No Man's Sky

[TCP]

Yeah except for this completely real post where you got your whine on:

 

AN INDIE GAME FOR $60?!?! THAT'S INSANE. WOW HELLO GAMES IS SO GREEDY. I'LL ONLY PAY $15 FOR INDIE GAMES. PLAYSTATION? MORE LIKE INDIESTATION AMI RIGHT??? SERIOUSLY THOUGH, I LOVE BATTLEFRONT.

PS: TCP IS SO HANDSOME.

[Mister Jack]

I never said an indie game should never be 60 dollars.  I said THIS game shouldn't be 60 dollars because it looks to me like it has no substance.

[TCP]

I never said an indie game should never be 60 dollars.  I said THIS game shouldn't be 60 dollars because it looks to me like it has no substance.

 

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, I also never made that "it's indie" argument. Quit being a moron, Cowboy.

 

This thread is going to be fucking priceless if the game ends up being incredibly underwhelming, though!

[TCP]

YOU QUIT BEING A MORON!

I fully expect a lot of upset people going into this game expecting a story like Mass Effect or something like that. If you're not into adventuring in games, this is not for you. Obviously there's more to do than a game like Proteus but if you don't see the appeal in a game like that than this isn't for you.

[danielpholt]

[SomTervo]

I never said an indie game should never be 60 dollars.  I said THIS game shouldn't be 60 dollars because it looks to me like it has no substance.

 

That seems pretty unfair.

 

Demon's Souls cost $60 back in 2009 and nobody knew shit about it or how it worked. It just looked like a "linear, janky RPG" from all the gameplay videos. And the devs intentionally keep a lot of content under wraps until the game releases. Hello Games are doing literally exactly the same as From in this regard but are getting rammoed by skeptics.

 

The devs are on record saying that there is a lot about the game they are keeping under wraps. Imagine it from their perspective: why would you procedurally generate an entire universe, show off what it can do in a couple of videos, then leave the universe empty of meaningful content/activities for the next two years? What have they been doing for two years? Twiddling their thumbs?

 

Mainly Devil's Advocating here. The game might be totally shit.

[deanb]

I think the "trust us there'll be stuff in here we just don't want to tell you about" when selling a £40 game only works when your only other games aren't two PSN games. FromSoft at least had a good 15 years behind them and stuff like Armored Core & Enchanted Arms. There's accusations of Sean Murray being a bit Molyneux-esque, but he at least earned the right for folks to take him on his word since for all the shit he does at 22 Cans he's knocked out some classic stuff before then.

[Mr. GOH!]

I expected it to be 40 USD because it seemed like a limited-scope game. I don't have any problem with it being 60 USD, since that means it will be 35 USD on cdkeys or GMG before too long. Either way, I was planning to wait for reviews before buying as I'm on the fence about non-narrative open-world games.

[SomTervo]

Price point must be the big contention here. TBH the majority of games are bought based on only a droplet of knowledge of what will be in the game - that's just how it works. High-budget games are long. There's a lot of stuff in them. And we know there's a narrative here - even if most of the gameplay is non-narrative driven.

 

Not a bad call re Sean Murray's chops, but I don't think it's totally on-point in this case. He was lead technical designer on Burnout 3 and several other games - so we know he can help craft good mechanics. The Joe Danger games were far from "just PSN games" in the pejorative and were renowned for being like Nintendo-away-from-Nintendo in terms of quality/refinement. IIRC other members of the team hail from really classy dev backgrounds, too (can't remember which, though, but like they've worked on some all-time great games).

 

Another nice aspect of their ethic is that they don't announce anything for a game until they know it works fully in-situ. Murray's on record saying that. That is like the opposite of Molyneux's approach, haha. [edit]Here is the source of that: link. Murray talks about the frustration of knowing that they have a certain thing in the game, but not being able to actually tell people it's there.[/edit]

 

The ultimate evidence of this ethos is that a year ago Murray said there were no plans for sentient alien races or dialogue/character systems in the game. Then in the last two weeks, they announce upwards of 4–5 sentient alien races (unconfirmed total number), with their own faction affiliations, languages and specialities. You can learn their language by finding script on their worlds or by trial and error (though you might offend them doing the latter) and then you can try talking to them for trade, info sharing or for fire support/backup. Dialogue can impact your faction rank with them and get you better/worse gear or aggro them. Before this, as far as we knew, the game didn't have any dialogue system or any other sentient life forms.

 

That's a pretty massive thing to reveal for your game 2 months before release. That's like a primary game mechanic. And considering story/narrative content is easier to develop and implement than entire game mechanics, I think there's plenty they are keeping under wraps.

 

I'm with you, GOH - I'm getting it on PC, so price point isn't as much of an issue. I'll be there on CDkeys 2 weeks before release, or a week after. From what I've heard, they're struggling to get it running on the PS4's CPU, so PC is clearly a safer way to go anyway.

Edited March 14, 2016 by SomTervo

[SomTervo]

Well, shit, somebody snuck a cheeky picture of the dialogue system in progress. Looks fuckin' A.

 

[Mister Jack]

They should have just said from the beginning that you get to play as Daft Punk.

[SomTervo]

That's not the player, you numpty!

[Mister Jack]

0/10.

[TheMightyEthan]

A reddit user posted a really good breakdown of what we know about what you'll actually be doing in NMS:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4didkh/what_do_you_do_in_no_mans_sky_and_other_questions/

 

It was enough to elicit a preorder out of me (I can always cancel it if I become less confident).

 

I found this part about how the universe is simulated especially enlightening, especially given our discussion of the procedural generation last month:

 

 

 

So all planets exist at the same time then? That must be an impossible to maintain server.

 

Not really, as it’s procedural, a planet or system only exists when you’re there, and the furthest things you can view are there only at the lowest level of detail. The stars you see are real stars, and the planets real planets, but they’re not taking up much space. If you can’t see anything at all, it’s not even generated.

 

Think of it like generating the world in Minecraft, as you walk, you generate more of the world – and things get pretty taxing after a while, because Minecraft is saving a lot of this information.

 

No Man’s Sky however throws this information in the trash when it’s not needed – the planet is simply regenerated from the same seed, if you will, when you return.

 

How does it handle your information? Anything you do is saved forever to your machine, that bird you killed, that terrain you destroyed, that blueprint you found, etc. but for everyone else, that planet is as untouched as the day you found it.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

So you can't make your mark on any planets you discover beyond naming it? I suppose that makes sense but it's a bit disappointing. Obviously, I wouldn't expect it to remember every animal you killed but if your mined all a resource, or killed ALL the animals somehow, it should be gone when someone else arrives

[TheMightyEthan]

It does save all that for your machine though, so I think that's good enough.  If I go back to a planet I've blasted it will still be blasted.

[Hot Heart]

So you can't make a giant picture of a penis out of alien corpses and then tell all your friends to head by Planet Penis and look for it?

 

Disappointed.

[Thursday Next]

 

 

but for everyone else, that planet is as untouched as the day you found it.

 

So what if you meet someone, then take them down to a planet you discovered and they stand on top of a large mineral deposit you destroyed? Do they float there on your screen? Or does the blasted-ness get shared to them from your machine so they don't see the minerals?

 

(I know nobody here knows, just rhetorical).

[Mal]

It almost seems like a succession (playthrough) planet is possible. It all hinges on what happens in TN's scenario.

[TheMightyEthan]

In another part of the FAQ it said that if two players are in the same vicinity then any changes either of them makes to the planet are shared, so I would assume the same applies to changes previously made.

[MetalCaveman]

[Mal]

Delayed to August 9th.

 

A reaction: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/736151267215560705

[TCP]

Ahaha are these people for real?

[Mister Jack]

So is it delayed or not?