No Man’s Sky was released 7 years ago yesterday (August 9th) on PS4 in North America, today (August 10th) on PS4 in Europe, and August 12th on Steam.

How long have you been playing and how many hours have you played?

I started around Beyond (2.0) and have almost 3800 hours played.

  • Cybermass@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I bought the pre release, got bored so quickly and never logged more than 2 hours for many many years. I thought they wouldn’t actually keep updating it but they did which is very cool.

    Now whenever I open the game to give it a try they force me to get all of this shit I don’t want like a freight thing and I need to build a base and it’s like dude I thought the whole idea was that you could do whatever you want, and then you force me to do all this tutorial shit that I don’t care about? I can’t get into it.

    The tutorials should be optional, I wanna explore the universe with just my ship and be a drifter for a while before I find a home planet I like to make my base, I wanna worry about freighters once I’ve experienced the rest of the game not right away. I want to learn the updates at my own pace but it won’t let me so I gave up on it.

    • Anomander@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The tutorials should be optional,

      I very much agree with this. There’s a ton of tutorial-style messaging that it would be nice to be able to customize and turn off. I have hundreds of hours at this point, but I still can’t pick up some map types - that I’ve already used - without the same tutorial mission about using maps popping up.

      • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s extremely aggressive too.

        Logged in and kapow, felt like I was hit with a lot of confusing new terminology. I played for 10 minutes than quit out of overwhelm.

        I’m excited seeing all these updates. But I’m so out of the loop.

        • NMSGalacticHub@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          I think part of the issue is, the game makes you feel like you’re supposed to “get it” all now. Whereas in the earlier versions, it just dropped you in the world, and you were expected to learn at your own pace.

          If you can get past the initial information overload, accepting that you aren’t going to retain or understand it all, then you can go back to playing with the “I’ll learn when I learn” mentality.

        • NMSGalacticHub@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          Kind of. You can just ignore them and do your own thing, but I don’t think there’s any way to get rid of the persistent messages.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I agree bought the preorder and the game was nothing that they claim it was. So I quit playing. Now can’t get into it. Makes you buy frieghters etc and the amount of money needed can’t be obtained. I too just wanted to be an explorer.

      Also they ruined one of my saves I had 100 hours on of building on a planet due to one of their updates.

      So I don’t play even though it was such an excellent concept.

      • XbSuper@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Easiest way to make money, is to hang out at the hub, and someone will likely gift you products worth several million each to sell.

        I also preordered, but I played long enough to amass some credits, and then learned how to dupe items, so money hasn’t been an issue for a long time. It definitely makes it easier to come back to when you have a few billion credits.

        Still, I think I’ve only got a couple hundred hours played. I want something to fight with my ship I spent hours upgrading (actually fight, not pathetic 1 shot sentinels). I don’t get why they allow you to build such powerful ships, with literally nothing to use them against.

      • Anomander@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        FYI, as long as you don’t have one already, you get your first freighter for free.

        After a reasonable amount of playtime, money is plentiful enough that those prices are an ‘every Tuesday’ kind of thing more than actually unattainable. After completing the main campaign and spending a bunch of time screwing around, at this point I have to store wealth as high-value items in storage, because selling a couple stacks will easily hit the wallet cap and selling more is a waste.

    • hawt@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Exactly my case. Got bored quickly and tried coming back a few different times for big updates. Never got past all the tutorials. I had more fun for the few hours I was flying around to other planets when I first got it.

    • NMSGalacticHub@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      I agree with you the tutorials should be optional, but there’s an easy enough way to bypass them… a little tedious, but easy.

      1. Start game in Creative Mode or Custom Mode with the easiest settings all enabled.
      2. Complete everything in the tutorials in the equivalent of god mode
      3. Switch back to regular Normal or Survival settings once you’re done with all tutorial stuff

      I know that doesn’t exactly fix your problem, but maybe it’ll make it small enough that you could enjoy the game again.

  • candle_lighter@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I wonder what I would have thought if I had been told 7 years ago what the state of the game would be in 2023

  • tgerulaitis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Started playing on Xbox when Next released, moved to the Switch version when that dropped. I probably have about 400 hours across both consoles.

    I still get excited when a new update or expedition drops. Usually I’ll end up putting in another 10-20 hours with every update, playing through the new content and exploring a few more star systems on my main save.

    It’s just nice to have a chill game to wonder around in, that’s not forcing me to keep logging in every day to grind out missions. Even in expeditions there’s usually loads of time to complete everything at a relaxed pace.

  • PenguinJuice@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Could never get into it. There’s always the overarching question of ‘why am I doing this?’

    Woulda been cool if they had actual enemies and cool combat and shit.

    • NMSGalacticHub@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      They’ve recently added far more difficult enemies. Combat could still use some work, but groups like the Galactic Hub (my civilization) host PVP competitions. Fighting another player is way harder than fighting a Sentinel.

  • Oderus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Loved playing this game for hours and hours until one day, I just stopped enjoying it. Not sure why really… just don’t enjoy playing it anymore.

    • Jeff Rose@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Once my original save got to the endgame, I spent a lot of time maxing out my money, freighter, bases, etc. and contributing to the glyph exchange subreddits. After a while I stopped playing but would check back in after a major update. I didn’t really play again seriously until the expeditions started. It’s the game I often go back to when I don’t have something else to play.

      • NMSGalacticHub@lemmy.worldM
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        1 year ago

        A lot of people find that civilized space is the thing that gets them to stay engaged in the end game. Helping to contribute to a community, helping new players, opening your own business to provide resources, stuff like that. I, of course, recommend the Galactic Hub as your first consideration for a civilization.

    • Zorque@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      That’s because the game is very empty. There’s lots to do… and none of it really means anything.

      It’s a great game to distract yourself from reality, but it’s not a particularly deep game.

      • Oderus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They said there are 4 Quadrillion stars and each has at least 1 planet you can land on. While true, each planet is one of ~8 variations and that’s it. Like… snooooze. Then they just added shit like underwater bases which were useless… or new underwater vehicles which were useless.

          • Zorque@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Oh, do the circle creature types have spikes now or something?

            Did they add a fourth enemy that attacks you?

            Are there more minerals you have constantly harvest to do the most basic of tasks?

            Or did they finally let you adjust how your camera beyond the tiny fraction of variation they allowed before?

            I heard they finally made it so the mecha is actually usable on PC now, that was cool of them.

      • NMSGalacticHub@lemmy.worldM
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        1 year ago

        That’s like saying a sandbox is only sand. It is what you make of it. It doesn’t need to be deep if your imagination is. Granted, that won’t be the type of game everyone enjoys. But for those who do enjoy it, they end up putting in 2,000 hours like me, and I’ve seen plenty of people with more hours than me too.

    • Anomander@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I still go back regularly, but after grinding out pretty much everything - there’s not really much left to do.

  • billothekid2@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I preordered on Steam, and I actually enjoyed it even way back then. Never really got into the hype, so I guess I was never too disappointed with the launch. It’s still a game I go back to just to chill. I highly recommend playing in VR if you have a headset.

    • AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Same. All I wanted out of it was flying off planets to other planets. And that was in and fun enough for 40 hours after release on my end.

  • gian @lemmy.grys.it
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    1 year ago

    I bought the pre release just a some days before the Steam release and played since, even if sometime I had paused for some months.

    And I bought it again on GoG, mainly because it not force you to be always updated to play, so every new release I let the steam players to be the beta tester 😁

  • Archmage Azor@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I started playing right around launch. I return now and then and probably have a few hundred hours in total across platforms.

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Always considered trying it, but that terrible first impression they made killed it for me.

    • AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Give it a go on sale. It’s one of the very few studios that went above and beyond to actually fix a PR fuck-up (and it was mainly that). Compare that to most studios with far more resources and reputation just throwing shit at the wall like Anthem and whatnot…

  • Razorwire666@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Haven’t played in a couple years after steam auto-updated the game and broke my mods and fucked up my saved game.