No Man's Sky - Hello Games

General
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[quote=“INovaeFlavien, post:224, topic:204”]
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.[/quote]

The answer is probably that the guy giving the demo meant that other players can trade at the terminal, not that the ships we see are ever going to be player ships. So just as I can upload my discoveries and other people can see them, my trades at terminals throughout the galaxy are also visible to other people. It’s consistent with the rest of the gameplay, requiring nothing more than a central database that players interact with intermittently. Everything else takes place on the client.

So no cooperation and no competition. Single player gaming with indirect impact on other players.

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Anyway. I think this game got me as an audience, and not just because it’s procedurally generated or cartoony. (Sadly cartoony has become a very broad term to describe art styles … but we had this discussion before)

What grabs my attention is the UI and the mystery. Subtle hints, ancient artefact, nonsensical puzzle, mysterius entities. All the make up screams adventure/art game to me. This gets the attention because of the tech they build/used and the effect it has on people … they start do dream what they could do. Simmilar what the INovae engine did to me, as well as many others. But IGN is looking into it and tries to make things clearer gameplay wise, As the developers seem to be unable to answer simple questions.
I have to say that I have to roll my eyes hard when he started to completely dodge the diversity question and start to explain how a day, night cycle works when a simple “NO” would have done the same without making them look ridicolous.

Just to compare what I meant why I’m in that audience:

TL/DR.: I enjoy games as simple as walking simulators if they have great art and a sense of mystery.

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I hope friends can meet each other in real time. NMS could miss the point with me if not…

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What we can do is, like many games that you have at the moment, where you are flying around with an open lobby. People are coming into that lobby and leaving it – like if you play Watch Dogs or something like that. Effectively, we have players joining your discrete space. We’re not trying to make an MMO where you can play with literally 60,000 people on screen. We handle the case like where other people can fly past in your game or that you can bump into other players in the game.

How many people could be there theoretically?
The lobby that you carry around with you now can, it’s almost like I don’t wanna say because people will just test it, it can carry a few people. More than what you will see during the normal course of the game.

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We don’t want people just scouting off beside their friends. I actually want people to boot up the game and just think, “Isn’t the universe huge? Who are we? What are we all doing here?”

These are the thoughts that pass through my mind each morning, actually.

I’m reminded of all the folks on the old boards who dreamt of leaving all the other players behind so they could go off and build their own empire in the depths of space. Well, I think No Man’s Sky was built just for them. You never have to interact with another soul, but you might see a trace of their passing.

Note that it is possible to see another player’s ship and even the player’s character, but the lead developer’s attitude is that you’re not going to know it’s a player’s ship, and the odds of seeing another player are very slim.

Then there’s this quote:

I guess the whole of the entire community could organize to go to one specific spot and then they would find that they weren’t all there at the same time. That would be ridiculous.

It’s such a surprise that people can’t figure out what the game is supposed to be.

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[quote=“JB47394, post:230, topic:204”]
I’m reminded of all the folks on the old boards who dreamt of leaving all the other players behind so they could go off and build their own empire in the depths of space. Well, I think No Man’s Sky was built just for them. You never have to interact with another soul, but you might see a trace of their passing.[/quote]
Except you can’t build an empire. Or anything. You can just look.

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It’s not Minecraft, that’s for sure. However, the players can work on portable achievements such as their ship, their gun, the amount of currency they have, their discoveries, etc. The exact fiction of “building an empire” won’t be there, but accomplishing things in a vacuum will certainly be part of the gameplay. Leaving comments about their accomplishments for others to find will probably appeal to a segment of that group.

There’s also this, from an interview back in September 2014:

So as players make their way closer into the centre of the galaxy, will they encounter other players more often – with bigger ships and better guns, all waiting to blast them to space dust? Perhaps, Sean explains: “If other players aren’t doing that, then there are NPCs who will. But even at the centre of the galaxy, everything is still massively spread out. We want to make something that’s vast – we want it to be like the Wild West, where you never know what’s over the horizon.”

I don’t know if they’re trying to do this, but imagine this game with MMO infrastructure behind it. In the first six months, the game is essentially a single player game because players are spread out so much. After that, the game progressively starts to turn into a multiplayer game, with players bumping into each other more and more often. In time, they start to travel in small packs. Continue for a while and you end up with EVE Online, with factions trying to control the center of the galaxy. The ultimate prize goes to the alliance of players that can build the high tech whatsitz at the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy to win the game.

I find the progression from single player to massively multiplayer in a single game to be an extraordinarily-intriguing possibility.

The development of the game could even proceed in stages. The MMO infrastructure won’t be needed for a couple years because it will take that long for more than 100 players to get into the same system.

It may be that’s why Sean keeps answering questions in such a screwy way. He’s trying to avoid giving away some pretty important stuff about the way the game plays out. It might also explain why the solo gameplay is so simple; they want to build on it as players start to interact with each other.

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The most important area ever built on a “AAA” space game and you can’t directly share your experience with anybody ? Seriously… this is your dream ? Flying alone, discover alone, empty space stations, etc…

Is NMS a solo game r a MMO ? If it’s a solo game, ok, but the story and gameplay has to be gorgeous. A MMO on a giaaaaant sandbox ? Yeah I can accept a little gameplay and story

A lot of people launch their console to play with friends. if in NMS, you can’t, I will not play it a lot, as I could imagine it before knowing that… and I don’t think I’m alone there.

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[quote=“JB47394, post:232, topic:204”]
I don’t know if they’re trying to do this, but imagine this game with MMO infrastructure behind it. In the first six months, the game is essentially a single player game because players are spread out so much. After that, the game progressively starts to turn into a multiplayer game, with players bumping into each other more and more often. In time, they start to travel in small packs. Continue for a while and you end up with EVE Online, with factions trying to control the center of the galaxy.[/quote]

That’s wishful thinking. Realistically, after a couple months everyone will get bored of seeing nobody else and will quit, leaving only a handful of hardcore players to populate the galaxy. No way that’s gonna snowball into an Eve Online.

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Nope. I meant that I ponder the size of the universe and wonder why we’re here.

It’s marketing. No Man’s Sky is marketing a game properly to follow this pattern. Market the solo experience now, and let the game morph over time without telling anyone that you’re going to do so. The solo experience will remain for years, and the multiplayer experience will become ever more intense as players congregate in ever greater numbers as they move towards a single point in the game world.

The idea is that they’d get solo players now, and multiplayer gamers later. There’s no reason they have to get everyone interested in the game on day one.

Note that this is just like the whole “peaceful core and wild frontier” pattern from the Infinity MMO. In that system, players picked the wildness of their game experience by where they set up shop. Well, in a game like the one I described, players would pick the social level of their game experience by how far towards the galactic core they moved. If you want to stay solo, just keep moving at a constant distance from the galactic core. There should be plenty of messages left behind by passers-by to amuse you. If you want more interaction with other players, keep moving towards the core.

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I think it’s much more likely that they never plan to add the features some people ask for (Gas Giants, More Expansive Multiplayer etc.) and engage in a tactic of deceive and evade with their answers.
That way they never have to say: “No, we don’t plan to add this to the game.” but can please everyone by rather saying “Look what else there could be!” or “Look how cool this allready is!”

I have to agree with Flavien on this one JB. It’s still clever marketing … just not the honest kind in my opinion.

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I would disagree with that marketing approach. If you’re making an MP game you market an MP game, otherwise you could lose all interest in your product if you drag your feet to the MP experience. Maybe they can do it this way as they have Sony backing. An approach like that would be a huge mistake for INS IMO.

I would disagree with that too. The MMO was going to be an MP game form the start, lots of player interaction whether or not you were in the cores…

Overall, I honestly can’t believe NMS will not be MP to any level beyond just sharing discoveries, it really would kill the game for me. (The cartoony style already took it in that direction for me personally anyways, but I think I would have tried it if I could kill other players)

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I think you’ve missed both points I was trying to make.

  1. It’s a solo game. So they market it as a solo game. According to my concoction, multiplayer will become ever more prominent, but only as player density increases. That could be a year or more out. At that point, they can start to talk about the ways in which players can interact. At first, they may only play up the fact that you can talk to each other. By the end, they’ll be talking about EVE Online-style alliance features.

  2. The peaceful core comment was intended to compare the “peace” aspect of the MMO with the “multiplayer” aspect of my concoction. That is, players get to choose where they want to be on a spectrum of gameplay options based on location, whether it is the “peace” spectrum in the MMO or “multiplayer” spectrum in No Man’s Sky.

If they don’t do this stuff, no big deal. However, I find it to be an intriguing gameplay construct.

I continue to lack any interest in the game except as study in gameplay design. Given Sean’s inability to give clear answers, just trying to figure out what the game is going to be like is the real fun anyway.

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IGN has a new video about the NMS economy, here it is.

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He mentions pirating. So, if there is no MP PvP player interaction, I’m wondering how you become a pirate?

I’m so confused.

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By pirating NPCs?

I noticed that one of the ships had a little arrow above it, kind of made me think that that was another player flying with him…

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He’s trying to make out that watching NPCs go about their mundane business of trading is an enjoyable experience that people might actually spend time doing?

I get that as a developer he can appreciate it because he’s actually programmed that, but for players that’s just ambient activity, not something of interest.

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It can be something of interest if there are significant mechanics behind the npcs trading, you can game those mechanics and figure things out and therefore fun occurs. But they arent doing that, so…

Something like what limit theory showed off in their trade video is what i would have in mind for that.

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Well pirating worked in games like the X series, so I guess it will be just like what cybercritic wrote. Crack open trader for their delicious goods and poof , you’re a pirate that’s hunted by the npc police.

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I guess I have too much EVE Online on the brain when I think about pirating…

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