A digression about No Man's Sky, moved from an unrelated thread.

[J.Random]

Arguably, NMS devs never actually delivered on their promises. Instead of alien but believable planetary systems (instead of planets nailed to their positions) leading to alien but believable biomes leading to alien but believable creatures and their behavior and interactions (who else remembers the "predator plant snatching a bird in flight" claim?), they first retconned a "it's all just a broken dying simulation" plot into the game, then dangled the shiny in front of the players, basebuilding and multiplayer (these last two were enough for most of the braindead public to declare that NMS is good now) and went on to creating thematic (mostly boring) "expeditions", barely improving the underlying mechanics.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, J.Random said:

NMS devs never actually delivered on their promises.

Agreed.

I feel sometimes like I'm the only one who thought the release build of NMS was the best version.

Bug fixes aside, very little that's been added over the years has made me happier with the game.

[RocketRockington]

24 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Agreed.

I feel sometimes like I'm the only one who thought the release build of NMS was the best version.

Bug fixes aside, very little that's been added over the years has made me happier with the game.

Yeah ditto.  I tried to get I to NMS a year or two ago because of how many people were saying it's awesome now... It was one of the most awful new player experiences I'd ever had, the 'tutorial' was hours long, incredibly boring and the UI was painfully unintuitive and cumbersome for what I was being asked to do : simple crafting and mining and equipping things to myself and my ship - solved problems in other games, not rocket science.  It felt like a hodgepodge of disconnected features thrown together and half-finished.

One of the reasons I'm so against KSP2 is not because I don't think it will get better - it will, given time, if it keeps getting funded, it can hardly get worse.  But better is still not good.

  It's just a horrifying shame how much potential was lost, and what people will eventually accept as 'good'. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

I feel sometimes like I'm the only one who thought the release build of NMS was the best version.

You're not the only one. It dipped for a while when they added base building (which I personally find ruins games that are all about travel, same thing happened with Generation Zero) but the last couple recent updates were pretty cool from a new save, I could largely ignore all the base building junk that used to be required in order to advance.

[Superfluous J]

33 minutes ago, regex said:

You're not the only one. It dipped for a while when they added base building (which I personally find ruins games that are all about travel, same thing happened with Generation Zero) but the last couple recent updates were pretty cool from a new save, I could largely ignore all the base building junk that used to be required in order to advance.

Maybe I will. The last time I played they had added power requirements to bases and that just made them worse

Nice to know you're not forced to make them anymore.

[Scarecrow71]

This whole conversation makes me wonder:  am I missing out on NMS?  I never played it, and I never read anything about it until recently.  Is it worth it?

[shdwlrd]

51 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

This whole conversation makes me wonder:  am I missing out on NMS?  I never played it, and I never read anything about it until recently.  Is it worth it?

It's up to you. Watch some YT and Twitch vods on it to see if it's your style of game. I hated it because of the grind of it. If there was a way to explore without the horrible grind, I wouldn't mind playing it. @RocketRockington assessment is very on point for it. It can be very painful and unintuitive to play.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

This whole conversation makes me wonder:  am I missing out on NMS?  I never played it, and I never read anything about it until recently.  Is it worth it?

It is DEFINITELY a niche game - at least the original version was. You have to enjoy exploring for the sake of exploring without any other reward. You have to enjoy the gameplay loop of arrive at system, go from planet to planet that are "unique" but really not that different from each other or any other planets you found, scan "unique" animals and plants that really aren't any different form each other or any other animals and plants you've seen, then visit the local space station for some contracts, fuel, trade goods, or whatnot, then move on to the next system to do it all again.

I found it quite chill and enjoyable for about 100 hours or so, so found it well worth the cost. I however felt I'd gotten everything out if it I wanted and never really felt the urge to go back.

These days you can also build a huge base and design a big portion of the interior space of a huge cruiser ship (using mostly the same tools as base building), and farm and bla bla bla, but none of that interested me all that much.

[RocketRockington]

It's not even that NMSs game loop isn't something I enjoy - I enjoyed all those activities in a variety of games, especially in Minecraft.  First of all, it was that this purportedly sandbox style game felt like it needed to drag me through its systems with a hook in my nose in unfun ways.  No nice 'take it at your pace' branching questing like you might see in certain Minecraft mods, it just felt forced on you in a linear and banal fashion.

Add that to how unpolished most systems, especially the UI was- it was just a joyless experience. 

I did like the look of the procedural planets, but unfortunately I know too much about proc gen systems to be really amazed by what's in NMS, that part is on me to some extent.

Edited May 9, 2023 by RocketRockington

[cocoscacao]

5 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

am I missing out

Well, if you need something to keep you occupied 'til patch 3... here