It's amazing how, every time i come back to NMS, the whole thing feels like... nothing.

It's a very cool and ambitious project, but there's fundamentally nothing substantial to it in terms of gameplay. It still feels to me, a decade later, more like a very very impressive tech demo than a video game

A big name in proc gen is Kate Compton who coined the term "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" to describe this phenomenon of technically unique but not different enough to matter - I googled "10000 bowls of oatmeal" to see if there was a good article and the second link was about it and nms

https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...

The best things about the game (and it is a good game at this point, they continued to add to it at a steady pace since launch) are the human written stories.

But, once you've exhausted those human stories, it's like wandering around a few billion abandoned malls. Interesting the first few times, but grows boring pretty fast. But also, the worst thing about the human-written stories is that they're often transparently designed around getting you to visit more abandoned malls. The procgen infinity of space is almost a negative, even though it's the game's whole schtick.

I guess now that I think of it like that, it's really impressive they made a fun game despite having to make it fit a boring repetitive universe.

It more or less reminds me of that Rick and Morty episode. They were playing an asteroid shooting.

> Morty: it's boring. crank up the realism slider to max

> Rick: why does it get even more empty? Wait, I got it... because the universe is empty.

At the end, I think there is little point in simulating the vastness of the universe in a video game (even just a fraction of it).

You do occasionally find some pretty cool stuff.

I found a barren planet in a black hole system where the vibe was all dark and shadowy with the light being tinted purple, and just some crystals or something on the surface, alongside a damaged robot that you could interact with.

There was also a world that had high Sentinel activity where I founded a settlement (well, more like took over managing it), however as it turns out it’d have those gravity storms often during which you could soar through the air.

There was also a world where the surface was toxic and you couldn’t stay on it for long, so I excavated a base underground, like something out of Red Faction.

For what it’s worth, a lot of it can feel samey (most of the scanning) and kinda boring, but while there aren’t that many insanely huge and cinematic moments, sometimes RNG hits just right and you get something nice.

Are you sure that you've played it recently? They added an actual story, a huge quest hub, unique items, tons of stuff to do really. I'm quite overwhelmed with the amount of things to do and I don't typically enjoy sandboxes.

I remember first hearing about NMS' concept and wishing that they would take the general idea but downsize it by at least 10 orders of magnitude. A universe with 1-100 millions of planets would still feel absolutely massive and way more than individual players would be able to exhaust, yet it would allow the creators to do a bit better curation, allow players to actually meet, maybe add more hand-crafted experiences. Basically, give up on technical purity in favor of fun.

I feel exactly the same. There has to be a way to do procedural generation in a way that doesn't feel "sparse". A thought that comes to me as I type this is what if you try to co-evolve the ecosystems so it doesn't feel like it's just a mix of the same base components in different quantities.

NMS's art-style is low-detail, but highly aesthetic. It can look amazing at times, but only when you're looking at grand cinematic vistas. It rarely looks good in closeups. This parallels the game's systems in many ways.

NMS is a technically impressive game. You can build a custom-spaceship, either with the in-game editor or by importing one from outside the game, dogfight in it, land on alien worlds, etc. and that's just one of the loops. However, the spaceships you build aren't simulated physical objects. They don't even feel as substantial as styrofoam fins tacked onto a model train. There's no real challenge to flying them. They all just float through space like nothing.

The game has dozens of ways to progress, finding resources and earning cash. They're all so easy to break that you have to consciously resist doing so. Craft a few donuts and you're rich. You don't have to worry about finding buyers for your obscenely high-end pastries. The market board will buy anything at the listed price. Game breaking bugs that trivialize finding resources have been left in the game forever because the developers were afraid that some people might be upset if they actually had to grind for resources. Why what is, ostensibly, a single player game with multiplayer support tacked on even has grind mechanics is another valid question.

I log into NMS occasionally, but my big problem with it is that it's gameplay devolves into a sequence of grinds that are all optional. The things that should offer a challenge (e.g. ship combat) don't. Every play session becomes a case of, "Where do I find this stupid mineral I need to build an upgrade that will make what's already too easy even easier?".

The technology on display in NMS is absolutely impressive, but the gameplay isn't. I'd love to see a fork of this game where they focus on more challenging gameplay with less focus on grinding and sandbox elements. I see the expeditions as an attempt at this, but they don't go far enough.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I have tried coming back to the game multiple times and every time I just feel bored and underwhelmed by the whole experience.

I was just about to say this. I have a lot of respect for the dev team but man is it so not my type of game.

I wish somehow the complexity of eve could meet a game like this. I would sell a kidney for that

I tried it a few years ago, following all the "It's actually good now!" stories.

But a few hours into the tutorial, at a point of yet another "go gather 20 wolf Pel^H^H Ores from that other planet and bring it back", and I lost interest.

The inner gameplay loop didn't work for me, and I need that hook.

Have there since been improvements to that inner loop?

In contrast, Destiny 2 keeps hooking me back in because its inner loop, the gunplay and abilities, and variety of builds, really works for me.

i played it day 1 back then and even bought a PS4 only to play it and played it over the years repeatedly after every larger update for about 1000 hours in total. The fundamental promise they made was never shipped, which was originally a large variety of procedural flora, fauna, and planet. It is still the same uninspired boring stale core that it was day 1 with minimal extensions which produce absolutely boring world that immediately repeat. The game was always Waiting for Godot, waiting for a game that was originally announced with an interesting procedural feature but never shipped. Meanwhile I discovered the history of procedural games, which is a story of fails.

I still sometimes hope that the actually rewrote the entire procedural variety system but it cant happen because people built persistent shit on those planets. They probably have to launch a new game.

Agreed. I want to like this game _so bad_ but I think the problem is that I'm looking for a feeling of fulfilling progression when in reality this game is just a bunch of disjointed sandboxes which is certainly not my type of game.

Yepp. Biggest buy misstake ever.

I remember when it first came out, there was so much hype but I immediately wondered, “where exactly is the game loop?” I also remember how aggressively defensive fans were about it.

Exactly how I feel about this game. While its redemption arc is one for the history books, every time I come back to it, I feel nothing.

Video games have always been part tech demo

And the story aspects are played out no different than Hollywood

NMS has more in common with Minecraft. It's a virtual chat room that looks Star Wars-y

Also don't discount simply not being a kid anymore. Biology isn't static. Memory does not allow for that same initial burst of excitement.

A mile wide, and an inch deep

I've heard it described as "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle"

Every year social media hits me hard with "No Man's Sky is good now!" — and I bit and dove in with a few buddies.

To say everything in this game is half baked is giving it too much credit. It's 10% baked at best. This isn't a game; it's an underwhelming tech demo. The only cool feature of the game is the planet to space flight transition. It's seamless, and looks great.

Everything else is baaaad: the quests have less logic than entry MMO quests, and are mainly fetch missions. The planets are randomly generated slop. The economy of building up your ship/fleet isn't fun (you just sell your ships over and over again). Understanding alien languages isn't fun (and weirdly, has no UX thought put into it?)

It's been a decade and I'm tired of seeing ads like this that are clearly just trying to trick folks into buying an elaborate space game tech demo. Can we move on from this "game"?

A played it, got stuck in a giant crater with seemingly no way to get out of it. That was basically the extent of my experience.

Disney found this out the hard way with Infinity. On v3.0 a large chunk of their IP was staged into a fully customizable and open universe.. and it was so unremarkable that they shutdown the servers and killed all development a few years later.

I feel the same way about Starfield. Just soulless projects instead of engaging video games.

Right on the nail.

I kinda feel the same way. I loved slowly going through the main story and probably put 50hr into the game, but the sandbox alone (amazing as it is) just doesn't do it for me.

This is why a cool tech solution (procedural generation of "levels") by itself isn't good enough. The core gameplay loop is fundamentally the same on every planet. The graphics and descriptions may change but once you've played it for a bit, it gets boring.

I think video games are art, so take my opinion in context of if this is right up your alley and you really love it, then keep on keepin on!

This perfectly describes how this game makes me feel.

I had a different experience.

I bought it on day one in 2016, and like everyone else, I was wowed by the planet hopping experience for about an hour or so. Then I put it down and didn't think about it again.

Then I picked it up a few years later, and discovered base building. Had more fun than the first playthrough, but it didn't click. Eventually I hear about something called the Galactic Hub, which is a star system marked by players as a central spot to build their bases. Kind of like a human home in the vast empty universe of NMS.

I get curious about it, and look up instructions on how to get there. I did some quick napkin math and realized it would take literally dozens of hours of grinding - nonstop travel - to get there. However, as it turns out, there's a loophole with black holes. When you enter a black hole, it spits you out into a totally different place in the galaxy. From the players perspective its random, but players got together and figured out that each unique black hole always sends you to the same spot in the galaxy. So they constructed a black hole "highway", along with an app that let you input your desired coordinates, and it would give you the list of black holes that would most optimally get you near your destination.

So I spend an evening playing the game, switching back and forth from the game to my laptop, inputting coordinates and slowly making my way closer and closer to the hub. Eventually I find it, and what was amazing was that it was the first time I'd seen any evidence of another player in the game.

That moment felt utterly magical, because while I was playing a game, I had an actual, real objective that I formed entirely on my own.

So yes, the game is an odd duck, but it can really open up with the right mindset.

Agreed. And this tech demo was a day 1 purchase for me back in the day. While it has gotten better since then it just doesn't hold my interest. I do like using it whenever every few months I feel inclined to get my PC VR headset out (I'm using an old HO Reverb G2 with the Oasis driver) I think it's a great VR title.

This is why you really need a good geologic, climate etc models. Like a full blown simulation.

Agreed. It's incredibly boring. It lacks an interesting and interactive story with good pacing. What they have done is cool, don't get me wrong, but I think they got carried away by the tech coolness without enough attention to what makes a game fun or interesting.

I feel the same. I want Rust in space, where there are constant stakes. NMS either takes too long to get to a part of the game where stakes become relevant, or doesn't have any.

If anyone has any recs on PvE/looting/base building games in space with the polish of NMS, please share.

I had some great moments in NMS. But, you're right, it needs a plot or storyline to follow.

I think this kind of game needs another innovation to make it interesting. I don't think adding more generative or LLM generated content is the solution.

>but there's fundamentally nothing substantial to it in terms of gameplay.

to me that has become a big positive aspect of the game. The non-teleology of it, that you just run around and immersive yourself in it is pleasant in its own right. Especially modern games to me seem to have substituted games as an experience with reward system driven busy work. Everything is always instrumental.

I started to notice this when games like Journey came out, or Death Stranding during the stress of the pandemic. No Man's Sky is obviously not as artistically strong as either one but the exploration only for explorations sake has me come back to it very regularly. It genuinely is a game about nothing (so is Seinfeld, never hurt the show) but to me that boredom is a genuinely good thing.

I felt this way for a while until I decided to sit down, start a new game, and engage with it.

It's a completely different game, it just doesn't look like it if you picked back up where you left off. Without the right context, you have a tendency to just repeat what you were doing before, and it feels like nothing changed.

But believe me, everything changed. You should revisit it, because I don't think you've seen the actual changes to the game.

they add feature after feature. but never a good drive for the player. 'why should i go to this planet?'

i have an idea for it,

Let users populate the universe with custom quests. Scriptable quests with dialog and multipart structure. You need a custom script language and some limitations on it. Example quests:

- "Bandits have occupied our town", but actually bandits are tax collectors. You instead may help them document the goods.

- "Our star is dying", instead a huge starhip is recharging and refusing to move without some condition.

also add a rumor system to lead players to quests.

you can use my idea Hello Games, you have my permission.

NMS seems to epitomize the excesses of the Agile development philosophy with most of their release updates -- small targeted tack-ons to the game engine that provide something tangible yet shallow for users to explore, usually disconnected from narrative. The same cargo drop configurations, how damaged containers always require removing the same rusted metal or goop, and how shelters have the same exact configuration, never ever evolve or change. It has such a strangely repetitive ghost town character. They could easily target their "agile" deliverables around diversifying and breathing more life into the worlds if they could span more "sprints". Unfortuntately, the tack-ons feel hollow, empty, and often ship incredibly buggy. They used procedural modeling to create an impressive array of planets, but never modeled the planet drops with the same care and diversity.

That's because there were no idea behind it in the first place. It was an ambitious overpromising project that hasn't delivered almost anything they promised. They didn't have any story or interesting gameplay in mind too. Pity.

It's a great game to play with friends. Explore, find cool animals, and most of all - build your fantasy space home. It's relaxing, fun, and can be a great shared experience. I imagine it wouldn't be quite as engaging completely by yourself.

It's kind of like ARK, they spent so much time on all the "cool" stuff that looks great in trailers without focusing on what actually would make a game like this incredible, which is a real persistent singular world with consequences and meaningful group based PVP or PVE that works at scale. What you end up with is just a simulacra of multiplayer that basically boils down to a visually represented Xbox Live lobby.

How I feel as well.

This game just doesn't scale well from mid game on - it's way too easy, even on permadeath + hardest difficulty. Like, making money is way too easy, combat is way too easy, everything is too forgiving. And the entire loop is centered on like, 3 things to do that are all variants of the same exact thing. Really hope they do a much better job in Light No Fire.

To the guy who replied to me: Our genius overlord moderators rate limited my responses so I'll post here.

> I wouldn't say it's too forgiving on resource grinding

You and I have very different ideas of what forgiving means. A reasonably intelligent 7 year old that enjoys and has experience playing video games could play this game on max difficulty settings and not have any issues. And while I never had an issue finding anything (shit is literally everywhere), resource scarcity doesn't equally an unforgiving game mechanic unless it's gated by some sort of difficult fight or something, which this game doesn't have. Combat is laughably easy and repetitive. I've got a couple hundred hours in the game, and at one point I was running the same bounty missions over and over again for some outrageous amount of money - the mission took 7 minutes round trip, the combat encounter was literally the exact same every time, same number of enemies just with different names. And that was the most efficient way I could make money in late game on the permadeath server on max settings. If that's the best economy loop a game can come up with, a 100% brainless combat encounter, then the developer has done something very wrong.