Topic: No Man's Sky

[Quemaqua]

I ended up re-buying the game. I made a nice chunk of unexpected side money, and while I really should have saved it ... let's just say life has been rough on me of late. Trouble with my school plans, loneliness and after effects of the end of a relationship, plus keeping myself way too busy in a schedule that's maybe a bit tough to maintain. In a fit of depression last night at like 2 AM after 2 days of severe stress headaches, I decided I wanted something mindless and simple and otherworldly to take my mind off things at least for a short while, so I opted to satiate my curiosity. Got it on GOG so I could still technically get a refund, but I think I'm going to keep it. Primarily because I'm using it as a language-learning tool, actually.

Game has full Japanese localization, and because of the type of language it uses, the way a lot of things are laid out, and the fact that you gradually learn words in the alien languages, it's been really great for adding example sentences to my SRS decks using screenshots, and it gives me more motivation to go into the world and do stuff than I'd probably have with the game on its own. Everything is a much greater mystery since I have to decipher it all, and the larger blocks of text are things I can only partly read without taking an excess of time to slowly translate with a dictionary. Not exactly a "pure" experience of the game, but I suspect the extra layer will add rather a lot to my enjoyment. Not likely to get anywhere fast, either, but that's entirely okay.

Will report back with thoughts if and when I do anything of substance. First few hours have just been wandering around the starting planet scanning stuff.

PC port really is a mess in a variety of ways, but it does work for me. Framerate isn't bad, despite a lot of hitching, but the screen tearing is the big issue. Doesn't seem to make a lick of difference whether vsync is on or off, and it gets quite bad in the right circumstances. There's been some funky interface stuff too, like one time when it was showing controller commands instead of keyboard commands despite the fact that I was using keyboard, and it stops responding to keyboard commands completely if I have the Japanese IME turned on in Windows. It's playable, even if the experience is far from ideal. Hopefully they fix some of this stuff.

[K-man]

http://vid.pr0gramm.com/2016/08/15/5322c9ed537c76b8.mp4

[Xessive]

http://vid.pr0gramm.com/2016/08/15/5322c9ed537c76b8.mp4

Hahahah 

[Quemaqua]

This review is well worth a read: http://kotaku.com/no-mans-sky-the-kotaku-review-1785383774

It very nicely sums up the strengths and weaknesses of this game, and why despite its many problems and limitations there's still something worthwhile in it. Is also a pleasant read of someone's experience.

[PyroMenace]

Yea I get it, he doesn't really need to keep trying to find an apology for the game which I feel like he's doing. He got bored with it, so he basically made up his own game and enjoyed it just out of desperation to like something that's $60 and paper thin. You can do that with most games if you try hard enough, Assassin's Creed 3 is a good example. As an AC game it's pretty garbage, but there's some nice exploration stuff you can do and even enjoy. But as I mentioned before, I've seen enough to know what it is, I still want it just for something to relax to every now and again, so I'll just wait for a price drop.

[Quemaqua]

It's not an experience that's at all worth the pricetag. There just isn't enough structure, not enough game, and the procedural content that's generated isn't cool enough or unique enough. But it's still pretty cool, and he makes a valid point that attempting to play it like a "real" game, where you're really working to achieve some goal, is shooting yourself in the foot. That's not what this game does well. That would be like trying to blow through ABZU because you just had to see how the story ended. That's not what it's there for.

I highly doubt this guy felt any desperation to like the game as it's unlikely he paid for a copy. He's worked for Kotaku for five-ish years. His review is just as negative as positive, but he does a pretty good job of explaining why certain people with a certain mindset are enjoying it despite the problems.

[Cobra951]

Waiting for a price drop isn't going to help me.  $360, $330 or $310 is too much to pay for hardware + troubled game, I fear.

[Quemaqua]

Alex Navarro's review is worth reading as well: http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/no-mans-sky-review/1900-748/

[Quemaqua]

I wrote an article addressing some of the stuff we talked about here a bit. Pug was kind enough to publish it:
http://pk.ign.com/ign-pakistan/5359/opinion/language-mystery-and-no-mans-sky

(Just posting here for people who don't regularly read the general board, heh.)

[Cobra951]

Michael J. Riser used to work for The Man, until he decided to quit and make stuff up for a living. He is a writer and an editor, and contributes to several publications, including IGN Pakistan. You can follow him on Twitter.

Congrats, man.  Way to go.  I did see Pug's thread earlier, but didn't get a chance to comment, as I was headed to bed after a little too much wine consumption.

Edit:  Smile.  You're on the front page. 

[scottws]

Oi... Windows XP.  Heh.  Good thing you are running NoScript!

Congrats on getting published, Que!

[ender]

So many things I love about this game... yet so conflicted by its unfinished nature. I would probably give it a 7 with a gold star for effort. I think, in the least, it made me excited about the possibility of gaming. That's worth something.

[Quemaqua]

Thanks guys!

And yeah, I'm with Ender. It's not a bad game, it's just not a great one. We'll see where they take it with some of their updates in the future. Either way, it's a cool thing and I'm glad it exists.

[Quemaqua]

Huge 1.1 "Foundation Update" hit today. Adds and fixes a ton of stuff. Not sure this is going to sway the people who clearly just want this game and its developer to shrivel and die, but whatever one might say about the state of the game as it shipped, one certainly can't accuse Hello Games of giving up on NMS. If they keep up this level of support, maybe they stand a chance of turning the NMS legacy the other way. Time will tell.

www.polygon.com/2016/11/27/13756302/no-mans-sky-foundation-update-patch-notes-ps4-pc-version-1-1

[Quemaqua]

Been playing this again for a while, and I have to say I really love it. It's still got its wonky spots, and it's not perfect, but I booted it up on a whim the other day and have been playing kind of a ton. They've clearly put a boatload of work into the thing. There's a heck of a lot of stuff in there now, and the whole thing generally feels a lot more compelling and magical. I think it probably still most appeals to people looking for something chilled out, but it's a much better package with a lot more to it. I'm actually keeping my fingers crossed that they'll be able to continue working on it at least for a while longer, because the momentum it has right now is great. It makes me sad that a rough start and the associated missteps turned it into this total pariah, because it's a magical game clearly developed by people who really love it.






If you want a nice rundown of the NMS updates up to the current one:

[Xessive]

I'm really glad they stuck it out and supported the game instead of abandoning it following the mass negative outcry on release.

[Cobra951]

Finally jumped in with the NEXT update (1.5).  I guess after two years, it finally measures up to expectations.  Managed my way through the initial poison planet, and made it to a peaceful world.  Rather overwhelming at first, but now I'm getting the hang of it.  Gathering resources, finding plans and building stuff.  Just deployed a base computer, and will be building a base soon.  Completely missed the space station, though.  I guess I can take off and go visit it.  As with Far Cry 5, I can use the controller most of the time, then reach for the mouse when I want the better pointer.  Both devices work well simultaneously.

An update to the update (1.51) just dropped too.  According to the patch notes, it fixes a TON of serious issues.

[gpw11]

Wow, it's been two years?!

[Cobra951]

Yes; how time flies.

After just under 8 hours of game time, according to the save files, I'm starting to get my legs.  There is such an overwhelming amount of micromanagement to get something as simply said as "fix and fuel your ship" underway.  Veterans at this game may not bat an eye, but total newcomers have a learning curve to tackle.

I can now move around the initial solar system--two planets so far, and a space station.  Every encounter leads to new mysteries and things to do.  Oh!  An exosuit upgrade! . . . locked behind two repairs that need resources I haven't heard of.  A merchant! . . . whom I can't understand, and refuses to trade with me.  Dammit.

I've gotten the game to perform very well.  Shadows and reflections at the default medium (because they look fine, not because I tested higher), high textures, HBAO on, TAA, no frame-rate cap, and vsync, triple-buffering and 16X anisotropy forced in the Nvidia control panel.  Locked 60 fps nearly all the time.  Exception seems to be restricted to new areas at first.  I'll guess uncached shit is loading in.  I think it looks great, if not realistic.  No issues with draw distance or excessive pop-in.  Lots of living detail that seems appropriate to the environment.  Great stuff.  Love it.

I don't want to give he impression that I'm getting discouraged.  Not at all.  This is all fascinating--a real space-travel sim, with real-time point-to-point navigation.  My own stylized Star Trek universe.  I get a big smile every time I figure out something new, and get to expand my horizons.

[MysterD]

I'm definitely very curious now w/ the NEXT Update for NMS here - but with such a huge backlog, not thinking I'll play this soon, and with it not in the $15 or less range - I think I can wait on this one, for now.

[Cobra951]

Over 20 hours now.  Behaving very well.  After several planets of exploration, and much burrowing with the terrain manipulator, meeting aliens and manipulating monoliths, I can't make the frame rate falter.  Stutters come in only when new a lot of new stuff first streams in, and that so far means first landing on an entirely new world.  There are a lot of complaints out there about performance, but after my tweaks, they're just gone here, on a middling system from almost 2 years ago.  I'm sure my lower res helps, but some of the complaints are coming from people with top-end gear.  I think they just expect too much.  Ultra settings are not necessary for this game to look pretty good, for what it is.

Progress is slow, mostly because I'm perfectly happy exploring, gathering stuff, and figuring out what does what.  There's a lot of that.  Still haven't warped to a new system.  Much left to do in this one.

[Cobra951]

Yeah, I'm hooked.  Like, seriously.  This really scratches my OCD itch.  It's repetitive and grind-heavy, but I just can't help myself.  Find more planets, explore them, scan and mine everything for profit, spend profits on new ships and upgrades for everything.  Got me a neato Exotic ship now.  Got a freighter, and 5 other ships that dock in it, mostly for their inventory space.  (The inventory system is downright punitive in this game.)  I've warped to several new star systems, learned many alien words, teleported back and forth across discovered systems, and am now following The Atlas Path (wherever that may lead).

The game did not like the bump in resolution to 1080p on my new screen.  Not one bit.  Frame rate dropped below 60 at least half the time, the GPU temp went up to 65 C, and within about a half-hour, I experienced my first and so-far only crash in over 50 hours of play time.  It's possible that leaving the res set at 1360x768 while playing in windowed-borderless mode (which forced it to 1920x1080) broke something in the code math.  I didn't mean to.  I just launched the game after the monitor switch, and it came up at the native res.  Don't know the cause, but I did not like how unoptimized the code felt anyway, so I switched to exclusive fullscreen, and left the original res setting alone.  Back to flawless 60 fps, and that matters more to me than the significant bump in sharpness at 1080p.  I later tried 1600x900, but for some idiotic reason, it comes up letterboxed with the aspect ratio squashed.  What more obvious 16:9 resolution is there than 1600x900?  Dammit, people.

Anyway, I'm going to have to check out other games at the higher res for performance-loss comparison.  Far Cry 5 seems like a good place to start.



Edit:  OK, so it turns out the big performance killer is windowed borderless mode.  Not an issue at 768p, but certainly is at 1080p.  After trying out Far Cry 5 briefly that way at native res, and shaking my head, I switched to true fullscreen, and it made a world of difference.  While I still get some drops below 60 fps, it behaves very well, and looks amazing.  So I took this new knowledge to No Man's Sky, and it still couldn't handle 1080p well enough to suit me.  I ended up choosing a strange resolution: 1728x972.  It looks almost as sharp as 1080p, and performs acceptably well.  No crashes so far.  I changed vsync to adaptive, which also helped, at the expense of some tearing.  It does look a hell of a lot better.  I have a feeling the game wasn't using the sharper textures at the lower res.  I'm seeing some details that I know I didn't see before, even when up close.  Little by little, I'm settling into this big change.  I had gotten so used to my old screen, for over a decade.  (So long, old friend.)

Edit 2:  Didn't want to make a new post for this bit.  It appears that two performance-impacting events just happened to come together at the same time--the higher resolution of the new screen, and the new ice planet I was exploring.  This caused me some confusion.  Most of the disappointing performance loss that did not go away when I switched from windowed borderless to fullscreen mode is actually the fault of serious code optimization issues on this world, not the higher res's.  After returning to my initial star system yesterday, I was back to nearly perfect 60 fps, with all its lovely smoothness, at 1728x972.  I'm tempted to try 1080p again.  Not greatly, though.  Everything looks quite sharp as is, especially compared to my old screen.

[MysterD]

In general, some thoughts.

V-Sync is a waste, unless you get lots of tearing. You lose too many frames, using V-Sync and all. If you have little to no tearing, use a program like MSI Afterburner or NVidia Inspector and cap it to 60fps, if you don't take crazy roller-coaster type of hits that go up and down a lot (i.e. go from 60 to 25fps then up to 45fps then back to 30fps then...well, you get the drift).

Adaptive Sync is not a bad idea either, as long as it ain't bouncing b/t back and forth with 60fps and 30fps all the time.

FastSync is good too for Nvidia users - but, you have to make sure still don't get graphical tearing. It's like running No Sync, but you get "useless" frames thrown out. Doesn't always work, though - as it did not play nice w/ Homefront: The Revolution for me. When using it - cap to 60fps (or wherever you like) w/ Afterburner or Nvidia Inspector.

G-Sync monitors are great for NVidia users, if you're willing to afford that expense in terms of $$ - since you don't get tearing & you really don't want to lose performance/frames.

[Cobra951]

In general, some thoughts.

. . .

Hey, I moved this discussion to the Monitors thread in the General Discussion board.  Don't want to hijack the NMS thread too much.

[MysterD]

Hey, I moved this discussion to the Monitors thread in the General Discussion board.  Don't want to hijack the NMS thread too much.

Sounds good & fair to me.

[Quemaqua]

Unfortunately I haven't had time to get back to this, but glad you're having such a good time with it, Cobra! It really is something special now, I think. I do hope to get back to it someday, when I actually get to play video games again for any appreciable length of time.

[MysterD]

ORIGINAL POST - 6:50pm EST:

This (No Man's Sky) is in the Xbox for PC Game Pass, for anyone that is looking to give this a shot.

Just spent a little over 2 hours with this.

And...I don't know what to make of it. The game had me in space to start, showing me all kinds of planets/stars as I was going by, to open the game. I was left floored with: "Damn, how huge is the scale of this game?" Yet, a part of me was like, for the few minutes, "So, am I gonna wind-up on a planet...or what?"

I was also annoyed by performance, in space, in this opening. Bouncing wildly b/t 15fps to 60fps, I was like "I hope it ain't gonna perform like this on a planet, once stuff gets going." And thankfully, at 1080p and mostly high settings - yeah, runs at a smooth 60fps, once on a planet. Though, ain't seen any players or anyone out here on the planet here that I'm on either.

This feels like a grind-fest. Gather things, craft stuff, do stuff - repeat cycle endlessly. I've had to build a scanner, rebuild a whole part of pieces to ship. Still not done w/ the ship. Had to refine some stuff I found on the planet. Died once. Went back to my death spot and got my lost inventory back.

But, my Gosh - this game looks great. I love the care to detail everywhere. The plants, the animals, the caves, the details, the world - everything is on an epic scope and scale, with details everywhere. Scanning stuff,  once you build the scanner, is cool; reminding me of when in ME: Andromeda you scanned something and got XP for it. There's something to this game, as the amount of details just on this one planet is staggering. And it feels like anything here, I can interact with - ships, plants, whatever. I just don't feel like...well, there's not many players online or NPC's to interact with here. It feels lonely out here - and I would guess, that this is also the point of the game, too: to make you feel like a lonely soul out there in space.

It all, at least right now, feels very laid back and cool. But, man - I do wish there was some real assemblance of a campaign, story, character, or something...to keep me wanting to go around in this sandbox, while not doing a typical campaign. B/c after 2 hours, I wonder if there's more to this game than that loop of gameplay, exploring, crafting, and grinding.

But, I'm still curious - and going to try to kick this around on and off, here and there...b/c this feels like an interesting title to just sandbox around for a little while.


EDIT - 8:30pm EST:

So, another 40 minutes or so spent with this one.

I repaired the ship and got it off the ground, out into space. The seamless transitions & travel from the ground to the sky; then just flying out in space; and to then just landing your ship down on the ground is so awesome. On this planet I'm on now, I now have monsters flat-out attacking me. I'm shooting them w/ my mining tool/gun, zipping around in my jetpack to avoid them, moving around, and whatnot. I still have to grind to find plants, items, craft stuff, as now I'm rebuilding a computer for a mission - but, this feels a bit more entertaining than earlier. Feels like there's a little bit more going on here, which this title feels like it needs.