This game was made by some of the most absent minded people I've ever encountered.

[M.D Geist]

This is just me venting as a new player, because what I thought first was just me being inexperienced at the game has left me aware after doing a number of internet searches that it is in fact -not- just me and in fact not just a few isolated features within the game.

After running into a few seemingly counterintuitive snags in getting accustomed to this game I realize now that this is not merely that but an established pattern of design decisions which really just absolutely rubs me the wrong way in spite of really liking and wanting to play the game more.

Being as that I'm a millennial I realize that the commentary on this might seem hypocritical, but I grew up with games made by people a generation or two behind my own, and everything about how this game is navigated and how things work feels extremely awkward and foreign to me.

Everything about what game devs from previous generations did emphasized a concise, intuitive learning curve, the UI. The concept of use behind everything was generally so intuitive you could just pick it right up and basically flow through the progression of the game. If there was anything you weren't sure of, with a bit of exploration, you could easily figure out and pick up what the developer was putting down.

I just don't ♥♥♥♥ing know about this game, it's so incredibly bizarre, it's seemingly made for a generation who does everything through pictographs instead of properly laid out menu trees where you see the big picture with appropriate context.

This game seems to deliberately drag you through a series of tasks and menus without giving you proper context as to what you're doing, I know I'm not the only person having trouble with this game because I've seen plenty of complaints on the forums here and elsewhere.

It's so bizzare, everything that seems to be implemented in the game is done in such a disjointed way that does not give you a full understanding of the how and why and potential consequences of your actions, It borders on infuriating at times.

It's like the developers made a lot of extremely absent minded presumptions about what the player does and doesn't know, and that for some reason really bothers the ♥♥♥♥ out of me.

I like having everything laid out for me so I understand how every relates to one another or how one thing I do might have consequences I may want or not.

For example, the game neglects to inform the player that if they decide to remove the base computer, that

1. you lose the chromatic metal you used to make it

2. anything you built which should seemingly have no relation to the base computer gets magically erased, what?

I get that the base computer is responsible for claiming a settlement, but should that really erase any architecture placed down after the base computer? I would argue no, that was an arbitrary call on behalf of the developer.

That's a huge gaping oversight that results in a lot of wasted time for the player.

I don't like using the term "autism" as a pejorative, but it's like the devs live in their own little world of occluded awareness in which they naively presume new players should be aware of certain things that they really aren't going to be.

Same with dropping custom markers, a lack of a terrain map or even a 2d grid which maps out important features of explored terrain even if a topographical display itself isn't present.

There's no simple way of managing your markers, telling you how many you can drop, etc, if you put down too many, they'll just start disappearing.

As much as I like this game, it feels like it was made by somebody who got so lost in making features that they didn't backtrack to ensure they'd be intuitively usable by new players.

There are a lot of features and tasks in this game that really shouldn't leave the player asking questions or taking to forums to have their questions answered, I've just never really experienced anything quite like it.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

It is a survival game...and one of the features is they give you very limited information. You have to figure it out....that is the game. A lot of folks choose the ask other players route...but the puzzle of how things work is actually a big part of the game.

That is why a lot of inquisitive idiots get bored very quickly because they never bothered to suss things out for themselves.

[Dirak2012]

If you delete the base computer you delete your base, that's how it has always worked.

[M.D Geist]

Ok, so giving you limited information about the actual survival related aspects of the game is one thing.

You cannot use that as a way to justify the meta of how this game functions at a core level, that's on par with characters in the metal gear solid games smacking a hole in the 4th wall and talking to the player through Snake.

As silly as that is, at least in those games they made a point of making the player as knowledgeable about how to interact with the game as possible.

It's one thing to make the GAME itself worth exploring and figuring out, but that's not a justification at all for how you interact with the mechanics of it.

That's like saying "this game is supposed to be challenging, so we'll make the controls as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ as possible" - instead of implementing challenging elements into the actual gameplay itself. It's like building a car with a lot of impressive features, but making the documentation or layout for said features unnecessarily cumbersome.

Nobody is going to want that except similar autists who don't differentiate gameplay from the user interface.

What I'm trying to say, since you didn't seem to decipher it, and I thought I was being clear. Having a curiosity about the gameplay is one thing, having curiosity about obtuse, poorly thought out mechanics and interface are another.

I have plenty of patience for a game that has depth, I have zero patience for a poorly, and inconsiderately developed interface and mechanics. That's not where I want my challenge from, I want it contextually in the game, not in a patchwork meta of half thought design decisions.

[Lailantie]

There's a base salvage capsule which will contain all the materials of your deleted base. If you build it on your next base you get everything back.

[TheS1X]

Wow

[Asterin]

I agree that despite years of improvements and development, there are still an enormous amount of clunky and counterintuitive features in this game The lack of mapping is still one area that boggles my mind.

I often find that the devs, even with the newer features, seem to add complexity for the sake of complexity... without finding ways of making it fun or interesting.

An example of this would be the new "Living Ship" update. The quest line to obtain it was long, confusing, tedious, and fundamentally not fun. First, buy a "seed" using quicksilver. Then pulse drive around until contacted by an alien ship. Then go to a planet and experience frustration trying to find a specific location using their terrible coordinate system, which is the only means of finding a specific planetary location. Then, gather materials and get a part of the ship. Then wait 24 real, actual hours for the part to mature. Then repeat that whole process 5 or more times. Then ultimately get a ship that is randomly, procedurally generated and disappointing because you didn't like how it turned out. To upgrade this new ship, you have to randomly pulse drive around space and just... wait... to run into random anomaly encounters. If you want another shot, that's a week of boring, irritating quests to repeat.

The developers just seem to lack a fundamental understanding of how to design fun and engaging game systems. It's not about just "make cool looking thing", "make players do busywork to obtain cool thing." So many of the gameplay choices in No Man's Sky feel ultimately pointless and empty.

[M.D Geist]

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

If you delete the base computer you delete your base, that's how it has always worked.

Lots of people not reading or capable of reading in this thread.

The point I was making is that there was no warning that removing the base computer would remove architecture you placed down.

There's absolutely no way you can make a logical assumption about that. My point is that was an entirely arbitrary decision made by the developers which they didn't fully explain.

I wanted to leave existing architecture up and move my base computer to a less awkward place, there's just no reason why that should destroy anything put down by the player.

That was just my point, when they made certain features they didn't fully think through how new players would interact and test certain features, and leaving them to make destructive changes that weren't disclosed beforehand is just very very sloppy game design.

Trying to imply that it's part of the "survival" element of the actual game is not an excuse.

[M.D Geist]

Originally posted by Lailantie:

There's a base salvage capsule which will contain all the materials of your deleted base. If you build it on your next base you get everything back.

That's great but you missed my point, which was the devs dropped the ball hard when disclosing to players their highly arbitrary logic behind certain mechanics.

[GG]

Originally posted by Yourebuying:

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

If you delete the base computer you delete your base, that's how it has always worked.

Lots of people not reading or capable of reading in this thread.

The point I was making is that there was no warning that removing the base computer would remove architecture you placed down.

There's absolutely no way you can make a logical assumption about that. My point is that was an entirely arbitrary decision made by the developers which they didn't fully explain.

I wanted to leave existing architecture up and move my base computer to a less awkward place, there's just no reason why that should destroy anything put down by the player.

That was just my point, when they made certain features they didn't fully think through how new players would interact and test certain features, and leaving them to make destructive changes that weren't disclosed beforehand is just very very sloppy game design.

Trying to imply that it's part of the "survival" element of the actual game is not an excuse.

You need a base computer to build a base. So it makes sense that deleting the base computer would delete your base.

[M.D Geist]

Originally posted by Asterin:

I agree that despite years of improvements and development, there are still an enormous amount of clunky and counterintuitive features in this game The lack of mapping is still one area that boggles my mind.

I often find that the devs, even with the newer features, seem to add complexity for the sake of complexity... without finding ways of making it fun or interesting.

The developers just seem to lack a fundamental understanding of how to design fun and engaging game systems. It's not about just "make cool looking thing", "make players do busywork to obtain cool thing." So many of the gameplay choices in No Man's Sky feel ultimately pointless and empty.

I'm really glad that at least somebody in this thread understands what I'm saying and frankly, agrees with me.

I'm just going to say it, it feels like this game was made by people who absolutely did not grow up playing games, like basically just some people who one day decided "I'm going to make a game even though I don't play them at all".

I'm just saying that among most people who play games from my generation, there's almost this shared consciousness about what makes a game intuitively functional, and the devs for this game fundamentally lack that. And I honestly wonder if it's because they didn't grow up playing them themselves.

[M.D Geist]

Originally posted by JustAnEmu:

You need a base computer to build a base. So it makes sense that deleting the base computer would delete your base.

To build, but to remove if the computer itself is, no that's not intuitively evident.

I've played many games in the past that allowed you to construct using a certain deployable interface where the architecture you place persists afterward.

[D4C]

♥♥♥♥ is wrong with you lol

[Gumsk]

It might help to imagine the fact that this was a prototype built by Sean alone for a few years, then, at most, another three people by launch time. A team of that size simply doesn't have enough combined expertise to make a polished game like a AAA studio (or like those studios should make). Also, with almost any project, you don't get to start from scratch to correct things and make them consistent and smooth; you just have to patch and add on to what is already there. Sean is great and all, but he's definitely not a master of every game design element that exists. That means whatever he built during that prototype phase, parts of it got pulled forward to that team of four, where you start getting some conflicting visions of the game and programming styles. Launch was a clusterf and they were likely working 24/7 just to get things working and keep them working. After Sean's three years alone, two years with the team of four, then a year to get things running relatively smoothly, you're six years into game development without having had a lot of eyes on it or the time or resources to do it perfectly.

Also, get into modding and you'll start seeing all sorts of wacky stuff. There was a comment someone found in the code that said 'This needs to be 1 or the game breaks. We don't know why.' And there are misspellings everywhere, like the bane of my existence: MAINDORR. I love the game and appreciate the work the developers do, but they are really sloppy.

Anyway, that's how I think about it when I see stuff that is completely messed up and makes no sense.

[Steefy_92]

Just when I thought that I read everything. Dude, perhaps it's time to actually expand your horizons a bit and get out of that narrow hallway? For instance, try to use your own intuition rather than depending on guidelines and handholding and then bashing a game for absent "minded" design and lack of intuition.

Sorry man, just stop. It's embarrassing. 95% of the things you said in this thread are common sense and discovered by experimenting

And this game has one of the better guides (tutorials) than most games of this type I played

[M.D Geist]

Originally posted by Steefy_92:

Just when I thought that I read everything. Dude, perhaps it's time to actually expand your horizons a bit and get out of that narrow hallway?

Autistic linear thinking is what I'm describing as the design impetus behind this game.

The entire reason why I'm frustrated with this game is because it forces you down an extremely restrictive and linear set of actions without offering you better context for what the causality of those linear outcomes are.

Arbitrary logic is what I'm criticizing here, there's nothing intuitive about post-hoc rationalizations when there are plenty of arguments against them.

For instance, try to use your own intuition rather than depending on guidelines and handholding and then bashing a game for absent "minded" design and lack of intuition.

Sorry man, just stop. It's embarrassing.

Not wanting to have your time wasted by testing the boundaries of the game's mechanics is not "hand holding", are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ serious?