When I started this game with a pistol & no accessories, Predators won frequently (usually) especially as the PS4 controller is not helpful. Even going in to space had its risks. SAVE was everything. But now most players have big guns/big weapons/big armour/big life support. So where is the danger & risk?
So planets or even systems where everything is a predator AND YOU need to get something there and only there. Predators that come from above from below ground. Think King Kong (Jack Black’s) and that valley that got everyone in the darkness.
I don’t want to be Attenborough showing me thinks that could kill me I want to be the first person to find out that this tiny thing can kill me (Game Only obviously)
What about no red paw prints.? What about sound only (I play with sound off as it offers nothing the screen doesn’t). To be honest if they did this for starships I’d be dead all the time but on a planet even your home planet this would get scary. I’ve had 2 attacks make me physically jump in hundreds of hours. Just 2. I want to be on my own in space on strange planets and scared.
This game gives you so many possible solutions but I need more problems. I have no idea if HG or anyone with influence reads this stuff but I hope so.
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One thing No Man’s Sky has always been sorely lacking is a difficulty curve. In almost all other video games, difficulty increases as you progress; each level gets harder, enemies become stronger as you venture out into the open world, or the game becomes harder as you level up.
NMS has no mechanic to increase difficulty, ever. The beginning of the game is always the most challenging because you start with nothing. As you gain tech and inventory slots, the game always invariably becomes easier, even in survival/permadeath mode.
Hello Games should implement a difficulty curve into the game in one of these three ways:
- As you gain inventory slots, enemies increase in health and damage they deal to you, forcing you to also get tech to fill those slots with or you will soon be overwhelmed.
- Enemies increase in health and damage dealt as you get closer to the center of the galaxy.
- Or, each new galaxy has enemies with increasing health and damage dealt.
Personally, I would like the middle one to be implemented the most, because HG used to say (before launch) that things would get “more alien” closer to the center, and they could also make things more difficult closer to the center as well when adding this feature.
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Personally, I have always thought of MNS as an RPG. And like every other RPG, there is an inherent flaw in the leveling system. Once you reach a certain point, there just is no challenge left. My comment in your last thread was not sarcastic, your best option to put the challenge back is to start over.
I have suggested this before, but you could effectively increase the difficulty yourself by removing some of those upgrades. Losing a damage upgrade in your multi-tool would make it appear as though the enemies have more health. Losing a shielding upgrade would make it appear like enemies dealt more damage.
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But that’s not a “fun” way to get a challenge Xion. A gamer wants to get stronger so he/she can go out and seek a greater challenge to test that new power on, but in NMS that new challenge doesn’t exist.
Edit: Actually, that’s not true, you can purposefully aggravate the sentinels and try your power on walkers and the Sentinel warship. Only problem is that it is designed to never let you escape alive after that.
I never saw NMS as a combat game. I don’t mind a little combat here and there, but I wouldn’t want it to become the game’s focus.
I find it hard to get my head around the idea that things can only be entertaining or interesting if they’re difficult.
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Sure, but then when the monsters get stronger you will want better equipment. Then stronger monsters. Then better equipment. And on, and on, and on.
And when you have the 100+ upgrades to everything and are fighting space whales in your battlecruiser, and you get bored of that too because it’s “too easy”, then what?
I always thought NMS was supposed to be an exploration game, not a combat game. I can see why you want it, but I agree with Polyphemus. I hope it doesn’t become a focus.
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Me either. I’ve never looked at NMS as a combat game. But, more of a chill, exploration game of discovery.
Ya might consider playing the PC version. (Mods) If you want the PS4 controller feels, that’s fine … just hook it up to the PC.
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This would get old quickly, as now we’re having an oblivion-esque leveled world. In which there is no difficulty curve because the difficulty never changes, because every lousy critter constantly scales to your level. Which is even more boring than a sinking difficulty curve. That at least makes you feel more powerful.
That would be a lot better, imho, but it still doesn’t change the fact that you can get everything you need from a few systems, no matter how close to the center they are. So what it would lead to in the end wouldn’t really be a difficulty curve. Players would just get all their gear together far from the center, and then have a pretty flat difficulty all the way in until maybe they’re pretty close to it.
And since atlas rises you don’t even have to get to the center anymore, so the whole thing kind of falls apart.
That would be almost pointless I think, as very few players strive to progress through galaxies. Most stay in Euclid, and multiplayer’s only going to increase that. Some cross one galaxy, and then play in the next. Only a handful of players move from one galaxy to the next relentlessly. And judging by the popularity of Eisentam, most players don’t seem to be looking for more action when picking their next galaxy.
What they should be doing, in my opinion, is diversify conflict levels / hazardous planets and their rewards.
Let’s look at the classical elite for a moment (not elite dangerous, that suffers a similar problem like NMS): You could rack in stupendious profits by trading with anarchical systems. But that came with the implied promise that if you’re not ready for them, you will die. There might heve been a one in a hundred lucky strike that you didn’t get intercepted on your way to the spacestation, but it was far too little to make the reload cycle worthwhile. You outfited your ship until you could be reasonably sure not to be wolf-fodder.
Similarly, I’d like to see extreme planets to be more like the locked-off zones in Metroid. Sure you could go there without the appropriate gadget, but you won’t survive, period. Imho the current system of “more hazard just makes your meters drain faster” is the biggest problem here. There should be sideeffects that just need a certain level of protection to be mitigated.
And then of course there’s predators, with which a lot could be done. HG should take a look into a Warhammer rulebook to get a few ideas how to make creatures terrifying…
- Maybe some people want a scaling difficulty? Better than no difficulty.
- No, you don’t have to go to the center. But some people might if they wanted it more difficult.
- Again, maybe people would start exploring other galaxies if there was any kind of incentive? Like higher difficulty?
I agree there. We need variation in the danger, not just higher damages and such.
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Isn’t the possible PVP contributing to the game difficulty in a way?
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I didn’t read sarcasm. I just never want to do anything again. I learnt Bridge, got good enough to win some competitions with various “lesser” partners (the better ones already have a partner) and The End. Same with Elite 1984, sat outside space stations, shot at it, waited for the police to come (lots of them) killed them and shot the space station again. Didn’t even bother with saves. as soon as I was Elite I flew back to Lave (original planet) and landed with zero currency. The End
I want to read a few more before I write again.
Every now and then I run in to a spot of bother in the game while exploring, be it accidentally falling down into a deep cave while running from a planet full of hungry deer bent on eating my flesh or the environment getting at me unexpectedly or a cluster of everything at once.
Earlier today I was in a flourishing planet with severe wind weather, an abundance of animals all trying to kill me with a large spawn rate and while fighting them off some sentinels came along, I also had low energy and low shields as well as low hazard protection.
Sometimes in my wandering the minor threats can pile up and get me unexpectedly. I haven’t died in a long long time but it’s been close, its easy to run away from everything and recharge but if I find myself fending attackers I try and stick around for the little challenge the universe throws at me.
Generally I never use health or shield upgrades on my exosuit, I usually just stick with stamina and jet pack upgrades so it makes those situations a little more risky.
It’d be a hard game to create a difficulty curve for but I much prefer the sporadic ramps in difficulty I’m experiencing. Seems much more natural to the vibe of the game, never know how a planets going to treat you until you get out and explore a little.
I could go days or weeks without running into difficulty so when I do its that little bit more exciting and special.
Just my personal take on the matter
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I have mentioned Elite & shooting the space station so already done the killing sentinels thing , even did the bait pirates thing
I don’t think I want bigger monsters and have certainly had 5 big cats *6 sentinels all at the same time and only a tiny useless pistol (C). I escaped by ingenuity & stealth not firepower. I should say I am rubbish at both Space Flight & Ground Shooting yet 34 Slot S Freighter (should be called Carriers) 24 Slot Alien MT, 999,999,999U 48 Slot S Haulers & Exotics & no cheats I know of. Running works well.
But couldn’t the enemy just be smarter & more cunning. I have had packs of warthogs that give up if you run. I have had Tigers prowl below my horizon but a red paw giving their position away.
If you saw those snakes on Attenborough or the fish from under the sand that is danger.
As an example my mineral was surrounded by nasties. S I jumped from one object to another, built I tower they couldn’t jump to and the mine away. If the big cats came in to the Emeril cave making mining much less safe.
It isn’t about bigger better guns or enemies (how’s that worked out for our world ?) it’s about bigger challenges & bigger risks. Like I said, a planet where everything wants to kill you but you need something there. Those Triffids able to move like… well Triffids. Puzzles to be solved.
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Here you have hit a nail. Some people left their 1st world as soon as the game told them to. Others stayed around and got much of what was needed locally. Some farmed, some missioned, some hunted. All of these show character traits. You could have been a botanist or zoologist as you like to catalogue new lifeforms. I clearly don’t like being told what to do (no missions for me), so self-employed lecturer (I didn’t say I didn’t like telling other people what to do).
The game is great because it can successfully be played in so many different ways but even your ladyship will go “seen that” once too often.
Here, in a few peoples messages we have given many ideas for HG, I just hope they are ahead of us and 1.5 is more than just networking.
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I would like more danger as well. I think that the game should stay chill for the most part, like it is now, but you could go seek out the danger if you wanted.
Systems or planets that are far more dangerous, but have great rewards would be cool, because if you were looking for combat, you could seek them out. Meet your friends there, and take on an actual challenge! I think that there should be more varied types of danger, besides pirates, 4 types of sentinels, and arbitrary annoying critters. (And lasher plants?).
Anyone else think that a sort of monster hunter type quests would be cool? You have to go to a certain system and seek out and take down a bigger, stronger creature with more complex AI? Then take back a DNA sample or something to get your reward?
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Guess No Man’s Sky is a game that has already produced so much imaginative gameplay that there will really be no ending in whatever the player can come up with.
The programmers will go along with it as long as they are able to procedurally generate it all.
But this new way of playing and programming games is a learning process from both sides, at least I look at this that way, having programmed a few small games in the far past (at the beginning of the 3D virtual reality revolution). What we are doing in NMS is testing out all the possibilities there are at this moment.
The holographic player is a toy of Microsoft and it’s holographic “glasses” are still too expensive for the general public to buy (about 3000 dollars at this moment I believe). But here we already get a taste of what the future could hold.
I hope there will come some easy programming language in the game so we can change some things to our own likings and kind a have a say in the way our own experience of the game will develop…
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I completely agree with your first point there. The hunger and imagination of the growing community will possibly be what drives the Devs to evolve the game over time. Potential from imagination is limitless; BUT so is the stretch of hype that accompanies it.
If we are loud enough to tell them (And they are not community deaf like…(Ahem) EA), they will experiment with new modes to create that sense of danger.
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Ah, yes. That is one of the biggest issues indeed, especially with the sentinels.
It’s kind of weird if I have to put an effort into making the enemy summon more backup before I accidentally obliterate it. I think sentinel spawning is a point where a leveled aproach could work really well, and would even make sense.
After all, if a policeman calls for backup and shouts something about a heavily armed madman driving through the city with a tank, you don’t just send one other policeman…
As for the rewards, I think they kind of wanted to go there with the gravitino balls and all those “endangered resources”. Problem is, those items seem to have been completely forgotten during the great inflation that happened at pathfinder and continued in atlas rises. They’re still 20 to 30’000 Units, which wasn’t much to begin with, and barely counts as grocery money in the world of atlas rises. If those things were, say, 500’000 a pop, I might get into fights with sentinels a lot more often…
What if you could travel to the edge of the galaxy and explore there, all Unknown Regions-like?
Make it so that outside of a galaxy, it’s rewarding but dangerous. And, if you travel far enough out, you could, like, stumble upon another galaxy.
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