Storms are still a bit too anti-fun.

[Fool]

In a game that is like 90% walking around I'm finding it to be a significant nuisance that storms aren't a bit more reasonable. The world generator has put me in a situation where I'm almost never on a planet that doesn't storm more often than it doesn't. There should be a much more significant gap of real-world time between one storm and the next. I'm regularly seeing only 20 seconds of reasonable conditions before a 3-5 minute round of storms.

I get that it's supposed to be 'spice' for the game. To give me something to spend resources on or whatever. I just think that maybe it's at the point where you've put too much seasoning on the steak here. I'm trying to do stuff with my time. Storms feel tedious when they are too frequent.

I hope that Beyond, among other things, gives storms some love. There should be more types of storms than just "Time for five minutes of maximum resource drain." - How about if rain storms are sometimes lightning storms, striking random locations for damage? How about storms that reduce JUST visibility? The one-note song has long since worn out its welcome. I can't imagine I'm the only spaceman feeling this way at this point.

That said, I'm returning to NMS after quite a hiatus and I've gotta say - Storms are just about my only major gripe point. They're just about the only part of the game that is truly no fun.

[NMSPlayer]

If you have your hyperdrive you can escape that. I hope that you are not playing permadeath because relief in perma is about a one in a million planet -- just found one today. In normal mode, on the other hand, there are thousands upon thousands of planets that are lush and not stormy.

[Fool]

Originally posted by NMSPlayer:

If you have your hyperdrive you can escape that. I hope that you are not playing permadeath because relief in perma is about a one in a million planet -- just found one today. In normal mode, on the other hand, there are thousands upon thousands of planets that are lush and not stormy.

I've got damn near an 800ly jump range and I really can't seem to catch a break. The direction I travel, the type of planet I frequent. None of it seems to matter. Storms are incredibly frequent across the board.

[Captain Fekry]

Originally posted by Fool:

Originally posted by NMSPlayer:

If you have your hyperdrive you can escape that. I hope that you are not playing permadeath because relief in perma is about a one in a million planet -- just found one today. In normal mode, on the other hand, there are thousands upon thousands of planets that are lush and not stormy.

I've got damn near an 800ly jump range and I really can't seem to catch a break. The direction I travel, the type of planet I frequent. None of it seems to matter. Storms are incredibly frequent across the board.

Set up a temporary base, do the base missions, get an exocraft, drive around storm-free.
Hope this helps.
Tip: ensure to remove temporary summoning stations after the exocraft is summoned.

[Fool]

Originally posted by Furperson:

Originally posted by Fool:

I've got damn near an 800ly jump range and I really can't seem to catch a break. The direction I travel, the type of planet I frequent. None of it seems to matter. Storms are incredibly frequent across the board.

Set up a temporary base, do the base missions, get an exocraft, drive around storm-free.
Hope this helps.
Tip: ensure to remove temporary summoning stations after the exocraft is summoned.

I know about this, sure. My problem isn't about difficulty in dealing with them. Resource burn isn't an issue here.

Storms just suck. They're not pretty, for one. Quite the opposite. If the planet was gonna be pretty storms clutter and obscure it. So that's fantastic. The game doesn't really play to its strengths here. It's not like I don't know I'm playing a theme park of a game. I'm not trying to walk around a theme park in torrential downpour - let alone skin melting rain. It's this, more than anything, teamed up with the resource burn and the sheer frequency its possible on so many planets that really drives a wedge into things for me.

The gameplay experience doesn't change much during a storm, it just gets a lot worse visually and doesn't feel as fun.

And kinda like I said above, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if there was variation. Storms with different levels of severity. If a planet is gonna storm on a virtually never ending scale at least have the storm vary in strength. Otherwise label it an extreme planet. If the whole thing is going to be covered in a virtually endless resource draining storm that will mean I need to stick closely to a vehicle I'd consider that an extreme.

It's the frequency of the thing I'm taking issue with. I'm getting sick of this uglier part of the game being the majority of what I'm getting.

[Dirak2012]

Are you playing on survival mode?

[Johnny in the Clouds]

To survive storms in Normal Mode you need to set up the exosuit upgrades efficiently. Also carry sodium, phosphorus and dioxite with you and buy some to store in your High Capacity Exosuit slots. You can also buy batteries but they can take up more slots if you carry a lot. Build an exocar and use that on storm planets and move around using that. Only getting out when your hazard suit is replenished. Use the exocar scanner to drive to new buildings.

Look for Systems with five or six planets to have greater chance of finding a pleasant environment. Also use your ship conflict scanner to avoid more dangerous systems. That way you should avoid more irritating sentinels and perhaps find quieter planets with less storms, though that is not necessarily always true.

[Lord Dickinson McCheddar]

In any mode once you get exosuit protection mods you can survive well, though I wish the exosuit had at least double the tech slots for it, as otherwise it digs into your inventory.

After that the only issue I have with storms is that they severely reduce visibility. Not all planets have storms that frequently but it is hard to find a planet without any hangups at all.

[Isme]

RE: The storm question/issue
Entering the atmosphere of a new planet, at night, during a raging storm of some sort, sailing along the ground you can't see, swinging above peaks you didn't see, landing and immediately attacked by fauna followed by frenzied sentinels attacking . . . . . .
Storms also have an axiomatic result of driving me into caves in which strange and weird things can happen including death.
To me and no doubt others, this is part of the storm fun, storms take away your SA and sense of orientation, leaving you fairly helpless. In addition, IMO, this is the core of the game. Catastrophic events while exploring. Whether it be the North and South poles on Earth or a NMS galaxy.
This all is fun to me, just one guy at least, and it's because of the storms.

[stvlepore]

Storm crystals are cool though........

[Fool]

Originally posted by Isme:

RE: The storm question/issue
Entering the atmosphere of a new planet, at night, during a raging storm of some sort, sailing along the ground you can't see, swinging above peaks you didn't see, landing and immediately attacked by fauna followed by frenzied sentinels attacking . . . . . .
Storms also have an axiomatic result of driving me into caves in which strange and weird things can happen including death.
To me and no doubt others, this is part of the storm fun, storms take away your SA and sense of orientation, leaving you fairly helpless. In addition, IMO, this is the core of the game. Catastrophic events while exploring. Whether it be the North and South poles on Earth or a NMS galaxy.
This all is fun to me, just one guy at least, and it's because of the storms.

If I was going to boil down my point to just the absolute meat of it it'd be as simple as:

"I'm getting too much of this and too consistently."

I'm moving in the neighborhood of 1k ly in a jump and still somehow whichever neck of the woods I'm in I find the same situations. I don't want removal of the storms. It seems like people try to make this feedback black and white like you either have to want it axed or want it to stay the same.

DO more with the damn storms. I'm sick of it always being EXACTLY the same. Especially with how frequently they'll be allowed to happen on average.

"Hey there, on this planet it's only safe to walk around for a short stretch of time before the fleshmelting rain returns!"

That statement should be COOL. The reason it ISN'T is because 'short stretch of time' often means as little as twenty seconds. Which is as good as if the planet had a perpetual storm that never ceased at that point.

Too much of anything is bad for you. The same thing that should be making storms awesome, the added danger and pressure they put on the player, is precisely what makes them feel like on overplayed song on the radio by the time you've had your 8th storm back to back with less then 5 minutes breathing room in between.

I see the good in the system. I don't want it to go anywhere. I want it to be worked on more. It feels incredibly un-fun in situations like mine, where you just can't escape it for god knows what reason.

[Firestarter]

you make very good points and i often wonder myself at the lack of storm varity, lightning strikes or variable storm hazards. things like ball lightning and various wind differences would be amazing, what if when you were near an ocean or large body of water? that little storm may turn turn into a hurricane impeding movement and creating massive waves!

what if holes that you dig could be filled up with rain water over time creating evolving langscapes,

what if lightning strikes storm crystals every so often (like their description says) making them truly hazardous to mine.

what about literal firestorms on extreme gas planets where if you arent careful where you mine you could set ablaze the entire country side?

and on that note massive forest fires where the smoke could be seen from space? or volcanos spewing massive amounts of smoke and ash into the air and creating rivers of lava!! these wouldent affect gameplay beyond needing a good hazard fiter in order to breathe and a brain so you dont jump into lava pits (although it would be cool if you could upgrade your suit to withstand extreme heat so that you could mine materials only fould in rivers of melting lava!!) the smog filled firey vistas would be very cool to look at!

tornados and sandstorms not like the ones in the game "mad max" but like the ones in the movie "mad max fury road" style...... nuff said



for a game that sell itself on the wonder of exploration, i think that it achives this goal with flying colors
but even still i often find myself marveling at what i feel are glaring ommisions in what is supposed to be a scifi planet exploration game some of the basic tropes are missing and given what they have done so far im confident that if they implemented them they would do them right.

[dphipps3]

I like the storms generally (not bothered by the increased survival dangers) but I have to say, for a game that prides itself on the appearance of billions of unique ( graphical combinations of several sets of flora, fauna, and terrain ) worlds, frequent storms that block your view of the unique and exotic world you are exploring seems counter-gamer-friendly.... Counter-inductive-to-continued-play.... You know what I mean.

[Corvus]

I would also like more variety in the storms.

However, I do not feel that they are a nuisance... They only occur that often on extreme planets in my experience (normal mode).

AND! I seek them out now, because you can make a ton of credits collecting Storm Crystals.

I love flying at max speed through the storm, dodging obstacles, looking for the crystals. I don't find it "counter intuitive" or "view blocking" at all... It's just a different environment.

[Fool]

Originally posted by davidb11:

I have no idea why you are finding so many storms. They are not super common on Normal mode at all.
You should not run into them that commonly.
I know I have never seen the level of storm activity you have.

Sure, every so often I run into a storm, but they're not common.

I can explain it I think, it's just the answer isn't satisfying. The answer is simple.

NMS is actually being decently honest about the fact it randomly slapped together a universe. As a result there are stretches like the one I'm caught in, where storms are incredibly frequent over a large expanse of space. Likewise, there are also probably stretches starved of them entirely. There is no balance or reason to it. It's simply whatever placed wherever.

It's respectable if true. However, truly random things often don't feel very good. Years and years ago Apple Iphones shipped with a shuffle feature that was truly random. It played songs in any possible order. Even repeating songs sometimes. Consumers loathed it and the hilarious thing was that feedback boiled down to "I don't care if it's actually random, it doesn't act like what I feel random should act like." - People are almost never looking for things to be truly random. People are often hoping for a sort controlled chaos instead. A simulated randomness instead of the real thing. Even though the real thing is easier to make.

It is actually probably precisely this problem that made me make the thread. The reality is, once I peel past the novelty of the fact that things like storm frequency are truly random I have to deal with the fact that for the most part while I'm playing the game truly random feels kinda crappy after only a few hours.

[Fool]

Originally posted by Corvus:

I would also like more variety in the storms.

However, I do not feel that they are a nuisance... They only occur that often on extreme planets in my experience (normal mode).

AND! I seek them out now, because you can make a ton of credits collecting Storm Crystals.

I love flying at max speed through the storm, dodging obstacles, looking for the crystals. I don't find it "counter intuitive" or "view blocking" at all... It's just a different environment.

See this is what flips my lid. I'm ALSO playing on Normal. All my feedback is based on a new save file in Normal mode I created because I was coming back from a long hiatus.