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Stories and Experiences

Started by fragger, August 21, 2016, 04:49:18 AM

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fragger

Quote from: Binnatics on September 12, 2016, 12:12:11 PM
I'd say it looks like a Multi tool ;)

:laugh: :-X Damn, why didn't I think of that one?

fragger

First salvaged ship of this game, looks more like a minisub than a spaceship. Not too crazy about the puke-green colour either... But it's just a temp.
[smg id=9284 align=center width=600]

Art Blade

[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Binnatics

Quote from: fragger on September 12, 2016, 04:23:51 PM
:laugh: :-X Damn, why didn't I think of that one?

8)

@ Art; Nice ships indeed! I think I like the design of the other needle-noose even better, but I don't like the colours. And that red baron is NICE! Also has a nice name ;)
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Art Blade

thank you, Binnatics :) It still amazes me when I see new ships with yet another new design. When I saw the red baron sitting on a landing pad at a trapo, my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. I ran over and made it mine.  :-D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Art Blade

My 2nd planed on which I found all creatures. :) And I am happy to say that there are only non-carnivore beasts here so I don't have to worry when going for a stroll. I flipping hate it when there are carnivores around. No relaxed walk, always on tip-toes.. no chilled-out exploring.. so I am really enjoying peaceful planets. This one is nice. The weather is nice, too, and the temperature is normal, so really a nice new peaceful haven to fall back to.  :-X :)

Here's Dodo, and Dodo wants to be my friend. :-D Oh and that yellow thing is just some plant.

[smg id=9285 type=preview align=center caption="peaceful planet"]
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Art Blade

It appears as if the hype about the game was over when I look at the fewer and fewer posts and stories and screenshots. It almost feels as if I was the last man standing, or, playing. I don't know whether anyone is actually still interested and still reading the posts here or just being absent for whatever reasons.

Well, I am still enjoying the game and I keep seeing strange or interesting stuff. I am now in my third galaxy so I'm not in a terrible hurry to get to the next. Instead, I start to explore adjacent star systems and call them "neighbours" which I count. Like, right now I am exploring "9th Neighbour" and in between, I jump back to this or that system just so I might get a distress call from a group of big freighters. You know, recently I started to hunt pirates as a hobby. Who would have thought.  8)

As far as I can tell, pirates are just normal fighter ships that we can see in stations. I found out that in the ship's cockpit where you can see a mini version of your own ship slowly circling and its name is shown on top, that the image and name changes when another ship is nearby. I kept seeing different shuttles and other ships on that mini display. When I encountered pirates, it didn't say "pirate" but instead showed a regular ship albeit they are apparently ships of the fighter class. Nothing special.

I usually use the booster to get close, then fire the mining laser at a pirate to draw his attention and then I change to photon cannon when he's headed towards me.. into a hail of energy bubbles -- a matter of seconds until he blows up rather spectacularly. >:D

I am always careful not to hit the big freighters and so far, I haven't been attacked by those. By now I have shot down almost 100 pirates. I have come to like those space battles against up to 20 pirates although the big ships in fact do kill a few of them leaving some 10 to 15 pirates to my attention. Which is better than none  :-()

Also, I have found many different and at times bizarre ships and flown most of those that looked different or special. Currently I am flying something regular but before I had a crazy ship. That is what keeps me going to different systems as each system has got a special breed of ships and I am curious about what else I might find. :)

I owned that one once.
[smg id=9287 type=preview align=center caption="bizarre fighter"]
[smg id=9288 type=preview align=center caption="bizarre fighter rear"]
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

fragger

Quote from: Art Blade on September 14, 2016, 04:51:10 PM
It appears as if the hype about the game was over when I look at the fewer and fewer posts and stories and screenshots. It almost feels as if I was the last man standing, or, playing. I don't know whether anyone is actually still interested and still reading the posts here or just being absent for whatever reasons.

I'm still reading the posts but not adding many, or indeed any at all, about my own experiences, because I'm not having any. I feel the game has run its course for me personally. It pulled me in big time for the first couple of weeks, but then my enthusiasm slowly began to ebb away. I think it was because once I came to realise that there aren't really very many built-in game objectives (I mean other than ones you may set for yourself), some of the attraction was lost for me. I'm not interested in getting the free-upgrade mod because about the only aspect of the game that really gave me any sense of satisfaction was the earning of the techs and the upgrades. So installing that mod would remove any incentive for me to play at all. I'd be the last person to knock modding - if you've paid good money for a game, and if modding it isn't affecting anybody else, you have every right to do so if it adds to your enjoyment of the game you've paid for. But I'm the type who likes the sense of achievement in having done things the hard way :-() I never even got around to installing the anti-pirate mod. Once I'd earned all the techs and upgrades though, I sort of felt like I'd gotten all dressed up but didn't have anywhere in particular to go.

I enjoyed the game for a month or so, but it just didn't last. As I said in some of my earlier posts, I knew it wouldn't hold my attention forever, but I lost interest in it sooner than I thought I would. It started to go downhill for me when I completed the Atlas path and got a big fat nothing for it other than causing an obscure star to be created in some distant corner of the galaxy that I would never see nor have anything to do with, and I thought, "then what was the flipping point?" The icing on the cake was the trip to the core turning out to be a non-event, other than to basically kick you back to the beginning in a new galaxy with everything needing to be repaired but no new techs or anything to w@&k towards.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't turned into a NMS hater, nor do I have any ill feeling or resentment towards it, and I might still play with it from time to time, but I'm just not enormously interested in it anymore. Maybe the devs will add more features and activities in time, but I'm not holding my breath. The game has received so much bad press (most of it unfairly, in my view) that it may have scared the devs away from touching it any further. We'll see in time, I guess.

There is potential for so much more in NMS, but it feels like it was cut short in the rush for release. For instance, there are a number of minerals that appear to have no purpose, revealing the entirety of all three of the alien races' stories achieves nothing, and I can't help but feel that the Atlas path was intended to lead to something but that too got cut short. I'm even starting to wonder if the V2 and V3 Atlas Passes actually exist in the game or if they too are evidence of omissions - I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that those doors can't be unlocked because there is nothing behind them.

Different strokes and all that. It's a very good game, there's just not enough of a variety of accomplishments to strive for to keep me hooked.

Dweller_Benthos

Yeah, I feel the same as Fragger, and I haven't even "completed" the game yet. Even a few weeks ago I decided I was going to treat the game as early access, as it was clearly not finished. I had done something similar to Kerbal Space Program, a game I enjoyed immensely, but played every iteration up through the development process quite a bit. This usually meant re-starting a new game as new features or fixes made old saves not w@&k anymore. This was fine for a while, but once the game had a full release, it had changed quite a bit and now starting from scratch was a bit more difficult and I found I had no desire to do so. So I left it, and haven't played for a year maybe? I may get back into it, but found that was a danger with early access games. I also have Stranded Deep and Subnautica sitting there, both of which I played quite a bit in early versions. Stranded Deep changed the world save format so that it's quite a bit different than it used to be. Subnautica has added so many new things, it's almost a different game now. I feel (hope) the same thing is going to happen to No Man's Sky, I'm pretty sure they are still working on it, and plan to add features. I don't want to get used to a game only to have it change drastically while I'm still playing it. I prefer to wait and watch how it trends and then when it looks like it has stabilized, I'll get back into it. I mean, they were talking about having the ability to build planetside bases, and other structures, so that would be a huge change, and who knows what else. So, early access gets you a glimpse of what the game might be, but I found it's best to let it sit for a while.

I'll play when I have some time where I don't want to get into something else, in that way, it's more like a casual game, play for 15 or 20 minutes, find some stuff, fly somewhere, then quit when you need to go to lunch or something. But until it's more finalized, I doubt I'll play for extended periods. But that's not to say I don't enjoy seeing what you guys are up to, and what weird things you've found.
"You've read it, you can't un-read it."
D_B

Art Blade

thanks for those posts, guys :)

The AtlasPass V2 and V3 exist. You get to see a room loaded with plants or a room that looks like it belonged to a janitor, stuffed with crates and robotic parts. So it's either a carbon stash or a trade commodities stash. Sometimes there are also random machines such as health or shield or exosuit slot upgrade machines additionally to the aforementioned supplies.
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Binnatics

I still read all the posts about the game. Thinking back, that must've been what most enjoyed me of No Man's Sky. The anticipation of what might be in the beyond. When I got the game and started playing I was so happy that I could finally join the fun, but sooner than I'd thought possible I learned the hard way that this game is indeed far from what it could have been. The Atlas disappointment was huge to me. I don't even believe that I actually created a star. I think it was just the message.
Finding a new galaxy was a cool climax @ first, but then I realised there would not be anything new other than more planets, ships and whatnot. So who cares for a new galaxy? We already had a bazillion stars to explore and now we are cut off any history we made happen ourselves to which we will never get back again. Same with the black holes. They make returning impossible. Keep exploring, lost in space.

The joy we've had so far together on the forum was so great. Building my ship was great, too. But having to do all over again was not so cool. And the mod which I installed made it too easy. But then there wasn't any purpose to go through with it. I do have a great ship, perfect layout now, no challenges anymore. Probably the mod was the last punch I needed to leave the game behind.

Well, fair enough, this was the first game to really get me away from GTA V for more than a week. Quite an achievement :)
I won't forget NMS easily and I might return to it when new updates come out. But I agree with you guys; this game was intended differently, bigger. There should have been something that would keep us going. Clues and gestures towards a strange mystery. That is in fact what I had thought of. Something like the great mystery of Mount Chilliad, something nobody solved until now, but where hundreds of ideas, possible clues and theories are being shared until today on the net.

The concept of a galaxy that will build itself along formulas being triggered by exploring players is revolutionary. But the devs (maybe because of Sony) haven't managed to get it to full potential.
They spent so much time and creativity into how starships, plants, animals and atmospheres would be randomly created, with an almost infinite amount of possibilities, that probably they didn't have any time left to make a game with it. They were stuck in a concept, lost in space :-D

! No longer available
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Art Blade

thanks for the feedback :)

Actually, I understand all of you. The game is lacking. But somehow that was my first impression when I watched some of the first videos, which is why originally I didn't even want to buy it, and now I can say first hand that it did not get any better playing the game  :laugh:

When I got the game, I had major problems and quickly recognised major errors I committed while playing. Having had to start over more than once, I wanted a fast lane to get where I should have been. That is when I start to analyze and trick games if the start is crap. You guys know exactly what I did to get up to speed and then I went through all the stuff there was without any mods, so essentially "the hard way," too. Then I was about to lose interest because getting JUST ONE NEW SHIP was incredibly, insanely difficult if you wanted to buy one. Well, a few hours of mind-melting trading and some 60+ millions later I bought one, already using D_B's clever exploit (strip down your ship or multi-tool if you want to get a better price) yet still some 60M for a ship.. I think we're among the few guys who were actually able to pull that off, making millions in minutes rather than weeks or months. Still, I wanted more. I love playing around with stuff that essentially should be accessible but.. the price.. I would have stopped playing if it hadn't been for the mods. Thanks to the easy way they provided, I was able to and still am able to have some fun with the game. Which is very limited to finding new cool random fighter ships and space battles. The best part was when we all kept adding new findings of how to improve the game, tweaks, tricks.. that really was nice  :-X :)

I'll be off this game October 13, release date of Shadow Warrior 2, which I will be playing cooperatively with an old friend of mine.
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

fragger

Looks like we all feel pretty much the same way, to varying degrees. I think of NMS as being a terrific concept in search of a game. We had a blast with it and a good time raving on about what we'd discovered, but we quickly uncovered all the game's secrets and ran out of new things to report other than ship configurations and planets we'd found. Which is good, but a complete game this does not make.

It has given me a bit of a hankering for a good space sim though, and I've actually been looking at Elite: Dangerous, a roughly analogous affair to NMS which has been out for about a year or so but is continually being improved upon and updated. This is a re-imagined Kickstarted reboot of the Elite space-trading games of the 80s and 90s, and is a really good-looking item. You can't land on planets unless you buy the "Horizons" EXP, and even then there is no life on those planets, however this is reportedly being worked upon and will be added in future via updates - at least, that's the impression I get. The game has mixed reviews, about 2/3 of which are positive, but there's a substantial minority of players that don't like it, so make of that what you will. There appears to be more to w@&k towards than there is in NMS in that there is a diverse assortment of missions available, which will vary depending on what system you're in. Yes, missions, something NMS almost entirely lacks. There's a lot more focus on accurately piloting your ship which makes it a bit more like a flight sim in space, and the graphics are gorgeous - your ship cockpit details alone put those of NMS to shame. AND you can move your head and look around while you're flying. You can even see your own hands on the controls.

There is no 18 quintillion planets in E:D, just a measly several hundred billion solar systems. Like NMS, it utilizes procedural generation, but did it a year earlier, just without detailed planet surface terrain and animals. NMS was not quite as revolutionary as it was made out to be...

Here's a sample of the gameplay (there are tons of E:D vids on Youtube, I've only just started looking at a few). The guy was new to it himself at the time and was still getting the hang. He refers to it as a MMO game but it can definitely be played in single-player mode (I checked) - HOWEVER: there is no offline mode, and that rotten practice really ticks me off :angry-new: So single-player is essentially playing MMO without the MM - or at least, you just don't see the other players, but those other players can still affect the market, sort of like GTA V's stock market system. I'm still looking into how the multi- and single-player versions may differ from each other, or whether they even do.

! No longer available


Here's the game on Steam (don't bother with the trailers. Like all trailers, what you see is not actual gameplay. Youtube is better for viewing actual gameplay clips):

http://store.steampowered.com/app/359320/


I won't be getting into it any time soon, it's too close to Civ VI time. But the game is on my "potential interest with reservations" list :-()


EDIT: A couple of extra points worth mentioning:

E:D has full joystick support for most popular makes, including the whole Thrustmaster range and HOTAS setups.

Most negative reviewers say the same thing - the game is boring. Now, where have we heard that before? I think "boring" to some people means either having to put in time to learn a game, or experiencing anything other than instant action all the time. By all accounts, E:D definitely has a curve and requires a commitment to get to grips with, and will take time and patience to get to know. These are the sorts of things that some individuals classify as "boring", i.e. having to put in any thought or effort themselves. Without playing the game, the negs could be right, I can't say one way or another. But about 85% of players claimed that NMS was boring, and look how much we got into it. Unfortunately NMS couldn't sustain our enthusiasm due to the ultimately limited nature of its concept, but had there been more to do in it I'm sure we'd all still be waxing lyrical now. E:D does appear to have more to do in it. It's something to bear in mind, at least.

A lot of people also found FC2 boring. Yet that game is the reason why we are all here now ^-^

Binnatics

Interesting concept, but I'm afraid I will be amongst the guys who will rate the game as boring.
Funny accent this guy has. Any idea where he's from? He seems to pronounce certain parts of sentences supper fast, as if being glued together ;D

I am very careful on whatever early access there is right now. I'm sure devs are still working on it, but my experience with DayZ (still experimental, probably releasing a weapon, car or zombie-type every few months) taught me not to go crazy on something that is still w@&k in progress. 
Besides of that, Gkid just told me about his experiences with Ark, which is also still experimental, not seeming to ever come to a full grown game.
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Art Blade

One reason I'm here is that I ditched E:D quite some time ago after only 82 hours of gameplay.

I had it from the start, played it simultaneously (not cooperatively, nor in the same session) with B33 ENN (an old OWG fellow who is "inactive" here). He decided to go down the dark alley by becoming a pirate and slave trader, messing with basically every law-and-order system there was, which included that he wasn't allowed to dock anywhere in the legal space without having the police after him. I decided to go down the trading route (as I almost always do in those types of games) and specialised in rare goods (erm, dynamic resonators, anyone?) which included travelling half across the known universe to buy, say, one bottle of the unique "arse of the galaxy beer" for say, 10 credits, then travel back all across the universe (which pretty much resembled warp jumps between systems in NMS) to sell that one bottle for say, 500,000 credits. There I'd buy something similarly cheap like "the other arse of the galaxy" stout, same price, same route back, same profit margin. I became quite rich in the process. Using my HOTAS whatever joystick was very rewarding.

Then I had a chat with B33 ENN. I asked him how it was going and he said that he was saving up for a new ship (the Adder). Actually the one I had been using for some time now. And I sent him this screenshot. It shows what I would get for my current adder if I traded it in for a fresh one.

[smg id=9299 type=preview align=center caption="Elite Dangerous Ship Price Check"]

As you can see, my refund would have been way over a million which is for the ship upgrades installed. Remember, he was saving up for the base price of some 90k. Unfortunately I wasn't there at his place to watch him shift in and out of consciousness after letting out one hell of a scream.  :-D

However, I was fed up with going back and forth, jumping from system to system, always the same procedure.. and jumps could include unforeseen drastic and very unpleasant events. Like, jumping straight into a sun. The moment you come out of the warp jump, all systems go on alert, hull integrity alert, overheating alert, hull breach, system failure, alert, alert, alert.. You wouldn't believe how busy you can get trying to get the f@#k out of there again without falling apart.

And there were pirates that could pull you out of pulse speed. And they really liked to finish you over properly. At least you had some kind of escape vector but that was more or less some random chance and it wasn't certain you could actually make it.

I was really pissed off by all the nonsense.



[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Dweller_Benthos

What it really boils down to for me, it's not that I don't want to play NMS, it's just that there are other games right now that I want to play more.

The problem with early access, is that there's the danger of the game becoming something you don't really like anymore. Like Kerbal Space Program, the early versions were just seat-of-the-pants space flight, where to even get to the moon you had to go by eye, and just gun it when you thought the time was right. Now, there are contracts, expense accounts, guidance systems, etc, and the game just feels different. If I hadn't played the early versions, and just picked up the game on release, I would probably feel differently about it. Same goes for Minecraft, the game as it is now is very different than the game was a year or two ago, and extremely different than what it was 6 years ago when I started playing it. Space Engineers is another one, the addition of planets changed the game entirely.

Maybe it's best not to know what it was, and just start with it in a more complete state. But as I said, I can feel this happening with NMS, it will either change and become brilliant or it will be even worse.
"You've read it, you can't un-read it."
D_B

Binnatics

Actually, I don't think it will change. Maybe some new features but what the game lacks for me, is the feeling of progress. Something that you may or may not achieve, something that gives perspective to your actions.
I don't expect them to put that in the game.

About that E:D game, I don't see enough movement when I watch that clip. All I see is a cockpit, a star map and a warp animation. I didn't watch everything, just quickly skipped through the vid, but couldn't find anything that showed me gameplay I'd actually want to do. In NMS you can at least move around in worlds, giving you the feeling that you have the liberty to explore, search, interact and kill a bit left and right :-D


"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Art Blade

[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

🡱 🡳