No Man's Sky

[jakonovski]

The flipside is that one should not be expected to become internet detective for every big release lest the game tells you to get fucked.

Which brings me to my favorite gaming thing this year: Steam refund.

[Hawkbit]

I am having fun with it, but also acknowledge the game is more shallow than I was led to believe during the 3-year marketing cycle. I noticed it while playing the first few days but couldn't really put my finger on the problem. Once I read through that list with all the sources it all started to make sense.

On one hand, I didn't expect much from the game so I'm not super disappointed. On the other hand, I can't justify giving them money for dlc when they didn't even come close to providing what they promised. Really it's a shame for what it did for gamers; HG/SM seemed above this level of shenanigans.

[Sky]

The flipside is that one should not be expected to become internet detective for every big release lest the game tells you to get fucked.

As I said in Useless Convo, I research most things I buy. And I'm rarely disappointed. I don't feel bad for people not willing to do a minimal amount of research and then get outraged when what they bought isn't what some marketing told them it was going to be.

By that metric I want a refund for every Whopper I've ever choked down. I suspect chicken nuggets might not be the highest grade breast meat, too.

[Torinak]

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.

Why would a company spend more money on making a satisfied audience more satisfied? The satisfied audience has already given their money to Hello Games, and it's not like they'll buy a second copy or something.

Fake edit: Ah, I see that they've now decided there may be paid DLC after all, even though before launch they said there wouldn't be any.

[Malakili]

Being able to build a larger ship that you could customize as your base as you travelled from system to system would probably scratch that building itch. You could launch your fighter from it and go down to the planet, etc.

This is all purely academic. I don't expect that kind of thing.

[Samwise]

I think I've put my finger on the main flaw with this game: the pacing is super uneven, because it doesn't know what kind of game it wants to be.

Sandbox games can go in two basic directions, I figure.  Minecraft goes in one direction, where you build stuff up, and it's kinda slow and methodical and peaceful, like raking a Zen garden.  And something like, say, GTA goes in an entirely different direction, where you tear around the sandbox and explore and blow stuff up.

For a Minecraft-style game, you need to have creative tools so the player can slowly build the world themselves and take pride in admiring the world they've built.  For a GTA-style game, you need to have lots of content and fast-paced gameplay so the player can take pride in discovering/conquering the world you've built.

NMS does neither of these well.  It has Minecraft's slow methodical resource collection but with none of the creative tools to make it exciting to collect those resources, and it has GTA's vast space to explore but with none of the content or gameplay to make it exciting to explore that space.  Shit, in Minecraft even when you're collecting resources you're creating, because as you mine you're carving out a tunnel and you're making choices about how to keep it lit and navigable and how high you're going to make it and all this stuff, and the upper levels of your mine wind up being an area you're constantly walking back and forth through as you work on the lower levels, so you feel this strong incentive to make it a pleasant area to be in as you're carving it out -- in NMS you just walk around a planet shooting rocks and then you leave, never to return.

I used GTA as my fast-paced sandbox example but FTL is maybe a better comparison even though it's not something we necessarily think of as a sandbox -- it's somewhat open-ended and randomized, with lots of player freedom, but the focus is on exploring and conquering rather than creating, and the game has a certain urgency and excitement where you're always going forward.  NMS would be better off trying to make itself more like FTL than trying to make itself more like Minecraft IMO.  

Streamline the really tedious bits away (e.g. add tech upgrades that let you strip-mine a planet from the comfort of your ship, because after a few hours in I got really tired of walking around shooting rocks) and put some resources into making the dogfighting more fun (like having a better FOV and not making you navigate a horribly shitty interface to repair your shields mid-fight, just for starters) and I think you'd have a pretty good space adventure game.

(fakeedit) Also what Malakili said, if there's a building/creative aspect, it should be in your ship, again using FTL as an example of a game where you get to customize your ship pretty heavily.

[Sky]

I was grumpy this morning. 

I still think my idea of ship bases is the single best thing that could happen in the short term for this game.

[Xuri]

Well shit. After playing a couple of hours, I just now had several crashed ship markers, outposts and monoliths to visit. After interacting with some debris to get a blueprint I already knew, suddenly ALL my markers are gone. *sigh* Lesson learned from this: If get crashed ship marker, go directly there immediately, do not get distracted by question marks or outposts or observatories or big piles of gold.Quit game, wait for patch to fix bugs. Too annoying.

[Ginaz]

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.

I heard Volkswagen made cool cars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLaKe5gwvLA

[Trippy]

I would love to play poker with him.

Edit: play

[01101010]

New patch to help stability issues on the PS4 have me freeze crashing after 10-15min... time to go for a long walk

[schild]

I like this game. But I requested a refund nonetheless. Guaranteed to be on sale 50% off+ within 2 steam sales, and on top of that, they might figure out they need to handmake content by then.

[lesion]

Same-o.

[Sophismata]

The game's hype was too Molyneuxan for me to pre-order it. And the $60 price point severely discouraged any idle curiosity. Hopefully they work out what they're doing, and patch in the fun because the concept is kind of cool.

[schild]

My refund was approved, which is cool, as my preorder was more than 14 hours ago and I had like 4 hours played. Probably helped that I asked for it to go back to my steam wallet since they couldn't do a Paypal refund.

Or, possibly, they're allowing any refunds on this particular title because Reasons.

[Cyrrex]

I'm waiting for the sale too.  I have deliberately not followed this game since it was announced way back, but even then it felt like a $19.99 winter sale game.  My 11 year-old son the other day mentions how he wished he had No Man's Sky, and I stared back at him like I had no idea what he was talking about.

[Khaldun]

I would like to build something like a station that I could insta-warp to where representatives of different species came. I feel stupid having moved to a second system because now I'm talking to a second set of guys and wondering if all the words I learned of the first species' language will ever be used again.

The painful part is really just how lacking in flavor it is. The next alien race doesn't seem to have an appreciatively different personality or aesthetic sense from the last one. The planets themselves look interestingly different and yet they're also built up out of same-ness. Again, Minecraft is the thing to look at for a contrast--its procedural generation manages somehow to create environments that feel distinctive or individual. I can think of 10-20 Minecraft landscapes I've seen where I thought, "That is so weird!" or "That is really cool looking" or "That is beautiful", and it was often just because six or seven familiar compositional elements were in proximity to each other in a new way.

Minecraft's proceduralism is like language in that respect--give me a vocabulary of 100 words and I can find enough ways to combine them to seem fresh and interesting, to create a sense of surprise, for a long time. No Man's Sky feels like it has a vocabulary of 20 words and all the words are almost the same. So you can say, "Give me the donut or I will eat the bagel instead" or you can say, "Give me the bagel and I will also eat the donut" or "The bagel and the donut are both very edible" or "The donut is here, but where's the bagel"?

Instead of "I brought some chicken, where is the oven?", "The room is as hot as an oven, I'm sweating", "Feathers and skin and bone do not a chicken make", "Don't sweat it, and don't chicken out". Minecraft is expressive, and not just because you can build things in the environment--it tricks you into forgetting, at least for a while, how it does its tricks. NMS so far has almost never managed to trick me into investing, into forgetting. I think the closest it's come is the first planet when I was figuring out what stuff did and when I went into some caves. That felt immersive, I could for a moment talk myself into the situation of my character. But when I'd hit my second Operations Center or my third Manufacturing Facility or the tenth pod with an incremental technology, I couldn't get back in that mindset. And honestly, the combinations of shapes and so on with creatures and objects rarely makes you giggle with delight or surprise--there are no beautiful accidents or strange failures. I think also one thing that's really troubled about the game is the damned smoothness of the groundforms. Everything looks like it's covered with Play-Doh.

[Tebonas]

Well, they could patch out the Space Combat part for all I care. Wing Commander this ain't, and pretending it is hurts my insides (and my Titanium reserves).

Apart from that this is a nice sandbox. Maybe they will patch in some toys, because for a week or two playing with sand is fun, but I approach the point where I realize a shovel and a bucket would be preferable.

[01101010]

The painful part is really just how lacking in flavor it is. The next alien race doesn't seem to have an appreciatively different personality or aesthetic sense from the last one. The planets themselves look interestingly different and yet they're also built up out of same-ness.

Now see, I find each of the species completely different in personality. Maybe it is because I am pretty far into the game in terms of maxing my character out and I been warping around pretty frequently. And you do encounter each race multiple times throughout the journey so language is lost on your first encounter.

[Yegolev]

There is this part you need to create/repair your warp drive.  You buy it from the supermarket during the "tutorial" or the story bit where you are supposed to leave the planet.  So far, I haven't been able to find another one, nor a blueprint to make one.

[Sky]

There is this part you need to create/repair your warp drive.  You buy it from the supermarket during the "tutorial" or the story bit where you are supposed to leave the planet.  So far, I haven't been able to find another one, nor a blueprint to make one.

The game should've handheld you the blueprints. Iirc, there are two subcomponents you have to craft first, but I had all the blueprints needed. Of course, my first system was huge and I spent half the time I've played so far there, so...

And yeah...the aliens are quite different and I've already found some surprising twists to them and I've hardly traveled at all.

[01101010]

There is this part you need to create/repair your warp drive.  You buy it from the supermarket during the "tutorial" or the story bit where you are supposed to leave the planet.  So far, I haven't been able to find another one, nor a blueprint to make one.

Dynamic Resonator? Those are sold at most every space station. You only need your launcher and pulse drive to get off planet. The blueprint for it will come eventually, but the resources to make it is kinda ridiculous.

[Reg]

I found some antimatter for sale and bought it, made a warp cell and left my starting system before I was supposed to. Eventually, I went back to the starting system did the stuff I missed and picked up the antimatter recipe I needed. The game really needs to do a better job handholding people at the start of the game.

[01101010]

Recipes show up repeatedly down the line so if you miss one, you will get another one (or 50). I think I have them all at this point as I have received nothing new for 3 days.

[Yegolev]

There is this part you need to create/repair your warp drive.  You buy it from the supermarket during the "tutorial" or the story bit where you are supposed to leave the planet.  So far, I haven't been able to find another one, nor a blueprint to make one.

Dynamic Resonator? Those are sold at most every space station. You only need your launcher and pulse drive to get off planet. The blueprint for it will come eventually, but the resources to make it is kinda ridiculous.

Well, I didn't check there.  I hit a few trade hubs and lots of aliens.

[Khaldun]

Does anyone else feel like their avatar is permanently crouched or really short? The perspective feels really strange sometimes.

I sort of wish there was a teeny bit more flavor text/narrative around my character (maybe there is later?) Like, if I am this dumb about interstellar travel, how did I get to my crash site in the first place? Is this a Farscape kind of thing where I got sucked through a wormhole?

[01101010]

Does anyone else feel like their avatar is permanently crouched or really short? The perspective feels really strange sometimes.

I sort of wish there was a teeny bit more flavor text/narrative around my character (maybe there is later?) Like, if I am this dumb about interstellar travel, how did I get to my crash site in the first place? Is this a Farscape kind of thing where I got sucked through a wormhole?

Belt camera. And no... there is no FoV setting on PS4.

[Yegolev]

I didn't think my avatar was short until you mentioned it.

I do think I'm playing some sort of space white trash.  Can't read, can't understand furiners, don't have a smartphone or a home, just a space-jalopy and no job.

[schild]

I didn't think my avatar was short until you mentioned it.

I do think I'm playing some sort of space white trash.  Can't read, can't understand furiners, don't have a smartphone or a home, just a space-jalopy and no job.

I have 59.99 Steam Wallet Space Duckets.

[Amarr HM]

I do think I'm playing some sort of space white trash.  Can't read, can't understand furiners, don't have a smartphone or a home, just a space-jalopy and no job.

Space hobo simulator could have been a fitting title.

[Khaldun]

Makes a lot of sense also because I apparently go around just ripping off shit of some actual value that people have left sitting around in crates all over planets.

[calapine]

For angry.bob: 

http://jezebel.com/why-isnt-it-called-no-womans-sky-1785411230

For those of you who have spent the past week wondering why Jezebel has not yet published a review of the long-awaited PC/console game No Man’s Sky, allow us to explain ourselves: we find the name of this “first person space travel” game to be distasteful, offensive, and shamelessly anti-feminist.

Jezebel will not be reviewing—or even playing—No Man’s Sky. In a game that claims to take place inside “an infinite procedurally generated galaxy,” there should be more than enough room for equality.

 

[Sir T]

So what massive invasion/disaster/rapture has happened that all these people have crashed/vanished/generally died and left all this crap lying around?

And yeah I saw that Jezebel thing a few days back and I couldn't repost becasue I was in agony, due to the strain on my optic nerves from rolling my eyes so hard.

[schild]

For angry.bob: 

http://jezebel.com/why-isnt-it-called-no-womans-sky-1785411230

For those of you who have spent the past week wondering why Jezebel has not yet published a review of the long-awaited PC/console game No Man’s Sky, allow us to explain ourselves: we find the name of this “first person space travel” game to be distasteful, offensive, and shamelessly anti-feminist.

Jezebel will not be reviewing—or even playing—No Man’s Sky. In a game that claims to take place inside “an infinite procedurally generated galaxy,” there should be more than enough room for equality.

 

lol

get a fucking life

[01101010]

For angry.bob: 

http://jezebel.com/why-isnt-it-called-no-womans-sky-1785411230

For those of you who have spent the past week wondering why Jezebel has not yet published a review of the long-awaited PC/console game No Man’s Sky, allow us to explain ourselves: we find the name of this “first person space travel” game to be distasteful, offensive, and shamelessly anti-feminist.

Jezebel will not be reviewing—or even playing—No Man’s Sky. In a game that claims to take place inside “an infinite procedurally generated galaxy,” there should be more than enough room for equality.

 

To boldly go...