No Man's Sky

[Soln]

I don't get how you can have a procedurally generated exploration game with no map.  And yes I know minecraft... This really needs an overhead mod.  I can suffer the inventory micro Mgmt if I can see where I can fly back to to sell stuff.  And makes me not want to go to space since I can't find previously explored points.

Grouchy edit:  and why populate every POI including your original spawn point with Atlas lock boxes? WTF?  It's really frustrating since there's zero info about what they are without spoilers.  If you only get a pass later in the game why show them everywhere on your starting planet.

[Falconeer]

Seriously, this game is love letter to golden age blah blah. In short, it wants you to take notes in a notebook as we used to do. Admittedly, that works.

[Torinak]

I don't get how you can have a procedurally generated exploration game with no map.  And yes I know minecraft... This really needs an overhead mod.  I can suffer the inventory micro Mgmt if I can see where I can fly back to to sell stuff.  And makes me not want to go to space since I can't find previously explored points.

Grouchy edit:  and why populate every POI including your original spawn point with Atlas lock boxes? WTF?  It's really frustrating since there's zero info about what they are without spoilers.  If you only get a pass later in the game why show them everywhere on your starting planet.

Vanilla (unmodded) Minecraft has had craftable maps since beta (2011-ish), not to mention lots of other ways to keep track of where you've been (signs, persistent terrain alteration, etc).

I know that the first thing I want to do if I'm gaming from a couch is to drag over a table for pencil and paper note-taking.

[Sky]

Seriously, this game is love letter to golden age blah blah. In short, it wants you to take notes in a notebook as we used to do. Admittedly, that works.

I was so close to breaking out the notebook earlier today...I don't see that as a bad thing.

[Bunk]

Except I don't see any indication of any sort of coordinate system, so once you fly off a planet, good luck ever landing on the same continent again.

[schild]

So, played the last 4 hours. Figured out the problem.

They forgot the game.

[Bunk]

Pretty much. Been bumming around free space and after about 8 hours got my first suggestion of what the hell I'm supposed to do about Atlas. And its about 6 systems away... Bow glad they gave me one warp core for the mission.

I see some potential here, and its not quite as bad as it first appeared (the first three hours gives you the idea that there are only like five setpieces). Game got a little more fun to explore on foot when I got a jetpack upgrade.

And yes, I've broken out the notebook. Asimovia System has a nice barren moon - with a pleasant atmosphere, and a crap ton of Aluminum and Nickel.


Also, for anyone who doesn't know: THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SANITY:  Hit "Melee" and then immediately hold down jetpack. You sort of do a jetpack run forward that's considerably faster than sprinting.

[Soln]

How can you take notes without coords?  And yes, without being able to add buildings like minecraft it's a fetch and explore game.  I worry it's going to get old fast when there's no map and easy way to bring 1M for a better ship.  So yeah, not much game.  Please patch in the fun.

Stealth edit:  this popping of PoIs and mobs for harvesting makes see a lot of SWG. 

[Amarr HM]

Downloaded the experimental patch and it seems to have fixed the issues I was having. The GUI screen is still borked so I have resigned to using the controller. Enjoying it now.

[Quinton]

So, played the last 4 hours. Figured out the problem.

They forgot the game.

I think they believe that incredibly limited inventory and constantly deteriorating or needing-to-be-refueled items *is* the game.

[Sky]

So much hate for such a cool game. Oh, f13. Never change.

For finding a spot on a planet, you can leave a POI discovered in a facility in the region where you want to return to. It will be visible in that system from space.

[Engels]

Seriously Sky, back up a bit. The game has so much potential to be boundless fun, but the inventory minigame has to be addressed. Not being even able to see what upgrades you have available without clearing a slot in your ship/tool/pack is wft levels of stupid. Having to spend your entire fortune on a ship upgrade which, other than new slots comes with no other visible benefits other than a dubious aesthetic upgrade is 

[Sky]

New slots = better weapons and more carrying space, that seems pretty beneficial. And if you're finding flying a cool new ship to be dubious, the game probably isn't for you.

Actually, it's not for most of f13, it's not really a big achiever/killer kinda game. It's just tool around looking at cool stuff and naming things appropriately silly names "Derpasaurus" or "Slightly-Less-Derpysaurus". I find that entertaining and if I need some guided, hand-crafted gameplay I have several games on my list to fill that niche (GTAV, Witcher 3). What I don't have is anything like this. And it's awesome.

Not going to back it up. While it's not perfect, I'm really digging it for what it is. Nobody is backing up the hate, either.

[Soln]

I am very confused about this game.  I don't "hate" but I am not having great fun.  I wonder if the design of this game is maybe flawed because it seems that there's "nothing special" about exploration (AKA Schild: "no game in it").  Bear with me while I explain.

While I was wondering why they shipped an exploration game without a map, or a coordinate system, or personal markers, or a notepad, or any kind of (public console) logging it occurred to me that this was deliberate.  Possibly these features weren't launch blockers, but maybe because of the emphasis on SPACE they do NOT want us to stay on planets.  Making exploration suck on planets is another drive to get players into SPACE to check out the eleventy-billion stars&planets they auto-generated.  The same way you have ever-diminishing inventory that forces you to go out and survey and mine and explore, they also don't want players to stay too long on one planet.  diminishing fun?  Go to another planet.

Another reason are the mob, resource and POI spawns.  First it seems remarkable, then it's ridiculous once you start flying.  You can't fly more than a few seconds without encountering another shelter/observatory/opscenter/tradecenter/camp/etc. and similarly for ruins/monoliths/etc.  They are EVERYWHERE.  The spawns are tuned for foot travel and once airborne there's nothing mysterious -- they are not hard to find.  This availability was probably designed to make it easier for players to advance, in the same way you can find isotopes/fuel/etc everywhere.  But once you realize there's nothing special about any of the buildings or ruins you encounter, it feels like another drive to go offworld.  Why stay on the same planet when it's a stripmall of ruins and buildings with single-word rewards and tech plans?  Tired of the same?  Try another planet with new-same.

So, not having any tools to manage your planetside explorations + eliminating the feeling that there's something special to discover (i.e. buildings&ruins everywhere) = a drive to push people off planet... to encounter the same thing on another world?  Once I started thinking like this the criticisms that it's "just a tech demo" started to resonate.  With no narrative campaign or progression mechanic except monies, and undercutting the freedom for players to stay on a world and really explore it and personalize (i.e. no personal buildings, no multiplayer) the game is feeling disappointing.  Am I doing it wrong?

[KallDrexx]

I am very confused about this game.  I don't "hate" but I am not having great fun.  I wonder if the design of this game is maybe flawed because it seems that there's "nothing special" about exploration (AKA Schild: "no game in it").  Bear with me while I explain.

While I was wondering why they shipped an exploration game without a map, or a coordinate system, or personal markers, or a notepad, or any kind of (public console) logging it occurred to me that this was deliberate.  Possibly these features weren't launch blockers, but maybe because of the emphasis on SPACE they do NOT want us to stay on planets.  Making exploration suck on planets is another drive to get players into SPACE to check out the eleventy-billion stars&planets they auto-generated.  The same way you have ever-diminishing inventory that forces you to go out and survey and mine and explore, they also don't want players to stay too long on one planet.  diminishing fun?  Go to another planet.

Another reason are the mob, resource and POI spawns.  First it seems remarkable, then it's ridiculous once you start flying.  You can't fly more than a few seconds without encountering another shelter/observatory/opscenter/tradecenter/camp/etc. and similarly for ruins/monoliths/etc.  They are EVERYWHERE.  The spawns are tuned for foot travel and once airborne there's nothing mysterious -- they are not hard to find.  This availability was probably designed to make it easier for players to advance, in the same way you can find isotopes/fuel/etc everywhere.  But once you realize there's nothing special about any of the buildings or ruins you encounter, it feels like another drive to go offworld.  Why stay on the same planet when it's a stripmall of ruins and buildings with single-word rewards and tech plans?  Tired of the same?  Try another planet with new-same.

So, not having any tools to manage your planetside explorations + eliminating the feeling that there's something special to discover (i.e. buildings&ruins everywhere) = a drive to push people off planet... to encounter the same thing on another world?  Once I started thinking like this the criticisms that it's "just a tech demo" started to resonate.  With no narrative campaign or progression mechanic except monies, and undercutting the freedom for players to stay on a world and really explore it and personalize (i.e. no personal buildings, no multiplayer) the game is feeling disappointing.  Am I doing it wrong?

You pretty much hit the nail on the head.  Sean Murray has stated several times pre-release that they didn't want base building and other things in the game because they didn't want people to be encouraged to stay on one planet, but instead he wanted to encourage people to keep moving around and explore all the different planets.

This of course puts things at odds with them saying base building is coming a few days before that shouldn't confuse anyone who has been watching him give mixed signals over and over again.

[jakonovski]

Oh god.

https://twitter.com/Britbongreturns/status/765190830894317568

[Bunk]

The Derpasuarus Rex is pretty awesome, I must admit.

The problem with encouraging people to explore "space" is that while the planets in the game can be pretty cool, space itself is overly meh.  I've yet to see any sort of nebula, or planetary rings, or anything new really in a given system. All the planets look like earth until you get close to them, all of them have the same asteroid fields surrounding them. Space is one area Elite blew them out of the water in, just on a visual level alone.

I stopped doing the head to the center of the galaxy thing, because it felt like I would just stop on a planet, get enough resources for a warp core, and head off to the next system. I guess my made up goal right now is to just find a planet with a nice atmosphere, interesting plants and animals, and then um, I dunno, do something...?

[Yegolev]

None of the planets I've seen look like Earth.  But I've never been to Edmonton...?

[Bunk]

Close, but off by a Province.

What I mean, is that from a distance all I see is blue and white swirly planets. Then I fly close and its a barren purple rock.

I was really spoiled by Elite.

[Goreschach]

Oh god.

https://twitter.com/Britbongreturns/status/765190830894317568

They've obviously been hard at work for the past two years. No wonder a delay was needed.

[Khaldun]

I like it for what it is but it does frustrate me because I think it's another case of using procedural generation to skip having to make content rather than because it makes for a better game. Two basic things would make this a really great experience:

a) less smoothing of the generation--allow for a few extreme/unusual outcomes. I can see the smoothing on every planet I visit, and it contributes to the sameness of feel. Minecraft is a good example of how to avoid this--every Minecraft world ends up having a few weird/extreme spots that are very memorable for some reason.

b) There should be something on the order of 300-500 memorably unique hand-crafted POIs/encounters scattered across planets, maybe 2-3 per planet.

[apocrypha]

Nobody is backing up the hate, either.

I've totally backed off, I'm done here. Said my piece, won't be saying anything else without major developments.

[Samprimary]

i like the game for what it is, too: an extended tech demo that they tricked people into buying for full price

[Sky]

b) There should be something on the order of 300-500 memorably unique hand-crafted POIs/encounters scattered across planets, maybe 2-3 per planet.

I've only been on an even dozen planets (ok, one was a moon) and I've seen one (really awesome) POI that wasn't on any of the others. It did show up a couple times on that planet, but nowhere else. Different art/music/text.

Of course it would be cool to have more hand-crafted content. I'm guessing the system allows for them to plug more in over time. If they do that, it will elevate the game in my opinion to a truly great game, with new content to find on my stumbling through the galaxy naming rocks 'A Red Rock' 'A Slightly Off-Red Rock' 'Allmanbrotherscis Cubensis' 'Joe's Landing Pad' 'Phil's Landing Pad, Joe Sucks' I'm just that easily entertained and ok with that fact.

All for letting the RNG off teh chain now and again, a Derpasaurus that just kinda drags it's giant head around or something. Yep.

fake edit for Sam: I don't feel tricked, I like it better than many games I've bought recently. At Steam Sale prices, everyone should buy it for sure. But we did kinda know what the game was going to be, even with the hype train and Murray's trolling of said train. I actively avoided any gameplay footage and it's pretty much exactly what I expected.

[Samprimary]

i mean i'm liking it okay too but i just know that nearly all of us, even the ones who definitely like it now, are going to get fatigued out by the grind rather quickly. there needs to be more going on with this game, for sure.

[Nija]

They've obviously been hard at work for the past two years. No wonder a delay was needed.

They've been sanding away for the past two years without even considering going to Harbor Freight and buying a $50 tool that will work at least once and save them 98% of the labor effort.

[KallDrexx]

Nobody is backing up the hate, either.

I don't understand why you feel the need to white knight this so much.  For the most part the conversation hasn't had much hate except when you try to tease it out of people.  There's actually been quite a lot of constructive criticism by people about some of the real flaws of the game.  

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I think people are being pretty proportionate, all things considering. I like the feel and the mood and the experience of the game flow, but it's kind of like the Wizard of Oz--I see too quickly through how the game is doing its tricks and it spoils some of the fun. And then I start dreaming up some pretty reasonable, doable ways that I think it could be better.

[01101010]

Nobody is backing up the hate, either.

I don't understand why you feel the need to white knight this so much.  For the most part the conversation hasn't had much hate except when you try to tease it out of people.  There's actually been quite a lot of constructive criticism by people about some of the real flaws of the game.  

 

It's the name...

[Venkman]

Eh come on, there's always a white knight here for something. Maybe it's just Sky's turn?

People have mentioned Minecraft. Minecraft is one part an exploration game and yes it has coordinates. I always found the craftable maps basically useless, but that's just me. Nah, the comparison breaks down because a) Minecraft isn't pushing you to constantly consume what you find as a springboard into finding the next planet/server; and, b) the whole "planet" is deformable to your heart's content. Then there's a the second order but as-important element of the biomes and how that deformability drives resources discovery all in service of building stuff specifically to stay in place.

Also the idea of developed content for NMS is kind of anathema to the premise and the promise. The more content they created, the more UI they'd need, the more task/goals they'd have to put in, the more it's just a regular game on an indie budget, the kind of thing you see promoted once on Steam and then forgotten. This needed to be high concept and stay that way just to get the attention.

[Falconeer]

Bah. I feel cheated. Being a bit obsessive compulsive I decided to explore this moon to the point of 100% completion in order to get a 325k Unit bonus and feel good about myself. I never completed a planet before so I assumed that all I had to do was to discover all the lifeforms marked as ? ? ? ? ? ? ? in the UI. There were 12 entries there so, again, I assumed there could be only 12 species on every planet -or at least on that one planet-. And I was wrong. When I was down to only two left (and that took me a LONG time), I finally found a new one that I hadn't recorded before, only to analyse it and find out that IT DID NOT COUNT towards the 12 species limit. In short, the remaining two ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? entries were still there even after scanning a new (red dot) unseen before species. I thought I was confused and tired, but when two hours later I found some never seen before aggro beetle down in a cave the same damn thing happened. For all I know the game might be expecting for me to find two pig-ants that are hidden in some procedural parallel dimension, or it's a bug. Regardless, the UI doesn't know what it wants from the players, and one of the "feature" I decided was entertaining to me is broken and doesn't make any sense. Fuck this bullshit?

I want to add that I don't think the game is not good or bad based on this, but it's a matter of fact that there are issues that start to become apparent after the first few hours of honeymoon are gone. In this context of creeping disappointment I just picked one of the goals and challenge that the game seem to invite players to take on, but to find out that it's basically a scammy feature doesn't help the cause of this game and, in a way, it is starting to symbolize pretty well the whole experience.

[Soln]

Yeah it needed more testing and polish.  It's not finished by the extreme feedback it's getting.  I'm not put out by missing dinosaur-sized mobs or multiplayer.  But I'm quitting until they add new exploration tools and/or a real questing-like mechanic or anything to make gameplay more interesting. Patch in the fun.

edit: sarcasm highlighted

[Wasted]

Bah. I feel cheated. Being a bit obsessive compulsive I decided to explore this moon to the point of 100% completion in order to get a 325k Unit bonus and feel good about myself. I never completed a planet before so I assumed that all I had to do was to discover all the lifeforms marked as ? ? ? ? ? ? ? in the UI. There were 12 entries there so, again, I assumed there could be only 12 species on every planet -or at least on that one planet-. And I was wrong. When I was down to only two left (and that took me a LONG time), I finally found a new one that I hadn't recorded before, only to analyse it and find out that IT DID NOT COUNT towards the 12 species limit. In short, the remaining two ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? entries were still there even after scanning a new (red dot) unseen before species. I thought I was confused and tired, but when two hours later I found some never seen before aggro beetle down in a cave the same damn thing happened. For all I know the game might be expecting for me to find two pig-ants that are hidden in some procedural parallel dimension, or it's a bug. Regardless, the UI doesn't know what it wants from the players, and one of the "feature" I decided was entertaining to me is broken and doesn't make any sense. Fuck this bullshit?

I want to add that I don't think the game is not good or bad based on this, but it's a matter of fact that there are issues that start to become apparent after the first few hours of honeymoon are gone. In this context of creeping disappointment I just picked one of the goals and challenge that the game seem to invite players to take on, but to find out that it's basically a scammy feature doesn't help the cause of this game and, in a way, it is starting to symbolize pretty well the whole experience.

I noticed early that each species seems to have variants that have the same name but some different colouring or feature.

[Torinak]

Yeah it needed more testing and polish.  It's not finished by the extreme feedback it's getting.  I'm not put out by missing dinosaur-sized mobs or multiplayer.  But I'm quitting until they add new exploration tools and/or a real questing-like mechanic or anything to make gameplay more interesting. Patch in the fun.

What games have successfully patched in the fun?

[schild]

Yeah it needed more testing and polish.  It's not finished by the extreme feedback it's getting.  I'm not put out by missing dinosaur-sized mobs or multiplayer.  But I'm quitting until they add new exploration tools and/or a real questing-like mechanic or anything to make gameplay more interesting. Patch in the fun.

What games have successfully patched in the fun?

1. Diablo 3
2.