I need more danger, more risk not Permadeath

Archive NMS Next
21

I think in general there should be unpopulated regions in galaxies. Something where the survival aspects of the game truly can come into their own. Would also enable them to tone them down a bit more in the civilised parts. I mean, why is it that nobody is trading marrow bulb? I get that it’s so I have a reason to go into caves every now and then, but it makes no sense from a worldbuilding point of view. Give me a “desert” of 30’000 or so lightyears to cross where I might stumble over an outpost if I’m very lucky, and there’ll be survival enough. No easy to locate trading posts, no space stations (and therefore no teleport back home), no repairing my ship but with what I scrounge from the planets I’m passing over.
I’m not saying these things (economy scanner, base teleport, most of the resources traded if you know where to look) are bad, quite the contrary. The contrast between more trading oriented play and more survival oriented play would be refreshing though, and since we literally have all the space in the universe as a playground, that kind of simple to implement variation would have been on the top of my list to give the game more variety.

Talking about repairing your ship and stuff, I’d have slammed survival mode players with a 20% chance of a random tech breaking whenever you lose a hitpoint. Oh, the drama that could ensue! :smile:

3 Likes
22

Wow, if only HG is listening.

I think the pricing of stuff is a big problem. As someone said above, everything is Chicken Feed now. I grew 500,000,000 & bought a Freighter (Carrier). After that no more need to mine, so no risks to take. I grew Gravitino, not because I didn’t want the danger but because it reduced the grind. Make 1,000,000,000U & you stop valuing anything. Limit our wealth, or at least make it a damned sit harder to accrue. Make missions necessary & dangerous. As an example in 20 minutes last night, just to kill some time, I made 3 jumps and got Freighter Warp Reactors Tau & Theta. Obviously there was a method in my madness and my theory panned out. If I had needed a mission that sent me to a really nasty place to get something to trade for one them ,that would have been exciting.

On the subject of trade, why cannot we barter for stuff. We only have nanites which are way too easy to get. Why cannot we carry stuff we know one of the races or planets really need (yes I know Elite did that in 1984). If a 48-5 slot freighter needed to be full of frankincense & myrrh to get a “manger” then that’s life as we know it.

My one (who am I kidding) other gripe is space battles. If you have the shields & firepower it isn’t hard to win but I really struggle with a PS4 Controller. Please give me a Hotas then make it as hard as you like. As someone said earlier in Elite the Anarchy Systems were a deathtrap, as you were usually attacked by 4 real nasties the second you dropped out of warp. But you just got better at surviving.

One of the best thing HG did was recognise that in the future when someone has built a multi zillion unit space station they wouldn’t want some jerk with a new toy trying to land/crash by hand after a long and tiring flight destroying the space station. There would be compulsory docking computers and transponders in every space craft. I wouldn’t mind a bit of meteorite damage, and the like, just to make us carry “spares”.

By the way, does anyone know why, with all 3 Warp Reactors in a 2-3-1 setup doesn’t quite reach maximum on the bar?

23

No Man’s Sky could use some inspiration from traditional survival games.

A good start would be making Multi-tool charges less of a nuisance, and more of something that you need to consider as you travel. They already have so many products for charges that nobody ever uses because it’s much easier to mine up some Plutonium or Carbon and forget about it. Imagine running out of charge for your Boltcaster in the middle of a Sentinel fight—the pure panic you would feel. Fight or flight. It’d force you to get your hands dirty if you wanted to make it out alive. Making you resort to melee attacks, which could get even more interesting if they added stuff like laser swords. That need to think ahead could drastically improve the game’s feeling of progression. It’d make you feel like an intruder, as you should, unless you work to colonize a region and make it your own. Anybody who just wants to see the sights of the universe without any lingering fear of what could lie around the corner should play in Creative mode. :confused:

2 Likes
24

For increasing the danger and difficulty in NMS, I think:

  • We could have extreme fauna planets and sentinel hub worlds with more numerous, dangerous and perhaps larger enemies.
  • I like @jedidia’s idea have having wilderness or wild regions of space with lesser amentites and more things that want to eat or pirate you.
  • I would like to have a “high-level” mission to the World of Glass.
  • The problem with scaling the difficulty of all enemies is that you can never have the comfortable exploration regardless of your build up. It lessens the rewards for improving your character and would be hard to normalize for the upcoming MP. I think there is room to have new dangerous enemies, planets and areas of space.

I agree that combat was never a focus for me in NMS, but it would be nice to have dangerous situations available (or to sneak up on you) from time to time.

3 Likes
25

Perhaps I should have started this thread with " I need more risk ". I play this game as if I really had woken up with no memory and no idea where or why I was (grammar). All my decisions follow from that.

At the beginning of NMS there was plenty of risks which have just diminished to zero over time. Everyone above has really just been saying just that in one way or another. The risk that you could be stranded with no save & no fuel even for the MT is just as valid as being “eaten”.

So, HG, much more risk please!!! There are loads of good ideas above in this thread.

2 Likes
26

And thus, the NMS Jedi Order was born.
dah dah dah dahhhh dahhh

2 Likes
27

Reviving this thread because after taking the survey and watching Cobra go over the survey it occurred to me that there was almost no mention of combat or danger in any of the choices.

A lot of good ideas were brought up in this thread and deserve further discussion. Let’s be clear tho, the goal isn’t to turn NMS into an action heavy power fantasy. The goal is to introduce elements of tense and interesting encounters into an otherwise chill exploration experience. That being said, let’s examine Starbound:

Starbound and NMS share a lot of common elements: both are about exploration, space travel, finding loot, crafting and upgrading equipment, building bases, etc. Starbound is also more focused on action and platforming.

But where Starbound really shines imo, are the dungeons you often find on the planets. Or the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes you can board hostile ships and space stations. And it’s all optional.

Also the difficulty curve is more balanced. You gather gear to survive and repair your ship. You then go out into space and explore. You start to find inhospitable planets so you need to find and craft better gear to explore further.

I believe NMS could draw inspiration from this model; and I enjoy the idea of the difficulty increasing as you get closer to the centre. Because right now you can get all the best gear within a few hundred light years from your journey start, and proceed to coast to the centre. Imagine if you only found C class stuff around the outer rim, B class further in, A class much further in, and S class maybe 100k light years from the centre.

While I wouldn’t want enemies chomping at me every step of the way, it would be great to run into trouble once in a while. Explore an dungeon hidden in a cave network and run into an Angry Vykeen with a loaded multitool who actually shoots at you!

A friend of mine played NMS for a bit but got bored because most of his time was spent harvesting sodium to charge his shields against storms. And currently, storms are the biggest threat travelers face.

Again, I bring this up because of the survey. HG are asking what they should focus on the most? Everything on the list! And adding more danger! Better ship AI, ground combat, melee weapons, etc.

Except VR, most of us can’t afford VR right now. Give it a couple years :slight_smile:

5 Likes
28

What I think would be cool is if a few of the locked buildings had sentinels or other hostile NPCs that you could fight. Maybe that could be a mission- liberating a base.

Also, freighter battles would look EPIC. I would love being able to storm aboard a hostile freighter, fighting off sentinels and pirates…

1 Like
29

Exactly! And maybe in some cases the guards will open fire if you get close, or even on sight.

This! This could be so much fun! And if you didn’t want to get involved, I bet it would be entertaining to watch from the space station.

1 Like
30

The uncharted systems are a good start where you have no safe havens and often have extreme weather, but unfortunately there are no reasons for us to stay there for long (finding cool exotic planets is about the only one I can think of).

Here are a few good ways to increase mostly voluntary danger while also increasing the variety at the same time that I had thought about:

  • Make extreme fauna planets (big predators, gargantuan creatures, or infested with swarm or pack hunetrs, ect.)
  • Put hunting missions on the mission board for kills on extreme fauna planets.
  • Have extreme predators drop unique sellables or components for making specialized tech modules.
  • Have pirate havens in uncharted systems. In addition to increased dogfights, this could enable freighter battles, or even base combat with multitool wielding opponents like mentioned above. Perhaps claiming their riches and/or base area could be good reward and a reason to spend time in an uncharted system?
  • Have sentinel hub systems with sentinel strongholds along the same line as the pirate havens mentioned above.
  • Include space weather or dangerous regions/hazards in systems.
3 Likes
31

I would be more in favour of difficult combat if there were some point to it.

At the moment, if you fight predators, they just respawn. Endlessly. Fighting them rapidly becomes really tedious. I tend to abandon planets with lots of predators - after a while, I can’t be bothered with the irritation of constant fighting.

A similar, but worse, situation exists with the sentinels. You can’t beat them. However hard you fight, they just come back stronger and stronger - until your only choice is to run, hide, or die.

If you could clear an area of predators or sentinels, so they would never come back, then that would be an incentive to fight them.

If, for instance, before I could build a base, I had to clear that area of sentinels - but then they would stay permanently dead - then I would have an incentive for tougher combat. A hard fight with a reward at the end is worth doing. Constant fighting for no reason just becomes boring and annoying. A fight that you can never win is just pointless.

So by all means give us harder combat - but make it winnable. Give us a reason to do it.

7 Likes
32

I like the idea of creating a ‘safe zone’.
I love the challenge of extreme enviroments and annoy my multiplayer buddies by purposely building in extreme biomes.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere I’d like a rechargable suit module that repels nasties so you get a break and I could see how that could be extended to be a portable tech unit.
You place your repel tech unit and beasties stay away.

A cloaking device module for hiding from agressive drone sentinels would be good too. Give you a chance to explore hostile worlds.

Pirate systems with automated guards or mobile NPCs would be fun.

6 Likes
33

You can beat them temporarily. After fighting off a few waves they’ll stop. You’ll keep the 5-star rating, so they’ll be back if you leave the atmosphere, but you have your quiet for a while. I’m not sure for how long, though.

That actually sounds like a really great idea!

2 Likes
34

THEBOX

12 Likes
35

Beta version ? :grin:

1 Like
36

A cloaking device would be really cool; great idea man :slight_smile:

Especially with a cloaking device; be a great setup for espionage missions.

1 Like
37

These would be really fun to do. Hello Games mentioned they’re preparing for a big announcement; maybe we’ll see some of the cool ideas mentioned throughout this thread :slight_smile:

38

Very well said Polyphemus :smiley:

1 Like