Wilhelm’s No Man’s Sky post on Monday got me thinking about what kind of multiplayer experience No Man’s Sky actually gives it’s players. I tend to think that, while No Man’s Sky, has made so, so much progress since it’s release in 2016, the multiplayer experience hasn’t changed all that much.
Yes, before you tell me it didn’t have multiplayer when it launched, I know, I remember. I also remember it being weird that Sean Murray led players on that their might be days before the launch.
Spoiler alert, people tried to meet up, it didn’t exists. Queue the outcry!
Now it does have multiplayer,it has for years, and still it’s as true now as it was 8 years ago, “No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game.” Can I see my friends? Yes. Jump around with them? Yes. Fly spaceships near each other? Also yes. Talk to them through an in game voice chat that, for some inexplicable reason, has the options to turn it off buried in the Network settings of all places? Unfortunately, yes. I can do all of that but there’s nothing to do together per say.
90% of the time spent playing No Man’s Sky with the Squad this weekend consisted of the four of us landing on a planet and immediately running in opposite directions. We did our own thing while chatting in Discord. I was doing this in 2016 too, I just couldn’t see any of them in the game. The only interaction we had with each other was meeting up and trading some materials with each other. Then it was right back out to do our own thing again.
I think this all stems from a few fundemental reason.
First, the world(s) isn’t all that dangerous. There isn’t muchthreat from anything besides the environment which can, often times, be mitigated by having enough supplies to charge all your bars or jumping back in your ship while they recharge. There isn’t a place you’re going to stumble in to that’s going to require someone else’s help. You’re rarely attacked and even if you are, you can probably get yourself out of a bad situation easily.
Second, there aren’t any shared objectives. Similar to above, there just isn’t anything that requires someone else help. There’s also nothing that brings you to the same spot for an activity. You can follow your friend(s)around from point of interest to point of interest but opening the same box as your buddy doesn’t add any value to the experience.
This all make sense, because again, “No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game”. Turns out, when you slap multiplayer on a game years later, it might be lacking.
Now, this may just be me not “getting” survival sandbox multiplayer. I think Palworld suffers from the same issue. Great as a solo game, servicable with two people, unbelievably boring with more than that. I want to play with people not around them. No Man’s Sky doesn’t offer meaningful ways to play together.
7 Days to Die, on the other hand, has a great multiplayer experience. The world is dangerous, made less so with a few pals. There’s a shared common goal of getting ready and surviving the Blood Moon. There are even shared quests from the Traders now. There’s always some reason to be within sight of another player.
All this to say, I don’t think No Man’s Sky offers much of a multiplayer experience.
Admittedly, we haven’t gotten very far in the game so I to see what we could do together. There, I found a lot of the same sentiment. One thing that did come up was doing Nexus missions together from the Anomaly. We haven’t tried these yest so maybe it will add some structure and a common goal for us to work on together.
I also came upon discussions of the Glactic Hub Project. This bills itself as a multiplayer Civillization which sounds kind of neat. It reminds me of the player groups that formed in Elite Dangerous:
The Galactic Hub Project is a multiplayer organization based in the video game No Man’s Sky. Founded in 2016, the Hub is No Man’s Sky’s largest and oldest active civilization. Our community features social events, PVP, sports, economic opportunities, creative writing endeavors, construction projects, and so much more. The wide variety of available content in our space has attracted the construction of over 2,000 bases in Hub space every year since 2020.
Galactic Hub Wiki Page
Of course, no space fairing civilization is complete with it’s own cryptocurrency. I’m not kidding…
Many Welps 