Sentinels Are Terrible

[Guru]

I have to say, sentinels may be some of the worst-implemented video game enemies I have ever seen. It's incredible the game is this old and this element of the gameplay is this unpolished.

1. They exist only to slow down gameplay.

Only in the facility-raid quests and events, where either you infiltrate or destroy silos, do they actually serve a purpose, standing between the player and 'quest rewards'. An antagonistic force to be overcome and justly rewarded for the effort.

In all other respects they exist to be annoying. They pop up on worlds, literally phasing in through the ground (breaking immersion because, come on), only interacting with the player when they try to do what 80% of the gameplay suggests you do; mine resources. They zoom over, literally arrange themselves to be in your face, and go 'HEY WUT YOU DOIN, STOP' and you have to. You just... stop, shift over, and continue on. It's minor, but like mosquitoes, minor irritations that pile up can eventually be enraging.

UNLIKE mosquitoes, though, you can't just swat them because...

2. You can't beat them.

You can fight sentinels, sure. I'm only a few dozen hours in and already fights with even walkers are trivial. Doesn't matter. They can't be beaten, they can't be stopped. Killing one summons more. Killing those summons even more. There's no 'final boss'. No big challenge at the end that rewards the player for sticking with it. Just endless waves.

So you can't just fight them. Like it or not, they, at one point or another, HAVE to be escaped from. And you know how you do that? You hide. Which eats up time and is boring. It's pretty awful game design that I'm sitting in my ship casually flying over the landscape checking my phone and reading twitter, waiting for the sentinels to magically forget that I exist so I can go back to playing the game.

Also, explain to me how getting in my ship and flying 100u away from an angry sentinel makes them forget about me, but getting in my ship and flying much FURTHER away into orbit summons seek-and-destroy sentinels who have perfect ability to find me, wherever I am, regardless of speed or location, until the end of time.

3. They have no character.

They're robots. Automotauns. They appear to exist as a universal constant, like hydrogen. They're endless, they don't communicate, they feel nothing. Smashing them carries with it all the satisfaction and drama of crunching leaves in my hand. A dull, boring exercise in futility. I will die and my atoms will decay to nothing and there will still be an infinite number of copy-and-past sentinels left to wander around interrupting gameplay.

I cannot imagine how anyone things these things were a good idea. They suck, top to bottom. They have a boring design, they interrupt gameplay, they reduce fun, they add nothing.

[caduceus_hermes]

They are part of the lore of the game though. You are meant to be annoyed by them

[hyperion]

I agree. I would be fine if you could just figtht and kill them on a planet. But no, they will chase you through the universe. No fun, you should be able to eliminate them from a planet and live in peace.

[AsakuraYoh]

They are like an antivirus. They pop anywhere to protect the simulation

[ppaladin123]

For a game that is supposed to be a chill exporation experience:

1. The sentinels are deeply annoying and a bad mechanic as you noted.
2. Every NPC is relentlessly dark and psychologically broken. Seriously, they are all addicts or depressives or being hunted or traumatized by horrible attrocities.

I like the game a lot but the tone is relentlessly bleak for basically no reason.

[jrista]

I think Sentinels are explicitly designed to be as annoying as hell. I get that, and have accepted it. They annoy the crap out of me, 100% of the time.

I think the main issue is there is no longer any window of opportunity to END the damnable warrant level progression. All previous versions of the game had that, and it was, IMO, utterly essential for the enjoyment of the game. The problem with NEXT is, if you aggro a sentinel, for ANY reason, no matter how benign...even mining a darn itsy bitsy rock (!!), you are effectively screwed for the next 10 minutes or so as you try to dodge the darn things. They seem to have x-ray vision, they see through everything, so there is nowhere you can hide. There is no escape to space since they just attack you there as well. That is just dumb.

We really need that window before the first sentinel (or rather, any wave of sentinels) sends out for backup to END the darn thing. That was great before...as if you wanted to fight sentinels, you could, for almost as long as you wanted to. If you didn't want to fight them, then you could just end that first sentinel quickly, and move on with your game.

The only real solution seems to be to kill them fast and run hard enough that you get so far away from them they cannot find you. If a hound or walker has shown up already, that seems to be near impossible. If they can fix this aspect of the sentinels, then the fact that they are just fundamentally designed to be annoying little ♥♥♥♥♥ will be fine, and I could live with that. :P

[Mr. Bufferlow]

As you get more experience and better addons for your tool and suit, they are not really that bad.

If you are fresh to the game, avoid irritating them. If they start to scan you, quit what you are doing and move away. Get up high- on buildings, large plants, etc. They are pretty dumb so rarely find you.

Mine from a distance- they will not be able to figure out that you are doing it.

If you do upset them- and they call reinforcements- hide in a building or cave.

If you really upset them (four or more stars) you need to get to a station to reset your wanted level.

[jrista]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

As you get more experience and better addons for your tool and suit, they are not really that bad.

I've got a full size 24-slot A-class filled with a bunch of S-class scatter blaster and plasma cannon upgrades. It can make pretty short work of sentinels, killing them fast isn't the issue. The problem is they never stop coming. Once they start, there is no end unless you can figure out how to run far enough fast enough. I've even hit my ship, and fled to the other side of the planet. First sentinel that phases through the ground there immediately aggros me, and on and on it goes. The only way I have ever been able to end it all is to flee on foot as fast as I can. I have to grab as many of the blue flowers as I can and jetpack away as fast as possible, behind as much landmass as possible. After the full 60 seconds, if something hasn't found me yet, it'll finally end.

It shouldn't be that hard to end the darn warrant. That's my beef with it all. Sometimes I am fine killing sentinels for a while. Sometimes I NEED to for materials. But I'm usually not into fighting them for endless hours. When I'm done, I just want to be able to be done. :P

[sffartist]

the only thing I've been able to do is to create a tunnel with the terrain tool, shoot at one, get it to follow me into the tunnel far enough, I run past it and close the hole up. At least while I am gathering it cannot touch me

[therealshakur]

Originally posted by jrista:

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

As you get more experience and better addons for your tool and suit, they are not really that bad.

I've got a full size 24-slot A-class filled with a bunch of S-class scatter blaster and plasma cannon upgrades. It can make pretty short work of sentinels, killing them fast isn't the issue. The problem is they never stop coming. Once they start, there is no end unless you can figure out how to run far enough fast enough. I've even hit my ship, and fled to the other side of the planet. First sentinel that phases through the ground there immediately aggros me, and on and on it goes. The only way I have ever been able to end it all is to flee on foot as fast as I can. I have to grab as many of the blue flowers as I can and jetpack away as fast as possible, behind as much landmass as possible. After the full 60 seconds, if something hasn't found me yet, it'll finally end.

It shouldn't be that hard to end the darn warrant. That's my beef with it all. Sometimes I am fine killing sentinels for a while. Sometimes I NEED to for materials. But I'm usually not into fighting them for endless hours. When I'm done, I just want to be able to be done. :P

they are so easy to get away from. you are obviously doing something wrong.

pay attention to the timer and just move at a regular pace one you get a jump on them, going to fast will cause you to run into new ones. if there is a building near by then just go inside and wait out the timer. if there is no timer when you flee them then save and reload as it wont pop-up again. usually the timer issue only happens after 4 or 5 alert dots.

[jrista]

Originally posted by therealshakur:

Originally posted by jrista:

I've got a full size 24-slot A-class filled with a bunch of S-class scatter blaster and plasma cannon upgrades. It can make pretty short work of sentinels, killing them fast isn't the issue. The problem is they never stop coming. Once they start, there is no end unless you can figure out how to run far enough fast enough. I've even hit my ship, and fled to the other side of the planet. First sentinel that phases through the ground there immediately aggros me, and on and on it goes. The only way I have ever been able to end it all is to flee on foot as fast as I can. I have to grab as many of the blue flowers as I can and jetpack away as fast as possible, behind as much landmass as possible. After the full 60 seconds, if something hasn't found me yet, it'll finally end.

It shouldn't be that hard to end the darn warrant. That's my beef with it all. Sometimes I am fine killing sentinels for a while. Sometimes I NEED to for materials. But I'm usually not into fighting them for endless hours. When I'm done, I just want to be able to be done. :P

they are so easy to get away from. you are obviously doing something wrong.

pay attention to the timer and just move at a regular pace one you get a jump on them, going to fast will cause you to run into new ones. if there is a building near by then just go inside and wait out the timer. if there is no timer when you flee them then save and reload as it wont pop-up again. usually the timer issue only happens after 4 or 5 alert dots.

It's not me. I've ducked into buildings, deep into caves, run away slowly, run fast, avoided any new sentinels, etc. If it is just the one sentinel, then these things can work. Once a hound or walker shows up, though, they do not. This used to be worse, actually, as the drones would get stuck underneath the terrain mesh, and would quite literally be able to follow you anywhere on the planet. I used to use the TM to pop them back onto the right side of the terrain and destroy them. If there were only other drones, and I was in a cave, then I could lose them.

If there was a walker, I could not. Walkers in particular seem to be able to see through everything. Doesn't matter if I duck into a building or cave or not. I watch the timer closely, and it seems that it will count down if the walker is not moving...but the moment they move and while they move, it resets to 60. I've gone DEEP into some caves, drilled down to the bedrock underneath the center of a rather large mountain, etc. and all to no avail if a Walker is around.

I seem to have the same problem most of the time with hounds, however if I can run fast enough and deep enough into a cave, then I may be able to lose the hound. But like the walkers...if they stand still, the counter will count down, but as soon as they start moving, it oscillates betwene 59 and 60, and I can't lose them. I can stand perfectly still in an area I basically know makes me invisible to them, and this will still happen. So I'm pretty sure there it is due to a bug. The fact that the counter gets stuck at 59/60 while the walkers and hounds move around (and I can see the counter jittering there, trying to count down but constantly being reset) seems very indicative of a bug.

The only thing I have ever done that actually seems to stop the warrant dead is to land on the space station. If I am close enough to do that, I will. Lot of the time, though, the station is too far away to get there while jamming is in effect.

[Tim]

Go underground using the terrain thing. I dig tunnels and wait them out or I'll dig a tunnel behind them then pop up to kill one or two. It' challenging but they can be beaten and deactivate before walkers ever show up. While you wait pull out the refiner and refine resources. Or like I said branch out with another tunnel, pop up behind them and attack. Then back into the tunnel to wait out the reinforcements. They do give up. You can also seal the tunnel off so they can't get to you. By the the time you tunnel out into another area they deactivate.They're a challenge but they can be dealt with if you play it smart.

[jrista]

Originally posted by Etack:

Go underground using the terrain thing. I dig tunnels and wait them out or I'll dig a tunnel behind them then pop up to kill one or two. It' challenging but they can be beaten and deactivate before walkers ever show up. While you wait pull out the refiner and refine resources. Or like I said branch out with another tunnel, pop up behind them and attack. Then back into the tunnel to wait out the reinforcements. They do give up. You can also seal the tunnel off so they can't get to you. By the the time you tunnel out into another area they deactivate.They're a challenge but they can be dealt with if you play it smart.

Digging seems to be no different than going into a cave. If it is just a drone, no problem. Walker, they can see through everything (or at least, while they are moving.) I've dug complex channels at bedrock level to try and get away. Walker will usually stay directly overhead. Now, I've also tried finding the sweet spot where the walker will stop moving. At one point, that seemed to work, the counter would start and it would eventually end and the walker would fold up and sit down deactivated. But something changed more recently...and once they stop moving and then enter search mode, they now walk around looking. The moment they start walking again, they apparently "see" me, and the countdown gets stuck in the previously mentioned 59/60 loop (i.e. THE ACTUAL BUG.)

I've also tried the burying the sentinels thing. That actually used to work for drones and hounds. With one of the most recent patches, that seems to have been nerfed. I've dug holes then tried to bury hounds and drones. They seem to move VERY quickly now and can get out before you can close it up. The hounds seem to detect when you start to close terrain over them and will use their jump move to get out. I've even seen them phase right through the rock I just formed, and often the jump attack move they use to get through it will also damage me.

Again, beating them is not the problem. They arne't even a challenge anymore with my multitool as it's currently configured (and that darn thing cost me thousands upon thousands of nanites to reconfigure several times before I found my current build). I can take down a walker in a few seconds with the plasma grenades. It's the fact that it never ends that bugs me. It doesn't matter that I can kill them fast...because I have to keep killing and keep killing and keep killing and MEH!!!!! STOP!!!!! -.-

[Cheesehead]

I agree with the poster on this. The sentinels are a totally missed opportunity. While very cool in concept, the in game implementation is just plain bad.

It's not just the sentinels, though, the entire combat implementation whether it be in ship or on the ground is barely passable. Hostile fauna never present any credible threat whatsoever. The first few hours you spend in the game, some stuff does look intimidating. After you get some experince playing the game, you start to realize that virtually any other game you have played presents more threats than this game.

There are some digging creatures that swarm if you mess with their eggs, and can pose a threat the first few times you mess with them, but that's it. After that, just avoid touching the eggs. Problem solved. No threat once again. It's a cheap mechanic and executed excessively poorly.

Space combat is entertaining at first, but once again, it's a mild threat. Nearly every space flight game has done it better.

I understand this is an exploration game, and that's why I like playing it, but everything would be better if it all wasn't done so crumby in the first place. It's like the developers thought "wouldn't be cool if....", and then lack any real mindset to make it happen.

If the sentinels were actually part of the "lore", they would have been implemented better and would pose an actual threat instead of being flat out annoying. They really don't seem as capable as the story makes them out to be. Once again, I will say that virtually every other game out there does it better. They also just spawn in magically and break immersion.

No Man's Sky can be very immersive. The immersion breaking silly stuff ruins the illusion. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be at least plausible.

Don't get me wrong. I really like this game at times. After the last big patch, I came back for more and spent a lot of quality time in it. Unfortunately, reality came back, mostly because of quest bugs that ruined my save game that haven't been patched yet. I started a new game, and got immediately hit with a game breaking bug in the first 8 hours.

Believe it or not, this game hasn't changed yet. It's still full of broken promises and lackluster actual gameplay. I got my money out of it, yes, but I can't help to think of the whole experience as being broken. The developers worked hard on this game and put a ton of effort into it, but they still appear to be mostly incompetent.

If you put years of work into building a bridge only to have it collapse shortly after you think it's done, you obviously failed. Yep, it looked real cool, but now you have people floating down river. Whoops. I guess I'll fix it. You think it's fixed, but now, only a few dare use it.

I'm still on the bridge, but what can I say, I'm a little crazy I guess. They did tell me more than once that this will be the coolest bridge ever. For now, I'm going to just wait until they put the safety rails up before I make another attempt.

[stvlepore]

The point of conflicts in games is to win or lose. The OP is correct here, you can’t win, only tie or lose.

[Tanchyon]

Originally posted by jrista:

Originally posted by therealshakur:

they are so easy to get away from. you are obviously doing something wrong.

pay attention to the timer and just move at a regular pace one you get a jump on them, going to fast will cause you to run into new ones. if there is a building near by then just go inside and wait out the timer. if there is no timer when you flee them then save and reload as it wont pop-up again. usually the timer issue only happens after 4 or 5 alert dots.

It's not me. I've ducked into buildings, deep into caves, run away slowly, run fast, avoided any new sentinels, etc. If it is just the one sentinel, then these things can work. Once a hound or walker shows up, though, they do not. This used to be worse, actually, as the drones would get stuck underneath the terrain mesh, and would quite literally be able to follow you anywhere on the planet. I used to use the TM to pop them back onto the right side of the terrain and destroy them. If there were only other drones, and I was in a cave, then I could lose them.

If there was a walker, I could not. Walkers in particular seem to be able to see through everything. Doesn't matter if I duck into a building or cave or not. I watch the timer closely, and it seems that it will count down if the walker is not moving...but the moment they move and while they move, it resets to 60. I've gone DEEP into some caves, drilled down to the bedrock underneath the center of a rather large mountain, etc. and all to no avail if a Walker is around.

I seem to have the same problem most of the time with hounds, however if I can run fast enough and deep enough into a cave, then I may be able to lose the hound. But like the walkers...if they stand still, the counter will count down, but as soon as they start moving, it oscillates betwene 59 and 60, and I can't lose them. I can stand perfectly still in an area I basically know makes me invisible to them, and this will still happen. So I'm pretty sure there it is due to a bug. The fact that the counter gets stuck at 59/60 while the walkers and hounds move around (and I can see the counter jittering there, trying to count down but constantly being reset) seems very indicative of a bug.

The only thing I have ever done that actually seems to stop the warrant dead is to land on the space station. If I am close enough to do that, I will. Lot of the time, though, the station is too far away to get there while jamming is in effect.

Jeezus what the hell are you doing man, I'm a nub with ♥♥♥♥ weapons and hardly and upgrades and i can easily get away from all sentinels, just walk off trying to break line of sight... can be even easier if you maximize your initial distance by alternating between sprint and jetpack using the momentum to keep you moving forward and letting the other charge a little before you use it again. By the time you are out of charge for one or the other you can literally just walk away and they never catch up unless you move fast enough to run into a new one.