No Man's Sky - Worlds Part I is out now and drastically transforms the planets

THEY DID IT AGAIN.

I've never played it. Is it good?

Downloading it now, but I'm kind of afraid that all this stuff is gonna kill performance on older systems. I'm hopeful it'll still be playable for me, but we'll see in a bit.

Edit: To my surprise, it works fine. I haven't been in the water or into space yet, but standard early game operation seems smooth.


Last edited by Nezchan on 17 July 2024 at 4:53 pm UTC

I've never played it. Is it good?

I suppose that depends on who you ask. There are people that love it and think it's great. Others (like me) don't like it at all. I tried it with the previous free expedition and played one session. Feeling of (space)flight is pretty bad and mechanics just don't give me anything to come back to. Frankly, it gives me the same feeling as an MMO. Long lists of tedious tasks without a meaningful story to hold things together.

I've never been able to shake the filth off this game in my mind since release, which is just really bad on my part I know, but I just can't seem to do it. I know I should absolutely give it another try and see what it's like after dozens of massive free updates, but .............. I think it's just a lost cause.

I've never played it. Is it good?

Well I played it for some time some years ago...
It was not bad: the planets were interesting and... beautiful. You could get more tech and build yourself a base... You could even play online coop with a friend etc...

There were issues too: The online coop mode was buggy as hell, crashing/disconnecting quite often.

But what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:
- when you landed on a newly discovered planet, there was nothing around you. But within minutes, the game (seamlessly) generated fauna around you, in order to make the place look alive
- when you landed on a nearby starbase (to do trade etc. with NPCs) the station was basically empty. After a couple of minutes, the game generated other starship and NPC traffic so that the base looked as if it was teeming with life :)

This meant one thing: (At least for the bigger part) the game world was not persistent! If you built a base on the planet, it was still there upon your return. Still, it happened to me once that while exploring a planet in my starship I 'accidentally' found another crashed ship, so I landed nearby, repaired the found/crashed ship and took off with the new one to test it. I was never able to find my original landed ship again :-(

(And that is also why I very much play & love e.g. X4 Foundations, which is THE exact opposite of NMS: The universe is fully persistent and fully simulated no matter where you, as a player, are and what you do. So if you see something interesting happening around you, you know it would happen regardless of you watching! )


Last edited by Boldos on 17 July 2024 at 7:44 pm UTC

I've never played it. Is it good?

If you built a base on the planet, it was still there upon your return. Still, it happened to me once that while exploring a planet in my starship I 'accidentally' found another crashed ship, so I landed nearby, repaired the found/crashed ship and took off with the new one to test it. I was never able to find my original landed ship again :-(

I don't know if this was always the case (got it at launch, refunded it, came back years after), but for a good few years now at least it's been possible to summon all owned ships through the menu thingy. Whatever you hopped on last is your main ship, but you do have access to all of them.

I've never played it. Is it good?

Highly depends. If you feel like just exploring planets and gathering stuff to maybe build/improve stuff is fun to you - then yes. If you're expecting a game with crunchy mechanics - no.

My take is that at launch NMS was terrible at the former, and now it's quite good at it. It'll never be good as a "proper" game, though, because that's clearly not the goal. It's more of a chill experience with some gamey bits that provide some sense of direction and progression, but that don't tie you to them if you don't care for them. Maybe grab it on sale and try it out then?

I've never played it. Is it good?

Highly depends. If you feel like just exploring planets and gathering stuff to maybe build/improve stuff is fun to you - then yes. If you're expecting a game with crunchy mechanics - no.

My take is that at launch NMS was terrible at the former, and now it's quite good at it. It'll never be good as a "proper" game, though, because that's clearly not the goal. It's more of a chill experience with some gamey bits that provide some sense of direction and progression, but that don't tie you to them if you don't care for them. Maybe grab it on sale and try it out then?

I can agree that NMS focuses bit more being wide than deep. It's just so wide that discovering new mechanics can be fun. Even when the mechanics are bit grindy if you interact too much with them.

There is actually a plot with few twists. And long side quest that functions as a tutorial and some of the unlocks are behind that. On top of that there's some lore than you can find.

Expedition might be good place to start as they act as semi standalone quests. As new player you start from scratch, but rewards along the way provide you enough stuff so you can complete the expedition. Longer time players can bring in some resources from their main save.

Upcoming expedition has combat focus. Combat is fine. It's not the most satisfying combat system ever and fun factor depends bit on what you're fighting with. And preview of the expedition hints that there will be at least some new enemies.

But what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:

Games are pretty much Potempkin villages. They lie and cheat, especially when you're not looking. Best ones can give illusion that the world continues to exist even when you're not around.

Sounds like NMS hasn't been just good enough in hiding the seams. I think space stations are not bad anymore and they can be populated while player is going through the entry animation. Planets can still be sometimes bit jarring. Animals might just appear out of thin air. Haven't noticed that yet with the new update, though have been played only twenty minutes after game froze.

Ocean waves really transform planets with water bodies. Huge difference and planets with mostly water feel quite lonely.

But! It's a little strange to see huge waves that don't reach the shore.

I've never played it. Is it good?

Yes it is. I thought that this is a pure survival game and not my cup of tea, but it turned out, there is some story to follow, character and base progressions, so it feels more like RPG in open world with survival mechanics.
There is really a lot to do, and for a long time, you won't be bored, because there are so many quests to follow and things to do. It can be surprisingly addictive. Also, survival mechanics feel very satisfying, so you won't feel like grinding much.
For me, it was a very nice surprise.


Last edited by michaldybczak on 19 July 2024 at 6:24 pm UTC

But what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:

Games are pretty much Potempkin villages. They lie and cheat, especially when you're not looking. Best ones can give illusion that the world continues to exist even when you're not around.

Well, in general, yes, you are of course correct; all game engines are by definition Potemkin villages. And yes, game engines - in general - do cheat all the time... Mainly to save the CPU+GPU power for other intensive tasks.

But you are talking about different level of Potemkin villages than what I meant, when comparing NMS to X4 Foundations universes.

The idea of comparing those two universes - the Potemkin village-universe of NMS vs. simulated universe of X4 Foundations - was that NMS is not >>really<< simulating the whole universe when you're not looking (or rather - it seems to be simulating only your immediate surroundings, where you, as s player, are now present, and looking) whereas the X4 Foundations >>really is simulating<< the rest of the universe on the background, regardless of you - as a player - looking...

Economies of all factions, movement of goods on ships, movement of ships, building stations and new ships using appropriate resourcing, battles and wars, destroying ships and stations... In X4 (almost) everything is fuly simulated (and universe-wide persistent) in the background for the whole universe you are in.

In X4 it is as if you were in the online, always developing, almost fully persistent, universe. (With the exception, that the whole game runs offline on your machine). Hence, there might be e.g. a big simulated war raging on on the other side of the X4 universe, without you really knowing about it. Nevertheless, you will usually feel&see the results of the war in the simulated X4 universe around you after some time ...


Last edited by Boldos on 21 July 2024 at 11:18 am UTC

But what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:

Games are pretty much Potempkin villages. They lie and cheat, especially when you're not looking. Best ones can give illusion that the world continues to exist even when you're not around.

Well, in general, yes, you are of course correct; all game engines are by definition Potemkin villages. And yes, game engines - in general - do cheat all the time... Mainly to save the CPU+GPU power for other intensive tasks.

But you are talking about different level of Potemkin villages than what I meant, when comparing NMS to X4 Foundations universes.

Sorry, I didn't tackle your answer entirely. NMS has been built around procedural generation in order to even be able to have the huge galaxy size. The size itself makes dynamic living galaxy something that starts to be technically infeasible. One player is able to discover only tiny part of the whole galaxy. Even travelling from one end of the galaxy to the other will take practically forever if you just jump from star system to star system.

NMS could be do better on the local level though, but let's keep on grander scale for now.

What Egosoft is doing with X series is cool, but I think they have had dream of persistence quite early on in the series. Probably won't be able to remember where player dropped a wrench in some random planet two hours ago (which NMS is also unable to do), but that don't think it has never been their aim. If you are trying to do absolutely everything, you probably end up in same situation than Star Citizen.

I've never played it. Is it good?

Others have already answered the question. I always like to have a basis to track changes in the game. At its core, the game hasn't changed that much but the content they've been adding has definitely helped with keeping the game refreshing. I like to go back to this video explaining the main issues with game; keep in mind this review came out around release but some of these points are what I referred to as "core game architecture."

NMS - Review

There's definitely been a ton of new content and there's a lot of more interactions with the game itself but this only just briefly expanded on some of the activities that you can do, or as others already commented, the game is now wider. Some improvements have fixed the issues mentioned but in my mind you will get most of what the game offers within a couple weeks.

I've never been able to shake the filth off this game in my mind since release, which is just really bad on my part I know, but I just can't seem to do it. I know I should absolutely give it another try and see what it's like after dozens of massive free updates, but .............. I think it's just a lost cause.

You aren't alone in this line of thinking; most people just moved on after their initial response. I have gone back to the game even after a decent amount of updates were out but the feeling of "just clicking textboxes" is still there. This isn't to discredit all the hard work they've put into the updates but all these activities still feel empty. It's almost as if every interaction was isolated from itself and interactions (even being chased by sentinels) are self-contained.

I'd say their next step could be to allow modding to some scale similar to that new Fallout mod. Imagine a story along the lines of "humans evolved into the 4 distinct alien races...blah blah..." but then again, that's a different type of game and this is a sandbox.