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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Gaming The Sky belongs to No Man

Discussion in 'Community' started by FatBurt, Mar 5, 2016.

  1. FatBurt

    FatBurt Sex Scarecrow Vanquisher star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 21, 2003
    not got a freighter yet and I'll be honest this is the first time I've heard of this happen in the main game.





    It is massively improved but yeah, it does still appear to be very buggy for some people.



    I hope they fix it soon as it's such a tranquil time sink, well it's often tranquil time sink if you get the right planet.
     
    Jedi Ben likes this.
  2. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    So, on the basis that I have a feckin’ massive freighter, I figure that, if nothing else I ought to check it out properly as No Man’s Sky is telling me to do so.

    That’s where it gets weird, but in a good way.

    I get told to build a Fleet Command room on the freighter, I don’t have the silver to build. Not a problem, there’s asteroids of the stuff so blast a few, go back, build. It then also lets me build a Construction Terminal! Yep, the very same thing it was saying no to at my planetary base. Then, having built the terminal, it says go find an overseer - previously, it was telling me to get the Overseer before building the terminal. So, expecting another bugged quest ****-up, I go to the station and lo and behold! I get my overseer. Head back to the freighter and I’m to build a glass corridor and pick up some blueprints.

    I leg it to the planet - a world of aggressive bastard sentinels, so it’s get in, get out. Head back - built a science terminal and can now build storage containers - so that’s for tomorrow at my planetary base, which I renamed as, for the hell of it - Z’ha’dum.

    It makes no damn sense whatsoever that building a freighter base in a different system would progress the quest. Now I’m wondering if you only have to build the terminals once, at a base, for them to be active at all bases. Would kind of make sense, as each is staffed by one of the races. Building them again and again would be a pain in the arse. Even so, this doesn’t let Murray off the hook, as it was still blocking me. And, if this is the case, the game does a terrible job of explaining it.

    Still, I don’t care as much - I’ve got around it. Will probably be a bit wary on the quests now, but am inclined to continue. Look, it’s simple, I just want a corporate space empire, is that too much to ask?

    Oh and you can buy freighters - a bargain at 2.5m units - each! I don’t have that currently, but later? Oh, sooner or later, yes.
     
  3. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    The NMS recovery continues....

    I now have a super storage facility on Z'ha'dum. Nine storage containers that I'll stack up with core materials so I've recovery stashes for the game deciding to drop 10 pirates on me out of nowhere.

    Also noticed that the Blueprint Analyser, which was supposedly not available to those with pre-NEXT saves, was in the tech to build so have that built, which in turn has allowed new base options - if I but find salvage blueprints. So, that's tomorrow night's job....
     
  4. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    NMS continues to improve, albeit with the odd spectacular crash along the way, mostly due to its so harsh that even Dredd would say to they ought to lighten off, sentinels.

    Let’s start with the good:

    • So I sent a frigate out on a mission, it ran into trouble - requested recall. I granted that and it limped back to base. How do you fix a damaged frigate? You fly over there, land on a pad and run around the ship fixing it, all against a galactic backdrop. Pretty damn smart.

    • I got the Armorer terminal up and running and have done most of his missions, word on the net is not to touch the last one and it does indeed sound like a bastard, with a less than great reward at the end of it.

    • I’ve spent a lot of time running around after buried tech to expand the base options and that, combined with the terminal missions, have really expanded it. I’ve designs for tech I can’t build but sound cool like an atmospheric harvester. I’ve built a large refiner and the thing has its own self-sustaining power source. I haven’t developed the freighter base much, but that can wait. Having the freighter itself is damn cool, never mind the option to build a fleet - which I don’t have the money for, yet.

    • I’ve gone to about five systems now and have teleport links between the stations. That’s one of the big upgrades they did. I think they realised the crafting for the hyperdrive was high, so getting people to consume those resources made for an irritating experience, thus once you’ve gone to a new system by hyperdrive, you can warp there by stargate in future.
    Is it perfect? No, but it’s far better than it was. However:

    • Sentinels? One occasion, I leg it into a newly, Terrain Manipulator created hole and manage to seal it behind me. One flying sentinel made it in, I shoot it like mad, I ought to be safe, right? No, because behind me, in this newly created dead end there is a dog sentinel that has literally been teleported in! This is the game being a cheap bastard.

    • Another time I legged it underground and the Sentinel could see through rock, so I kept blasting a corridor away until it went into search mode. Again, not great and the sentinels are the biggest flaw in the game. The product of a parental tendency from Hello Games. No, we can’t trust the player not to be a bastard so we’ve filled the universe with supercops.

    • Outside of those robo-bastards, there are the odd glitch that irritates. Like a planet name obscuring the timer destination countdown. Or something supposed to be at point X, you get there and the icon disappears. The biggest flaw is it does not remove the icons for sites already visited - this one they really ought to be working on because it’s a pain in the arse to go after what you think is a new drop pod and you already got the upgrade from it. This particularly so when you’ve finally worked out how to decode the encrypted data logs you find.
    Back to the cool stuff:

    • Storm inbound… Well, ****. Wait, got the Terrain Manipulator? Blast a bolthole at an angle and if you’re underground the storm doesn’t touch you. This changes how you play the game.

    • Similarly, freezing weather at night time. Got a small amount of Sodium, but the level of recharge meant it was easily topped up.

    • Reinforced door on a factory? Strafe it. This never gets old, you blast the door in, wait for the Sentinels to cool off and waltz right in.

    • Pirates - I’m getting better at killing this scum. Killed 60 of the buggers.

    • There’s starting to be an interesting galactic history picture forming - the Gek are the arch-bastards of No Man’s Sky, so to oppose them the Vy’Keen got organised, not sure how the Korvax fit in yet.
    For anyone of a completionist tendency, NMS remains an existential nightmare for, by design, you can only see a fraction of it. I can see the game spawning a couple of philosophical doctoral theses. If you resist that, it’s very much a game that is what you make of it. Don’t yet have the planetary vehicles, but they would come in useful.
     
  5. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    So today’s NMS session veered between ‘Ok fun’ and to ‘exasperating and dire’. The latter first? OK then:

    You are told to get Solanium, you scan a planet that says it has it, you land and look around - all the while in a boiling environment that slowly kills you every second you are in it - and it isn’t ****ing there. Tried a couple more sites, same result. Fine, let’s go to a different planet, no luck, same ****. In the end I gave up for a time and did some other quests. In the interim I’d looked online, even found a picture of what the hell I’m supposed to be looking for as it supposedly glows in the dark but is still scanner-immune. I saw a planet of the right type, flew around looking for it and got lucky with a massive clump of them. Should the game require me to get lucky? No. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t fun, it was bad.

    Took on a mission for destroying depots, I find one, I blow it sky high - guess what? Doesn’t count. Supposedly, on a planet with sentinels that shoot on sight, the only way to make it count is to land nearby and attack with your popgun! Aka ****ing suicide. Stuff that too.

    Outside of this there was a mission or two again, to that sentinel infested hellhole and it looks like another trip is on the cards. Also got ambushed by pirates, a couple of the fights I won, the other went so spectacularly I played the ‘reload save, **** you all’ card. That the combat system is not to aim at the ships but this circle ahead of them just irritates, it makes no damn sense. That it’s so damn hard to recharge shields in mid-battle doesn’t help - just do a ‘recharge’ button and be done you feckin’ idiots.

    Still, do have the farming tech now active and I have the plant for frost crystals, another bastard hard material to come by. Like the Solanium, you go to a planet that says its there and it bloody well isn’t, so farming the thing is by far the better option.

    Oh and bounty kills are bugged - I kill the ship, but no money.
     
  6. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Far better mini-go on NMS tonight - no faffing around, no unclear missions, no trip to that sentinel-infested frozen hellhole!

    Went to a different system, grabbed the Convergence Cube I was after. Then also got a pie of Dioxite for the Frostwort plants - these will supply frost crystals which will finally allow me to start glassing up the base and make it real nice, plus allowing me to add a biodome.

    Got the heat capacitor blueprint, which was the other half of the circuit board and wouldn’t you know it? Involves a pile of Solanium! Good job I nabbed 500 of it when I saw it. I’m also told you can grow it, which’ll be much easier.

    Went back to the base and did a serious expansion - large room, 4 small hydroponic bays. Plus a couple of curving corridors and for the hell of it I’ve colour coded the lights for a couple of sections so I know which is which.

    Looking good. Now, I just have to investigate the Poly-Fibre build for the circuit build to unlock the tech terminal…
     
  7. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    So No Man’s Sky is back to being a bugged crapbag.
    • What should happen: Give Overseer 100 mordite, get Exocraft Terminal build.

    • What happens: Get told ‘take blueprint’ - terminal does not show up in build option!
    This is absolutely the worst possible game to be doing this crap. It had a spectacularly lousy reputation, it did this big PR drive for Next, people give it a second chance and they get? Buggy crap.
    The amount of sheer counter-intuitive chicanery I have had to engage in to progress the base quests is nuts.
    They did an awful lot of things right on this upgrade but also got some very big things very, very wrong.
     
  8. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Conned it into giving me what I wanted.

    First, Overseer was saying take this blueprint but the blueprint I got was Scatter Blaster. So I went and bought all the multi-tool upgrades before talking to him. That time the blueprint was ‘exocraft terminal’.

    Second, I kept trying to build it on the freighter, as that’s where the others all were. Except, I finally remembered that it only allowed me to build the construction terminal on the freighter, not the land base. So I went back to my land base and found that, yes, this one it did allow to be built.

    So, I finally have the bloody thing, having blown 1,500 nanite clusters on a ton of upgrades to force the game to give me the blueprint it should have done!
     
  9. JEDI-SOLO

    JEDI-SOLO Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2002
    Bought this game Friday and didn’t start till Sat but I played like crazy. Woke up and started to do the same thing for another few hours Sunday till lightning took out my PS4.

    Wonderful
     
  10. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Had an epic session on No Man’s Sky where I built and completely out-fitted all three Exocraft vehicles, expanded the base to a massive degree, progressed the main story a little, which opened up more base options.

    Getting the vehicles really changes things, not only can you roam much further, but when a storm comes along you just keep on driving! And driving through a superheated rainstorm, the graphics looked awesome - I wasn’t able to notice it before.

    Today was mostly me nabbing loads of copper, killing the odd Sentinel for pugneum - though they remain the single biggest flaw in the game. And don’t raid a depot while in the Roamer, you will never evade the Sentinels except by returning to base. So, there’s a long line of destruction of my legging it out of there! The only real way to take out a depot is by starship.

    The only flaw was when it gave me this boost function, didn’t flash up the button and hit me with a timed mission. Not cool, but I still pulled it off.

    Now have Gravitino plants, which is the definition of ‘cash crop’, but Albumen Pearl might beat it, but that’ll take a bit more getting. Frostwort plants have given more frost crystals than I currently know what to do with but I do have some new glass designs to build with. All in all the bio=dome is starting to live up to its name.

    Oh yeah, a trio of pirates picked a fight, I killed them all. One by one they got to watch their friends die and then it was their turn.

    I still have that second ship on the freighter to repair - might actually get around to that now, as I’ve the ability to carry all the stuff needed.
     
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  11. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    So, went to a new star system, saved a freighter, despite one of its defenders picking a fight despite my saving its arse - got offered the freighter. Only one problem:

    It was £58,000,000 +

    Yep 58 million plus units. Granted, it was bloody massive, looked like a NMS' homage to a Super Star Destroyer, but I've barely got 2.5m units!

    So today, as part of a distraction from a water problem until engineer got here, I focused on tech development and base building. Found I had this build option for large wood windows, so slung a load in the central complex and it transforms the building. I'm developing the cash crop of Gravitino plants, now got 5, plotting to give them their dedicated biodome then I can rack in 100,000+ units per batch sale.

    But the bigger amount of time was doing a huge wodge of the Artemis quest, which a couple of times, involved my legging it to a space station with pirates breathing on my arse. It's not a bad questline, I think I'm past the point where I previously got in Creative in an pre-Next game, probably a year ago. It's straight-forward, but that it ignores your ranking with the guilds is a double-edge. On the one hand, they only ask for two quests, but it would have been cool to have your rank recognised. Also killed 8 sentinels, granted they were more one-on-one assassinations than fights but screw those little buggers.
     
  12. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    NMS continues to fend off Yakuza Kiwami 2.

    This is, in itself, quite impressive. Why and how? Well, I now have four starships, a base that is regularly generating 150k of income a turn - which sounds a lot, but is kind of low for this game,works for now though.

    Along with having nabbed three crashed ships, having done minimal repair and then sold each of them to a foolish alien, I have a top-of-the-line, fully repaired multi-tool, which has changed things again. The S-Class boltcaster upgrade allowed me to kill 8 sentinels easily, even the armoured ones - might be able to take out the dog ones now and that’s without having the parts to install the heavy weaponry. Got some scanner upgrades and instead of getting a handful of units, some plants give 20k per scan, some creatures +100k - all of a sudden getting a few million to buy a frigate is achievable, long term? Getting a Super Star Destroyer freighter for 80-100m.

    It’s also noticeable that, with my rank increased, mission rewards have gone from a handful of units to tech that, when sold, supplies 500k to 1.5m a time.

    So it seems pretty clear that the way to cash is continue doing the missions, expanding the base and reaping the money.
     
  13. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Well, I hit some serious restrictions in NMS on base building.

    To a degree, the base building is pretty ambitious, but only so long as you abide by its less than clear and arbitrary rules. If you decide you want to do something a bit more creative - like say, sticking a bio-dome or two on a two-tier custom glass pane complex of hydroponic bays, chances are it'll collapse quick. Similarly, you might have stuck to a grid system, but when you try to link everything up, it doesn't quite go.

    This and the cursor indicator is the dumbest sumbitch software you will ever encounter - frequently it'll place your item everywhere except where you actually want it. So, it can be bloody exasperating.

    On the other hand, I do now have a multi-level biodome complex set-up, including a landing pad at the sort of centre of it, moved the exocraft vehicles out to the front, done some serious remodeling on base 1. Base 1? Yeah, now got a second on a damp planet but it's right on the sea shore and slopes down to and over the water. Unlike Base , Z'Ha'Dum, there's far fewer sentinels too which will make development far easier.

    In addition to the other three starships, I've recruited two more frigates and then sent all three on a combat mission. Their orders? Go forth and kick arse, they did.

    Meanwhile the farm is now racking up about 1m units per go, while generating enough resources to also fuel expansion! So, got about 16m units in the bank and that's only going to go up. Got some new product recipes, raided an alien ruin, got a circuit board's worth of component from freighter salvage - that's another 850-950k in one go, blew a few pirates to hell and did the same to some sentinels. It's quite clever that you can overlay missions - Monster Hunter World - so you get a kill-3-sentinels mission, you combine that with a kill-4, kill-5, kill-8, kill-8 mission and every single sentinel kill contributes to all five!

    Even so, I think tomorrow is when it will finally be time to boot up Yakuza Kiwami 2 - and I really ought to because Monster Hunter World's autumn festival is in-bound and I didn't upgrade Aloy's bow. That and there will be many other goodies to get.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2018
  14. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 10, 2017
    It's a shame. From your experiences, the game sounds like a blast @Jedi Ben. But I honestly don't want to support Hello Games after everything that happened around the game's release.
     
  15. FatBurt

    FatBurt Sex Scarecrow Vanquisher star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 21, 2003
    Game releases often go pear shaped

    WoW often has difficulties on new expansions

    Arkham (Tank) Knight has an appalling run when released on PC



    It happens to many designers to one degree or another




    If the game is good (and currently cheap) why not try it even if you have issues based on something that happened three years ago? The issues are resolved now (in the main)
     
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  16. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    That's a decision everyone has to make, but in the two years since, for me, I'd say sticking out four big updates for free across the timespan is quite the attempt at restitution. Particularly given what else we've seen in from the industry in the same span. Nor am I convinced that the Next patch is it for those freebies, I'm certain there will be more.

    Nor do you have to support HG, buy a second-hand copy for a fiver - there, you cut them out.

    However, HG is more than Sean Murray, who has clearly wised up from the PR disaster he was two years ago, so in the interest of fairness, does the rest of the studio not qualify for a re-evaluation? Is not 'fessing up and then spending two years trying to correct it not worth something more than a lack of forgiveness?

    For myself, it was a bit of a different situation - I didn't follow it that closely, so didn't have the expectations some had. Found it was OK for a bit, but didn't like the crafting / survival so put it on the shelf. Considered flogging it, but there was no resale value. So shelved it, played other games. Went back to it on and off as the updates hit, but none of them worked in the way Next did. They look to have worked out that the crafting needs to be quicker and easier and more fun, so they've done that. Part of why I stopped playing before was the landing thrusters crafting was a pain in the arse, now? Far, far easier - I've got loads of the stuff for refueling.

    Which is the fun versus realism aspect - the earlier versions were more realistic, but less fun. (Also, if you want realism, there's Elite Dangerous.) Realistically, you should land and be stuck on a planet, but that's not fun. Now? Every planet has those core elements for flying and surviving.

    True, but HG got in over their head with NMS, they had Sony whacking it up into a far bigger release and Murray's solution to it all was to lie out of his arse about it. So yeah, that was never going to end well.

    But, to do four big free updates in the two years since two years that were also where microtransactions and loot boxes went to new heights of greed, has to count for something. As should their claim to not be considering any micrortransactions in the future, just big, free updates.

    Changing tack:

    The game's procedural model has its limits - the same missions come up, there's graphical similarity across the galaxy, even with the Next upgrade, you can send out fleet missions, but those will be similar too. The challenge for them is can they push it more? For instance you gain or lose standing with various factions and the impact, to a degree, is on the upgrades you buy and some missions that rank is needed to access. What if having good / bad rep with a faction affects how you are greeted in a system owned by that faction? Or, if I'm known for killing pirates, do they start to flee from me instead of fighting?

    They can keep bolting stuff onto this forever, it's one hell of a basis for building. It's also a very different 'game as service' model to that of EA. (The only other lot doing something similar to HG is Capcom with Monster Hunter World.) Like MHW, I'm not going to play it all the time, but I'll drop in every now and again.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2018
  17. FatBurt

    FatBurt Sex Scarecrow Vanquisher star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 21, 2003
    Sony applied massive pressure from what I've seen/read and in all honesty should have delayed the game for a year or so.


    Small developer with big idea, major company with no patience is in all honesty a recipe for disaster.


    the NMS lauch issues were not all Hello Game's fault IMO
     
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  18. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 10, 2017
    I don't like the standard it sets. Companies shouldn't be able to release an unfinished and buggy game for full price then have their sins absolved by dropping a mega patch later down the line. They sold a broken game hyped up by blatant lies. I won't forget that, and I won't support it, no matter how good the patch is. And just because other companies did worse things, that doesn't make what Hello Games did any better.

    Now, with that being said, I may go the second hand route like @Jedi Ben mentioned. I just don't want to give them any money.
     
  19. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    You can buy the game or not buy the game but I absolutely promise you that it's of essentially zero consequence to industry trends, particularly at this point; the moral angle is probably incoherent and definitely meaningless in the aggregate.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2018
  20. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 10, 2017
    I know me buying or not buying the game is essentially meaningless.

    But I'm not comfortable with giving Hello Games my money. [face_plain]
     
  21. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Fine, but spare us the boycott performance drama.
     
  22. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 10, 2017
    I'm not encouraging anyone else to not buy the game. I'm not trying to shame anyone for buying it. I'm just trying to explain why i'm personally not comfortable with buying the game because of some objectionable things from Hello Games and my own discomfort at industry trends that encourage selling unfinished games. That doesn't seem unreasonable.
     
  23. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Fair enough, I'm projecting a lot of frustration with broader enthusiast reactions onto you, and that's a rather discourteous load of assumptions (especially given the game in question's infamous launch).

    Just... just don't start talking about puddles. :p
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2018
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  24. Outsourced

    Outsourced Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 10, 2017
    No worries. I understand how frustrating it can get when people continuously trash a game. It's grating, especially when it's a game you enjoy.
     
  25. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    It's less that and more the trend of how these controversies tend to bear out is beyond exhausting at this point. But I find a lot of current discourse (gaming or otherwise) just exhausting, so maybe it's me.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2018
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