Hey dudes!

So, like many of you, I saw NMS first at E3 and thought it looked mind blowing. A truly revolutionary game. Then, when it came out, it turned out it was absolutely shite, and people really didn't react well. However, it looks like this game has had the Phoenix treatment, really rising from its ashes? The post support- everytime I heard about it, I was amazed at how much cool shit they added.

And now, the final nail in the "I Want this" coffin- The "Beyond" update. I'm watching videos, and it looks like one of the coolest games I've ever seen. This is the kind of game I used to LITERALLY DREAM ABOUT in the 90's. Can anyone confirm the "what's good"ness of the game in 2019? Is anyone else going in on the "Beyond" update? I Wanna know now cause it's £20 for another week.

It technically did last year with the NEXT update, which added multiplayer and overhauled a lot of the game’s features and mechanics. That update got me back in for the first time since launch and I fell in love with the game. I’m extremely excited to play tonight.

The thing I told people who were curious about the game after NEXT is that No Man’s Sky is almost entirely about resource gathering, unless you’re playing the creative mode or whatever it’s called (I haven’t tried it). Base building, freighters, rovers, all of those features are things that facilitate resource gathering. It’s been a pretty grindy game as a result, and you kinda needed to be ready for that because just existing in that game consumes something. However, the patch notes for BEYOND seem to indicate that much of the grind has been alleviated. I saw someone say the inventory space for resource stacks has increased from 250 to 10,000 or something crazy like that.

Basically, the game’s been really, really cool since the NEXT update. I can’t speak to today’s update yet but on paper it sounds pretty amazing.

Before I say anything, I just want to mention that @nateandrews nailed it. No Man's Sky has been good for a minute.

Now, all that said, it's still largely a game about collecting resources and scanning wildlife and accruing the wealth necessary to purchase ships. It is still one of those. The team has simply made that process way more varied, intuitive, and exciting.

Technically that was last year with the NEXT update which I liked well enough despite having to still lock the game at 30 frames (though 30 well-paced frames) because it doesn't like mid-range GPUs like my old 1060 for some odd reason; but I digress. Personally, it's still not the Freelancer that I've been wanting since Freelancer, but I'm okay with calling this the Travis Scott/Astroworld of space exploration games, where they're things that I can enjoy and appreciate as they are when I'm just looking for a chilled and relaxing time, but not the things that I specifically look for within the respective mediums.

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw looks like it'll be my new Freelancer.

Glad to see that Hello Games managed to turn it around. That game always seemed like a solid foundation upon which they had to build.

Funnily enough, yesterday i fell asleep to some GB Infinite where Jeff was talking about the whole situation of No Mans Sky. He wondered if they handled things a bit more like Rare did with Sea of Thieves (Not hyping people on certain features pre-release , but releasing a relatively barebones beta and subsequently releasing the game without any big new surprises) would the hype & fallout have been just as big? Would they ever have been able to make the game in this way, without the funds & visibility the hype generated? By playing coy & being nebulous about what the game could eventually turn out to be, have we gotten a better game out of it in the end than it would have been if people knew that the basegame would be a singleplayer exploration + resource gathering game?

At the moment the update is causing massive amounts of crashing on ps4 and pc. I tried it briefly in VR on ps4 and its very blurry but kinda ok in a way. Tried to start a new game on PC and crash every time I try get into the ship at the beginning. Also keybinds are not working and the new multiplayer social area is crashing and t posing people. Maybe wait a lil.

The move to Vulkan for the PC version is a HUGE game changer, at least for people like me who have AMD graphics cards. There is still some stuttering issues, but I can now get a pretty solid 56-60fps at 1080p maxed on my RX 580 whereas with the OpenGL renderer I wasn't able to avoid drops to the 40s at 900p minimum settings

It's a stuttery mess for me on PC, and with Next I was able to max things out comfortably at 60fps+.

They'll fix it, no doubt, but it's disappointing to say the least.

I don't think it ever really was in the ashes as much as people perceived it to be something it wasn't and the developers didn't really do a great job at correcting that interpretation. As many people above have mentioned this game was almost always about resource management and not about exploring the stars - the act of traversing the galaxy is just a means to a bigger endgame which is a loop of collecting resources and managing meters. No Mans Sky can be absolutely exhausting in it's constant management of bars going down as you do anything. I jumped in on the last big update and was a little surprised by just how much the game would get in my way of wanting to do anything. Maybe a lot of those things have changed, but as long as you know what it is going in you probably won't be disappointed.

The Beyond patch itself is really enjoyable ---- in single player.

Multiplayer so far has been a mess. I can't even join more than 4 friends at a time, when HG seemed to indicate you can join with 32 friends. If all of this is just a glorified meeting hub for groups of 4 friends at a time then they lied again.

Has anyone successfully joined together in a group of more than 4 players?

they never said you can form a group with up to 32 players, in the nexus you can see up to 16 players at once in that instance. You can however potentially see up to 32 players in the universe, let's say on a planet. But you can't make a group that big afaik

Dropping a line here to say that if you picked it up because of the latest patch and were blocked by the grind there's a save editor out there that let's you explore some of the games later construction and exploration content.

It's not an MMO so nobody is getting banned for giving themselves enough Units to buy their dream capital ship, pimp out a starship, or build a monstrous base on your dream planet, and you're not messing with anyone else's good time.

I say have at it

So I've played a bunch since the Beyond update and I can't help shake the feeling that this game is a lot of work to play without much reward. I think I had a bit more tolerance for it with the Next update because it had practically revamped the entire experience. This time around it mostly feels like the same game but with some very necessary tweaks to a lot of the mechanics, plus the new additions.

Still, you spend so much time sorting through inventory and recharging equipment. The PS4 version has also gotten way worse about loading in planets. Whenever I land at my primary base I have to wait over a minute for the ground to fully render, otherwise I fall through the planet when I exit my starship. It's kinda become a pain to play and I'm not sure how much more I'll continue with it.

it's still no man's sky after all, it's a inventory management game and a crafting game. Beyond doesn't change that one single bit.

They were so vague about the way it works that it became a bit misleading at first glance. I understand now that it was never meant to be more than 4 players in a group, but I think they could have been more upfront about the multiplayer system. In my mind, 32 players could be any combination of friends and strangers, so what's stopping them from letting 32 friends joining an instance?

I'm sure there is a legitimate technical reason for it, but it doesn't really excuse the vagueness.

i totally understand, Vague is Sean murray's middle name i'm afraid. :D

Anyway i've been messing with a save editor to get around some of the insane storage limitations and it's been far more enjoyable :D

It's a survival game at heart, so if you like punching trees with erm...a laser gun, then this is the game for you!