No Man's Sky - Interceptor

[Mogster]

@Davros sock drawer You can land on planets in Elite, and it works perfectly. I can't say I've ever crashed in the process either, but the small amount of skill involved is enough to make it satisfying every time.

 

Flight in NMS is probably the weakest part of the game as there's not really anything to it. It's always just a means to an end instead of being satisfying in its own right.

[Broker]

Not really sure what I should do now. I've got a suit with about 30 slots, a ship I love and a decent tool. I can't really be bothered to mine anymore because there's nothing to buy and I've already got my tool, ship and suit packed with upgrades so I can barely store anything anyway. 

 

Im trying to avoid spoilers, but I've jumped about ten times now and not seen any trace of the path people are talking about. Everyone who started when I did is talking about anomalies and has an atlas pass but I've seen nothing like that. Do I just keep jumping? I feel like I've missed something important. 

[JPickford]

One interesting thing,  after a few hours I had that feeling that I'd seen everything.  All I could see were the similarities between planets.   But after a bit longer that feeling reversed,  almost like I learned to appreciate the subtleties of the algorithms.  No two planets feel the same any more.  There's a strong feeling of not wanting to leave a planet until I've fully appreciated it.  

[Davros sock drawer]

6 minutes ago, dood said:

Huh? Why would it break the game? 

 

Well, a couple of reasons.

 

One is the way the game seems to have several levels of graphical fidelity which seem to load in at each "layer" for want of a better word. If you could fly your ship so close that it'd need to load in all the individual flowers, grass, animals etc, I think the engine would struggle.

 

But I also think it would wreck the pace of the game, and the feel of it. I can picture it now. You fly down to a planet and zoom along the surface. This is great! Then you you try and fly sideways down a canyon. You fuck it up, die, returning to the Space Station you saved on. Then you have to fly back to the planet to try and grab your stuff. Your wing clips a rock...

 

 

[Flub]

27 minutes ago, Cosmic_Guru said:

 

I'm curious about when you guys with the 30 slotters are going to stop grinding and just amass warp drive materials to cut and run for the centre.

 

I have no plans to seriously head for the center. I already know what happens and I`m happy to hang around exploring.

[Goose]

There's certainly oceans. I've been on planets that are nearly all ocean. And deep ones too. I've been in ones that take all your oxygen just to get a glimpse of the bottom. 

[JPickford]

You can fly sideways?

[Davros sock drawer]

11 minutes ago, Mogster said:

@Davros sock drawer You can land on planets in Elite, and it works perfectly. I can't say I've ever crashed in the process either, but the small amount of skill involved is enough to make it satisfying every time.

 

Flight in NMS is probably the weakest part of the game as there's not really anything to it. It's always just a means to an end instead of being satisfying in its own right.

 

There is a massive difference between the two though. In NMS you can skim along the planet's surface, dog-fighting other small ships at a fast pace. I find that to be really entertaining. If you had to worry about crashing into the ground I personally think it'd be a lot less enjoyable.

[siread]

I guess HelloGames didn't want people crashing all over the place but some of the scenery is just crying out to be flown through, daredevil style. I've posted this pic a couple of times but it I was sooo desperate to fly through these massive rock formations...

The game just won't let you. Now imagine being chased by pirates and using rocks and cliffs for cover, with the other ships crashing into cliffs or whatever (Independence Day!) . Then you could inspect the crashed ships.

 

 

[Davros sock drawer]

10 minutes ago, JPickford said:

You can fly sideways?

 

Not sure if serious...

 

L1 and R1?

 

Edit: Sorry, I mean "On your side" of course.

[John0]

6 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

Not sure if serious...

 

L1 and R1?

 

Woah.

[JPickford]

7 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

 

Not sure if serious...

 

L1 and R1?

 

Edit: Sorry, I mean "On your side" of course.

 

Yes I was serious.

[Davros sock drawer]

Yeah, you can fly upside down and everything.

[K]

This annoys me as often as it thrills me, but the thrilling bits are amazing, and show me things I’ve never seen in a game before. The thrills are definitely winning so far. I must have played 5 – 6 hours this weekend, and I spent the whole time in one system – Blackstar, the third system I’ve been to, and the first one where space was the proper colour. There’s six or seven explorable planets and moons, and there’s a huge range of stuff, from weird rock worlds with vast plains of what look like orange lichen; a heavily radioactive waterworld dotted with steep-sided volcanic islands, the rocky coastline dotted with bizarre alien spire-plants, and the seas filled with sunken installations and alien monoliths; an LV-426 lookalike with titanic rock formations that look like coproliths; a freezing rainforest world full of rolling grasslands, alien jungles, and dinosaurs, with the occasional hurricane to liven things up.

 

The last world is particularly beautiful, but exploring it does highlight a few issues. Dood is right when he says the flight model is too simplistic, I’d love it if you could turn off the stabilisers and actually fly your craft like a plane, rather than pointing it in one direction and letting the autopilot do the rest. Sometimes it feels like I’m being dragged up into the sky for no reason; I’d love to be able to swoop low over a coastline and skim the water, rather than just bobbing about. I don't think it would necessarily break the game, if you crashed into something it could just damage your shields (or some of your equipment for extreme, sustained damage) rather than necessitate restarting at a space station.

 

Another slight irritation is that weather doesn’t appear when you’re flying, so if you take off in a rainstorm it instantly clears, and then immediately comes back when you land. That’s clearly for technical reasons, and it’s a bit of a shame, but it’s understandable. The game feels like it’s been optimised to look at its best when you’re on foot.

 

The whole thing is basically a conflict between the technical wizardry and the technical limitations. Like, it would have been much easier to maintain the illusion if space stations were done in the same way that they are in Elite, where you log into a trade terminal and communicate via that, rather than have each space station as two or three rooms with one alien sat in them tapping at an iPad. I admire the fact that they took the more ambitious, more difficult route, but I’d probably rather they used trickery to suggest a vast, bustling space habitat, rather than try to directly portray one and fail.

 

Those alien sunsets, though.

[siread]

1 hour ago, Captain LeChuck said:

But you have to grind to keep adventuring. Getting the materials together for certain upgrades is quite a grind.  Thing is, certain types of grind I'm fine with, I'd love to do trade runs between systems. But finding systems you've visited is nigh in impossible (not to mention a huge oversight in terms of design). I'm assuming Elite has far more structure to it. 

 

Also, I think I've jumped more than most here, and the planets are really very similar, with only superficial differences. Especially the layout. They're all very flat. There are no genuine mountains, just very large hills. No sheer cliffs where you can't see the bottom, just small mesas. There are no seas, just very large lakes, and going underwater is the same on every planet, the colour is just different sometimes. So yes, I'm really starting to get that "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" feeling.

 

Still, that feeling of wonder when you warp to a new system is still there. So as you say, I'm going to keep adventuring, and follow the Atlas path. I still want to know what's behind doors 2 and 3. Bet it's just another exo suit slot, which I've already maxed out.

 

I think it's very easy to assume you've seen 'everything' after 10 or even 20 planets, and then something crops up that blows your mind. There's a paragraph in the Eurogamer review that mentions finding an oasis type planet after countless hostile environments. Sure, it may not be anything "new" but it's so refreshing.

[Hello Goaty ♥]

19 minutes ago, Goose said:

There's certainly oceans. I've been on planets that are nearly all ocean. And deep ones too. I've been in ones that take all your oxygen just to get a glimpse of the bottom. 

 

Indeed there are, and this planet is huge too!

 

 

[The Bag]

35 minutes ago, JPickford said:

 

So basically you should disassemble every upgrade before switching ships or multi-tools?  Never thought of that.

 

I also strip every crashed ship I find if I'm not going to take it - switch to it, disassemble everything, switch back and take the components.

[MrCarrot]

3 hours ago, Flub said:

One thing I'm not convinced with their implementation of is hazard shielding boosts. You can add shields for specific types to your hazard. So for say hot planets I currently have two extra shield boosts I can add to my suit. Each one takes up a slot in the suit and each one drains fuel constantly (zinc or titanium). There are some issues with this.

 

1. Uses suit slots

2. Uses the pretty rare titanium/zinc

3. Drains far, far too quickly

 

The three combined means I really don't want to use them. The downsides far outweigh any benefits. What I end up doing on these sorts of planets is just staying close to the ship so I can get my base hazard shields recharged. I'd like to see this tweaked or changed.

 

Personally I think the fact that these types use suit slots is downside enough. Suit slots are valuable. Make the shields give a flat boost to the effectiveness of the hazard shields and remove the fuel requirements for the boosts.

 

Otherwise either drastically slow down the speed the shields drain or let us fuel them with something more common. Or make zinc far more common that it is. I know pre-patch you could fuel these things with carbon.

 

Agree with (almost*) all of this. The way the environmental shields work at the moment feels almost broken. They seem to only grant about 10 seconds of additional protection and if you try to keep them topped up, you just spend all your time faffing about in your inventory. What's weird is that the life support upgrades already work like you suggest - as just a flat boost to the duration of the base system - so I don't really see why HG haven't done the same for the shields. Unless they just really wanted to have more refuel-able stuff to give you something to do, in which case, surely the upgraded shields should still last much longer than they do, because the constant recharge management just isn't any fun.

 

* If you have the recipe for shielding shards or plates, you can fuel the hazard protection upgrades with iron, so you don't need to waste titanium or zinc, but you still have the hassle of constantly having to craft shards.

[Davros sock drawer]

9 minutes ago, Captain LeChuck said:

But not sideways. Which is something that annoys me in space. I wish I was able to manoeuvre my ship while maintaining its current flight path. Which is something I'm sure enemy ships can do. 

 

Yeah, that'd be cool. 

[Cosmic_Guru]

8 minutes ago, MrCarrot said:

 

Agree with (almost*) all of this. The way the environmental shields work at the moment feels almost broken. They seem to only grant about 10 seconds of additional protection and if you try to keep them topped up, you just spend all your time faffing about in your inventory. What's weird is that the life support upgrades already work like you suggest - as just a flat boost to the duration of the base system - so I don't really see why HG haven't done the same for the shields. Unless they just really wanted to have more refuel-able stuff to give you something to do, in which case, surely the upgraded shields should still last much longer than they do, because the constant recharge management just isn't any fun.

 

* If you have the recipe for shielding shards or plates, you can fuel the hazard protection upgrades with iron, so you don't need to waste titanium or zinc, but you still have the hassle of constantly having to craft shards.

 

You need a stack of titanium in reserve for this - for me zinc is too precious to use, being a warp drive component.  Fortunately, all you need to do is pick a fight with the monitors to achieve this (and they sometimes drop neutrino modules in those oil drums they incongruously leave rolling around behind).

 

I think I've gotten over my RPG hang-ups about markers and way-points ,and the fuzziness of non-quantified mods and am just enjoying the ride for what it is.

[Davros sock drawer]

20 minutes ago, K said:

This annoys me as often as it thrills me, but the thrilling bits are amazing, and show me things I’ve never seen in a game before. The thrills are definitely winning so far. I must have played 5 – 6 hours this weekend, and I spent the whole time in one system – Blackstar, the third system I’ve been to, and the first one where space was the proper colour. There’s six or seven explorable planets and moons, and there’s a huge range of stuff, from weird rock worlds with vast plains of what look like orange lichen; a heavily radioactive waterworld dotted with steep-sided volcanic islands, the rocky coastline dotted with bizarre alien spire-plants, and the seas filled with sunken installations and alien monoliths; an LV-426 lookalike with titanic rock formations that look like coproliths; a freezing rainforest world full of rolling grasslands, alien jungles, and dinosaurs, with the occasional hurricane to liven things up.

 

The last world is particularly beautiful, but exploring it does highlight a few issues. Dood is right when he says the flight model is too simplistic, I’d love it if you could turn off the stabilisers and actually fly your craft like a plane, rather than pointing it in one direction and letting the autopilot do the rest. Sometimes it feels like I’m being dragged up into the sky for no reason; I’d love to be able to swoop low over a coastline and skim the water, rather than just bobbing about. I don't think it would necessarily break the game, if you crashed into something it could just damage your shields (or some of your equipment for extreme, sustained damage) rather than necessitate restarting at a space station.

 

Another slight irritation is that weather doesn’t appear when you’re flying, so if you take off in a rainstorm it instantly clears, and then immediately comes back when you land. That’s clearly for technical reasons, and it’s a bit of a shame, but it’s understandable. The game feels like it’s been optimised to look at its best when you’re on foot.

 

The whole thing is basically a conflict between the technical wizardry and the technical limitations. Like, it would have been much easier to maintain the illusion if space stations were done in the same way that they are in Elite, where you log into a trade terminal and communicate via that, rather than have each space station as two or three rooms with one alien sat in them tapping at an iPad. I admire the fact that they took the more ambitious, more difficult route, but I’d probably rather they used trickery to suggest a vast, bustling space habitat, rather than try to directly portray one and fail.

 

Those alien sunsets, though.

 

All fair points, and re. the bit in bold that could work, but like I said - it'd need to be re-designed. They couldn't just release a patch which turned off the buffer between your ship and the planet.

 

And yes, totally agree regarding the balancing act they're doing here. I think we should all remember that they're generating entire planets on the fly here, which is no mean feat. For me the balance is about right, but there's always more to want.

 

Glad to hear that you're enjoying it though. I did think of you when I arrived at this system and thought "Ok, even that's a bit much for me"...

 

 

[Flub]

15 minutes ago, MrCarrot said:

 

 

* If you have the recipe for shielding shards or plates, you can fuel the hazard protection upgrades with iron, so you don't need to waste titanium or zinc, but you still have the hassle of constantly having to craft shards.

 

I do and ooo. That`s handy. Cheers.

[Dimahoo]

41 minutes ago, Broker said:

Not really sure what I should do now. I've got a suit with about 30 slots, a ship I love and a decent tool. I can't really be bothered to mine anymore because there's nothing to buy and I've already got my tool, ship and suit packed with upgrades so I can barely store anything anyway. 

 

Im trying to avoid spoilers, but I've jumped about ten times now and not seen any trace of the path people are talking about. Everyone who started when I did is talking about anomalies and has an atlas pass but I've seen nothing like that. Do I just keep jumping? I feel like I've missed something important. 

 

Those Oil drums can sometimes be fun to chase. It would be funny to see a video of seeing how far the longest one could roll for.

 

By the way the Atlus missions are on your space navigation guide (someone said they hadn't seen the Atlus missions).

You follow a different set of systems - but if have found/given the atlus missions they appear if you select the waypoint diamonds at the very top.

If they're not in your ships computer i guess you'll have to go back and get them?. Not sure.

[Mogster]

39 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

 

There is a massive difference between the two though. In NMS you can skim along the planet's surface, dog-fighting other small ships at a fast pace. I find that to be really entertaining. If you had to worry about crashing into the ground I personally think it'd be a lot less enjoyable.

You can in Elite as well. Anyway I'm not trying to suggest there's no reason for it to be the way it is, just that I personally wish there was more to it. I still love the game, and I'd love Elite so much more if it made exploration anywhere near as good as NMS. 

[Flub]

I'd like to be able to stop and hover.

[Pob]

I agree with people who say the game would be much better if the flight model was more involving. I've been totally absorbed in NMS but it's also made me really want to go back to Elite and get into that properly have to proper piloting fun. Between the two games they certainly have a lot to offer.

[K]

21 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

 

All fair points, and re. the bit in bold that could work, but like I said - it'd need to be re-designed. They couldn't just release a patch which turned off the buffer between your ship and the planet.

 

And yes, totally agree regarding the balancing act they're doing here. I think we should all remember that they're generating entire planets on the fly here, which is no mean feat. For me the balance is about right, but there's always more to want.

 

Glad to hear that you're enjoying it though. I did think of you when I arrived at this system and thought "Ok, even that's a bit much for me"...

 

I don't want to give the impression that I think making the flight model more nuanced would be an easy fix or anything - it must be a colossal challenge to implement a satisfying and enjoyable system that balances ease of exploration with more freedom to control the craft. I saw a from some entitled reddit person this morning saying that implementing simple multiplayer would take one employee AT MOST a week, and that full World of Warcraft-style MMO multiplayer would take about three; it's amazing that the game even works and has the content it has. It's just that the ship handles somewhere between a helicopter and a free cam, and it does feel a bit awkward at times. It's something else to go on the wishlist.

[yashiro]

16 minutes ago, Flub said:

I'd like to be able to stop and hover.

 

I support that but only if your ship has the required hover technology. There's so much more you could do with ships than 'looks like ass but woo more slots, ok'.

[JPickford]

I've been on planets where there is no hazard or extreme temp.  

[Rev]

7 minutes ago, Captain LeChuck said:

Actually, are there any planets where you don't need life support?

 

I think it just gets used at the same rate regardless of whether it actually needs to be. I think.