Gaming The Sky belongs to No Man

Word of advice: Don't fly into asteroids at very fast speed.

It was the first time I got into space and after I smashed into it I started spinning wildly until I slowed down..

 

Budoima Noven is a beautiful planet that has enabled me to fix my ship very quickly.



Now for bed

 

So in my 50mins last night.

I fixed my ship. Left the planet for a look and then landed back on the planet.

I've already survived an attack by sentinels.

Big explore tonight I think.

 

Loving this game so far. The music, the aesthetics, feeding funny animals carbon. Very chill and very fun. Managing resources is a bit of a nagging b#$ch so far, but I assume as I get further into it and craft better stuff it won't be as much of a drag. But other than that, man was it exciting to fly off the planet for the first time, see space, and head to a space station!

 

I've been hearing some pretty bad things about No Man's Sky myself. Namely that once that initial awe at the scope of the game has worn off it settles into a dull cycle of tedium. It's been enough to make me hold off on buying the PC version tomorrow.

That said they did get the ever amazing Bill Bailey to shill for it...



That and pets that poop money.

So even if I never play you, I still love you No Man's Sky.

 

10 hours in and still in my first solar system.

Not changed ship yet but new multitool and expanded carrying ability in place.

 

What's the point?

If it's just scenery without any people?

I could do that in RL!

 

By definition, every video game is pointless.

 

No, the act and experience of joy in play is intrinsically worthwhile so they're no more or less pointless than any form of entertainment or leisure. Now, if you want to take the route that everything is pointless and video games are pointless by consequence, I might be on board.

See, that "dull cycle" of resource gathering and gawking at pretty scenery is actually exactly the kind of loop I enjoy, so I think it's more of a preference thing. If you aren't into that, probably best avoided, but that's clearly been the key aspect of the game forever so I'm not sure why people are so surprised.

 

Just finished for tonight.

Still exploring planet 2 in my home solar system.

Still have 1 more planet and a moon to go. I'm aiming for 100% on monoliths too.

Still find the game stunning from a graphical perspective. The having to recharge is a little annoying but I'm hoping for an upgrade option that fixes that.

As it stands though I'm very impressed and have the day off tomorrow so may just get out of the solar system by the end of the weekend.

 

I meant that what is there to explore?

As far as I know it's just planets and such.
Then it's just pretty scenery and resource gathering.

Where's the history or lore? What can you actually find and discover?

Lost temples? Civilisations?

 

You say that like it's not why most of us are interested in the game.

It's still early in the game's launch window but the impression I've been getting with respect to the #lore is "there isn't much, what is there is spread thin, look elsewhere if that's what you want." As for what there is to discover - planets, plants, animals, some sentient alien species you can learn the languages of, killer robots, apparently some monoliths of questionable purpose, that sort of thing.

 

Well if there's aliens there's history right? Right?
You can't have one without the other!
Same with Language!

I'm not convinced.

How could you learn about fictional animals/places without the necessary skills from school? I doubt many players know much about that stuff.

Why not say learn Real things?

 

Not necessarily, it's just a video game.

You can, as it's a video game.

See above.

You don't need to learn about their ecology, you just find them. The joy is the joy of discovery.

Because it's a ****ing video game. Seriously, is your point "why play this video game when you can learn about the real world?" At that point why play any video games, watch any movies, read any books, post on a Star Wars message board?

 

To be honest that makes no sense.

If it's just a video game what's the point?

Why doesn't it follow logic or any kind of legitimacy?

SWTOR for instance (and other MMORPG) is fun to play because you can discover and it makes sense.

How does the game function if all players can talk about is, " oh I found a nice planet today, it had blue grass, a red sky and leopard type animals in the orange trees. I then found remains of a building but no clues to what it actually was."


I'm not trying to hate on the game or those playing it but it just makes no sense to me.

 

What's the ultimate point of SWTOR? To have fun, right? Some people think wandering around finding things in a cool space exploration environment is fun and don't necessarily need there to be a plot or elaborate lore to make that act of discovery fun.

Obviously if that's hard to understand, that's probably not you. You should probably not play this game as you most likely won't enjoy it. Hope that helps.

 

I figured that was going to be the key point of the game, though I've been reading stories of people having really bad luck with the procedural generation system and getting nothing but recoloured, barren rock planets. That's bound to compound the tedium in a game that's been boasting such a wide variety of locales.

Is No Man's Sky making you have an existential crisis? Not often a video game makes that happen.

 

Luck's probably playing a role, yeah. My starter planet was like this weird Moorcock nightmare of perpetual acid rain and giant mushrooms with attacking tendrils the size of trees, and then after finding my first space station I stumbled across what, from a distance, I thought was some kind of desert planet but actually turned out to be a vast plain of red grass and trees inhabited by some like-like looking mother****ers (to the point that I renamed them like-likes). So I haven't had that problem.

Now if I could just get some hyperdrive fuel to blow this popsicle stand I'll really be cooking.

 

Eh, the other side should have deployed Buddha and Nietzsche would have self-destructed!

More seriously though, yes - it can be argued that NMS by its very nature of being too large for a player to see the entirety of, even if they had several lifetimes, can trigger that eternal Q of: What am I doing with my life? Sure, games have always had that dimension to them, but never to this degree because the games were ultimately far smaller and finite.

 

Heads' up for PC users: a fair amount of people are reporting severe issues, like immediate CTDs and arcane hardware incompatibilities. You may want to hold off and wait for patches. Sean Murray has tweeted a bit about the most common issues but it doesn't sound comprehensive.

 

Just curious if anyone has figured out a way around the 1st person motion sickness issue. I've been watching a friend play, and its gotten me so dizzy I have to look away from the screen. Aside from that, it seems like a really cool game. Just a bit of a bummer that its only 1st person POV.

 

If the issue is the rate at which the screen is whipping around, you can probably fiddle with the sensitivity, but there aren't any FOV options on PS4 (and even reduced sensitivity won't save you from the high-speed banking maneuvers in your ship). The PC version has some but, well. In either case if first person gives you motion sickness regardless of the FOV settings you're out of luck.

 

So flying around my the first system I was in and found a crashed ship that had better things than my original one! After a bit I got it all repaired and took it. Then I decided to warp to a new system. But when I came out of warp I was 3 feet from a space station which I bounced off of violently...
But on the bright side I didn't die and I found planet that a was very similar to Dathomir which was cool!

 

Man, I'd kill for a crashed ship. I've only seen ones up for sale and it's like "Am I made of units? Possibly, I was born on an acid death planet inhabited by zebra rats so I'm not ruling anything out, but unlikely, y'know?" Meanwhile my twitter feed is full of people posting their sick rides.

On the bright side, I found a pod to add an inventory slot to my suit, so now I'm wondering if there's a way to do that to the default ship, in which case the issue is mitigated.

 

I feel the same when watching a friend play FPS. I've tend to just either zone out or look at the wider room at the same time. Drinking plenty helps.

Still have no idea why 3rd Person isn't generally used.