No Man's Sky - Interceptor

[Thread Astaire]

This game has faults, but by god can i forgive Hello Games for every single one of them. This is utterly superb.

 

Just watched a Digital Foundry video on NMS on YouTube and all they did was gripe about some stupid graphical issues, rather than focus on what an amazing universe these guys have created. I've only managed to make it to 5 planets yet and been playing for hours. I'm currently stuck on Dagobah mining Emeril. 

 

This has completely sucked me in and hopefully they can build on this game to add things. How can you review and give this game a number?

 

 

[Cosmic_Guru]

39 minutes ago, Rowan Morrison said:

 

It's not so much the slots as what goes in them, and whether you unlock new blueprints later on for a greater variety of weapon types. I've had ricochet shots, shotguns and machine gun mods so far, so I'm hoping there's more to come. It's just the fact that every blueprint I find now is one I've already got that I find a bit grating - I'd found most of them before I made my first warp jump. Maybe I need to follow the quest a bit more...

 

I'm going through a phase like that currently and I'm wondering whether there is some sort of loot scaling dependent on size of ship or tool.  On the other hand, maybe it's all just random and the higher level ones are simply much rarer.  For that matter will we see the rarer elements in the wild later or, or more challenging environmental hazards (these seem manageable with the appropriate shield and fuel for it)?  I haven't died from exposure once yet.

 

On closer inspection of my ship upgrades (so I can amuse myself in the meantime obtaining materials which will boost me when that magic moment arrives), I find I possess a warp drive sigma upgrade - it requires dynamic resonator (which I can make) and iridium which I can't say I've seen anywhere in the wild yet.

 

I really really want Chrystolite  which has completely dried up and buying 30 units here and there isn't going to cut it.  (Posting my most wanted here has worked out before so fingers crossed...)

 

Happy with my 14 slot tool at present because I only use the laser and the currenty tau intensity grenades.  All suit upgrades are maxed to my current blueprints other than the jet pack,  and I have 36 slots available.

 

 

[Cyhwuhx]

5 hours ago, Rayn said:

After less than a week since release and I've clocked more than 30 hours in this game already. I haven't played a game this much in such a short amount of time since...well, I can't even remember. Maybe since the release of World of Warcraft. 

 

Even before the official PS4 release, I saw plenty of user reviews that boldly stated that "After you've played it for 2-3 hours you've seen everything" and this still puzzles me. 
While I'm fully aware that NMS isn't for everyone, I can't help but think a lot of the negative feedback comes from people who have either not played it at all or just decided they wanted to hate it from the very first moment. 

 

Here's me, with nearly 35 hours played and I'm still running into surprises here and there that keeps fuelling my curiosity to keep playing. 

I've also seen a lot of people who claim they didn't want to play it because "there's nothing to do". 

 

That's another statement I'm puzzled about. After my time with the game, I simply wish there were more hours in the day so I could play it more, because I have so much to do in the game. After visiting the first anomaly I was torn between the two major choices, should I go for a black hole or chase the Atlas route. After I chose one of them I kinda regretted it and wanted to go the other way. Luckily I found a solution to do so. Since then I've basically gone back and forth between the two paths and to my big surprise it has been very rewarding for me. I've been drip fed snippets of intriguing information and lore, and I've started to get a more complete picture of how things work in this mighty fine galaxy. 

I simply can't wait for my next session, and if the game is only half as entertaining for me going forward compared to my journey so far, I'm pretty sure I'll manage to easilly squeeze another 35 hours out of it without getting bored. 

 

A lot of 'gamers' seem to forget that anything that is fun is repetitive. Tetris… you have seen everything in 10 seconds. Doesn't change the nature of the game itself nor the amounts of time you can put into it. If you like a game, repetitiveness is a godsend, if you don't like it, it's torture. It's not like Overwatch-players are complaining about doing the same thing over and over again.

 

NMS is not GTA, you don't have a load of options, but its variety keeps you on your toes. I've been doing the same thing from the start and I want more. Like Muramasa, Odin Sphere, Subnautica, Tetris, etc. The stupid idea that somehow a game should be an everlasting banquet which swaps chefs every 10 minutes is ludicrous. Nobody would like that as a game, because there's no system to master. The system in NMS is rather easy to master apart from some vague motions you need to go through at the start; the variety it then manages to display with each planet, makes your approach different, let's you apply mastery different.

 

You need to take this in slow as you mention. Just dwell somewhere, learn the environment, master it, move on when you've reached its and your limits. NMS is a slow cooking game. I've already put more hours in it than any other game this year and the absurd thing is, it feels like I've done nothing; I've barely scratched the surface and every action I take mean not doing about a dozen others.

 

But yes, of course… "There's nothing to do."  (This usually translates to "I can't shoot other players" anyway.)

[JohnC]

Do I need to achieve something before I can rename a planet? I highlight a planet and hold triangle for "Rename and upload", but nothing happens after the circle fills. Am I missing something or am I bugged?

[Rayn]

7 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Do I need to achieve something before I can rename a planet? I highlight a planet and hold triangle for "Rename and upload", but nothing happens after the circle fills. Am I missing something or am I bugged?

 

Sounds bugged. Never had any issues with that. Try to restart the game?

[Uncle Mike]

24 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Do I need to achieve something before I can rename a planet? I highlight a planet and hold triangle for "Rename and upload", but nothing happens after the circle fills. Am I missing something or am I bugged?

 

Did you already upload it once? Once you upload something, you can't then rename it.

[Gorf King]

I must not farm. I must not farm. There's a whole universe out there - I must not just stay here on this one planet and farm its infinite resources. I must not farm. I must not farm. I must not...

 

Oh hey, it's Sunday - why not do a bit of farming?

 

 

Gah. I only want the 100% fauna. I'd give up everything I've worked for just to get that last animal. Honest! I'd swap 14 mil for that, straight. Well, maybe 10. But at this rate it's never going to happen. I'm going to die a very unhappy, and a very rich, man.

 

I bet it's a fucking ant or something.

[robdood]

48 minutes ago, gospvg said:

I'm still on my first star system, these pirates can I run away from them or do I need to stand and fight? I'm still in my first ship going to wait for a 30+ ship before upgrading.

 

1 hour ago, Rowan Morrison said:

 

It's not so much the slots as what goes in them, and whether you unlock new blueprints later on for a greater variety of weapon types. I've had ricochet shots, shotguns and machine gun mods so far, so I'm hoping there's more to come. It's just the fact that every blueprint I find now is one I've already got that I find a bit grating - I'd found most of them before I made my first warp jump. Maybe I need to follow the quest a bit more...

I really feel if you hang about too long rinsing planets  at the beginning you're going to find the later game a bit dull as you basically have most of the upgrades / unlocks...  That's why I'm only hanging about each planet for a handful of stops before moving on. 

[Clipper]

In the earlier vidstrailers/demos they showed someone drilling into ground , normal rock to excavate below etc

 

does the laser eventually an upgrade that does that or can you only do it imprecisely with grenades

[robdood]

10 minutes ago, Clipper said:

In the earlier vidstrailers/demos they showed someone drilling into ground , normal rock to excavate below etc

 

does the laser eventually an upgrade that does that or can you only do it imprecisely with grenades

Yeah I want to know this. Every multitool I've bought comes with those upgrade which increase landscape destruction, but the mining laser doesn't do anything to just bog standard terrain. 

[Cosmic_Guru]

17 minutes ago, dood said:

 

I really feel if you hang about too long rinsing planets  at the beginning you're going to find the later game a bit dull as you basically have most of the upgrades / unlocks...  That's why I'm only hanging about each planet for a handful of stops before moving on. 

 

Yeah, keep moving on is my mantra - if a planet doesn't seem to have what I most want at a particular time (Chrystolite), I'll learn a few words, maybe visit manufacturing or ops centre and move on.  I'm never going to 100% anything non-barren.

 

And my whining here has worked YET again.  Two Tau level upgrades for my suit after a longish barren spell 

[robdood]

6 minutes ago, Cosmic_Guru said:

 

Yeah, keep moving on is my mantra - if a planet doesn't seem to have what I most want at a particular time (Chrystolite), I'll learn a few words, maybe visit manufacturing or ops centre and move on.  I'm never going to 100% anything non-barren.

 

And my whining here has worked YET again.  Two Tau level upgrades for my suit after a long barren spell.

Chrystolite is a FUCKER to find! Hate those bloody blue gems. There must be some way to guess where they will appear. 

[Cosmic_Guru]

7 minutes ago, Captain LeChuck said:

 

Only with grenades I think. What I've noticed though is you can weaponise the multi-tool's mining laser. My laser takes down sentinels much quicker than the boltcaster.

 

Yep, my laser is configured for both combat and mining.  Grenade will one shot the Dog or 2 shot most doors.  Never use the bolt caster.

 

8 minutes ago, dood said:

Chrystolite is a FUCKER to find! Hate those bloody blue gems. There must be some way to guess where they will appear. 

 

But there was so much of it on my first few planets - it grows in crystal form like a blue version of Plutonium, often in those cave grottos or even on the surface.  Wish I had the foresighte to load up the ship with a stack or two.

[pulsemyne]

This is an odd game for me. I mean on the one hand I can see why some people bitched and moaned about, there are some silly design decisions. Also the whole game doesn't feel as fleshed out as it could be. There is so much potential but little of it has been realised. The PC version as has some odd bugs such as tabbing out means you cannot go back into the game and have to reload the thing. It also doesn't quite feel like a game that costs 40 quid. The UI feels and looks cheap, there isn't that much variety in the creatures you meet, the graphics could be improved etc.

And yet, it's compulsive stuff. It should be shit because of all it's faults and yet, for me, it isn't. Maybe it's because I am a bit of a sci fi nerd but there really is something about the game I like. If you go into the game expecting some sort of sci fi epic space opera then you will not enjoy it. It's not that kind of a game. Instead it's more about going around exploring and collecting things to sell. It's core mechanic, collecting stuff for fuel to go somewhere else and collect more stuff, maybe shallow but not all games have to be as deep as an ocean. Sometimes a shallow but memorable experience can be satisfying. 

Also thanks to the scanning and identifying things you sometimes feel like a universe botanist.

Could there be more variety in the gameplay? Yes. Could the graphics be improved? Yes. Could the Ui be better? Oh god yes. Could the game be better? Yes.

But it still has me. If things can be built on and improved over the next few months then No man's sky could become very special indeed. The potential is there.

[robdood]

I think the ultimate compelling factor for me is that my adventure really feels unique, despite us all going through the same gating / scripted bits.   The fact that basically no one has much chance of visiting the same planet's as me, let alone find / explore the same places on those planets! 

 

Also,  lol @Gorf King with 12 million credits..  Careful you don't make the rest of the game too trivial!

[Rowan Morrison]

I'm on a planet with loads of Chrysolite (and gold) right now, growing in crystal shards like Plutonium usually does. So I can't leave until I've harvested every last drop, obviously. Last planet had these floating jellyfish things in the air that couldn't be scanned, but gave up a load of Omegon when shot. Good times.

 

I've also got stage 2 and 3 jetpack boosters, and they're a game changer - much easier to roam around, and much more fun to blast through the air for long stretches.

 

I should add to my earlier posts that whenever I start to feel disappointed with some aspect of NMS, I remind myself that the game just generated an entire fucking planet just for me, and at any time I can go and have it generate a new one.

[Monkeyboy]

Okay, I've just ended up on a barren planet which seems to be full of those pearls that Gorf King loves so much. Time to clear my inventory and start farming!

[MrCarrot]

According to Reddit*, when you upgrade your hyperdrive, you gain access to completely different classes of stars - they are different colours, apparently - and the planets in these systems are more likely to have rarer elements available. Which might explain why my search for Omegon on my puny, homemade hyperdrive has so far not borne fruit.

 

* So goes the opening to all of the internet's most credible postings.

[Cosmic_Guru]

Well, I bought this one for a dirt cheap 274k - only 2 additional slots, so it's hardly the Great Leap Forward, but I couldn't resist.

 

 I don't know if it's a co-incidence, but the first planet landed on thereafter was colder than any visited so far.

 

I'm also looking for Omegon for that jet pack upgrade - found 43 units to buy once just the 7 more required.

[Mogster]

@pulsemyne I've not tried it, but according to RPS there are a couple of ways return to tabbed out game in progress:

 

Quote

– Go to Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del or Win-R, then “taskmgr”), Click the down arrow next to No Man’s Sky, then right-click on Application, and choose “Bring to front”.

OR
– Go to the game’s Steam page, then click the Play button – it’ll pretend it’s launching it again, but then the game will pop up once more

 

[Kevvy Metal]

2 hours ago, Takizawa said:

I'm still waiting to find a planet with something green, or water, when I do I'm never leaving.

 

I recently found a Green planet - named "Green Mush" because running out of name ideas - That's a proper Paradise world with cool weather and storms and what not. Beautiful green vistas with Blue oceans. 

The Planet has zero wildlife however, but it's moon! It's moon is a Toxic waste land that's densely populated with animals! Literally jam packed with more animals roaming about than any other planet I've encountered. 

[Tailfly]

1 hour ago, Cosmic_Guru said:

 

I'm going through a phase like that currently and I'm wondering whether there is some sort of loot scaling dependent on size of ship or tool.  On the other hand, maybe it's all just random and the higher level ones are simply much rarer.  For that matter will we see the rarer elements in the wild later or, or more challenging environmental hazards (these seem manageable with the appropriate shield and fuel for it)?  I haven't died from exposure once yet.

 

On closer inspection of my ship upgrades (so I can amuse myself in the meantime obtaining materials which will boost me when that magic moment arrives), I find I possess a warp drive sigma upgrade - it requires dynamic resonator (which I can make) and iridium which I can't say I've seen anywhere in the wild yet.

 

I really really want Chrystolite  which has completely dried up and buying 30 units here and there isn't going to cut it.  (Posting my most wanted here has worked out before so fingers crossed...)

 

Happy with my 14 slot tool at present because I only use the laser and the currenty tau intensity grenades.  All suit upgrades are maxed to my current blueprints other than the jet pack,  and I have 36 slots available.

 

 

 

Get up in an asteroid field and the large ones are usually iridium.

 

11 minutes ago, MrCarrot said:

According to Reddit*, when you upgrade your hyperdrive, you gain access to completely different classes of stars - they are different colours, apparently - and the planets in these systems are more likely to have rarer elements available. Which might explain why my search for Omegon on my puny, homemade hyperdrive has so far not borne fruit.

 

* So goes the opening to all of the internet's most credible postings.

 

This is bloody huge! Wish the game explained the whole upgrade system better ...actually scrap that its not explained AT ALL. I'm now going to have to think over my layout and do a bit of restructuring. I'm kind of looking forward to it...

[Takizawa]

Made a new pal.

 

 

His Dad said it was ok if we played after school.

 

 

 

[Flub]

So I just found my first planet with sac venom. Icy but otherwise hospitable. Sentinels are not hostile by default. Ima gonna stay here a while. You can barely move for sac venom

[Kevvy Metal]

1 hour ago, Cyhwuhx said:

 

A lot of 'gamers' seem to forget that anything that is fun is repetitive. Tetris… you have seen everything in 10 seconds. Doesn't change the nature of the game itself nor the amounts of time you can put into it. If you like a game, repetitiveness is a godsend, if you don't like it, it's torture. It's not like Overwatch-players are complaining about doing the same thing over and over again.

 

NMS is not GTA, you don't have a load of options, but its variety keeps you on your toes. I've been doing the same thing from the start and I want more. Like Muramasa, Odin Sphere, Subnautica, Tetris, etc. The stupid idea that somehow a game should be an everlasting banquet which swaps chefs every 10 minutes is ludicrous. Nobody would like that as a game, because there's no system to master. The system in NMS is rather easy to master apart from some vague motions you need to go through at the start; the variety it then manages to display with each planet, makes your approach different, let's you apply mastery different.

 

You need to take this in slow as you mention. Just dwell somewhere, learn the environment, master it, move on when you've reached its and your limits. NMS is a slow cooking game. I've already put more hours in it than any other game this year and the absurd thing is, it feels like I've done nothing; I've barely scratched the surface and every action I take mean not doing about a dozen others.

 

But yes, of course… "There's nothing to do."  (This usually translates to "I can't shoot other players" anyway.)

 

Also thought I'd chime in and say that this is all on the money and an excellent post. 

All the best games for me have had an excellent "Core loop" ( I loathe that term) or "Main Mechanic" that feels fun to continuously do. That whole Halo "30 seconds of fun" thing. Long term goals just aid motivation to keep doing that main thing. 

 

I find NMS compelling. It's fun just landing on a planet and mining away. The feeling when spying a huge lump of gold to mine is great. 

[hereticboy]

This is getting frustrating now. There seems to be no way of clearing waypoints from the galactic map, other than reaching them. I've used a couple of black holes since setting my waypoints, so my choice is to follow the trail back to them, or never see a new black hole waypoint again. On top of that, the game keeps crashing.

 

It's an amazing game, but its issues are really doing my head in at this point.

[Cosmic_Guru]

@Tailfly cheers for the tip, will check out the asteroids more carefully (I know there are also copper and gold ones).

[Flub]

This post about star types and warp drive types seems to indicate a progression loop

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4xle85/psa_there_are_four_types_of_star_systems/

 

My safe sac venom planet is a red star type. Also has masses of Chrysonite which was handy. I'll stock up on that

 

LOOK AT ALL OF THEM. NEED MORE SLOTS

 

[The Bag]

Didn't think pirates would follow me into a planet's atmosphere.  I was wrong, still a pretty cool fight across the planet's surface which I won.  I've been avoiding ship combat since I got obliterated by a group of eight pirates in the second system I visited.  Still not great but the upgraded shields and weapons do make a difference.

[Flub]

Holy motherfucking shit. Just helped a Vykeen build a nuclear warhead and he gave me plans to build a Warp Reactor Tau. That's the third type