Bummed about all the “No Man’s Sky” issues…

So back when Hello Studios was promoting their soon to release “No Man’s Sky”, it looked great, and was promised to include many multiplayer perks.   After many delays, the game has materialized, but not the game I was hoping for.  At best it is a wholly different form than the version that was advertised.

I’m not much of a Multi-player gamer, but I do readily concede that the bulk of the complaints against Sean Murray and Hello Games were on the Multi Player front.  So I won’t waste your time on the multitude of ways that they have disappointed their fans on the MP front. My main concern in this article is the way they went about implementing the financial portion of the game.

No Man’s Sky allows that I can buy a ship or MultiTool from an alien trader, but I cannot sell my StarShip or MultiTool to anyone, which completely breaks the traditionally accepted transactional finance system of the game, as these two items are (or would be) the single biggest value items.

I totally enjoy the idea of being able to search-out crashed Starships to find the upgrade of my dreams, but I dislike the idea of not being able to sell my previously owned ship.  If I have to pay to buy someone else’s ship, then I should be able to sell my ship.  The traditional sales model used in 90% of the games out there that have a character inventory system, the Player can typically acquire inventory by:

  • defeating an opponent and claiming their property (the right of the conquering hero),
  • stealing items (and potentially needing a fence if stolen property is marked as such), and
  • actually buying the items through legitimate sales or other such transactions.

Another control method to keep a player from gaining the best possible StarShip in the first hour of playing the game is:

Ships/MultiTool that I am offered will always be based on the current number of slots of your current StarShip/MultiTool.  If I have a 20 item ship, I won’t be offered a 48-slot ship, I will instead be offered a ship up to approximately 24 thru 26-slot.  This is true whether or not I chose to buy a StarShip or search for a crashed StarShip.  Same with MultiTools.

If I max out all of my armaments and companion items from inventory when I have a 48-slot ship, then the asking price for an almost equivalent 48-slot ship is approximately 152 Million Space Bucks (Units).

But if I take that same ship and remove all of the armaments and companion items from inventory, then suddenly bids on roughly equivalent ships are around 56 Million Space Bucks (Units). So we can deduce with a little math that all of the successfully built-out armaments and companion items is 96 Million Space Bucks (Units).  So a user could eventually get a really good ship relatively quickly in the game by “flipping” Starships.

Once I figured-out the way that financial transactions occurred in the game, the whole “play as a Trader” gameplay went right out the window. So I’ve spent about 100 Million Space Bucks (Units) buying a 36-Slot ship, and later a 43-slot ship.  I eventually found a crashed 48-slot ship, as most of my fellow players have successfully done.

But if the value of my next ship is dependent on the number of slots of my current ship (48 slots), then finding a 48-slot fighter should be relatively easy and not too expensive.  Wrong.  They are still wanting 148 Million Space Bucks for a 46-slot Fighter (when I already have all of my armaments and companion slots stripped-out of my current starship).  Wow.  Talk about a broken financial system.  They’ve ruined the game for me.  And I’ve done less than 21 hyper-drive jumps.  I’ve given up playing this game until they fix the issues, which may never get resolved, since Multiplayer issues will probably eclipse the Financial issues.

The number of times the game has crashed for me is beyond my ability to count (I don’t have that many fingers and toes).  And Sony’s Playstation4 OS asks me once again: “Please describe the problem you are having:”.  Well Sony, my problem is that I paid $60 for this game…

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