Not All Men's Sky

[beatbandito]

Did we not have a No Man's Sky thread?

Well, it's pretty fun now. It's basically 3d Starbound as everyone else describes it but I see it as Sea of Thieves except with content.

There's multiplayer too. Technically "online" play but definitely leave networking off if you don't have friends coming in. It's good to have apparently up to 16 friends in one game and possibly never even meet as you chat and do your own stuff that will carry back even if you're not hosting. Randos are just game-wide open mics that can and probably will track you down and fuck around just for fun since there is zero cheat protection.

So if anyone wants to do some drop-in... holler? Is that still something people say?

[mharr]

I have this kinda by accident and will probably be checking out the new update in time, but for the moment it just doesn't seem to run on my hardware like at all, which is weird because it was completely fine a year ago. Hoping for some optimisation patches.

[pacobird]

So is it good now or

[beatbandito]

It is as good as Starbound. There's some kind of story, but it basically comes down to "of all the things you could do now anyway, do this one". Nothing you do has any meaning, so if you're not enjoying yourself doing the actual thing, you'll quickly find yourself in a spiral of ennui. Still, it's all connected together very well.

In Sea of Thieves you're told to get gold, so you go to a populated island, get a mission to go to an unpopulated island and do a thing, then bring it back to the populated island for gold. In doing so maybe some players mess with you and shake things up.

In No Man's Sky you don't really get told anything (the first planet is a very quick task that is turned into a long tutorial if you're completely new) as much as you choose to do something and then the game makes things happen on the way. So you decide you want to get some credits (I already forget the currency name) and to do that you could do space missions, do planetside missions, gather items and/or craft to trade, buy items and do actual trading by tracking system economies and running goods.

So you decide to be an asshole and attack a nearby (npc) trade fleet, but you fucked up and you can't win the fight, you're out of warp fuel so you pulse drive to the nearest planet, but run out of that on the way so need to track down some asteroids to mine, while mining pirates scan you and notice all the silver and gold you're building up while extracting the fuel resource and try to extort you. You're still banged up from the fleet assault and don't want to pay them off, but you got some pulse fuel so you run to the planet to lay low. As you land you notice some ancient tech ruins and stop off there, but it pisses off the sentinels (old tech defenders) and you run from them back to your ship. But you're out of fuel for lift-off. So you run off from them, getting distracted scanning for sodium and oxygen deposits on the way to keep your life support going, only realizing how far you are from your ship when an atmosphere-free planet heat-wave warning pops up and you pull out your terrain manipulator to dig down and out of the sun (and away from the sentinels) only to fall into a cave with toxic plants, so you start carving out a spot to survive the storm, all the while thinking "man, I really need more survivability, forget the credits, I need to get some tech points for life support mods!" And the process repeats.

Of course, this is all a very abstract and romanticized look at it. The alien tech and reputation with the race of the fleet you attacked don't really matter outside of small credits differences. It seems like there's a rule to check every minute you're idle in space to decide if a pirate spawns, and the options are always "pay credits or fight, or choose fight then land somewhere". Sentinels are broken and if they show up all you can do is hide because they will fucking linger and scan you and spawn more forever no matter how many you kill. Credits get you nicer personal ships and fleets which... make you more credits.

It's just enough to let you have fun if you want to, space combat actually feels kind of nice even if there's only like 4 weapons and all ships control the same. The base building is pretty involved but requires a lot of unlocking things so I haven't gotten into it. The creature creation is just random enough to chuckle at its production every once in a while.

[pacobird]

Hmm, that actually sounds like it's turning into what I wanted it to be (a warmer, more casual Elite: Dangerous) instead of Yet Another Survival Crafter. Thanks! Maybe I'll check it out.

[mharr]

It continues to do that thing where it has the trappings of a survival crafter, but all the things you need to survive are uniformly spread throughout all of space and time so it's just clicky busywork and inventory pressure. Fortunately the various mods that can selectively tone that stuff down still work on a per-client basis even though it's technically open multiplayer PvP now.

It's a very strange beast, seems to have fallen through a rift from another timeline where videogames were a brand new idea circa 2010.