Hello Games Introduces No Man's Sky BEACON Expansion

[T0@st]

Hello, our latest update is called No Man's Sky BEACON, releasing today on June 4th, and it's a big one! Not only that but we are releasing a Nintendo Switch 2 version ready for launch of the new console tomorrow on June 5th. Players can become town mayor and take ownership of multiple settlements. You can construct buildings and upgrade each one, with new building types like jukebox bars where you can choose the music, merchants where you can build custom starships or even ponds you can chill and fish at.

One of the coolest additions in BEACON is the arrival of the robotic Autophage settlements. The most recent race introduced to No Man's Sky, these large towns are built in their own image, an identifiable robotic style, all metal and mechanics. Unique Autophage building parts can be constructed in your own base and add a very hard sci-fi style to your dwellings and constructions. For the ambitious Traveller, multiple settlements can now be owned and managed by one Overseer, so for instance you won't need to abandon your existing charges to bring these new robotic citizens under your wing.




Settlement visitors will also notice a complete level up of building details across all settlement types, including weathered building materials, upgraded settlement buildings and new settlement utilities.

Each inhabitant can be conversed with, with their own abilities and attributes to manage. As town mayor you'll be enlisted to welcome new settlers, resolve disputes, and make choices to create prosperity.



A well managed settlement can make their owners rich in resources, but they need to be protected. Travellers can hire a squadron of wingmen, who will now defend towns when they come under attack from roving pirates.

Away from the huge settlement makeover, BEACON offers many more quality of life improvements which the community will love, such as the ability to change or even disable the voice communicator of your exosuit, and improved base part snapping to name just a few.

We introduced Cross-Save for No Man's Sky at the end of last year to a limited few to ensure it was robust and that people's thousand hour saves weren't in jeopardy. Ever since we've slowly been opening up to more and more players and, with BEACON, I'm happy to announce that we are opening up Cross-Save fully to the entire player base. Now everyone can continue their travels no matter what platform they are playing on.

And Cross Save and Cross Play are particularly important as this update we also are releasing a cutting edge version of No Man's Sky for Switch 2 launch.

It's been fun to see Travellers exploring the universe in search of alien remains since we released the RELICS update last month, creating ever-wilder creature permutations and turning their bases into mini-museums. BEACON is the third update of the year and there's plenty more planned. I'm so proud of the small team for continuing to pour such passion into this game we love so much. Full patch notes can be found here.

Our journey continues.

• Sean Murray, Hello Games

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[Veseleil]

Hello, hello games.

 

[Cheeseball]

Oh damn, No Man Sky is now turning into my Terraria replacement.

 

[neatfeatguy]

A few months back I probably put in around 30 hours into No Man's Sky and I do have to say that it has vastly changed since the initial launch of the game, but it hasn't improved my opinion about it.

What hasn't changed, yet has (a little), is the creature variation between worlds. I visited a couple dozen different solar systems across thousands of light years and easily visited a 100 different planets. While there were a couple of interesting ones (for example, one had geometric shapes as creatures - such as cubes) most have the same looking creatures. The first planet I was on, it was really cool to see these giant worms tunnel up from the ground and fly across the sky and then tunnel back into the ground. It was pretty cool to see them on the second planet I visited and it was okay seeing them on the third planet I visited.... By the time I had been through 4-5 dozen planets it was boring as hell to see these giant worms on 90% of all the planets I visited across thousands of light years apart.

Here are some new things I got to experience:
You had a star ship fleet you could command and send ships off on voyages for resources.
You had mech-type machines you could build and commandeer.
You could do daily missions for in game currency to buy special items.
You had plans you could use for building bases.
You could take ownership of a settlement and make decisions for it.
You can play in 3rd or 1st person view (personally, I hate the 3rd person view, it feel clunky and looks awkward. Although, I feel the first person view had been adjusted from the original game and it feels slightly off, too. It took me a long time to get used it.).
You can set game difficulty settings how ever you want to make it very casual or an extreme survival mode type game.
...the list goes on of all the new stuff you could do that wasn't available during the original release, yet I don't feel these additions really helped the game.

While all this different stuff has been added the game still feels empty. You have all these things to do and all these places to visit, but even after adding all this extra stuff it still just seems bland. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the game on a some level, but no matter how much they add to the game it doesn't make it feel like it has any more depth than it did when it initially released. I'm not sure how much more they can add to this game and still keep it feeling like it hasn't really changed since it was originally released.

I commend Hello Games for not giving up on No Man's Sky. It's a rare thing to see a company that keeps adding stuff to a game for so long. I just don't see the entertainment in the things they've added. I suspect the game has run the course for my enjoyment and it seems there are many people out there that love all the add-ons that have been done for free.

 

[Event Horizon]

I'll take the XeSS 2.0 and silent exosuit.

 

[Veseleil]

A few months back I probably put in around 30 hours into No Man's Sky and I do have to say that it has vastly changed since the initial launch of the game, but it hasn't improved my opinion about it.

What hasn't changed, yet has (a little), is the creature variation between worlds. I visited a couple dozen different solar systems across thousands of light years and easily visited a 100 different planets. While there were a couple of interesting ones (for example, one had geometric shapes as creatures - such as cubes) most have the same looking creatures. The first planet I was on, it was really cool to see these giant worms tunnel up from the ground and fly across the sky and then tunnel back into the ground. It was pretty cool to see them on the second planet I visited and it was okay seeing them on the third planet I visited.... By the time I had been through 4-5 dozen planets it was boring as hell to see these giant worms on 90% of all the planets I visited across thousands of light years apart.

Here are some new things I got to experience:
You had a star ship fleet you could command and send ships off on voyages for resources.
You had mech-type machines you could build and commandeer.
You could do daily missions for in game currency to buy special items.
You had plans you could use for building bases.
You could take ownership of a settlement and make decisions for it.
You can play in 3rd or 1st person view (personally, I hate the 3rd person view, it feel clunky and looks awkward. Although, I feel the first person view had been adjusted from the original game and it feels slightly off, too. It took me a long time to get used it.).
You can set game difficulty settings how ever you want to make it very casual or an extreme survival mode type game.
...the list goes on of all the new stuff you could do that wasn't available during the original release, yet I don't feel these additions really helped the game.

While all this different stuff has been added the game still feels empty. You have all these things to do and all these places to visit, but even after adding all this extra stuff it still just seems bland. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the game on a some level, but no matter how much they add to the game it doesn't make it feel like it has any more depth than it did when it initially released. I'm not sure how much more they can add to this game and still keep it feeling like it hasn't really changed since it was originally released.

I commend Hello Games for not giving up on No Man's Sky. It's a rare thing to see a company that keeps adding stuff to a game for so long. I just don't see the entertainment in the things they've added. I suspect the game has run the course for my enjoyment and it seems there are many people out there that love all the add-ons that have been done for free.

I just want this game to stay alive until I get my first VR headset to enjoy it properly, even extremely casually.
There are many things missing, many things done poorly, I could write a book on the subject.
Yes, the planets and the variety of everything on them is severely lacking, and the MP perspective and mechanics are leaving a lot to be desired. Impossible to fix the latter unfortunately.
Still, this might be the best game of its kind, and being an indie project at that, it kinda earns my appreciation just for its existence alone.

 

[Frick]

While all this different stuff has been added the game still feels empty. You have all these things to do and all these places to visit, but even after adding all this extra stuff it still just seems bland. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the game on a some level, but no matter how much they add to the game it doesn't make it feel like it has any more depth than it did when it initially released. I'm not sure how much more they can add to this game and still keep it feeling like it hasn't really changed since it was originally released.

This is because it has no writing (or very little) and design. It just has a whole bunch of stuff, very little of which serves any kind of purpose in the game.

 

[Vayra86]

A few months back I probably put in around 30 hours into No Man's Sky and I do have to say that it has vastly changed since the initial launch of the game, but it hasn't improved my opinion about it.

What hasn't changed, yet has (a little), is the creature variation between worlds. I visited a couple dozen different solar systems across thousands of light years and easily visited a 100 different planets. While there were a couple of interesting ones (for example, one had geometric shapes as creatures - such as cubes) most have the same looking creatures. The first planet I was on, it was really cool to see these giant worms tunnel up from the ground and fly across the sky and then tunnel back into the ground. It was pretty cool to see them on the second planet I visited and it was okay seeing them on the third planet I visited.... By the time I had been through 4-5 dozen planets it was boring as hell to see these giant worms on 90% of all the planets I visited across thousands of light years apart.

Here are some new things I got to experience:
You had a star ship fleet you could command and send ships off on voyages for resources.
You had mech-type machines you could build and commandeer.
You could do daily missions for in game currency to buy special items.
You had plans you could use for building bases.
You could take ownership of a settlement and make decisions for it.
You can play in 3rd or 1st person view (personally, I hate the 3rd person view, it feel clunky and looks awkward. Although, I feel the first person view had been adjusted from the original game and it feels slightly off, too. It took me a long time to get used it.).
You can set game difficulty settings how ever you want to make it very casual or an extreme survival mode type game.
...the list goes on of all the new stuff you could do that wasn't available during the original release, yet I don't feel these additions really helped the game.

While all this different stuff has been added the game still feels empty. You have all these things to do and all these places to visit, but even after adding all this extra stuff it still just seems bland. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the game on a some level, but no matter how much they add to the game it doesn't make it feel like it has any more depth than it did when it initially released. I'm not sure how much more they can add to this game and still keep it feeling like it hasn't really changed since it was originally released.

I commend Hello Games for not giving up on No Man's Sky. It's a rare thing to see a company that keeps adding stuff to a game for so long. I just don't see the entertainment in the things they've added. I suspect the game has run the course for my enjoyment and it seems there are many people out there that love all the add-ons that have been done for free.

This is exactly my experience. I can't find the fun in this game. Building stuff and collecting stuff to build stuff... yeah... whatever.

 

[Veseleil]

This is exactly my experience. I can't find the fun in this game. Building stuff and collecting stuff to build stuff... yeah... whatever.

It's a classic EA game, forever EA kind. At least it's not an abandonware like the majority of those eventually (or pretty soon) end up, but unfortunately falls into a "a single dev or two working on it (in a spare time)" category.