At this point in time, it's fair to say that No Man's Sky is finally the product that was promised from the start, and more. As one of the biggest open world video games ever in relation to map size, Hello Games' space exploration title may have had a very rocky start when it was released back in 2016, but it's come to the point where most have likely forgiven the studio's launch blunders. In addition to a slew of free content updates, there are also regular patches coming out that help keep the game in tip-top shape.
According to a recent post on the No Man's Sky website, a new update has just rolled out, which specifically looks at fixing some issues with the new "Outlaws" DLC that came out recently. While this one doesn't come with any content, it does appear to have quite a significant list of bug fixes, with the studio thanking players for giving feedback after the last major update. Some of the issues that have been fixed relate to things like pilot recruitment, mission progress, crashes on the console ports, and even an issue where the game was displaying updates from the wrong patch notes.
The release of another patch shows that the developer is truly listening to the fan base, and making relevant changes when needed. With the "Outlaws" DLC coming out last month, there were some problems that players noticed. The main issue seemed to be that pirates in No Man's Sky were attacking players far too frequently, making it almost impossible to make any progress in the game. There were even videos showing the aggressive NPCs appearing almost out of nowhere and forcing the player to abandon their exploration to defend themselves. Luckily, the team at Hello Games were quick off the mark, and a hotfix was issued not long after people began to register the problem.
The work that's been put into the game has clearly paid dividends. No Man's Sky recently winning a BAFTA in the Evolving Game category shows recognition of the studio's diligence in undoing the damage that was done after the initial launch almost six years ago.
Hello Games has now started working on a new project, though the company will still keep updating its galaxy exploration title. Not much is known about what this next game will be, but one thing that's certain is that the studio has learned a lesson about overhyping and making it impossible for a game to live up to fan expectations.
The full patch notes are as follows:
Bug fixes
- Fixed an issue that could leave some players unable to construct the first map fragment as part of the Blighted expedition.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent the Liberation milestone from unlocking when declining a freighter acquisition during the Blighted expedition.
- Fixed an issue where Gravitino Balls collected from Sentient Plants would not count towards the Coveted Suns milestone in the Blighted expedition.
- Fixed an issue that could cause a blocker during the Last Piece milestone in the Blighted expedition.
- Fixed an issue that could occur if players opened the Portal during the Blighted expedition but then did not enter it.
- Fixed an issue that showed an incorrect prompt on the final reward patch having already collected the expedition reward
- Fixed an issue that could prevent progress in the Under a Rebel Star mission when flying to the rendezvous point.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent progress in the Under a Rebel Star mission after triggering an alarm at the crash site.
- Fixed an issue that could cause pilot recruitment to be blocked if the player had already recruited a similar looking NPC.
- Fixed a number of specific mission blockers that could occur when using the Neutron Cannon.
- Fixed an issue where the incorrect outcome was used for a specific Gek interaction.
- Improved the combat behaviours of higher-ranked squadron pilots.
- Fixed an issue that could occur if dismissing your squadron while they are already leaving.
- Fixed a number of issues that could cause Sentinel drones to spawn underground and become stuck.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Vulnerable Settlement alert to appear on the first planet visited after every warp.
- Fixed an issue that prevented players from transferring items from their ship’s cargo inventory when buying a new starship.
- Fixed an issue that caused the in-game patch notes to display notes from the wrong version.
- Fixed an issue that could cause pirate names to appear as debug strings.
- Fixed an issue that caused some Solar ships to change appearance and colours.
- Fixed a number of visual issues with cloth rendering.
- Fixed an issue that caused Gek squadron pilots to appear overly tall.
- Fixed a texture streaming memory leak.
- Fixed a GPU crash on PlayStation 5.
- Fixed a crash related to Sentinel Hardframe navigation.
- Fixed a number of memory-related crashes for PlayStation 4 and Xbox 1.
- Fixed a crash related to the squadron management UI.
- Fixed a crash related to squadron recruitment.
No Man's Sky is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, with a Nintendo Switch port scheduled for mid-2022.
Source: No Man's Sky
