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Just to clarify-- Update of the Year can include DLC correct? It may be prudent/helpful to call it Update/DLC of the Year.

How do Early Access games work for this? Ark was up for a nomination in 2015 but it hasn't even been released yet. At one point the CG awards were about our favorite things we played this year, which doesn't require release dates to be within the year. That said, that would allow Pong to get it.

At any rate, here are my nominations. I haven't played all of these but they all seem like they should get a nod in the nominations.

AAA: Doom, Skyrim SE, Fallout Shelter, Civ 6, Dishonored 2, Overwatch

Indie: No Man's Sky, Owlboy, Stardew Valley, The Witness, Firewatch

Update: No Man's Sky, Terraria, Fallout's Far Harbor

Mobile: Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run

Fallout Shelter was released for PC in 2016! :D

Also Jon-- wasn't Mighty No. 9 indie? It was kickstarted. It looks like their publishers are just distribution partners and nothing else.

@FunnyRandomz it looks like that key was given away months ago

Not a bad arena deck. How far did you go with it?

Hey JaBo, I'm moving this to the forums for now. If you'd like to add some more explanation and discussion points to it we can push it back to main.

Admittedly I've only put about 5 hours into Hearthstone but I asked a friend who plays a ton, and he said he didn't quite get it either.

Aaahhhh ok that makes sense now.

OH GET IT NOW!

Incredible. I bet it doesn't suck for him because maybe he didn't get what happened either.

> I've done that, where I've conceded or made a huge misplay and immediately regretted it. Or, started attacking minions instead of face, only to realize I had lethal and blew it lol.

I miss lethal rarely now. My misplays these days are in trading or not seeing some other in hand synergy with a card in play. I am taking a bit more time per turn to cut that down but it happens sometimes.

Congrats JaBo! I am not really close to getting a golden portrait at all. It's something I look forward to finally doing but haven't really prioritized ranked very much.

I built a Curator Zoo deck that is incredible fun. The synergy you can create with Beasts, Dragons and Murlocs using the Curator, Zoobot and Menagerie Magician is nuts. One match I buffed a Murloc, Beast and Dragon to crazy levels for a nuts smash to the face that won me the game. It also runs Anyfin Can Happen if you want a Murloc ending too. I also added Pantry Spider for some extra fun with a new card and so far it's not a Tier 1 deck but it gets enough wins to be fun.

Here she is, the last ship I'll ever need: http://i.imgur.com/wLIMmrX.jpg

Until I find another one that looks cooler ;)

I just love the science-type ships, and this one's asymmetry won me over. I was scouting for a badass x-wing looking ship but found this one instead.

On PC you can hide the HUD in the options, too.

Or download a mod to do it with a shortcut key

That first creature is awesome! And I love your ship. I might even give up mine for it! :D

Adam-- I've done the same thing with floating islands, and ended up just finding a beacon where I could call my ship. It was on another sucky planet though so it was not a fun time.

I ran into my first planet with weather patterns. I didn't even know there were such things in the game. It is so cool to discover these things!

Someone just stole my ship. Like, no joke, I'm walking back to my ship to leave and I see it take off.

http://i.imgur.com/GXTyQVG.jpg

I get to where it was supposed to be in about 25 seconds and snapped another pic. They've gotten off-world with it.

http://i.imgur.com/D2EreDI.jpg

I was able to call it back with an override chip but what the hell?

Also you shouldn't trust Dale: http://i.imgur.com/10CAotl.jpg

Also, we haven't mentioned portals: http://i.imgur.com/qX1wLNG.jpg

These were shown and discussed in trailers. This is the second one I've found. There's no marker for them (that marker in the screenshot is on a planet behind the portal) and they're apparently useless at the moment. People have dissected the game files and found dialogue relating to portals, but as of now nobody knows how to activate them, or even if you CAN activate them.

It's another SEAN MURRAY LIED TO US trigger, but I imagine they just couldn't get them working before launch.

@Adam, I'm not sure if it's *actually* being stolen or if it's a bug where the game treats your ship like an NPC ship. Either way, it was hilarious.

Travis: Can you be stuck on a planet if your ship is stolen?

Jon: no, you can't be stuck. All it takes is 10x of a couple elements to craft an override ship that you can use at many of the planet's locations to call your ship.

I actually bought this ship. I had a ton of money and little to spend it on, and I spotted this one and fell in love. It was like 300 million or something to that effect but at a certain point money is useless. I lucked into a gravitino ball planet followed by a vortex cube planet fairly early on, so I didn't have to worry about money.

*override chip, not ship.

Oh! And this isn't the first time I've had ship weirdness. I died in a space battle and respawned at that system's station. But my ship wasn't with me. The marker for that ship was behind me and days away. I had to reload my previous save, which was also at that station, and when I got out I checked the direction where the map marker was, and there was nothing back there. So it seemed my ship spawned in a different star system than I did.

Here is my current ship: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=750596983

Thanks scrypt! I found it crashed on a planet.

Yeah I dig that particular color. I haven't found a ship in that color that didn't look like a flying air conditioner unit.

One planet I was on had some very bizarre world generation that led to the environment breaking into buildings.

I had to use a grenade to get in: http://i.imgur.com/gUmvjy5.jpg
Here's some of the interior:
http://i.imgur.com/D8lbN9v.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HD1yQkF.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hXRl9Sz.jpg
Then this building is barely hanging on: http://i.imgur.com/XuSAfzL.jpg
Again, interior shots:
http://i.imgur.com/KIjhq2g.jpg - The entrance
http://i.imgur.com/5KYIHZ2.jpg

Another planet had some really unique creatures:
Flying tadpoles:
http://i.imgur.com/jaAqT5g.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dB2MFa3.jpg
And this bug chicken thing: http://i.imgur.com/HCKsjsY.jpg

And more ship weirdness! http://i.imgur.com/qWtqJJp.jpg
As I jetpacked up to get in, another ship landed below me.

Yeah I wanna see that tall ship too! I've never seen anything that looks like it would be a hazard before :D

@Greg-- 4 bars is the light armored one, the explorer class. Fighters have six, trade ships have eight.

Fighters are faster, trade ships are slower, explorer ships are medium speed and have the lowest HP. So it seems in terms of best all around, fighters are the best class.

But I still love my little lopsided grasshopper looking thing.

scrypt-- do you have the option on PS4 to turn off the HUD? I try to remember to do that for screenshots, but obviously I forget more often than not.

The HUD doesn't entirely disappear, only the stuff at the bottom with your life support and protection. Though it seems kinda odd that they do since life support is always dropping and you'd want to keep tabs on it.

The option in the menus disables everything, including point of interest icons and even the "press E" notifications that come up on things. If H does the same thing, I've been making this way harder on myself! :D

Escape -> Graphics -> Show HUD

@scrypt it looks like a PC only option for some weird reason :/

> This other species always seems to look exactly like one I've already discovered.

It's male and female. Some species don't have male and female that you can scan, some do. But when they do, only one counts toward your fauna completion.

In fact if you notice, when you scan those it'll say in the bottom right "scanned creature belongs to already scanned species" or something like that.

There's another patch up on the experimental branch. No patch notes, of course, because who wants to read those? But it appears bird scanning has been fixed, confirmed by a bunch of people.

Confirmed! I've scanned a few things and the scanner seems to be more consistent across the board, but it's more noticeable on birds.

I found a planet that was almost entirely water, and that's not a fun trip. There should be some sort of underwater propulsion. http://i.imgur.com/VWSFQri.jpg

But it did have a ton of underwater buildings, which I hadn't seen before and haven't since. http://i.imgur.com/FNh66Ia.jpg

These were odd animals. They were attached to the ground but would swing around like wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men. http://i.imgur.com/blbIuz2.jpg

These guys, in case you didn't get the Family Guy reference. https://www.amazon.com/Inflatable-Wacky-Waving-Tube-Man/dp/B008NCQ5O2/?tag=lege1-20

This happened, and I had no clue what the text said, but luckily the correct answer for Vy'Keen is almost always "report them to the authorities" http://i.imgur.com/pI3vHFz.jpg

This was the last animal I needed for 100% on this planet, and I found him in the wrongest place: http://i.imgur.com/UWgQrTE.jpg

I almost swapped ships when I came across this beauty, but I couldn't quite part with mine. http://i.imgur.com/QbIY5xe.jpg

This is my most recent planet, and the one that really makes me wish there were a way to wormhole to specific places. I never want to leave this place, but I must: http://i.imgur.com/M6ee7oN.jpg

More from that planet:
http://i.imgur.com/ukC6fls.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/P6PrxNK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/V9iwcmZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/VuIuPOK.jpg

Side-note: I don't know why these screenshots are so jaggy. It doesn't look like this in-game.

(actually, my in-game anti-aliasing is off, and I'm forcing it in the nvidia control panel because the in-game AA is broken. Maybe Steam is somehow getting a screenshot before the nvidia AA kicks in? I dunno)

> my AA in the game is maxed.

Yeah I turned it off because while it works a little better than it did at launch, it still doesn't work very well. I'm having nvidia do it for me which makes the game look amazing but apparently not the screenshots, and I have no idea how that works!

Remind me to do this tomorrow Greg, and I definitely will!

Adam, I've never had one of those kinds of ships but some of them look badass.

Also your second screenshot there is someone else's RAGE screenshot, and I suspect it's because the last two numbers got cut off, since it otherwise looks like it's in sequence.

Another winter planet, and these things are floating around. They just stay stationary. They aren't animals, plants, or geology apparently, because they're entirely un-scannable. http://i.imgur.com/tyjoAe8.jpg

Greg, you asked for settings--

Here's in game, everything maxed except for AA: http://i.imgur.com/nWXaRn1.jpg
Here's the nvidia control panel overriding AA: http://i.imgur.com/riy5fna.png

OK so apparently those floating things are radnox deposits. Mine the hell out of those if you find them. It's not gravitino, sac venom, or vortex cubes but it's very valuable!

Khajit has wares if you have coin.

15 of 15, and there are only 14 in the list. I wonder if that 15th somehow took it one too far. Either way, damn, that sucks!

I dig the ship. There's something about those grasshopper ships that I love.

I like the first one there. I've never been a fan of the class of ship in the second screenshot though.

Yeah, there's no reason to be picky until you find that 48 slot ship.

It's pretty easy to consistently find upgrades by using the transmission towers.

I really wish there was a way to keep a fleet of ships. Maybe that will come with updates. But I had to get rid of my ship due to a known bug related to my journey to the center.

I grabbed a crashed trade ship that I hated but it was my best option if I wanted to keep progressing on my path and not wait around for another perfect ship. I knew I'd find something amazing later, but that ship has been with me for so long, I'd grown attached to it. It's silly, but I really loved it.

It didn't take long before I found something amazing, though. Here she is in all her glory:
Left side: http://i.imgur.com/mHxNLVz.jpg
Right side: http://i.imgur.com/G159RIn.jpg
Yep, you saw that right. I have an astromech droid! :D http://i.imgur.com/cTRb7hh.jpg

I have a feeling I'll be sticking with this one for a while. I think it's a better looking ship than my old one, but it doesn't have the sentimental value yet.

Other random recent discoveries:
I call this a floating brainsquidturtlecricket: http://i.imgur.com/WGj19WJ.jpg
This gek looks like a cat. I feel like "Khajit has wares if you have coin" is even more appropriate here: http://i.imgur.com/sm5T8y8.jpg

I made it to the center! I won't spoil anything but here's the system I named right on the edge before the center: http://i.imgur.com/CbE9tlT.jpg
As for what comes after, you'll have to find that yourself :)

Once two of us have finished we should start another forum thread to talk about story stuff. "Finished" may be the wrong word because I don't think I'll ever be done with it. This is a game like Terraria where I want to keep playing forever, and it will be even more when they add more content.

Travis, how many hours did you put in before you made it to the center?

I am taking my time getting there.

Once I got all the inventory slots, all the blueprints, basically everything I could, I just made a mad dash toward the center, stopping to repair my ship when necessary. All told I have 62 hours in the game but you could probably get to the center in 30 or so.

I just found a planet full of vortex cubes. Needless to say, I am not popular with sentinels on this planet.

Oh yeah, vortex cubes will make them hate you but make you money! They don't come after you as much in the caves.

A couple of recent shots from my travels:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=758831469
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=756979789

I love that first shot, Will. It's like those planets lined up for that shot.

I have been to the biggest planet in that pic. I love that I can go to the planets that I see in the sky. So cool.

Yeah the worst that happens is the Steam videos get switched out.

"Misleading" is a loaded word, but there are some differences between the videos and the released game, as discussed in other threads here. But I think it's ludicrous to go after Hello Games for this when there are so many worse offenders like Ubisoft that I kept mentioning in the other thread.

If they're making recommendations and waiting for a response, I would imagine they'd technically have to be investigating, though perhaps not a "formal" investigation. In order for them to have recommendations to Valve and HG they would have already had to investigate, else there's nothing to recommend.

Surely they don't pass on any complaints to the companies and wait for the response before doing any of their own research. You'd end up with messages from them to Valve with things like "Person McPeople has requested that you change the advertising for DOOM because he/she was under the impression that there would be giant unicorns in the game and there aren't enough notices in the store page that there won't be unicorns."

Sure, that's hyperbole but hyperbole to make it easier to see the problem. Like 80% of the complaints they get are probably baseless, and they'd have to investigate a little bit before even presenting recommendations.

To put it more simply, that Gamespot article says they have rejected claims-- in order to do that, they have to investigate.

It may be a matter of the different ways "investigate" can be used.

Looking at the ASA FAQ, it looks like a justified complaint will launch an investigation. But again, there may be some ambiguity to that word.

OK! Solved! I think! This was bothering me (obviously :D) that the wording didn't all seem to fit.

1. The ASA receives a complaint, and determines if it's legitimate.
2. If legitimate, they launch an investigation and determine how the advertisers can resolve it.
3. At this point they try to resolve it informally, sending (in this case) Hello Games and Steam recommendations for how they can resolve the problem. This seems to be where we are right now. The initial investigation has found ways they can fix the advertising problems.
4. If this doesn't work out, a full formal investigation is done and judged by the ASA council. This takes lots of time so they try to avoid it.

So the word investigation *was* the problem here, since it applies in two different spots. The ASA can launch an investigation immediately, but they usually don't get sent up to the ASA Council.

The ASA has rejected claims because they found they weren't violating anything. And reading about how they do things, they reject things all the time before they go to the Council for an "official investigation" but there's plenty of investigating done before that.

But yeah, the last comment above-- on the ASA site, they refer to the immediate steps after a complaint has been filed as an investigation, and then they refer to the formal process later on as an investigation. Also, that website is hell to navigate. Information is spread around everywhere.

If they are sending Hello Games and Valve a raft of questions about the advertising, I'd *personally* classify that as them investigating the complaint. "An inquiry placed forward to" them sounds like investigating, personally. First steps and all.

Again, it's the ambiguity of the word "investigate." You're not wrong, the articles aren't wrong, it's just an ambiguous word.

Eh, I don't see it that way. It's mostly common parlance.

Though I do think it's hilarious that we are discussing whether game media is misleading people about the ASA activities, when what they're doing is determining whether others were misled.

ITS MISLEADS ALL THE WAY DOWN!

I think scrypt is right here in that by using certain words you do hype up the meaning which drives clicks. At this point games media wins clicks and ad revenue by continuing to keep this story amped up.

Investigation does, to me anyway, imply some criminal thing being looked into. Simply saying something like "The ASA has Opened Dialog With ..." isn't as sensational and doesn't drive as much attention.

I have personally been involved with incident investigations at my previous job that usually come down to "Verizon line was down." But it was still called an investigation.

Staying in tech, if I call about a known outage when I have internet issues, they'll say the techs are investigating.

Whenever anyone wants to say they're checking out something in a way that sounds like they care about what they're doing they will say investigating. It's a more official sounding way to say you don't know but you're finding out.

You're seeking knowledge on something, you're investigating it.

Oh, and probably "information" in response to your question.

Yeah, good point. Maybe I still think of Batman when I think investigation. But not the new Batman, the old one where he was a Detective.

Not that makes what I said make more sense. Because it doesn't.

Heh, I guess that's a discovery :D

Here is a Hello Games post on the update.

http://www.no-mans-sky.com/foundation-update/

Looks like it's getting more Terraria-esque features, which makes a lot of sense for the game.

Heh, Jon you missed my post ;)

Hahahaha. Yeah, your post is better.

Elite Dangerous is much more combat oriented. It's been the game that many people compare NMS to when criticizing it, but they have very different goals.

I like that graphic!

This is surely a bug, but if you find a ship (or buy one) with more advanced tech than you've learned to build, you'll never learn blueprints for the new tech. Unfortunately the best fix is to dismantle everything and rebuild. This is mostly a problem with starships but can also happen with multitools.

I don't (personally) think it's necessary since we've all read them but I could see the benefit if new people show up.

I'd like to echo scrypt's idea of "main tips" because there are some tips in that thread that aren't tips at all. But some of them could definitely be handy.

Here's a big tip that I wish I knew-- the different models of ships have different survivability, regardless of the upgrades you have on them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4yz8eg/psa_your_ship_looks_affect_its_survivability_in/

Oh here's a tip that I meant to mention in the roundtable:

We've been talking about farming for the Atlas Pass V2 and V3. I've discovered the best strategy for that: stop farming, and pretend they don't exist. Seriously.

Atlas Pass V1 gets you more frequent suit upgrades and usually a blueprint or two. V2/3 gets you... plants. And boxes. Like the same stuff you get everywhere else.

To refine that, if you've gotten it up to blinking red, you at least have to wait for the bar to go down before firing. But yeah, the cool down isn't well designed.

That isn't an obvious tip, at least it wasn't to me! I discovered it accidentally.

Ah, OK. I was basing that on my original pre-mod experience so it was probably overheating much faster.

I didn't think it was a bug, but it's not displayed well. The gradual slide down to cool makes it seem as though the temperature is steadily dropping, which based on practice isn't what's happening.

I posted this in the other thread, but it bears repeating: http://imgur.com/a/JjzTW#DdqlX39

Efficient upgrade placement. Not mine, found on reddit. I followed this guy's example and totally did away with the boltcaster on the multi-tool. With the railshot adapter it's so pointless. Even the elite enemies that show up when you take valuables from planets that have hostile sentries go down almost instantly.

He had reasonable justifications for the choices he made (which things to forego for others) but I can't remember them now. I have yet to equip any specific hazard protection. I haven't had much use for them yet. I can always get from shelter to shelter or stock some minerals to recharge it. BUT I imagine on the extreme weather planets that would be different.

Speaking of swimming speed-- if you do the melee/jetpack combo into the water, you keep your speed while underwater. Bonus, your jetpack recharges immediately when you submerge, so you can take a dip and then pop out at the same speed and with a full jetpack.

While we're talking about tips, here's a request for tips.

1. Is there any trick to more easily finding those last couple species on a planet? I know that they're in a certain order (land, air, cave, water) and all but sometimes it's just worse than a needle in a haystack.

2. This one gets slightly spoilery, but very slightly. I've learned a ton of words from the three main species, but I've only learned one Atlas word, and I've hit three Atlas stops. I don't even think that first word came from there anyway. Is there a trick to learning more?

1. Yeah, I've been doing that. The white dots show animal activity that's obscured or too far away, and when you get close you can tell if you've scanned it already. It's just a slog and a half to find the last one or two.

Oh and 2. According to the save file analysis people have done, the words for each species are all the same. Maybe there are some outliers like "interloper" for the Vy'Keen.

Yup. That's one of my favorite parts of the game though.

Thanks for the great tips everyone!

@greg:

1. Yeah scrypt is totally right, and as I told scrypt, that's what I've been doing. There's always that last one or two that get really tricky. Interestingly enough, I haven't found a single creature in caves. I've full-completed a few worlds but never seen a cave dweller.

2. Maybe, maybe not. That was just speculation on reddit. However, speaking to them is faster if you're looking to get words fast. The random aliens you meet in shelters and space stations that give you a little puzzle thing (at least it's puzzling if you can't read the language) can be spoken to again for 20 carbon. One of the options there is to learn a new word. That comes up once every other time you speak to them. But the other times you can usually get carbon from them, so you can keep going indefinitely and learning words. Way easier than

@scrypt: that's either a PS4 bug or a PC bug. On PS4 you can upload barren planets, on PC you can't. But nobody knows which one is the bug.

Also @greg with regard to #2-- if you speak to them and still have unknown words, I don't think you've gotten them all. There are 450ish words for each species, and if I am reading this right, they only used those words for the dialogue. So if you never see missing words you may have them all.

Oh yeah, I know they can be for sure. I'm just surprised I've never seen one!

You can find my Steam profile on my CG profile here, just click my name :)

Something truly exciting-- I was heading to a distress signal where a bunch of freighters were getting attacked. Two ships, easy peasy. But one of my shots missed and hit the innocent freighter. I decided to try my hand at piracy since I hear it's quite lucrative.

Little did I know that those sentinels aren't just robots on planets, they also have ships. So I got that level 10 milestone for ships destroyed. Yeesh. And the Korvax loved me for taking out sentinel ships.

Greg-- check a few comments up

"@scrypt: that's either a PS4 bug or a PC bug. On PS4 you can upload barren planets, on PC you can't. But nobody knows which one is the bug."

It's a known bug one way or the other, I'm just not sure if we're bugged or scrypt is :D

It seems like about half and half for me. I tend not to stay on the barren planets long because besides not having animals, they're often quite boring. That screenshot is still hilarious! :D

I would pay tons of units or real world money for something that gives you hints about the animals. I have one left to discover, and it's between a flying animal and a water animal. So it has to be either flying, cave, or water, since that's the order the records are in. I've found birds during the day and night, I've swam all around the ocean during the day and night, I've been all through a ton of caves during the day and night. It just isn't showing up :/

I wish I had the PS4 bug :D

While on the topic of things I'd love to have in-game, a way to call your ship as a late late late game item would be amazing.

Also Greg disregard that theory I read on reddit about the members of the species teaching you a different subset of the language than the stones. Everyone learns the words in the same order regardless of where you learn them.

Here are a few tips now that I've gotten pretty far.

1. This one is spoilery so it's hidden behind a pastebin, but I wish I had read it before even starting the game in a way: http://pastebin.com/9zrj2J4e

2. The numbers shown on the galaxy map are way wrong. If something says you're jumping about 1600 toward the center of the galaxy, it's actually only 3 or 400.

3. Black holes always put you between 1300 and 1700 light years closer to the center, so it definitely gets you clsoer than a normal warp, but you break some equipment. Come prepared, or be prepared to stop and farm for/buy ingredients to fix broken equipment. Worth it though.

4. Don't follow the path to the center waypoint that you have in your galaxy map. It isn't as efficient. Just go into free exploration mode, point yourself at the center (the big shiny light) and warp as far as you can toward it. Preferably to a black hole. Once you get a few jumps like this under your belt, you'll get a feel for how far forward you can jump and it becomes much easier.

4a. About black holes, further spoilery text that's related to #1 but is even more spoilery: http://pastebin.com/KqzCzzm5

Ultimately, I wish I had jumped more often. As it is right now, I'm at milestone 10 on all the milestones, and all I have left to do aside from enjoying the scenery and farming for words is to jump to the center. But that gets a bit boring.

Also-- the reason for the math mismatch. They noticed before launch that you could get to the center faster than they liked, so they expanded things 4x, but didn't properly update all the math. So warps that tell you they're taking you 1600 light years only actually take you 400 light years.

Black holes have a confusing numbers issue as well, but it's not an inaccuracy. A black hole warp might say that you went hundreds of thousands of light years but you're only 1500ish closer. That's because the report when you get out of a black hole tells you the linear distance you traveled, not how much closer you are to the center. If it takes you to the other side of the galaxy, that's a long damn trip.

It was to me as well, until I ran out of things to do. The sights are pretty and the random animals are interesting, but that's not enough. I wish I had been progressing toward the center gradually the whole time. Still, it's going to take me 100 black holes or so to get there, so the need to farm for repairs will keep me interested, I hope.

It goes left -> right and then down.

So

First Second
Third Fourth
Fifth Sixth

and so on.

Which honestly seems weird doesn't it? It really seems like it should go top-down.

Oh also, 10 planets fully scanned and I STILL never saw a cave creature. Weird RNG.

@Greg: from my experience the scanner will reveal what the ? is if it has line of sight nearly 100% of the time, but even sometimes if it doesn't. I've seen it not work when there wasn't anything obviously in the way except for terrain, but then it'll work sometimes with terrain in the way so I have no idea. :D

I have seen "press P to go back" and the like but seriously, P? What were they thinking there? Escape is always the key for that kind of thing.

And I imagine that it saves immediately when you hit the beacon, but just hasn't had time to show you the notification about it, so I would bet it's saving before you upload it. That said, I rarely worry about that and end up uploading discoveries from the past 6 or 7 jumps in one sitting, unless I've 100% completed a world. Why it doesn't do this shit automatically is a total mystery to me. The E3 footage from a while back even showed an "upload successful" message whenever you discover something.

So further tip about going to the center: things actually do get weirder toward the center, at least in my experience. I use a few black holes in a row to jump a few thousand light years and then stop for repairs and such, and the planets are so much more enjoyable.

I'm not spoiling anything, just restating something that the developers have said and confirming that it's correct in my experiences.

> I just ran into something special for my second time.

What kind of something special?

Don't worry, nobody is saying anything about story! I think story spoilers for a game like this would give someone the ability to smack someone across the internet ;)

But it's a procedurally generated game, which makes it entirely impossible to spoil something except for story. Our games will all be very different. That's one of the things I love, you can never know what to expect.

Ah ok. Understood. I don't think it's at all a spoiler since "Atlas Interface" is marked on your map from the start of the game.

I actually prefer the blaster to the phase beam personally. At least when it's upgraded it fires super fast, auto aims, and almost never overheats. The phase beam, even upgraded, overheats in like half a second.

Early days before the upgrades, the phase beam was handy though.

Just to point out my terminology was wrong, so we may not be on the same page. I'm referring to fighting in ships.

For the multi-tool, I don't even have the "blaster" or whatever it's called installed. The railshot adapter makes your mining beam insanely powerful as a weapon.

OK so we got the answer about uploading barren planets: It's fixed on PS4 now, so it was never supposed to work that way at all. Weird that it only affected PS4.

If you are going to upgrade your multi-tool, dismantle all that you can on your current multi-tool before upgrading. You get some good resources that way.

By upgrade, I mean swap out for a new multi-tool.

Yep, same goes for ships!

The easiest way to get the Atlas Pass V1 is the space anomaly. It's guaranteed on your first trip there. And an anomaly is guaranteed on your first visit after your first Atlas Interface.

V2 and V3 can also come from the anomaly, but you have to hit it a ton of times first. You can also grind outposts for them, they come as random rewards, but that's quite tedious, I did it.

Thanks for the tip Scrypt!

Yep, that's a glitch that may get patched out, but I've used it quite a bit for vortex cube farming.

Ah, it looks like that glitch *was* patched out. No more stacking those unstackables unfortunately.

Interesting. I checked it because someone on a PS4 patch thread said it was patched.

Maybe it still works if you have previous stacks before the most recent patch? I dunno.

I have, it's not working. Weird.

I wonder though, if it will let you break down components into stacks, but then if you pick up another one (like a vortex cube) it won't stack with the other stack, if that makes sense. That's what I tested. I didn't break down multiple ship components at once.

That would give you the option of more easily breaking things down while not letting you continue to collect.

Huh. Nope, I just tried that. I last stopped on a vortex cube planet. I tried breaking down two things that give you vortex cubes, and then picking up a few. It's now stacking the same as always.

SO... I dunno.

Huh. Nope. This is weird. Here's what I did:

1. Grabbed a vortex cube from the ground.
2. Broke down a module that gives you a vortex cube. At this point I had one that said 1/1, and another that said 1/100
3. Built that module again, and got lucky that it used the one that said 1/1.
4. Broke it down again. Now I have one stack that says 2/100.
5. Picked up a vortex cube from the ground, transferred it to my ship. Now, 3/100.
6. Picked up six more from the ground, transferred them to my ship. I have a stack of 6/100 and three individuals. Wat.

Yeah good point about the steps. I guess I had another vortex cube in my inventory and didn't realize it.

I think my browser ate part of that last one-line comment there. Either that or I thought I wrote more and hit "post" too soon. I was at the doctor so I may have just been distracted. Either way--

I guess I had another vortex cube and didn't realize it. I hadn't been to a trading post in a while so that's feasible. You are correct that it was Beam Impact Theta.

To your second paragraph, that's exactly how it used to work, then I saw someone say it was patched and tested it myself and my findings agreed with that person, the trick no longer worked. But then testing it earlier it was working for me again, albeit inconsistently. Transferring them to the ship only stacked some of them, which is dumbfounding to me. Reading more since 1.08 it seems that very rarely people say it was patched but it's mostly people saying it isn't.

I guess it's possible that there's a certain thing you can do that makes it inconsistent. And it may have something to do with save files pre-1.08? I had been doing all that testing on a single save, as in I hadn't saved at all since I started testing it. I tested again, got the inconsistency again. Then I saved again, closed the game, booted it back up, and it's no longer inconsistent. It's working perfectly.

So who knows. Long story short, it looks like it still works! It just got weird for me.

OK revisiting this a week later. Another patch, and this time the stacking bug is absolutely fixed. Dismantling the Beam Impact Theta this time creates a single item in a stack of 1/1 rather than 1/100.

Other "bugs" removed include the one where you could hold in E and mouse over all your discoveries to upload them quickly. Geeeeeeeez why did they remove that? It wasn't really impacting anything and it made uploading discoveries so much easier.

The patch is in testing on PC currently.

But also, the level of detail is far better-- way less pop-in near you as you walk through the world, and there are new graphical effects like fog and volumetric lighting (at least new to the PC, maybe not PS4, I dunno), all while running WAY better.

Nope, they're working on making what they have work better first, which is sensible.

So a couple of notes on the patch, now that it's public.

1. The hold-and-sweep to upload all your discoveries is broken on Steam but not on GOG. That's an interesting disconnect. You'd expect it to be the same files. It's probably just a particular repository they didn't update. I'm *hoping* that fixing something else broke the sweep to upload, and they then fixed sweep uploading but forgot to add that to the Steam version.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(What I mean by that, on your discoveries screen, rather than holding E on every single discovery, you could hold E and then sweep your mouse over everything. It wasn't instant but it skipped part of the delay so uploading many discoveries at once was much faster.)

2. The item stacking will still work if you have a stack from before the patch, so as long as you sell all but one of your vortex cubes, gravitino balls, or whatever you had a stack of before, you'll be fine. But as soon as you sell that whole stack, you won't be able to stack again.

3. Distant LOD is far better now, way fewer terrain pop-ins, but the ones within a few meters still happen.

4. Graphics seem better across the board but there are some issues. Grass flickering is a big one-- if you're near tall grass, the textures flicker in and out. If you're a few meters away or fly above the grass, it's fine. Turning down the FOV helps significantly but doesn't fully fix it, but I'm not about to do that because increased FOV helps with motion sickness.

4. This is patch 1.0.9 according to GOG. Steam doesn't have any way to tell the version other than patch notes and we haven't gotten those in quite a while. There was a small update on Steam's experimental branch after 1.0.8 hit PS4 that some people think was 1.0.8, but some seem to think THIS patch is the 1.0.8 patch since no main-channel patch hit until now... BUT there are no patch notes at all since 1.0.7. That's incredibly frustrating. I get why they're staying mostly silent right now about where the game is headed. Anything they say right now would probably be met with tons of vitriol and death threats and other common angry gamer terribleness, but I don't think patch notes on patch day is asking for much. For a while they came a few days after patches but the 1.0.8 patch never got any patch notes. They assembled a community team a few weeks back that has yet to interact with the community.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah there are a few ways you can use the term LOD, but in this case it's basically that distant textures render in a higher level of detail sooner now, which leads to things looking better in the long run, with less mid range pop-in. The nearby pop-in is still rampant but it's progress!

The PS4 patch came out today and confirms that all these changes are patch 1.9. Interestingly, the "sweep" discovery upload is also fixed/broken depending on how you look at it on PS4. So only GOG users still have this ability.

Perhaps since 1.9 is now out on all platforms we'll see patch notes in the coming days.

http://www.no-mans-sky.com/log

Patch notes are up. It confirms that getting more than a single item per stack of some items was an exploit and has been intentionally fixed. The hold-and-sweep to upload thing isn't specifically mentioned, but one bug that was fixed...

Fixed a rare issue where pressing and holding a button would cause the game to crash under specific circumstances.

... sounds like it might have something to do with that.

Yeah they update their boilerplate every patch or so, that's the one I've seen mentioned recently.

Honestly props to them. As much as I hate waiting days for patch notes and not knowing what's coming, they're really working hard to fix the game.

Yeah that's the one I posted about above. An update about their intentions for the near future would be welcome now. The natives are getting restless!

I am getting restless! They might be a little reluctant to talk about what is next given the "overhype" of the game prior to release.

Yeah, that's probably why they've been basically silent for so long. Even just some general hints without any hype or specifics would be neat at this point, but those hints would also be subject to overhype. They're in a no-win situtation.

Right, but a matter of when-- a month, six months? Something like when they plan to start, if people can expect things before the end of the year, that kind of thing.

Actually not even that. The issue is that the very active Hello Games twitter and Sean Murray's twitter have been entirely silent since the launch, with the exception of announcing patch notes. The only thing they've said on their own site is that they'll be working on bases and freighters when they have patched the bugs. But that was early on, the reception the game received has only gotten worse, and they've stopped talking.

Which, fine, they're working on things and they may not have any new details to share. BUT the problem is that the hole is being filled by the detractors. The people who feel they were lied to or that the game failed to deliver are louder, even if there numbers are falling a bit. But they're controlling the narrative.

This PC Gamer article says what I mean pretty well, although he feels much more pessimistically than I do.
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-makers-of-no-mans-sky-need-to-start-talking-again/

I agree with your predictions, and also the multiplayer expectations. I'm even happier without it.

I don't think patch notes are enough, and as far as I can tell there's been no news since September 2. That last development update is awesome. We need another one. As specific as that one is, no need to hype stuff again and kill people's hopes and dreams and (apparently) everything they live for. Just *something*.

> My prediction: The user base will dwindle down to those who probably would have been the only ones to buy the game if they had been 100% completely transparent about every "boring" detail of the game. Hello Games will continue to support the game, as they have always said they would. People will talk shit about Hello Games for forever, despite anything, because that's what people do.

I agree with you on this. Eventually the rage will subside and it won't be as fashionable to talk about No Man's Sky so you won't be seeing "think pieces" saying the same thing anymore nor will people share them. I am going to make a further prediction in that this game will eventually, years later, be seen as a good game. There will be think pieces that state it's flaws yet that largely it will be seen with fresh eyes as a good game. Kind of like Spore now, not perfect but good and sells quite a bit.

> That last development update is awesome. We need another one. As specific as that one is, no need to hype stuff again and kill people's hopes and dreams and (apparently) everything they live for. Just *something*.

I bet, for you, another dev update would work well. That said, them going into silent running mode is the best strategy in our current environment. ANYTHING they say at this point will be wrong. It will be picked apart and become a new news cycle where the majority written/comment sentiment will be anti Hello Games. Eventually they will post what you want Travis, but if I were them i'd hold off for along time.

When a community is aggrieved and as negative as they are now i'm not sure more communication is the answer even though everyone says it is. Sometimes you need to have people work it out to achieve some kind of resolution on their own. I'm not sure I can think of a case where there was so much negativity and a company turned it around with more talking.

Patching the game and then talking about new free content is the ticket and eventually, we will get some kind of post mortem or something from them but for now, silent running seems like the best option.

I agree with that to a point, but right now the thing people are complaining about the hardest is the silence. Especially so, considering that the latest development update talks about bring on a community management team that hasn't interacted with the community at all.

People feel neglected, in a way, even the people who like the game. Maybe especially those people. The rage about "NO MANS LIE AMIRITE" has died down quite a bit. The people on /r/NoMansSkyTheGame at least seem to downvote trolls now instead of celebrating them. The complaints left are reasonable, and chief among them is the silence from Hello Games.

Which is why I think now is a good time to talk.

When they released the last development update, people in general did not tear it apart like you mention. It was hopeful. Aside from the typical, tired "I bet they're just lying!" comments, it was very positively received. Something now to expand on this paragraph:

"What matters now, as always, is what we do rather than what we say. We’re developers, and our focus is first on resolving any issues people have with the game as it is, then on future free updates which will improve, expand and build on the No Man’s Sky universe."

would be great. Just something to say "We are nearing the end of bug fixing and will soon start working on content updates." or something to that effect.

Just to be clear I don't think this is an *obligation* or anything. They sold a game and we bought it, and the extent of the obligation, in my opinion, is to fix the major issues. I just think it would be better for them and us.

What I imagine is that they're waiting until they have something really solid to say before they say it.

It's just really frustrating when patch notes come late (super late in the case of 1.0.8 which didn't even show up until a week or more later, a few days after 1.0.9 came out), and say things that amount to "We know there are problems and we're going to work on it" and are then silent for weeks, patch notes aside. It's especially frustrating as someone who likes the game quite a bit, who lost interest because of some of the places where the game is quite shallow. After 70ish hours, yes, so that's a lot of game. I just see a lot of unfinished potential, and my frustration comes from that.

I sound unappreciative, but I'm not. They're working hard to fix things when the mood at Hello Games has to be pretty dour. It's not easy and I greatly appreciate it, personally. I'm sure they'll do some great things with what they have after the bug fixes are done.

This started off more as me wanting to vent than wanting to start a debate but here we are :D

"My knee, that's my fucking knee why didn't you evolve me you asshole?"

Ah, love it.

Literally laughing out loud that was so funny.

How are you watching it? Hulu, Netflix, YouTube? Cable?

I've heard about this too, kinda want to watch it now.

The best thing is that their last episode is the Bullshit of Penn & Teller: Bullshit.

They own up to the fact that they aren't infallible and even that they were straight up wrong on some episodes.

And they spew a bunch of... eh, well... Bullshit... about some Libertarian causes. They're die-hard Libertarians and some things are just Libertarian talking points.

Like one episode in which they argue that second-hand smoke isn't harmful, even though it's basically proven that it is.

BUT don't let that stop you from watching. I loved it. It's a fun show and they make some good points that make you think. Just be sure you think, and don't just believe everything they say.

Huh, apparently that's not the last episode. Maybe it was an extra they did? I'm not sure. At any rate, they definitely call Bullshit on themselves.

So I'm reading about their episodes now, and realizing that I would have more of a problem with the show now than I did 10 years ago. I'm much more educated and I'm just not sure I could watch "the flat tax is the only moral tax," "global warming isn't real," "the Americans with Disabilities Act is shit" and stuff like that anymore.

> I watched it via Amazon Prime Instant Video.

We recently signed up for Prime so I just added that to my queue, thanks Greg!

For us, Amazon Prime usually pays for itself in a few months just in shipping alone, then you get special deals, streaming video/music, Kindle specials... it's a no-brainer.