I remember first hearing about NMS' concept and wishing that they would take the general idea but downsize it by at least 10 orders of magnitude. A universe with 1-100 millions of planets would still feel absolutely massive and way more than individual players would be able to exhaust, yet it would allow the creators to do a bit better curation, allow players to actually meet, maybe add more hand-crafted experiences.…
They added real multiplayer several years ago. If you go to the same system another player is in, they'll be there. (As well as everything anybody has ever built there).
But you are pretty much guaranteed never to meet anyone while roaming around randomly. Only if you go to a galaxy center, the Anomaly, an expedition, or matchmake into someone else's game (is that still a thing?)
A big name in proc gen is Kate Compton who coined the term "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" to describe this phenomenon of technically unique but not different enough to matter - I googled "10000 bowls of oatmeal" to see if there was a good article and the second link was about it and nms https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...
That's pretty much the perfect description of NMS. Every planet is 'different', every site on the planets are 'different', but not different in any meaningful way. Oh look...this planet has 4 legged animals that are green and bumpy and the last one they were brown and spiky...but they move the same and act the same. Yawn.
Isn't Mincecraft basically that? I've never played it, so would be curious to hear from someone who's played both. From the outside both look very dull/soulless and yet people spend hours playing Minecraft building things - just engaging with their imaginations
It's amazing how, every time i come back to NMS, the whole thing feels like... nothing. It's a very cool and ambitious project, but there's fundamentally nothing substantial to it in terms of gameplay. It still feels to me, a decade later, more like a very very impressive tech demo than a video game
A played it, got stuck in a giant crater with seemingly no way to get out of it. That was basically the extent of my experience.
When up against a wall you have infinite jetpack but the game doesn’t really tell you this.
That's pretty much the perfect description of NMS. Every planet is 'different', every site on the planets are 'different', but not different in any meaningful way. Oh look...this planet has 4 legged animals that are green and bumpy and the last one they were brown and spiky...but they move the same and act the same. Yawn.
Isn't Mincecraft basically that? I've never played it, so would be curious to hear from someone who's played both. From the outside both look very dull/soulless and yet people spend hours playing Minecraft building things - just engaging with their imaginations
Basic Minecraft is basically that imo
Modded Minecraft is a very different beast, depending on the mods
It's pretty cool to see what modders have done with it over the years. I genuinely think Minecraft + Create is the best factory game.
I have hundreds of hours with my son in creative mode just building bases, fishing, battling our animals and hanging out. We’ve explored hundreds of systems just cataloguing all the animals and flora. We’ve learned all the languages. We basically have infinite money.
It’s all very shallow but it’s also “cozy”. This game is much more Animal Crossing than Minecraft. Other than the planets with extremely dangerous atmospheres and storms (and only in survival mode) it’s all pretty chill. If you like making your own fun and just like doing stuff like using photo mode and chatting with friends this is a great game.
My son was really excited to see the new customizable base station any space station updates. It’s like they made this update just for us.
Really looking forward to see what they’re cooking up for Light No Fire.
This game came out before my son was even born and it’s his favourite game and it’s a constant source of bonding for us. Thank you Hello Games.
A big name in proc gen is Kate Compton who coined the term "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" to describe this phenomenon of technically unique but not different enough to matter - I googled "10000 bowls of oatmeal" to see if there was a good article and the second link was about it and nms https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...
That's pretty much the perfect description of NMS. Every planet is 'different', every site on the planets are 'different', but not different in any meaningful way. Oh look...this planet has 4 legged animals that are green and bumpy and the last one they were brown and spiky...but they move the same and act the same. Yawn.
A lot of criticism from no man's sky, like this one, comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what no man's sky is, i fear... No Man's Sky really is just a sandbox game. a sandbox game doesn't need infinitely complex mechanics, it just needs to give you a blank canvas to do what you want to do... minecraft has like what 40 biomes, no man's sky has practically infinite biomes, is that not enough? you can build a unique ship nobody else will ever have, you can make a unique base on a unique planet and even build cities with other players, you can decide to be a space pirate or a wanderer and just explore to your heart's content, is that not enough? what else do people want? people always say nms planets are boring but is it just because they are a single biome? sure it would be amazing to have real planets, like light no fire but for all 18 quintillion something planets, but that would mean having a 30gb folder for every planet! just because they're procedurally generated doesn't mean they don't use up storage when they are generated, and it would be, i think, completely unfeasible to offer what light no fire promises to do but for the entire universe. IMHO you should view the entire nms universe as your equivalent to a minecraft world, and every planet as a unique-ish (there is some repetition but really not a lot) biome in that world. at least it helped me contextualize what the game does, because you're really not meant to spend the entire game on one planet. it's no man's sky, not no man's land...
Looks great. I just hope these alliances won't turn into the sort of thing like EVE Online Corporations but I guess this game is too different for that. Eve online makes me sick, its corporations are everything I hate in the real world :) I like games to be better than the real world.
I feel exactly the same. There has to be a way to do procedural generation in a way that doesn't feel "sparse". A thought that comes to me as I type this is what if you try to co-evolve the ecosystems so it doesn't feel like it's just a mix of the same base components in different quantities.
I am but an armchair expert here, but I do think most of what's missing is the complexity of real-life ecosystems and "connections". Having biomes that are substantially large on a given planet and diversity among them, animals unique to each, and some kind of connections between the sparse settlements (even just like 3-5 actual cities per planet would be a start) would be a big difference. It would be a bit less abo…
> even just like 3-5 actual cities per planet would be a start
This often takes me out of immersion in reading sci fi books. Every planet has one culture, one ruler, one major city. I know it's usually just a convenience but has the author never seen earth? Why would future human colonized planets not have hundreds of thousands of cities and competing factions?
Finding only one village on each planet is kind of laughable in the same way. The stage of human evolution where there was one village is such a tiny slice of time (if it ever even existed at all).
True realism is often interesting though, which provides more long term engagement than fleeting shallow fun. Look at some of the hard core 3rd party addons for flight sims, for instance, which are so realistic they actually ship licensed versions of the real aircraft training manuals and checklists - because every switch and procedure works.
True realism at the right place and time. Fly out of SeaTac or Chicago O'Hare in most flight sims at sunrise, and you'll get a richly detailed airport, realistic traffic, realistic surrounding terrain, etc. with hopefully jaw-dropping views. Pick a random airport at a random time with an obscure name or location in the US Midwest, and they all start to look the same (even with detailed, realistic geography): a mostly…
You haven’t seen either of the last two MSFS releases have you? They’re using high res satellite imagery of the entire globe. Even small towns are shockingly detailed.