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[Vivalas]

Right, well, I am in to the casual exploration bit. It looks like Space Engine but with people to meet and you can play with friends. I won't say that the sins of the past are forgotten, but I suppose I get 2 hours to decide whether or not it performs well and is engaging.

I suppose there might be more sales but I doubt it will go below $30 USD, and I don't really buy games more expensive than that, so.

[PTTG??]

Well, I tried it.

I must say, I had low expectations for NMS, but it did an admirable job of failing to meet them.

Performance was a big downside. Starting a new game takes at least 10 minutes of loading, and the autosave either doesn't work or I hadn't reached the point where it kicks in.

In each of the three games I tried to start, I started on a acid planet with 2-3 minutes of acid-resistant protection. My first quest was to gather 75 units of "ferric dust" or something like that. It takes like 5 seconds to get one ferric dust, and you get it by holding the trigger down while pointing at a standard brown surface rock.

Keep in mind, this is the first quest in the game, and the most inventive, immersive, and interesting thing the developers could think of was apparently, "stare at a rock for six minutes." My reward for this would not be that I get more acid-resistant armor, but instead I get a sensor that lets me find the resource I need to get more acid-resistant armor, presumably after staring at a rock for nine minutes.

This was complicated by the incredibly poor performance when looking in the general direction of the ground. When I looked up, frame rates were passable, but if more than 25% of the screen is dirt, it goes down to single-digit FPS.

Oh, and then the one time I decided just to see if it was even possible to collect 75 dust before I died of acid exposure, a robot sentinel showed up and started shooting me for collecting rock dust. I won the slow, boring combat, but then I had 20 seconds to flee before reinforcements showed up. I had already burned through my acid armor, so while I was still running away I dissolved in the acid rain and died.

I got a black screen with a quote, and I couldn't click my way past it, so I quit and got a refund.

Man, what a damned disappointment.

[Folly]

Looking at the steam forums for this game, I found several bug threads. They all have about 90% of posters saying zero bugs and perfect frames, and 10% of posters saying constant freezes and crashes and fps dips. So performance seems to be an issue only with certain systems.

[Whivy]

Man, i'm not a pro NMS, i find it pretty "okay" at most, but most of your points are not valid

Performance was a big downside. Starting a new game takes at least 10 minutes of loading, and the autosave either doesn't work or I hadn't reached the point where it kicks in.

What are your specs ? New game took 5min at most the first time, 1min the second time (cause first planet didn't please me). Got a dozen autosaves in about 30min game. Most of them happen after you go to your ship though. It shouldn't take you more than 2min to reach it if you follow the quest.

In each of the three games I tried to start, I started on a acid planet with 2-3 minutes of acid-resistant protection.

You must have been really unlucky, tried 2 starts, one was a boreal world (cold but not Hoth cold), but the second time i started in acidic as well. It's sure is annoying at first when you don't know that you need to collect elements from plants to recharge, but after that, it's not a real problem at all. Especially since you are not supposed to stay more than 20min on the starting planet if you follow the quest fast enough.

My first quest was to gather 75 units of "ferric dust" or something like that. It takes like 5 seconds to get one ferric dust, and you get it by holding the trigger down while pointing at a standard brown surface rock.

No, just... no unless you aim it at empty ground. Just take a medium sized rock that are everywhere. Mining it will take about 5-6s and you'll get from 15 to 30 ferric when you finished to mine it completly. The first quest take less than a minute.

This was complicated by the incredibly poor performance when looking in the general direction of the ground. When I looked up, frame rates were passable, but if more than 25% of the screen is dirt, it goes down to single-digit FPS.

Well, no problem performance-wise on my side so... dunno.

Oh, and then the one time I decided just to see if it was even possible to collect 75 dust before I died of acid exposure, a robot sentinel showed up and started shooting me for collecting rock dust. I won the slow, boring combat, but then I had 20 seconds to flee before reinforcements showed up. I had already burned through my acid armor, so while I was still running away I dissolved in the acid rain and died.

Happened to me too, then i just avoided the sentinels while mining. That's die and learn, if you played dwarf fortress, you should be reaaaaally used to that though. And dying at first quest just make you reappear same place 10s after death. So it's not that terrible.

Overall, the game is not perfect, i don't think i'll be able to invest hundreds of hours in it before getting bored (i think subnautica is more interesting to be honest) but i disagree with most of your points.

Are you sure you are not biased because you didn't want NMS to please you ?

[Vivalas]

Yeah, so,  started on an acid planet too but kind of enjoyed it. It made feel somewhat frantic actually as my toxic protection faded. but harvesting 75 ferrite took 30 seconds at most and I found some sodium plants. The rain sounds real nice from inside the cockpit too.

First impressions? Well, on almost max settings on a shit rig I can get a solid 30 FPS (although the game seems to cap at 30 FPS? I thought v sync was supposed to be 60 FPS), and is pretty damned smooth. Meanwhile other less visually stunning games like Empyrion or Space Engineers plod along with frequent stuttering and lag.

Gameplay wise, it seems slow and perhaps slightly repetitive at first, but not so much that it becomes a grind. The planets and landscapes seem pretty varied, even if a bit uninteresting, but I have seen pictures of cool formations amd found a nice cave system myself.

Frankly, my biggest negative thing about the game is how multiplayer was sold to be "meet people randomly on your journey", which is a lie. On the Reddit people seem to be saying it was always sold as COOP and denying this, but I think that's false. I half bought it on that fact alone, and the fact HG is using shady marketing tactics again by not quite exactly explaining how their systems work is almost enough for me to refund it on principle.

Multiplayer works like this: you join someone else's game randomly, or they join yours randomly. It's not so much happenstance at two travellers being on the same planet at once by chance, and more of a sort of matchmaking. Although it did mention if you meet someone else on another planet they show up as an "orb", which I guess is somewhat interesting, so they might fully expand it later to be what many had thought it to be to begin with, but still, stop being complete shills.

I think why people like it (and I kinda do), is it is a lot more now than what it was before: a chill exploration game where you wander around the universe. And it fills a gap that I have wanted before: now when it is late and I spend hours thinking of a game to play, I can just chill and fly around on NMS, which is the niche I think most of the people who came back and gave a positive review wanted in the first place, even if it can be shallow at times.

So: sitting at 117 minutes, I'll probably keep it. I almost want to refund because of the nagging feeling I've been shammed by more shitty marketing and half fulfilled promise, but at the same time it is a nice chill game that I can chill around with friends, and I got it half off. And between ED and NMS I think I will stick to NMS since it seems like ED but with less visuals but with actual planets.

I will say, however, that I dislike always having to fuel the launch boosters whenever I land. I suppose I could have just done creative, but it makes exploring seem a bit pointless.

[Lich180]

From what I've seen of the multiplayer you CAN run into people randomly, but it's highly unlikely you will due to the size of the Galaxy and the distribution in players. If you seek out the Galactic Hub or another large congregation of players you'll find a lot of people.

You can also join a friend's game and be teleported directly to them, and keep any progress you make while there.

As to the launch thrusters, asteroids in space give a ton of fuel, and the space stations market / NPCs sell the fuel you need. You can also make launch fuel from materials you gather. Survival mode drains more fuel per launch, and I believe the style of ship you have affects the amount of fuel used as well. Not too sure on that, since I only have a fighter and a hauler right now.

[Whivy]

First impressions? Well, on almost max settings on a shit rig I can get a solid 30 FPS (although the game seems to cap at 30 FPS? I thought v sync was supposed to be 60 FPS)

I think there is a fps limit settings in the menu, by default it's 30 but you can push it t60 or 90.

[PTTG??]

My standards were raised by the fact it's normally $60, and by the serious ethical lapses by the dev team during launch. I wanted to like the game, but I'm not going to give it the benefit of the doubt needed to get passed a boring and outright hostile start.

Dwarf Fortress and Kenshi and any number of open, communicative, and honest games deserve the time and effort it takes to get off the ground.

[Trolldefender99]

My standards were raised by the fact it's normally $60, and by the serious ethical lapses by the dev team during launch. I wanted to like the game, but I'm not going to give it the benefit of the doubt needed to get passed a boring and outright hostile start.

Dwarf Fortress and Kenshi and any number of open, communicative, and honest games deserve the time and effort it takes to get off the ground.

So from what I gather...

You went in hating the game, because (at least partly) of game's launch. You wanted or/and expected it to be bad, with a negative attitude to playing it. Won't even give it a chance and now pretty much trolling on the thread because the game launched poorly and you didn't go in with a positive outlook, but actually a negative one.

Think that about sums it up.

[McTraveller]

I broke down and got it when it was on steam for $25 or whatever on that crazy sale.  It was.. pretty, but a bit too relaxing.  I never felt any motivation to do anything.  I still managed to put close to 40 hours or something into it - still worth the entertainment dollar.

[Trolldefender99]

Oy, oy, PTTG has a right to feel the way they do. Yes, I'd allow the launch conditions to affect one's perspective of it now- it was in every way a massive misdirection with a sixty dollar price tag. Two years (Three?) of continued development have not changed the core gameplay loop much, which only really hold appeal when sold as they did prior to release if you're not already willing to accept the game for being kind of shallow. Me, I've enjoyed it enough to dunk over a hundred hours in it- I've gotten my money out of it, drama or otherwise.

PTTG is also not being belligerent or aggressive. Please reel it in; the forum already has a sour history around this game and raising hackles at forumites is not going to let us discuss it for long.

Launch should have nothing to do with how the game is NOW. Granted, at launch it was so bad I thought it was Spore 2.0.

But, NOW it isn't like that at all. They haven't even charged anything extra. They haven't released paid mods, paid dlc, magical casino loot boxes or all that nickel and dime BS that most other companies do. And they really turned the game around

I'll concede that if it isn't the persons type of game however, then they just won't ever like it. But that has nothing to do with launch or the game itself, thats just the persons preference. But the way PTTG posted (more so his second post than his first post) made it read like he just went in with a negative attitude instead of actually going in positive with GOOD expectations (not bad/low expectations) and didn't bother giving it a chance and already went in thinking the game was going to be bad. Granted, if he or anyone else just doesn't like the game itself that is fine. I tried ELITE Dangerous and Euro Truck simulator, and both I thought were too boring. But there is a group of people that like those games. Nothing to do with those games though.

If he was actually not being overly negative and just doesn't like the game, then I apologize. The way it was worded (and can't really tell someones tone with just text) made it read like he went in already with low expectations and expecting it to be bad, and allowing launch to cloud his judgement instead of focusing on how the game currently is. Unless he (and anyone else) just doesn't like the type of game it is, then thats fine cause everyone has their own preference in gaming.

[Trolldefender99]

In other news...

I'm actually surprised No Man's Sky didn't just shut the door, stop updating and move on to a new game altogether. I've seen so many early access games (and yeah, No man's sky wasn't early access I know) either get abandoned, or released to negative reviews and never updated again. I actually really thought NMS, because how much a disaster it was and how much bad press there was; would see maybe one or two updates at most and never again to see another update.

Instead they kept working on the game and made something "great" (if its the persons type of game that is). They really turned things around. Didn't even charge for DLC, microtransactions, loot boxes or anything else that almost every other game company does. Granted still probably won't be liked by everyone, and I have encountered stuttering (but performs well overall) but wow its so different than at launch.

[Vivalas]

Oy, oy, PTTG has a right to feel the way they do. Yes, I'd allow the launch conditions to affect one's perspective of it now- it was in every way a massive misdirection with a sixty dollar price tag. Two years (Three?) of continued development have not changed the core gameplay loop much, which only really hold appeal when sold as they did prior to release if you're not already willing to accept the game for being kind of shallow. Me, I've enjoyed it enough to dunk over a hundred hours in it- I've gotten my money out of it, drama or otherwise.

PTTG is also not being belligerent or aggressive. Please reel it in; the forum already has a sour history around this game and raising hackles at forumites is not going to let us discuss it for long.

Yes, I don't think we've ever gotten any sort of acknowledgement for the scam the game was when it first came out, and despite the fact it is still being developed, I still don't think it's worth $60 (nor do I think any game is), and I still don't really trust HG or anything they do. If it was marketed as an early access title, and then moved to where it is now, and if it had a more reasonable price tag, I would approve. But even though I grudgingly like the game (and wish I had a few more hours to decide), there is nothing that excuses building a hype around a $60 overpriced turd, taking advantage of your fans, and then just deserting them after launch. Granted, I never had to deal with that, but it really made just about everyone in the gaming industry, and anyone that follows games, pretty mad. I suppose that's what happens when you get Sony as a publisher.

I, uh, also never really read the previous thread, but I don't want to get this one closed down and it's decent now, so that's as far as I will go with ranting. I would say it's maybe worth $30. Definitely not $60. If you don't get it on sale, I advise waiting until another sale unless you REALLY love just chilling and wandering aimlessly.

EDIT: In response to the post that came as I was typing this, yes, I do love how they didn't just turn tail and leave, and REALLY like how they are putting out free content updates. That's part of the redemption, I think.

EDIT 2: But in retrospect, it's not so much free content updates as actually finishing the game, so.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Judging by steam reviews, it really has come around. The overall review score is still low (though not as much as it used to be), but recent reviews is sitting at a solid 83%. It's enough to tempt me, really.

Keep in mind that reviews were great for the first two weeks of launch as well. It's at the end of the second week that the bad side of the game started to really sink in and the poop hit the fan.

[Gabeux]

Yep, the problem with launch was that it took a good 10-20h to really realize there wasn't anything else. It took a good 30-40-50-60..or so many hours to get to the end and truly see in the eye of evil and how bad and demonic marketing can be.
No one should ever forget and should never forgive. But the horse is beyond dead now, NMS is like a ghost horse at this point. Only thing that annoys me is not the game anymore, it's the media / youtube. It honestly feels like people are baiting when they say "This update bring so much new stuff! Free updates!".
Those youtubers doing "Should you give NMS a Second Chance after All The FREE Updates?" and "WATCH THIS: Hello Games was very nice to give people more content!" and getting 200k average views is pure bait to me. I.e. people are still trying to monetize rage. And all of this attention still makes it as if NMS is or was truly intended to be a "special" game, that sits above others.

The game has a bunch of quirks that will hopefully be fixed (after all the effort they put in it, would be silly not to fix simple UI/UX/Performance stuff), but what I'd rather have people understand is what I said before, NMS is a Chill Procedural Survival-Arcade Game, where "exploration" means that sometimes you might bump into vistas or views that may make you say "damn, this looks cool" or "why every planet in this system all have animals that seems to have foxes as their ancestors..?", and it doesn't go beyond that. At all. I have no idea why it gets so much attention while games I can spend 1000h on like X4 Foundation gets no attention at all - again, this is what currently pisses me off: NMS is not most people cup of tea but all the talks on it somehow made a lot of people think it is.
This was mentioned before in the thread about it being a niche game that people took as mainstream.

I do hope/wish they do more updates though. Because then it might get close to the original promises and could potentially go beyond that. Not in a hardcore, deep-and-wide, cold-and-hard way, but in it's on 'chill' way.
As an addict/fan of space games I'd see no harm into more honest work being put into it. Could be interesting to see where it goes if they have more stuff to show, an attempt to take the actual "NEXT" step.

The only reason I play it atm is because I couldn't refund it back at launch, and because Space Engineers, Empyrion, X3, X:Rebirth, Heat Signature..nothing is scratching the itch of "I'm a spaceman and I can fly my ship, then land my ship and walk and poke stuff in the eye". Also I like the art and the music, 10/10. But my god the game design choices....
The moment an actual space game comes out, like X4 Foundations, I'll drop it for ages again.