in each universe (that I have the patience to visit) and then just go hang out at the anomaly so folks can use the teleporter to fling themselves to universes unknown.
Your mistake is thinking it’s a sandbox game. In my opinion, it’s barely even a survival game.
Sure, over the years they have added a lot of systems, but as you noticed, they’re all pretty shallow, and on top of that, have basically no interaction with each other.
First I’d heard of Light No Fire, wow yeah, that looks great. Honestly, I think their style lends itself more to fantasy than SciFi, this could be great.
During my first time playing it (not long ago), it was pretty obvious where new content was layered on top of old, mainly because none of it really works together all that well. It feels like there’s a lot of stuff to do, but none of it is all that cohesive
Also the building system is like pulling teeth (on console anyway). I can never get anything placed where I wanted it if my build was at all complex, particularly stairs as I can recall
So, it’s good?
It’s okay. As the other comments pointed out, it kinda feels like a really cool tech demo. Lots of systems to look at, but everything is disconnected. That’s what makes the game feel shallow. You can completely ignore most stuff without any consequence
I haven’t played in a while, this is piquing my interest again! I love how vast this game is becoming, more major gaming studios need to follow their example when it comes to rehabbing a game that came out initially as the worst version of itself. Still haven’t even gotten to the center of the universe, I might try again as the path is really weird.
ITT: people vaguely complaining about NMS but not pointing to anything that’s wrong with it.
Y’all know you can not like a product without something being fundamentally and at-its-core wrong with it, right? It could just be not your cup of tea?
I personally have been having a blast making my Corvette and am excited for the new expedition. The fact that I got all this stuff for no added cost makes me feel even better about the time I’ll have.
People on here crying, meanwhile I’m flying around the galaxy in my Eagle 5 Winnebago
Did you include the fuel port in the glovebox in case you need to install any Liquid Schwartz?
Does it have raspberry jamming capabilities?
You got hyper-jets on that thing?
👀 slay, how are the interiors?
Haven’t had the time to check out the insides yet
I’ll be honest with you for me personally I just don’t have the patience for the game. I just want to build my ship with whatever parts are in the game and explore. that’s it. I don’t want to mine resources, I don’t want to wait in some random station for some random ship to show up that MIGHT have the part I want. I don’t want to do any of that.
I barely made it out of the tutorial and forced my way through it.
Nothing wrong with NMS but I didn’t want to play it the way it made me play it. I just want to build in peace and explore.
That’s fair! And for what it’s worth, the game now offers a creative mode that alleviates the need to mine resources if that’s not what you’re looking for. That might be what you want out of it?
Yeah I know but you still have to wait for ships to show up to get their parts right? unless they changed it you don’t have access to ALL ship parts right off the bat in creative mode do you?
Fair enough. The creative modes are definitely worth considering, you can set build cost to zero, eliminating the waiting and farming. Survival aspects can also be tuned, so you can stand in storms and feel like a god.
I love NMS for what it is. A sandbox. Some people don’t like playing in one. That’s fine.
Totally! Not for everyone and certainly doesn’t have to be.
But I did hope that people who are making the leap from “I don’t like NMS” to “NMS isn’t good” would offer more to consider than the vibes not being there.
Mile wide, inch deep. I’ve no doubt (as excited for this update as I am) that this will be the same.
Basically they just add a framework for new features and then leaves it there without building it out.
I’ve read “Mile wide, inch deep” often enough in this thread that feels less like a problem and more like a thought-terminating cliche to me.
Is it a flaw to have a lot of smaller things you can do without them needing to be complete experiences themselves? They’re not trying to make a different game out of these expansions (except Light no Fire I guess lol), it’s still going to be NMS at the end of the day
Yes, it is a flaw. Because those “smaller things” are little more than virtual fidget spinners.
They offer a few fleeting moments of novelty and thats pretty much it. They have little to no relevance to the gameplay loop or are opposed to the gameplay loop.
I can “build” a settlement that does next to nothing and I can’t even design it the way I want.
I can build a base that is practically lifeless, but I have to be carefull because terrain will respawn. Or base foundations float on top of terrain.
And all the things I can build I’m lucky if theres 3 different skins I can choose from to try and make something “my own”.
And then of course lets not forget about the near literal mile wide inch deep the games oceans are. Heres a submersible. We will force you to use it for a couple missions and then theres no real need or point to it. All the oceans are the same shallow boring experience.
Here im being slightly facetious but only slightly :
You’ve seen one ice planet? Guess what - you’ve seen them all.
One glitch planet- you guessed it youve seen them all.
Tropical planet - oh look this ones sky is a different color, but still the exact same type of tree as that other tropical planet 40k lightyears away.
I’m not gonna respond to all of that but I will say:
In regards to 1. I disagree - there are plenty of flawed things that are still my taste - just like this game is.
I can enjoy something and still admit the problems it has. I don’t need to ‘justify’ my enjoyment by pretending something is perfect or doesn’t need improvement.
That would be like saying a person I like has zero flaws or issues. Just patently untrue. EVERYBODY has something they need to work on themselves even if they can’t see it.
If you can’t tell the difference between constructive and destructive criticism that’s something you need to work on lol.
My wife bought me the game and for years I didn’t pick it up. Couple years ago I decided to finally give it a try.
I’m on my third playthrough and am making a sea base for fishing and deep sea exploration. All commanded from the bridge of my dreadnought. I haven’t played in a couple months but am glad I get new things to do again. The amount of updates and changes absolutely amaze me.
But you just don’t understand. Sean Murray personally lied to me nine years ago!!! Boycotted forevar!!!
(Edit: I thought the sarcasm in this was clear enough but maybe it’s tough to get through to some people.)
This game and the developers deserve credit and support for what they created. I need to spend more time in that sandbox universe, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface.
I’ve had it on my wishlist for years but my laptop would probably run it at like 20fps which is just low enough to be miserable
How sure are you? It runs pretty well on some pretty low specs.
Well I haven’t tested it so I can’t be sure. Also depends on res. I might get decent frames at a lower resolution, 720p maybe, but that’s also a compromise.
It plays well enough on a Steam Deck and even better 7-year old machine with a 1060 in it. But not sure how low-spec your laptop is.
I keep being enticed back to trying the game again with each new release but the gameplay just doesn’t grab me and there’s such a limited amount of story that it doesn’t get its hooks in me. I guess I’m just not a crafting/survival type.
They’ve released a ton of content and game enhancements since 5 years ago. I just picked it up a couple of months ago and I’m floored by how good this game is. Yes, it’s all randomized/procedurally generated and that’s why it’s so vast. The story is okay but not AAA amazing, but definitely check it out if it’s been a while.
Might hop on with a few friends in a few days, I’m already excited to see the current state of the game!
Might just be a bit burnt out on games like NMS and Elite. A whole universe of unique but equally irrelevant rocks.
What fun stuff is there to do at essentially an end game status? NMS probably does manage better than Elite though, at least you can build a house or something. Or make your freighter hangar pretty.
I gave up on Elite shortly after launch. However, I do keep tabs on it on occasion. The end game of Elite is basically choosing factions to support and helping them take over star systems. Honestly, it seems at least intriguing. I can’t say the same for NMS.
I hoped on lemmy to look up some news since I saw the steam artwork changed and here was this post at the top
Haven’t read the notes yet on what we get but I’m excited