Heartless Gamer put down a whole lot of thoughts about the recent Throne and Liberty global beta, saying that while the MMO has plenty going for it, including graphics and performance, it’s not a slam-dunk by any means. “I can tell you that this beta was nothing like what I got out of New World’s […]

When I last left off I was standing on a hostile planet where I needed to keep maintaining my life support and my environmental protection systems by feeding them oxygen and sodium regularly.  I had been briefly off planet for an inter-system flight from the radioactive planet where I started to the blazing hot planet where I ended up.  So hot the landscape literally erupts in flames.  The place is a constant blaze.

So there I am, fresh from space on a hot planet where just staying alive seems to be a bit of a chore.

This is where the somewhat odd slant of the game comes in.  Or maybe it isn’t odd.  Maybe that is just me.  But it felt, in retrospect, that they wanted to put you in the mind of walking up hill, in the snow… or maybe in the fire… both ways to school every morning before introducing a little relief.  They want you to appreciate the good life once you get there I guess.

I say this because the next thing on my tutorial list was to build a base computer, and a base computer unlocks housing.

The chromatic metal was a bit of a chore… I had to find a copper deposit and there were none close by… but once I solved that I was set.

The base computer actually stakes a claim on the planet which you can then build on.  That keeps others from encroaching on your base.  Good fences make good neighbors or some such, right?

Setting that up kicks off  a series of things to do, the first of which is to choose a base building material.

For whatever reason I chose wood paneling… literally the least science fiction looking of the options… for reasons I cannot recall even though it was only a few days ago.  Probably impatience.  It wouldn’t be the first time I made a choice because I was interested in the next choice.  But on a planet that is constantly on fire, wood seemed like the least practical choice I could have made.  Fortunately, it appears to be some sort of synthetic wood simulation that is, among other things, fire resistant, so no worries on that front.

You get a snap-to building mechanic that is somewhat akin to Valheim, though the pieces are bigger.  You can slap together a decent sized shelter on a 2×3 floor grid.  It was a little wonky in that “the pieces move relative to you if you move while trying to place them, but not at the same rate you move” sort of way.  But getting six floor sections, walls, and two doors was easy.  Getting the roof on… that was a bit of a chore.  I had to stand way back from the structure to get the roof to snap into the right location.

But once the roof was on and I went inside, I discovered that all buildings are climate controlled.  The incessant heat was gone.  I could stop worrying about my environmental protections.

Then it was time to build things in the base.  There was a research station from which I could learn more building ideas or addition machinery.  The tutorial pushes you down the machinery path, so I ended up with a generator, some wiring, a save beacon, and a teleporter.

The teleporter was intriguing, though it wasn’t connected to anything, so I couldn’t go anyway.  It is like that when you have the first bit of tech.

More immediately useful was the save point beacon which answered the burning question “how do I save the game so I can log off?”  I mean, the game writes a save point every time you exit your ship, but I am not always right next to my ship and at this point in my journey I had not been informed I could simply summon my ship to me.  It is less of a ship and more of a companion, but I’ll get to more of that in a minute.  So you go to the save beacon and save.  Easy as that.

So I ended up with a set of amenities in my base building… though I haven’t bothered to build the signal booster yet.

In part that was because the tutorial path suddenly forgot about my base and was once again hot to trot on my ship.  I had to venture out again to find something.  Somewhere there was a blueprint waiting for me.

Having found that the game was very keen that I get that hyperdrive built, because how can you see the universe on 30 Altairian dollars a day if you can get to the next star system with your hyperdrive.

The first item on the build a hyperdrive checklist was to purchase a microprocessor… and there were not a lot of stores on my burning planet.  So I was sent to the space station, there being on in every system, galactic infrastructure being a very important aspect of the game.

That means getting in your ship and taking off… which meant fueling the ship, as there is always something running out of resources.  I did that, then took off and pointed the ship… well… up.  That is where space is.  There is a marker to follow to get you there.

Once out of the atmosphere it started giving me time to destination estimates, which were not promising.

However, the game tutorial prompted me to press and hold the space bar… everything is press AND hold around here… to engage the pulse engine, which made for a more comfortable travel time.

Fortunately the pulse engine was fueled.  I was in space and didn’t have it fueled at a later point and was short on an item to make the fuel, so had to slow boat to a station.  Only 20 minutes, but 20 minutes of holding down the W key can be a trial… though I did get to kill three pirates along the way.

Anyway, first space station trip complete.

The time estimate were done by the same person who did the Windows file copy time estimates.  They are entirely accurate based on the situation at that instant, even if they said something else five seconds ago.

On arrival I needed to land at/in/on the space station, which, much to my relief, just grabs you and lands you when you arrive within proximity of its landing bay.  As I approached I had visions of my run at Elite Dangerous, something else that is almost a decade back at this point, which ended in very short order due to my inability to dock/land in the newbie tutorial baby steps space station. (I understand that is better now, but if you read the comments on that post it is all about getting the right joystick with HOTAS controls and… that just wasn’t going to happen, then or now.)

There I found the marketplace interface… the galactic trade terminal which, giving lie to its name, is a only for local sales.  The market is different in each system.

I did not have enough units… the unit of currency is the unit… so had to scrounge around and sell stuff I had to hand, but eventually I got the microprocessor needed to fix the warp drive on my ship.

The game was also telling me to go see the exosuit technology merchant for an inventory upgrade for my exosuit.  But the merchant had no such thing when I spoke to him.

Those who have played the game are laughing at me even now I bet, as the merchant does not have the upgrade.  Rather, it is that blue glowing display taking up the right quarter of the image above.  But it didn’t say go look next to the merchant, so I am still a bit salty… also, I had to Google the answer even though it was right in front of me multiple times.

That little upgrade is available in every space station every day, so now my suit has more pockets than a tinker’s bag.  I love inventory space.

I also talked to all the locals on the station, but that is a tale for another time I think.

Then, having picked up my groceries and expanded my inventory, the game told me to use the station teleporter to get back to my base… “warp” was the term used, which seemed odd, but whatever… so I found that, opposite the trade terminal.

Then I realized I had left my ship parked in the docking area.  Well, I guess if I can just teleport back, then maybe all my spaceflight will be done from space stations going forward.  That could be a thing.

So through I went and was back at my base.  Then the game told me to go fix my ship and I was all “GAME! You just told me to leave my ship behind at the space station” and the game suggested that maybe they had considered that situation, because when I went outside I found my ship parked around the back, having followed me home like a puppy or something.

I get that your ship just always being there is a huge benefit, but it felt like a moment of “we’re just not going to talk about it” as the game glided on, sending me off to the next chore.

Anyway, I fixed the warp drive.  I could now, theoretically at least, travel between star system.  Also, one more thing to keep fueled.  Later I end up on a planet being hounded by sentinels and, in jumping into my ship to make my get away I am informed that one system or another needs to be replenished, like the scenes of the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes back.

At this point, which is not that far into my journey because I’ve been writing about other things, Potshot read my post about No Man’s Sky, which he also bought on Steam back in a past age, and he decided to get it running as well.

So the next entry will be about us trying to play together.

Reddit’s ‘monstavvvv’ has created an incredible cyberpunk city in No Man’s Sky that all players can visit and explore. This city features streets, bars, shops, apartments, a nightclub and a mini metro. And, as you will see below, it looks amazing. This project took monstavvvv a couple of months to create in Creative Mode. The … Continue reading A modder has created a cyberpunk city in No Man’s Sky, featuring streets, bars, shops, apartments, a nightclub and a mini metro →

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The Site

I did my complaining about WordPress early this month, so I can move on to something more upbeat for this section.  I got at least a bit of recognition this month from CCP as they included the blog in the Community Beat post published on July 5th. (The title says “July 7” which just says to me an American wrote the title and screwed up the Euro date pattern.  Swift?  I blame all things on CCP Swift now.)

Woo hoo!  I guess I have to set aside my usual “CCP only cares about Twitch streamers and the rare site they let into the community program” gripe for a while.  I mean, it is still true, but I can’t gripe about it for a few weeks now.

Hey, they didn’t just link to this blog, they also took a moment to link out to my other blog, EVE Online Pictures.  So it was a twofer!  That site saw an immediate boost in view!

I mean, maybe that wasn’t a huge boost, but when the average is zero, anything is an improvement.  (It looked like one person showed up and used infinite scroll to look at pictures until they got bored and moved on.)

And what prompted them to notice my work?  Was it my ongoing writing about life in New Eden?  Was it my monthly look at destruction from the MER?  Was it my criticism of their economic policy and their plans for null sec?  Was it my years of CSM election coverage?  Was it my posts about the Alliance Tournament?  Was it all the historical posts about wars in null sec?  Was it because I was bitching again about the in-game map?

Nope!  It was due to me repeating the story Asher Elias told at the fireside a while back about Ser Fukalite’s ship spinning medal… a medal which I am pretty sure was handed out by the community team.

So the lesson here is clear enough that I can put it in meme form.

You can close the loop if you just write about what the people who write the community outreach post are up to.  Look for more of that for sure!

One Year Ago

We got the announcement that Blaugust would be returning for its 10th edition.  We had a decent list of signups in advance.

I did a run down of my gaming in the first six months of 2023.

EverQuest and EverQuest II got quiet summer producer’s letters.

Blizzard’s Q2 2023 financials were all about Diablo IV.

In Wrath Classic I was indulging in the Call of the Crusade update.  That is always good for faction rep… and for heirloom gear for alts to come to Northrend.

The group gave heroic Gundrak a try and we didn’t quite have it in us.  That got us doing Wintergrasp for welfare epics… when we were not having desync issues.

I thought about flying in Wrath of the Lich King, probably the last expansion where it wasn’t a controversy.

Blizz was warming up for WoW Classic Hardcore with the proposed rule set.

CCP announced that the EVE Online 20th Anniversary Edition box was ready to order… though the shipping was going to be so expensive they pledged to give is PLEX in compensation.  CCP also gave us the roadmap to the CSM18 election.  I went over the June 2023 destruction from the MER.

In New Eden the drama of the Tranquility Trading Consortium kept on going with Vily changing his mind and declaring it would carry on, just as a PanFam-only business.

Pandemic Horde lost their irreplaceable Pochven Fortizar in Skarkon.

And I reviewed The Fountain War a decade after its end.

The Metaverse was still trying to be a thing, but even after pouring billions into Facebook Horizon Worlds, Zuck’s metaverse vision still lacked legs, both literally and metaphorically.

Twitter, which was still Twitter, was trying to limit the posting rate of non-subscribers.  Many thought for sure that would kill Twitter, yet it lived.  Only Twitter could kill Twitter I opined, and it couldn’t even manage that right.  At that point I had spent a month with Twitter alternatives and Facebook launched Instagram Threads.  I tried to sum up the different pretenders and the communities they were fostering.

And then Elon announced his master plan, to change the name of Twitter to X.  Jesus wept he is so dumb.

I did a brief wrap up of the 2023 Steam Summer Sale.

I was looking at old books on my shelf wondering what to do with them… besides read them again.

And I started off on my Telephony Tales series of posts.  That started with my misspent youth and calling payphones at the mall and yelling past the Popcorn Lady.

Five Years Ago

There was a Steam Summer Sale to write about, with its odd contest.

Daybreak was fiddling around and registering studio names with the USPTO.

Pokemon Go hit its third birthday. StarCraft got cartooned.

And it looked like Blizz was going to give people a mount every six months so long as they subscribed to the six month renewal plan.

CCP, after saying they would change the 1 million skill point starter pack, just kept on selling it so long as there was sufficient demand.  But at least it was limited to one per account.

Out in null sec space, it was all about the Drifters as the month opened up.  They changed up a bit, but the war we had in progress was already ruined.  We tallied up the damage and headed home.  We had chased PanFam out of Tribute and Vale of the Silent.

But the Drifters were just the start of what would be dubbed the Chaos Era.  CCP announced that local would soon be blacked out in null sec.  We got warnings it was coming.  And then it hit and CCP said it would remain in place indefinitely. (Which some people took to mean permanently.)  The idea came from Hilmar, though many people were going on about null sec being risk averse.

The big VNI nerf hit in there as well.  And a tax increase!  Good thing devs don’t need to run for re-election.

Meanwhile, CCP was trying to keep people in the game during the blackout with skill point handouts.  So many skill points.  And they had to clarify what they meant even.  But the online player count suffered all the same.

And I was on CCP about maybe building their own killboard or at least making SKINs for all the things.

Still, I did get some play time in New Eden.  We did a Triglavian roam with DBRB.  I went on a blackout roam. I moved a dreadnought around to a new deployment on my own, then lost it.  It was a suicide dread.

I tried out DOTA Underlords.

I had been fiddling around with tracking my game play time for six months.

And, finally, we were getting ready for Blaugust once again.

Ten Years Ago

There was a site put up by eBay about game return on investment.  Unsurprisingly, it indicated that used games are a deal in that regard, so you should go buy some on eBay.

There was the passing of yet another Steam Summer Sale.

SOE forgot to pay their domain name registration.  Wasn’t that fun!  Meanwhile, Landmark was available for a deep discount after the Steam Summer Sale, leading to speculation about its future.

SuperData Research was listing out the Top Subscription MMOs while not defining what they really meant by the term.

Anarchy Online introduced a PLEX-like currency, GRACE.

The community manager for LOTRO was busy telling raiders and PvMP players that they weren’t getting any new content because they added up to less than 10% of the player population.

I finished up Pokemon Y on the 3DS.

In my attempt at the loremaster achievement in WoW I ran through Desolace, Feralas, and Thousand Needles one week, Felwood and Un’goro Crater the next.  Then it was Winterspring, Swamp of Sorrows, and the Blasted Lands, the Cape of Stranglethorn, and the final bit of the Eastern Kingdoms.  I was on a roll.

in EVE Online we were commuting to Delve, where maybe there was going to be a war, and chasing Brave Newbies around (then getting pipe bombed) when there wasn’t anything going on.  That was back when we owned Delve.  Fights went on sporadically for a while and many a Rupture was sacrificed simply try a fresh doctrine.  So many Ruptures.  Apocs did better.

Meanwhile the Crius expansion hit New Eden, making industry better… it did get better, right?

In EverQuest, on the Fippy Darkpaw Time Locked Progression server, the vote to unlock the Underfoot expansion failed, making it the second expansion ever to get voted down, the first being Gates of Discord nearly two years before.

With that I was wondering what other MMOs might go for the retro nostalgia server thing.  Not WoW, I was sure of that at the time.  Since then though…

I was also on about housing in MMOs, what has really worked for me and what has fallen flat and why.  This included some projection as to what garrisons might end up being in WoW.

Our epic game of Civilization V saw expansionism and direct conflict with the Aztec empire.

Fifteen Years Ago

I won a contest.  Granted, all I got was a T-shirt.  But that was probably more than you got.  And it was due to a video game.

Mythic announced a version of Warhammer Online for the Mac.  Not sure that helped anything at all.

I was, as usual, asking silly questions like why does Tetris gets faster.  Okay, it was an analogy, but it was still silly.

Oh, and then there was the horse.  Remember the $10 horse?  I did a poll about it and everything.  Boy, that seems like small potatoes these days.  I mean, that was a cash shop game selling a horse for $10.  Now WoW and EQ2 will sell you mounts that cost much more.

Gary Gannon announced that GAX Online was going to close in August, bringing to an end that experiment in gamer community building.

I asked what people considered cheating in an MMO.  It included another poll.  I was doing polls that July.

I did a parody of Tipa’s Daily Blog Roll feature.  That is some pretty rich stuff in hindsight.

In EVE Online I got another step closer to mining perfection.  I was also fiddling around with a fit for a Dominix.

In World of Warcraft the instance group hit Violet Hold and Gundrak, but couldn’t get the team together for Halls of Stone, so went back and did some Burning Crusade heroics just for kicks.

Then the instance group took a run at Onyxia.  The old school Onyxia.  She’s since been remade.

My daughter somehow got to Dalaran at level 16… without having the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

And even as we were doing all that, we were starting to mull over what we should do once we were level 80 with no new expansion in sight.  It only took us a year to try another game.  At about that time, my hunter alt hit level 80.

I also dredged up the old Alamo Teechs U 2 Play Druid post from the WoW forums.  Philosophical question:  Would Alamo have posted that if RealID had forced him to use his real name?

And, finally, my daughter was trying to get me to help her make WoW videos to post on YouTube.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Billy Mitchell got the first perfect score in Pac-Man, though his record has since been expunged due to accusations about cheating.

Forty Five Years Ago

The Sony Walkman was introduced and portable music has not been the same since.  A pair of classmates of mine had a father went to Japan on business regularly and who brought them each one of the brand new devices back from one of his trips.  Those were the first two I ever saw.  Blue and gray cases and headphones with bright orange foam padding for the ears.

Most Viewed Posts in July

1. Blackrock Caverns for Four
2. Return from Pokemon Go Fest 2024
3. I Sold a SKIN on the Paragon Hub!
4. Level 45 at Last in Pokemon Go
5. Stars Reach Appears on Steam and all the Default Social Media Outlets
6. Timing those Lucky Eggs for Friendship Milestones in Pokemon Go
7. Starting No Man’s Sky – My Ship is on Fire and I am Being Irradiated
8. June 2024 in Review
9. In Which We Bowl Over Blackrock Caverns
10. Averting a Black Ops Disaster
11. Answering Gaming Questions with AI – Finding a Warm Ocean in Minecraft
12. Tarisland – I Hate it Already

Search Terms of the Month

starcraft cartooned carbot deviant art
[Why Deviant Art?]

ttc-collective-agreement-2020
[I have some posts about that!]

gamer blogs
[pretty sure I’ve had my card revoked]

neg vs enad
[gen vs dane?]

zmud on windows 11?
[Haven’t gone there yet… maybe?]

Game Time by ManicTime

On the one hand, I did play a few more titles than usual this past month.

• EVE Online – 48.14%
• No Man’s Sky – 24.11%
• WoW Classic – 14.81%
• Valheim – 6.04%
• EverQuest – 4.01%
• Unnamed Beta – 1.50%
• Once Human – 1.31%
• Palia – 0.04%
• World of Warcraft – 0.04%

On the other, nearly 75% of that time was the first two titles, though No Man’s Sky was a surprise dark horse candidate.  But I cover that below.  It could have been a Once Human month.  I played that for an evening… and then was distracted elsewhere.  Meanwhile, I think I logged into WoW and Palia to claim a gift or a Twitch drop or something.  It was quick.

EVE Online

New Eden was at the top of the chart this month, thanks to several factors.  First, there was a new group formed in the Imperium to go out and pick fights in the middle of PanFam space, so that got me undocked.  Then there was the Keepstar bout in Catch.  That might turn into something next month, but in July it was mostly move ops.  I was recorded on 16 different fleets according to the participation dashboard, but at least 6 of those were just getting in to move ships from point A to point B.

A lot of my time in game was probably attributable to me logging in and doing the AIR daily goals for 12 days across seven characters, 5 Omega and 2 Alpha, to test that out.  Well, if the goal was to get entice me to log in more, op success.

EverQuest

Really, I am still subscribed, but all I am doing in the Overseer thing every day… and I have almost gotten all the achievements for that.  So I might be done here sooner rather than later.  My 25th anniversary spirit is waining.

No Man’s Sky

Kind of a surprise entry this month… or any month.  It came out in 2016, I played it for a short bit in 2017, and then haven’t really thought about it much since then, save for noting updates coming out every so often.  Then there was all the Stars Reach talk this past month, with pillars and being on Steam, and I started thinking about procedurally generated exploratory space games… and hey, here we are!  More to come on this too.

Once Human

I came very close to making Once Human a thing, mostly because I had picked it in our Game Critic Fantasy League, so I had a vested interest, and because I left Twitch tuned into Mind1 and he went and played it so I ended up with some Twitch Drops for it.  So I tried it for a bit.  It has its own interesting flavor.  But then all the Stars Reach stuff made me think about No Man’s Sky and I went there instead.

Pokemon Go

• Level: 46 (+1, level, 10% of the way to 47, 0 of 4 tasks complete)
• Pokedex status: 838 (+8) caught, 847 (+7) seen
• Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 16 of 18
• Pokemon I want: Two specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm and Sun
• Current buddy: Annihilape

Valheim

I think I finally hit the wall here in the Ashlands.  But that is fine.  We got some good times out of this third run at the game.  It is my most played title on Steam.  I can feel good about moving on.

WoW Classic

I am feeling kind of the way I did with Burning Crusade Classic, that I have started to prove that my negative feelings for Cataclysm back in the day were not wholly unwarranted.  And we have six more months to go on this.  Our group still has a dungeons to run.  But logging in to level up alts and that sort of thing… not really feeling it for that.

Coming Up

Blaugust.  Next month is Blaugust so you can expect a Blaugust kick off post tomorrow to celebrate the first day of the event, with a run down of participants, probably with a bit of history and some reasons to join in.  Or maybe not.  I don’t know.

Then I have to figure out how to fill out the month… which is one of those things that is always daunting on the first day, and then when I get to the last day I realize I have a half a dozen more unfinished drafts in the drafts folder and didn’t even start on some things I felt I should have.

There might be a war of sorts in EVE Online.  We’ll see if the other side shows up I suppose.

Other than that, nothing is going on in August… wait, I am being told that there might actually be a release or two in August.

Yes, we’re getting the Janthir Wilds expansion for Guild Wars 2, which will bring with it player housing.  A very big deal there.

I think we’re getting a big update in EverQuest 2.

Oh, and Visionary Realms is said to be doing a pre-alpha beta test of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen in anticipation of early access in December… I think I have that right.  But you won’t hear about it here as this event is has been reported to require that participants not share, communicate, or deliberately imply information about their pre-alpha experience or involvement.  Public information on their website, however, is fair game and we’ll get to the plan for early access, oh you can just bet.

And I suppose I would be remiss if I did not mention The War Within for WoW.  Big new expansion.  Kind of a thing here in the game’s 20th year.

So, you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

I guess that situation, but also in the situation of owning this title at all.  Well, I am, even if you’re not.

I went back to check when I bought No Man’s Sky, just to get at least some sense of when I put in the 25 minutes of total play time I had before I downloaded it to try again last month.  I purchased the game in August of 2017 according to my purchase history, when it was on sale.

Honestly, my purchase history is practically fodder for a blog post on its own.  Several, really.  Let me put NMS into some purchase context.

That is some history right there.  Three purchases for my daughter, one of which was returned because I suspect ARK didn’t run on her iMac.  That was before I built her a gaming PC.

RimWorld, which is my third most played title on Steam, with 311 hours, and the name in game pack, which I totally did not get because they rejected all my entries, Doom, Civ VI, and MiniMetro show up before NMS.  Those were all Summer Sale purchases… well, Doom seems too late for that, but figures in the post I have about the sale, so maybe?  The latter three have, in order, 91 minutes, 14.8 hours, and 8.4 hours played.  Not bad, really, in a world of so many purchased and unplayed titles.

On the far side, in the autumn, there is Medieval Engineers, Space Engineers, EVE Valkyrie, Grim Dawn, and Vietnam 65, which have 75 minutes, 78 minutes, 5.1 hours, 3.4 hours, and 18.1 hours played respectively.

Is this really my Steam catalog?  Do I actually play the games I buy?  I am as surprised as anybody by this revelation.

And in the middle of all of that was No Man’s Sky, with 25 minutes of play time.  I guess I had other things to play.  But it wasn’t the best of times for the game, as I previously covered, so I might be excused for giving it a miss.

I even found my save from my original run at the game… Steam cloud save for the win.  I might have to go back and see what happened back on August 24, 2017… though the game says that save needs to be updated.  We’ll see.

But here we are in 2024, the game is about to turn eight, and I am playing it again.  All I knew when I started was that I didn’t like it seven years ago, but a lot has changed.

Now, in starting off down this path, I had a plan.  I was going to go through the game slowly and write a series of fairly granular views of the game as it took me through various aspects of coming up to speed… and then I got into it, found myself a dozen hours in, and now I feel like Iago Montoya.

So let me sum up in a bit of an initial speed run to get at least to a baseline from which I can continue.  I plan to do this in chunks still, but somewhat less granular chunks.  Also, I promise this will be the last time I get into the history of the game, that having been over-covered here and in my previous post. (I can also promise I will, at some point, break that promise.  Also, I am from Crete and all Cretans are liars.)

Again, I don’t remember how the game started in 2017… I have searched my brain, but have found nothing to trigger any old memories… so maybe what I am seeing now was there then, though something

But here in 20204… where I will attempt to stay going forward… NMS starts off with the classic shipwreck, amnesia scenarios.  I will occasionally mock these over-used, but I also recognize you do have manifest a player into a game as a fully formed adult with no expectation of knowledge and no desire to over burden them with stuff, and there are only so many smooth ways to do that.

And, even having opted for a well worn trope, NMS does it pretty effectively.

You wake up, everything is broken, your ship is on fire, and you are being irradiated by a hostile atmosphere and are being told you need to do something.  There is a task list for you, an urgent task list if the tone is accepted… though I suspect you have as much time as you need… though I did not test that hypothesis.  I found myself caught up in the fire drill.

First you have to fix your multi-tool.  Then it comes up and tells you that your scanner is down.

Not just down, but critically damage and there is a task that demands you repair it immediately by using the newly working multi-tool to mine some ferrite dust.  So off I went, first trying to mining laser attachment on the nearest thing.

Then, after looking around a bit, I found something that would actually yield ferrite.

With that I was able to gather enough ferrite dust to fix the scanner.

Fixing the scanner was critical as my environmental protection was blinking at me about being low on this radioactive planetary surface.  You need the scanner to find things that will yield sodium, that being what the fuels the protective layer of your suit.  So I scanned and went chasing after sodium, then went about trying to harvest some.

The joke in that image is that you just need to pick the plant by holding down the E key.  The mining laser is not needed nor will it actually do anything in this situation.  I was learning.

And I wasn’t just learning about what to mine and what to pluck from the ground.  I was learning about the UI and control scheme.

As noted previously, NMS is a cross-platform title.

This means that its UI is setup to accommodate both PC mouse and keyboard as well as a controller.  This means some compromises, such as a layered menu system that can feel a bit inflexible if you’re used to PC responsiveness.

Still, I will grant that they have done a good job with the compromise, on par with Forza Horizon… which means I still get lost and you have to remember that a tab of options even exist because they don’t just hang it somewhere on a bar on the UI the way one might with a PC.

The most immediate thing I had to get used to was the need to hold down a key on selections, such as the E in the sodium harvesting image, rather than just hitting the key and getting an immediate response.  The comic side effect of this is that when I swap over to something like EVE Online I find myself clicking and holding on options that do not require that level of effort.

Anyway, I found my sodium and then was guided how to recharge my suit so it would stop telling me about my impending demise.

That sorted, it was back to the burning ship and getting that repaired, which involved me learning about how to craft things from my suit and apply them to my ship.

That also required me to find a hermetic seal, something that I could not craft.  That sent me off to a marker, a bit of exploration, to some buildings where I might find the missing part.  Moving around on the surface.

That red diamond with the somewhat inverted tuning fork… or whatever it is… is the universal important quest marker telling you where to go… which, at the moment was sending me into some buildings.

I found my hermetic seal.  I also found that buildings are good.  Inside of a building my environmental protections stop nagging me and even recharge.  Buildings made me happy at that point.  Eventually though, I had to leave the building and head into the radioactive landscape and back to my ship.

The game brought me through a few other tasks, like the deployment and use of a portable refiner, which can convert raw elements I harvest into more usable forms.

The final thing to fix was analysis visor

This is a critical bit of your kit as it allows you to find key minerals and things you can salvage on the landscape as well as being able to scan and record new things you run into, for which you receive a bounty.  Cash money for finding stuff is good.

That done, the ship refueled, the game then pushes you to get off of the radioactive hell hole it started you on and into space.  Wheee!

And then it sends you to another planet… see the quest marker… when I found I had given up radioactivity for extreme heat.  I am not sure which hurts market value more.

Goodbye Jovi, hello Yardo.  The temps are not too bad if you stay inside.  The fact that there are firestorms that pop up now and again is a bit of a drawback.

So I made it out of the initial “let’s get you going” tutorial and onto another planet.  So far, so good.

Though I will say, for a game with the title No Man’s Sky, there are, in fact, a lot of things flying past in the sky.  Like all the time.

That isn’t bad, though I keep looking over my shoulder when I hear something flying overhead.

Anyway, I am getting stuck into NMS.

This is partially a review of No Man’s Sky/partially an editorial. No Man’s Sky just had its 5.0 update, Worlds Part 1. And I went back to it on my Xbox. And I marveled at how good it has become. But it still isn’t perfect, as it has a fatal flaw, one that sunk Starfield. It is that because No Man’s Sky is nothing but procedural-generated content, its wide as ocean, but puddle-deep. I have 160 hours on my save, and the only worlds I remember are the ones I have bases on. The rest have faded from memory because they weren’t distinct. Sure there are awesome vistas, because there isn’t much to do on any particular world. Land, catalog minerals, flora and fauna and move on. Each world is larger than some open world games, but there’s nothing to do on them. But let’s back up.

No Man’s Sky’s Rocky Start

Eight Years ago, No Man’s Sky was released, and it was hated. Sean Murray of Hello games made lofty promises about what the game would be, and it was all a lie. No multiplayer, no base building and planets didn’t rotate. But a funny thing happened, Hello Games didn’t make many excuses, they went silent and got to work. And over the last eight years, made No Man’s Sky into a juggernaut. with a team the fraction of the size of most AAA games. There is multiplayer, deep base building and the star systems acts like star systems(though you do have to warp between them). There’s also settlements, pirate battles, pirate systems, pet breeding, a new secret robot race, sentinels, ship building, expeditions and the list goes on. Because its so free-form, Hello Games can cram random stuff in, and it works. And none of updates cost extra.

Its easy to label No Man’s Sky the greatest game comeback in history, even eclipsing Cyberpunk 2077 IMO. Cyberpunk’s comeback is certainly impressive, especially with the Phantom Liberty expansion, but CD Project Red stopped development after four years as its vision for the game was completed. Hello Games has been at it for eight year and sees no signs of slowing.down. But even if they continue for another eight, there’s one problem they can’t fix.

The Fatal Flaw

As I said in the opening paragraph, No Man’s Sky has an infinite universe, but not that much to do on any particular world. There are missions you can do, and there are navigation points on each world. But each giant planet ultimately fells hollow and generic. The Worlds update certainly helps, and I can’t wait for part 2, but does the universe need to be nearly infinite? Once you leave the starting Euclid Galaxy, good luck finding a star-system that has already been discovered. I haven’t seen a single other player outside of the Anomaly. Maybe that is the point, a feeling of solitude on an alien planet. And on certain worlds, there is that feeling. But after 100 star-systems everything feels the same.

What is the solution? I’m not sure there is one. Procedural-generation just can’t match hand-crafted content, Just ask Bethesda how well relying on it went with Starfield(hint: it didn’t go very well). But Starfield is an RPG, No Man’s Sky is an exploration sandbox. Flying into the unknown is the point, even if what is there doesn’t exactly wow most of the time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying No Man’s is a terrible game eight-years on, just the opposite. It is just that there’s a limit to how far things can be refined in a game like this. And that’s alright. Now if you excuse me, I have to find this underground rare creature…

The post No Man’s Sky in 2024: Great but Flawed appeared first on The Game Slush Pile.

Exploratory space sim No Man's Sky increasing tilt into the wonderfully bizarre continues today with the launch of a brand-new update, titled Adrift, which this time lets players explore an abandoned universe where civilisation has come to an end.

Adrift is, at least in part, a nod to No Man's Sky's earliest days - where lifeforms were scarce and exploration was an entirely solo, wonderfully lonely endeavour against a seemingly endless backdrop of stars. "There's so much we love about the game now," Hello Games says, "but there was something unique at release in how alone you felt in the universe."

To that end, Adrift gives players the option to explore an alternative universe of broken, rusted buildings and lost Travellers graves, that's free of other lifeforms, shops, trading, shortcuts, or help - all creating what Hello Games calls a "very different survival experience".

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With an effectively infinite universe to fill in No Man’s Sky, developers Hello Games have certainly risen to the challenge of trying to fill it with as much stuff as they possibly can over the last near-decade, still managing to add major new features and modes eight years on from the sci-fi exploration game’s release. Next update Adrift is taking things right the way back, though, by emptying the expansive cosmos of almost everything except you, your ship and planets to visit.

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It's been fairly quiet on the No Man's Sky front since its previous big update, Echoes, introduced the world to a mysterious new robot race known as the Autophages last August, but all that changes today with the release of its new Omega update - which coincides with a first-ever free weekend for the exploratory space sim on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC.

No Man's Sky's Omega update introduces a handful of new core features, including on-planet missions. These procedurally generated quests can be initiated by speaking to alien lifeforms Travellers find roaming around on planet surfaces, and are assembled based on a number of factors, including locale, climate, and alien personality.

Elsewhere, the update makes it possible to captain an imposing Dreadnought capital ship - previously they existed mainly to be blown up - but this first requires a spot of successful space combat; players will need to defeat the pirate freighters surrounding a hostile Dreadnought during an encounter before they're able to board it and take control.

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It's been fairly quiet on the No Man's Sky front since its previous big update, Echoes, introduced the world to a mysterious new robot race known as the Autophages last August, but all that changes today with the release of its new Omega update - which coincides with a first-ever free weekend for the exploratory space sim on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC.

No Man's Sky's Omega update introduces a handful of new core features, including on-planet missions. These procedurally generated quests can be initiated by speaking to alien lifeforms Travellers find roaming around on planet surfaces, and are assembled based on a number of factors, including locale, climate, and alien personality.

Elsewhere, the update makes it possible to captain an imposing Dreadnought capital ship - previously they existed mainly to be blown up - but this first requires a spot of successful space combat; players will need to defeat the pirate freighters surrounding a hostile Dreadnought during an encounter before they're able to board it and take control.

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A game that keeps on giving.

Oh! Mega.

No Man's Sky is going free to play this coming weekend to celebrate the launch of the Omega Expedition, which comes in an update alongside myriad other changes today, February 15.

The Omega Expedition is free from February 15 at 6am Pacific / 9am Eastern / 2pm UK on February …

Hello Games describe No Man's Sky's latest Omega update as being geared towards newcomers and "lapsed players looking for a way back in". Hey, they're talking about me! I haven't played the wide-eyed space game since before the pandemic, partly because I only own the PS4 version and now that I'm RPS news editor, I'm not allowed to touch consoles any more. Seriously, they burn my skin on contact. Anyway, let's have a gander at the trailer.

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