After the games controversial Launch back in 2016 I do think that a lot of gamers at the time just assumed that the reason No Man’s Sky struggled so much at first was because hello games were such a small team that could not possibly deliver on all their many promises. There was also a widespread belief that once the bigger video game studios started making thier own space games it whould show just how out of their depth that hello games really was by taking on such an ambitious project in the first place.

Now after 7 years we can look back and realize that frankly it’s kind of a miracle that No Man’s Sky. even exist at all because other games that have attempted to do what No Man’s Sky did have not worked out so well

For example, Mass effect Andromeda was originally going to be very much like No Man’s Sky and yet the developers struggled so much with it that they decided to just abandon the idea in the middle of making the game.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 looks like it also tried to pull off no man sky on smaller scale but even they are having a tough time with the idea and it looks like the game ain’t never coming out

Star citizen is more successful compared to the others, but just like Beyond Good and Evil 2 that game still does not even have a release date and Even when it comes to a big triple A game like like Starfiled Todd Howard himself admitted just how difficult it would be to pull off the seamless planet landings that we see in a game like no man sky and that was a big reason why he ultimately decided not to include it in thier game

The reason I bring all this is up is simply to say that what the incredible team at hello games did was not easy at all and even game studios with much bigger teams and bigger budgets have a hard time because it is still insanely hard to make a space exploration game

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As much as all the Cool New Stuff is nice, it’s getting really frustrating that the devs refuse to slow down and fix any old systems, they’re just throwing new stuff on top of a broken foundation and it’s getting more and more clunky. From basic quality of life stuff like being able to turn off the useless auto-Pin feature that literally only ever hinders getting things done, to desperately needed bugfixes (I haven’t been able to rely on any base or freighter based refiners since they were introduced b/c they delete their contents regularly), to dozens and dozens of visual errors with bases and ships, it’s all just building up into a constant frustration. It’s like Factorio’s most recent friday facts (# 374) said – doing that kind of underlying foundation repair and QOL gives more mental space to enjoy New Stuff, and NMS’s refusal to do so keeps me, and I imagine others, returning for new features and almost instantly leaving again. What’s the fun of a new race when fundamental issues with the character customization haven’t been fixed in the entire time it’s existed (like the presets being useless because they only save to the save game they’re made on). What’s the fun of the new inventory setup when half the things you can put in the technology slots are broken/useless/not worth the space and have been since they were introduced? etc etc.

With all the cool updates we got over the years, this is one thing I keep hearing people put on their wishlist when speculating about the next one. And every time a new update is released and this is not included, I can’t help but be a little disappointed.

I think this is the one thing that’s still pulling NMS back graphically. This is the one thing that is still making the game look inferior to that infamous first trailer, which had better looking water animation. But even if I ignore that, just having a look at water in the current game does not do justice to the rest of the world design. Water sticks out like a sore thumb, it just doesn’t look good.

I’m guessing most people have seen the mods, we know it can be done. I know that this isn’t a gameplay feature, but I still think it would be a fundamental improvement to NMS. Do you think this is as important as I do or not really?