No Man's Sky

[Dweller_Benthos]

Art, I just re-read that myself and saw that the order of those words could have a couple meanings, like the old joke:
"I shot an elephant in my pajamas last night"
"What was an elephant doing in your pajamas?"

PZ, that is a nice thing about the vehicles, none of them take damage and they usually just plow right through any obstacles so you can just floor it and not worry about hitting anything. At least they made that aspect of the game fun, lol.

[Art Blade]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Continuing with community missions, and it's a bit frustrating that they went through the trouble to add multiplayer and almost no one uses it. You see other players in the nexus, start a mission, then no one joins you and you have to go do it alone. Or some join the mission at the start then immediately quit the group so you end up doing the mission alone anyway, or with some people still listed in your group but they are nowhere to be seen.

[Art Blade]

if you see me online when you struggle with those missions, just let me know. If it helps you, I'll join you.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Thanks, maybe I might. But it's not really a matter of getting the missions done, most can be done by a single player, it just takes longer. Case in point last night I had two other people with me on a mission, one never showed up at that target planet, even though his marker was there, he wasn't, there was nothing at the marker point. The other guy was there and was actually doing the mission which is something anyway, but he left, not sure if he completed his part or not, so I was there alone doing the rest of it.

[Art Blade]

whatever went on, it doesn't sound like fun. I'd gladly help you and together it should be better.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah it's not too bad, I was just moaning about the fact that they added multiplayer and no one wants to play it that way it seems. I may call on you sometime if something interesting comes along.

[Art Blade]

alright

[fragger]

Turns out I had an old saved game from about a year ago when I had my last serious attempt at NMS (I had tried it again briefly a couple of months ago but quickly lost interest when I couldn't even get my starting ship off the ground...)

Well... I must say the game has come a long way. I'm impressed with how much better everything looks, and the Space Stations are more like they should have been along, with shops, vendors and other things in them. Plus there are plenty of aliens wandering about - and they do actually wander about now, no more standing in one spot for their entire lives. When they arrive at the Station, starship pilots now get out of their ships and hang around nearby, so that you talk to them, not to their ships.

The menuing system has been greatly improved and now has useful "Guide" and "Catalog" tabs, although the help they provide is minimal. There still appears to be no way for me to see what blueprints I've got, unless I go to install an upgrade. There are still a number of things I can think of that I believe would improve the UI, but it's getting there.

Outposts and the like on planets have gotten a much-needed graphical makeover, they look terrific now. I like what they've done with planets generally. The ringed ones look awesome and the draw-in of surface details when entering a planet's atmosphere from space has been hugely polished up. Now, looking at a planet from space actually does give you an idea of what it's like at ground level, and descending to a planet's surface from space now looks more like it did in that infamous original promo footage.

There are no more of those somewhat ludicrous giant towers and barn-sized masses of precious metals just waiting for you to come along and laser them down. All large deposits of mineable goodies are now in the ground where they belong, with just the tops of their materials sticking out of the ground like big flat blisters. The deposits are nowhere near as extensive now though, containing maybe two or three hundred units' worth of stuff each. From what I've seen so far, anyway. They are also fewer and further between.

Too many changes to go into here (and in true Hello style, not all of them are for the better) but it seems that the devs are still doggedly trying to transmute NMS into something like the kind of game they originally promised, bit by bit. I have to hand it to them, I admire their tenacity. When the game got savaged by all and sundry after release the devs could have just washed their hands of it and walked away, but they stuck it out and didn't give up on it. Kudos to them for that at least.

But one thing still hasn't changed - @#$%& pirates! I've been to three systems now and I get hassled by pirates EVERY time I try to fly between planets in any of those systems. EVERY. FLIPPING. TIME. Seriously Hello, address this stupid nonsense already. I want to explore and such when I fly my ship, not get into a dogfight every damn time. Those bloody pirates are what always end up turning me off the game. We'll see how long they take to wind me up into another rage quit, which is the way my dalliances with NMS always seem to end.

But for now, I'm back in and enjoying it. Lots and lots of new things to learn and play around with, and it looks better than ever

[Art Blade]

nice report, fragger

Still sounds like something that's far from ready. The game, not the report of yours.

[fragger]

 

It has become a bit easier to get to grips with all the new stuff now compared to when I last picked the game up a year ago. A lot has been streamlined and tidied up, and extra aids have been added which the game has been screaming for since day one. Still, Hello have never been ones for hand-holding so there are still enough sussings-out of things to keep the player befuddled occupied. It's just a somewhat less painful process getting to the bottoms of things now. So no, perhaps not yet finished, but light-years ahead of where it was at release time (yeah yeah...)

I'm still determining, but so far it appears that the slots in both your Exosuit and Starship can now hold over 2,000 units of minerals or whatever, and have much enlarged capacities for stackable items. In the case of the Exosuit, that includes both the slots in your "Cargo" area and those in your "General" area. I currently have over 2,000 materials in one slot in each of those areas. I only recently (like a few hours ago) came across this and I haven't yet had much more than a couple of thousand of any one mineral on hand to test the limits, but it appears that the slots have been GREATLY enlarged all around. I'll have to mine the dickens out of something to see how deep the new pockets go...

...unless it's a glitch introduced in the last update. Maybe some programmer temoprarily removed the slot limits and forgot to put them back...

[Art Blade]

Oh for crying out loud, just the mention of the word "glitch" in conjunction with NMS and updates makes me feel sick and push that game far back into its virtual shelf on my hard drive.

[fragger]

 

I now have over 3,000 Carbon inside one Exosuit "General" slot. These slots used to hold 250 (500 in the case of both the Exosuit's "Cargo" area and the slots on a Starship). I'll see what happens if I press on... I'm deforesting a good-sized area doing this.

[Art Blade]

Indeed, let's see how deep they go.. which reminds me of that song.. "He's got the whole world in his hands cargo slots"

[fragger]

4,000... Got to pee.