No Man's Sky [PS4, PS5, XO, XBSX|S, PC, NX]

Fabulous, candid interview: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-07-20-the-big-sean-murray-interview

Sean Murray: We went through.... Well, you can use your imagination. you know what the internet can do. They crowdsource ways to be mean to people. They did all the things they can do. I was dealing with the Met[ropolitan Police], Scotland Yard, stuff like that. It was serious and it was real. I'd say, personally, I wasn't a fan. I think the internet isn't necessarily really good at knowing how to deal with people in the fairest way, I think. They are right in a lot of the mistakes they point out. I looked at a bunch of that stuff and thought, yeah... We talked about the game too early. We were naively excited about the game, and we talked to other people who were naively excited about the game and they interviewed us and we all talked really excitedly! And I will not do that again!

I remember talking to Oli [Welsh, Eurogamer editor], and he was saying something along the lines of how nice it was to sit down with developers and just chat about any old thing, and I was like yeah why doesn't everyone do that? Why don't all publishers do that, why is it so scripted? I totally understand why now. I stepped back and got that perspective. Yes there was a lot of shit going on, but I was able to step back and go okay, I need to reevaluate for a bit about why I make games and who I'm making them for. This didn't just happen in one day. I need to start seeing this as data. And start categorising it and working out what we're doing here. That was my way of dealing with it.

I'll give you an overly honest answer. I've been asked loads of times to talk about dealing with toxicity or a backlash when your game releases because it's become a hot topic, it's happened a whole bunch of times, and I've always turned it down - there are two reasons for that. It's the same reasons I'm giving you a weird answer. One, it's kind of personal. I understand that it's juicy information and it's interesting to hear about. This team that made the game is incredibly talented and they made something that's really interesting - and that [controversy] should not be what defines them, and defines No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky should be the game that was super ambitious and was made by a small team and went on to grow bigger and have a cool community around it. That's what I want to talk about.

The other thing, which is the honest part, the human cost. I don't know how to deal with it. And I've never known how to deal with it. People ask what we did, and I don't think we did anything particularly good or clever. I'm not sure anyone can - an angry mob is crowdsourcing ways to make your life difficult, and they know how to do that. So I did what I did when I was a kid when I was getting shit at school or when I've had shitty bosses. I threw myself into work and made games.

And you didn't walk away from the game.

Sean Murray: Yeah, I mean... I'd love to to take credit for that as some sort of selfless act or whatever, but people don't realise it's easy for that story to run away with itself. I know I'm bias but these facts are pretty much out there - there were stories that there were massive drop-offs of people playing No Man's Sky. I think PC Gamer did this thing where they were comparing our chart with lots of other games, and it's actually normal, and No Man's Sky is doing better than those games. We could see that, we could talk to Valve and to Sony who were super helpful and they were telling us people are playing this game for a phenomenally long amount of time.

You guys were writing stories about there being massive refund rates, and that's not true - our numbers were slightly above average on PC, but that's par for the course when you have a game that sells a lot of copies and people play it on min spec machines, below min spec machines. They were way under the average on PS4, say - but we had no credibility to come out at the time and say these things. Who would believe us? Probably no-one will believe me now. That's why we were doing updates. We're not doing it altruistically. You can see when our updates come out, we go to the top of the steam charts, our numbers go up the same as it would for any big title. I'm not saying there's no story there - there's definitely problems, there were definitely people who were angry. But you give me too much credit by saying we stuck with the game out of altruism.​

 

I’m sure the initial updates were to get back in the good books - it’s interesting since then they went with a different model to other companies, rather than charge for updates (add ons) they’ve relied on sales boosts...surely that can only go so far?

Either way, as a day one owner I never regretted my purchase.

 

I began playing this game a few weeks ago and I like it very much, even though it can be a bit overwhelming at first and there are a few annoying bugs.

There's still so much I don't know... For instance, I found a crashed C-class starship which is valued in 35 million units, 35 times the value of my A-class ship, and I can't really see why. What do you think? Should I sell it or keep it as my second ship or even as my primary one?

 

I’m looking to give this another try (maybe with VR this time), so here’s what I found:
https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/Starship
https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/Price_Catalogue

Looks like there are six ship types, including the presumably tiny and cheap Shuttle or Explorer you start with, and four classes of each type. The class of a ship type (C < B < A < S) determines its inventory spaces and bonus (of what, I dunno). Judging from your prices, you found a hauler or a freighter, which has a lot more cargo space. That’s probably preferable to your starter ship?

Some ship buying and selling info from the first link:

Spoiler

To purchase a new ship at a trading post or a space station, you may trade-in your current ship as part of the deal. The new ship's value is as shown in the table, and the trade-in value of your current ship is 70% of the value in the table. If the new ship's value is higher than the trade-in value (this is normally the case), you must make up the difference in units. If the new ship's value is lower than your trade-in value, then no units are exchanged (i.e. you do not collect the difference). If you are trading in a Crashed Ship, the trade in value will be reduced by the percentage of Damaged Component slots.

For example, suppose you want to trade in a 38-slot B-class Hauler for a 48-slot S-class Hauler. The new ship costs 126 million units as per the table. The trade-in value of your current ship is 23.8 million units (70% of the table value of 34 million), so you must supply an additional 102.2 million units to make the deal. If 19 of the 38 slots on your B-class Hauler contain Damaged Components, the trade-in value will be reduced by 50% to 11.9 million units.

Trade-in values did not exist prior to the Pathfinder update. Ships obtained prior to the Pathfinder update have been classified as C-class and assigned a monetary value based on the amount of slots. The maximum possible value for a pre-Pathfinder ship is 49 million units.

 

Yes, thank you.

I already read that info a few days ago, but I still don't understand why this ship is class C:



and costs x35 times (35 million, approx) my main ship (A-Class):

 

A lot more slots available and a lot more items already in the ship (that need to be fixed).

 

Yes, I can see that, but then, why such a ship is C-class?

 

pre-pathfinder update?

 

I must have one one of the few who liked the release version of the game - at least until I hit a quest-breaking bug around the 30 hours mark which meant I couldn't get a new ship and move on. I had another go a few months back following the update that introduced base building but it felt like a totally different game.

I still get pangs to get occasional back into it, but this is a game that would really appeal on Switch for me.

 

I only started playing very recently. I'm not familiar with updates. I think I installed the game two months ago but I didn't play it for a few weeks.

 

hm then i dont know, path finder came out in 2017

 

Well, thanks anyway, y'all.

 

The primary missions are confusing. I was supposed to get to the center of the galaxy (which, BTW, appeared as an objective for two different primary missions) to reset the Atlas, but I was able to do it way far from it, so The Atlas Path mission ended. Again, the fact that some missions seem duplicated because they share objectives is confusing as well. I understand that the story may be confusing because it's supposed to be a mystery, right? But I just don't know what I'm doing.

I'm enjoying the game, though.

 

So, I got back into this. NMS is as addictive (read: dangerous) as Civ. I can quit anytime I want.... Maybe VR (discomfort) will help me self-regulate. The noise my Pro makes in “4k” mode would have made me stop playing until I forced 1080p. (Why isn’t this an in-game option?!)

Ship class is a price multiplier (e.g., a B class costs 10% more than the exact same ship but C class), cargo space is an escalating price addition (look at the first few C haulers in the price catalog: +800k, +900k, +1050k). Also the shuttle is the cheapest / most affordable ship type (27 slot B class: shuttle 4050k, explorer 6400k, hauler 8100k, fighter 8050k). That’s the gamesplanation of why that hauler costs so much more than that shuttle. Each extra cargo slot in a hauler costs more than that entire shuttle.

It’s annoying that they don’t make class bonuses as obvious as in the 1.0 release.

I tried repairing a “36,000,000” C:41+6 crashed hauler one slot at a time, checking the salvage price each repair. Fixing an empty general cargo slot was worth 600,000. Fixing an empty technical slot was worth nothing. Fixing a base item (e.g., engine, shield, or upgrade) in general cargo was worth 200,000 or nothing, IIRC. Fixing 16+2 of the 31+4 damaged slots raised the salvage price from 8,600,000 to ~17,200,000. So it can be worth at least partly repairing an expensive ship with materials you have or that can be bought before scrapping it. Scrapping a ship has benefits like getting its value in potentially useful minerals and yielding some bonus upgrade modules, so it’s preferable to trading it toward a new one.

I like that bug shuttle and the slanty wings on that hauler. The ship designs I’ve seen so far aren’t as nice, and some of them are terrible to see out of / around. One literally had the space equivalent of a 2x4 blocking the horizon.

The only advice I’d give is to use the free exosuit upgrade you find at dropships on a cargo slot, because (1) they’re way more expensive to pay to upgrade at a space station and (2) you’re getting double the storage space.

Another nonobvious thing that I glimpsed in an item description is that grouping upgrades together along with the base module (e.g., engine, weapon, mining laser) will net you a bonus that’s not reflected in the individual item card stats but is reflected in the obtuse summary on the top right (e.g., damage potential, hyperdrive range). It shows as a subtly colored outline for the affected items. So you might want to place some items and their upgrades in general cargo if they won’t fit into tech.

Wonder if they’ll offer a PS5 upgrade that pushes LODs out so you can actually see structures when flying more than ten feet off the ground. Instant warps would be nice, too.

 

i don't like the fact that since VR release last august they did not bother making a PS4 pro upgrade for VR, it's exactly the same as PS4 VR, i stopped playing months ago because of that.

 

It doesn't run any faster? What about XB1X vs XB1?

 

the normal game is PS4 pro and XBX enhanced, but the PSVR version has no PS4 pro support.

 

I suppose realistically that's a niche of a niche. You're looking at the Union set between PS4 Pro owners and PSVR owners. Likely a number to small to spend time on, or at least one would assume as much without evidence to the contrary. Adding VR might increase sales, but adding VR enhancements for PS4P owners likely won't - they'd buy it for the VR version with or without 4Pro enhancements.

 

Nah it still sucks and most games do have PS4 Pro upgrades these days afaik.

 

But that wouldn't be just a PS4 Pro patch: it'd be a PS4 Pro + PSVR patch. That's why Shifty says that it's a niche of a niche.

But yeah, it still sucks...