5 Things No Man’s Sky Needs Right Now

It’s been a big week for gamers and that’s due entirely to the highly anticipated release of arguably the biggest indie game ever, No Man’s Sky.  Yes, PS4 owners got a chance to explore the seemingly infinite cosmos starting Tuesday and as of today PC gamers finally get to join in the fun.  Meanwhile our Wii U is doing a great job holding up some books on our shelf (damnit, Nintendo, get in the game!).

We’re having a love and hate relationship with No Man’s Sky since having grabbed it on PSN on launch day.  We too experienced the ridiculous game breaking bug due to the pre launch ship bypassing the warp drive tutorial leaving us to drift endlessly in space after making the mistake of jettisoning the only one we’d ever see.  We too have watched in bewilderment at the bizarre PR moves Sean Murray and the team are making to avoid answering some very basic questions about multiplayer.  We too scour subreddits and wikis about the game hoping someone, somewhere has found a purpose in this expanding universe.

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There’s a lot to dislike about this game, most of which was summarily nailed by Jim Sterling in his controversial review.  The worlds are hollow.  No actual NPCs to encounter wandering around.  The aliens literally don’t exist as you can fall right through them.  Inventory management is nightmarishly bad.  The day of the launch Sean Murray took a moment to issue another disclaimer about his game, almost apologizing in advance for expectations people had.

Regardless, night after night, I find myself camped out on my couch with a fresh pot of coffee to fend off sleep long enough to conquer just a few more galaxies.  I play without purpose letting impulse drive my every decision.  Do I search this planet for another outpost or see what’s at the bottom of that ominous lake?  Do I leave behind this world I’ve traversed for over an hour to see what else is out there knowing I’ll never be back here again?  Do I travel towards the center of the universe or do I warp to that other star system that has an inordinate amount of moons to visit?  It’s easy to lose hours to this quickly.

But with all of that said, we can’t help but feel there’s so much missing, significant content or mechanics that would otherwise make this a top rated game.  Sure the lack of real multiplayer and previously mentioned bugs are disappointing, but we have a few other ideas that not many are talking about.

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Here now are 5 ways No Man’s Sky could be significantly better.

5. Maps

Oh man, this game is large. Staring at the galaxy map to decide where to warp to next is crippling.  It’s just so unbelievable massive.  Even on a single planet it’s rare to run into the same place twice.  We appreciate the sense of wonder this causes but the tradeoff is there’s no sense of accomplishment too.  Beacons are rendered by the game as points of interest to explore, not by us to notify key parts of a planet.  Once you fly away, you’ll likely never be back so the entire experience feels so disposable.

We’d be so much happier to be creating a minimap of a particular planet showing us key bases, monoliths, etc.  You’re shouldn’t just be an explorer placing your flag on soil or arbitrarily naming some wandering creature some carefully coded expletive, you should become a cartographer as well mapping out overground and underground pathways of that planet.

Likelihood: Doubtful. We’d love to see this change though code-wise we wonder if this is sustainable as we believe all planets are rendered and trashed based entirely on the presence of a player.  Creating a minimap of that planet that’s permanently defined could be a challenge to store.

4. Random Events

This game draws a lot of comparisons to Destiny.  You’re a solo space traveler wandering the cosmos on the orders of some ancient artifact.  The game even lifts the interface and click functions of Destiny.  One thing that didn’t port over were the random events that happened on each of Destiny’s planets.  Every 10 minutes or so some event would take places somewhere on a Destiny map that nearby players could undertake.  Yes, they were repetitive but at least they were interesting and provided a fun challenge to break up the rest of the game.

Nothing like that exists in No Man’s Sky.  As much as you travel to new worlds the experience doesn’t substantially change, ever.  We know this is attributable to a small dev team that did a miraculous job producing what this is (and they did), but we can’t help but miss some sense of purpose on planets.  Can’t one Gek send us to rescue someone or find some ancient buried resource?  Can’t one pirate raid occur on a base we’re exploring?  Can’t something happen sometime?

Likelihood: Good. The PC launch of this game is a great thing as the mod community will more than likely come together to do something just like this.  Give us something to do while on a planet.  If that takes shape we hope the promises of Hello Games to release free DLC will come true and they’ll pursue ideas from the best of the PC mods.

3. Let us Crash

Flying around on planets is an incredibly unrewarding experience.  Beacons occasionally pop in several minutes away forcing you to either stare mindlessly as you float that direction or shoot to space and back down again closer your destination.  Either way, it’s just not fun.  There’s no risk.  You can flip your ship but you’ll never fly under a rocky ridge or skim the ocean waters.  You can’t.  The game’s invisible walls keeps you safely above crash range at all times.  If you hit the “land now” button your ship will sometimes violently shoot down and stop on just about whatever – including trees for us in one case which made for a helluva time getting back to our ship.

Again, Destiny did this pretty well with their sparrows.  It’s hard to die but you can race them into walls or do the occasional trick.  I’m not looking for MS Flight Simulator, but let’s take the safety wheels off at least, shall we?

Likelihood: Good. Again, it feels like the PC modding community will prove this works quickly and hopefully Hello Games takes note.  The challenge will be lowering the bar to restore a crashed ship or streamlining the ability to get back to your ship (Destiny had it too easy letting you instantly generate your sparrow next to you).

2. Space Alliances

We get it.  This is a solitary experience.  Sean Murray has been stalwart in saying that (except when he didn’t).   Even the title suggests a solo experience.  But that isolation starts to be a drag after a while.  It’s almost a relief when you wander into a base to see an NPC alien otherwise thoroughly distracted by their clipboard to take a moment to look up and wave at you.  It’s the least they can do since traders apparently refuse to get out of their ships if they see you walking around the hangar.

Typically we’re not a huge fan of factions and alliances in games but giving you some sense a social life, even if it entirely NPC run, would do wonders.    The ability to get missions from that alliance, run into them in space somehow, or progress within their group would easily expand so much the experience of this game.

Likelihood: Doubtful.  Hello Games will likely spend the next several months focused on bug hunting and easy fixes.  This would be a sizeable upgrade that would likely be reserved for a full sequel.

1. Permanent Upgrades

Your life in No Man’s Sky is entirely defined by your possessions: how much plutonium you’re holding to recharge your launch fuel or power up your mining laser, the caliber of your current equipment, the cargo hold of your current ship.  A few bad space skirmishes in a row or wandering too far in a toxic planet could see your resources running precariously low.  It’s not game breaking but does feel strange that the time and investment you make in the game doesn’t really matter.

Over time shouldn’t my character get better at this just from his/her experiences?  They can be slight improvements (like Borderlands 2 Bad Ass points), but the ability to get a small percent more resources upon mining that same heridium again or reload my grenades slightly faster when I’m in firefight.  Most of this is handled in items you carry but it’s unrealistic to assume someone is going to carry shields for every environment type on their ship when they can barely carry required resources and precious items they can sell.  Shields, jetpacks, life supply, these items shouldn’t be part of the equation for inventory management.  They should just be character upgrades you maintain and remain with you as you play.

Likelihood: Mixed.  Hello Games is getting a lot of flak for the inventory management and perhaps this would be creative way to fix it.  Alternatively, they could just decide to expand your inventory randomly as they did during the day one patch.

Awesome work, guys, but the job’s not done yet.

Hopefully we can see some of these or other significant game improvements soon from the devs.  What we have now is good, but the possibilities of what this game could become are incredible.  Safe travels, explorers!