No Man’s Sky One Year Later • Hacker News Board

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#41

Post by LeoNatan25 » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:17 PM UTC

dcolgan wrote: post #35

As a former amateur Twitch.tv streamer, I've always been fascinated by the rise and fall of internet personalities, and some of the biggest personalities seem to be game developers that found themselves in the spotlight. Someone made this very in-depth video about the fall from grace of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w It seems to me that the combo of high pressure and a guy…

Wait, let’s not conflate the cases you describe, where the trolling may have been and probably was malicious, with the case of No Man’s Land, where lead director flat out lied about the content of the game, and people who couldn’t control their hype fell for it and late raged. In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#42

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

> No Man’s Sky inhabits this frustrating space alongside games like the nu Deus Ex games, the original X-Com, or the Mass Effect series. It offers something you just can’t get anywhere else, but it does so in a deeply flawed and annoying way.

This really resonated with me. I have a whole pile of Steam games which have fascinating, unique traits, but are 'objectively' bad in that they failed to deliver a solid story, or interface, or mechanics, or all of the above.

- Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator comes to mind; it's a great exploration of cooperative multiplayer design and the possibilities opened up by incomplete information. But it's also clunky and acutely underdeveloped in terms of game modes, balance, and AI. If you want a good game, you'd better dive deep into modding.

- Tharsis also counts; deeply strategic play in a constrained setting, undermined by strategy-destroying levels of randomness.

- Even AAA stuff like Civilization does this to me. Why is Civ great? Because nothing else is Civ. Why is Civ terrible? Because the balance is underwhelming and the AI is catastrophically bad.

- Hell, for years Minecraft was like this. The opening comment about "imagine if Minecraft had been clunky and unintuitive at release" made me laugh, because it was. Deep Survival play has been almost dependent on mods for much of the games history, but the underlying insight was too good to pass up.

So... it's an interesting insight, and it also prompts a question. Why don't more of these intriguing flops prompt more polished attempts?

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#43

Post by mustacheemperor » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #24

I found the gameplay at release enjoyable as a chill-out experience, much more my speed than first-person twitch-fests. I didn't mind that it was hyped far beyond what they delivered, its a game after-all. Maybe millennial gamers have more expectations than people who grew up on atari game cartridges? Haven't played it for months, but my expectations for any game is merely few dozen sessions of play maybe ~100 hours…

I can definitely see why the community was enraged at release, and the game definitely doesn't fit the magazine cover descriptions I remember reading about it. That said, I bought it a few weeks ago for $20 and it's exceeded my expectations. If I had bought this game on release expecting what was promised, I don't know if I could even enjoy it now. But having gone in with pretty low expectations and for the price of a movie theater outing, it's definitely been a great experience. I agree with the author, that NMS occupies a space that doesn't really have a standout title that accomplishes what everyone really wants in this genre. For now I'm enjoying the exploration and base building quests - it's a great pick up/put down game that I can play after work a few times a week to unwind.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#44

Post by TrueDatz » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #24

I found the gameplay at release enjoyable as a chill-out experience, much more my speed than first-person twitch-fests. I didn't mind that it was hyped far beyond what they delivered, its a game after-all. Maybe millennial gamers have more expectations than people who grew up on atari game cartridges? Haven't played it for months, but my expectations for any game is merely few dozen sessions of play maybe ~100 hours…

Yeah the spoiled brats say the 'developers lied'.

The devs had a plan, it didn't work out. That doesn't mean they lied, programming is hard, period.

But what do you expect from spoiled brats? Did they pass on the game like adults, since it was released without some features?

No, they cried and cried fraud. Like babies.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#45

Post by LeoNatan25 » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #22

EpicEng wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>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. The people who pre-ordered should've waited till the reviews came out and then bought? I have rarely seen a level of delusion from a fan base than the one around NMS, they collectively hyped themselves to a leve…

> The people who pre-ordered should’ve waited till the reviews came out and then bought?

This is obviously true—no one should ever preorder digital games.

But that does not absolve the developer from flat out lying in interviews and promises, sorry.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#46

Post by LeoNatan25 » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

TremendousJudge wrote: post #37

dageshi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. The people who pre-ordered should've waited till the reviews came out and then bought? I have rarely seen a level of delusion from a fan base than the one around NMS, they collectively hyped themselves to a leve…

>I have rarely seen a level of delusion from a fan base than the one around NMS Just wait until star citizen crashes down hard

You assume it will ever be released. :-)

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#47

Post by etchalon » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

zzalpha wrote: post #9

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…

So what's your personal take on the posted article? The post article would suggest NMS is being pulled in a lot of different directions... it has a single player quest, but it's not a great quest-based game. It has sandbox elements, but no obvious gameplay loop to make the sandbox compelling. It doesn't speak to the multiplayer elements, and I don't have personal experience with them, so I don't know how well they fi…

I was a fan of what was released initially, and thought the uproar was completely ludicrous. But I also didn't pay insanely close attention to the hype machine.

When my more "invested" friends pointed out all the things the developer said would be there, that weren't, I thought, "Well, it'll probably come later." And behold, now some are. Maybe more will come.

As a game, I probably lost 40-60 hours playing the initial release of the game. I treated it as a weird independent/art house game which was more about an experiment than about a crystalized game loop experience.

It was fun, and interesting, and what systems were present were pleasant enough.

Having played with the update, all of the updates are great and worth revisiting. It definitely changes the feel of the game.

It's not a "great" game, but what it is is great. You can fly around a universe and see things literally no one has ever seen before, including the developers. There are some mechanics to make exploring easier, some things which make you more powerful, and a loose, cryptic plot.

It's easily worth the 60 bucks, which is all you can ask of it.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#48

Post by LeoNatan25 » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

yflu wrote: post #12

EpicEng wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Clearly they did not create a “minimum viable” product if their customers were so unhappy with the end result. As a startup, they failed completely at determining what that “minimum viable” was.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#49

Post by vorpalhex » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

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…

If you want strong direction, then open world is the wrong end of the spectrum. Give me a large world with lots of complexity and I'll entertain myself for hundreds of hours. Give me a directed plot and I'll probably stop caring in about 4 hours.

It seems to me there are two very different views of story telling in games. One camp wants games to be strongly directed minimal choice stories with a very specific narrative and it's entirely ok to curtail player agency to tell that story.

Another camp thinks the opposite: player agency always comes first and there is no set narrative but the one that players create for themselves. This comes with the potential that said narrative can be dumb.

I don't think either camp is wrong, just different ways to tell a story. I really favor the later, and I really hate when my agency is abridged as a player because some writer wants to tell a story I don't care about. At the same time, I'm sure plenty of folks have the opposite viewpoint.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#50

Post by slg » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #41

dcolgan wrote: post #35

As a former amateur Twitch.tv streamer, I've always been fascinated by the rise and fall of internet personalities, and some of the biggest personalities seem to be game developers that found themselves in the spotlight. Someone made this very in-depth video about the fall from grace of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w It seems to me that the combo of high pressure and a guy…

Wait, let’s not conflate the cases you describe, where the trolling may have been and probably was malicious, with the case of No Man’s Land, where lead director flat out lied about the content of the game, and people who couldn’t control their hype fell for it and late raged. In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified.

>In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified.

Why? The guy obviously wasn't trying to make a bad game. He was just inexperienced, got in over his head, and failed to deliver the product he wanted to build on the timeline he promised. I would have assumed if any community understands that failure isn't an unusual result in the face of ambitious goals it would be the HN crowd. Meanwhile since the game's release he has continued to work on that product to get it closer to everyone's initial expectations. I understand being disappointed by the whole thing, but the vitriol directed his way was somewhat disturbing.