I’m getting a feeling this game too suffers from the Elite Dangerous’ “Mile wide Inch deep” affliction.
The diffrence being that in NMS the real action is on the surface of planets. Travelling between planets is nothing more than stepping on the subway.
A mix of these games would be interesting.
I’ve decided not to refund it. For such a small team they’ve actually made a big game.
Seeing all the bad reviews and the hype for NMS already dying down I think the I-Novae devs made a on-point decision in making Battlescape first, giving it limited space, have a chance to try things out, find the right balance between gameplay and technology - then learn from it and go full scale (if all goes well)
…and I have the feeling SC backers and fans are also starting to get pissed as the game changes to something else then promised in the early days.
The Spore comparison is something I’ve seen a lot of people make, but I don’t think it’s completely fair. Spore actively over-promised and under-delivered, while the NMS developers never made any promises. Spore failed to live up to specific promises, and reduced parts of the game that many people were most excited about to the point of almost being mini games. NMS failed to create any expectations at all, and in doing so failed to rope in the expectations of its potential audience.
I mean, sure from the customer’s point of view, the disappointment is pretty similar, but in terms of the developers making good on their promises… Hello Games seems to have delivered exactly what they said they would. They just failed to get anyone to listen to them.
[quote=“Kichae, post:372, topic:204”]
The Spore comparison is something I’ve seen a lot of people make, but I don’t think it’s completely fair. Spore actively over-promised and under-delivered, while the NMS developers never made any promises. Spore failed to live up to specific promises, and reduced parts of the game that many people were most excited about to the point of almost being mini games. NMS failed to create any expectations at all, and in doing so failed to rope in the expectations of its potential audience.[/quote]
I think it’s the opposite. By consciously staying vague and never precising what the gameplay is, NMS made people dream about what the game could be. I remember in end 2014 when I wrote on my blog the article about SC vs ED vs NMS that I clearly said I had no idea what kind of game NMS was. And a few months ago I still had no idea. It’s only at the end of the tunnel that we started to have answers, but it was too late. People have been building expectations in their own head and that lead to the disapointment ( for some ) that we see today.
You’re right on one thing though: NMS never made any promises. But by not explaining clearly what the game was about they achieved pretty much the same result as over-promising. See how long it took to even figure out it wasn’t a multiplayer game…
Personally, I’ve been playing it for a few hours since its release and I think it’s a pretty cool game for people who like exploring ( and don’t mind grinding ) at a slow pace. People who were expecting a cool & fun game with some action though, can only be disapointed.
That is true - really small team.
I’m going to purchase this after about a month just for that.
Support small businesses!
… Also to get all the major bugs and stuff out of the way.
Oh yeah, I’m not saying Hello Games didn’t make mistakes, just that the mistakes were mostly different mistakes from those made by Maxis. Sane result, but almost a completely different path.
Ive played it for about 13 hours or so now. Got a nice ship and a load of upgrades for my exo-suit and multi-tool.
It does get repetitive, sadly. If you don’t enjoy mining then you won’t like this game as there is no real way to avoid it.
Even if you enjoy the exploration aspect, whic is fun i have to admit, you will need to mine to stay alive. But with my multi-tool upgrades things just melt really fast.
My biggest disappointment has to be the ship flight. Its about as casual as you could imagine. Landing and takeoff is done by autopilot and when in the air you can’t really go down. There is minimum altitude and no further without landing. But you can fly straight up into space but its like the atmosphere is only a few miles thick. Space travel is definitely its weakest link.
I think that’s what bugs me most really. If the space combat have been a little more like House of the Dying Sun, it would be great, but it’s rather shallow. Automated landing and takeoff is slightly annoying, as is the min altitude stuff, but given there aren’t really any major ground based targets that’s somewhat forgiveable.
I’m enjoying it so far, the story is kind of interesting, which means I haven’t really stopped to fully explore any system yet. I’m hoping there’s more than just two sapient races to bump into though, because that’s getting a little boring.
I do get the feeling I’ve only scratched the surface of the content they’ve got in the game or planning to put in the game though.
There are few folks i gladly listen for a review.
Mack is one of them. Because he is hard, i might not agree with everything he says, but he does one thing that is really necessary. He tries to shows you the weak points of games. It is up to you whether you are willing to overlook them.
This is part 1 of his review.
Just bought it and played it. The performance was pretty bad (r9 280x), but it was playable. What got me to refund it was the flight mechanics, you can’t really control the spaceship, rolling is not possible, flying near ground isn’t possible, they basically advertise this as a space/ground game, why are the flight mechanics so simple? It ruined the game for me, I actually liked it until I first flew the ship.
It’s ‘A’ and ‘D’ to roll…
You do know that you can upgrade parts of yours ship to give you more control and manuevers?
Just sayin’. 
Still it seems fairly simplistic. Or am i wrong ?
Some dude just reached the center of the galaxy.
You start in a new galaxy. Mind = not blown
Although I love mining, at least in EVE, there are other activities to distract from the grind. And it can even be a relief, especially from PvP. Personally I think the key to a successful game is building > building ships, structures and space stations. And not minecraft/spaceengineers low poly assets but something players can really sink their teeth in. Of course mining is always a good thing to have but it looks like to me NMS focused more on size than content. Really glad I didn’t plop down $60 for this game.
PS
Video is hysterical! thanks.
I’m not sure how fair that is at the moment. Whilst mining is a necessary part of the game to keep your systems running, it’s relatively easy to keep yourself well enough stocked to spend time doing other stuff, like exploring planets and finding species, or getting into fights on the ground or in space.
There also seem to be at least two story/plot arcs, one based around the journey to the centre, and the other based around Atlas constructs, and it’s hard to tell where the latter is leading right now. It also seems like there’s a lot of potential for them to continue adding story content on later as some kind of expansion.
The combat so far isn’t particularly fun, so I hope those systems get worked on.
For the most part though, this game has always been about the drive to explore and find new things, and if you like those things you’ll probably like it.
I think the pricing is too high for what it is however, at £39.99 in the UK I’d expect this game more around the £30 mark, but it’s not exactly extortionate for a modern game
Perhaps it’s unfair if exploring, finding new species and getting into fights is your thing. But from what I’m seeing they all look and sound pretty limited, even repetitive. Also I am wondering how NMS plans to pay for updates if updates will add more content? Gamers are going to pay more on already poor reviews? That might not work out too well.
According to the Guardian review, the future updates will be free. That might explain the higher up-front cost, and/or it might be part of their deal with Sony to support one of their flagship titles.
Don’t bother getting this game yet if you have an older K10 series AMD CPU. It’s completely FUBAR until they fix the hardware issue. Even the experimental build only gets you to the starfield loading screen and then it crashes.