Hello Games must have been reading our minds because I kid you not I was wondering when they were going to be announcing their next update for No Man’s Sky just yesterday. Now 24 hours (and one Twitter meltdown by yours truly) later, we have an idea of what is next to come for the space exploration game. They made the official announcement of the next update called Beyond, a large three part update that is proclaimed by Hello Games to be even bigger and better than previous updates (you can find the announcement on the game’s official website).
Beyond is being described as a culmination of three updates interwoven into one. The announcement of the update gave us just the first of the three updates to the game, which includes all new multiplayer and social experiences. The game will now be a full online experience where players can interact with one another. Hello Games is refraining from calling it an MMO because their are no subscriptions or microtransactions, but in essence… it’s an MMO now (hence my Twitter meltdown).
The bad news in this announcement is that they only announced that first part of the update and are going to announce the other two over the next two weeks. The good news, though, is that we get to let our imaginations run wild with ideas of what the other two parts to Beyond might be. I have a couple of things that I would personally love to see added into the game that are not completely out of the realm of possibility.
Our buddy Simon, who you guys would recognize from our CoD podcast, joked that he would never play the game unless there was a battle royale mode that spanned multiple planets in a star system. As sarcastic as he was when he said it, my ideas arent terribly far off from what he brought up. They also are two interconnected ideas so I feel like they would fit in with the theme of Beyond as a whole. The first part of it being a true, fleshed out PvP experience.
PvP
The past two and a half years since launch, Hello Games has been committed to bringing narrative, exploration, cooperative play and crafting to the heights they currently, and have done a fantastic job. Now that the PvE experience has reached the potential Hello Games envisioned initially, it feels like the right time to shift focus towards new PvP experiences.
There are a couple ideas I have conjured up on how they could potentially approach PvP. They could do a traditional matchmaking system where you have ground or air combat with whatever multi-tool or ship you have in your playthrough and just do match made games, or another thought I had was implementing PvP star systems. You could have a designated filter on your galaxy map that will show you which star systems are PvP enabled and which are PvE only.
Updated Faction System
The third piece to my dream Beyond update would be to add depth to the faction system. There are currently faction based quests and ways to gain or lose reputation with the different factions in the game, but it still feels a little shallow and you dont entirely feel like apart of a certain faction. I would love to see them have you ally more closely with these factions and build on the bits of lore that you find within the universe.
How They Would Intertwine
These two concepts would work very well together because the updated factions and lore can attribute to why the PvP events are happening. You can even have full faction based PvP if you so choose. Have conflicts between Gek and Vy’Keen players scattered in different star systems. Another idea is have PvP arenas of sorts in certain Vy’Keen systems (I chose them because they are the brutish warrior race). These two concepts play so well off of each other so I feel like these would be such great pieces to the game.
Other Ways it Could Impact the Game
With an improved faction system I feel like it would be a great opportunity to continue world building by adding new, complex building types that are unique to each faction. For example, in a Vy’Keen system, you might see remnants of warrior base camps on planets or intricate well made Gek cities. This would make each planet feel more alive and unique.
With PvP, it gives them an opportunity to add new types of mods for the multi tools to help cater to combat more and even add new vendor types that can help you better equip yourself for battles.
The possibilities for Beyond are endless at this point and this is all just wild daydreaming but I would love to see those changes implemented into the game. The evolution of No Man’s Sky has been amazing and I hope they continue to bring new exciting things to the game (like my ideas listed above) so that the game can continue to captivate the fans that stuck with them through this development cycle.
What big changes do you want to see hit No Man’s Sky in the Beyond update when it drops this Summer? Sound off below or let us know on Twitter!
The Nerd Chambers 