After being massively in love with the original game (first Steam game I get 100% achievements), I just started a new save. So far it feels mostly the same amazing and self-guided experience, just a bit deeper, so I'm not people who hated it at launch will change their minds now.
I hope the current coop "lite" gives way to true synchronous coop. If that happens, I think I might never play another game, ever. ;)
The game is very substantially changed since release. Indeed each revision of the last few months has invalidated more of the information you'll find in online game guides from commercial sources, and with this update I'd say most of them are either entirely irrelevant or downright misleading.
No Man's Sky is now in a sort of no-man's-land between "interesting tech demo" and "full blown video game". This new update has many new features but also myriad new bugs. It's clearly still a work in progress.
What's interesting, and unusual, is that developer has continued to work, as though the first release was really more the start of an "early access" series. Hard to believe they've made significant money from the drip of sales since.
It appears that they used the massive influx of capital they got from the hype pre-launch to continue building their vision that was entirely too big to deliver in any timely manner. They might be able to turn this around riding that into something that generates enough interest to continue to make plenty.
Putting it on sale on steam has it back at the top, which is actually kind of incredible considering the launch outrage.
The hype wasn't for nothing, people are craving the kind of game that was described before this launched. This is potentially Minecraft all over again.
No -- it's just communication and basic "hey, there is another person here with you." You still have separate worlds with separate elements and separate buildings. It's just letting you communicate.
I so do not envy the engineer who is pressured into hooking what is essentially two procedural generators, with the possibility for a alteration overlay together. If one mad guy alters a whole solar system into planet lava smileys..., how do you pack and transfer that information history on top of that, in real time...
The story goes something like this- they in fact have the same procedural generator. Both work upon the same key- thus mountains and everything is in the same place, provided they use the same hardware or the code is protected against floating point deviations.
The problem is- where do you begin and end with that? If a player can modify a world, basically, every change has to be distributed.. you have a sort of highres minecraft on your hands. Without originally being intended to be this. How do you sync it, if multiple players join and merge a universe?
I play the GOG version with steam controller, but I'm a bit of an edge case. I play on linux, installed the GOG version through PlayOnLinux (thus playing it through wine), and I made a launcher in steam so that I can use the steam controller with it (anything you create a launcher for, even an emulator or nethack, gets steam controller support for free). Even if you're not on linux, you can do the same : just create a launcher ("add non steam game") to launch the GOG game.
Even then, though, it does not qualify as "proper support" if this means "native support". It's just like using steam controller for any game that has no controller support : you configure it to emulate keyboard and mouse (but it's still a good experience for NMS, once done).
Yea, I know you can configure it, but by "proper", I mean that it is automatically configured, and that the buttons can automatically change their action depending on the context. I believe it works this way in the Steam version of the game, but when I tried a few months back, it didn't work that way in the GOG version.
I hope the current coop "lite" gives way to true synchronous coop. If that happens, I think I might never play another game, ever. ;)