I agree with you. And Sean Murray tweeted 8 hours before release “to be super clear, the game is not multiplayer”. I don’t know if regarding law it is enough to balance with lies on conferences and interviews
Yeah, I didn’t purchase NMS because it appeared in later demos it wasn’t a multiplayer. But there are definitely some mixed messages put out by the DEV. Seems to me they really thought a multiplayer was feasible but then realized it wasn’t possible, at least within the time frame they scheduled.
Maybe … but Sean Murray lies for a lot of things, I don’t think it’s only a bad estimation of what they’d have time to implement.
[quote=“JoergZdarsky, post:508, topic:204”]
Yes. I am pretty sure a lot of those ppl discussing such techniques in Procedural Terrain Rendering How-To could do better, the NMS’ implementation was a huge let down and fake in a lot of ways. Their cave system is interesting, but a lot of their in-game space-to-planet techniques and LODing looks more like a non-procedural non-LOD static fake than anything else. A huge disapointment, I agree![/quote]
I suspect their poor LOD is down to their planets being entirely voxel-based (and destructible!) . On the other hand, the use of voxels allows them to have caves quite easily.
P.S. I think a lot of the disappointment stems from No Mans Sky being priced & sold as an AAA title, when in reality it’s virtually an Indie title (well, 13 devs won’t produce an AAA title, at least). If you view it as an Indie title, it’s a huge achievement. If Sony had not gotten involved, I wonder if things might have not been a lot different? (e.g. less pressure to make big marketing claims)
I do wonder the same, though I wonder how close they would have got to release without that extra funding.
What extra funding? Sony only gave them a marketing budget afaik.
I’d assumed at least some of it would have gone towards PS4 development.
Sony offered but Hello Games refused - only accepting promo & marketing. It was entirely funded by Joe Danger funds.
Kind of a strange business move considering they could have hired extra devs to complete the needed features.
We have no idea what creative control Sony were asking for in exchange… Wouldn’t have been nothing.
Agreed, but it seems odd they wanted that level of creative control and yet were totally ok with being beholden to a marketing deadline - ie. the antithesis to creative work.
Maybe they should have snubbed Sony, gone full indie, and ported the game post-release. That way they would have gained PS4 and Xbox sales by working on both ports simultaneously.
I’m assuming legal matters are the reason HG have gone dead silent. It would be nice if they could at least shed some light on what their future plans are for the game - even if that plan is to shelve the game entirely.
Sadly, things change when someone wiggles millions of dollars in front of your face and puts you on a E3 center stage, guy basically became a member of the elite class overnight, thanks to Sony.
They had no choice but to take Sony money after their office flooded.
NMS got an update the other day, base building and other interesting stuff in there, might be worth a look if you haven’t refunded it.
Played a bit of it last night. It certainly gives you something more interesting to do and the ability to stack items is a massive relief. The idea of owning the large freighters floating around is a nice goal to reach for but I can’t see how far it will take the gameplay beyond resource gathering. Perhaps there will be some kind of Power Play style scenario in future updates. As they say this is just the foundational work for further additions.
Ships still control like crap though. The latest version of the Low Flight Mod helps that a little but even then it becomes infuriating to move the ship where you want it to go. Half the time is spent just wrestling with the ship’s attitude.
The update is very impressive. That is a lot of stuff done for just a few months of work. Hell, it is not even a DLC.
Yet, there are still people complaining that all this had to be there Day 1, even though none of these features were promised in ads before the game was launched.
I think base building was one of the things that weren’t advertised, but mentioned by sean murray as a possible feature in one of those interviews (iirc I saw it in one of those ‘Stuff that Sean murray promised but didn’t deliver’ threads, but it might be just my imagination). Anyway, it is great to see that they didn’t abandon the game, and it was interesting to see it in action (I probably was way too excited about being able to build and climb ladders). They also tweeted that they wanted to make 100% sure, that they could deliver, hence the lack of any signs of life during the development of that update. That might be for the best.
However, I find it very weird, that one of the additions is nothing more than a futuristic sign post. That stuff only makes sense in a multiplayer environment. *hint, hint* *nudge, nudge*
I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t mind item stacking from D1, and that’s probably not something hard to code.
Nonetheless, the update is interesting. Hopefully there’s more to come 
This leads me back to the belief that there was a lot more content planned for general release, but some kinda internal political wrangling (probably involving Sony) lead to it being held back
Sony wanted the game out and their money back. Same as any other company out there.
Modders have shown a lot of hidden things in the code of the game. Things left out of the final release.
To be fair against Hello Games I doubt they had much say in anything once Sony “invested” in the game.
I wonder how much less hate they would have got if they had sold the exact same game at the exact same price, but stamping it Early Access.