The popularity behind No Man’s Sky stems from it being an MMO on a console system. A space related MMO at that and I imagine a first of a kind. This wonder isn’t any more complicated than that, and if you like it, good for you.
Well, people are going to be really disappointed, then.
I gave up on buying consoles five years ago. Blame goes to computer hardware for being so damn fun to learn about mixed with the fact that console systems are completely predefined.
For me the appeal is kinda the abstract design an d colour palette and the mistery behind the actual gameplay. Something that screams: “Interesting interative adventure experience” to me.
Then that appeal is squished by the fact it is PS4 exclusive. Guess I have to watch a lets play like I did with, the other PS exclusive, “Journey”.
I’m getting the same feeling about No Man’s Sky as I got about Spore. The hype levels are too high. I hope Hello Games do well from it and don’t suffer too much from disappointing other peoples high expectations.
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I think this happens a lot with procedural generation. People generally expect too much out of it IMO.
I remember someone on the old forums (possibly Flavien?) having a short rant about how procedural generation wasn’t a magic wand. It’s something that isn’t immediately apprent to people new to proc gen.
Procedurally generated game worlds are starting to come back in a big way (for various definitions of “big”). Roguelikes are starting to crop up again, for instance. As the hardware has reached the point where procedurally generated game worlds actually look pretty good, and as more and more development resources go into graphics instead of gameplay or world development, this could be a continuing trend. I’m sure in someone’s mind, procedural generation is giving them larger game worlds “for free”.
Procedural, at this point, is very close to becoming a parity marketing term.
Do you guys remember all those people in TOF who would say that they wanted to get a ship and drive off into the boonies somewhere to set up their own empire? I guess No Man’s Sky is for them. Players will apparently be in the same universe, but rarely ever bump into each other.
I guess the socialization will be outside of the game, where players will talk about stuff that they’ve encountered in common, without ever encountering each other. Those discussions would be in social media venues. Perhaps if finding one another is a real chore then only players who have really hit it off outside the game will go through the effort.
It has potential as an interesting dynamic.
They do, but this is really just first generation stuff. Wait until we have procedurally-generated generators.
Seems so. It could be really interesting if there’s actually something to do with the stuff you find. The fact that I can’t do it socially would be a really big let down for me, though.
I’m getting the same sense as Crayfish, though. I have this sinking feeling about the game that, in the absence of clear information, people are just building a fantasy game in the little corner of their minds that house expectations, and they’ll be really let down. I’m a little worried for the studio.
We saw the same thing with TQFE, really. It’s a little too easy for these open universe games to become everything to everybody. It was worrying then, and it’s worrying now. Especially since I hope NMS does really well. Sony’s really managed to get an unexpected amount of mindshare with this game, and it could be a really big opportunity for the genre to expand its audience.
I was guilty of this when Chris Roberts was talking about a game he wanted to make, a go anywhere, do anything space game. iirc it was called FreeLancer. I did play both StarLancer & FreeLancer, but they were not what I was dreaming of…
I have a funny little anecdote about this that I’m sure Flavien won’t mind me sharing.
Back when I was community manager he gave me the job of collating all the gameplay ideas that had been suggested on the forums. Obviously I couldn’t collate all of them but I probably gathered about ten percent including the most commonly discussed ideas that had reached the status of being “generally accepted by the community”. This resulted in a heavily summarised 22 page document that captured most of the ideas we’d had with a paragraph or two each. (I’m presuming the document itself is under NDA).
After submitting it to Flavien for review his response was that “it got him a bit worried”. For many features there were just a couple lines and no more. There was no way that all the features in that document (which was a small part of all things discussed) were going to make it into the game in a realistic timescale.
Infinity the MMO was always destined to be a lot smaller than most of the community’s imagination of it.
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Last i checked gamepads people use for consoles dont even have enough buttons or axis to control a ship in a “space simulator” well. Unless there’s a special controller somewhere with 3 axis strafe, roll, then one of the thumbsticks can be used for pitch and yaw probably. And of course you have the rest of the functions
No man’s sky reminds of be hazeron on some level(please stop reminding me about this game im getting to feel like a broken record), the animals on planets and stuff, but it’s obvious just from a glance it’s more for show than really worthwhile parts of the game. Meh.
[quote=“Crayfish, post:113, topic:679”]
There was no way that all the features in that document (which was a small part of all things discussed) were going to make it into the game in a realistic timescale.[/quote]
I find it disheartening that our gameplay discussions were taken that way. My goal was to brainstorm, to explore pretty much any idea that we cared to come up with so that we could find out how much mileage was there - and possibly the scale of work involved. Because INS is going with an “engine first” approach, it seemed reasonable to dive into gameplay and bat around some ideas, fleshing out the more interesting ones.
At no time did I think that a team of a couple engineers and a handful of artists could implement even a fraction of all the stuff that we described. There are probably a dozen full games in all those discussions.
The beauty of an MMO is that it can start small and keep expanding. Especially in a game world of the size and diversity of a galaxy. Start with just the combat and then add from there. Or start with the exploration and add from there. Marketing determines the order. The important part for me is that an MMO should be about multiple experiences, not just one experience with some fluff add-ons to support the fiction of that one experience.
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That was actually a big disappointment for me with Strike Suit Zero. First I played it with a gamepad, as it felt like the recommended one. Then I switched to mouse+keyboard, because the pad is simply not precise enough (not to FPS levels, but in a same way). But it still felt limited, probably because it had to work with the pad.
So I’m not sure how they can get a great dogfighting experience with a pad. Then again, it may not need it to be a great game, depending on the focus.
(Oh, and your fighter has a minimum speed in SSZ, something that irritates me to no end with space shooters, so there’s also that.)
I’ve pretty much accepted this as a necessary evil for the time being having played games with no effective limits, it doesnt work too well. There’s probably a way to do it properly but i havent seen it in a twitch skill based combat context. I do wish most games had the limit higher though, like the ICP. Star ciitzen’s limits for example are too low for my taste.
Do you mean maximum speed? Then I agree, we need a max speed, particularly with the ridiculously huge distance of real life used for I:B (even though I agree that setting it too low is a relatively common mistake).
I was thinking about minimum speed - or the ability to stop completely, like in Freespace 2 or Starlancer (IIRC). In SSZ, you can stop only in your mech’ form. In a fighter form, you have to keep advancing. This is fine for an airplane, as that’s how we expect them to work anyway, but for a zero-g fighter with no absolute up and down, I found it only irritating.
I think anybody on the forums with experience of developing large software projects knew that, but that’s still the minority of people there. A lot of the members were under the impression that all the things being talked about would be things they would eventually be able to do in the game.
It’s hard to tell who thought what was a realistic game feature or not. Gameplay discussions ranged from “what I’d like to see” to “this, or I won’t play”, with expectations of implementation ranging from “likely never” to “add it to the test builds NOW!”.
I get excited about atmospheric scattering, so I’m completely out of touch with what the average forum visitor or game player was hoping to see.
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Games that bill sandbox style interactions they usually lack a large part of the formula. They don’t allow people to impact the universe in a meaningful way. Owning stations, owning planets, building up your planets, owning star systems. Eve does this to a degree, but the combat and player interaction is pretty stagnant. E:D lacks any way for players to impact their surroundings.
I think what most people want is what Inovae is offering visually and how you move around in the game. Combine that with the ability to run a planet or system in a meaningful way (setting up refineries, mines, ship yards,) you would have a real winner. The more people invest into the game the more they get out of it. Give players the ability to manage a planet like simcity, but on a planetary scale, same with the space around the planet. whoa.
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