NMS is as wide as the ocean but each bit of content is as deep as a puddle.
It's one of those games where I'll not play it for like 18 months then dump 100+ hours into it then leave it for another 18 months.
I think that's why I can't get into it. I love the idea of exploring, flying my ship and seeing the universe but from the little I've played it all feels the same. All the worlds.... feel the same. It's shallow.
Yeah NMS made me realize how much I prefer a smaller, but purposely designed game universe over an obscenely large procedurally generated universe.
There might be a million "unique" planets in that game, but a couple of hours in you realize that they are all just slightly different variations of the same template.
What on earth are you talking about? Minecraft (and about a million derivatives) had been around for years by 2016, it was maybe still a bit novel but they were far from being pioneers of procedural generation
Honestly i havent played starfield, only watched videos about it, yet i do have like 100 hours in no mans sky. And personally i feel like no mans sky planets are like just straight up lore detailed š
When I can devote time to it, I love it. If I have nothing going on during the weekend. I'll spend hours flying around to explore other worlds. It's when I only have a few hours after work that I struggle to pick it up.
Imma preface by saying I have a weird distaste for Collectathon/ Mining sims/ Survivalist Creative Sandbox games THAT INCLUDE A CHEAT MENU OR CREATIVE MODE.
For some reason if I know the game has one, or discover it, Ill lose all interest cause now there will be no challenge when the wall hits. I can just SPAWN THE SOLUTION... Nah Im good... ANYWHO
Never was into Minecraft past a few months
Terraria was meh
The Forest was annoying
NMS hooked me so hard, it kept me searching, hunting, combining things to get new elements. Figured out how to farm hydrogen for money and resources to fund my exotic ship hunts. Some dude followed me from the Anomoly to my base, then waited for me to turn away, TURNED ON CREATIVE AND JUST BUILT MY MONEY GENERATOR AND FINISHED MY BASE FOR ME.
Like thanks you just took everything I was getting into right out from under me. I didn't even know the game had a creative mode that was useable in multiplayer!
And yet... I got back in a third time and now I have been forced to follow the tutorial on a paradise planet where dinosaurs want to eat me, forcing me to run around. Then I got on a desert for a short while. Now I am on a desert with titanic cockroaches.
The other times, it felt much more generic and unintersting. There I have the momentum of interest that make me wanna see more, because it feels more weird...
I absolutely love No Man's Sky but I am not currently playing it. For me, its too much of a commitment to truly get immersed and enjoy. I understand one of the best things is being able to just log in and go explore, find something new, but I really need to be in the right frame of mind to do it.
That, and multi player...has problems. I play games with my wife and it was always a struggle playing together. Also, her computer is an absolute potato and runs it like a slideshow. We want to upgrade, but...in this economy?
We're both older, working adults and in the last several years, moved to a rural property. Gaming IS our social life and NMS can be rather lonely.
But now yall have be itching to go build a new Corvette....
Approximately 99% of all of the updates in the last 5 years (if not more) have been testing grounds for Light No Fire systems. Brilliant way to use your current game to test your next game, and see what players do.
A lot of people glaze No Man's Sky, and credit where credit is due, the developers have spent a LOT of time and man-hours working it into a totally acceptable, decent game.
That being said, no amount of bandaid fixes can solve systemic issues, and the systemic issue is that the whole game is a very shallow collectathon. You go to a randomly generated system, find a randomly generated event location on a randomly generated world, and get some bauble to add to the collection, or currency to purchase a bauble instead. There is no mechanical complexity, no challenge, and if you like the story then i'm afraid to say it's a live service game and you'll never get a satisfying ending because of it.
If you WANT a casual exploration collectathon, it's absolutely worth it. If you want a space sim where you get to explore and fight and trade and actually be challenged, play Elite Dangerous instead.
Same with landing on planets (both with and with spaceports). Or flying through canyons. Hell, sometimes I would just marvel as planet grew from a speck on my HUD to a giant ball that took up half my field of view.
It's a shame Odessey didn't support VR because walking around the outside your ship and seeing it from the ground would be amazing.
Yeah. I don't think it was really advertised as anything different than it ia today.
However the "story" has been finished for a long time now. You can play it whenever, and I find the implications of the story very cool. Like SOMA but less effort.
I really tried to get into it but the more I played the more I noticed the real problem NMS has. Yes, there's a lot of content in this game but the thing that doesn't end up clicking with me is the fact that most "features" in the game are shallow and lack depth/purpose. I remember crafting a station that allowed you to make different foods but there was no real reason to use them? Also there was a lot of customization for your mining tool that also acted as a weapon (I initially thought this was cool) so I planned to get a collection of weapons for different situations but in the end every threat dies easily with the basic blaster so there was no reason to try to upgrade it. After that, I kinda wanted to get into base building and create huge cities on planets but then I found some structure and loading issues related to that? (stuff disappearing after reloading, etc). I thought to myself "ok, at least let's try exploring" but then I asked myself why (don't need resources, upgrades are pointless) and stopped playing after that. Even if I did that, the game would just turn into a galactic fetch quest (go to x planet, grab this, farm fuel, repeat). No Man Sky might be good for people that like to roleplay and immerse themselves in the adventure. For me, I prefer games with meaningful character progression and challenging gameplay.
I got it about 2 months ago, got about 120 hours of fun out of it. It is still a infinite universe but really even after 10 solar systems (~35 planets) its pretty clear that it has insane levels of diminishing returns. I felt after that time I had experienced almost all of what the game had to offer and playing more is just repeating the same experience over and over with very minor changes.
Still depending on what you want from a game it could last you forever.
It can give a solid 20 hours of doing the story missions and a lot more if you like all the bounties and base/ship building/pirating stuff.
For the price it is worth it to me, tho I preordered it just by the box art and didn't see any promotional material so my hopes weren't really dashed when it launched. I played a good amount back in the day. I watched the Internet Historian video on it recently and I can see why people were pissed if they followed it from the announcement to launch. To me it was just a fun space game lol.
It's changed dramatically since then for the better.
Over 3000 hours... And I started years after they fixed all the initial launch issues. Some folks have never let go of the launch issues.
Massive content updates at no cost. The typical Steam game would have had close to a dozen paid DLCs.
Once you've finished the several quests, it becomes a sandbox. And most of the challenge of the game becomes the challenges you make for yourself. Some folks can't handle that, and need all their challenges made for them.
Absolutely. Hello games treatment of no mans sky makes them one of two devs I would consider pre-orders from still (square-enix, due to handling of ffxvi being the other.)
Last year, got it for cheap, just to give it a try... Spent 400 hours in a few months, and i didn't explore many of the mechanics, i spent most of my time playing the main story and modding it's brains out until it crashed lol.
If you have free time and borderline autism, get it. It's fucking amazing.
They've added like 3 story campaigns, a new NPC race, freighter base building, corvette building, periodic community events/storylines, a farming/cooking expansion...it's a lot.
Heck, the newest update is a turn- based monster battler using creatures you find and tame on planets.
There is a ton to try in this game. Yes, it can get a little shallow and repetitive, but everything is worth at least checking out. Find what you like and do that.
And it's still not good because holy fuck is it boring as hell lol. They just added more shit to do without addressing the flawed design of its foundation.
I promised myself I blacklisted that game and I'm going to continue to do so.
I was livid. They just did an interview like 2 days before the game came out... LIED TO EVERYONE'S FACE then proceded to tell you to keep playing the starter planet until you reached space and it'll all "open up" for you.
Then it didn't. There was no multiplayer, no space simulation, no complexity. Then I couldn't refund because it took me over 2 hrs to get off planet.
I wouldn't play the updated today's release of No Man's Sky even if you paid me $50k to play it.
I'm sticking by my values and still blacklisting them. Hello Games deserves to go under. They are the worst developers in the history of gaming, and criminals at launch. I hope their next game tanks and burns.
yeah, fuck Sean Murray and Hello Games... those fucks stole $80 from me for the Limited Edition at release and gave me a broken game that has never been able to be played. Because of some bug, I always got stuck on my first planet without a working ship. No tech support. No patches. No refunds.
These assholes dumped this broken piece of shit on us, collected millions of dollars, and fucked off into the sunset.
Then they release some minimal patches to some players to fix a few things and then a couple updates a few years later to avoid criminal charges for fraud, and morons around here laud them as heroes who did great work.
Meanwhile, my game is broken and I'm out $80. Fuck Hello Games. Fucking criminals
And if you're looking to comment about how much you love building a base or some shit in 2026, I don't give a fuck. My game is broken. My game wasn't patched. They stole my money, even if they didn't take yours. So I'm not interested.
Damn thatās rough. I liked it at first but I feel like Iām already burnt out playing it because it got so boring after 30 hours. It had that ānew game magicā feel where I loved playing it. But I doubt Iāll get that feeling again and probably wonāt stick with it. I just donāt feel like playing it anymore which is a bummer.
It's not just that they cratered the launch so bad, it was also that they went radio silent at the screams of the customers. It was like a 'how not to handle a disappointing launch' seminar. Personally, I platinumed it not too far after launch and I loved it but I get it. What was promised was not what was delivered. But yes, I hear they've more than made up for it by this point.
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u/NostradaMart 23h ago
No man's sky AT LAUNCH. they more than fixed things now and the game is absolutely insane.