It might be worth keeping an eye on this Mixer channel. There's a guy from discord who's hopefully going to stream their early Xbox copy: https://mixer.com/Architect16
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No Man’s Sky: NEXT Update - First impressions/previews
- Thread starter Kyuuji
- Start date
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Well, the planet he did end up on didnt look too different from what we have now. But it only lasted like 10 seconds so lol. 3rd person looks cool and the UI seems sleeker slightly.
Have they updated the planets to have more then a single biome? That was like one of my main issues, exploring a planet felt largely useless because they were just one "type" of planet, you land and if you travel around the planet you never feel like the environment really changes much, a forest type planet stays a forest planet, a desert planet stays a desert, etc. I'd love for them to have different types of biomes and weather so as you explore a planet it gradually feels different as you do so.
I should warn people that the Waking Titan ARG is basically ending and we are being tasked to save people this might take quite a while and may not be interesting to those who haven't been following along.
Seems like an hour and 15 minutes. 15 minutes per person.
Wait for next week. It's not uncommon for these long running GaaS games to put the game on sale when a big new update launches.
when i played NMS when it first came out, i also started to visit planets and systems that were already named. i was a little annoyed, especially because i didn't like the names they chose.
Nothing would suggest that. We might get a note from Sean like the last time thanking those that have been involved.
Yep, just boot it up, download the updates and you're good to go.
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As others have said you're good to go! Check the links for the previous updates at the bottom of the OP to see what's changed between then and now.
the 28 Changes IGN video really impressed me and makes me excited about the game. Now, I only have one question for people who have played this previously. It might be silly, but are there any adversaries that pop up that require combat? I know that this game is about relaxing, but if you come across some kind of titan or creature that is aggressive and requires team work to defeat (yeah, I get that this is Monster Hunters), and you happen to find these things every 30 planets or so....
this might already exist, I dunno. But i could imagine being hooked on this thing like, FOREVER, as my main MP game if 80% of the time I'm just exploring and mining and discovering stuff, and out of hundreds of planets, I encounter maybe 10-20 Titans or enemies that are aggressive and powerful that just cant' be taken down without incredible grinding or coordinated teamwork. The spoils, of course, would be such a resource rich planet that's so rare. Essentially, boss fights that are sprinkled throughout the galaxy.
Is this even a thing??? Have i been missing out all along?
this might already exist, I dunno. But i could imagine being hooked on this thing like, FOREVER, as my main MP game if 80% of the time I'm just exploring and mining and discovering stuff, and out of hundreds of planets, I encounter maybe 10-20 Titans or enemies that are aggressive and powerful that just cant' be taken down without incredible grinding or coordinated teamwork. The spoils, of course, would be such a resource rich planet that's so rare. Essentially, boss fights that are sprinkled throughout the galaxy.
Is this even a thing??? Have i been missing out all along?
Nah, it's not. Everything dies pretty easily besides the higher tier sentinels who act as the cops of the game. Each planet has its own attitude of sentinels as they can vary i.e. relaxed vs strict. If you go around destroying the land and killing animals, they may try and kill you.
Currently there are pirates in space, robot drones on the surface, and occasionally aggressive animals. With the possible exception of dogfighting, combat is very simplistic.
However there is a new enemy race in the Next update which we don't know much about, but appears in the trailer in what may be a combat based MP mission. So 'maybe' basically.
I would say that combat really isn't the focus of the game though (especially on foot) - so don't expect much but an occasional diversion in that department.
Others have said combat isn't a focus, but its not 100% 'relaxing' either unless you are on a grounded ship or in a space station. Some planets have very hostile drones, you can run away from these and deaggro them, but if you fight them and don't kill them fast enough they summon more of them, think GTA style star system, higher the stars the more aggressive and difficult types start showing up. Generally you have to try to get these out though, most the time the amount time it takes for them to show up you would have either died from laser fire on the smaller ones or simply made them lose interest or killed them too fast to call friends. Aggressive or stalker animals are also annoying but give no real reward for attacking them and basically none of them have any real issues killing (except the small and fast little devils that show up occasionally, hit box too small to kill them before they get to you). The main thing that has any real combat activity with some skill involved is probably space combat, but even that isn't really highly skilled. Some of this could change in the update, and having other players potentially involved could also form a new type of challenge, but don't go into it looking for that gameplay.
Ah well. It was a nice thought. In lieu of AI systems for the native life on each planet, NMS could really be amazing with that experience I was thinking about. Imagine having to chart out your own maps and needing to actually trade resources that might be useful for other players. There might be a resource on one one planet that is so essential for cultivating another planet! Maybe some of those Titans wouldn't require fighting at all, but specific resources that they could use to grow and cultivate their own ecosystems.
So now that I've seen that video (base building is more nuanced than i thought), is this game pretty much minecraft? Go to planet, excavate minerals, don't piss off police-bots, fuel your ship, go to next planet, try not to get shot down by aggro pirates in space as you travel between planets? Now...do that with friends? Rinse and Repeat? Is that essentially what this game is?
EDIT - So one more thought....and I'm really asking this from people who played it and enjoyed it because i'm looking forward to this myself: What exactly are you discovering? It's heavily billed as an exploration game. I get that there's no real combat...that's fine. But if there isn't any of that open-world AI / ecosystems where species interact independent of you (the cool stuff from watching animals in Far Cry, or People in GTA), no species of communal life that you might uncover, and no real adversaries, are you just going to the next planet to mine minerals and to see a new vista? Are you essentially going from planet to planet to see new randomly generated vistas, or is there much more? In the early game when it launched, there were hills with rocks, fields with rocks, and caves with crystals. There were occasional aggro robots. Also sometimes cryptic messages...
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I'm as excited as everyone else here about the update, but that's a lot of assumptions you have there. Probably should preface your statements with some kind of disclaimer because none of what you posted is confirmed.
Makes sense, XBO version was like 7GB? PS4 was like 11+ when I checked this morning. Adds up.
There may be a stealth/arg early release of NEXT, which would be rad. A message from Sean is playing upon completion of the ARG.
Nah, it doesn't work like that (for consoles at least)
It's a reasonable question, but not easy to answer even though I've played about 200 hours by now.
I suppose of that time the first 50 or so were playing the launch game and just bouncing around the galaxy following the atlas path and collecting words, upgrading my ship, picking up new weapons and blueprints etc. Basically the launch game.
Then the first update came after 3 months and they added bases and, importantly, Survival mode. Survival mode was a rock hard challenge and suddenly all the systems in the game made sense. I felt like a new game to me and I must have put in another 50 hours at least doing that. Until I got to a point where I could survive without too much effort. Felt good.
I spent about 30 hours on the Pathfinder update, building the vehicles, doing the base building. And collecting money to buy a freighter. Also I love photo mode - there was definitly time spent (wasted?) just messing around with that.
Atlas Rises was a huge update. Game systems were dramatically changed, they added the story mode (about 15 hours or something for me), quests, new biomes and a bunch of other stuff. I guess the rest of the time has been taken up doing that over the last year, on and off. I didn't play it for about 9 months or something. Jumped back in recently to beef up my finances in prep for Next and to look for the Portal glyphs. I tend to bounce between my Normal and Survival saves.
Honestly - it's difficult to break down what I 'do' in NMS. I pick it up and I put it down - so yeah, it's often just aimless stuff that takes up and hour here and there. But it's slowly racked up a lot of game time. 20% of players put in over 100 hours - 5% over 1000!
In some ways it's like a walking simulator. Other times it's like a space sim. Sometimes its a bit like Minecraft. It's very difficult to gauge if people will like it. What I will say is that there is at least 30 hours of solid, linear gameplay there. So even if you don't like the sandbox stuff on its own, there's enough value there for most people I think.
I have no idea how Next will alter things - but things like community missions, and MP quests, and the intriguing frigate system, on top of what's already there, suggest there'll be plenty of stuff to 'do' at least.
