4575

I also ran into the issue of having my flight control inverted for normal play making it messed up in vr. Grabbing the stick and pulling back would make the ship head down, and pushing forward would make it go up. I only spent about 10 minutes playing around on my very safe planet, so I will have to spend some more time tonight figuring things out. Teleport worked well enough, but I should also try smooth movement. I still need to try the exocraft as well.

4576

I may be misunderstanding this game (which I’ve played four hours of and really enjoyed, even though I’m now sidelining it for a while to finally play Middle Earth: Shadow of War), but this seems to me to be one of those games where the game basically is the grind?

I mean yes, it looks like there is nominally some “main quest,” but so far that basically consists of getting me to explore new planets to pick up foozles to make foozles to be able to pick up more foozles to make more foozles. And at some point, I get to make a base on foozle planet somewhere.

I’m okay with this.

4577

It’s a chill exploration game with a grind in terms of getting cooler stuff. Better ships, better multitools, that sort of thing. I don’t feel the game is nearly so grindy as something like Elite, though.

4578

Yeah I think most of the grind here is up to you. I think if you really wanted, you could get by with just your initial ship and explore until the end of time.

4579

To me, I think the key is that the parts of the game loop that have you doing the kinds of things I like doing, like shooting or flying in space or thinking through something, are extremely minor. Most of the time is spent collecting resources, which I have a serious aversion to.

4580

I’d say when NMS was first launched, and for the first couple of updates thereafter, you could argue that “grind” was a significant part of the gameplay. However, after the NEXT update a year ago, and even more so now after the Beyond update, I feel like “grind” is no longer an issue.

The reason for that is the refinements Hello Games has made in both the story quests they’ve added and in the general gameplay itself. When you first start out, technically you are “grinding” a little as you’ll need to collect a lot of different resources to do many tasks and get yourself up and running, however the way this is presented through tutorials and early story missions makes it feel like you’re acheiving goals rather than simply collecting a bunch of random resources. As you progress through the main storylines and explore through dozens of systems, you’ll collect a lot of the resources you’ll need just because you’re thinking “oh…there is a big deposit of X right here, I should put 1000 into my suit/ship/freighter storage now because I’ll probably need it later”. Pretty soon you become OCD about topping off your stored supplies of everything, which only takes a few seconds here and there, and the “grind” vanishes. Now that Beyond has increased the capacity of storage slots, this is even more relevant.

In the 250 hours I’ve been playing the only time I really felt like I was doing something repetitive just to achieve a goal was when that goal was self-imposed. For example, I really wanted an S-Class Fan Wing Hauler with max slots and the cool purple exhaust engines. It was my dream ship. In order to obtain it, I had to warp to over a dozen high economy systems, camp out on trading post landing platforms, and watch ships come and go until I was finally in the right place at the right time to purchase one off an alien pilot. It took me several hours of non-exciting gameplay, but I felt like the end result was worth it, and again, it was something I choose to do, not something the game required of me.

4581

I mean, I understand that, but a lot of exploration/crafting games are defined by the grind, so to speak. If someone told me they hate moving blocks around in mincraft because it’s a grind, well … wrong game for them, right? Or that taming dinos in ARK is too grindy. That’s IS ARK in a nutshell. In a similar vein, if people don’t like exploring and getting resources in No Man’s Sky, that doesn’t bode well.

What some people call grind, other people call a game. It’s akin to saying the leveling is a grind in an RPG. Well, yeah. That’s part of it though. :) Otherwise we could just read a book and get a better story in most cases.

If I was to pinpoint any real grind in this game it would be resource management, aka inventory and storage. Now THAT is a grind.

4582

Unless that just happens to be your favorite game loop activity.

4583

Surely the most rewarding once you start getting some breathing room!

4584

I’m actually disappointed in how much slack they give players. 2 slots is my optimal inventory management game. So much planning!

4585

I finally had a chance to sit and play for an hour or so last night now that all of the issues I was having post-Beyond seem to be fixed. I played my existing character, as I have zero desire to start over again after spending 200+ hours getting to where I am currently in the game, including the ship I mentioned above, a freighter I like, fully upgraded everything…etc…

So it doesn’t look like any brand new story elements were added with Beyond. I mean, there are changes to the existing Artemis and Atlas paths, tutorials, and lots of new NPC missions both solo and co-op, but there isn’t a brand new storyline for players who finished Artemis and Atlas to follow. That’s fine, as I’m cool with just exploring some of the new and changed content, and I still want to try my hand at constructing a cool base, especially now that there are so many additional elements for base building.

After warping around, dropping through a black hole and exploring a bit, I decided to use the portal at the space station to zip back to my old existing base. Of course it’s totally powered down, but I had already visited the Nexus and purchased blueprints for both the manual power source and the solar panels and batteries. I tried following the base construction power tutorial, and laid down the manual power source and fueled it. Then I tried connecting my relatively small base with the power lines. Holy shit, for not really having much of a base, it draws a metric shitton of power, way more than the power source was able to provide. What really annoyed me too was that it consumed the fuel even though it wasn’t able to power anything. Nice.

So I think I will dismantle my base and attempt to discover and move to a planet with a nicer biome that also has geopower points or whatever they’re called. If I start all over again I should be able to sync the power supply with the base needs as I build, rather than trying to play catch up on a half-assed existing base.

I’ve never moved my base before. Do I just deconstruct all the base elements to regain resources and then pick up the base computer to carry to my new home?

4586

Yeah, power draw is insane. You don’t need your portal to be powered up to portal to YOU from remote locations. You only need to power it up when you want to portal out.

What I’ve done is put things I don’t need on in their own large room (I use the square one not the circular one.) Then I run power to a switch on the floor, then from there to that room. When not in use I just turn the whole room off. I have another room for always on things I use, etc. I do detest that not all things can be on normal base tiles but must be in one of those rooms.

Be careful with that if you haven’t finished the base constructions quests. I think they are tied to that one lone base computer. New ones don’t generate the quest, so you may end up resetting it if you move the base computer.

4587

Huh, I wonder if that is a bug? As long as you have gotten to the first “Searching Archives …” you can move it I think. I am sure I have in prior saves.

I spent a bit of time in previous versions testing the experimental branches. They do mean it when they say to back up the save, and then do not continue a save run in experimental back on the main branch even after roll in of the patch. So I did a lot of starting and stopping and branching timeline saves for a bit.

4588

Speaking of that, does this game update via sync or something? I’ve not seen a game download under my downloads but I note they have actually patched multiple times since the BEYOND launch.

I don’t even know how to check my version in-game.

4589

Not sure what you aren’t seeing. I do see downloads complete on my steam download bar. I just looked though, I do have steam set to not allow background downloads. So maybe they can. No clue on version myself. Of course, you do the opt in/out of the beta branches on the steam properties tab, so I’m not counting that.

Whats the number in the bottom right on the load screen? Maybe?

4590

For my portal and storage containers I placed a couple proximity switches so they only power up when I come near.

4591

Not true, or at least, not always true. I packed up and moved while about a third way through the base computer mission (post Beyond), and the new base computer picked up the mission just fine. Same goes for the five specialist terminals, if you’re still working on any of those.

As for the logistics, you get about half your materials back if you simply delete the old base from the old base computer. They’ll just be sitting inside a salvage unit whenever you plop one down. Just keep in mind that the salvage unit only stores mats from the most recently deleted base. Or if you take a few minutes to manually delete (I bet you have enough inventory slots to fit everything) you get 100%.

4592

I don’t know if it is normal, but the base computer keeps sending me to the same terminal to get data. The story it gives me seems to be progressing though, so I guess it is working.

Edit: Anyone know how to copy the universe address that shows in the bottom left corner in photo mode? It says copy address and hide there, but I don’t see a way to do it.

4593

Good to know. Now I wonder if I delete my starter base if the quest continues at another? Yes I have multiple “bases.” I’m just putting them up to warp around.

4594

I wanted to spin this up again but I was very disappointed with the support for ultrawide displays. It’s playable I guess, if you don’t mind a stretched interface, which I do. Especially how blurry it looks. Blech. There used to be mods that supposedly worked around this but none of them work with the latest update.