No Man's Sky's new 'Orbital' update adds ship customisation and space station overhauls to the already feature rich spa…
I Cast Fist
link
fedilink
English
129M

Gave it a whirl. Basically, you can now scrap ships to get their components to create a new ship inside any station. Couldn’t find any merchant within the station selling pieces, so you have to go out and explore, or scrap some of your own ships.

Stations now look slightly different from one another and no longer have those semi-hidden rooms that nobody cared about. Alien vendors now give a discount if you’re at a good standing with their race. Guild “vendors” offer a list of stuff for free, but I don’t get why the prompt is red instead of white. Performance is still mostly CPU bound.

Overall decent update, but the new features don’t warrant playing more than 1 hour.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
6
edit-2
9M

Do you guys do anything other than to pile on to shit on this game? Shit on Star Citizen? Shit on buying anything ever? Shit on Sean Murray and how naive he just was and you would just do such a better job right?

Thought this would be a cool place to talk about games. How do you not have any awareness that [removed for civility]

Makes sense though since Linux is [bad word] at running games unless you have a Steam Deck.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-149M

removed by mod

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
99M

and we don’t need games anyway as they’re unproductive

So you come to a games community to shit on games and brag about how your shitty OS doesn’t play them?

Make it make sense

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
59M

Username Spez_

Of course it’s going to be a shit take.

Dremor
mod
link
fedilink
English
19M

Please stay civil (rule 2)

Dremor
mod
link
fedilink
English
19M

Please stay civil (rule 2).

If you come across such comment, please reply to them instead of OP, maybe you will start some interesting debate instead of just try to stir conflict in the community.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
19M

Sorry, edited

Dremor
mod
link
fedilink
English
-2
edit-2
9M

Still out of context.

If this was a reply calling on someone baselessly criticizing the game, I’d allow it, but OP just posted an article that doesn’t even criticize the game.

Still, thank you for your edit.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
4
edit-2
9M

There was just too many derivative comments to choose from. I didn’t want to make it personal with someone. This was not directed at OP I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that that would be clear.

Dremor
mod
link
fedilink
English
-39M

If you find one that seen interesting to debate upon, reply to it.
For the other, don’t waste your time on them and just downvote.

The vote system was made for this reason.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
109M

I recently switched my laptop over to pop os and I’ve had no issues running the games I want to play using Lutris. Hell I’d argue Linux runs old games better than windows because of lutris. I have a few games I tried running on windows 10 and no matter what I did the game would insta ctd. But after switching and installing them using a lutris config I’ve actually been able to play those games. I even thought for sure I’d lose some of the functionality of my laptop (key lights, touch screen, something) but nope it all worked straight after install.

Linux has come a long way since I last tried it ~15 years ago

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
19M

Linux has come a long way since I last tried it ~15 years ago

100% this. Linux has been my daily driver since ~2005 and it seems like suddenly one day I went from playing tux racer and trying to get Skyrim to work to some degree with wine to buying games on steam with little fear of having to anything more than choose proton experimental and maybe add gamemoderun to the settings. It’s a completely different world now.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
910M

Wow finally!

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
19M

Can you own more than 6 lousy ships now? Not that I am still playing the game,but IT was the only fun thing left to do for me last time I tried getting back into this game.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
499M

NMS development is the best redemption arc story in a long time.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
29M

it might just be me but I come back to this game about once a year, play for about 4 hours before feeling like it feels almost exactly the same? I see these huge update drops but they don’t ever feel like anything

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
15
edit-2
9M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
69M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
610M

I might try this again when I get home

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
6310M

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!

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
1410M

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!

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
710M

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.

Thrickles
link
fedilink
English
910M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
410M

Can you still play it? Been a while since I’ve played but last I knew the expeditions were limited-time thingies.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
1010M

FOMO-leveraging shit needs to stop. All it does is make me not want to touch the thing at all because I know I don’t have the time to do all the things in a season.

NMS isn’t so bad at it, but seriously FUCK the games that leverage it. Almost as bad as microtransactions.

Cosmic Cleric
link
fedilink
English
29M

FOMO-leveraging shit needs to stop.

but seriously FUCK the games that leverage it.

No one likes to be manipulated/tricked for someone else’s profit.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
49M

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.

Cosmic Cleric
link
fedilink
English
29M

and struggled with the mechanics…

Are you speaking towards the UI/UX, or the gameplay?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
39M

Similar to Glide said above, wanted a space sim and realize it’s more of a survival game. On the opposite end I played a little Elite Dangerous which was WAY TOO INVOLVED space sim!

Lexi Sneptaur
link
fedilink
English
2810M

Common Hello Games W

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
2210M

this game came out in 2016 btw

kudos HG! grah!

Decoy321
link
fedilink
English
1110M

GRAH!!

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
610M

…Interloper

m-p{3}
link
fedilink
English
710M

Honestly I’m really thrilled to play the update tonight.

Bizzle
link
fedilink
English
4110M

Well, with ship customization this game is finished enough for me to play it again.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
31
edit-2
10M

That was the only thing left keeping me from being interested in the game. Finally, ship customization. Finally.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
010M

Wtf I thought the previous update was the last update?

body_by_make
link
fedilink
English
2
edit-2
9M

So far they’ve literally ended every update video with something like “And there’s more to come!”, including this one.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
79M

I remember when this game was a dumpster fire. Is it actually a video game now?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
169M

Yes, for a while now.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
20
edit-2
9M

Yes. But last time I played it (which was admittedly, idk, 2 years and something like 10 major updates ago now ? These guys just don’t stop), barring a few exceptions the gameplay was all breadth and no depth. You could do a ton of different things but after you had done a thing once, every other instances of the same activity would feel extremely samey

Edit: I should point out that I’m very much ok with repetition if the gameplay is deep enough to keep me interested. I have easily played various horde shooter games for a total of ~2500 hours. Not including the ~800 hours in Warframe, where the gameplay isn’t even that deep, but still interesting enough to make the grind for new toys bearable.

I Cast Fist
link
fedilink
English
99M

All breadth and no depth, still the same. Some 12 different planet types, a number of neat looking anomaly planets that exist only for sightseeing (one of my favorites was a planet where everything is covered in a metallic hexagonal mesh). As I said in another comment in this thread, the game is very repetitive with some activities being needlessly padded out to make you waste as much time as possible (learning alien words, going into derelict freighters to get upgrades)

Cosmic Cleric
link
fedilink
English
09M

You’re not wrong, but also the space that they would need on your hard drive to make the game really non-repetitive visually would be out of this world (pardon the pun). Also not so sure how that would work out on the consoles.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
19M

Actually, there’s a couple popular mods with an overhauled algorithm. No space required (That wouldn’t make sense anyway). Back when I played through this I wouldn’t touch it without it.

Cosmic Cleric
link
fedilink
English
1
edit-2
9M

I’m speaking about the 3D models and meshes, visuals.

Variety of planets/systems and various areas on planets is very poor just because of the amount of hard drive space needed for all of the models and meshes.

I Cast Fist
link
fedilink
English
59M

TLDR > A lot of the repetitiveness isn’t a problem of “Lack of disk space”, it’s just a matter of not making good use of procedural generation. Seeing “the same building blocks in a different configuration” is better than seeing “the same thing”.

the space that they would need on your hard drive to make the game really non-repetitive visually would be out of this world

Not necessarily. You can procedurally generate textures, sounds and geometry, but that becomes a huge CPU hog in a game that already blows CPU usage. But most of the repetitiveness can be “fixed” (read: reduced) without adding more than ~20MB of new textures and geometry.

One of the problems is that there’s no variation within a planet. Every grassy planet is the same mechanically. Sure, one might have bubbles in the air, another might have yellow grass instead of red, but they’re mechanically identical. It’s the only planet type to find starbulbs and minerals with parafinum. No grassy planet has an ice cap, or a desert patch, or a volcano. If you ever need to find cactus and pyrite, you have to go to a desert planet. If you need uranium and gamma weed, radioactive planet. Then you have the caves, which are completely identical in every planet.

Some planets may have bio luminescent plants, which are gorgeous to look at, but because there’s no variation within a planet, you see them everywhere. There’s never a point where you think “This is the spot on this planet”. Because everywhere is “the spot”, so it’s just “the planet”, which can also be found on the next star system.

Save for airless planets, if I’m not mistaken, every planet has the same 3 “trap” plants (man eater, whip, spores in a cave). There’s not even a color change depending on the planet. Same damn plant, same damn damage, same oxygen amount on death, whether on ice or on a volcano.

Another thing that compounds on the lack of planetary variation is the same sin that Starfield did, of every point of interest being the same everywhere. Every market is the same, every small settlement is the same, every infested facility is the same. This one is easy to give more variation, just create some building blocks and chain them together, like how rooms are generated in ARPG games like Diablo or Torchlight. You know how each star system has a different market rating? Use that to calculate the maximum size any one POI can reach, or as a weight to the POI that can appear (small settlements become more common in 1 star system, markets more common in 3 star, etc).

They do the above in a limited capacity with derelict freighters, so it’s not like there’s “no way” to do it or “they don’t know how”.

Yet another thing that breaks the immersion and “want” of exploration: the vast majority of the galaxy is “settled”. Star systems without any alien presence are the exception. What the hell are you even exploring if there’s already someone there with a working teleporter in space, plus several POI dotting every planet?

Cosmic Cleric
link
fedilink
English
0
edit-2
9M

You can procedurally generate textures, sounds and geometry

Does any game do that today? I’m not aware of any. ??

Another thing that compounds on the lack of planetary variation

That’s the same problem again, you need hard drive space for all that 3D variation.

As far as I know all the 3D stuff is what takes up the most space on the hard drive, and that stuff is never procedurally created. /shrug Maybe someday with AI??

I Cast Fist
link
fedilink
English
4
edit-2
9M

Today? No, I don’t think any game does it.

.kkrieger did that. Not a “real game”, it’s a demo (of a demoscene), a “proof of concept” or a “proof of skill”. Nostalgia Nerd has a very interesting video about it on youtube.

3D models tend to occupy less disk space than textures, as these usually come in at least 2 files: one for the actual colors, one or two more for light mapping (bump map, emission, normals, etc). I don’t know which format NMS uses, but a .obj 3D model with 62k triangles will take around 4.5MB of disk space.

For comparison, this Damaged Helmet in gltf format (which you can see on your browser here) has 15k triangles, a .bin file (the actual 3D geometry) of 545kb and roughly 3MB of textures - The Default_albedo.jpg is the “actual color” and it alone is larger than the .bin + .gltf, at 914kb.

That’s the same problem again, you need hard drive space for all that 3D variation.

Not really. Again, they just need to be smart with what they have. Grassy planet where one third is green grass, another is red grass, another is yellow. No need for any extra stuff to be made, they already have the building blocks. Better yet, mostly grassy planet with patches of radioactive terrain surrounded by desert.

For buildings, just think about player made bases. You can make effectively “infinite” interiors and exteriors with all the stuff players can use to make a base. Write coordinates of “premade” rooms, write some extra lines of code to join specific rooms together and bam, all you needed was less than 10kb of extra text to increase variety.

Cosmic Cleric
link
fedilink
English
19M

You can procedurally generate textures, sounds and geometry

Does any game do that today? I’m not aware of any. ??

Today? No, I don’t think any game does it.

Well, my comment that you replied to was about a specific game that is already out, today. Hence, my point still stands.

Let’s hope that future hardware and games are aligned more with what you described, but today’s games do have limitations, based on the day and age they’re created in.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
19M

The beauty of all these issues is you can mod them out.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
19M

I have yet to find any mods that improve the game in the way I’d like… Or that will even work with the latest version of the game.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
69M

some activities being needlessly padded out to make you waste as much time as possible (learning alien words, going into derelict freighters to get upgrades)

And now I remember why I stopped playing the last time. All the things I wanted to do (mostly, getting cooler/better ships and capital ships, and getting better weapons) required grinding insane amounts of money. Plus getting the exact ship you wanted was extremely random (and grindy, because good luck finding the ship with the looks you want and a good rating) but it looks like this update addresses this at least…

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
29M

Getting money is pretty easy if you set up mines of rare resources. Give it some time and you’ll have all the money you need.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
29M

Oh yeah I think I remember reading about that and going “that’s a thing ?” And promptly realizing that none of my bases were on a planet where the profits would be worth the time investment

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
29M

The planets with big money kinda suck to make bases. They are usually the most hazardous ones. I basically only leave a landing pad and a portal besides the mining stuff to collect and take it to my main base from time to time.

I Cast Fist
link
fedilink
English
39M

If you mean mining Active Indium, they nerfed the price hard some updates ago. Using Oxygen + Chlorine for infinite multiplication still works. Another easy-ish way to get money is with a huge plantation of cactus. There’s a recipe that turns 200 into a gel that sells for 50k each.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
19M

Hah, I think I figured out the cactus thing by myself right before I stopped playing. But I didn’t have the motivation to make a big enough farm to really start racking up the big bucks

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
49M

Yeah. Kind of.

Some people have already given their take, so I’ll add to it:

The game has a couple of hours of actual, fun content. After those couple of hours you’ll start to notice that everything is the same. Oh sure, the creatures and plants are made of different parts, but that’s as far as the differences go. Every planet has the exact same pattern, every system has a space station with the exact same functions, so eventually it really feels like exploration doesn’t matter. Which kinda sucks for a game that’s supposed to be about exploration.

I’ve always said that exploration would’ve been far more impactful if the universe of No Man’s Sky had just a bit more realism in it. This would mean most planets would be frozen iceballs or low atmosphere dustballs with no life on them. This would make discovering a planet with life on it quite momentous. It would also eliminate the problem of quickly finding out all life on every planet is exactly the same.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
610M

Playing this on the playstation vr2 is mind blowing.

Create a post

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

  • 1 user online
  • 141 users / day
  • 757 users / week
  • 2.28K users / month
  • 6.31K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 4.88K Posts
  • 100K Comments
  • Modlog