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Comment by riotnrrd | Hacker News Reader

I love this game so much. First of all, it's kind of technologically astounding. You can get in your spaceship and take off from a planet and fly to another one and land, all without any loading screens. The planets themselves are sculptable isosurfaces (only to an extent, though; you can't drill a hole through to the other side) and littered with points of interest, unique animals and plants.

It's quasi-social -- you can play with friends or go on missions with randos if you want -- but fundamentally a mellow, solitary sandbox to play in however you'd like. I like to collect neat looking spaceships, some people build amazing bases, and others basically use it as an outer space dog fighting game.

It's absolutely worth picking up if you want to putter around for a hundred or so hours in outer space.

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> all without any loading screens

It's like Elite: Dangerous or Minecraft. There are all kinds of loading screens, but they're all pretty cleverly hidden. On planetary surfaces, you can see chunks load as you drive or fly towards surface features. Every teleport is a loading screen. So is entering and exiting a vehicle, landings and takeoffs, entering/dropping from NMS's equivalent of supercruise, or warping to other systems.

My one big gameplay complaint is how lost and directionless I feel in NMS compared to Elite: Dangerous. Like, in Elite I can see a nebula or some other galactic destination and plot a course toward it, settle in and explore an area, and so on. But I never quite feel like I can know where I am or see—at the galactic level—where I'm going. I'm not a huge fan of the spaceflight mechanics, either. And VR in NMS seems completely broken on my brand new gaming machine, which ultimately got me to uninstall it.

I feel like I got a lot of entertainment out of my $6 NMS purchase, so none of these criticisms are to say the game is bad. If you've never played it and think you might enjoy a hybrid of Minecraft and Elite: Dangerous, it's the game for you! And I'm very glad to hear the game and the player base are still lively. Great community there, especially with player groups like that taxi service, or various colonies, or resources like the Glyph Exchange.

P.S. I have to second the "simultaneously too small and too big" feeling of NMS. Space in both KSP and Elite feels scaled well. Then again, I came to NMS late, so maybe how KSP and Elite do things only feels natural because I played those first.

In order to have a realistic, but reasonably playable space game, you need one of 1. Distances compressed, 2. Time compressed, 3. Unrealistic speeds

KSP uses [1] (scaled down solar system) and [2] (user-controlled time passage), although [1] can be modded away by using a realistic solar system mod. Elite:Dangerous uses [3] (warp drives). I've never played NMS but it sounds like they use [1] and maybe [3]?

Mostly [3], I think. There are a few different levels of plaid speed for the ship's engines. If you want to walk on the ground, it rapidly turns into "this will take days or weeks". Similarly, different levels of implausibly fast mode in the ship remove multiple orders of magnitude from travel time.

They may have also used [1] for NMS. I don't think it really matters, given the game play, to be honest.

All of the planets are something like 20 km diameter IIRC, so [1] is very much a thing. They're annoyingly big to walk around, but tiny compared to earth's moon.

I love it too, but after playing KSP so much, it bothers me how compressed space is… although a huge class gripe about NMS is how empty it feels, I actually feel like it’s not empty enough at times. Space doesn’t feel big, and solar systems feel like planets and moons are stacked on top of each other.

Galaxies and systems in NMS both feel very flat compared to both KSP and Elite: Dangerous. Bodies in NMS systems are just there, nothing really in an orbit or anything. There's no structure. No real ring systems. Stellar phenomena is just RNG. Every planet is landable. Interplanetary travel is in very straight lines. You can't even fly to the stars in a system, as they're just skybox objects.

At the galactic level, well, first, I never know where I am or what direction I'm going. In NMS, you don't see some oddly bright splotch of light slowly resolve into huge nebula as you slowly jump toward it, like you might in Elite. NMS doesn't seem to render much of the surrounding galaxy when it generates the skybox. There's definitely no sense of galactic orientation because there isn't anything like the Magellanic Clouds or distant galaxies off in the far distance. Your only views of the galaxy are either of the immediate vicinity or a tiny thumbnail.

But hey, without getting too far into spoilers, the whole "obviously procedurally generated" thing is part of the NMS universe's conceit, right? And out of universe, it's clear that Hello Games explicitly set out to *not* create a sim like KSP or Elite: Dangerous but rather something with a unique story and a different player experience entirely. I respect that. The game's a lot of fun, and the story it tells is deeply engaging, if that's what you want.

Elite dangerous' star model is slightly more rooted in reality but it's just as RNG as NMS. And it doesn't even have planets with atmosphere yet (if they ever come because they seem to have given up on it).

Also they're moving away from VR support rather than towards like NMS.

I used to love E:D but it's really gone to shit sadly and all the promises are moot. No atmospheric planets, no ship interiors, no VR when walking around.

It's a shame because it was building up to be great. Then frontier lost interest and started pulling resources away towards their rollercoaster and dino games :(

I think it's peak was when the deep core mining came out. And the decline with Odyssey which I never really played because they dropped VR.

I still have to try NMS. But at least the planets are more interesting.

> * Elite dangerous' star model is slightly more rooted in reality but it's just as RNG as NMS.*

I'm well aware of how Elite: Dangerous's procedural generation works. Frankly, I think it's is even more impressive than NMS's, since the Stellar Forge-generated galaxy has real structure to it: the spiral arms, areas of greater and lesser density, and so on.

> they seem to have given up on [planets with atmospheres]

Odyssey planets do have atmospheres, so I'm not sure what you mean.

> Also they're moving away from VR support rather than towards like NMS... [Frontier] dropped VR.

Well, first of all, FDev didn't drop VR. It works fine in Elite: Dangerous Odyssey. The way they implemented on-foot VR as theater mode instead of attempting to hack some kind of room-scale VR system into their engine—which has great support for seated VR—seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Contrast that with how NMS implements vehicle controls in VR. They do room-scale VR, so there's no transition to seated VR when entering a vehicle, which is controlled—and I use that term loosely—by basically waving your fists around in the air to work controls you can't feel. It's pretty awful.

Second of all, VR in NMS was very badly broken as of August, the last time I tried it out. And I'm running a brand new 5700X and 4070 Ti that can play Elite: Dangerous Odyssey on VR ULTRA at 45 fps worst case.

As far as the current direction of Elite: Dangerous? Sure, there's plenty to criticize, but after over 10k hours, I'm still really enjoying it. I'm still learning new things. I'm still following the story. I'm still engaging with other players. I'm still buying ARX. With NMS, after 367 hours every system, every planet, every station, every alien has started to feel the same. I no longer enjoy it. But hell, you might really, really love NMS. If you can pick it up on sale, you should get it.

> Odyssey planets do have atmospheres, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Only light atmospheres where you have to wear a spacesuit. The real atmospheric planets with cities and roads etc never came despite being promised.

> Well, first of all, FDev didn't drop VR. It works fine in Elite: Dangerous Odyssey. The way they implemented on-foot VR as theater mode instead of attempting to hack some kind of room-scale VR system into their engine—which has great support for seated VR—seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Contrast that with how NMS implements vehicle controls in VR. They do room-scale VR, so there's no transition to seated VR when entering a vehicle, which is controlled—and I use that term loosely—by basically waving your fists around in the air to work controls you can't feel. It's pretty awful.

To me it breaks immersion completely which is the whole point of VR. Controls can be adjusted with the controllers, I play msfs2020 like that all the time. Projecting a virtual screen is not VR. Just a cheap shortcut.

I'm very disappointed with Elite Dangerous :( and the Devs totally disregarding the community doesn't help. But anyway maybe NMS will be nicer. I haven't played E:D since Odyssey came out. Without real VR there's no point anymore.

As far as I understood from the forum they're locked into this engine but all the people who knew how it worked internally have left so they can't build new features into it anymore.

And regarding the direction of development, there just isn't really any anymore. It's just stopped. It's like maintenance mode.

> But hey, without getting too far into spoilers, the whole "obviously procedurally generated" thing is part of the NMS universe's conceit, right?

Could you give spoilers and/or elaborate? I'll probably not going to play this

https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Lore#The_Atlas

> fundamentally a mellow, solitary sandbox to play in however you'd like.

So a Minecraft competitor, basically? I can see that. I have played it and enjoyed it, I think Minecraft does it better overall but some variation is nice.

This is going to sound shallow but it’s so hard for me to play rpgs that don’t graphically look good or realistic. The art in that game cheapens it so much for me I can’t really play it.

That does sound shallow, actually. Once you learn to leave behind the vain realm of sensory experience, then you'll really be able to enjoy quality video games.

It is shallow. Still, I need both of those things to happen together. Gorgeous graphics along with good gameplay and mechanics.

to each their own I guess. Personally I avoid good graphics. It's not that I actually dislike them, but rather ive found across many games the rpgs and systems designed by small teams, often lone developers, have a lot more quirk and charm that I enjoy. I tend to love and embrace janky gameplay though, so I guess its not for everyone. Some highlights include cataclysm dda, dwarf fortress, rule the waves

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