New game mode customization along with some other changes may bring accessibility gains to No Man’s Sky. Hello Games has not been sitting still since the release of the Endurance update earlier this year, as they have yet again released a large update to their space exploration hit. The new titled update is called Waypoint.
Customized gameplay improves accessibility
The custom game modes steal the show with this update. Existing game modes, along with the new “relaxed” game mode, are now presets rather than fixed modes. Depending on the mode, certain game mode settings are pre-selected. A player can switch game modes at any time or customize the settings to better fit their preferences and abilities.
In all, there are 24 settings in 4 categories that allow you to tweak the gameplay from a creative sandbox mode to a nightmare mode and everything in between. Survival settings allow setting survival difficulty, resource abundance and use, and consequences of in-game death. Crafting and item settings control the cost of crafting and buying items and blueprint availability for example.
Combat settings affect enemy strength and the amount of combat you can expect. Lastly, ease of use settings has a few settings such as an option to set the inventory transfer range to infinite, a huge help for those that have difficulty keeping track of where they left their di-hydrogen jelly.
Settings like these can help players avoid gameplay that proves inaccessible for them, such as in-flight combat, while keeping other aspects untouched.
A more accessible UI?
Aside from that huge change, there have been changes to the UI. There is still a lot of text that is small enough to be a problem for players, and contrast is sometimes an issue. However, the amounts in the different inventories have a darker shadow that improves the readability.
The bar indicating how full a charge is, or how large a stack of items can be has now been replaced by a number or percentage. Item categories are now displayed below each other instead of separated into tabs. It’s easier to navigate, but may be a bit more visually overwhelming.
Tracking your progress and objectives has seen some improvements as well. To be honest, it’s too much to detail in a news post without turning it into a copy of the lengthy patch notes of the Waypoint update. All in all, this update includes enough accessibility-related changes to enable players to make No Man’s Sky a more accessible experience for them.
