No Man's Sky

[Rendakor]

Here's my favorite line:

I feel utterly bamboozled now, possibly even hoodwinked.

Still, very good article.

[Yegolev]

I have not played Elite, but I have recently started Rebel Galaxy and that is pretty fun and casual enough for me.

[Samprimary]

the game is a lofty project involving procedural generation that obviously hit a brick wall during development where they had to give it enough of a gameplay pastiche to make it more than a tech demo. the more i play, the more it seems profoundly evident that the whole game was scaled tremendously back to account for gameplay quality concerns so that they could slap survival gameplay elements on top and get it out the door.

in particular:

1. the procedural world generation has obviously gone through several tragic defanging and sterilization passes to make sure that there weren't things like inescapable pits the player could fall into. now the worlds all seem samey.

2. since they didn't really know how to manage space being a place where you could run out of fuel, they seem to have opted to make all space the same, choked with asteroids made of spaceship fuel. this is super disappointing.

3. since i guess people might get their feelings hurt if they flew their craft full speed into the ground and then it blew up and killed them, your ship now can never really interface with the terrain or do anything but hover at a set altitude, that the world generation appears to have been neutered even further still to accommodate (capping the severity of any terrain altitude change). again making the worlds look more boring so that the game can play more boringer.

4. the shallowness of the game's inventory management and crafting system requires a constant available presence of inventory management options such as always needing merchants to sell to. as a compensation by the developers, every single planet you "DISCOVER" has literally thousands of buildings on it full of spacefarers who live there or are constantly taking off and touching down all day all apparently sitting around with their thumbs in their asses waiting for you to name the planet you have "DISCOVERED" — if there is ever an actually uncharted actual wilderness systems, I have not found them. everywhere you go is populated and has a space station.

in short this game is Sporecraft 2016.

[Ginaz]

I think the issue people have with this game, setting aside all the hype, is the very vague and evasive responses given by the developers when asked even basic questions.  If they had been more straightforward and honest then we wouldn't be seeing the controversies surrounding NMS.  It's not a good way for a brand new indie studio to start off with their first game and no one is going to trust them if/when they make another one.

[Reg]

They've probably made enough money off NMS that they can leave the industry and never make another game.

[Ginaz]

They've probably made enough money off NMS that they can leave the industry and never make another game.

Probably.  They can go all Phil Fish and say "Fuck you guys, we're out!".

[Sir T]

Honestly, reading down through this thread, I have a feeling that if this was half the price people would be 4 times less pissed off. That and if they had just said "sorry guys, problems with network code, had to pull multi-player at the last minute. Hope to Iron the thing out soon."

$66 is a large percentage of my weekly income which is why I honestly baulked at this, and I think they aimed it too high. People pay that and they want a fleshed out experience, whereas if they pay $30 they are far more forgiving.

[satael]

If it didn't come out (also) on PS4 they could have just labeled it "early access" like so many other games that seem to be failing to deliver all that was promised. 

[Yegolev]

They've probably made enough money off NMS that they can leave the industry and never make another game.

Probably.  They can go all Phil Fish and say "Fuck you guys, we're out!".

For the record, this is my plan if I make a game or am elected president.

[Amarr HM]

the game is a lofty project involving procedural generation that obviously hit a brick wall during development where they had to give it enough of a gameplay pastiche to make it more than a tech demo. the more i play, the more it seems profoundly evident that the whole game was scaled tremendously back to account for gameplay quality concerns so that they could slap survival gameplay elements on top and get it out the door.

in particular...

I agree with all you are saying here extremely valid points, but I seem to be enjoying it anyway.

Maybe I'm just determined to get my moneys worth, but to be honest I think the whole is greater than the sum here. There's actually a pretty funexperience going on here that is severely lacking in other games of this genre. In fact there's a real dearth in quality in this genre as far as I'm concerned and at least this is step in the right direction. Even if it is a bit of a mis-step.

[Rendakor]

As others have said, if this were a $30 early access title I wouldn't be so annoyed with it. Right now I think I'm done though, until they patch in the fun.

[Yegolev]

This is why I don't look at prices on things.

[Engels]

I'm wondering if there's wiggle room for a class action lawsuit at this stage. I had no idea that the dev team was so obviously duplicitous about the game's nature as documented in that reddit thread.

As far as my experience goes, the bloom is off the rose and I see an endless quest before me involving one or two more slots in my ship's inventory so I can hoard the otherwise useless rarer elements needed for shield boost 4 or whatever.

As far as the comparison to Elite and NMS, my most immediate, albeit superficial observation is that ED goes for a 'realistic' depiction of planets, both in terms of art and physics, whereas NMS is more akin to World of Warcraft, both artistically and their concern for 'realism'.

[Samprimary]

elite, for all its problems, has a rock solid space flight experience. most of the value of the game is in using it as a lern 2 spayschip sim, as you slowly get more and more adept at six-dimensionally navigating landings and transit and navigating spaceteroids

[Sky]

I'm wondering if there's wiggle room for a class action lawsuit at this stage.

Oh for fuck's sake.

[Rendakor]

Red Bull got sued for not giving people wings. The bar is low.

[Sky]

Because others are cunts is not reason to advocate acting like a cunt.

[Engels]

Oh I'm not advocating it, just wondering if its bound to happen considering the uproar and not unsubstantial evidence of consumers being misled. I personally can't pretend to be an aggrieved party, since my purchase was based on a few clips from a talk show and a youtube video here and there that did not 'lie' to me or lead me astray, as these other interviews/videos did. I do however, wish I had seen those videos because I would have immediately smelled a rat and known they couldn't possibly deliver on the things stated.

[Mandella]

Warning! Penny-Arcade trigger:


https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/08/17/infinite-and-infinitesimal


As for me, this game is just what I was thinking it would be, and honestly just what I would enjoy -- at a twenty dollar price point. So waiting on that Steam sale, and wondering where I'm going to budget the hundred hours or so I'm probably going to spend on this game from...

[Sky]

Oh I'm not advocating it

Okeedoke, sorry, then 

Just so much avoidable angst if people just waited until, oh, a day after release to watch a couple videos or streams.

If you're into this kind of casual exploration kinda thing, it's a great game and there are lots of people enjoying it. Seems most who aren't were looking for something the game is not. I don't bitch (much) about Terraria/Starbound being platformers, because despite that I got a lot of enjoyment out of them (even if I had paid console retail like NMS). But they ultimately aren't good games (for me) because of the platformy console/boss encounter gameplay. Know thyself. Those looking for more game I think are misguided, putting in more 'game' is what killed Spore. If Spore had been just a toy as WW intended (and much how NMS is), it would've been a much better game.

[Bunk]

I fully agree on Spore - more game killed that.

With NMS, it feels like a Sandbox Survival Exploration game, but doesn't have one of the key features we expect in Sandbox Survival - building things.

I know they have said base building is coming, but I think its something they needed from the get go. What's the point in discovering your own world and naming your own stuff if there's never a reason to go back?

[Khaldun]

I actually don't think base building is the nirvana of this game. I think it's a big uptick in hand-crafted POIs. There should be a reason to keep going over the next hill/system. The possibility of something extreme, unexpected, unseen. I feel that Minecraft actually provided that in various ways. This is missing that sense that tomorrow might be WOW, look at that.

[Amarr HM]

Agreed base building would definitely go against the essence of the game. Although you could use the plasma launcher to build some underground caverns, if you want to have a Terraria like experience.

[Xuri]

Are there any mods available that can give me a frickin' compass or some other method for identifying which direction I'm going in? -_-

[Bunk]

Why? There's no point in going anywhere in particular on a planet other than the next waypoint.

To clarify on the base building - I think that could have worked had the game been built around that. It obviously wasn't though - so its just going to feel tacked on. Why build a base on a planet in a game designed to encourage you to leave and never return to said planet?

I like aspects of it, but my biggest problem is that the game's only real driver is discovering something new - and it doesn't seem like they put enough interesting things in there to actually discover.

[Sky]

I agree base building would be very starboundish, and not in the good way.

My 2c would be just continuing work on what's already here. Not going to gain the audience of people complaining about the game, but you can enhance the audience that likes it. More content for the procedural engines across the board would be job 1 (and I'm fine with where it is now, just what I think it a priority focus to improve things). Then craft in more POIs to feed into it.

Then work on more deep space mystery stuff, long term. Hell, hide it all over and just obfuscate stuff. As long as the procedural stuff continues to be expanded upon, I don't think many carrots are needed, so long as there are some.

[Sky]

Actually, a way base building could work and use the current format in an improved way would be some kind of larger ship for hyperspace jumps. Like the big cargo ships, but you can slot it up with defensive gear (for pirates), and it has an inventory. Upgraded similar to normal ships (buy/salvage), also opens up another layer to space combat by letting the AI use them, too.

Then you have a persistent 'base' that travels with you. Dock your fighter/trader/explorer and walk around inside. Decorate etc. Make hyperspace jumps from the helm.

[Wasted]

I don't mind if the base building feels tacked on.  At the moment its a sandbox game but with an extremely narrow focus of gameplay, they created a huge universe for a small game.  I just want some extra things to do, even if they don't further the main goal of the game.

There are two things I want most from a base.  Local storage so I can create a nice stockpile, knowing full well I may be abandoning it when I move on.  Secondly a fixed reference point on the planet.  Lets say they limit you to one base per planet but then, in the absence of implementing a coordinate system, they at least make that base a fixed point like the systems space station, then that will satisfy me.  I can use the base a point of reference for the rest of my exploring.  The main issue I have with the exploring in the game is how directionless it feels.

[Xuri]

Secondly a fixed reference point on the planet.  Lets say they limit you to one base per planet but then, in the absence of implementing a coordinate system, they at least make that base a fixed point like the systems space station, then that will satisfy me.  I can use the base a point of reference for the rest of my exploring.  The main issue I have with the exploring in the game is how directionless it feels.

This. Also, because I've had crashed ship beacons vanish on me (possibly a bug), and would at least like to know which direction of the world they were in so I can go explore for it manually if need be.

[Amarr HM]

Discovering special locations on planets should be more difficult and far more rewarding.  Scanning birds or shooting them down is annoying,  that needs to be fixed. Some of them seem impervious to laser damage.

[Wasted]

I think it is more that they are out of range, the beam only shoots so far.

[Amarr HM]

Nah I can see the hit markers when I hit them, Ive shot plenty down that way.  Theres just some species that refuse to die. Annoying.

[apocrypha]

So you know I said I was done with the hate? Yeah, I Sean Murray'ed.

No Man's Sky creator walks back "no paid DLC" statement.

And apparently these suspiciously similar Metacritic reviews have been traced to Guildford:


And let's not forget that in that list of things promised posted earlier just how many of those quotes were from less than 4 months ago, with footage that looked nothing like the released game being used 1 month ago.

Regardless of whether or not you like the game, is anyone still prepared to defend the marketing?

[01101010]

Regardless of whether or not you like the game, is anyone still prepared to defend the marketing?

Defend marketing? Can you actually defend any types of marketing? And who is defending it here? There are some of us that are enjoying the game for what it is. Yeah there are little things that are a pain in the ass, but other than a very small list, that is the same with every game. Game is great if you didn't pay attention to what was said about it prior to release.

[Sky]

Yeah, I actually enjoyed watching Murray troll the fuck out of gamers.

I'm over the herd gamer mentality, they're a bunch of fuckwaddled manbabies who need to find real problems to worry about.

They had to wait LITRALLY less than the release day to see exactly what the game was. Which is pretty much what anyone actually watching objectively and not erecting a giant boner of wish fulfillment was doing (and is now considered white knighting, apparently).

Every time he slyly smiled and was intentionally vague about things that were clearly not in the game, I laughed. He's not the dev people want, he's the dev people deserve.

And he also made a cool game.