No Man's Sky

[Smoove_B]

In my ~4 hours I've yet to acquire the hyperdrive so I guess I should go do that and trade up.

[Octavious]

Grabbed the PS4 version. God I hate the downloads on the PS4 it's always sooooo slow unless you hard wire it.

[Hetz]

I'm enjoying the game so far - the exploration is fun and I haven't gotten enough same-i-tis from structures yet except for space stations which has to be one of the most underwhelming parts of the game. When I landed I was thinking here is this huge station. Oddly it is mostly a big empty hanger with an unnecessary staircase up to a small room.

As to performance issues I get major hitching when flying at anything above 'half' speed in atmosphere. In space or on the ground? No problems at all. It is manageable so far and I don't mind it too much. I haven't experienced any of the steam review issues myself.

I was able to completely fix my hitching issues by going into the nvidia driver control panel and turning the Shader Cache to OFF on the No Mans Sky preset. Dont turn it off on the global default profile, only No Mans Sky. If you change it in the global preset, then every other game will have hitching problems. For some reason, there is a problem with the Shader Cache on No Mans Sky. Once I did this, it fixed everything and I am having no more issues at all.

Absolutely loving the game now! Cant wait to see what gets added to this game over time.

[rshetts2]

If you don't want the freebie ship, you could try redeeming it and then not accepting the trade. I expect that would clear the "Redeem me!" prompt. Now, why you wouldn't want a sporty little Z95 is beyond me...

I thought I saw a headline somewhere that the freebie ship was causing some type of game-breaking bug to happen related to the creation of the hyperdrive?

As I understand it, if you redeem the ship before getting the hyperdrive blueprint it may be possible to skip over that stage of the tutorial path and get stuck later after trading up a ship with no hyperdrive and being unable to craft one. I waited until I got the hyperdrive blueprint before redeeming the pre-order ship, just to be safe. The pre-order ship isn't a huge improvement over the default starter (it has one extra slot and comes with a hyperdrive and a secondary weapon system) but it looks a heck of lot nicer sitting on a landing pad.

I redeemed my warp ship near the start of the game and still had no problem getting the warp drive blueprint. I think the key is at the start when you find the atlas orb, accepting the Atlas path will get you clues to the blueprint. If you dont accept the atlas path, then you have to happen on it randomly.

Im about 5 hours in and yeah Im having a lot of fun with it. Flight and landing can be a bit wonky but lowering the flight sensitivity in the options helped me a lot. I am getting better at landing where I want to as well but I still can miss the mark easily. I got taunted by the game big time when I visited my first space station. I talked to one of the ship pilots who had a rather nice ship. He offered to sell it to me and the thing had 29 slots! That made my puny ship look like a toy. Of course he wanted about 3 million more for it than what I had. Its a good thing they dont allow piracy by players because I would have happily ganked him for that ship, all of that inventory space would be awesome!

[Smoove_B]

Trying to move the story along (and I've crossed the 5 hour mark) and made it to the planet it wanted me to visit close to 6 hours ago. It's very, very different than first two planets - described as completely devoid of flora and fauna. It's absolutely a barren planet but thankfully there are outposts and (finally!) upgrades to my Exosuit that add slots. Regarding an outpost I'd discovered when first arriving:

Spoiler:

It was taken over by some type of plant (fungal?) growth that the residents were seemingly researching. The structures were falling apart, sparking and open to the environment. That's the first time I've seen something like that and it was a bit creepy.

Also: the story wants me to hit a beacon on this planet but I can never get closer - it reports that I'm about 10 minutes away but then recalculates and seemingly moves away from me. Quick searching online indicates that the beacon is then likely on the other side of the planet and it's calculating distance as if I could travel through the center. Hopefully they update that at some point as it confused me for a long time.

[Max Peck]

I have found one exosuit upgrade (an extra inventory slot) at an outpost on my starting planet. It was a freebie from one of those interactive thingamabobs you find inside many of the outpost structures.

My memory failed me here. The exosuit upgrades are available in special structures like this (it looks kind of like a grounded escape pod or landing vehicle to me):


The little dot-in-a-circle icon shows up on the HUD at a distance, even if you don't have a waypoint for the site, so it is something to keep an eye open for as you fly around.

[Smoove_B]

Things I did this afternoon:

Found a few wrecked spaceships (that I could have taken and repaired)
Discovered a trading post
Misunderstood an alien and allowed him to put a needle directly into my brain.

Good times.

[Max Peck]

I tracked down a crashed ship after detecting it's emergency beacon and flying half-way around the planet, only to discover that while it had one more slot than my current ship, it also had a few broken upgrades, so I wouldn't have been able to transfer all of my cargo. On top of that, it had a broken hyperdrive that required a part I couldn't make, so I ended up sticking with my trusty little Z95 for now.

[killbot737]

Flying critters are really hard to scan (and shoot).

[naednek]

grrr i have returned the game, but part of me still wants to play such a polarizing game. The tech is awesome

[Octavious]

Game makes me sick. I played for an hour and wanted to puke. I'm not sensitive to motion stuff, but something in this game is messing with me. Which is awesome to find out after you spend 60 bucks.

[Smoove_B]

That's really weird because I get queasy playing games at the drop of a hat - and this doesn't bother me at all. The only thing I changed was the FOV to 100 (up from 70).

[Octavious]

No FOV slider on the PS4. That's my problem.

[ColdSteel]

was able to completely fix my hitching issues by going into the nvidia driver control panel and turning the Shader Cache to OFF on the No Mans Sky preset. Dont turn it off on the global default profile, only No Mans Sky. If you change it in the global preset, then every other game will have hitching problems. For some reason, there is a problem with the Shader Cache on No Mans Sky. Once I did this, it fixed everything and I am having no more issues at all.

FYI they have the beta patch out on steam and one of the things it fixes is the shader cache issue. There are also fixes for some of the other major issues as well. They fixed the framerate setting too.

We have hot fixes for many issues in a build which is currently with our test team. This will exit testing and be made live for all players early next week.
If you are having issues and want to check this out immediately, we have made it available in a new Steam branch, called "Experimental".

We've already resolved many issues for people who reported them by moving them over to this branch.

Here’s what’s different

Improved AMD Phenom Support
Thousands of lines of assembly have been rewritten overnight to support AMD CPUs. Unfortunately whilst the game code no longer relies on anything above SSE 2, Havok Physics still requires “Supplemental SSE 3”, which was not supported until “Bobcat” and above. We’re discussing with Havok.

Alt-Tab has improved
Some systems/configs were crashing or not pausing correctly on Alt Tab. This should now be resolved.

Shader Caching
Framerate was initially stuttering due to shaders not being correctly cached by the GPU on some systems. We have replaced the GPU caching system. You may notice some stutter during the Galactic Map intro to the game (the very first time you run), but it should be smoother from then on (this will be fixed in future). This is particularly true on ATI cards

Mouse Jitter
Smoothing on mouse movement has been improved to prevent hitching or stuttering, and is now adjustable through the Options menu in “Mouse Smoothing”.

Max FPS Cap
On some CPU/GPU configurations, setting Max FPS to 60 or 30 was not giving 60 or 30 FPS (causing stuttering). This has been improved.

Improved Performance
On CPUs with 4 threads or fewer, performance has been improved.

Intel GPUsThe game will now let you know if you are trying to run with an unsupported GPU. This will hopefully flag for some users that their high end GPU has not been selected.

Gsync
Gsync has been disabled by default, which was causing an issue for some users

Here is how you access it
To access the Experimental branch right-click on the game from the library page and select "Properties". Among the available tabs will be the "BETAS" tab.

Code: 3xperimental
Your new branch should be listed in the dropdown menu under "Select the beta you would like to opt into:"

If you encounter issues with this please mail and include [EXPERIMENTAL] in the subject.

IF THIS BRANCH FIXES YOUR ISSUE, PLEASE LET US KNOW

Thank you,
Hello Games

[Newcastle]

Need some help on planetary navigation. Is there a way to set up waypoints or something to help find your way around the planet. I just found a trader and plan on working around him (ie selling resources & stuff). But when i went up in my ship, there was no waypoint/beacon you get for the discovered items. Just want something to help navigate the planet a bit better. Any tips? Or do you guys fire & forget?

[FishPants]

Can someone explain to be the anomaly thing? I keep getting alerts when I'm looking to warp, but can't tell if I'm warping where the anomaly is detected.. I've got four stupid atlas stones and not a single blueprint. Was the alien with the blueprint in the atlas station or somewhere else? It's really bugging me but I've gone too far to just throw in the towel and restart.

[Reemul]

Need some help on planetary navigation. Is there a way to set up waypoints or something to help find your way around the planet. I just found a trader and plan on working around him (ie selling resources & stuff). But when i went up in my ship, there was no waypoint/beacon you get for the discovered items. Just want something to help navigate the planet a bit better. Any tips? Or do you guys fire & forget?

If you scan a building it will show on your hud if you don't it won't. So scan locations you want to revisit

[rshetts2]

I ran into a barren planet that had basically nothing but minerals, outposts and monoliths. Its a great place to make and sell Bypass Chips because the base materials are every where. You can not land without iron and plutonium around you. The resale is just a bit over market but its still a nice way to build some cash. The cool thing is there are outposts everywhere. I have my exosuit almost fully expanded because Ive found so many of those pods. Ive probably picked up 50 words on this planet as well. I did find a salvageable ship but it had less slots than my ship did so it was basically worthless. Anyway Ill probably just spend some time selling Bypass chips until I have a couple of million and then try to buy a nice ship at one of the trading posts. Ive found 3 with multiple landing pads and ships come and go a lot there.

[Newcastle]

Need some help on planetary navigation. Is there a way to set up waypoints or something to help find your way around the planet. I just found a trader and plan on working around him (ie selling resources & stuff). But when i went up in my ship, there was no waypoint/beacon you get for the discovered items. Just want something to help navigate the planet a bit better. Any tips? Or do you guys fire & forget?

If you scan a building it will show on your hud if you don't it won't. So scan locations you want to revisit

Thank you SO much. The navigating around planets w/out waypoints was quite frustating. I'd actually started not activating certain ? areas that were near a place of interest for myself. Anyway, now will use the scanning of buildings.

[msduncan]

I'm beginning to get irritated at the inventory system. I don't have enough slots to make the items I need to craft an item -- if that makes sense.

[Zaxxon]

I'm beginning to get irritated at the inventory system. I don't have enough slots to make the items I need to craft an item -- if that makes sense.

I'm impressed you made it this long. It took me about two minutes to begin to get irritated with it.

[Smoove_B]

I'm beginning to get irritated at the inventory system. I don't have enough slots to make the items I need to craft an item -- if that makes sense.

I had the same experience - mainly because I was ignoring the "story" and not following the instructions to go elsewhere and so *stuff*. Once I started following the in-game guidance, I found options to upgrade my suit and was up over 22 slots in a few hours. It sounds like rshetts and I landed on a similar planet (that I was instructed to travel to) and it was abundant with resources and upgrades. What's crazy is that I think I'm still in the tutorial as I've yet to actually create a Warp Drive -- and I have 10 hours in the game. Part of that is because I had to travel 1/2 around a planet (twice) to get to story-related waypoints and in doing so I came across monoliths and drop pods every 100 feet. Now it looks like I need to switch to a mining/selling mode and start cashing up.

I guess my point is, the game is so open that you can do whatever you want - but you likely won't find upgrades to your suit until you start following the story prompts.

[rshetts2]

I'm beginning to get irritated at the inventory system. I don't have enough slots to make the items I need to craft an item -- if that makes sense.

I had the same experience - mainly because I was ignoring the "story" and not following the instructions to go elsewhere and so *stuff*. Once I started following the in-game guidance, I found options to upgrade my suit and was up over 22 slots in a few hours. It sounds like rshetts and I landed on a similar planet (that I was instructed to travel to) and it was abundant with resources and upgrades. What's crazy is that I think I'm still in the tutorial as I've yet to actually create a Warp Drive -- and I have 10 hours in the game. Part of that is because I had to travel 1/2 around a planet (twice) to get to story-related waypoints and in doing so I came across monoliths and drop pods every 100 feet. Now it looks like I need to switch to a mining/selling mode and start cashing up.

I guess my point is, the game is so open that you can do whatever you want - but you likely won't find upgrades to your suit until you start following the story prompts.

I found that planet in my 2nd system. The first after I acquired warp, Ive been loosley following the prompts, so that may be why. Oh and Im still irritated by the inventory. So many items do not stack but have decent value.

[Max Peck]

I'm beginning to get irritated at the inventory system. I don't have enough slots to make the items I need to craft an item -- if that makes sense.

I'm impressed you made it this long. It took me about two minutes to begin to get irritated with it.

It's a pretty universal sentiment, and I recall Sean Murray saying that they were planning to increase the resource capacity per slot for both the exosuit and ship. Maybe, if we're lucky, they'll also consider allowing stacking of non-resource items. That would be a big help for some of the more complex items that need multiple subcomponents.

In the mean time, in order to increase the slots in your exosuit, you can spend some time hunting down drop pods in order to buy the slot upgrades. I've had some luck with this by using signal scanners to search for them; they seem to be under the "shelter" category.

[Newcastle]

Polygon has a great guide section, will add this to the tip thread we got going on.
http://www.polygon.com/no-mans-sky/2016 ... -sky-guide

[hepcat]

Personally, I'm getting more frustrated with navigation. I can hop in my ship and hit thrusters towards that outpost that says it's 23:34 away...and then watch that eta increase the closer I get. It's annoying the crap out of me. Am I just doing something wrong?

[Smoove_B]

Personally, I'm getting more frustrated with navigation. I can hop in my ship and hit thrusters towards that outpost that says it's 23:34 away...and then watch that eta increase the closer I get. It's annoying the crap out of me. Am I just doing something wrong?

You probably missed this - I posted the same problem earlier. What's happening is that it's calculating your distance (and time) as if you could travel through the center of the entire planet. Just keep flying in the direction of the desired waypoint and you'll get there...eventually. Try not to be a monkey (like me) and stop at every.single. drop pod and alien artifact you see -- you'll get there much faster.

I was also under the impression you could fly up and into sub-orbital levels and do it much faster, but I'm a sucker for finding stuff ("Oooh shiny!") at the surface.

[hepcat]

Whoops, sorry for not checking to see if this had been answered already.

Thanks!

[Grifman]

Don't skip too many drop pods, they are a major source of exosuit upgrades.

[Smoove_B]

Similar to the game, there's a lot going on in this thread. I'm still getting my bearings and I'm about to hit the 10 hour mark.

[Smoove_B]

Don't skip too many drop pods, they are a major source of exosuit upgrades.

I had to stop because the cost for upgrades was ~110,000 units per slot. Going to need to mine like it's my job (and hey, maybe it is for all I know) to continue. Right now the ship inventory slots are more problematic than my suit, but it's nice to be able to add all kinds of suit mods in and still have 10+ slots for items. Also, using the tip from the other thread that the ship slots hold 500 units and the suit only holds 250 is also quite helpful - particularly for the mining runs.

[Lee]

So after the first weekend of the PC release, I still can't determine if this game is a buy/wait/pass. Seems like people mostly like it, but that it still needs some work? Is that a correct assessment?

[baelthazar]

Personally, I'm getting more frustrated with navigation. I can hop in my ship and hit thrusters towards that outpost that says it's 23:34 away...and then watch that eta increase the closer I get. It's annoying the crap out of me. Am I just doing something wrong?

You probably missed this - I posted the same problem earlier. What's happening is that it's calculating your distance (and time) as if you could travel through the center of the entire planet. Just keep flying in the direction of the desired waypoint and you'll get there...eventually. Try not to be a monkey (like me) and stop at every.single. drop pod and alien artifact you see -- you'll get there much faster.

I was also under the impression you could fly up and into sub-orbital levels and do it much faster, but I'm a sucker for finding stuff ("Oooh shiny!") at the surface.

The best way to reduce travel time is to go to orbital (where the asteroids are) and then point your reticle at the floating icon for where you want to go. Then you activate your pulse drive. It will take you in an arc that will drop you much closer to the target (and let it keep the post pulse drive boost until you get closer).

[Newcastle]

So after the first weekend of full a PC release, I still can't determine if this game is a buy/wait/pass. Seems like people mostly like it, but that it still needs some work? Is that a correct assessment?

Really depends what type of games enjoy. If you like exploration and cruising around on a spaceship and resource gathering...hop to it. Get it. You also have to tolerate a sandbox type atmosphere. IE subnautica (without the heavy crafting component). You kind of have to have a mindset of "oooh i wonder what's over the next hill."

However if you need a direct line of questing, need good combat, then its not for you. Do note, i chose not to go the "atlas route" which is the storyline part of the game. However, as soon as I can find it again, will pick it up.

The combat is really nonexistent so far, just critters nibbling at my heels.

I find there is a bit of a learning curve since the documentation in game is sparse. It gives you some hints here and there, but you kind of have to plug along.

I like it so far, but am sure at some point the game will lose its shine. I think about 10-12 hours in. Right now am working on getting more credits to get a bigger spaceship so i can hold moar stuff (resources). I wonder about its depth though and how long it will keep its shine of exploration.


Really depends what you like.

[Smoove_B]

So after the first weekend of full a PC release, I still can't determine if this game is a buy/wait/pass. Seems like people mostly like it, but that it still needs some work? Is that a correct assessment?

I've put 10 hours in and I don't know how I feel yet. Right now my driving factor is trying to figure out what the hell is going on and the more I interact with alien artifacts, the more I think I'm puzzling together what a story might be. Or it could be "fluff" that the designers put in to help me make a own story in my mind. There are probably tweaks necessary to graphics and possibly some basic game play elements, but I haven't experienced a single crash or game-breaking bug in my time playing.

What I can say for sure is that this game seemingly rewards slow, steady progress. So far (for me) it's been a game of finding moments - things you see or story elements that happen while you're wandering around doing something else. I don't doubt for a second the game will have highly polarized opinions depending on your personal preferences and play style. I can totally see where some people would play for 2 hours and hate it. I'm not in that camp, but I'm also not entirely convinced there's more to what I've seen so far...but I'm hopeful.

[wonderpug]

So after the first weekend of full a PC release, I still can't determine if this game is a buy/wait/pass. Seems like people mostly like it, but that it still needs some work? Is that a correct assessment?

I'm really loving it now that I've gotten the hang of things, but I'd still say it's a 'wait' for most people. This feels like a very ambitious indie title more than it does a polished AAA title. This really should've been $40 at the most, but no regrets here. Aside from the annoyance of having to tweak graphics settings to get it playable, and the shoddy tutorial for showing you the basics, I'm having a blast.

Game makes me sick. I played for an hour and wanted to puke. I'm not sensitive to motion stuff, but something in this game is messing with me. Which is awesome to find out after you spend 60 bucks.

Seconding the above: it's probably the FOV settings. I was getting sick after my first hour or so, but now that I tweaked the config file to put it up to 120 (which I think in this game translates to actually being something far less than 120) I don't have the issue at all anymore. Hopefully the option gets patched into the PS4 version soon for you.

[Grifman]

So after the first weekend of full a PC release, I still can't determine if this game is a buy/wait/pass. Seems like people mostly like it, but that it still needs some work? Is that a correct assessment?

I'm curious too if the gameplay is there for the long term. Right now, based upon what I have seen, read, the game is IMO a missed opportunity. I can think of just a ton of things that could be added to make the long term gameplay more interesting and compelling:

1) Quests from the various alien races (need these elements for a plague vaccine, capture this species for our galactic zoo, wipe out this nest of pirates, etc.)

2) Different types of structures for each race to provide variety.

3) Space navigational hazards that you need to find solutions to before proceeding (nebulas, asteroid belts, pulsars, etc)

4) Very dangerous alien species (like in Aliens that create risks, problems, etc). I've seen outposts that look like they have been infected, attacked by something, but nothing seems to come of it.

5) Local pre-space faring intelligent species that you in interact with in some way

6). More and different upgrades. Why not a mod that scrambles sentinel signals to delay their attack? Or another that creates a fake image of you that they attack? Something more than just more weapon power or more space or shielding.

I think they have a good skeleton, just not sure if there is enough meat there.

[Reemul]

On a personal level I no longer judge a game on if it has long legs.

The odd game lasts me ages but there are so many games and so much to play having any game last 20 hours is fine for me regardless of cost. Some games cost more and play shorter others cost a little and play for ages.

For me that is no longer a measure, I get bored see the next shiny thing and move on and I am fine with that. I don't look for value for money in play time at all, but that is just me.

[Chaz]

I'm really liking it. I think what it comes down to is this: when you're playing an MMO, do you ever think "man, this game would be so much better if I could just wander around this huge world without all those stupid mobs attacking me all the time"? Because that's basically what this game is. If you're an explorer type that really liked wandering from place to place with very little friction, then this will probably be good for you. If you need constant challenge, direction, and purpose, this may not be so good.

I agree it probably shouldn't be a $60 game though. It's a really good $20-40 game, but I'm not surprised that the mainstream audience expecting something along the lines of the average $60 AAA game is coming away disappointed and annoyed.

[baelthazar]

Gamespot gave it a 7/10. I found that their criticisms are apt but I do not know if I agree on how much they scaled against those criticisms. Now I have not yet gotten to the first Atlas station, because I have been obsessed with hitting all the planets I can and seeing things, so I have not opened that part up yet. So my comments are based on that.

I would say I have about 10 hours in. I really enjoy the game but, as I suspected, there are a lot of comparisons to Starbound and Spore. The biggest issue is one raised by many people here, in a game that boasts unbelievable amount of diversity, you tend to get a strange feeling of "been there, done that." Yes, every planet has different palette shifts (my favorites so far were a red ocean planet with "blood" seas and a blue-tinged planet) but also has many of the same types of trees or minerals. The creatures are interesting, but a lot of them look the same or similar, with notable exceptions. Each planet has the same points of interest, similar things to do, and the same types of alien races doing the same sitting around. This is a lot like Starbound and Spore (the space part) - you go to a planet, are in awe of the initial weirdness, then set out to do the exact same things you were doing on the world you just left. I would say Starbound does this better (in some ways, although the creatures in Starbound are limited to the same 20 or so sprites). In Starbound you have the same alien villages, same types of plants and biomes, but at least you can occasionally find weird alien ruins, prisons, labs, and other odd elements as you explore. So far, I have not seen anything like that in NMS. I suspected one problem with Murray's algorithm and the quintillion planets - you can create basic structures, but will miss out on the things that make real planets interesting. So far I have not found any grand canyons, Mt. Everests, giant red spots, rings, or giant trenches like those that dot the actual planets we know (also, all the planets in a system are jammed next to each other in a way physically impossible - but this is a criticism of almost every space game). Awesome natural formations would really add to the game immensely.

All that being said, I keep thinking about the game and want to play. I am obsessed with finding the different crashed ships with the hope of upgrading to something that looks super weird and cool. I keep studying alien monoliths to build the languages. I keep wanting to see what new techs pop up. Even if there is a "sameness" to the planets, I still love the surprise of seeing what the next planet will be like. And even if the creatures are sort of herky jerky and oddly constructed, I want to study them. The game does build stories and I find it oddly relaxing in a way Starbound is not (perhaps this is partially due to the universe being less hostile and no quests pushing you to do boss fights and such).

Case in point - my first planet had some of the weirdest and fun animals. I was looking around, just trying to find them all, when - on a hillside, I saw something huge walking around. I go forward and see what is basically a giant goat (as tall as a T-Rex or so) walking on hind legs. It looked exactly like a medieval representation of Satan (no kidding). Being the first to discover it, I named it Baphomet (which it looked like, although missing wings). It was weird, wild and fun. I had the same experience on an alien world when I noticed something that looked like a sack hopping on the ground. Catching up with it, I scanned it to find it basically looked like a a hopping mushroom. My better self prevented me from naming it something like "Floppy Dong" and instead I called it "Beanie Baby," since it hopped around like a living bean bag. I got a nice laugh.

So I am not sure what to say. Part of me thinks this game is a 7/10. Part of me feels this is the most sense of wonder and amusement I have had in a long long time (likely since the first time I played Minecraft and knew nothing about it when I booted it up). My biggest feeling is, like others here, that the tech behind this holds some interesting implications for future games. I imagine a universe generated like this that allows trading, empire-building, colonization, and warfare. Now that would be something!