I picked up EGS years ago and I'm just starting to play it. Right now I'm just gathering resources but I don't know what my next steps are supposed to be as far as base or vehicle building goes. NMS looks interesting as well and it's half off on GOG for the next few days.
Does anyone have any experience with these games?
NMS was fun to tinker with for a while but ultimately it was a shallow experience. Even long after launch, it's just a couple dozen systems mashed together with little thought to them. There's tools to build material collection including a power plant, or you can simply mix a couple ingredients in a furnace and get more than you started with. Why go through all of that effort to harvest materials when there's a simple duplication recipe?
This has always been my impression of it, even though I have never played it. From all of the videos and discussions I have seen, I have never been able to actually identify a gameplay loop. It just seems like busywork for busywork's sake.
I'm not even against time wasting busywork games. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time playing Stardew Valley. NMS just seemed pointless and boring.
It's one of those games where the procedural generation hurts it in the long run. Eventually you stop seeing new things, and exploration is boring. Unfortunate for NMS especially when (as far as I can tell) it's an exploration based game.
Empyrion is not good. They added a scripted story questline but it's about as crummy as Starbound. The shooting is really bad and the vehicle combat sucks too. Everything is just resource attrition with zero skill. The skillpoint leveling system is also pointless as it's just a recipe unlocker (you will be stuck by mineral availability long after you unlock everything). The game struggles to put together a progression since you need to visit a dozen planets to build anything decent but once you do there's nothing left to see. You can build this mega star destroyer but there is absolutely nothing to do with it. Gear and items are also basic and lackluster, and resource gathering is a massive pain.
Overall I think it's a terrible game and waste of potential. I have more fun with 7 days to Die even though it's a basic zombie/builder it just has a far better gameplay loop to it.
Agreed overall. The build system is quite solid, but it ends up being a massive disappointment because the overall game lacks even the most basic of solid gameplay design or polish, after years of half-assed work.
And 7 Days to Die, conversely, had a clear, fun, solid gameplay design almost from day 1, even when it was unpolished jank.
I refunded the game, can fully support your words. Was just not for me and it for the price also.
Agreed on Empyrion. I think it is very poorly optimized as well, I had to turn the detail way down to get anywhere near 60fps with a RTX4070.
I played No Man's Sky for a while. It was long after release. It's OK, but eventually, I ran up against a hard limit in how much shit I was allowed to build so I just quit. I don't know if they ever changed or removed that. It was kind of interesting to explore it though.
NMS is basically the 3D version of starbound in that it boasts unlimited planets despite each planet being a color swap replication of every other planet.
They still update the game with things here and there so there's that. Story is B at best, combat is lacking
No Man's Sky was an over-hyped sandbox game last time I played it but that was years ago. I can't imagine it evolved into anything worthwhile short of them scrapping both the engine and the core game design to the point where it literally became an entirely different game.
There's supposedly a big redemption story with NMS's development. Its launch was a disaster but they somehow managed to turn things around commercially at least.
They added a lot of new stuff and made a lot more things worth doing and flowing, but its still the same sandbox genre.
The redemption is that they spent years working and fixing it after being completely thrown to the gutter, something no one expected. Its less "omg they fixed it and its amazing now" and more "for no real money, they kept grinding anyway just to try and redeem their product."
Its a principle and moral redemption, not exactly a production one.
Commercially maybe, but I'll bet it's still shit.
NMS is still as vast as an ocean and as shallow as a puddle. Once you notice how "different but the same" the procedural generation is the magic wears off.
Elite is NOT too big, every other game is too small. Elite's scale is exactly one to one. Just because it doesn't have a Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography like every braindead Nintendo game ever doesn't mean it is bad. The endgame of Elite is to put your name in the galactic records: https://edastro.com/records/ It's just not a game for you, so stop bashing my game.
You are a goddamn woman. You refuse to leave other peoples shit alone. Go away.
What was the problem with Elite Dangerous?
What wasn't. Outside of the flight model and basic combat, everything is shit and they keep making it worse, not better. And you can't even really enjoy the combat because of the engineering grind. Want competitive weapons? Fly to fifteen different rando goons across the universe and do their fetch quests, so you can spend tens of hours fetching more bullshit materials from unfun gathering spots, or be locked out of PVP relevance.
Don't want to engage in that content? Many pve enemies are tied to your player rank, and once you get high enough THEY get the engineered shit.
No Man's Sky is my go-to fuckaround game. It came a long way from its launch debacle (though it was still amazingly chill and interesting for at least so many hours even then), with a little more structure, and they just introduced ship building. As it is, they've introduced several different quest lines, and some new mechanics. The rest of the posts seem a little out of date.
Wish I had a VR set for it.
Keep in mind that it's not really a quest focused game, but there are a slew of random quests at both the space stations and the Anomaly once you've got the story/mechanics quests out of the way.
I quite enjoyed NMS. I had it at launch and was very disappointed then came back to it years later to play with a friend of mine. I dont have time for it anymore. I barely do any gaming. It's one I wouldnt mind playing again. Especially since my dad still plays it. He worked in the oilfield his whole life and derives grest enjoyment out of setting up efficient refineries.
I found No Man's Sky fun (I played it for the first time maybe two years ago). I shifted to a new galaxy once and I felt I had enough, as I also maxed out myself and my ships' capabilities. You start getting used to the patterns in the procedural generation, and eventually I didn't feel like scanning flora and fauna at 100% for a planet because the bonuses didn't feel worth it, and then I didn't want to waste time scanning anything. A notebook and a few lucky trades and you have all the money you might want, and it's easier to just buy the materials you need than actually harvest.
It you get caught up in gatcha games with daily missions and stuff, you might get more mileage with the built-in multiplayer hub, along with dispatching Frigate missions, but everything had this samey-ness to it that just got exhausting and felt like work instead of discovery.
I've played both.
Empyrion I've played about 10 hours, it just hasn't hooked me. It has an interesting building engine, and the way all of the systems work together with power and processing. It can be a little janky at times. If one really wanted to get into it you could probably build some cool things. But I'm not sure there's much to do with the cool thing you built.
I've played a fair amount of NMS, I stuck with it from the Kickstarter, even after they were doing refunds. I never seem to get very far though. A new major update will come out, I'll start a new game, play for 5-10 hours, then get distracted and not come back to it. They keep adding more to the game, so I think there's plenty of entertainment to be had.
I don't have anything against either game, I wouldn't put them in the top of my list, they're both just OK.
I'll probably buy Light No Fire, the next game from the NMS guys, because I like the studio and want to see what they do with that.
NMS is interesting and has a lot of potential but I end up getting board as shit as it reminds me of Minecraft.
I enjoy NMS quite a bit, but after ~200 hours the main draw is looking for things I haven't already seen a million times. Also the game is hard to play because of the massive, constant crashing every 20 minutes that goes on for weeks after every update. I had to quit playing it again recently because they updated the space stations and now I can't accomplish a single mission in full before a hard crash to desktop. In 4 or 5 months they'll drop a stability patch and it'll go back to crashing every 3-4 hours and I'll get to enjoy it again.