No Man's Sky

[Sennex 1,903]

What do you folks think of this game?

 

It seems almost to large to succeed, and I can see where the criticism of it appears valid, I just don't know what to think at the moment.

 

No Man's Sky (a few videos)

 

 

 

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,453]

I think it has a lot of potential, but it's just too unclear at this point. Definitely something to keep anot eye on.

[J4MES OX4D 10,034]

I'm intrigued by this but it's a indie game with an AAA price and I haven't been convinced by the developers that this game has a basis for longevity and variety. Could be a nice a relaxing title but it looks more like No Mans Land right now but hopefully we'll get more info as the game drifts towards release. 

[Riff Machine 2,105]

I'll keep my eyes on this one.  It looks pretty damn good and I like the transition between surface to space.  I just hope it lives up to the hype.

[L_C_Scipio 395]

No Man's Sky has been delayed. From Sean Murray:

"The game really has come together, and it’s such an incredible relief. As we sit an play it now, and as I watch playtesters every day, I can finally let myself get excited. We’re actually doing this.

However, as we approached our final deadlines, we realized that some key moments needed extra polish to bring them up to our standards. I have had to make the tough choice to delay the game for a few weeks to allow us to deliver something special.

After a short delay, No Man’s Sky will launch in North America on August 9, in Europe August 10, and in the UK August 12."

I don't know about you guys but I'm really excited. I've got the game pre ordered so the delay is pretty disappointing.

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,453]

I'm not getting it right away, but it's a game I'm definitely keeping an eye on. Seems like it could be really cool.

[JsinOwl 644]

I don't quite get the point by watching the trailers. So there's this infinitely huge, procedurally generated galaxy of worlds to explore but to what end? Do you build civilizations on them, like sim city? Do you find resources to build and expand your fleet and engage in multiplayer battles? It seems like you just visit planets, go "this is cool" and move on to the next. Almost like the game Flower, where the only point is the emotions you feel, not the game.

[Sennex 1,903]

I don't quite get the point by watching the trailers. So there's this infinitely huge, procedurally generated galaxy of worlds to explore but to what end? Do you build civilizations on them, like sim city? Do you find resources to build and expand your fleet and engage in multiplayer battles? It seems like you just visit planets, go "this is cool" and move on to the next. Almost like the game Flower, where the only point is the emotions you feel, not the game.

 

I have exactly the same questions

 

I keep seeing comparisons to Minecraft, but with MC you explore and build.

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,453]

They mention collecting resources or samples don't they? I'm not sure what the point is either, but I'm interested in knowing more. I'm enticed but not sold.

[L_C_Scipio 395]

I don't quite get the point by watching the trailers. So there's this infinitely huge, procedurally generated galaxy of worlds to explore but to what end? Do you build civilizations on them, like sim city? Do you find resources to build and expand your fleet and engage in multiplayer battles? It seems like you just visit planets, go "this is cool" and move on to the next. Almost like the game Flower, where the only point is the emotions you feel, not the game.

I think the exploration is the main draw. You get to see places that, most likely, no one's ever seen before...and most likely, no one else ever will. I can spend hours in Minecraft just walking around. What's around that river bend? What's over that hill? I have to go see. And if I see a cave...I can't help but go check it out. Sure, the gameplay loop is pretty much going to be, collect resources to improve your ship and gear so you can go somewhere else to collect more resources to improve your stuff so you can go farther and collect more stuff... But really, Warframe is the same way, just with slicing things to little bits along the way. Farm resources so you can build better guns to farm harder areas for resources so you can build even better guns to farm different resources so you can build better guns to farm... Etc.

I can definitely understand why people think NMS will be boring. I expect I'll get bored after a while, put it aside, then come back a few weeks later and get sucked back into it. But the idea of going places just to see what's there is too appealing.

You can also spend all your time as a trader, for instance, or be a space pirate. There's combat if you choose to engage in it. Sean Murray, the developer, often refers to it as a survival game. A big part of what you'll be doing is just trying to stay alive.

What keeps popping into my head though: "To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations.. To boldly go where no man has gone before."

I can't wait.

[J4MES OX4D 10,034]

I think this game has been delayed because the developers have made such an atrocious attempts at conveying the concept despite heavy exposure from IGN and Sony. Either they are dramatically underselling the concept or the developers are struggling to communicate the game because there is simply nothing much there at all. After watching all the promotional features in the last couple of months; I've digested it's just another survival game with no story where you hop between generated planets, scavenging, looting, exploring barren lands, befriending the population or fighting them whilst discovering lore in dribs and drabs. It certainly presents itself as ambitious but most of this is down to the scale and is further helped by the procedural generation characteristics where no planet will ever be the same as one you've explored but actually; this is still a fairly limited feature as only minor aspects actually vary to make each planet 'unique' - one may have one type of rock and another one may look identical but have a 'different type of rock'. I'd rather they just had a scaling universe and one that had a fixed amount of planets that were the same for everyone - this would also make sense as one of the features you can share with your friends is planetary data but this is useless if the chances of you friend arriving on the same planet based on its characteristics is something like a trillion to one.

 

I'm still very intrigued but the blanks have to be filled in and there are many questions still unanswered. Survival games of this nature are known for dodging important queries and failing to match the ambition they are presenting so I hope it doesn't fall into the same trap that the other shedload have done. 

[Sennex 1,903]

The game is intriguing, and I really hope that I will enjoy it. 

 

But....

 

I am all about exploring until I find an amazing spot, and then fortifying the bejeezus out of it!

[The3rdWalker 1,271]

Not for me. I'll watch it on Twitch.

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

So this is out in 2 weeks and a hear a little hype for this game on the news and around some people i know. With thelack of an absolute standout AAA game at the moment, this may start to receive a decent amount of fan base.

I can see myself playing it but I'm nervous on how it is trying to a lot of different types of games and get ot completely wrong. The idea of exploring is cool, to an extent, as if there isn't an objective I can see people just dicking around in space battling and blowing up worlds. It interests me enough to still consider it once I'm back fron my hols though.

Anyone getting this?

[The3rdWalker 1,271]

There's a lot of things that don't add up in this game and it has people cautiously approaching it. I don't really enjoy single player games so I will be passing.

[tronic44 3,642]

I've been looking forward to this game for a while but when they released that you couldn't team up with others it kind of put me off. It seems like a huge game of 100+ hours and, to me, a game like that should be played with others. 

Although i do like the idea of bumping into a friend randomly, i don't see this happening. I'll check it out on Twitch and Youtube for a bit and see if it take my fancy but will BF1 and Final Fantasy coming out soon, it'll have to be seriously epic for me to start playing it.

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

1 minute ago, PlasticGaming said:

There's a lot of things that don't add up in this game and it has people cautiously approaching it. I don't really enjoy single player games so I will be passing.

To not hook up with other people though surely is missing the point of this game? It feels way more a social game than a one player, linear one.

[L_C_Scipio 395]

You guys hear about the guy that paid $1,300 for an early copy of the game, and now Hello Games says, "Actually there's a day one update that's changing the game substantially, and by the way we're resetting the universe before launch".

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

1 minute ago, L_C_Scipio said:

You guys hear about the guy that paid $1,300 for an early copy of the game, and now Hello Games says, "Actually there's a day one update that's changing the game substantially, and by the way we're resetting the universe before launch".

Yeah, just going to be post that they've took the step to reset. Interesting move as it won't change the game, just piss off early gamers that obtained it.

Its PC release has also been put back 3 days. I feel this one can't be a pre-order / day 1 option now.

[Stretch616 697]

I've been reading a bit more on this over the past few days as this has the potential to be an awesome game if done right. One the articles (excuse the paraphrashing) said that it would be virtually impossible to bump into a fellow gamer unless you had their exact star coordinates. So the implication in that phrase leads me to believe that you could team up.

The main draw of this game for me is that it is a modern day Elite. I really like the idea of the full space exploration with zero boundaries. Very very tempted to get this on release day

[L_C_Scipio 395]

Here's the notes for the day 1 patch. I'm getting the game on Tuesday but sadly probably can't play until Saturday. Can't wait!

 

Update 1.03

Sean Murray  |  August 7, 2016

Update 1.03

When we went gold five or six week ago, we posted on twitter, and literally every reply was like “hope you are going on a nice holiday!”. Some of us have, but I didn’t want to, not yet. I pictured myself somewhere staring out the window thinking about this game I’ve been working on for five years.

We’re under a pretty intense spotlight right now, and hopefully it’s easy to imagine how hard it would be to switch off from that, or how deeply we care about people’s first impression of the game.

In fact most of us were back here the day after we went gold, working on this update. We’re already proud of what we put on a disk, but if we had time, why not continue to update it?

 

Hello Games will continually update No Man’s Sky this way. This is the first of many.

 

It will be available on Monday for press for review once it exits submission, and on launch for public on PC and PS4. We expect future updates like these to continue to be free.

 

For 99.9% of people, all you have to do is install the update before you begin to play.

If you had an early copy somehow, your save game will technically work post update, but you will miss out on new content and experiences if you don’t delete your save before updating (should be obvious why from notes below). We highly recommend deleting your save if you have played before updating your game (we won’t do this in future, but it’s a day zero update).

 

Servers will be wiped on Sunday and again Monday in the lead up to launch.

 

Beware these notes contain some spoilers. Here are some things our little team has been up to over the last four or five weeks:
◾The Three Paths – there are now new, unique “paths” you can follow throughout the game. You must start the game on a fresh save, with the patch, as early choices have significant impact on what you see later in the game, and the overall experience.
◾The Universe – we changed the rules of the universe generation algorithm. Planets have moved. Environments have changed biomes. Galaxies have altered shape. All to create greater variety earlier. Galaxies are now up to 10x larger.
◾Diversity – Creatures are now more diverse in terms of ecology and densities on planets.
◾Planets – we’ve added dead moons, low atmosphere and extreme hazardous planets. Extreme hazards include blizzards and dust storms.
◾Atmosphere – space, night time and day skies are now 4x more varied due to new atmospheric system, which refracts light more accurately to allow for more intense sunsets.
◾Planet rotation – play testing has made it obvious people are struggling to adjust to this during play so it’s effects have been reduced further…
◾Terrain generation – caves up to 128m tall are now possible. Geometric anomalies have been added. Underwater erosion now leads to more interesting sea beds.
◾Ship diversity – a wider variety of ships appear per star system, and are available to purchase. Cargo and installed technology now vary more, and ships have more unique attributes.
◾Inventory – ship inventories now store 5 times more resources per slot. Suit inventories now store 2.5 times more per slot. This encourages exploration and gives freedom from the beginning. We’re probably going to increase this even further in the next update, for people in the latter game phases, and will allow greater trading potential.
◾Trading – trading is deeper. Star systems and planets each have their own wants and needs, based off a galactic economy. Observing these is the key to successful trading. We still working on adjusting this based on how everyone plays, but all trading values have been rebalanced across the galaxy, giving a greater depth. A bunch of trade exploits were uncovered and have been removed
◾Feeding – creatures now have their own diet, based on planet and climate. Feeding them correctly will yield different results per species, such as mining for you, protecting the player, becoming pets, alerting you to rare loot or pooping valuable resources.
◾Survival – recharging hazard protection requires rare resources, making shielding shards useful again. Storms can be deadly. Hazard protection and suit upgrades have been added. Liquids are often more dangerous
◾Graphical effects – Lighting and texture resolution have been improved. Shadow quality has doubled. Temporal AA didn’t make it in time, but it’s so close
◾Balancing – several hundred upgrades have had stat changes (mainly exo-suit and ship, but also weapon), new upgrades have been added.
◾Combat – Auto Aim and weapon aim has been completely rewritten to feel more gentle in general, but stickier when you need it. Sentinels now alert each other, if they haven’t been dealt with quickly. Quad and Walker AI is now much more challenging, even I struggle with them without a powered up weapon.
◾Space Combat – advanced techniques have been introduced, like brake drifting and critical hits. Bounty missions and larger battles now occur. Pirate frequency has been increased, as well as difficulty depending on your cargo.
◾Exploits – infinite warp cell exploit and rare goods trading exploit among other removed. People using these cheats were ruining the game for themselves, but people are weird and can’t stop themselves ¯\_(シ)_/¯
◾Stability – foundations for buildings on super large planets. Resolved several low repro crashes, in particular when player warped further than 256 light years in one session (was only possible due to warp cell exploit above).
◾Space Stations – interiors are now more varied, bars, trade rooms and hydroponic labs have been added
◾Networking – Ability to scan star systems other players have discovered on the Galactic Map, increasing the chance of collision. Star systems discovered by other players appear during Galactic Map flight
◾Ship scanning – scanning for points of interest from your ship is now possible. Buildings generate earlier and show up in ship scans
◾Flying over terrain – pop-in and shadow artefacts have been reduced. Generation speed has been increased two fold (planets with large bodies of water will be targeted in next update)
◾Writing – The Atlas path has been rewritten by James Swallow (writer on Deus Ex) and me.  I think it speaks to the over-arching theme of player freedom more clearly now. Early mission text has been rewritten to allow for multiple endings.

 

I grew up reading Carmack’s .plan files for Quake, so it’s fun to be writing one of my own

 

Next up we’re adding the ability to build bases and own giant space freighters. Temporal AA and my new cloud rendering tech should be coming soon too. It will really change the game again, and enhance it visually.

 

This universe we’ve built is a pretty large canvas, we’ve got a lot of ideas. This is the type of game we want to be.

 

Love,

Sean

[Stretch616 697]

That sounds awesome. Really got me excited for this now

[J4MES OX4D 10,034]

I'm probably going to save my money for Deus Ex Mankini Divided but I'll keep my eyes on the reviews for this one. It'll either be a massive success or monumental flop but after watching hours upon hours of gameplay and listening to so many interviews from the devs; I still cannot decided which way it'll go. I think the biggest problem which could impact it in the long term is the procedural generated world itself - 18 quintillion planets may sound utterly epic but it's just algorithmic fluff that could make the core gameplay repetitive and ironically shallow. I think they would've been better off in a fixed universe with a set number of planets and more social features at the expense of all the snazzy big numbers that are based on varying generated algorithms. Fingers crossed though and hopefully it can live up to the hype at what is becoming a very quiet year indeed.