No Man Sky Preoder Now!

General
21

No Man’s Sky is not even out that they already have planned a 150$ (or so) deluxe edition… Honestly, that smells bad. They are heavy promoting it on the basis of few videos and lead programmer interviews.

I wish success to Murray and is team of course. But, is it me? Or every time I see him talking about his game during interviews, I always feel he is a bit uncomfortable and has a hard time to speak about the gameplay as well as trying to fuel interviewer’s hype? In fact, the interviewer, no matter the main stream media outlet he is speaking on, is always ultra-hyped, more than Murray himself even if he is passionate about his baby of course…

That feels forced. Also, there is no multiplayer, because Murray wants to stick with his vision for the game, that is push away players from each others so they can feel a sense of exploration while traveling the universe, which is fine. That was the explanation he gave when the interviewer asked about the multiplayer mode because it would be nice and fun to explore the universe with (a) friend(s). Yeah, forget about that.

At least he should have gave the option to play multiplayer, but it surely would have heavily modified and rebalanced the gameplay in a way he clearly doesn’t want (he said it’s not part of NMS gameplay spirit and he want NMS to be different from other games in the field…). To be fair, a game like The Long Dark is perfectly good with its non multiplayer sandbox, so, why not…

Murray hinted that after the release of the game, depending on how users play and what are their requests, “more things can be done”. Meh, that’s strange. that would mean he has already coded all the stuff necessary for a multiplayer mode or that it will be an “easy” task to do so after the game is completed. Which is not, Infinity B. developers will correct me if I’m mistaken…

Not sure if the '80s colour like palette will appeal users as well, after playing for a few hours. That’s pleasing to start with, but seeing quintillions of planets (so to speak) systematically with a rainbow filter will surely bore even more quickly users if the gameplay is not there.

Also, but that’s nitpicking, they sometimes speak about NMS universe and sometimes about NMS galaxy. For what I can see, it is none of those. It is a sort of gigantic nebulae with quintillions of star systems and a big mystery at the centre of it… Not very important but misleading nonetheless.

And make a real 1:1 galaxy like Elite Dangerous with that colour palette would be stupid… After all, even if Elite D. lacks on gameplay (hot debate), the procedural visuals and sights the game can offer are often really stunning (see Erimus youtube channel…). I don’t think NMS engine will ever offer the same “real life” stunning sights you can see in Elite or Infinity B. for that matter…

I don’t know. I’m passionate about astronomy and space exploration. So NMS has surely its appeal. But planets looks really always the same (just look at the incredible diversity of planets and moons in our own solar system…), with different colours and planetary systems seems to be displayed as a bunch of planets very close to each others (which makes me think there is very few Newtonian mechanics there). Maybe I’m wrong though. We will see that on independent reviews…

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I honestly think the colour pallet issue will end up being pretty interesting. When NMS was announced, the 16 bit retro revival was just gaining steam, and indy games were looking for some sort of stylistic hook to help them stand out. Bright, poppy colours like that were quite novel, especially compared the the brown grittiness of AAA titles, and they started to show up everywhere.

That was 2 or 3 years ago now. Indie games have a real foothold in the market, and the 16 bit revival has become a much smaller part of that (and, in many cases, have given way to the Flash style animation aesthetic of 15 years ago). The colour pallet and design language of the indie market have diversified. It’s entirely possible that NMS could come off as looking “so 2013”.

I really want to see what sort of impact NMS has on future stylistic choices in the industry.

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23

Would be interesting for sure.

But I would not want that style for something like ED, SC or even Infinity B. Because they are more like real space simulators and games… Can you imagine a purple looking Star Citizen? Of course not.

It may work for NMS and its more single player space exploration style, or space acid trip for those who want to be sarcastic :yum:… Planet Nomads, due to be out in Alpha this summer, has the same style as NMS, more or less, with full biomes and the crafting mechanics of Space Engineers and on a much “compact” scale. It would not surprise me if it will do better than NMS…

Surely NMS is and will not be the only one to have that kind of graphic style but I’m not sure it will serve the game. I just feel it will be an infinite repetitive mess of vivid colours, without much physical variations. You can already spot repetitive tree “models” on a planet for example. Not very good.

The media hype has been so huge that I fear it has started to bore more and more people before it hits the shelves… Which is not very good for an engine supposed to push procedural generation to new levels. Heck, I am more pleased when I see news of Before (the game) which also has a very atypical graphic style than I am with NMS now. But the former has not been so much hyped…

Again, I don’t especially want NMS to fail, it will surely start selling very well because Sony is throwing an insane amount of marketing at it and will maybe even be bundled with a PS4 and a VR headset… For how many time before players discover the potential fail it is?

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I played Rex Nebular as a child. I can imagine anything in a sci-fi setting.

Personally, I believe that a game’s aesthetic should communicate something about the game itself. The slightly cartoony aesthetic of NMS communicates that the world itself is slightly cartoony, and should obey some cartoon logic. If the game plays like a cartoony arcade game, I think it’s perfectly appropriate.

I still can’t pin down what Star Citizen is supposed to be (I haven’t followed its development, but the impression I get is that it’s supposed to be everything to everyone, or something), so I have no idea whether a purple theme would work with it or not. Maybe?

I think we just need to accept that, on some level, things will get very repetitive in procedurally generated games. Battlescape will probably avoid this by limiting the number of worlds in its system, but if we ever get the full galaxy of Infinity, we’re also going to see a lot of repetition.

Given how much NMS is leaning on procedurally generated content, it’s probably going to suffer from this in a way we haven’t seen before in modern, highly publicised console gaming. It’s a growing pain of the technology, and I don’t think it’s something that players will even pay too much attention to until they’re a good 5 or 10 hours into the game.

Unless the game sucks.

I really hope the game doesn’t suck. I have a surprisingly large number of friends who are really hyped for NMS. Friends who really haven’t touched the space flight and space combat genres since X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. They’re largely console gamers these days, so Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous really flew under their RADAR, but NMS is a huge, glowing, shiny thing in their view. It could really pull more people back if it succeeds.

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It’s another World of Warcraft, but without a subscription. And without other players - which is the part that I don’t get. Perhaps they’re trying to piggyback on Facebook such that when you discover something new, you’ll post it on Facebook and the community will exist there. “Did you guys find all eight of the obelisks yet?” “I finally found a 30m tall animal.” And so on.

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That may be, but I don’t think it’s that fishy. Mainly because certain companies like EA or Activision are selling you a yearly franchise for over 120€ and then add some ‘shortcut bundles’ and microtransactions to it. Not to say that their behaviour is in any way excusable. It all depends on the contents of the deluxe edition. RE6 deluxe edition came with a leather jacket that was the design leon kennedy was wearing. Overpriced yes, but still kind of worth it for those who decided to buy it. Even if it was a cosplayer who got it just to have an edge over the other leon kennedy cosplayers.

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sounds like the hype gave it greenlight to become so expensive.

who even pays full price for a steam game anymore? less than 3 weeks, XCOM 2 went on sale and i got it literally half off and it hadn’t even been a month.

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How much money did you put into this unreleased new IP called “Battlescape” that will be made by a completely untested game studio with no previous games on the market?

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Five bucks.

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Ok.

I was a serious question BTW. :slightly_smiling:

Bit surprised though…considering your presence here I would have expected more. :wink:

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Well, at least the game will come complete. Not like others big AAA games (with literally missing parts) that are only a pretext to sell paid expansions or in game transactions…

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe we will have expansions as well with NMS but it does not seem to be just a “part of game” (Destiny? Just saying…). And it is true that NMS is mainly a console product unlike the two main contenders (ED/SC).

Still, I find the collector edition being pushed right now a bit odd, but certainly a good move considering the probable high selling numbers NMS will have in its debut…

And again, I wish Murray and is team success. While Sony marketing moves are another thing…

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I was working part time academic contracts at the time. Money was tight. I pledged enough to be in the system for whenever the pledge upgrade system goes online.

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Well, Infinity Battlescape is the first game of I-Novae that’s true, they are starting “from scratch” even if, yes, the game engine is old. Still, the visuals are really good and will improve for the final release.

NMS is not the first game of Hello Games, and considering the previous one was not that good, I’m more worried about NMS coming from a partially trusted company like Hello Games with a first “so-so” game than IB coming from a new game company with obvious talented developers starting their first game…

But again, we will see and I wish success to both of them… Still I don’t really like the heavy overhyped marketing of Sony about NMS and its early and odd collector edition. Surely good for business but that smells bad for the game…

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Really don’t understand this line of reasoning.

If these “missing parts” was only a “pretext” to sell expansions (in the case of ED) then that pretty much requires scenarios like this to be true:

  1. That the devs in just 2 years of development would have been able to make everything people find to be “missing”, but intentionally decided to leave these things out so they could sell them separately later. That is everything in the game so far plus the ability to land on all kinds of planets full of content with everything that entails, first person mode, full ship interiors, space station interiors and so on. In 2 years…this wouldn’t be possible even with unlimited funds and ten times the number of devs.

  2. That they would have kept on developing the game for several more years (7 years? 8? 9?) until “everything” was done. Where would the funds come from? Because the KS sum didn’t even fund a single year.

So maybe, just maybe the path they have chosen are simply necessary to reach the goal?

But no…remember kids! All devs are EVIL!! The one and only reason people make games is because they want your money!! It’s not like people working in the industry actually care about their craft. After all…they are part of CORPORATIONS!! queue dramatic and evil music

:grin:

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You misspelled “publisher” :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well…sometimes they are one and the same. :wink:

Like in the case of ED/FD.

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Ok, from what i’ve understood NMS is a survival space shooter. Imagine Minecraft in space where you can’t build but you have to farm many materials to upgrade your ship so you can manage the enemies closer to the core. There’s also a language learning system similar to Fallout’s hacking minigame or something… I won’t preorder a 60$ but i’ll look at videos of people playig and see if it’s fine then. I’m also concerned i’ll have to pay for the game twice with all the “season passes” and “expansions”

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Tired about survival and etc no much as real life survival games open all bad aspects of humanity i guess. exist minecraft in space in steam platform call starmade yeah made a star like mom Justn Bieber

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I swear we’re one of the most cynical communities ever.

I love it. :slight_smile:

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I will still wiat for INFINITE!