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Can 'No Man's Sky' Redeem Itself With Its Third Free Update? (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Engadget's new article on No Man's Sky:
Developer Hello Games has gone some way to giving the people what they've wanted Friday with the third major update since the title's launch. "Atlas Rises" (aka update 1.3) adds the beginnings of real-time multiplayer to the space exploration game, though admittedly, "interaction with others is currently very limited." Thanks to the update, up to 16 players can now exist together in the same space. Fellow pilots will appear as floating blue orbs moving about the terrain, and proximity-based voice chat will allow players to plan their next jump together. That's pretty much it, but Hello Games calls it "an important first step into the world of synchronous co-op in No Man's Sky."
Meeting up with other explorers should be a bit easier with the new portal system, which allows players to travel between planets instantly, including to random worlds. Taking a leaf out of Stargate lore, activating a sequence of glyphs on portals can designate specific exit points. Hello Games hopes the community will band together to create something of a database of glyph sequences... There's 30 hours of new storyline gameplay and a new mission system that lets you pick up all kinds of different odd jobs from a forever-updating list. Star systems now are now graded with "wealth, economy and conflict levels," giving you more information on desirable destinations (depending on what you're after). There's a new class of ships, new exotic planet types and a new "interdimensional race" to contend with. Terrain editing is now possible provided you have the appropriate Multi-Tool enhancement, and crashed freighters on the surface of planets serve as new scavenging hotspots... to its credit, Hello Games continues to push massive, free updates for the title, such that the game is now very different to what it was initially.
The game has been heavily discounted to promote the update, and Saturday it became Amazon's #12 best-selling PS4 game -- and one of Steam's top 100 most-played games.
Meeting up with other explorers should be a bit easier with the new portal system, which allows players to travel between planets instantly, including to random worlds. Taking a leaf out of Stargate lore, activating a sequence of glyphs on portals can designate specific exit points. Hello Games hopes the community will band together to create something of a database of glyph sequences... There's 30 hours of new storyline gameplay and a new mission system that lets you pick up all kinds of different odd jobs from a forever-updating list. Star systems now are now graded with "wealth, economy and conflict levels," giving you more information on desirable destinations (depending on what you're after). There's a new class of ships, new exotic planet types and a new "interdimensional race" to contend with. Terrain editing is now possible provided you have the appropriate Multi-Tool enhancement, and crashed freighters on the surface of planets serve as new scavenging hotspots... to its credit, Hello Games continues to push massive, free updates for the title, such that the game is now very different to what it was initially.
The game has been heavily discounted to promote the update, and Saturday it became Amazon's #12 best-selling PS4 game -- and one of Steam's top 100 most-played games.
The kind of thought that needs to connect the word 'free' to the word 'update' is so damaged by the current gaming environment that any logical output will be at best a matter of chance, akin a monkey randomly typing a copy of Shakespeare.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Fuck PvP, go play Unreal/Quake/etc if you want that kind of shit.
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In fact this latest update has made the game even worse. I was starting to get to get into the exploration with the addition of the foundation and pathfinder updates, but Atlas Rising introduces instability (as in the game crashes a lot more), severely reduced performance (as if it wasn't bad enough already) and they have reset the entire universe _again_ (spend many hours finding that perfect planet, completing the base missions and building a nice base? well too fucking bad because it's all been changed up and wiped out.)
And what did they add? Some more text and redundant missions to over-explain all of the details to the less mentally capable. I thought the story they had for Atlas, Polo and Nada was just fine as it was and it left you with a lot to think about, not only in the game but existentially. Now they feel the need to spell everything out and beat you over the head with it.
They also supposedly improved the graphics, but I haven't seen any sign of that. So far stuff either looks the same, a bit worse or absolutely ridiculous (see neon-glow techno planets). This was something that nobody asked for and did nothing but make the game run like shit...I mean even more than it already did.
They added a clunky portal system (on top of the previous teleportation system) that lets you jump to random points in the galaxy if you know a specific code to enter into alien rotary telephone dials. As far as I know, it only works for destinations within the galaxy you are currently in, so no back-tracking to Euclid for example.
Oh and they added "multi-player". If you happen to run into up to a whopping 16 other players, you will see a floating ball of light which you can't interact with in any way other than talking to them. Terraforming, planetary deformation, building bases, combat, etc. cannot be seen by or joined in on by other players in realtime.
There is still no way to move your base, a ton of materials have been made obsolete, all base personnel must be recruited again, the galaxy is still not seamlessly open and free roam (something Elite and Elite II did decades ago on a single floppy disk), there are still no planets of different sizes or composition (ie. gas giants, ice giants, brown dwarfs), every star system still has a starbase present and every planet still has pre-existing buildings on them.
Some of the diehard shills will tell you to just start the whole game over, but fuck that. I've already put in hundreds of hours getting and building all of my stuff. There is no way I'm going to repeat all of that to end up with gear that isn't as good as what I've already got.