Recommended Posts

I really like this game and I don't really know why. Still in the tutorial part but just wandering around a planet was super cool.

I don't like how it costs a ton of fuel to take off with your ship. It means I never want to just fly around a planet because I'm scared I'll get stuck.

The weird part is, it's like, explore to find resources to allow you to explore to find resources to allow you to explore ad infinitim. This would normally put me off...but it's weirdly enjoyable.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't like how it costs a ton of fuel to take off with your ship. It means I never want to just fly around a planet because I'm scared I'll get stuck.

You won't. Plutonium - which is what the launch thrusters require - is super plentiful. I've never had to walk more than a minute for it - and when you find the red crystals that can be mined for it, you get tonnes. It's easy to think "oh, I'm stuck!" and then realise what you really mean is "that plutonium is really far", where you've decided really far is >60s walk. When in fact... those planets are big.

It does discourage constant in/out of spaceship hopping - you tend to orbit looking for a good base of operations - but don't be too precious about it. You'll also slowly get a knack for recognising the things that are the same the galaxy over - various mineral deposits, crystals, etc.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

At one point I discovered a crashed spaceship, and I was astonished to find that it wasn't just part of the scenery: if I could scavenge and build the necessary parts, I could fix it and take it as my own. But some of the materials didn't seem to be present on this planet, so I had to leave it; and of course I have no way to figure out how to find it again now. I think the game wants me to feel like that won't matter - that there'll be countless more crashed spaceships out there for me to fix up - and that's probably correct. But at the same time, I worry that if I find something else that's even more amazing, I'll want to have a way to get back to it again.

You can pretty much always get a spaceship up and running with the mats on a planet: you only need working launch thrusters and pulse drive to get into orbit - just like the ship you start with.

The last ship I salvaged - the location of which I found through {GAME_MECHANIC} - became a huge project - I could have all this extra space, if I was willing to abandon a charged hyperdrive, and fix so many of its core components. I ended up managing - through a combination of stuff I had on me and foraging - to get the engines and lasers back online. All the modifications were going to require fixing later, once I had space to craft stuff, and more Thamium9 from a trip mining asteroids. I ended up kicking the launch thrusters into life and flying out to the nearest space station with no shields; fixed the shields in orbit once I'd mined a pile of Thamium, and over the next half hour, brought the upgraded systems online whilst I did a few chores.

It was great when it all worked out, though. I'm hugely enjoying this - somewhere between the excitement of survival and the chill of just coasting. And the colours. It's fulfilling all my Peter Elson/Chris Foss dreams.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Have you learned about the sprint hop?

 

"While sprinting, tap melee and then immediately tap jump. You'll get a massively boosted jump"

 

That trick helps reduce some of the tedium of crawling across the planets.

 

Other misc tips here:

ttps://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4x88ji/super_helpful_game_mechanics_that_are_never/

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm having a ridiculous amount of fun with this game. Of course I would prefer a smattering of bespoke planets that didn't feel so...artificial from time to time, but I keep telling myself it's ok. The same with sometimes feeling like the whole thing is aimless, even following the Atlas path.

The more I let go of those preconceived notions of what my gaming session should be the more free I feel. I'm just not sure if it's actually freeing or some kind of Stockholm syndrome but at this point I don't care. My immediate concerns are all I care about, and my immediate concern is more iron. Lots and lots of iron.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm eager to see what the end-game planets might be like. I have this fantasy that they dial up all the sliders to max. Dark Souls Similar Face meets Minecraft Far Lands. 

 

 

I looked up some spoilers,

And I sawa video about finding a new galaxy. The planet they left looked like any planet we've been seeing. The destination in the new galaxy looked like the start of the original game. Maybe finding the inside of the universe is the goal? And that's where the truly crazy proc-gen abominations are? I hope, I hope.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not really a spoiler, but here's a useful thing to know about upgrades that some folks might prefer to discover on their own -

Upgrade placement in inventory slots matters. If you place two boltcaster upgrades in adjacent slots, for instance, they'll both get a bright colored border around them, indicating that there's some kind of linked synergy going on, increasing the effects of both.

 

Once I learned this, I went through and dismantled a bunch of upgrades and reinstalled them to make sure that like technologies were all appropriately chained together and now my pulse grenades, mining laser, and environmental protections are all just sick as hell.

 

I have no idea if there's additional layers to this, though - i.e., if I place two radiation shielding buffs next to each other, if that amplifies radiation shielding further, or if it makes no difference whether radiation shielding is next to toxic shielding, as long as all the shielding units are linked.  Or if the number of adjacencies matters - if I have a mining laser buff that is adjacent on all four sides with other mining laser buffs, is that four synergy bonuses?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Most of this sounds pretty good (especially that time waster part)! :tup:

 

Can't wait to get some space trucking done. Gotta queue up some David Bowie, Pharaoh Overlord, and 35007 for Saturday. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I enjoy these tweets:

 

http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/11/12441124/no-mans-sky-problem-strip-mining

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the premise of the game distasteful. I suppose if you're not going to play a game in which you kill everything, you may as well play a game where you exploit the natural resources of every planet you encounter.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Someone managed to encapsulate the game's premise more elegantly than me, but yes it seems obvious that you're Space Columbus in the Age of Space Discovery.

 

"I discovered this!"

 

'Hello welcome to my house. My family has been here for 19 generations.'

 

"HIGH FIVE ME ON THIS DISCOVERY!"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That does sum it up well, Badfinger.

 

No Man's Sky's exploitation is doubly confusing because you're actually not exploring fresh 'unclaimed' land. Your "discovering" places that are already named and have structures. I guess this is in line with classical colonialism, disrespecting the natives' entitlements to property. 

 

The Polygon post is a good brief on the materialistic subtext of No Man's Sky. This comes up on 3 Moves Ahead often, the hidden agenda of games, I believe it is Troy Goodfellow who brings it up?

 

The big paradox to me is this. Is this games mis-representing reality by focusing on systems that translate well to gameplay? Or is this games reflecting the fundamental materialism of reality?

 

I like to play "non-violent" games, casual base-building games. Terreria, Minecraft, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, Stardew Valley. The systems of these games all revolve around strip mining the world to morph it into human uses. 

 

This comes up even while playing Minecraft in creative mode, where the only resource is space itself.  All the conflicts that then arise are over property disputes; you made your claim too close to mine, your build next to my build is an eyesore, etc. And there is a strong desire to turn the procedurally generated hills into a Euclidean flat land for streets and skyscrapers.

 

The 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy has a sort of relevant monolog...

Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment; instead, he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery, and he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But somehow he didn't know where to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier, the more complicated he made it. So now his children are sentenced to 10-15 years of school, just to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat they were born into. And civilized man, who refused to adapt to his surroundings, now finds he has to adapt and re-adapt every hour of the day to his self-created environment. For instance, if it's Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy. 10:30 means you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then you have to look busy again. And so your day is chopped into pieces, and in each segment of time you adapt to a new set circumstances. No wonder some people go off the rails a bit...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That is... accurate but seems incredibly reductive in an almost unfair way.

I'd be more inclined to agree if the game included destroying native peoples as a goal in the core game loop.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Right, right... The game isn't a total genocide. the game never lets you shoot an Alien NPC. The gun cannot be raised in their huts, in their Trade Depots, or on their Space Stations.

 

And the Sentinel system is there to police the more malevolent Space Explorers. When they kill animals, certain plants, or break an entry into locked adobes.

 

Then there is the yet undetermined nature of your Space Explorer self. Who sent you? What is your mission? This is deliberately vague, I assume to let the player write their own fiction.

 

Thus, in my personal fiction of the game, I imagine you are playing an advanced form of Pokemon Go or Ingress. This explains why everything is already colonized and named. You are just pretending to re-colonize and re-name everything. Westworld, for space explorers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No Man's Sky's exploitation is doubly confusing because you're actually not exploring fresh 'unclaimed' land. Your "discovering" places that are already named and have structures. I guess this is in line with classical colonialism, disrespecting the natives' entitlements to property. 

 

The Polygon post is a good brief on the materialistic subtext of No Man's Sky. This comes up on 3 Moves Ahead often, the hidden agenda of games, I believe it is Troy Goodfellow who brings it up?

 

The big paradox to me is this. Is this games mis-representing reality by focusing on systems that translate well to gameplay? Or is this games reflecting the fundamental materialism of reality?

 

I like to play "non-violent" games, casual base-building games. Terreria, Minecraft, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, Stardew Valley. The systems of these games all revolve around strip mining the world to morph it into human uses. 

 

Just for the sake of argument, let's say the developers are trying to represent reality, and in that case aren't they doing it perfectly?  Hasn't this exact situation, that being colonial powers/explorers coming in and taking resources for their own gain, played out time and time again?  I think when it comes to questions like this the mechanics can only say so much, player choice in relation to the breadth of those decisions must be considered.  I'm sure it's possible to play no mans' sky without taking more than you need, but just because the game provides players the ability to take more than that doesn't necessarily provide the whole picture.  I don't think the purpose of games is to provide the answer so much as it is to ask the question.

 

Beyond my pedantry however, isn't any game that relies on resources found in an environment being explored by an outsider, whether it be no mans' sky spelunky, civilization, or Don't starve doing the exact same thing?  Don't all these games require players to take things that don't belong to them (at least in as much as things belong to anyone based on their place of birth) and convert them into something personally useful?  Games themselves revolve around conflict, and to lesser or greater extends the modelling of that conflict will always take some sort of philosophical stance, which will be open to criticism of some kind.  It seems in cases like this the criticism isn't so much a result of the mechanics but the fidelity of the simulation, which is particularly exacerbated in games where violence is not a direct goal.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I completely agree!

 

I avoid conflict. My agenda when playing games often is as escapism, and to model utopia. Base-building games help achieve this by modeling prosperity, until the bubble pops. But that's on me, on my expectations and my shoddy base building; my ineffectiveness in the face of conflict.

 

How does this apply to Norman's Sky? Did I sit down and play Norman's Sky and say, let's visit utopia? It does look so chill; all this violence and capitalism is harshing my mellow. So perhaps when I criticize the survival and exploitation aspects of the gameplay, it is because I want to be playing a different game; where God mode is turned on, and I can float through all the planets effortlessly. Perhaps I am then missing the point. I could play Spore, or Universe Sandbox. 

 

A last aside. Conflict is a form of agony, of suffering; but in Greek, Agon is the term for struggle, contest, and skill. This is reflected in the words protagonists and antagonists. This was part of the Greek moral system Arete, which focused on individuals becoming the greatest possible versions. Agony was the contest in which they achieved this. So in this frame, conflict is good.

 

I enjoy Norman's Sky a lot. I like taking photos of space cows. I also enjoy pedantry. But perhaps I am way out of my element.

 

I also worry that the asynchronous-multiplayer aspect will limit the PC mod scene...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

How does this apply to Norman's Sky? Did I sit down and play Norman's Sky and say, let's visit utopia? It does look so chill; all this violence and capitalism is harshing my mellow. So perhaps when I criticize the survival and exploitation aspects of the gameplay, it is because I want to be playing a different game; where God mode is turned on, and I can float through all the planets effortlessly. Perhaps I am then missing the point. I could play Spore, or Universe Sandbox. 

 

This in particular I think is the crux of the question.  Yes the game has an economy, but you seem to find it upsetting because it is formalized, not because it exists.  Communism, mercantilism, trading, and all other systems of organizing wealth don't necessarily eliminate the idea of an economy existing.  Second, this criticism is essentially a western critique of a western system, basically the formalization of the economic system in the way it is represented inspires excess.  That seems vague so let me elaborate.  Take for example the economic system of Native Americans prior to colonization.  People still traded, made war on each other, planted crops, and so on, it was the organization of wealth that is the main cultural difference here.  It wasn't that white settlers were coming in and taking things that didn't "belong" to them in some sense, it is that they were taking too much, preventing others from using the land they used, and being wasteful such that it had a negative impact on others.  

 

Since I haven't played it yet I can't say, but does NMS model scarcity?  are you taking things from planets, and thereby depriving the denizens of resources, or are those denizens plugged into that same economic system and, in some respect, benefit from you doing the work of mining the resources?  Are you doing the kind of negative things you are familiar with in earth's history in no man's sky, or are you simply seeing your actions through the lens of the dominant economic system of the day?  I've heard a number of criticisms around NMS that seem to echo the sentiments you've described here, and these criticisms seem to relate specific in-game actions to their known effects in the real world, but not their effects in the world of no man's sky.  It might seem like a weird point here, it's just that the criticisms seem incomplete to me at the moment since the discussion of a much larger piece of the puzzle, namely how the systems in NMS feed back in on themselves is missing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I shot down a guy who was a merchant or something. It felt good. Maybe I can just be a pirate.

 

I still really like this game, and I still don't know why. I have no idea what I'm doing, what there is to do or why I'm doing anything, but I also never run out of things to do, and never feel bored. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@itsamoose I might have read you wrong, but I would argue that if your actions don't have consequences in NMS then it's worse than if they did. The issue I see is that the ideology of consumption isn't particularly challenged, and the game modelling little to no consequences for your rabid consumption are part of that. The shallow simulation just restates a worldview that's too common to games.

 

Of course it's a game about escapism, I think some people (like me) wanted the escape of having to go through devouring worlds. But also, the fact that this is such a common problem in games I wouldn't have singled out NMS for it, except maybe because people didn't expect it to be a survival game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That is... accurate but seems incredibly reductive in an almost unfair way.

I'd be more inclined to agree if the game included destroying native peoples as a goal in the core game loop.

 

Oh it's absolutely reductive! I'm not trying to make a political statement; it's just a observation kicking around in my head that coalesced into words after reading the polygon article that touched on it. I think it's absolutely fair, though. The verb they chose is discover. It tracks 1:1 with the age of discovery. If they chose "indexed" or "documented" or something else as their verb it doesn't draw me directly there. It doesn't change my opinion on the game in any way, but I think it's a valid point of discussion. Exterminate is the last X. There's a long way between that one and Explore.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Completely fair!

I don't necessarily DISAGREE with these observations (everyone's, not just yours), either, I just, ya know! :P

I guess I think it's important to ALSO make the observation that we're not invading and conquering the lands of other sentient beings.

That would be a super interesting change to the game, though. Hmm.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Poor game crashed on me twice last night! The first time I forgive, I had it in suspend mode forever; it crashed while I was arriving at a new star system. Second time it crashed when I was flying like a jerk on some planet. Didn't lose too much, the game saves when you land on planets. I bet this game was impossible to get through Cert.

 

I've been main lining towards an Atlas waypoint, with the hopes of getting some sweet upgrades. So I've been sort of rushing through star systems in an interstellar road-trip. Stop to get gas, try and spot some convenient road side attractions, then get back on the road.

 

Starting to get harassed by aggressive animals. Which results in me standing on top of my space-car trying to photograph the malevolent animal in question, while it is underneath my space-car. Or just lobbing them with a plasma grenade and seeing them rag-doll into a crater-shaped grave.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess I think it's important to ALSO make the observation that we're not invading and conquering the lands of other sentient beings.

That would be a super interesting change to the game, though. Hmm.

 

 

What if there was a late-game quest where an Evil Empire gives you the keys to their planet-destroyer-space station. And you just cruise around in that making asteroid fields.

 

It is later revealed that the brains behind the Evil Empire is a highly efficient mining algorithm.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

While I was pillaging my treasure-cube planet, I learned that the Big Dog-style quad walker sentinels buckle when you give them a firm tap on the nose with a plasma grenade, and that became my strategy when they sent them after me, rather than running back to my ship every time.  However: it turns out if you do this enough times, the sentinels lose their patience with you, bump your warrant level up another notch, and send one of those bigass AT-AT looking assholes your way instead.

 

So I ran from this one for a little bit, but I had gotten pretty cocky once I learned that the quad walkers weren't a significant threat to me, and I had wandered far enough from my ship that the biped sentinel had spawned between me and my escape.  I was careful to use the landscape as cover and found a position where I could pelt the big sentinel with plasma grenades while also avoiding its hate-cannon, and with this method, eventually dismantle it.  Success! Sort of?? Killing it resulted in maxing out my warrant level and now there were three more.

 

No big deal, there's a cave right here, when they can't see you they eventually forget that they're supposed to be trying to detain you with lasers. So I hide out and wait for the fuzz to buzz off. And wait. And wait.  Huh, this is weird, normally all you have to do is break line-of-sight for about thirty seconds and your warrant level drops to zero.  But these clowns don't seem to be going away? I'm still getting the screenshake from their stomping nearby and hearing beeping that I'm assuming are robot cusswords?  So eventually I get tired of waiting and decide to try to book it back to my ship - they zap me a few times but my shields hold, and they can't move as fast as I can, so I'm able to get clear.

 

However - the remainder of the time I spend on this planet, my warrant level is stuck at maximum and the 'danger' music continues to play.  I fly a ways out from where I left the walkers, so I assume they're still pursuing me, which means that the game must have decided not to spawn more.  So I can continue my completely legitimate business operation without intervention from local law enforcement.  Over the space of about 90 minutes I'm able to accrue four million interstellar space dollars, and decide that it's now appropriate to look for franchise opportunities elsewhere.

 

When I break atmosphere, though, my warrant level appears to have followed me into orbit.  (Sort of: warrant level 5 on a planet appears to translate to warrant level 1 in space.)  My computer tells me that sentinel ships are inbound.  Like: this guys aren't nearly as excited as I am about how wealthy this planet's resources have made me?  Do they just fundamentally not understand the value of free market enterprise in a healthy economy, or?  Whatever, I engage my hyperdrive before they can get close enough to prevent me from jumping to warp.

 

A few star systems down the road, I discover a planet that has gravitino balls littered all over the place.  And a sentinel alertness rating of: aggressive.  I hate cops.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now