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No Man’s Sky One Year Later

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Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#111

Post by the_af »

> 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.

X-Com flawed and annoying? Them's fighting words! The game is a masterpiece. It didn't feel frustrating back then; it felt like it belonged in my top 5 most engaging and enjoyable games, and I know this is a widely shared opinion in gamers my age.

edit: well, one of the commenters from TFA agrees with me:

> The original x-com was “deeply flawed and annoying”? I mean if that’s your opinion, cool, but surely you realize that most people consider it a classic and using it as an example of a failed game is only going to confuse us.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#112

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

fake-name wrote: post #97
KirinDave wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Modded Minecraft (try All the Mods 3 on the twitch client, or (formerly my modpack) Resonant Rise) Challenge Pack Modded Minecraft (Currently Popular: Age of Engineering, Forever Stranded, Sky Factory 3) Factorio Dwarf Fortress Modded Dwarf Fortress Masterwork Poschengband & Tome4 represent the pinnacle (to me) of classic Roguelike design. Risk of Rain Endless Legend Endless Space 2 (Amplitude releases a consist…

I've never really understood some of the zachtronics games. Things like TIS-100 and Shenzen I/O confuse me. Why would I spend time learning some esoteric assembler that exists no where else, when you could take that same time and learn an actual assembler? I really, REALLY wish they had done something really clever, like targetted AVR opcodes or something for their vCPU. That'd make it so not only do you get to have…

Haven't played TIS-100, but Shenzen I/O is just a really good puzzle game. Nothing more to it than that.

I'd also add that a large segment of their player base likely has programming experience, yet no experience in assembly.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#113

Post by ratherbefuddled »

cwyers wrote: post #20
newforice wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

I have a PC that's nearly 5 years old, that wasn't top of the line (budget about £800 without screens) when I bought it and took me half a day to put together. It runs every game I've tried on it at least at medium and usually on high. I've spent zero time optimising it, not put a single h/w upgrade in and driver updates get run about every 6 months for a few minutes. PC gaming is way beyond "mostly just works" and has been for some time from my point of view.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#114

Post by jerf »

the_af wrote: post #111

> 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. X-Com flawed and annoying? Them's fighting words! The game is a masterpiece. It didn't feel frustrating back then; it felt like it belonged in my top 5 most engaging and enjoyab…

X-Com shipped with a broken difficulty selector, so that all games were played on "Easy" regardless of your setting. The gameplay could be slow and ponderous at the best of times, and at the worst of times (chasing down the one last alien) could be quite maddeningly slow, literally at times 10-30 minutes of nothing. (Then the last alien gets the drop on you and your dude dies.) Some of the mechanics are pretty opaque in the era before "I'll just read a complete disassembly of the game engine on GameFAQs." Some of that is probably a part of the love for the game, but by most modern standards that's a flaw in a game. (Having to discover mechanics is not intrinsically a flaw, but making them somewhat undiscoverable kinda is.)

I'm not sure I'd defend the "deeply" part of "deeply flawed", because IMHO it still belongs in a different category than some of those other games; it came much closer to doing what it set out to do deliberately, it did not just accidentally back into being a good game despite itself. However, I will defend that X-Com was somewhat flawed. The very fact that they could ship the difficulty selector broken, because nobody noticed, because the difference was not big enough to be noticeable, is a pretty decently sized problem on its own; that affects everything from top to bottom right there.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#115

Post by zzalpha »

vorpalhex wrote: post #49
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 narrati…

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.

This is a false dichotomy.

Skyrim, for example, is absolutely both of these things, offering a strongly directed central narrative and lots of open world exploration opportunities.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#116

Post by sctb »

anon_dev_123456 wrote: post #70
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…

Cosmo was shunned because he went looney tunes in a very short timespan. For those who don't really watch speedruns, what happened to him was really fucked up. - Lost in very important tournament. - Got depressed because of it. - Girlfriend left him. - More depressed. - Suddenly, "I'm actually a girl". I feel really really sorry for Cosmo, so much went wrong in his life in a very short timespan and he snapped.

This account has been violating the guidelines a lot in its short life. Please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#117

Post by jerf »

vorpalhex wrote: post #49
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 narrati…

"Give me a large world with lots of complexity and I'll entertain myself for hundreds of hours."

Personally I'd say one of the problems is that No Man's Sky never had "lots of complexity" (not that you are necessarily claiming it did or tried to). Maybe I just know too much, but I can see through the algorithms generating all the pretty pictures pretty easily, and from there it's not hard to notice that the preconditions those algorithms have is going to make it so that pretty much nothing of any other complexity is possible. So you have all of these very beautiful worlds, where all you can do is point at things and shoot them with one of a couple of different types of beams. That was pretty much written in stone as soon as the data structures that make up the world were written down; there's not much more you can do with those data structures other than what the game offers you.

Contrast with Minecraft, which is built for interaction from the get go. It's a very different data structure.

Come to think of it, you could do worse than take an early Minecraft as your base and build No Man's Sky on top of it. (Modern Minecraft would be more like what particular worlds would look like; it's now a bit too detailed to build something like this on.) Another thing you'd get out of that is that you can build things that actually interact with the environment, the way villagers (who may not actually build their villages, but they do farm) and creepers ("boom") do in minecraft. Worlds could not just look superficially different, but actually have different behaviors in them, this world filled with creatures that aren't violent, that world filled with things that destroy everything you do as soon as you look at them, etc. If one was clever and could make those world rich in resources, perhaps even resources the peaceful worlds entirely lack, you might even be able to get some "game" going like having to land with a party to defend you while you put up an obsidian shelter or something.

Man. Suddenly I wish I had a few million dollars spare lying around because this sounds like with some care it could be hella fun. Make it an MMORPG somehow (biggest challenge: What game mechanism can you use to prevent too many people from being in the same chunks at the same time? Solve that and you're a great deal of the way there, since Minecraft itself pretty much proves out the rest) and you could have an Eve killer.

See also my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12276473#12276881

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#118

Post by vinkelhake »

noxToken wrote: post #67
crispyambulance wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it is "just a game"... an innovative, highly creative game with some really interesting features. I suspect the real creative talent behind the game got used and pressured by product-manager types to ship far before it was ready because of all the money and promises involved. Throwing a fit because of "honesty" in game pre-marketing is sort of like asking for your money back because a movie didn't fulfill the e…

> Throwing a fit because of "honesty" in game pre-marketing is sort of like asking for your money back because a movie didn't fulfill the expectations set by the trailer. Yeah, good luck with that at the multiplex, but also keep in mind that many people got their money back for the game. These aren't the same though. Trailers can be used to evoke a certain sense about a movie that is disingenuous such as masking a dr…

> For what it's worth, I heard that people who didn't follow the hype-train liked the game. Those accounts of the gameplay all praised it.

It's unfortunate (but understandable) that critique of No Man's Sky often mix what was promised with what was actually delivered. So much of the commentary focus on Sean Murray's broken promises.

There are a few reviews that cut through all the hype and focus on the gameplay and it's not a pretty picture. It's an AAA-priced game that (at the time of the launch) is at the level of an early access game. I recommend checking out Joseph Anderson's analysis on Youtube.

The people who have had the best time with this game seem to treat it as an overly complicated fidget cube. Something to keep their fingers busy while their mind is focused on something like listening to a podcast.

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#119

Post by tekromancr »

lodi wrote: post #106
fake-name wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really understood some of the zachtronics games. Things like TIS-100 and Shenzen I/O confuse me. Why would I spend time learning some esoteric assembler that exists no where else, when you could take that same time and learn an actual assembler? I really, REALLY wish they had done something really clever, like targetted AVR opcodes or something for their vCPU. That'd make it so not only do you get to have…

TIS and Shenzen superficially look like assembly programming, but in reality they're very sophisticated puzzle games. You basically create these networks of routines, each of which is limited to something like 9 lines of code (and labels cost a line!). All the tasks are structured so that when you try to code them the straightforward way you're always short a line or two, and then you have to sit there racking your b…

Labels and code can share a line, like this:

  ST: MOV X1 ACC
  TEQ ACC 1
  + JMP ST
  MOV X1 X2
  SLP 1
Now go back and optimize your solutions! :)

Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later

#120

Post by KirinDave »

fake-name wrote: post #97
KirinDave wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Modded Minecraft (try All the Mods 3 on the twitch client, or (formerly my modpack) Resonant Rise) Challenge Pack Modded Minecraft (Currently Popular: Age of Engineering, Forever Stranded, Sky Factory 3) Factorio Dwarf Fortress Modded Dwarf Fortress Masterwork Poschengband & Tome4 represent the pinnacle (to me) of classic Roguelike design. Risk of Rain Endless Legend Endless Space 2 (Amplitude releases a consist…

I've never really understood some of the zachtronics games. Things like TIS-100 and Shenzen I/O confuse me. Why would I spend time learning some esoteric assembler that exists no where else, when you could take that same time and learn an actual assembler? I really, REALLY wish they had done something really clever, like targetted AVR opcodes or something for their vCPU. That'd make it so not only do you get to have…

> Things like TIS-100 and Shenzen I/O confuse me. Why would I spend time learning some esoteric assembler that exists no where else, when you could take that same time and learn an actual assembler?

TIS-100 and Shenzen I/O are theme park training grounds where a solution is guaranteed to exist. For education or for people lacking confidence, that has appeal. Also, I _wish_ I had hardware like the TIS-100.

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