No Man’s Sky has had a great month, coincidentally around the launch of the other big space adventure of the day.

No Man’s Sky has been one of the best examples of a video redemption story, and developer Hello Games never stopped expanding the game with new content, and more features. Just recently, the procedural space adventure celebrated its seventh anniversary with the Echoes update, and it doesn’t look like there’s an end in sight to this support.

But do these updates bring back players? The answer is an emphatic yes! Hello Games founder, Sean Murray, recently revealed that No Man’s Sky is having “its biggest month in the last few years.” Interestingly, this is happening across all platforms where No Man’s Sky is available - so PC, consoles, Mac, and even VR.

  • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I honestly cannot fathom how would you could possibly think that no man’s sky is a better game by far.

    No Man Sky’s is a good engine / tech demo to build a game on, but it’s barely a game.

    Ground combat suck, space combat sucks, the story is just random notes tucked away with zero interesting characters or character development.

    It’s basically just grinding it out to fly around and scan a bunch of plants that look identical but have a slightly different name.

    • Crayphish
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      1 year ago

      Really? You can’t fathom how someone would consider NMS a better game? Both games are barely comparable other than using space as a backdrop. Judging by the reaction online, it seems like many people were lead to believe that Starfield would be a space sim and came up wanting when it was more of a sci-fi Fallout, with mostly optional engagement with the space elements. For those people, I can see merit in recommending they check out No Man’s Sky, which has a shallow, bit widely-spread space simulation to engage with.

      I don’t think it’s useful to try and argue which game is better, but I would much rather play No Man’s Sky any day of the week. Bethesda RPGs have long lost their luster for me since the Oblivion days, and now just stand as a testament of disappointing writing, stagnant technology and under-baked systems. Starfield does not show any meaningful signs of breaking the norm.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Really? You can’t fathom how someone would consider NMS a better game?

        Correct.

        Both games are barely comparable other than using space as a backdrop.

        People who say X things aren’t comparable usually seem to grossly misunderstand how comparisons work. They’re very similar games and even if they weren’t they would still be comparable, the end result of the comparison is just that they would be different.

        I don’t think it’s useful to try and argue which game is better, but I would much rather play No Man’s Sky any day of the week.

        That’s fine but I still can’t fathom why. The only part of it that’s better than Starfield is flying to and from space.

    • olicvb@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I thought this way back when i first played it. But I’ve been spending the lasts days playing and it got so much better.

      The environments are no longer the same everywhere, sure you will find matching planets but they don’t all look like asteroids with hair anymore. Minerals dont stick out of the ground anymore. And underground caves exists.

      The multiplayer aspect got better too (or so i hear, didn’t get to try it yet).

      The stories are more engaging with specific npc’s interacting with you.

      Never thought space combat sucked? It’s not to the level of Elite Dangerous, but it’s somewhat entertaining, and accomplishes what need to be done imo.

      It’s an MMORPG so of course you have grinding, and for my current playthrough it isn’t boring yet. I’ve got a minecraft vibe, where you upgrade gear and ammass items for future uses.

      love that you can get pets now and use them for more than simply have around, I got some kind of panther yesterday, was able to mount some guns to it and now it helps me in combat (kinda tedious to use idk if i fully figured it out yet, but sometimes the companion won’t attack).

      All that and i only started playing, there’s the whole frigate thing, and also settlements to protect. I’m told you can have some kind of fleet to send on missions, and i’m certain there’s other huge content i’m missing that i dont know of yet.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I played it like 3 months ago before the Echoes update, so this isn’t based on the launch version or anything.

        The environments are no longer the same everywhere, sure you will find matching planets but they don’t all look like asteroids with hair anymore. Minerals dont stick out of the ground anymore. And underground caves exists.

        I mean yeah, but they don’t look any better or more varied than Starfield’s planets, that’s for sure. It’s neat that they added caves but the caves are also pretty boring. There’s not much in them beyond some more resources. You don’t have the expansiveness or endlessness of minecraft caves nor the buried mines and mob spawners and lava and more interesting underground stuff.

        Never thought space combat sucked? It’s not to the level of Elite Dangerous, but it’s somewhat entertaining, and accomplishes what need to be done imo.

        It’s serviceable, but I wouldn’t describe it as fun, as in I don’t actively enjoy the space combat. I find Starfield’s juggling of systems and targeting on top of standard dog fighting maneuvering at least a little more engaging, but a serviceable system that’s not that much fun kind of describes most of No Man’s Sky to me.

        It’s an MMORPG so of course you have grinding, and for my current playthrough it isn’t boring yet. I’ve got a minecraft vibe, where you upgrade gear and ammass items for future uses.

        I find it’s crafting to be far less satisfying than Minecraft’s or say Subnautica’s, and a lot more grindy, but that could just be me.

        Again, I know they have all these different systems, but it really feels like each system is just barely enough of a system to entertain you for a couple hours, but doesn’t have the depth / polish / interweaving complexity to truly hold you.

      • Lojcs@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Did they fix the hitboxes? The robot dogs and flytraps meleeing me from 5 meters away was really annoying when I played the game

        • olicvb@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Seems so, i haven’t encountered this issue (and i got attacked a decent amount)

    • exohuman@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I think you are describing the game at release years ago. It has grown so much since then.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        I played it not that long ago. The comment above is still pretty much spot on. There’s base building now I guess. There’s still nothing to keep it interesting.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I literally played it like 3 months ago, before the most echoes update, but from the looks of the update notes I think my description still likely stands.