No Man's Sky

Jalynfane · Aug 17, 2016

“One thing you won’t see however, is the studio exploiting that with micro-transactions. Murray is adamant on this point. “We do want to add a ton of features, like we’ve just discussed: Freighters, bases, these type of things. But we want to do it for free. You’ve paid for the game, so you should get this stuff without paying even more money. So no, there will be no paid DLC, just patches.“

RE paid DLC:
“Maybe in the future there’s some reason why we just couldn’t possibly afford to do a certain feature without charging for it”.

Amzin · Aug 17, 2016

jihodj said:
I read the first part of that post, and watched the first set of videos linked supposedly "proving" that they promised planetary physics and shit.

They didn't. And the way they hash together that "promise" is by taking points stated by that head developer out of context and out of their order of position. For instance, the first video to support that claim went to like 2:30 seconds in a video, the second went to like the 19 minute mark in the video, the third jumped back up to like 4 minutes into the video.

Seems like strong evidence to me these people were inventing what they wanted to hear in what he said.

All he said was that the planets would simulate day and night as if they were rotating around a Sun in orbit.

The word physics never once left his mouth.

I stopped reading it there.

I'm kinda glad it was deleted because I don't feel it was accurate, and I feel it paints a false portrait of what was promised.

The thing that Sean Murray did dance around, and mislead on, was multiplayer/co-op. But there is some serious mythology construction going on in regards to other supposed claims he made.

Also the video from earlier in this thread that was like "JURASSIC PARK" and then breaks into harmonica music, that shit is more accurate in regards to displaying the difference between expectations based on what we saw and what we actually got as the "end" product, than that Reddit post.

In my opinion.

Ehhhh. You can nitpick that one but they said a TON of stuff (and showed stuff in videos, both years ago and shortly before release) of stuff that they talked about that would be in the game that is not in the game. Again, using footage of the game from over a year ago with features that are 100% cut for your 1-month-to-release trailer is fucking scummy. All this is on top of the price originally being ~$30 and getting raised a little later on to $60. So, cut features, inflated price, outright lies in some places (with no follow up saying anything about "we had to cut this" or "that feature borked the game" or even "it'll be in free updates down the road") and now they're even backing off the all-DLC-is-free train which is doubly insulting considering how many features are missing.

Is the MP overblown? Sure. They did outright say multiplayer would exist, constantly, over the years, and it obviously is not the game though. But MP is just one of a multitude of things MIA. It's really Spore 2.0 right down to the evasive "face" of the release avoiding any responsibility for the inconsistencies and problems. Keep in mind they also said it was originally for PC and would not be a port but that clearly changed too, or was a lie.

Until they come clean, they damn sure don't deserve $60, and won't get anything at all from me. It's great that some people are enjoying it, but I would say it's a terrible fucking precedent for games... except it's happened before. And because so many people bought into the hype, because no one working on the game ever fessed up (and still hasn't), they are getting away with it (somewhat) and with the inflated price and effort of pre-selling the game, it just shows other developers STILL don't need to deliver what they promise because people will just excuse it away.

hodj · Aug 17, 2016

That's fine. I didn't follow this game through all that crap for a reason.

Never pay attention to a very hyped titled until about 6 months out from release, you'll save yourself immense amounts of suffering and disappointment.

Vorph · Aug 17, 2016

I read the post after playing the game for a few hours, and not having followed the hype surrounding it all that closely. Just enough to get the impression that Sean Murray belongs to the Peter Molyneux school of game design. To me it feels like playing something that just came out of alpha, maybe a 0.2 beta/early access game if I'm being really generous. The procedural generation works--for the most part--and there's a bare bones system of game mechanics tacked onto it. I don't feel like there's any depth at all to it yet though.

And Hodj, come on. The vast majority of that post was accurately sourced. People even added more things in the comments that the OP missed, also sourced. His account was deleted, and that's why the post is gone now. Speculation is that r/gamingcirclejerk had something to do with it, which would not be out of character for them at all. Regardless, the NMS sub mods have restored it.

The best one in the comments was this gem from an interview HG did with The Atlantic: "The team programmed some of the physics for aesthetic reasons. For instance, Duncan insisted on permitting moons to orbit closer to their planets than Newtonian physics would allow. When he desired the possibility of green skies, the team had to redesign the periodic table to create atmospheric particles that would diffract light at just the right wavelength."

This is another Spore, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Destiny all rolled into one, and then ported to PC with even less competence and knowledge of the platform than Dark Souls 1 was.

Noodleface · Aug 17, 2016

You only suffer and end up being disappointed if you buy it

Kedwyn · Aug 17, 2016

Some of the stuff is accurate. The big capital ships just sit there with their engines on. They did show them moving in the videos. Honestly though i see a lot more bitching and looking for things to bitch about than big things that they lied and left out of the game. The biggest being multiplayer which they clearly stepped back from and had clearly said it would be almost impossible.

People just have fucked up expectations, love to bitch and the Internet is filled with pussies with nothing but time on their hands and an axe to grind.

i'd love a more in depth game but given this isn't a AAA title and the size of the studio this is actually pretty damn good. Much better than most of the other side scrol shit released by small developers these days.

Vorph, your alpha comment is fucking retarded.

hodj · Aug 17, 2016

If the rest of it was sourced the same way the first claim was, which was badly and obviously in a biased manner that didn't actually support the claim they were making, then I have to disagree.

I saw a massive gish gallop of charges. I went to the first one on the list and found them claiming that Sean Murray claimed there would be full planetary physics and full blown physics engines in the game and all this and that simply does not comport with the links they were using as "citations".

I'm sorry but I stopped right there.

If you can't even get your first claim accurate and present it in an honest manner, I tend to stop reading. Same thing with posts here.

Now that doesn't mean some of their claims and evidence may comport with reality, but that list was so fucking long it screamed "We're just throwing everything at the wall we can to see if something sticks."

It was definitely a gish gallop/proof by verbosity attack. To rebut every claim on that list would certainly take longer than most people are willing to spend doing so. They should have gotten the 3-5 most egregious, in their view, broken promises and constructed their argument around that, rather than taking every clip of every video from the past 3 years and parsing it 100 different ways to justify every possible permutation of fantasy that they hyper zealot fanboys can come up with.

I ignored all that shit, all that hype, all that marketing for two plus years, and before the game came out I watched leaked videos and their own trailers, and the game I got was exactly what I expected based on those impressions.

The multiplayer claim, the no paid DLC reverse, the promise of lots of realistic looking procedurally generated life forms on the planets, all those are valid complaints.

As I've said, this game is incredibly niche. I'm surprised Sony put money into it at all. That should be the thing most people are most shocked about. That Sony saw this and was like "That's a game a shit load of console players will like we should get 1st party exclusvie rights to it" when its so obvious so many people wouldn't even begin to dig this game based on what it actually is.

Ladro · Aug 17, 2016

This isn't the first AAA game to grossly oversell itself. Agree with Hodj, don't pay attention and get invested in shit until it's almost released. More often than not studios make the game sound like the second coming just to get box sales... People can't be surprised at this anymore.

Kedwyn · Aug 17, 2016

Ladro said:
This isn't the first AAA game to grossly oversell itself. Agree with Hodj, don't pay attention and get invested in shit until it's almost released. More often than not studios make the game sound like the second coming just to get box sales... People can't be surprised at this anymore.

This wasn't a AAA game. The studio has like 25 people.

Vorph · Aug 17, 2016

Kedwyn said:
People just have fucked up expectations, love to bitch and the Internet is filled with pussies with nothing but time on their hands and an axe to grind.

The expectations were directly from the developers though. This isn't a bunch of people who posted "My wishlist for NMS" threads on reddit and then got pissed because none of it happened. Why should Sean Murray and Hello Games get a pass? What he did is just as bad as what Randy Pitchford did with Aliens CM when it comes to talking and showing a game that never really existed.

i'd love a more in depth game but given this isn't a AAA title and the size of the studio this is actually pretty damn good. Much better than most of the other side scrol shit released by small developers these days.

If you charge $60 for it, I don't think you get to also make the "we're an indie!" claim.

Vorph, your alpha comment is fucking retarded.

I was referring to something like, say, the state ARK: Survival Evolved was in when it first hit beta/early access.

hodj · Aug 17, 2016

Vorph said:
If you charge $60 for it, I don't think you get to also make the "we're an indie!" claim.

There is no logical connection between your premise and your conclusion here.

There is no justification for the claim "If you are producing and independent title, then you cannot charge a 60 dollar price tag for that title" beyond personal, subjective opinion.

You may feel that way, and you're free to make your purchases based on that mentality if you so choose. Others, myself included, are free to disagree. There is no real causal relationship between whether a game is independently developed or not and the price charged for the game.

Most indie games sell for less than 60 dollars, not because of the amount of content they provide, or the number of people on the team, but because their shitty game wouldn't sell otherwise because it looks like it was made in 1988.

If you can get 60 bones for a game 25 people made, and EA gets the same price tag for a game 600 people made, guess what? You won.

Ladro · Aug 17, 2016

Kedwyn said:
This wasn't a AAA game. The studio has like 25 people.

Fair enough. It certainly feels like it was marketed and sold as one.

hodj · Aug 17, 2016

Ladro said:
Fair enough. It certainly feels like it was marketed and sold as one.

Sony did that.

How else did this game get on what was it, the daily show or some shit? Carson Daily or some shit?

Like I said, I can't understand why more people aren't looking at Sony and being like "Why did you promote this game the way you did?", meaning, like a AAA title backed and funded by them.

BrotherWu · Aug 17, 2016

Can someone help me out with how discovery and uploading works? I've found a pleasant, hospitable planet and decided to try to fully explore it. I'm not clear on a couple of things, though:

1) Recently, my progress seems to be stuck at 76%, even after I discovered a few more plants and minerals. What gives?
2) Above the list of thumbnails of items you have discovered, there is a list labeled "Records". Some of them are filled in, some are not. What are these? Are these why my progress is stuck at 76%?
3) There is a message saying "Upload blah blah for 325,000 units.". I can't click on it. Is this only clickable after I get 100%?
4) I see that I can also individually upload each discovery. Is that the way to do it or can you do it in a single batch?

In short, how does discovery work?

Jalynfane · Aug 17, 2016

I "think" the way that record thing works, is that there are maybe 20-30 species on the planet, and that Records list has Y amount. Not every animal you tag will be on that records list, a random sampling is the list. Get that done and you get 100%

Soygen · Aug 17, 2016

khalid · Aug 17, 2016

Is the game worth $60? Is the game fun? Those are the important questions for me.

The game didn't live up to the hype, but no game could lead up to the hype that this game did. I think the developers definitely played up the hype, but developers are going to do that. No developer wants to poopoo their own game.

Droigan · Aug 17, 2016

jihodj said:
Sony did that.

How else did this game get on what was it, the daily show or some shit? Carson Daily or some shit?

Like I said, I can't understand why more people aren't looking at Sony and being like "Why did you promote this game the way you did?", meaning, like a AAA title backed and funded by them.

Undoubtedly true, but do you think Hello Games signed a clause with Sony that lists not confronting misleading representation of their game? That they were forced to market features that were no longer there or able to deliver? Or that they had to use the "game engine" for the July marketing push that they knew no longer was accurate for how the game would be when it launched?

For the most part, the hype I have seen surrounding this game has been backed/created by the developers (as pointed out by the post). Shady part comes from them not correcting it once they knew it was no longer accurate, especially after raising the price cost and embargoed reviews. I highly doubt Hello Games were contractually obligated to do the things I mentioned above.

The push of marketing has clearly been towards an AAA featured game. Which is what that reddit posts pointed out. With statements from the developers, not by Sony executives.

When Hello Games signed with Sony to make it a console exclusive and raised the price from $30 to $60, it would be entirely reasonable to expect the early (and continuing for that matter) press to be accurate. That it would feature the things they said, because the product now represented what anyone would expect from a full AAA game. Large scale features and game mechanics, backed with an exclusive deal from a massive publisher (Sony), and a price cost fairly exclusive to AAA releases.

To use a same studio comparison. To put all the issues on marketing and lack of delivery from No Man's Sky on Sony and absolve Hello Games would be like putting all the issues with marketing and lack of delivery from Ghostbusters on Sony and absolve Paul Fiig.

Vorph · Aug 17, 2016

jihodj said:
There is no justification for the claim "If you are producing and independent title, then you cannot charge a 60 dollar price tag for that title" beyond personal, subjective opinion.

I never said that an indie studio can't sell a game for $60. What I'm saying is that if that's the price you go with then I'm going to judge it the same way I judge every other $60 game. I really don't give a fuck how many people made it.

Caliane · Aug 17, 2016

Droigan said:
Undoubtedly true, but do you think Hello Games signed a clause with Sony that lists not confronting misleading representation of their game? That they were forced to market features that were no longer there or able to deliver? Or that they had to use the "game engine" for the July marketing push that they knew no longer was accurate for how the game would be when it launched?

For the most part, the hype I have seen surrounding this game has been backed/created by the developers (as pointed out by the post). Shady part comes from them not correcting it once they knew it was no longer accurate, especially after raising the price cost and embargoed reviews. I highly doubt Hello Games were contractually obligated to do the things I mentioned above.

The push of marketing has clearly been towards an AAA featured game. Which is what that reddit posts pointed out. With statements from the developers, not by Sony executives.

When Hello Games signed with Sony to make it a console exclusive and raised the price from $30 to $60, it would be entirely reasonable to expect the early (and continuing for that matter) press to be accurate. That it would feature the things they said, because the product now represented what anyone would expect from a full AAA game. Large scale features and game mechanics, backed with an exclusive deal from a massive publisher (Sony), and a price cost fairly exclusive to AAA releases.

To use a same studio comparison. To put all the issues on marketing and lack of delivery from No Man's Sky on Sony and absolve Hello Games would be like putting all the issues with marketing and lack of delivery from Ghostbusters on Sony and absolve Paul Fiig.

I'd say its even worse. Sony did not do the marketing. Sean himself did. Sean is the one being quoted for all that absurd bullshit. He very clearly stated things would be in the game, which are not in the game. Dude outright claimed features, which are not in the game. That goes way beyond, bullshit 100hour to complete nonsense you get from others.

ps. While you all bought this, I bought Rimworld. ahaha. suckers.

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