No Man's Sky NEXT Update Elevates the Game to What It Was Always Supposed to Be

[Raevenlord]

Hello Games has released the definitive update to No Man's Sky: the one that shores up many of the game's weaknesses and delivers what we were promised nearly two years ago. The game has had a steady stream of incremental, evolutionary updates to its core systems, in the meantime. But none have been as comprehensive and game changing - immediately or for the way they prepare the future - as the 1.5 update, codenamed NEXT, that dropped today.

Among the additions - and trust me, these are grand in both number and scope - the NEXT update introduces a full multiplayer experience, near-unlimited base building, command of freighter armadas, a graphical overhaul, multiple quality of life improvements, revised systems and HUD, increased variance, even more procedurally-generated bits and pieces, third-person view support... it's a real expansion that's being distributed for free, and which stands to offer more than some game sequels ever managed to do. Look after the break for a rundown of the changes - then boot up the game, grab a cup of coffee, prepare your screenshot utilities, and enjoy the ride.





Multiplayer
Team up with a small group of friends and explore the universe together, or be joined by random travellers. Help friends to stay alive, or prey on others to survive. Fight as a pirate or a wingman in epic space battles with friends and enemies. Group up to build communal bases, farms, and racetracks, and share your creations with all players online.



Explore the galaxy at your own pace, or progress together from the very start of the game and all the way through the story. Invite your friends aboard your Freighter and take on challenging multiplayer missions from the Galactic Commission Station on your bridge. Communicate with other players vocally using a headset, and / or converse using text chat on PC. While wandering the galaxy solo, continue to experience chance encounters with strange floating orbs.

Community engagement
Soon after the release of No Man's Sky NEXT, Hello Games has planned its first season of weekly content and community events. This will be free for all players, with no microtransactions. Take part in community missions and unlock new rewards and customisations. Players will also be able to interact with Xbox One Mixer streamers by helping or hindering their gameplay.

Galactic Atlas Website
NEXT marks the launch of a new website dedicated to the community, which we're calling the Galactic Atlas. The site features points of interest in the No Man's Sky Euclid Galaxy, and will grow in functionality and expand over time, in part through your feedback. Key Regional Hubs are marked, with discovery statistics and community events appearing soon.



Base Building
Bases can now be built anywhere on any planet, high in mountains or underwater. Hundreds of new base parts have been added to unlock more creative possibilities. Teleporters can now be built anywhere on the planet surface, and the teleporter menu has been reworked for ease of use.

Base complexity and size limits have been dramatically increased. Players can own multiple bases, spread across regions, planets or star systems. Sculpt the terrain around your base with the improved terrain manipulator.



Third Person
The game is fully playable in third or first person, both on-foot and in ship. Ship controls in both views now allow for true low flight mode across the surface of planets. Communicate with other players using expressive gestures available from the quick menu.



Character Customisation
Construct an Appearance Customiser in your base or freighter to personalise your appearance. Play as a Gek, Vy'keen, Korvax or Traveller / Anomaly.



Freighter Enhancements
Assemble and upgrade a fleet of frigates, each specialised to excel in combat, exploration, trade, industry, or support.Command your frigates from the bridge of your freighter to complete real-time fleet missions. Call on your fleet for assistance in space battles, or deploy them to help you explore a specific system. Improved freighter base building allows for a truly custom capital ship.



Crafting and Resources
All core substances and resources have been reworked and rebalanced to increase consistency and realism. Planetary resources have been expanded, with unique substances and items to find and refine based on the planet's biome and weather, as well as stellar classification. Deployable tech can be picked up and carried in your inventory.

Crafting is deeper with the addition of buildable refiners. Convert raw substances into more valuable materials for constructing advanced products and base parts. Experiment with refiner recipes to discover all the possibilities!



Procedural Tech
Discover unique procedurally generated technology to upgrade your Exosuit, Multi-Tool, and Starships.



Analysis Visor Enhancements
Quickly locate terrain resources and buried products with the improved analysis visor. Set short-term goals by tagging the markers of points of interest. Pinpoint your exact location on a planet with visible latitude and longitude coordinates.



Missions and Structure

• The opening section of the game has been overhauled, introducing new story elements and an early taste of advanced gameplay features, as well as a new mission chain for players with bases.
• Envoys in Space Stations offer rewards and tributes to high-ranking members of their Guilds.
• Mission types have been expanded, with photography, feeding, freighter attack and defence, archaeology, and specialised hunting missions now available.

Graphical Enhancements

• Dramatically improved visuals bring more life than ever to planetary landscapes.
• Experience a greater sense of planetary scale with massively improved draw distance.
• Deep improvements to planetary terrain generation create more varied alien environments, featuring higher mountains and more navigable cave systems.
• Planet surfaces now look more interesting and representative from orbit.
• The universe is more diverse than ever with colour palette variety, dense forests and large trees, and abandoned and empty systems.
• New dynamic tessellation enables detailed terrain height maps without sacrificing performance. Tessellation will be rolling out in parity to all platforms that can support it very soon.

UI Overhaul
The HUD has been remixed to both improve readability and reduce intrusion on the gameplay area. The visual location of messages is better prioritised to help emphasise critical information. Quality of life improvements make the build menu and the quick menu more efficient.Inventory stacks can now be split for a more streamlined experience.

Players with freighters can summon any of their personal starship fleet at any time. Maintenance and repair interactions have had a visual and functional overhaul. Repairs now take place 'in-world', and can be carried out in incremental stages. Players interested in salvage can repair damaged ships + Multi-Tools by gathering the right components and fixing damaged slots.



Space Station Marketplace
Purchase all your space exploration needs in the huge new Space Station Marketplace.

Exploration, Fauna and Flora
Find and excavate buried ruins with the Terrain Manipulator to unearth locked ancient treasures. Use the Terrain Manipulator to locate buried technology modules and turn the salvaged components into new base parts with the Blueprint Analyser. Some creature types will herd together, grazing and fleeing from danger as a group.

Creatures now respond more enthusiastically to being fed, recognising you as a friend and alerting nearby creatures to the food source. Creature movements now appear more natural and intelligent, with improved AI and entirely revamped animations. Sentinel behaviours and animations have been improved. Players can stand their ground in combat, or take advantage of the time between reinforcement waves to escape and find a place to avoid Drone scans and searches. Find Navigation Data and use it in the overhauled Signal Booster to locate planetary structures.

Survive the threat of new hazardous flora and fauna. Be careful if you touch the eggs…



Audio
Creature voices are now more diverse, and NPC vocals have been updated to match their new set of animations. New foley for the player character is audible throughout the game. Ship sounds and combat audio have been improved. The game soundtrack is expanded with several new music tracks composed by Paul Weir.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[StrayKAT]

But the fundamental idea is still boring, I bet.

But since I'm about to install my whole Steam Library anyhow, it'll be on my computer to check out sometime.

 

[dj-electric]

Worth mentioning that right now the game is heavily discounted on steam and GMG

 

[neatfeatguy]

That's a pretty impressive list of updates/additions.

I've got to hand it to them - the initial release of the game was rather lackluster, but they've kept at it by trying to add on and improve. I did enjoy it enough to put 30-40 hours into the game when it first launched. This now seems like a gigantic sandbox/explore/base build game with multiplayer (once the next update releases).

I'm not much for the base building aspect of things, but if multiplayer proves to be decent enough, it might be something I could talk my younger brother into picking up.

 

[Deleted member 178884]

Glad to see it still updating - it has potential in 2-3 years, I guess I need to come back in 3 years to see how much progress on the ps4 version.

 

[Gasaraki]

Why are we still covering this stupid game. Just let it die and stop trying to hype it up constantly, how it's going to "fix the issues, and give us the game promised, bla, bla, bla". You can't reward liars.

 

[cucker tarlson]

"as the 1.5 update, codenamed NEXT, that dropped today. "

 

[dj-electric]

Why are we still covering this stupid game. Just let it die and stop trying to hype it up constantly, how it's going to "fix the issues, and give us the game promised, bla, bla, bla". You can't reward liars.

But... they did massively improve the game. Liars or not.

 

[StrayKAT]

Why are we still covering this stupid game. Just let it die and stop trying to hype it up constantly, how it's going to "fix the issues, and give us the game promised, bla, bla, bla". You can't reward liars.

Unfortunately, I already rewarded them at launch.

 

[Deleted member 178884]

Unfortunately, I already rewarded them at launch.

Hope you didn't pay £60 for it like I did at launch - asses at game didn't want to refund so I just leave it sitting there, time to wait a couple of years and it will be a decent game.

 

[StrayKAT]

Hope you didn't pay £60 for it like I did at launch - asses at game didn't want to refund so I just leave it sitting there, time to wait a couple of years and it will be a decent game.

Hah.. I did actually.

Shows how desperate I am for space games, I guess. To this day, the Wing Commander series is still in my top 5 or something (fortunately, I haven't gotten suckered in to backing Star Citizen). But what made WC great is dogfighting and narrative. Two things No Man Sky lacks.

 

[Deleted member 178884]

Hah.. I did actually.

Shows how desperate I am for space games, I guess. To this day, the Wing Commander series is still in my top 5 or something (fortunately, I haven't gotten suckered in to backing Star Citizen). But what made WC great is dogfighting and narrative. Two things No Man Sky lacks.

Ouch. I wanted a space game too, galaxy on fire was a solid game but it felt like grinding. Sadly we are yet to see a AAA space game that actually goes far - no mans sky would be great if it didn't feel too much of a grind and more space fights.

 

[StrayKAT]

Ouch. I wanted a space game too, galaxy on fire was a solid game but it felt like grinding. Sadly we are yet to see a AAA space game that actually goes far - no mans sky would be great if it didn't feel too much of a grind and more space fights.

I should have seen it coming tbh. I've already had a long disappointment with sandboxes in the past. It's just not my thing. If it is a big sprawing game, it still needs that sweet spot of offering more direction and narrative, like TES or GTA. I like open endedness, but not as the main selling point.

 

[Vayra86]

Def checking this out right about NOW

 

[AltCapwn]

Gonna buy it back used on ps4 to check that out, seems promising. Always loved the discovery part of that game as I always had interest in space.

 

[Fluffmeister]

I've been enjoying the game a lot as of Atlas Rises, but damn since playing NEXT they have put tons of work in, problem is I'm back learning what elements I need to construct/recharge certain systems.

It was sweet standing on one of my Frigates over looking my huge s-class freighter!

 

[IceShroom]

Why are we still covering this stupid game. Just let it die and stop trying to hype it up constantly, how it's going to "fix the issues, and give us the game promised, bla, bla, bla". You can't reward liars.

Better than New Bioware which droped support for Mass Effect Andromeda just in 5 months after release.

 

[StrayKAT]

Better than New Bioware which droped support for Mass Effect Andromeda just in 5 months after release.

Good riddance though.

For all of my love of narrative in games, Bioware really dropped the ball on that one.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Better than New Bioware which droped support for Mass Effect Andromeda just in 5 months after release.

when a game is just so bad you just want to literally bury it.... Just like back in 1983 when Atari buried a few million copies of their E.T game in some landfill somewhere.

I think for most people. The chance this game had has come and gone. People may still buy and play the game but if I didnt already have the game then i wouldnt buy it unless It was at bargain bucket levels in terms of discount or not at all if i think the money would be better off being put towards a bacon sandwich.

I judge this game purely on the principle that Sean Murray told a lot of lies and was guilty of hyping the game to no end.... the game gets released and its nothing like the footage thats been shown and there are features that were said to be in the game that arent..... Amongst other things...

Some people may still love the game though and thats fair enough.

 

[Prince Valiant]

Good riddance though.

For all of my love of narrative in games, Bioware really dropped the ball on that one.

EA sucked the last of the marrow from Bioware's bones long before Andromeda and they'll throw them in the mass grave sooner or later.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Hah.. I did actually.

Shows how desperate I am for space games, I guess. To this day, the Wing Commander series is still in my top 5 or something (fortunately, I haven't gotten suckered in to backing Star Citizen). But what made WC great is dogfighting and narrative. Two things No Man Sky lacks.

By date, Descent: Freespace still ranks by far nr.1 as the most realistical and enjoyable space fighter with amazing gameplay and story. I really wished that they would make a sequesl or at least a re-do....

 

[lexluthermiester]

Shows how desperate I am for space games, I guess. To this day, the Wing Commander series is still in my top 5 or something (fortunately, I haven't gotten suckered in to backing Star Citizen). But what made WC great is dogfighting and narrative. Two things No Man Sky lacks.

You should perhaps look into the Freespace games, on GOG of course;
https://www.gog.com/game/freespace_expansion
https://www.gog.com/game/freespace_2
And also the Independence War games;
https://www.gog.com/game/independence_war_deluxe
https://www.gog.com/game/independence_war_2

 

[Vayra86]

So...

went (back) in yesterday. Loaded my old save. Lots of things are different for sure... its a shame though that the game still has its clunkiness in many things, I need to get my mods back. The whole 'hold button to interact...slowly' gets on my nerves faster than I could find my ship. But then I found my ship. And anytime I get in the cockpit hatch will keep opening and closing repeatedly. In space, everywhere.

Possibly just me. So I travelled through space and some planets nearby with my newly transformed Pacman-ship, landed on a moon and got hit by severe storms shortly after. Very high risk planet apparently, and also high security, and... all of my old, pretty maxed out technology was now 'Obsolete Technology' that I can apparently sell for a crapload of cash. Great moment to figure that out too. Back to the ship. With the flappy cockpit, made my way back to Space station, got out... closed the game and got a crash to desktop.

And that's as far as i got. To be continued, if I can find the patience

 

[Gasaraki]

Better than New Bioware which droped support for Mass Effect Andromeda just in 5 months after release.

I have ME:A. They dropped support because it's one hot pile of garbage that can never be fixed because it's mostly game engine issues. The actual single player game itself is fine. NMS is a open world so there's no story and you can just add "stuff" in to the game, fix the UI and you're good.

 

[StrayKAT]

ME should have just ended at 3. They only felt compelled to carry on because of ME's ending drama, but in retrospect, it's just a damn game.. and it wasn't that bad. If anything, ME3's real fault was BEFORE the ending.. the actual planet Earth level. If they had made that badass... like the Suicide Mission in ME2, with different squad loadouts and lots of drama, then people would have been so emotionally drained that the actual ending would have been welcomed a bit more. As it is, Earth is subdued and the ending an emotional letdown.

But because of that, they wanted to redeem themselves... and listen to haters. Only they screwed up more and made a worse game.