“on one has never been in” means “no other player”, not, “no other civilization”.
There was nothing planted on the video, it jumped on a totally new system for him, not a totally new system as “an never unvisited system”…
However, you make me think that it could be awesome if there was also unpopulated planets… I hope so, if not, the probability is very small.
Is there any planet types, or just landable ones ?
Are There Gas Giants?
You are always able to walk around a planet. There are ones that aesthetically look gaseous. They are actually what toxic planets kind of are. But there’s no point in a planet that you can’t land your ship on. And we felt like it would be frustrating for the players to see this planet because you and I would know what gaseous planets are but then everyone else might not. And they would be like, “Oh, I get out and fall?” It’s just a weird concept for people, but I still wanted to have something in there.
That says it all really… their target audience doesn’t know what a gas giant is.
That’s a bit sad, I don’t see the problem really with having gas giants. If they are afraid people will walk on them they can just display pressure warnings and such (with a lot of beeping) when you start to fly into the atmosphere.
Given that, I wonder if they are afraid people might try and land on stars (I mean, if one might try and land on a gas giant, why wouldn’t that person think you might be able to fly super close to a star and give it hug).
//edit
(might just be an easy way out of having to create gas giants)
Especially if they give them moons. The moons would be the interesting destinations, offering more varied environments than the fairly uniform cartoon Earth-like ones we’ve seen.
Players could still fly through the atmosphere of a gas giant and collect resources by shooting stuff that’s floating around. Or swoop in to collect it. Or fly down to the ‘floating’ level which is used as the gas giant’s ‘surface’. The difference would be that everything would float. So just as ships don’t land on the atmosphere of a rocky planet and the pilot falls out, ships don’t land on the atmosphere of a gas giant. They land on the floating layer.
It would be different gameplay, making the game that much more interesting. Perhaps they don’t have the development resources to pursue any other forms of gameplay.
I remain in the camp that sees players creating the interesting content on a procedural background. The changing environment then inspires players to create myriad variations that ultimately make the world come alive in a meaningful way. I want to visit a planet or moon (or gas giant) and scratch my head as I try to figure out what the player has done in their unique environment. Ideally, I learn a thing or two on each visit. I may never have an opportunity to use what I’ve learned because it’s unique to that environment, but it’s more stuff to explore, figure out and share with others.
He’s either defending his engine’s restriction or he’s defending his own limitation as a game designer. “There’s no point in a planet that you can’t land your ship on.” I can see that his game mechanics involve walking around on planets, but he also has ships shooting at stuff. Why not allow ships to interact with atmospheric stuff? Or allow the player to get out and fly around in the atmosphere with a Boba Fett jetpack?
Given the stuff they’re doing, the game seems to be targeting teens or pre-teens. And older folks who just want to play with a toy.
…
…
…
I just…
…
…
…
Apparently NMS’s target audience not only doesn’t know what a gas giant is, it also struggles with the concept of “sky” (remarkable, given the game’s title), and the notion that one shouldn’t get out of their ship/plane/boat/car before it has landed/docked/stopped.
By throwing his intended audience under the bus, apparently. Kids aren’t idiots, and this idea that they’re presenting that they won’t understand that jumping out of a space plane that isn’t on the ground is a bad idea is more idiotic than the idea than not actually understanding that jumping out of a space plane that hasn’t landed is a bad idea.
Sigh.
I hope the NMS devs one day act as consultants for TV shows that want to portray super-simplified caricatures of game developers, and it hurts their soul in the same way they’re currently hurting my soul.
This seems somewhat sad to me too:
Looks like planets will be very static.
I think the single biome planets are basically a given for most space games. They’re a trope that’s so deeply ingrained, we just have to accept them in most circumstances.
That said, Earth only has somewhere between 4 and 20 biomes (depending on which classification scheme you use), which still doesn’t leave a lot of room for meaningful exploration and discovery.
I liked his interest in using the periodic table, but, like @Kichae, his interpretation of his audience’s mental faculties hurts my soul. You’re not going to teach anyone anything about science with an attitude like that.
Well, but Earth has a large variety of weather. Even Mars has some weather and that is basically a two “biome” planet. That quote sounds like weather will always be the same for every planet all the time. That said, have they shown night on the planets yet? Or does “same weather” include no night? 
They’ll have desert planets, and jungle planets, and grass planets, and ice planets, and maybe non-tropical forest planets, and I bet even some sandy island planets. Oh, and possibly planets that are all mountains, all of the time. And maybe to double the number of planet types, they’ll have it rain/snow on some of those planets, and not on others. So, you’re looking at 10-14 different planet types. Maybe 15-21 if the count cloudy or overcast as another type of weather. 30-42 if windy vs not-windy is another distinction.
For me it would be a game I would want to play at a friend’s house, not mine.
Lots more information about how NMS plays here:
The mining seems pretty goofy… Animals are neat.
If No Man’s Sky has any serious multiplayer gaming to it, I’d love to see it. The gameplay he’s shown so far is completely uninteresting to me. Can players even locate each other so they can trade, fight and explore together? How do they communicate with each other? And so on.
The whole game seems goofy and cartoony - and I commend them for consistency; the rendition is cartoony and the gameplay matches it. I can only assume that the game is targeted at younger players.
The animals are surprisingly well done, but they don’t seem to have any gameplay value other than needing to shoot near one to scare it off. That, or shooting one, then leaving the planet - a gameplay pattern which I don’t comprehend.
i believe i heard some interview with creator and he said no… so imagine it would be pretty much like Elite D. Solo mode.
I think a lot of mature ppl play puzzle games and candy crush & whatnot… I don’t think this will wind up being a game for Sci-Fi genre fans. But I do think it could grab a lot of ppl’s attention like Minecraft did. Maybe that is what Sony is counting on.
The multiplayer aspect is only about sharing discoveries. You can’t “physically” meet other players, fight or talk to them.
Like Spore, it’ll likely grab their attention, but I haven’t seen anything in the gameplay that would hold their attention. Minecraft has the hook that you can design and create stuff. No Man’s Sky allows you to find stuff.
He mentions that ships can be other players at the 7:00 mark. Here’s a link to that point in the video.
That suggests that some kind of interaction is possible. Given the mechanics I saw in the video, that would even include piracy - which wouldn’t be in keeping with the cartoon presentation at all. If there is no means of communication, then players who know each other could at least play together through Teamspeak or some other side channel.
You’re right, and see, that’s exactly why I hate all this “communication” around NMS. Because the information I gave you is something I read in a magazine just today, I’m not inventing this stuff; it is litteraly written black & white in an article from E3 that you can’t interact with other players in the game. So who knows.