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No Man’s Sky One Year Later

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Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#71

Post by spike021 »

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 haven't played it, but my brother was someone who pre-ordered long before it was released and had a ton of fun with it the past year. I know that's anecdotal, but I think this may be a situation where some majority, or even minority, is just overshadowing the opposite that did/does enjoy the game as-is.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#72

Post by Pigo »

Bartweiss wrote: post #42

> 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,…

This may be off-point, but are there more polished attempts at new ideas out there that are worth checking out? I can't keep up with what's worth playing anymore, and don't have time to play every game hoping that it hits the mark. Anytime I check out the top ranking games, it's new Call of Duty's, Battlefields, Assassin's Creeds, or sports (blegh) and a whole host of games that disappear as fast as they show up. I'd kill for a new game that engages as much Civilization or C&C did.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#73

Post by exodust »

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…

Speaking of coming out as transgender, lead programmer on No Mans Sky, Innes Mckendrick has been there done that. He's done some great talks about programming in the game including a GDC talk that's on youtube, and earlier a talk on procedural world tech.

This is what most impresses me about No Mans Sky, the engine. I've only played it a bit on friend's playstation. They're onto something really cool with the new way of generating noise and using voxels to create detailed realistic landscapes.

Sean Murray did a talk on the noise generation, but it was a strange talk I must say. He spends too long on how many people played No Mans Sky, and how it 'really was actually' successful. He shouldn't worry so much and just get on with making games with this awesome engine. The story-telling and game elements will sort itself out in this game or the next.

Game devs can be amusingly self-conscious and troubled... just today I watched a talk by Davey Wreden the writer of The Stanley Parable. Wow, talk about 'in therapy'. Honest guy, nice guy, insists his life is okay now and he's no longer deeply depressed and addicted to self-validation. Brave talk... but dude it's a gaming conference, not a mental health conference!

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#74

Post by ssully »

etchalon wrote: post #47
zzalpha wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 initia…

As someone who actually followed the development from the day it was announced at the VGAs, I also found the uproar to be ludicrous and the claims of the developer lying to be overblown.

I think it also might be that I am pretty aware that games/most projects in any field are never going to be what is said when first announced. I used to feverishly follow game developments when I was a kid and became intimately aware that features promised at announcement don't always make it to the end and that I also impose a lot of my own desires onto the project that never had any reality of coming true.

Finally I will say I found NMS to be a pretty boring game, but one that is incredibly beautiful. The sense of planetary scale in the game is unmatched IMO and I think that Hello Games or a developer with similar tech can make something truly special with that.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#75

Post by sushid »

slg wrote: post #65
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. He was lying up until the last weeks to release, where no practical development on the game was taking place. I’d see your point if promises were made years before release and the company was unable to deliver. But there was clear malice here.

Like the original article suggests, if he was truly malicious in intent then why would he continue to work on this game after release? Hanlon's razor suggests he just failed on the biggest stage he was ever on and he didn't know how to handle that. To quote the article: >When people ask you, “Will we be able to do X?” it’s easy to say “yes” because you already wanted to have X and you’ve already thought about how you…

Why wouldn't he work on the game? It's not like after ONE over-promise he's never going to ever in the game dev business. His life a repeated game theory interaction.

Whether he intended to deceive or not, it makes sense to do some damage control for the future.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#76

Post by ghurtado »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #54
slg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Please. He was lying up until the last weeks to release, where no practical development on the game was taking place. I’d see your point if promises were made years before release and the company was unable to deliver. But there was clear malice here.

> But there was clear malice here.

Do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#77

Post by hello_asdf »

Pigo wrote: post #72
Bartweiss wrote: post #42

> 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,…

This may be off-point, but are there more polished attempts at new ideas out there that are worth checking out? I can't keep up with what's worth playing anymore, and don't have time to play every game hoping that it hits the mark. Anytime I check out the top ranking games, it's new Call of Duty's, Battlefields, Assassin's Creeds, or sports (blegh) and a whole host of games that disappear as fast as they show up. I'd…

Try Europa Universalis 4 by Paradox Interactive. It's a strategy game.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#78

Post by zzalpha »

majewsky wrote: post #28
zzalpha wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> randomly generated threats (Minecraft, Terraria) Maybe that's just me, but Minecraft is totally not about randomly generated threats. Sure, you have a certain set of milestones related to combat (e.g. loot a nether fortress, defeat the Ender dragon), but 99% of what motivates me about Minecraft is building stuff.

Yeah, that's fair, I left that out and only noticed it later.

Of course, AFAIK, NMS only added "building stuff" (e.g. bases) to the list of things you could do after the initial release.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#79

Post by ghurtado »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #56
zerohm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't envy software developers under immense pressure to deliver a AAA title on time. Having to predict whether or not you can get that feature working flawlessly in 30 days isn't easy in a vacuum. Much less with your Marketing dept being overly optimistic with your prediction.

In this case of a small company, most of the marketing was done by lead director who was very close to the development team and obviously knew what the team was able and unable to deliver.

> obviously knew what the team was able and unable to deliver.

You speak like someone that has never been a part of a software project.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#80

Post by bllguo »

Pigo wrote: post #72
Bartweiss wrote: post #42

> 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,…

This may be off-point, but are there more polished attempts at new ideas out there that are worth checking out? I can't keep up with what's worth playing anymore, and don't have time to play every game hoping that it hits the mark. Anytime I check out the top ranking games, it's new Call of Duty's, Battlefields, Assassin's Creeds, or sports (blegh) and a whole host of games that disappear as fast as they show up. I'd…

It's not really new, just under the radar - but maybe Paradox Interactive's grand strategy games would be up your alley. Look at Crusader Kings 2, or Europa Universalis 4.

I make this recommendation reluctantly as I despise their DLC practices, but those games are pretty great and fulfill an underserved niche. If you do decide to play them - I'd try out the base game before considering DLC, there's just way too much.

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