[HN Gopher] No Man's Sky's update introduces billions of new sta...
___________________________________________________________________
No Man's Sky's update introduces billions of new stars, planets,
and more
Author : hochmartinez
Score : 122 points
Date : 2025-01-29 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.playstation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.playstation.com)
| recursive wrote:
| The number of stars and planets has been overplayed from the
| start. Sure, there's a quintillion planets, but after you've seen
| a hundred, you pretty much got the gist of the scope of what's
| possible. Everything starts to look samey.
|
| Much more significantly, it seems the new planets use new biomes
| and terrain generators. If they gave all undiscovered planets a
| chance to use these, even if they cut the number of planets by
| 99%, it would still be a big improvement. The number is just so
| big, it's irrelevant.
| talldayo wrote:
| No Mans Sky is a pretty fun game nowadays. If you're less
| interested in the _Eve Online_ ideals of corporate bureaucracy in
| space and you just want to explore some neat looking empty
| planets, it 's the premier game of it's kind. I pre-ordered it
| after watching the infamous IGN trailer[0] and was disappointed
| like everyone else, but today I'm very happy with where the game
| is and can easily recommend it at the $30 price point where it
| goes on sale.
|
| Game is availible natively for Windows and MacOS, supports Linux
| and supports multiplayer across consoles and PC clients.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtmEjqzg7M
| Ultimatt wrote:
| Also supports VR multiplayer
| rcarmo wrote:
| Is there a Switch update yet?
| joshuaheard wrote:
| Or PC?
| jrflowers wrote:
| I haven't checked but it looks like this has rolled out across
| all platforms, not just PlayStation.
|
| https://www.nomanssky.com/worlds-part-ii-update/
| ziddoap wrote:
| No Man's Sky is the poster child for turning a shitty launch into
| a success. You can really feel the passion of the staff at Hello
| Games in the current version of the game. It reminds me of the
| quote, which I'm about to butcher, that is along the lines of
| "People don't remember the problem, they remember how you dealt
| with the problem".
|
| If you haven't seen it, "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky" is a
| good review of the story. It's 5 years old now, and the
| engoodening hasn't stopped.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BJVO3PDeQ
| jrootabega wrote:
| This is more a reflection of the state of online gaming
| discourse and youtube rambling clickbait these days. People
| believe what the culture tells them cool people believe, and
| perpetuate it to others. No Man's Sky didn't have multiplayer
| at launch. Now it does. That's pretty much the only
| indisputable improvement to the game. They've certainly managed
| to improve the NARRATIVE about the game, though.
|
| EDIT: I also want to call out one particularly user-hostile
| thing they have done: pump up the visual quality and complexity
| so high that the game performs very poorly on the console
| generation _on which it was released_ : the PS4/Xbox One
| generation. This is true even on performance mode. So if you
| bought the game at release, you will now suffer degraded
| performance if you are still using your original hardware. You
| don't hear too much about this because when it's mentioned the
| person usually gets console-shamed, e.g. "get with the times,
| time to upgrade you cheapskate!" It's not only low framerates
| and ambient pop-in; it's also extremely bad pop-in of hazardous
| plants and structures. And you often can't land your ship on
| the ground until the terrain has fully generated. This can take
| a minute or two sometimes. Or you could try to go harvest from
| one of your resource collectors and have to wait something like
| 10 seconds for it to finally appear in front of you. And once
| it did, the chances of it bugging out and having no resources
| inside of it are way too high.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _That 's pretty much the only indisputable improvement to
| the game._
|
| I'm not sure how you can possibly say that with a straight
| face.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Almost everything else is just a half-baked shallow
| mechanic tacked on to the existing ones. Quantity and
| popularity != quality.
| dingnuts wrote:
| just because you found those mechanics to be not to your
| liking doesn't make them invalid. A whole lot of shallow
| gameplay can easily add up to a game that is fun, because
| it is full of small activities that are each fun for a
| little while. If that wasn't true, Mario Party would be
| no fun
|
| "shallow" is also /definitely/ your opinion here. it's
| okay to not like things, but that doesn't make them
| objectively bad. it's just not to your taste.
|
| I've played NMS on and off since launch and it's a
| totally different game now in MY humble opinion
| jrootabega wrote:
| Shallow is the observation of many, many people who
| usually just get ignored, or worse in today's vote-
| centered social media platforms, suppressed, for going
| against the popular narrative.
|
| If it's true that not liking something doesn't make it
| bad, then liking something also doesn't make it good.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >If it's true that not liking something doesn't make it
| bad, then liking something also doesn't make it good.
|
| They didn't say it was good _or_ that they liked it, they
| said it 's a totally different game now from launch.
| drakythe wrote:
| -- Removed leading/condescending question. My apologies to
| the poster. --
|
| If the game isn't for you that's fine. Not every game is for
| every person. But the game has absolutely been improved, in
| numerous ways, since launch.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Yes, I have played a lot of it. And have since 2016.
| ygjb wrote:
| The poster asked if you played the game, and acknowledged
| that you don't have to like it - that's not a fallacy,
| it's a clarifying question.
|
| The game has had clearly observable and measurable
| improvements, in terms of features, like multi-player,
| but also in terms of overall content, game and storyline
| components, and substantial new and revised game
| mechanics.
|
| It is abundantly clear from player feedback that your
| opinion is in the minority.
|
| Steam reviews - Recent Reviews: Very Positive (1,837) All
| Reviews: Very Positive (256,838)
| remram wrote:
| The implication is clear even if formulated as a
| question. Let's not pretend here.
|
| Asking people if they've played the game (or "read the
| article") is also directly against the HN guidelines.
| jrootabega wrote:
| It's fine to be in the minority; doesn't make you wrong.
| Steam reviews are far from a good indicator of actual
| quality.
| teddyh wrote:
| The game certainly has had changes and additions. Whether
| those constitute _improvements_ is a matter of opinion.
| mrmuagi wrote:
| Besides the multiplayer update, what have you found fun
| about the game to invest all those hours?
|
| Personally think the gameplay loop is shallow, modding
| helped me find more depth.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I wouldn't say that it was a good investment, or even too
| much of an investment at all. A lot of it was
| procrastination, escapism, self-sabotage, etc. There were
| times when I could overlay a sort of canon to my
| character's activities that was pleasurable to think
| about. I spent a lot of time wanting the game to be good,
| but some glitch or design decision would always get in
| the way.
|
| But I'd say one of the best experiences I had in the game
| was becoming self-reliant at the start of a new save.
| Struggling not to die evolves into having enough
| resources to survive indefinitely by manual resource
| harvesting, which evolves into setting up crude crafting
| pipelines, which then evolves into advanced harvesting
| and manufacturing, enabling easy interstellar travel and
| self-sufficient freighter bases. But that can only happen
| once per save. And it's only really satisfying on
| survival or permadeath. The other modes are essentially
| just a no-risk sandbox.
| drakythe wrote:
| My apologies. I'll edit out the leading question. It just
| seems outrageous to me to say "the game hasn't been
| improved except it added multiplayer" when multiple
| pieces of the engine have been re-written. New game play
| loops added, bugs squashed, updated content, and entirely
| new ways of generating planets, flora, and fauna have
| been added.
|
| I feel it is akin to saying FPS games haven't improved
| since DOOM (95), or simulation games haven't improved
| since Deus Ex. Are both excellent examples of their
| genre? Yes, absolutely. Are they still some of the most
| fun you can have in a game? Yes. Holy crap yes. But to
| ignore improvements made in the last 3 decades of game
| development and storytelling just because another game
| hasn't improved on every single aspect aspect of them is
| a wild perspective.
|
| Denying the improvements Hello Games has made over the
| last 9 years feels as if it can only come from a
| perspective of "I don't like it, therefore it is bad".
| Which to be clear, again, it is fine if you don't like a
| game. I don't like WoW, haven't since before Cataclysm. I
| don't like Diablo III in the same way I liked D2 (and as
| a result haven't even played D4). But those are personal
| preferences to me, and both games contain numerous
| improvements over their predecessors. Just not my bag.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Despite really disliking the game, but also still playing
| it enough to apparently notice "many, many glitches" in
| recent updates, it's pretty obvious that they either have
| some bone to pick with No Man's Sky or just enjoy being a
| bit contrarian. Or maybe they're having a bad day. In any
| case, their comments don't seem to be in good faith.
|
| I never understood why people will keep playing games
| they don't like. It doesn't make any sense to me. If I
| don't like a game, I play something else.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I should not have spent the time that I did with the
| game. I regret a lot of it. At this point I think I'm
| fully done with it, although I might pick it back up on
| PC at some point in order to work on mods (which I think
| might address some of the big gaps in the game).
| jrootabega wrote:
| They've certainly done a good number of things, and it
| probably wasn't easy to do, but my observation is just
| that almost none of those things really contribute to the
| heart of the game, work together in a meaningful way, or
| got executed without a lot of rough edges and bugs which
| never have been/never will be addressed.
|
| I believe it happened this way because when they were in
| danger of self-destructing after the terrible launch,
| they knew they could no longer afford to risk continuing
| to try for the vision they had and sold. They had to
| pivot to a adding shallow crowd-pleasing fluff, and the
| more the better. And it was a good business decision! Now
| people go gaga over the fact that you can summon a
| multiplayer social hub from your menu and do fortnite
| emotes with strangers.
|
| Let me try to flip this and compliment NMS for what I
| think it is. It's a good light-hearted space-themed VR
| chat with some gamelike elements.
|
| -----------------------
|
| Also, no worries about the earlier question. I wasn't
| offended or upset, but I think it was just a good
| opportunity to point out that the culture about
| discussing this game now has that kind of thing baked
| into it.
| drakythe wrote:
| Regarding the question: I appreciate your point. I was
| less concerned about offense and more about playing into
| the rule breaking and poor discussion etiquette you
| brought up. Its too easy to treat everyone like dingbats
| online and I don't like playing into that type of
| conversation. So, my apology was intended less as a
| "sorry for offending you" and more of a "sorry for not
| trying for a real conversation"
| mr_toad wrote:
| > That's pretty much the only indisputable improvement to the
| game.
|
| On launch it would crash every ten minutes. Last time I
| played you could go weeks without a glitch.
|
| Some people think that they warrant forgiveness.
|
| https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2024/07/19/succor
| jrootabega wrote:
| If that's really true in a wide scope, yeah, I guess that
| would have to be an improvement. But I've observed the
| opposite - didn't used to get too many crashes or glitches
| back in the launch days, but my recent experiences are full
| of a few crashes and many, many glitches.
| mattmanser wrote:
| I think that's an oft repeated over statement of reality.
|
| I've enjoyed a good 60+ hours in it, it's good. But not great.
| I didn't pay for it, not sure I'd have been as happy would I
| have paid for it.
|
| It's still very shallow. As a programmer you can see all the
| really basic algos underlying all the generation.
|
| There are like 10 planet types, with a couple of extra wacky
| ones. All the stations are virtually identical inside. There
| are like 8 points of identical interest. And bizarrely they're
| everywhere. There are 3 alien races. You land on a planet and
| within seconds spaceships are over flying you. You enter a new
| system and 10 seconds later a fleet of "random" carriers will
| turn up within your sightline.
|
| You arrived at a new planet and the creatures are all exactly
| the same as you've seen before, just more legs, or 4 wings
| instead of two.
|
| The thing the really bugs me are the sentinels. I get the in
| game explanation, but it's boring that every planet has them.
| And the few that don't are weird ones.
|
| Everything is different and yet, apart from a very few minor
| things, it's all the same.
|
| And the randomness gets grating. Want a cool ship? Have fun
| trying to grind that out. Want a cool gun? Ditto. You have to
| resort to going to particular coords supplied by the internet,
| not in game play.
|
| For me, never before has space felt so small. Elite dangerous
| suffers from similar shallowness problems, but at least it felt
| epic.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _over statement of reality._
|
| You don't have to enjoy the game, that's totally fine. But my
| comment is pretty reality-based.
|
| The game completely bombed on launch and was dragged through
| the mud (mostly deservedly) in every review. Now has very
| positive reviews on Steam, people still talk about it, and
| people still buy it a decade later. It's sold enough copies
| to support the staff at Hello Games for that time.
|
| If that isn't turning a shitty launch into a success, I have
| no idea what is.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I feel same way. Played on Game Pass, not sure I would have
| valued it if I paid for it. It is very grating that you see
| same set piece, be it pirates or ruins again and again. I
| have seen this one before. Oh and to get best output I should
| just save scum...
|
| And then randomness leads to issues like finding very nice
| looking end game planet. To make your own base. And even
| there the option to place it so that certain things
| refresh.... So game world is not even consistent...
| remram wrote:
| People keep saying that. I ended up biting the bullet after the
| latest "game changing" update.
|
| It's barely a game at all. It's still a walking simulator. The
| environment is great, and there is some variety. But there is
| no objective or opposition, not even a story (a little robot
| tells you to do stuff). It's a sandbox, an engine one could
| build a game in (and they might someday?)
|
| They added some construction stuff, so the game will say "go
| and build a house" and you do that. Or "go build a blueprint
| machine" and now you have more blueprints. But what is any of
| it for? You can just sit in your cockpit.
|
| It all seems so pointless. Like they have seen other survival
| games and copied some mechanics over without understanding what
| makes a survival game. It is a really puzzling experience, I
| can't understand what they were thinking.
| talldayo wrote:
| If you think it's bad _now_ , imagine how bad it was for
| those of us that pre-ordered it. It was a dadgum mess back
| then.
|
| Most people are warming up to this game because they're
| delivering on the original game concept and still going the
| extra mile. _No Man 's Sky_ was criticized at launch because
| the gameplay was nothing like the trailer had suggested, and
| the updates since launch have really and truly fixed that
| complaint.
|
| No, there isn't EVA in space or serious FPS combat or even
| well tuned space dogfights. But none of that was really part
| of the original promise, and looking at the utterly
| _derelict_ state of games that try to thread all those
| needles (cough cough, _Star Citizen_ ), I'm glad _No Man 's
| Sky_ went it's own way.
| Kye wrote:
| You can walk out on to the outside of freighters if you
| install the right module. I forget which one, but I got a
| nice picture from the outside.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/kyefox.com/post/3lgvtgt7zas2q
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _It 's still a walking simulator. _
|
| I don't know how many different ways to say it. We all enjoy
| different types of games! You obviously aren't a fan of
| sandbox games, lots of people aren't either. Or maybe it's
| just this sandbox game. That's fine too.
|
| But it is pretty objectively a great example of taking an
| absolutely abysmal launch and turning it into something that
| a decent amount of people (doesn't mean everyone!) still
| enjoy and talk favorably about. It still sells copies. It
| still keeps the lights on at Hello Games.
|
| I cannot think of a single other game that had such an awful
| launch that has, 10 years later, enjoyed mostly positive
| reviews. Cyberpunk might be the closest.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I think the craziest turnaround story was Final Fantasy
| XIV, which was so bad at release that the following
| shitstorms meant that everyone expected it would go the way
| most MMOs go (soon forgotten). But not with Square-Enix
| (who had a money maker with their previous MMO Final
| Fantasy 11) who commited to revamping the whole game which
| took basically 3 years but in the end it became a really
| good game with a lot of happy players. (I have not played
| it myself so would like to listen to what players
| themselves say!)
| csallen wrote:
| This was my impression, too. I've been reading years of hype,
| so I bought the game a few months ago, and I was unimpressed.
| But the fact that it's kind of an objective-less sandbox
| wasn't what got me.
|
| I've played plenty of open world games and enjoyed them. In
| fact, even in games like Morrowind or Starfield or Grand
| Theft Auto or the like, which have big worlds _and_ specific
| objectives, I 've always found myself ignoring the quests and
| preferring to explore on my own terms.
|
| I remember hopping around in Morrowind as a kid, trying to
| become as powerful as possible, and seeking out baddies to
| best. Then in Grand Theft Auto I'd go on epic crime sprees to
| see how long I could elude the authorities. And in Starfield
| I built an incredible network of trading posts that spanned
| the galaxy to see how much I could enrich myself.
|
| What made these games fun is that, despite not following any
| missions or objectives, I was able to do impressive and
| interesting things and have fun. Perhaps that's possible in
| No Man's Sky, but in my first couple hours of playing, it
| didn't seem like it. It seemed liked I'd be going around
| doing boring and uninteresting things, and that it wouldn't
| be fun.
|
| So it's not that it was a sandbox that bothered me, but that
| it was a sandbox devoid of fun.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's like describing a bucket of random Lego pieces "not a
| toy".
|
| It's a game. It just might not be the game for you. Some
| people buy a Lego set, follow the instructions and make
| whatever the set is and that's it. That's fine. Other people
| will build out ideas with whatever pieces they have. Yet
| other people will buy specific pieces to build out some Lego
| vision they have, some of which are truly incredible.
|
| It's also like Minecraft. Are you just playing survival mode?
| Or are you playing creatively to build out some vision of a
| city or a building or even a computer?
|
| NMS is really self-directed play. The campaign is really just
| a tutorial. Are you going to go out and find and max out the
| best ships? Build an interesting base? Find a particular
| world to build your base on that has an aesthetic you want?
| That's up to you.
|
| I've put hundreds of hours into NMS although not for a few
| years. I first got into it after the Next update IIRC, which
| was a _massive_ improvement at the time.
|
| What I'd like to see with one of these updates is way more
| attention on base building as I think that area is kinda
| weak. Flattening ground is awkward. Base components don't
| snap to wood/stone/metal components for some reason. They
| could do so much more with this.
| Kye wrote:
| That's the same thing I wanted out of it. Give me Minecraft
| on pretty planets. None of the environmental mods for
| Minecraft come close to any random NMS planet.
| scoofy wrote:
| I've never played it, so I really can't speak to the though,
| but my obvious comparison is Minecraft.
|
| I really think the deep lore of Minecraft does a lot of work.
| When you find a new and interesting random place to explore,
| it usually ties in with your view of the place you are in,
| and eventually you find your way to an ending of sorts.
|
| Another similar game from my youth that was the same was Wing
| Commander: Privateer. It was a sandbox, where a game suddenly
| appears after you've been exploring for months, but it's not
| much more than some cut scenes within the sandbox.
|
| I have no qualms with a sandbox game, but I'd prefer it were
| generally tied into a narrative, either in a lore narrative
| or with a direct story.
| xiande04 wrote:
| The genre is called "sandbox" or "simulation". See Minecraft,
| Garry's Mod, The Sims, etc. Not all genres are for everyone.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| > But there is no objective or opposition, not even a story
| (a little robot tells you to do stuff). It's a sandbox, an
| engine one could build a game in (and they might someday?)
|
| I've found a very different experience. There seem to be
| several main story threads to follow, as well as the addition
| of a few interesting sidequests (I'm in the middle of the one
| about hacking and reverse engineering one of the sentinels).
| And that's not even counting the expeditions they come up
| with from time to time. I particularly enjoyed working
| through the one that had the Normandy from Mass Effect as the
| end prize.
| FumblingBear wrote:
| All of the other replies to you seem to give examples of
| other sandbox games that are successful / fun and suggest
| that maybe you just don't like the genre, but as an avid fan
| of sandbox games, and many of the other titles given by other
| posters, I still agree with you.
|
| No Man's Sky feels devoid of any personality or interesting
| content in a particularly unique way. No amount of updates
| will ever fix for me what feels like a fundamental gameplay
| loop issue.
|
| All of the layers of systems they've added with each new
| update still just feel __bad__. I'm glad so many have found a
| way to enjoy the game, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills
| when none of them seem to address the issue of "collect
| arbitrary resources to build gear to collect other arbitrary
| resources ad nauseum" in a way that I just find fundamentally
| unsatisfying.
|
| I still understand that reductive description can apply to
| many of the other games I actually enjoy (i.e. Minecraft,
| etc.) but that's what's so strange to me about NMS--by all
| means, I __should__ like the game. But I still think it's a
| miserable experience devoid of any real meaning. Even if the
| point is to find your own meaning in the systems it provides,
| I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels so much
| worse than any of the others.
|
| Maybe someone else can better articulate why it feels so bad,
| but to me, despite all of the work they've put on the game,
| it still feels so devoid of meaning.
| 1shooner wrote:
| I found it to be the grind half of a game, the chores you do
| to make the fun part more fun. But there is no fun part. The
| creative part is all prefabricated, and the exploration is
| very low-dimensional variation on templates that quickly
| blend together.
| zoogeny wrote:
| No Man's Sky is a bit of a litmus test for me these days.
|
| If you still hold a grudge against these guys after everything
| they've done, the numerous free updates, the commitment to high
| quality output, etc. then I will have a hard time believing you
| have any perspective. The disastrous launch was _9 years ago_ and
| yet here we are still talking about substantial free updates.
|
| It is totally fair to say the game isn't for you. But the team at
| Hello Games has blown past making up for their rookie mistake and
| well into the position of a shining example of how any game
| company should conduct themselves.
|
| If you still harbor some bitter feelings about that launch, maybe
| it is time to let it go.
| zen928 wrote:
| This would be a stronger point for me if the main developer had
| already apologized for promising things they couldn't deliver
| on as main tenants for bringing players to the game, but I can
| see looking online that this isn't the case even as of 2025.
| Rather than engage the community continually dismissing
| intentful lies as 'drama around launch', I'd rather spend my
| time and energy on supporting platforms that value honesty and
| transparency.
|
| But, I don't dismiss it as a fun videogame. I don't think
| cyberpunk 2077 is a bad game still either, but the reframing by
| these communities of legitimate problems as petty grudges turns
| me away from wanting to support them entirely. I don't value
| that type of conduct from a game company.
| micromodel wrote:
| Haha, I'll bite.
|
| I don't _hate_ NMS or HG. And it doesn 't upset me that people
| are enjoying it. However, what bothers me is that people have
| been talking about it for 5+ years as if it had been fixed up
| to be at least as good a game as was originally promised. And
| that's just not true. This gets missed in all the conversations
| about this game.
|
| Like, originally someone offered to sell you a fully self-
| sufficient farm on multiple acres of land. You buy it, and what
| you actually get is a CSA box of vegetables at your doorstep.
| Vegetables are cool, but that's not what you bought. Over time,
| the quality and variety of the vegetables went up. You got
| access to the farm. You saw it didn't actually have any grazing
| animals or compost management or energy generation, but, you
| know, they were building a greenhouse. After a few years they
| started building a composting toilet! Well, ok, just a regular
| outhouse, not a composting toilet, that was too complicated.
| You still don't own the farm. It still isn't close to self
| sufficient. But they're doing some neat things, they have
| chickens now, and you're entitled to as many vegetables as you
| can eat. That's all fine, but you were in the market for a
| built-out farm.
|
| That's what it feels like. Many of the promised features will
| likely never exist. (And not unreasonably - they'd be massive
| undertakings.) I've gone back to the game twice to check it out
| after huge updates and saw:
|
| - They added features like vehicles that I never wanted
|
| - Most of the new features were extremely limited in scope and
| felt half-baked, like character customization
|
| - The ugliest and most irritating/boring parts of the original
| game weren't being improved
|
| Now, all that said, this is Worlds 2 and I hadn't even heard
| about Worlds 1. My information is several years out of date.
| Since I already own it on PS4, I'm willing to take another
| look! Some of this stuff sounds really cool! But if they
| haven't resolved any of the failures in the core gameplay
| mechanics, I don't know if it's ever going to be a great game.
|
| I saw the "Engoodening" video when it came out and while I get
| it, there's _a lot_ of praise due to a team that will spend 5
| years, let alone 9, making big mechanical improvements to games
| for free... it 's not like it's unprecedented. Paradox
| Interactive has been doing that for decades, and they've often
| done it better (although they've had their own huge missteps,
| they're largely debatable, and the delta between
| promise::delivery has never been near the scale of NMS) (and
| admittedly the free updates are usually only about half of the
| content,the rest being paid DLC). And further, every time I get
| suckered into checking again, NMS boots up and just feels like
| a cheap, poorly thought out toy again.
|
| So yeah maybe I'm someone who "holds a grudge for 9 years" in
| your eyes, but I feel like I'm actually just the only
| reasonable person in the room. I think being wary of NMS
| updates is far more rational and honest than telling people
| it's better than it was ever promised to be, when it's just
| clearly not. People who enjoy it now should say they enjoy what
| it is, not that it has surpassed expectations, because
| expectations were originally set impossibly high.
|
| ---
|
| An additional point is that the behavior of the (CEO? Lead
| Dev?) around launch was downright shit, and that was never
| addressed. Direct lies, even after launch. Silence for months.
| No mention ever of the missing features.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > However, what bothers me is that people have been talking
| about it for 5+ years as if it had been fixed up to be at
| least as good a game as was originally promised. And that's
| just not true.
|
| What did they promise that they did not deliver?
| barnabee wrote:
| > as if it had been fixed up to be at least as good a game as
| was originally promised
|
| I pre-ordered NMS because I was excited by the concept[0], I
| wasn't really aware of the "broken promises" until everyone
| started to make a fuss, and I never felt the game I received
| didn't provide the experience that I'd expected. Needless to
| say I played it a lot in those first weeks and enjoyed it a
| lot.
|
| I've dipped back in since and while the updates are awesome,
| I've never played it as much as those first weeks. I am
| hopiong to find the time to give it a proper play through in
| VR, at some point, though.
|
| [0] and perhaps heavly influenced by 65daysofstatic doing the
| soundtrack
| torlok wrote:
| Something tells me you bought the game at a discount years
| after release.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I bought it at launch and I'm satisfied. They fucked it up,
| then they fixed their fuckup for free. Sure, we can all
| complain and whine that they released a bad game, and they
| did, but they apologized and then worked hard to fix the
| problem. I think humans need to have more understanding for
| things like this, especially or something as objectively not-
| important as a video game. If this were the THERAC-25 I would
| obviously have a much different opinion, but it's
| entertainment so there's no sense in holding a grudge against
| them.
| zoogeny wrote:
| That is an incorrect assumption. In fact, I bought it for
| full price at launch.
| debacle wrote:
| No grudge, but as I understand it the game loop is still too
| "make your own fun." Has that part changed yet?
| easythrees wrote:
| Yes and no. Some new things are quite fun like expeditions or
| derelict freighters, but there's no "story" per se beyond the
| base one.
| zoogeny wrote:
| It isn't for everyone, that is for sure. You can find a lot
| of things to criticize about the game, as you can will all
| games. Not everyone likes Factorio, Elden Ring, God of War,
| Stardew Valley, Rimworld etc. even if they are massive
| successes within their own communities.
|
| I'm not defending the game or trying to make a case for it.
| I'm suggesting that if you can't look past your 9 year old
| memory of a botched launch and compare it to the subsequent
| near-decade of grind this team has put into their dream - you
| might be lacking perspective.
| zamadatix wrote:
| A grudge in general is fine enough to me, you don't have to
| start being fine with everything ever done just because it
| eventually stopped being that way, but weighing that so high as
| to not consider anything else about the game/developer at this
| point is where it's taken into the realm of "really?" for me.
| segasaturn wrote:
| My first time playing NMS was around 7 years after launch when
| it was added to Game Pass Ultimate. It's a _fine_ game, but the
| reliance on procedural generation for planets made everything
| feel... stale, and same-y. It 's ironic, the game has billions
| of unique worlds, but none of them have anything interesting
| going on on them because they were made by an algorithm and not
| a person. Starfield had the same problems (remember
| Starfield?). This is also how most people feel about AI-
| generated content.
| Stevvo wrote:
| A counter-point on procedural generation; Elite Dangerous did
| the same, but it worked. e.g. Watching a ringed planet
| eclipse a pulsar was awe inspiring. It had countless
| incredible combinations of procedurally generated stars &
| planets you could discover.
| RedNifre wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite.
|
| My experience with No Man's Sky was this:
|
| - I started playing the campaign (instead of the sandbox mode)
| and was off to a great start
|
| - I noticed that you slowly gain additional inventory slots for
| your character, but that you can just buy a large ship with
| many inventory slots instead, so I did some trading and bought
| a huge ship
|
| - Inventory management: I put the stuff I don't need on me in
| the ship's cargo space. Especially the "space traveler's
| passport" or whatever it was called, since you only need that
| during quests/campaign progressions
|
| - I had my first run in with pirates and died
|
| - Ah, so when you die, you lose all ship cargo, but keep your
| player inventory. Good to know. Now, where's my "space
| traveler's passport", that I need to continue the campaign? I
| bricked my save?
|
| - I went to the forum where everybody laughed and called me an
| idiot. OF COURSE you don't put your quest items in the ship!
|
| Note that the game only had auto-save, no manual save states,
| so I lost everything for the stupid reason that the game
| removes all quest items from your ship on death and does not
| tell you that beforehand. This was one of the worst experiences
| I had in a game/community, ever.
| ziddoap wrote:
| That's super unfortunate, especially the community part.
|
| > _Note that the game only had auto-save, no manual save
| states_
|
| Not that it fixes anything, but I am really curious when this
| was? At least as far back as Nov 2016 there has been manual
| saves via save points. And I'm pretty sure beacons have been
| in since pre-release.
|
| This definitely speaks to a UI failure (as well as the quest
| item stuff). The UI has been completely overhauled since.
| But, I certainly do not blame you for having your opinion
| soured and not wanting to try again.
| suraci wrote:
| I'm very grateful to the team after all these hard work and
| their sincerity, can't forget the surprise when i saw all the
| changes they made after years, but it's just, hard to go back
| to play it, makes me feel bad sometimes
| mzhaase wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| I am not bitter, but Sean Murray after launch was sitting in
| interviews, claiming that the game had multiplayer (and a lot
| of other stuff), knowing fully well that those were lies.
|
| On top of many, many lies that happened before launch. These
| are not "rookie mistakes". This is a person that is clearly
| fine with lying to players in order to hype up the game. He
| should never be trusted again.
|
| Yes, it's exemplary that they fixed the game, and added all
| those features, but Sean Murray remains an untrustworthy
| individual. I would never hire, do business with, or believe
| him. I will stay away from anything this guy does in the
| future.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I'm not going to try to gaslight you since your memories are
| your own. But consider your memory of 9 years ago in the
| light it occurred. After huge hype, the entire gaming world
| turned Hello Games and Sean Murray into a meme. Every video
| was clipped and cut to make him look like a mustache twirling
| villain that was lying to trick gamers into buying his shit
| shovel-ware game. We have this vision of a huckster game
| developer whose entire grift is to hype and then abandon
| games and Sean became the poster child for this. This was
| made much worse by Sony strongly pushing No Man's Sky as an
| indie success story adding even more fuel to the hype.
|
| But lets consider the next 9 years and ask: does the behavior
| of Sean match that caricature? If he was indeed the lying
| manipulative hype man that reddit memes made him out to be,
| how would we expect him to act? Wouldn't he take the money
| and run? 5 years after the launch, the engoodening video from
| Internet Archivist was released. Penny Arcade also has that
| famous cartoon from a few years ago. His reputation is mostly
| laundered now. Why do they keep releasing free updates? Why
| is he not shovelings out a bunch more over-hyped crap? Do you
| think this is the longest 9 year con job in the history of
| games?
|
| That is the lack of perspective I am talking about. Sean
| oversold the game and got called out for it. He was put in
| the public stocks and people threw rotten vegetables at him.
| Then he and the rest of the team spent 9 years quietly
| grinding away to prove they believed in the game and believed
| in their vision.
|
| You remember some videos cut to make him look evil 9 years
| ago. I'm talking about 9 years of him showing who he and his
| team really are.
| root_axis wrote:
| My problem with the NMS debacle was that they lied egregiously
| when building hype about the game's features and just continued
| to lie and evade when it all came crashing down. I played the
| game a year or two ago, overall it wasn't bad, a middling
| sandbox crafting game, but there are way more games than I have
| time to play, so I'd prefer to patron those with a more honest
| approach.
| troad wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy, plus you're implying that anyone who
| disagrees must bear a grudge, which is not at all the case.
| Games that promise the things NMS promises are games for me.
| NMS just doesn't deliver.
|
| Years of free updates have turned a barren tech demo into a
| fairly middling game, without solving the key problem: there
| are ten squillion planets, but no sense of discovery. The same
| three races, who have already populated every planet before you
| get there, with the same space station, and the same few
| outpost buildings. No cities. No history. Nothing to explore
| that you haven't seen in the first 10 minutes. It's a dead
| galaxy.
|
| Then there's the lack of attention to gameplay systems. The
| last time I tried it, I quickly figured out that I could turn
| element X into 10 element Ys, into 3 element Xes. And I could
| do this with just about any element in the game. And thank God
| for that, because everything is gated behind collecting far too
| many of those elements.
|
| NMS is not a good game, and the same gaming community that was
| hyperbolic about its failure nine years ago is now hyperbolic
| about its comeback, because 'content creators' need narratives
| to peddle, and a redemption ark makes for a great narrative.
| But there is no narrative here. 'Bad game remains fairly bad'
| isn't going to make any YouTube videos go viral.
|
| Finally, I don't understand the 9 year point at all. Effort is
| something you commend in children; among adults, it's results
| that matter. I honestly think that if the studio spent those 9
| years making a new game, applying the lessons learnt from NMS,
| they may have actually made something worth playing. Nine years
| is a serious chunk of a human lifespan, far too long to spend
| on a sunk cost fallacy.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| It is wild how much content the team has continued to add years
| and years after the launch and without even making any of it paid
| DLC. The commitment is super impressive, and I applaud them for
| it, but I am curious how the economics of it work. Is there a
| wave of people that buy the game when these huge updates are
| released? How is it possible to keep building this long for a
| game that is a one time purchase?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| New purchasers, subscription products like Game Pass...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Sales
|
| > After the game was added to the Xbox Game Pass service in
| June 2020, Hello Games reported a month later that No Man's Sky
| had seen more than one million new players.
| bombcar wrote:
| Depending on how they do it, and how many people they need
| working on it, it might only need to keep a relatively small
| trickle of new sales going.
|
| It also now marks it as a "great value" so people are more
| likely to pick it up even if they don't end up playing.
|
| Depending on pricing, you can even just sell to people
| upgrading or changing consoles (this is one area that really
| helps Stardew Valley, albeit with a low cost).
|
| After all, even if you've sold millions of copies, there's way
| more people who have NOT bought it.
| juancn wrote:
| Besides all the revenue from things like Game Pass or PS+, I
| think the long game is building a game engine for procedurally
| generated games.
|
| They're working on a fantasy title too
| (https://lightnofire.com/) which uses the same engine to build
| a whole planet, but Earth scale.
|
| Improvements in the engine for one, translate to the other.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| Man, its too much effort to explore this actual Earth and see
| as much as possible. I can't even fathom the energy and
| commitment needed to explore a virtual Earth like planet
| however awesome it sounds. How do you guys stay committed to
| something like this?
| ok_dad wrote:
| I tend to play games with high commitment like these in a
| binge for a few weeks or a month, playing it for maybe
| hours a day (a night actually because of the kiddos) until
| I've basically done everything fun the game has to offer,
| then I stop. Sometimes I play again a few years later in a
| similar way, then stop again. Recent games I've played like
| this include Rust, Project Zomboid, and Timberborn.
| jimcsharp wrote:
| Seeing as much of a virtual planet as possible costs $60
| and it uses the same energy that isn't being used because
| the other thing costs thousands of dollars.
| ViktorRay wrote:
| The game has actually consistently been on Steam's yearly top
| seller list for many years.
|
| It's surprising to see its continued popularity and
| development. In a good way of course!
| buran77 wrote:
| > With Worlds Part II, we added billions of new star systems and
| trillions of new planets to the universe
|
| I played the game at launch for a few days and coincidentally
| just last week again. So assume basic knowledge of the gameplay.
| Can someone explain how _trillions_ of planets in the game (I
| mean the number specifically) changes the experience in game?
|
| I get improving the level of variety on a planet and between
| planets can improve the gameplay. But trillions of anything makes
| me think most of the content will never be touched by any human.
| Am I missing something?
| shikon7 wrote:
| As I understand it, they add a new set of planets with the new
| features, and keeping the old planets untouched.
|
| The increased variety is not because trillions of planets are
| added, but because the new planets will have more varierty than
| the old ones.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| What they really mean is there is more variety when you land on
| different planets, they added more variables to the procedural
| generation. And I gotta say it _did_ improve over time, they
| have become more varied and interesting, but still with that
| "procedural" feel.
| variaga wrote:
| Unequal distribution, basically. While most planets will never
| be observed by a human, it turns out players congregate in
| certain parts of the galaxy, particularly near the galactic
| center. (The game starts you at a random location near the edge
| and there's literally a 'reach the galactic center' quest, so
| most players end up near the center eventually.)
|
| So yes, there are trillions of stars, but there's only so many
| of them within $RADIUS of the center. In practice every planet
| 'near' (for some definition of 'near') the center has already
| been discovered and the 'good' planets are likely to already
| have bases. There are also spots that get their locations
| published in the forums or advertised in-game (good drops, cool
| bases, things like that) that also end up 'locally' crowded.
|
| I found there were basically two experiences in NMS - "the
| outer rim" which was, frankly, lonely - you almost never
| encounter any signs that other players even exist and "the
| core" where it feels like everything has already been done -
| sure it's new to you, but you're never the first. Finding a
| middle zone where you can see evidence of other players, but
| there's still stuff to discover was rare in my experience.
| CashWasabi wrote:
| This game has the biggest comeback story of any game in gaming
| history. I'm really looking forward to their next title and how
| much of "new" tech they will be showing in it. As far as I
| understand it will be the same engine as No Man's Sky. But there
| might be even more content and also this time it seems to be only
| one big planet?
| rkagerer wrote:
| While we're talking space games, did Star Citizen ever get
| properly released? I crowdfunded it 10 years ago and am still
| waiting for delivery or access to play. Emailed them a few times
| in the interim and never got any response.
| aprilnya wrote:
| It's been out in Early Access for a bit... weird that as a
| backer you wouldn't have access to it
| rkagerer wrote:
| Thanks for the answer. Was there an email that went out or
| something? If I recall I didn't back on Kickstarter, but
| directly with the company. (Also is it ever going to leave
| Early Access? Are they asking for more money?)
| rkagerer wrote:
| The game has a 60% discount on Steam right now [1], but not on
| GoG [2]. Is the Steam version DRM-benign? e.g. Is it similar to
| Kerbal Space Program where you could just copy the folder out to
| another location (or a new PC) and play it without Steam having
| to be installed?
|
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/
|
| [2] https://www.gog.com/en/game/no_mans_sky
| lukan wrote:
| Steam games you cannot just copy and play. GoG is like this.
|
| (with steam you can sort of export it, but then need another
| steam client to install it)
| rkagerer wrote:
| What you said is not the case for all Steam games. KSP is
| one, several more are listed here:
|
| https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-
| free_g...
| jader201 wrote:
| NMS is a technical marvel, and at first, the game is quite fun.
|
| But for me, it just falls flat after a while. The planets just
| feel functionally the same, just with a different "skin" (which
| is cool, just doesn't add to the fun).
|
| I've gone back to it 3 or 4 times, and may/may not explore it
| again after this update. But it's always the same: it feels
| cool/new for a few hours, then I realize it's still very
| repetitive.
|
| And I hold no ill will about the launch -- I don't really care,
| and I think the continued efforts and free updates are very
| admirable.
|
| But it comes down to the gameplay, and at the end of the day,
| there's not enough depth to keep me playing (e.g. compared to
| something like Factorio, where I can play this for months and it
| never gets old).
| jrootabega wrote:
| It's not only as shallow and boring as you describe, but also
| thoroughly unpolished and buggy.
| Kye wrote:
| Has the building system improved any since 2023?
|
| I did a playthrough back then:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7oYF3lDf4g&list=PLfFb7mAGQz...
|
| But decided I wanted to focus on building, only to discover it
| was extremely glitchy.
| Yeul wrote:
| Personally I prefer content with story and characters. Which is
| why nobody has beaten Mass effect yet.
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