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No Man’s Sky One Year Later

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Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#11

Post by newforice »

dexwiz wrote: post #7

Open world games are notoriously disappointing. "What is this game supposed to be?" is a great question. Are you trying to explore? collect resources and upgrade grind? build things? combat (ground or space)? By being all these things, they became nothing. All encompassing space games (for example EVE) take years to build, usually in the form of updates after release. As for the UI. It looks like its designed so the…

Open world games are great for me. I can't stand it when a game locks me into a pattern.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#12

Post by yflu »

EpicEng wrote: post #10
AlexC04 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly - I loved the first iteration and have jumped in to play it again this time round. I love it still (again). It's changed a lot. It's upgraded again there is a tonne of stuff to do, lots to see and explore and plenty of "hooks" to give you the excuse to see them. NMS gets a lot of hate and I don't think it's deserved but hey if the author doesn't want to play it, then it's no skin off my nose. They can do wha…

>NMS gets a lot of hate and I don't think it's deserved Should we just ignore all of the hype and promises made by the developer/publisher which were never delivered on? That's where the hate comes from. They promised something much more than what they delivered. Yes, they've made improvements, and that's great, but it still doesn't contain some of the biggest features promised while the game was still in dev. The ma…

They did what most "lean startups" did. They made an MVP, and iterated from there. The only difference is that their target audience were gamers who hivemind way more than most other markets.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#13

Post by newforice »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

Ugh NMS. Didn't get superhyped but bought it at launch, listened to that soundtrack by 65daysofstatic for a few weeks, played the game for about 30 minutes. It was just so boring. They had the tech to make universes but made the core gameplay so boring you didn't care. How is that possible? The game is now what it could have been, but it makes me uncomfortable even enjoying the game because I remember the dev lying o…

I think all games should focus on one platform, the PC platform. Consoles drain developer's time and attention from making the actual game. And don't get me started on knuckle-dragging VR.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#14

Post by nickthemagicman »

newforice wrote: post #11
dexwiz wrote: post #7

Open world games are notoriously disappointing. "What is this game supposed to be?" is a great question. Are you trying to explore? collect resources and upgrade grind? build things? combat (ground or space)? By being all these things, they became nothing. All encompassing space games (for example EVE) take years to build, usually in the form of updates after release. As for the UI. It looks like its designed so the…

Open world games are great for me. I can't stand it when a game locks me into a pattern.

Totally agree. Elder Scrolls and Fallout and Ultima are some of the best games ever.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#15

Post by minikites »

dexwiz wrote: post #7

Open world games are notoriously disappointing. "What is this game supposed to be?" is a great question. Are you trying to explore? collect resources and upgrade grind? build things? combat (ground or space)? By being all these things, they became nothing. All encompassing space games (for example EVE) take years to build, usually in the form of updates after release. As for the UI. It looks like its designed so the…

Compare and contrast No Man's Sky with Elite: Dangerous. Elite has a lot more defined and fleshed out "roles" to play that have tradeoffs, but they aren't working against each other. The author indicates that this very thing is lacking in No Man's Sky.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#17

Post by zzalpha »

newforice wrote: post #11
dexwiz wrote: post #7

Open world games are notoriously disappointing. "What is this game supposed to be?" is a great question. Are you trying to explore? collect resources and upgrade grind? build things? combat (ground or space)? By being all these things, they became nothing. All encompassing space games (for example EVE) take years to build, usually in the form of updates after release. As for the UI. It looks like its designed so the…

Open world games are great for me. I can't stand it when a game locks me into a pattern.

Sure, but every open world game includes a gameplay loop of some kind.

Virtually every open world game has the same basic loop: collect, craft/buy/sell, build.

After that, it's just a question of how you motivate players to go through the loop: quests (Elder Scrolls), randomly generated threats (Minecraft, Terraria), multiplayer PC threats (WoW, EVE), etc.

Sounds like this author feels NMS fails to justify itself in this way.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#19

Post by dexwiz »

newforice wrote: post #13
aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

Ugh NMS. Didn't get superhyped but bought it at launch, listened to that soundtrack by 65daysofstatic for a few weeks, played the game for about 30 minutes. It was just so boring. They had the tech to make universes but made the core gameplay so boring you didn't care. How is that possible? The game is now what it could have been, but it makes me uncomfortable even enjoying the game because I remember the dev lying o…

I think all games should focus on one platform, the PC platform. Consoles drain developer's time and attention from making the actual game. And don't get me started on knuckle-dragging VR.

It looks like PS4 [1] sales almost doubled Steam Sales [2]. There were probably a large amount of non Steam PC sales, but Steam being one of the largest distribution platforms, I imagine its a large portion of total PC sales.

[1] http://www.vgchartz.com/game/84663/no-mans-sky/ [2] http://steamspy.com/app/275850

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#20

Post by cwyers »

newforice wrote: post #13
aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

Ugh NMS. Didn't get superhyped but bought it at launch, listened to that soundtrack by 65daysofstatic for a few weeks, played the game for about 30 minutes. It was just so boring. They had the tech to make universes but made the core gameplay so boring you didn't care. How is that possible? The game is now what it could have been, but it makes me uncomfortable even enjoying the game because I remember the dev lying o…

I think all games should focus on one platform, the PC platform. Consoles drain developer's time and attention from making the actual game. And don't get me started on knuckle-dragging VR.

The consoles are much easier to develop for -- debugging GPU problems across hundreds of GPUs by three manufacturers is so much harder than doing so on a single (or two, if you count the two major consoles) GPU type. They also make a larger share of the revenue than PC games do. They don't drain attention, they put attention where the most revenue for the least work is.

And from a user point of view, PC gaming just got exhausting for me. Driver updates, keeping up with GPU upgrades... or I can plunk down some money on a box that Mostly Just Works. Yes, there's parts of console gaming that annoy me. I dislike having to have a PS4 and an Xbox One, which are like 80-90% of the same damn hardware, to play all the games I want. This goes doubly because the PS4 has marginally better hardware (minus the controller, which is improved from previous generations but not as comfortable as the Xbox controller) and the Xbox has outrageously better software, so I'm missing out on something no matter which console I'm using and I can't crossplay with friends on a different console. But those annoyances are small potatoes given how much time I've sunk into getting PC games to run optimally.

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