No Man's Sky's update introduces billions of new stars, planets, and more

https://blog.playstation.com/2025/01/29/no-mans-skys-latest-update-introduces-billions-of-new-stars-planets-and-more-today/

by hochmartinez • 1 year ago

160 124 1 year ago

blog.playstation.com

recursive• 1 year ago

The number of stars and planets has been overplayed from the start. Sure, there's a quintillion planets, but after you've seen a hundred, you pretty much got the gist of the scope of what's possible. Everything starts to look samey.

Much more significantly, it seems the new planets use new biomes and terrain generators. If they gave all undiscovered planets a chance to use these, even if they cut the number of planets by 99%, it would still be a big improvement. The number is just so big, it's irrelevant.

talldayo2• 1 year ago

No Mans Sky is a pretty fun game nowadays. If you're less interested in the Eve Online ideals of corporate bureaucracy in space and you just want to explore some neat looking empty planets, it's the premier game of it's kind. I pre-ordered it after watching the infamous IGN trailer[0] and was disappointed like everyone else, but today I'm very happy with where the game is and can easily recommend it at the $30 price point where it goes on sale.

Game is availible natively for Windows and MacOS, supports Linux and supports multiplayer across consoles and PC clients.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtmEjqzg7M

Ultimatt• 1 year ago

Also supports VR multiplayer

rcarmo• 1 year ago

Is there a Switch update yet?

joshuaheard• 1 year ago

Or PC?

jrflowers• 1 year ago

I haven’t checked but it looks like this has rolled out across all platforms, not just PlayStation.

https://www.nomanssky.com/worlds-part-ii-update/

ziddoap7• 1 year ago

No Man's Sky is the poster child for turning a shitty launch into a success. You can really feel the passion of the staff at Hello Games in the current version of the game. It reminds me of the quote, which I'm about to butcher, that is along the lines of "People don't remember the problem, they remember how you dealt with the problem".

If you haven't seen it, "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky" is a good review of the story. It's 5 years old now, and the engoodening hasn't stopped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BJVO3PDeQ

jrootabega13• 1 year ago

This is more a reflection of the state of online gaming discourse and youtube rambling clickbait these days. People believe what the culture tells them cool people believe, and perpetuate it to others. No Man's Sky didn't have multiplayer at launch. Now it does. That's pretty much the only indisputable improvement to the game. They've certainly managed to improve the NARRATIVE about the game, though.

EDIT: I also want to call out one particularly user-hostile thing they have done: pump up the visual quality and complexity so high that the game performs very poorly on the console generation on which it was released: the PS4/Xbox One generation. This is true even on performance mode. So if you bought the game at release, you will now suffer degraded performance if you are still using your original hardware. You don't hear too much about this because when it's mentioned the person usually gets console-shamed, e.g. "get with the times, time to upgrade you cheapskate!" It's not only low framerates and ambient pop-in; it's also extremely bad pop-in of hazardous plants and structures. And you often can't land your ship on the ground until the terrain has fully generated. This can take a minute or two sometimes. Or you could try to go harvest from one of your resource collectors and have to wait something like 10 seconds for it to finally appear in front of you. And once it did, the chances of it bugging out and having no resources inside of it are way too high.

ziddoap7• 1 year ago

That's pretty much the only indisputable improvement to the game.

I'm not sure how you can possibly say that with a straight face.

drakythe3• 1 year ago

-- Removed leading/condescending question. My apologies to the poster. --

If the game isn't for you that's fine. Not every game is for every person. But the game has absolutely been improved, in numerous ways, since launch.

mr_toad• 1 year ago

That's pretty much the only indisputable improvement to the game.

On launch it would crash every ten minutes. Last time I played you could go weeks without a glitch.

Some people think that they warrant forgiveness.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2024/07/19/succor

16594470912• 1 year ago

complexity so high that the game performs very poorly on the console generation on which it was released: the PS4/Xbox One generation. This is true even on performance mode.

The game runs surprisingly well on a Nintendo Switch, I mean each time there is a major update I figure that's the one to do the Switch in (...and this one just may be it!). Then to my utter surprise, the Switch does not spontaneously combust and I can play without crashing (well, except for when they introduce bug that crash it, even then they get it patched pretty quick).

Watching the update video, I'm really not sure what's been added other than new graphic things, and the Switch is not a system for graphic things. At this point though, No Man's Sky seems to be a quasi-staging server for their upcoming game. The update was all about the new graphics and how they made it for the other game and added it to NMS. Some of the updates last year were pretty fun though.

mattmanser• 1 year ago

I think that's an oft repeated over statement of reality.

I've enjoyed a good 60+ hours in it, it's good. But not great. I didn't pay for it, not sure I'd have been as happy would I have paid for it.

It's still very shallow. As a programmer you can see all the really basic algos underlying all the generation.

There are like 10 planet types, with a couple of extra wacky ones. All the stations are virtually identical inside. There are like 8 points of identical interest. And bizarrely they're everywhere. There are 3 alien races. You land on a planet and within seconds spaceships are over flying you. You enter a new system and 10 seconds later a fleet of "random" carriers will turn up within your sightline.

You arrived at a new planet and the creatures are all exactly the same as you've seen before, just more legs, or 4 wings instead of two.

The thing the really bugs me are the sentinels. I get the in game explanation, but it's boring that every planet has them. And the few that don't are weird ones.

Everything is different and yet, apart from a very few minor things, it's all the same.

And the randomness gets grating. Want a cool ship? Have fun trying to grind that out. Want a cool gun? Ditto. You have to resort to going to particular coords supplied by the internet, not in game play.

For me, never before has space felt so small. Elite dangerous suffers from similar shallowness problems, but at least it felt epic.

ziddoap7• 1 year ago

over statement of reality.

You don't have to enjoy the game, that's totally fine. But my comment is pretty reality-based.

The game completely bombed on launch and was dragged through the mud (mostly deservedly) in every review. Now has very positive reviews on Steam, people still talk about it, and people still buy it a decade later. It's sold enough copies to support the staff at Hello Games for that time.

If that isn't turning a shitty launch into a success, I have no idea what is.

Ekaros• 1 year ago

I feel same way. Played on Game Pass, not sure I would have valued it if I paid for it. It is very grating that you see same set piece, be it pirates or ruins again and again. I have seen this one before. Oh and to get best output I should just save scum...

And then randomness leads to issues like finding very nice looking end game planet. To make your own base. And even there the option to place it so that certain things refresh.... So game world is not even consistent...

sippeangelo• 1 year ago

The "sentinels" or whatever is what brought me out of it immediately. There are a billion planets to explore, but someone always got there before you.

remram5• 1 year ago

People keep saying that. I ended up biting the bullet after the latest "game changing" update.

It's barely a game at all. It's still a walking simulator. The environment is great, and there is some variety. But there is no objective or opposition, not even a story (a little robot tells you to do stuff). It's a sandbox, an engine one could build a game in (and they might someday?)

They added some construction stuff, so the game will say "go and build a house" and you do that. Or "go build a blueprint machine" and now you have more blueprints. But what is any of it for? You can just sit in your cockpit.

It all seems so pointless. Like they have seen other survival games and copied some mechanics over without understanding what makes a survival game. It is a really puzzling experience, I can't understand what they were thinking.

talldayo2• 1 year ago

If you think it's bad now, imagine how bad it was for those of us that pre-ordered it. It was a dadgum mess back then.

Most people are warming up to this game because they're delivering on the original game concept and still going the extra mile. No Man's Sky was criticized at launch because the gameplay was nothing like the trailer had suggested, and the updates since launch have really and truly fixed that complaint.

No, there isn't EVA in space or serious FPS combat or even well tuned space dogfights. But none of that was really part of the original promise, and looking at the utterly derelict state of games that try to thread all those needles (cough cough, Star Citizen), I'm glad No Man's Sky went it's own way.

ziddoap7• 1 year ago

It's still a walking simulator.

I don't know how many different ways to say it. We all enjoy different types of games! You obviously aren't a fan of sandbox games, lots of people aren't either. Or maybe it's just this sandbox game. That's fine too.

But it is pretty objectively a great example of taking an absolutely abysmal launch and turning it into something that a decent amount of people (doesn't mean everyone!) still enjoy and talk favorably about. It still sells copies. It still keeps the lights on at Hello Games.

I cannot think of a single other game that had such an awful launch that has, 10 years later, enjoyed mostly positive reviews. Cyberpunk might be the closest.

csallen• 1 year ago

This was my impression, too. I've been reading years of hype, so I bought the game a few months ago, and I was unimpressed. But the fact that it's kind of an objective-less sandbox wasn't what got me.

I've played plenty of open world games and enjoyed them. In fact, even in games like Morrowind or Starfield or Grand Theft Auto or the like, which have big worlds and specific objectives, I've always found myself ignoring the quests and preferring to explore on my own terms.

I remember hopping around in Morrowind as a kid, trying to become as powerful as possible, and seeking out baddies to best. Then in Grand Theft Auto I'd go on epic crime sprees to see how long I could elude the authorities. And in Starfield I built an incredible network of trading posts that spanned the galaxy to see how much I could enrich myself.

What made these games fun is that, despite not following any missions or objectives, I was able to do impressive and interesting things and have fun. Perhaps that's possible in No Man's Sky, but in my first couple hours of playing, it didn't seem like it. It seemed liked I'd be going around doing boring and uninteresting things, and that it wouldn't be fun.

So it's not that it was a sandbox that bothered me, but that it was a sandbox devoid of fun.

jmyeet• 1 year ago

It's like describing a bucket of random Lego pieces "not a toy".

It's a game. It just might not be the game for you. Some people buy a Lego set, follow the instructions and make whatever the set is and that's it. That's fine. Other people will build out ideas with whatever pieces they have. Yet other people will buy specific pieces to build out some Lego vision they have, some of which are truly incredible.

It's also like Minecraft. Are you just playing survival mode? Or are you playing creatively to build out some vision of a city or a building or even a computer?

NMS is really self-directed play. The campaign is really just a tutorial. Are you going to go out and find and max out the best ships? Build an interesting base? Find a particular world to build your base on that has an aesthetic you want? That's up to you.

I've put hundreds of hours into NMS although not for a few years. I first got into it after the Next update IIRC, which was a massive improvement at the time.

What I'd like to see with one of these updates is way more attention on base building as I think that area is kinda weak. Flattening ground is awkward. Base components don't snap to wood/stone/metal components for some reason. They could do so much more with this.

scoofy• 1 year ago

I've never played it, so I really can't speak to the though, but my obvious comparison is Minecraft.

I really think the deep lore of Minecraft does a lot of work. When you find a new and interesting random place to explore, it usually ties in with your view of the place you are in, and eventually you find your way to an ending of sorts.

Another similar game from my youth that was the same was Wing Commander: Privateer. It was a sandbox, where a game suddenly appears after you've been exploring for months, but it's not much more than some cut scenes within the sandbox.

I have no qualms with a sandbox game, but I'd prefer it were generally tied into a narrative, either in a lore narrative or with a direct story.

xiande04• 1 year ago

The genre is called "sandbox" or "simulation". See Minecraft, Garry's Mod, The Sims, etc. Not all genres are for everyone.

Rooster61• 1 year ago

But there is no objective or opposition, not even a story (a little robot tells you to do stuff). It's a sandbox, an engine one could build a game in (and they might someday?)

I've found a very different experience. There seem to be several main story threads to follow, as well as the addition of a few interesting sidequests (I'm in the middle of the one about hacking and reverse engineering one of the sentinels). And that's not even counting the expeditions they come up with from time to time. I particularly enjoyed working through the one that had the Normandy from Mass Effect as the end prize.

FumblingBear• 1 year ago

All of the other replies to you seem to give examples of other sandbox games that are successful / fun and suggest that maybe you just don't like the genre, but as an avid fan of sandbox games, and many of the other titles given by other posters, I still agree with you.

No Man's Sky feels devoid of any personality or interesting content in a particularly unique way. No amount of updates will ever fix for me what feels like a fundamental gameplay loop issue.

All of the layers of systems they've added with each new update still just feel __bad__. I'm glad so many have found a way to enjoy the game, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when none of them seem to address the issue of "collect arbitrary resources to build gear to collect other arbitrary resources ad nauseum" in a way that I just find fundamentally unsatisfying.

I still understand that reductive description can apply to many of the other games I actually enjoy (i.e. Minecraft, etc.) but that's what's so strange to me about NMS—by all means, I __should__ like the game. But I still think it's a miserable experience devoid of any real meaning. Even if the point is to find your own meaning in the systems it provides, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels so much worse than any of the others.

Maybe someone else can better articulate why it feels so bad, but to me, despite all of the work they've put on the game, it still feels so devoid of meaning.

1shooner• 1 year ago

I found it to be the grind half of a game, the chores you do to make the fun part more fun. But there is no fun part. The creative part is all prefabricated, and the exploration is very low-dimensional variation on templates that quickly blend together.

m463• 1 year ago

I got it about a month ago. I think it is janky. Everything about the controls, movement, camera is ... well it doesn't seem solid/decent.

Maybe there's some sort of control-remapping or config file tweaks that can make it more tolerable.

h0us3• 1 year ago

Comments like this make no sense to me either.

All video games are empty time sinks at the end of the day. It’s a matter of what people want their escape to look and sound like.

Anyone expecting real world prestige for 100 percenting the last Mario? It’s all still literally accomplishing sitting on the couch only barely rising above passive consumption of entertainment.

Asking “what does it all mean” to everything gets exhausting. Human existence is arbitrary; it happened because it could.

lithos• 1 year ago

Play during the events.

Essentially you get a task list and set path to complete the event, mechanically just for some shiny cosmetic stuff and a really basic lore dump for the event. But the reality is that it feels like an MMO-lite due to the fact that everyone else is on the same handful of planets.

zoogeny5• 1 year ago

No Man's Sky is a bit of a litmus test for me these days.

If you still hold a grudge against these guys after everything they've done, the numerous free updates, the commitment to high quality output, etc. then I will have a hard time believing you have any perspective. The disastrous launch was 9 years ago and yet here we are still talking about substantial free updates.

It is totally fair to say the game isn't for you. But the team at Hello Games has blown past making up for their rookie mistake and well into the position of a shining example of how any game company should conduct themselves.

If you still harbor some bitter feelings about that launch, maybe it is time to let it go.

zen928• 1 year ago

This would be a stronger point for me if the main developer had already apologized for promising things they couldn't deliver on as main tenants for bringing players to the game, but I can see looking online that this isn't the case even as of 2025. Rather than engage the community continually dismissing intentful lies as 'drama around launch', I'd rather spend my time and energy on supporting platforms that value honesty and transparency.

But, I don't dismiss it as a fun videogame. I don't think cyberpunk 2077 is a bad game still either, but the reframing by these communities of legitimate problems as petty grudges turns me away from wanting to support them entirely. I don't value that type of conduct from a game company.

micromodel• 1 year ago

Haha, I'll bite.

I don't hate NMS or HG. And it doesn't upset me that people are enjoying it. However, what bothers me is that people have been talking about it for 5+ years as if it had been fixed up to be at least as good a game as was originally promised. And that's just not true. This gets missed in all the conversations about this game.

Like, originally someone offered to sell you a fully self-sufficient farm on multiple acres of land. You buy it, and what you actually get is a CSA box of vegetables at your doorstep. Vegetables are cool, but that's not what you bought. Over time, the quality and variety of the vegetables went up. You got access to the farm. You saw it didn't actually have any grazing animals or compost management or energy generation, but, you know, they were building a greenhouse. After a few years they started building a composting toilet! Well, ok, just a regular outhouse, not a composting toilet, that was too complicated. You still don't own the farm. It still isn't close to self sufficient. But they're doing some neat things, they have chickens now, and you're entitled to as many vegetables as you can eat. That's all fine, but you were in the market for a built-out farm.

That's what it feels like. Many of the promised features will likely never exist. (And not unreasonably - they'd be massive undertakings.) I've gone back to the game twice to check it out after huge updates and saw:

- They added features like vehicles that I never wanted

- Most of the new features were extremely limited in scope and felt half-baked, like character customization

- The ugliest and most irritating/boring parts of the original game weren't being improved

Now, all that said, this is Worlds 2 and I hadn't even heard about Worlds 1. My information is several years out of date. Since I already own it on PS4, I'm willing to take another look! Some of this stuff sounds really cool! But if they haven't resolved any of the failures in the core gameplay mechanics, I don't know if it's ever going to be a great game.

I saw the "Engoodening" video when it came out and while I get it, there's a lot of praise due to a team that will spend 5 years, let alone 9, making big mechanical improvements to games for free... it's not like it's unprecedented. Paradox Interactive has been doing that for decades, and they've often done it better (although they've had their own huge missteps, they're largely debatable, and the delta between promise::delivery has never been near the scale of NMS) (and admittedly the free updates are usually only about half of the content,the rest being paid DLC). And further, every time I get suckered into checking again, NMS boots up and just feels like a cheap, poorly thought out toy again.

So yeah maybe I'm someone who "holds a grudge for 9 years" in your eyes, but I feel like I'm actually just the only reasonable person in the room. I think being wary of NMS updates is far more rational and honest than telling people it's better than it was ever promised to be, when it's just clearly not. People who enjoy it now should say they enjoy what it is, not that it has surpassed expectations, because expectations were originally set impossibly high.

---

An additional point is that the behavior of the (CEO? Lead Dev?) around launch was downright shit, and that was never addressed. Direct lies, even after launch. Silence for months. No mention ever of the missing features.

the_mitsuhiko• 1 year ago

However, what bothers me is that people have been talking about it for 5+ years as if it had been fixed up to be at least as good a game as was originally promised. And that's just not true.

What did they promise that they did not deliver?

barnabee• 1 year ago

as if it had been fixed up to be at least as good a game as was originally promised

I pre-ordered NMS because I was excited by the concept[0], I wasn't really aware of the "broken promises" until everyone started to make a fuss, and I never felt the game I received didn't provide the experience that I'd expected. Needless to say I played it a lot in those first weeks and enjoyed it a lot.

I've dipped back in since and while the updates are awesome, I've never played it as much as those first weeks. I am hopiong to find the time to give it a proper play through in VR, at some point, though.

[0] and perhaps heavly influenced by 65daysofstatic doing the soundtrack

torlok• 1 year ago

Something tells me you bought the game at a discount years after release.

ok_dad2• 1 year ago

I bought it at launch and I'm satisfied. They fucked it up, then they fixed their fuckup for free. Sure, we can all complain and whine that they released a bad game, and they did, but they apologized and then worked hard to fix the problem. I think humans need to have more understanding for things like this, especially or something as objectively not-important as a video game. If this were the THERAC-25 I would obviously have a much different opinion, but it's entertainment so there's no sense in holding a grudge against them.

zoogeny5• 1 year ago

That is an incorrect assumption. In fact, I bought it for full price at launch.

debacle• 1 year ago

No grudge, but as I understand it the game loop is still too "make your own fun." Has that part changed yet?

easythrees• 1 year ago

Yes and no. Some new things are quite fun like expeditions or derelict freighters, but there’s no “story” per se beyond the base one.

zoogeny5• 1 year ago

It isn't for everyone, that is for sure. You can find a lot of things to criticize about the game, as you can will all games. Not everyone likes Factorio, Elden Ring, God of War, Stardew Valley, Rimworld etc. even if they are massive successes within their own communities.

I'm not defending the game or trying to make a case for it. I'm suggesting that if you can't look past your 9 year old memory of a botched launch and compare it to the subsequent near-decade of grind this team has put into their dream - you might be lacking perspective.

zamadatix• 1 year ago

A grudge in general is fine enough to me, you don't have to start being fine with everything ever done just because it eventually stopped being that way, but weighing that so high as to not consider anything else about the game/developer at this point is where it's taken into the realm of "really?" for me.

segasaturn• 1 year ago

My first time playing NMS was around 7 years after launch when it was added to Game Pass Ultimate. It's a fine game, but the reliance on procedural generation for planets made everything feel... stale, and same-y. It's ironic, the game has billions of unique worlds, but none of them have anything interesting going on on them because they were made by an algorithm and not a person. Starfield had the same problems (remember Starfield?). This is also how most people feel about AI-generated content.

Stevvo• 1 year ago

A counter-point on procedural generation; Elite Dangerous did the same, but it worked. e.g. Watching a ringed planet eclipse a pulsar was awe inspiring. It had countless incredible combinations of procedurally generated stars & planets you could discover.

RedNifre2• 1 year ago

Okay, I'll bite.

My experience with No Man's Sky was this:

- I started playing the campaign (instead of the sandbox mode) and was off to a great start

- I noticed that you slowly gain additional inventory slots for your character, but that you can just buy a large ship with many inventory slots instead, so I did some trading and bought a huge ship

- Inventory management: I put the stuff I don't need on me in the ship's cargo space. Especially the "space traveler's passport" or whatever it was called, since you only need that during quests/campaign progressions

- I had my first run in with pirates and died

- Ah, so when you die, you lose all ship cargo, but keep your player inventory. Good to know. Now, where's my "space traveler's passport", that I need to continue the campaign? I bricked my save?

- I went to the forum where everybody laughed and called me an idiot. OF COURSE you don't put your quest items in the ship!

Note that the game only had auto-save, no manual save states, so I lost everything for the stupid reason that the game removes all quest items from your ship on death and does not tell you that beforehand. This was one of the worst experiences I had in a game/community, ever.

ziddoap7• 1 year ago

That's super unfortunate, especially the community part.

Note that the game only had auto-save, no manual save states

Not that it fixes anything, but I am really curious when this was? At least as far back as Nov 2016 there has been manual saves via save points. And I'm pretty sure beacons have been in since pre-release.

This definitely speaks to a UI failure (as well as the quest item stuff). The UI has been completely overhauled since. But, I certainly do not blame you for having your opinion soured and not wanting to try again.

suraci• 1 year ago

I'm very grateful to the team after all these hard work and their sincerity, can't forget the surprise when i saw all the changes they made after years, but it's just, hard to go back to play it, makes me feel bad sometimes

mzhaase• 1 year ago

I disagree.

I am not bitter, but Sean Murray after launch was sitting in interviews, claiming that the game had multiplayer (and a lot of other stuff), knowing fully well that those were lies.

On top of many, many lies that happened before launch. These are not "rookie mistakes". This is a person that is clearly fine with lying to players in order to hype up the game. He should never be trusted again.

Yes, it's exemplary that they fixed the game, and added all those features, but Sean Murray remains an untrustworthy individual. I would never hire, do business with, or believe him. I will stay away from anything this guy does in the future.

zoogeny5• 1 year ago

I'm not going to try to gaslight you since your memories are your own. But consider your memory of 9 years ago in the light it occurred. After huge hype, the entire gaming world turned Hello Games and Sean Murray into a meme. Every video was clipped and cut to make him look like a mustache twirling villain that was lying to trick gamers into buying his shit shovel-ware game. We have this vision of a huckster game developer whose entire grift is to hype and then abandon games and Sean became the poster child for this. This was made much worse by Sony strongly pushing No Man's Sky as an indie success story adding even more fuel to the hype.

But lets consider the next 9 years and ask: does the behavior of Sean match that caricature? If he was indeed the lying manipulative hype man that reddit memes made him out to be, how would we expect him to act? Wouldn't he take the money and run? 5 years after the launch, the engoodening video from Internet Archivist was released. Penny Arcade also has that famous cartoon from a few years ago. His reputation is mostly laundered now. Why do they keep releasing free updates? Why is he not shovelings out a bunch more over-hyped crap? Do you think this is the longest 9 year con job in the history of games?

That is the lack of perspective I am talking about. Sean oversold the game and got called out for it. He was put in the public stocks and people threw rotten vegetables at him. Then he and the rest of the team spent 9 years quietly grinding away to prove they believed in the game and believed in their vision.

You remember some videos cut to make him look evil 9 years ago. I'm talking about 9 years of him showing who he and his team really are.

root_axis• 1 year ago

My problem with the NMS debacle was that they lied egregiously when building hype about the game's features and just continued to lie and evade when it all came crashing down. I played the game a year or two ago, overall it wasn't bad, a middling sandbox crafting game, but there are way more games than I have time to play, so I'd prefer to patron those with a more honest approach.

troad2• 1 year ago

This is a false dichotomy, plus you're implying that anyone who disagrees must bear a grudge, which is not at all the case. Games that promise the things NMS promises are games for me. NMS just doesn't deliver.

Years of free updates have turned a barren tech demo into a fairly middling game, without solving the key problem: there are ten squillion planets, but no sense of discovery. The same three races, who have already populated every planet before you get there, with the same space station, and the same few outpost buildings. No cities. No history. Nothing to explore that you haven't seen in the first 10 minutes. It's a dead galaxy.

Then there's the lack of attention to gameplay systems. The last time I tried it, I quickly figured out that I could turn element X into 10 element Ys, into 3 element Xes. And I could do this with just about any element in the game. And thank God for that, because everything is gated behind collecting far too many of those elements.

NMS is not a good game, and the same gaming community that was hyperbolic about its failure nine years ago is now hyperbolic about its comeback, because 'content creators' need narratives to peddle, and a redemption ark makes for a great narrative. But there is no narrative here. 'Bad game remains fairly bad' isn't going to make any YouTube videos go viral.

Finally, I don't agree with the 9 year point at all. I honestly think that if the studio spent those 9 years making a new game, applying the lessons learnt from NMS, they may have actually made something worth playing. Nine years is a serious chunk of a human lifespan, far too long to spend on a sunk cost fallacy.

zoogeny5• 1 year ago

I think your confusing my post. You can feel however you want about the game itself, it isn't for everyone. Your suggestion that they work on something else for 9 years is also strange. Why would they listen to someone who doesn't like the games they make instead of listening to the literal thousands of players who play the game each day? [1] It makes a lot more sense for a game company to focus on the lovers and not the haters, IMO.

You don't like the game, and may not like the style of games that Hello Games chooses to make. But 9 years after launch, and before this new update, they were still pulling 5-10k players per day just on Steam, so probably more overall if PlayStation, etc. are included. That seems like evidence enough for me that a decent audience believes it is something worth playing.

My actual comment, however, is addressing people who still hate on the developers. You can dislike the game while still respecting the effort the developers have put into serving their fans.

1. https://steamcharts.com/app/275850

ticulatedspline• 1 year ago

I've played the game 3 times, which is a lot for a game these days. I want to like it and I still pretty much hate them, and I kinda hate them even more because of how much everyone loves them despite not deserving it.

Part of the problem is the game still isn't good. If they actually pulled off the miracle and created a magnum opus I'd be softer but after the last run (maybe a few years ago) I decided that despite all the love the fans have and all the new "features" foundationally the game is just bad. And never will be good (and that's setting aside all the bugs of which there were many).

though even then I could have forgiven them since it was more of a game than launch but the reason I think I still hate them is the seeming lack of any real repentance over what was, lets not beat around the bush, literal fraud. They weren't really penitent at launch and I see that continued hubris in their pricing. NMS NEVER was a $60 game. NMS never will be a $60 game, if it released brand new tomorrow as is it wouldn't be worth $60. but that's their pride.

Actual AAA games from that era are priced cheaper yet NMS still says "nope I'm worth a AAA now". I think if after release they had said "shit, we're sorry. we're going to re-price the game at $19, refund the difference to everyone and label it 'early access'" then continued to work on it and then maybe 5 years ago peaked at $30 when it hit an actual 1.0 I think i would have forgiven them immediately

And it's not like what they're doing is unique, there's lots of games that get love from their devs and lots of better games in the genre for more reasonable pricing. Redigit and Terraria are a much better poster child of value, they've added so much content over the years, it's such a better game than NMS and I've bought it twice for less than even the sale price of NMS

Their continued overinflated sense of self worth for spending a decade slathering lipstick on a pig combined with a rabid fanbase that never hesitates to gush about them being some sort of saintly figure for doing it rubs me the wrong way.

aweiland• 1 year ago

I found it to be the worst grindfest ever. It's like they went looking for everything they could for you to grin on. I remember trying to fly my ship around the planet instead of walking forever. Suddenly I got a message that I was out of take off fuel. Not fuel, take off fuel. Another resource to grind out. No thanks.

claudiulodro• 1 year ago

It is wild how much content the team has continued to add years and years after the launch and without even making any of it paid DLC. The commitment is super impressive, and I applaud them for it, but I am curious how the economics of it work. Is there a wave of people that buy the game when these huge updates are released? How is it possible to keep building this long for a game that is a one time purchase?

ceejayoz• 1 year ago

New purchasers, subscription products like Game Pass...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Sales

After the game was added to the Xbox Game Pass service in June 2020, Hello Games reported a month later that No Man's Sky had seen more than one million new players.

bombcar• 1 year ago

Depending on how they do it, and how many people they need working on it, it might only need to keep a relatively small trickle of new sales going.

It also now marks it as a "great value" so people are more likely to pick it up even if they don't end up playing.

Depending on pricing, you can even just sell to people upgrading or changing consoles (this is one area that really helps Stardew Valley, albeit with a low cost).

After all, even if you've sold millions of copies, there's way more people who have NOT bought it.

juancn• 1 year ago

Besides all the revenue from things like Game Pass or PS+, I think the long game is building a game engine for procedurally generated games.

They're working on a fantasy title too (https://lightnofire.com/) which uses the same engine to build a whole planet, but Earth scale.

Improvements in the engine for one, translate to the other.

saturn8601• 1 year ago

Man, its too much effort to explore this actual Earth and see as much as possible. I can't even fathom the energy and commitment needed to explore a virtual Earth like planet however awesome it sounds. How do you guys stay committed to something like this?

ViktorRay• 1 year ago

The game has actually consistently been on Steam’s yearly top seller list for many years.

It’s surprising to see its continued popularity and development. In a good way of course!

buran77• 1 year ago

With Worlds Part II, we added billions of new star systems and trillions of new planets to the universe

I played the game at launch for a few days and coincidentally just last week again. So assume basic knowledge of the gameplay. Can someone explain how trillions of planets in the game (I mean the number specifically) changes the experience in game?

I get improving the level of variety on a planet and between planets can improve the gameplay. But trillions of anything makes me think most of the content will never be touched by any human. Am I missing something?

shikon7• 1 year ago

As I understand it, they add a new set of planets with the new features, and keeping the old planets untouched.

The increased variety is not because trillions of planets are added, but because the new planets will have more varierty than the old ones.

Synaesthesia• 1 year ago

What they really mean is there is more variety when you land on different planets, they added more variables to the procedural generation. And I gotta say it did improve over time, they have become more varied and interesting, but still with that "procedural" feel.

variaga• 1 year ago

Unequal distribution, basically. While most planets will never be observed by a human, it turns out players congregate in certain parts of the galaxy, particularly near the galactic center. (The game starts you at a random location near the edge and there's literally a 'reach the galactic center' quest, so most players end up near the center eventually.)

So yes, there are trillions of stars, but there's only so many of them within $RADIUS of the center. In practice every planet 'near' (for some definition of 'near') the center has already been discovered and the 'good' planets are likely to already have bases. There are also spots that get their locations published in the forums or advertised in-game (good drops, cool bases, things like that) that also end up 'locally' crowded.

I found there were basically two experiences in NMS - "the outer rim" which was, frankly, lonely - you almost never encounter any signs that other players even exist and "the core" where it feels like everything has already been done - sure it's new to you, but you're never the first. Finding a middle zone where you can see evidence of other players, but there's still stuff to discover was rare in my experience.

CashWasabi• 1 year ago

This game has the biggest comeback story of any game in gaming history. I'm really looking forward to their next title and how much of "new" tech they will be showing in it. As far as I understand it will be the same engine as No Man's Sky. But there might be even more content and also this time it seems to be only one big planet?

rkagerer4• 1 year ago

While we're talking space games, did Star Citizen ever get properly released? I crowdfunded it 10 years ago and am still waiting for delivery or access to play. Emailed them a few times in the interim and never got any response.

aprilnya• 1 year ago

It’s been out in Early Access for a bit… weird that as a backer you wouldn’t have access to it

rkagerer4• 1 year ago

Thanks for the answer. Was there an email that went out or something? If I recall I didn't back on Kickstarter, but directly with the company. (Also is it ever going to leave Early Access? Are they asking for more money?)

rkagerer4• 1 year ago

The game has a 60% discount on Steam right now [1], but not on GoG [2]. Is the Steam version DRM-benign? e.g. Is it similar to Kerbal Space Program where you could just copy the folder out to another location (or a new PC) and play it without Steam having to be installed?

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/

[2] https://www.gog.com/en/game/no_mans_sky

lukan• 1 year ago

Steam games you cannot just copy and play. GoG is like this.

(with steam you can sort of export it, but then need another steam client to install it)

rkagerer4• 1 year ago

What you said is not the case for all Steam games. KSP is one, several more are listed here:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...

jader201• 1 year ago

NMS is a technical marvel, and at first, the game is quite fun.

But for me, it just falls flat after a while. The planets just feel functionally the same, just with a different "skin" (which is cool, just doesn't add to the fun).

I've gone back to it 3 or 4 times, and may/may not explore it again after this update. But it's always the same: it feels cool/new for a few hours, then I realize it's still very repetitive.

And I hold no ill will about the launch -- I don't really care, and I think the continued efforts and free updates are very admirable.

But it comes down to the gameplay, and at the end of the day, there's not enough depth to keep me playing (e.g. compared to something like Factorio, where I can play this for months and it never gets old).

jrootabega13• 1 year ago

It's not only as shallow and boring as you describe, but also thoroughly unpolished and buggy.

31carmichael• 1 year ago

A large reason is that the game is procedurally generated. Your brain notices this and knows that it is unnatural. Like you said, it's fun at first, but then it is repetitive.

It is amazing though, if somehow you don't notice the weirdness.

Kye3• 1 year ago

Has the building system improved any since 2023?

I did a playthrough back then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7oYF3lDf4g&list=PLfFb7mAGQz...

But decided I wanted to focus on building, only to discover it was extremely glitchy.

Yeul• 1 year ago

Personally I prefer content with story and characters. Which is why nobody has beaten Mass effect yet.

shaggie76• 1 year ago

I started playing a week ago having letting it "cellar" for a few years; I was quite enjoying it but today, after downloading 20GB of free update, I reliably crash on boot :(

Edit: deleted C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries\SETTINGS and I can boot again.

Edit 2: crashed again after playing for a bit; back in the cellar it goes -- needs a bit more time to mature I think.

lexa1979• 1 year ago

With a VR headset: with Alyx, it's one of the best game I enjoyed playing :)

You ARE in space. That feeling when you hop in your spaceship, take off, point to the sky and come up in space...

Sure, after a hundred hours of playing, I came to the conclusion I had enough, I had seen everything that was to see in the game - even without completing it, never reached the center of the galaxy - but it sure was worth its price.

Havoc• 1 year ago

Played it for a bit. Say 20 hrs. It’s okay.

Think the entire premise is flawed though. The average user is going to see maybe 20 or 50 worlds. So 30 hand crafted worlds would be better than a billion bland procedural ones.

More generic volume is not a plus for games

Saris• 1 year ago

I would love to see some more detail added and variety of structures and whatnot. The planets are cool but I just end up feeling so bored after awhile with the same random structures every so often.

I think I would rather play on maybe 100 planets that are partially random but have a lot of manual work put into the detail of the surface and structures.

No Man's Sky's update introduces billions of new stars, planets, and more

Related Stories