No Man's Sky

[Slam_Jones]

1 minute ago, Alphasus said:

http://www.idigitaltimes.com/no-mans-sky-multiplayer-controversy-explained-server-issues-crushing-online-features-550145

"This has turned out not to be the case. The lack of multiplayer in No Man’s Sky was demonstrated fairly conclusively shortly after release, when two players managed to appear at the same time on the same planet, yet remain invisible to each other."

Apparently it was "server issues".

Might I quote from the second to last paragraph in that article?

While Murray’s tweets don’t confirm whether or not players sharing the same planet will eventually be able to see each other or interact, he does suggest that there’s more to the multiplayer aspect of No Man’s Sky than just the shared server of planet and species names.

 

And my take on that:

If you're being purposefully vague, it's usually for a reason.  In this case, because they know if they say "nope!  No multiplayer!" then they won't sell nearly as many copies.  If they leave it open-ended (by refusing to give definitive answers) then people will hope for the best.  Personally, as a person, I hate when companies and game studios half-lie to you like that... at the very least I'm not giving them any money.  Whether you do, of course, is your choice.

So, it sounds to me like they just don't have the system for seeing other players in place yet and are just trying to save face.

[Green Baron]

Reviews on gog are bad. I think i save the time ....

 

[TwinKerbal]

This guy posted a comment on NMS

It's pretty funny

http://imgur.com/a/Gm8kF

But in all seriousness I like the game.  Although it may lag violently and there's a lot of grinding it's interesting and open world, which I like.

[W. Kerman]

7 hours ago, Slam_Jones said:

Might I quote from the second to last paragraph in that article?

 

 

 

And my take on that:

If you're being purposefully vague, it's usually for a reason.  In this case, because they know if they say "nope!  No multiplayer!" then they won't sell nearly as many copies.  If they leave it open-ended (by refusing to give definitive answers) then people will hope for the best.  Personally, as a person, I hate when companies and game studios half-lie to you like that... at the very least I'm not giving them any money.  Whether you do, of course, is your choice.

So, it sounds to me like they just don't have the system for seeing other players in place yet and are just trying to save face.

Also, why waste time to deal with the 0.000000000000000000001 chance that 2 people bonk into each other?

[Shpaget]

16 minutes ago, W. Kerman said:

Also, why waste time to deal with the 0.000000000000000000001 chance that 2 people bonk into each other?

Because people want to do what seems hard and impossible. Sooner or later you will get multiple players band together in an attempt to find each other, and suddenly you have tens or even hundreds of players swarming around one planet/moon trying to do something they are technically supposed to be able to do, but is said to be nearly impossible.

If the game does not allow this it's a completely different story than it being extremely hard, and the devs said it's hard, not that the game does not support it.

[Shania_L]

I cant speak for everyone but I downloaded NMS as soon as it went live friday evening, I havent encountered any crashes or lag. The only thing I did have was alt-tabbing whilst in fullscreen mode is a one way deal, borderless window mode looks identical and handles alt-tab just fine.

I have spent most of my time over the last 2 days thouroughly exploring the 8 planets in the first two systems, i'm hardly rushing anywhere. got myself a butt ugly ship (but its more practical than the starting one) and im working out the rules of the universe. This game does not believe in holding your hand, it gives you hints but it will not tell you how to do something, its down to you to work it out.

There are annoying issues, the hold down the mouse/'e' key (on some menus not others) takes a bit to get used to, and I'm finding that I have started doing it out of game now which is even more annoying .. Whether there is true multiplayer or not is a complete non issue to me, I'd actually prefer it if noone else got to liquid in my sandbox, thats my job! I only upload the data i have identified because its easy money.

On the whole I got what I expected and am a happy customer, it seems the vast majority of complainers are those who are trying to use sub-par equipment or bought NMS expecting some all action thrll ride, its their own fault.

[LordFerret]

19 hours ago, Shania_L said:

... those who are trying to use sub-par equipment or bought NMS expecting some all action thrll ride, its their own fault.

There wasn't (still isn't) much emphasis on the hardware one needs to play the game as is meant... not that I've seen anyway. "Buyer beware" isn't going to make Hello Games famous for anything. That's entirely the dev's fault. As for expecting the action thrill ride, that is also the dev's fault, for allowing their marketing department to pump out the early video previews of gameplay that they have; I've seen plenty of them, and initial appearances is exactly that - you'll be in this huge galaxy with millions of others that you 'might' run into (although it might not be easy). I even saw early release videos folks made with tips on how to find your friends online, in game.

So it either is or it isn't - "whatever". Hello Games needs to make a statement and make "whatever" clear, before their name becomes mud.

[pxi]

On 13/8/2016 at 10:43 PM, Slam_Jones said:

If you're being purposefully vague, it's usually for a reason.  In this case, because they know if they say "nope!  No multiplayer!" then they won't sell nearly as many copies.  If they leave it open-ended (by refusing to give definitive answers) then people will hope for the best.  Personally, as a person, I hate when companies and game studios half-lie to you like that... at the very least I'm not giving them any money.  Whether you do, of course, is your choice.

So, it sounds to me like they just don't have the system for seeing other players in place yet and are just trying to save face.

That's pretty much my take on it too.  The devs could go on to have good careers a politicians if the company tanks, judging from the evasiveness of their answers to direct questions.

I'll be waiting for a few patches and a sale personally.  It's a pretty game to be sure, but I haven't seen anything that'd demand that I play the game right this minute, and I'm already pretty well served in the exploration department with Elite:Dangerous.

[Superfluous J]

I've played it for 4-5 hours on PC so far and here are my first impressions:

• If you liked the resource collecting, crafting, and exploring of Minecraft but found yourself not enjoying the building, this could be the game for you.
• If you can handle KSP's bugginess and UI quirks, No Man's Sky's are at - at worst - similar and - in my opinion - not as bad. Would I rather they're different? Of course. Is the game unplayably terrible because of them? Not really.
• I made a scant few graphical changes in line with common suggestions (turned off Vsync, went to windowed mode. That may have been it but I may be forgetting something) and kept FPS at 30 (I'm not one of those "Anything less than 120fps is a child's toy" people) and other than pop-in, I've been very happy with both the visual quality and the performance in general.
• Flying a ship in atmosphere with a mouse and keyboard can be frustrating as all get out. As far as I can tell, "Roll" isn't a thing in this game and if your ship's upside down, well it's just going to be that way until you turn enough in the correct direction (which is likely not the way you want to go) to get it upright. I spent a lot of time upside-down, and a similar amount of time with my ship flying happily along at a 45 degree angle.
• There is not one single decent map function, and many things are totally lacking maps. There is no map of planets you can refer to and mark waypoints. There is similarly no map of the system you are in. The little map of things around you in the ship's cockpit is - as far as I can tell - completely useless except to show you were planets are (which isn't that important as most of them can fill the field of view). The only map that serves any purpose at all is the star map and it's so frustrating to control that I find myself just jumping to the first star I manage to highlight that it tells me I can reach. Following the story, I had to plot a course to a specific star that was not marked (it was between me and the destination) and I managed it, but it was not enjoyable to do so at all.
• I seem to have broken the storyline, or am missing something. I suspect the game told me something that I didn't notice and now I can find no record of in-game text, and no list of current goals (though that does exist in the very early game). I have a space station marked on my HUD but I can find nothing there to interact with, that I've not interacted with already. I'm on the verge of Googling my way through the mission. If you're curious, I'm in that aforementioned system, one jump from an Atlas waypoint star, with no hyperdrive fuel and no way (that I've found) to buy or make it.

tl;dr, I like the game. If it was $30 I'd say it was an insta-buy. For $60 you have to really like the genre and feel (as I do) that multiplayer is not just "not a big deal" but actually undesirable. I'm glad I bought it, but might - knowing what I know now - have held off.

Edited August 15, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[worir4]

2 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

 

• Flying a ship in atmosphere with a mouse and keyboard can be frustrating as all get out. As far as I can tell, "Roll" isn't a thing in this game and if your ship's upside down, well it's just going to be that way until you turn enough in the correct direction (which is likely not the way you want to go) to get it upright. I spent a lot of time upside-down, and a similar amount of time with my ship flying happily along at a 45 degree angle.

(Psst, you can role with the A and D keys.)

[Superfluous J]

Just now, worir4 said:

(Psst, you can role with the A and D keys.)

I swear I tried those, but I suppose it's possible I only tried Q and E. I know that I had endless trouble with Just Cause 2 and 3, jumping out of my helicopter or plane over and over when trying to roll.

[worir4]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

I swear I tried those, but I suppose it's possible I only tried Q and E. I know that I had endless trouble with Just Cause 2 and 3, jumping out of my helicopter or plane over and over when trying to roll.

I guess Kerbal habits die hard. XD

[magnemoe]

On 13.8.2016 at 11:43 PM, Slam_Jones said:

Might I quote from the second to last paragraph in that article?

And my take on that:

If you're being purposefully vague, it's usually for a reason.  In this case, because they know if they say "nope!  No multiplayer!" then they won't sell nearly as many copies.  If they leave it open-ended (by refusing to give definitive answers) then people will hope for the best.  Personally, as a person, I hate when companies and game studios half-lie to you like that... at the very least I'm not giving them any money.  Whether you do, of course, is your choice.

So, it sounds to me like they just don't have the system for seeing other players in place yet and are just trying to save face.

it might be instancing who made the players not see each other, you run this on an server farm and two players has to be on the same server too see each other. 
The elder scroll online MMO uses the same system, benefit is that its just one server and less populated areas will have more people around. Downside is that an busy town is likely spread out over multiple servers and you have to travel to an friend to meet him. even if next to each other. 
As population density in no mans sky is very low this should not be an problem but this is tricky coding and easy to mess up. 

On the other hand it might simply be an dropped feature who ends up as an always online drm. 

[magnemoe]

Someone has gone trough the no man sky's files and not found any other sign of muliplayer than that might be an character model. 
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1263009

Leaving another issue, with multiplayer it would be very strange if everybody looked the same, just letting you select color on spacesuit helmet and backpack would help a lot if more than two players played together. 

So far the only effect is this  
http://www.dorkly.com/post/80101/the-problem-with-no-mans-sky
Yes who could have guessed, remember the same stuff in Spore but I played it offline so I just ran into my previous creations all the time. 

[Dispatcher]

On August 13, 2016 at 7:22 AM, Dispatcher said:

I figure NMS will be ported to the Mac in time for our real sun Sol to reach its red giant phase in the aeons ahead.  I agree about virtual machines.

I don't want to build another windows machine (been there done that) and my iMac is 9 years old so it might not play well (if at all) even if I partitioned and put Windows on it.

So if I am convinced to get NMS I'd then buy a PS4.

I have watched a few streams of PS4 and now PC play just to see what I think and if that would change my plans regarding platform of choice.

I have changed my mind on this.  The graphics are of course much better on the PC.  I have a relative who intends to build me a gaming rig, so I'm fine with that.  I'll just furnish most of the parts.  By the time that's all done, I suppose that NMS will have been patched again and the bugs mostly squashed.

[Dispatcher]

By now, everyone has heard that No Man's Sky doesn't facilitate a multiplayer experience.  But if you want to watch the gameplay of two brothers sharing their separate gameplay experiences in the same video episodes, then here is your cup of tea.  Be warned that, as with the 18.5 quintillion You Tube videos and streams covering No Man's Sky, these videos contains spoilers.

Unlike other game play-through videos of obscure games I've posted here in the Lounge, I'm just posting the link of what should be the first video of a playlist, done by brothers who like to game together.  I learned a few things from the first one; you might too.  They expect to keep adding to the playlist for a while anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STRe9cPLH4I&index=2&list=PLIof4Cp3-cansVRaWbi7ocsOF422bXTKa

 

[Vanamonde]

No Man's Sky threads have been merged. Let's keep the discussion all in one place, please. 

[JoseEduardo]

On 8/15/2016 at 6:45 AM, 5thHorseman said:

tl;dr, I like the game. If it was $30 I'd say it was an insta-buy. For $60 you have to really like the genre and feel (as I do) that multiplayer is not just "not a big deal" but actually undesirable. I'm glad I bought it, but might - knowing what I know now - have held off.

I fully agree with this...

I have ~100h in Elite, over 1300h in KSP, over 500 in GTA V (and far more in GTA VC and SA) and so far 42h in No Man's Sky, so lack of main story is not a thing that bothers me, but lack of interesting things to do does, and Elite and NMS fall into that category after a while, except that IMHO Elite is way deeper than NMS... even d***ing around in NMS isn't as fun as GTA....

of course, you have 18 quintillion planets in NMS to visit, but you can't go back to them (unlike Elite), the travel looks like some hippie acid trip, and even the trading in Elite is more fun than the grinding in NMS... and to be fair there isn't much apart from grinding and collecting resources in NMS, while Elite has that and a more rewarding trading... plus every flight aspect of Elite is way cooler (and you can actually land your ships! you, the pilot, can land your ship on a pad or on land! in NMS 99% of the time the AP is capable of landing right NEXT to the pad, but not AT it, and for some reason the game doesn't let you manually land, heck, it doesn't even allow you to point your ship downwards without doing a barrel roll to see if you're at the right place to land....)

I wonder how (and why) they plan on adding base building if you can't easily go back to the place you were nor set waypoints, and why will we have freighters... I think their top 2 priorities right now should be fix the PC version and add something fun to do in the game... even if that means leaving to the modding community to figure it out for them (and there are mods already)

ah, and one thing that really annoys me in NMS: learning words.... seriously? I need to find over 400 words one at a time for each species? couldn't it have been like 4 at a time so you'd need ~100 stones to get all the words for one species?

[DuoDex]

I have to say that from what I've seen of No Man's Sky it's exactly what the developers set out to do.

It's just not what people wanted.

It's a gigantic, procedurally generated galaxy that accurately captures the vastness of space and the great variety of things contained with it. Thing is, space is boring. There might very well be millions of NPC battles going on in that galaxy, but there are quintillions of planets. The chances of being able to start/engage in one are minuscule, just like the size of space vs. the size of planets are.

There's a lot to do, but because it's a highly realistic, well-scaled, and super-detailed game, it feels like there isn't.

I won't buy it as the amount of money I'm willing to spend on games is pretty limited, and there are expansions rumored for HOI4. paradox pls fix air game

[Superfluous J]

22 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

learning words.... seriously? I need to find over 400 words one at a time for each species? couldn't it have been like 4 at a time so you'd need ~100 stones to get all the words for one species?

This is actually one of my favorite parts. I'm going to be happy when I get enough words to actually understand what people are saying on a regular basis, but it's fun right now trying to interpret what the NPC wants me to do. Though I've found they tend to too-liberally sprinkle clues into descriptions, so you almost don't even need ANY words in some cases.

I didn't know there were mods, I'll have to look into that. I'd love some QOL improvements in inventory and whatnot.

[JPLRepo]

From what I've watched it's not what people were expecting and not what I was expecting.
I'm having much more fun with Empyrion - Galactic Survival and it's on sale right now.

[JoseEduardo]

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

This is actually one of my favorite parts. I'm going to be happy when I get enough words to actually understand what people are saying on a regular basis, but it's fun right now trying to interpret what the NPC wants me to do. Though I've found they tend to too-liberally sprinkle clues into descriptions, so you almost don't even need ANY words in some cases.

I didn't know there were mods, I'll have to look into that. I'd love some QOL improvements in inventory and whatnot.

at first it is fun, you get to the monuments and find three new words and it's "OHHH, NICE, I'M LEARNING!!!" then after the 20th word you learned in the past 3 hours through stones, plaques and monoliths you figure out aliens can teach you words for 20 carbon, and that is the fastest way of learning words... and it still takes over 6 hours of doing it repeatedly.... 6 freaking hours talking to an alien to understand everything he says....

sure, in RL you take years to learn a new language, but come on, it is a game, it shouldn't take you 6 hours of gameplay talking to an alien to learn their language.... (again, one race, there are other two plus Atlas own language) they could have changed it to like 4 or 5 words for each stone/plaque/monolith/ruin, remove the option to learn with an alien and it would still take an incredible amount of time to learn, but would be far more fun to go chasing the artifacts in order to learn their language

as for mods: http://nomansskymods.com/mods/

3 hours ago, DuoDex said:

I have to say that from what I've seen of No Man's Sky it's exactly what the developers set out to do.

It's just not what people wanted.

It's a gigantic, procedurally generated galaxy that accurately captures the vastness of space and the great variety of things contained with it. Thing is, space is boring. There might very well be millions of NPC battles going on in that galaxy, but there are quintillions of planets. The chances of being able to start/engage in one are minuscule, just like the size of space vs. the size of planets are.

There's a lot to do, but because it's a highly realistic, well-scaled, and super-detailed game, it feels like there isn't.

I won't buy it as the amount of money I'm willing to spend on games is pretty limited, and there are expansions rumored for HOI4. paradox pls fix air game

from what I've read they wanted to make a massive exploration game in hopes to be something along the lines of old sci-fi series, however it fails at that, because there are few random events (pirates attacking you, attacking a freighter or a planet where sentinels are naturally hostile), there isn't much variety for exploration, all stars looks to be the same, and there is really nothing much up for you to do... one thing they could do (or let the modding community do if they feel they don't have the workforce for it) is a star wars kind of feeling, you could set up your own rebel alliance/trade federation/senate/galactic republic/galactic empire/first order and make an all-out war against other groups, conquer space, recruit aliens, build outposts for your group, repair crashed ships and allow you to store them to use on this scenario.... (imagine a Euro Truck Simulator, but with spaceships and war.... alongside with trucking trading)

No Man's Sky and Elite have an amazing, but empty playground, they just need to add something to actually give life to their game, and so far NMS (apparently not planned) has mods, which can be a huge point for it...

EDIT: so, someone put together some stuff about NMS, which from quotes from Sean Murray and promo footage show that the game was kinda dumbed down, and yeah, some stuff that I saw in the promos would have made this far more interesting (I wasn't on the hype btw, I only started looking for this game after the PS4 release...), and from the footage I saw one thing that really bothered me was the ability to scan from the space for POI, you can do that in the game, but it only shows one POI, even if there is a cluster of 40 around the same area....

also, some of the footage shown, especially the pillar footage, yeah, they aren't exactly lying, but they basically try to show you this:


while the game goes more like this:


they did not lie that much in the final promo, but what we get is the chroma-q of the promo...

link: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4y4i3a/wheres_the_nms_we_were_sold_on_front_page/

apparently the real OP got threatened and he deleted his account, so someone else saved his post and re-posted it

Edited August 17, 2016 by JoseEduardo

[pxi]

10 hours ago, DuoDex said:

I have to say that from what I've seen of No Man's Sky it's exactly what the developers set out to do.

It's just not what people wanted.

In much the same way as Spore.

Not so much what the devs set out to do, rather what they ended up doing from what I can see.

There are no procedural atoms in NMS.  Now, most of us probably never took that statement seriously, but nonetheless, that's what they stated in promo trailers.  Now Hello Games want to whistle innocently and act like they've no idea where people got these wild expectations from.  I steadfastly refuse to board hype trains for games, but even I find that a little disagreeable.

People wanted what they were offered in the promo trailers.  Trailers which seem to show things that are not in the game, but are nonetheless still being used to sell the game on steam.  It's worth reading that reddit post.  (https://archive.is/V5Zns)  I was going to post it myself, but JoseEduardo beat me to it.

 

EDIT:  I do still plan on buying the game, but it probably won't be any time soon seeing as every evasive non-answer to a seemingly simple yes/no question I see coming out of Hello Games cuts the price I'm willing to pay for the game in half.  At this point I wouldn't be surprised if I tweeted Sean Murray asking if there was joystick support in the game and got a cryptic tweet about using a Wii balance board in response.  Oh well, roll on Winter Sale 2018.

Edited August 18, 2016 by pxi

[JoseEduardo]

I wonder why they removed the planets orbiting the sun part... from a technical POV Elite does it (and while it can be boring at times, like in LHS 3447 where the star you spawn is far away from the star that there is actual stuff in it it is quite cool), so they could too if they wanted, but from a sci-fi POV, far away planets doing realistic things ain't that exciting for the general public

I hope Hello Studios doesn't change their mind and charge for stuff they said that would be in the actual release... (Sean is already considering) I can't get a refund because I've played over 42h, but I wouldn't buy anything else from them, and would instead wait for Elite to be a bit more developed (they didn't lie on their business plan, might not be the best of the scenarios, but at least they didn't lie), as so far, the only thing that NMS has that Elite doesn't (yet) is atmospheric landing, wildlife and on-foot exploration/combat, and the only thing NMS is probably going to have that Elite most likely won't ever (since it is multiplayer), are mods

also, I tried going to the sun in NMS, but apparently it's just a skybox, not an actual sun you can get close and probably blow up your ship due to overheat (unlike Elite), so there's that to the list, but in all honesty that's not an issue to me....

Edited August 18, 2016 by JoseEduardo

[pxi]

52 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

I wonder why they removed the planets orbiting the sun part... from a technical POV Elite does it (and while it can be boring at times, like in LHS 3447 where the star you spawn is far away from the star that there is actual stuff in it it is quite cool), so they could too if they wanted, but from a sci-fi POV, far away planets doing realistic things ain't that exciting for the general public

Changes like that really do make me wonder.  I'd have to go with your theory as to why they were cut, although (since Elite's already been brought up), with far-away stuff, you do get opportunities for weird emergent game play such as the Hutton Truckers and the Fuel Rats.

52 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

I hope Hello Studios doesn't change their mind and charge for stuff they said that would be in the actual release... (Sean is already considering) I can't get a refund because I've played over 42h, but I wouldn't buy anything else from them, and would instead wait for Elite to be a bit more developed (they didn't lie on their business plan, might not be the best of the scenarios, but at least they didn't lie), as so far, the only thing that NMS has that Elite doesn't (yet) is atmospheric landing, wildlife and on-foot exploration/combat, and the only thing NMS is probably going to have that Elite most likely won't ever (since it is multiplayer), are mods

To be fair, there are things in Elite that were promised at launch that are still not in the game.  As a veteran of the prequels I most miss landing on atmospheric planets, the realistic solar system view, and Thargoids.  All of which are still 'on the list' as Frontier like to put it.  Frontier have also done a pretty reasonable job of explaining their reasoning for why certain things were cut, or ended up in the game in a different form.

Elite is not a particularly deep game, that is a fair criticism, but neither were the prequels when it came right down to it.  It is a worthy sequel though when judged against the earlier games, and there is some depth to be found if you're willing to look for it.  I've spent the last month on a 60kly round-trip to fix a travelling starport halfway across the galaxy, and coming back with supplies in the hope of helping to set up a permanant outpost in the area.  After that, it's back to pootling round the Formadine Rift, assuming anything announced at Gamescom doesn't alter that plan.

Getting back to NMS, if they decide to charge for things that were assumed to be in the game at launch, they might well burn through whatever goodwill there still remains in their community.  You've only got to look at the reaction that happened on these very forums when the idea of paid DLC was floated for a preview, and the KSP community never gave me the impression they'd engage in shenanigans like DDOSing reviews they didn't like, or death threats (credible or otherwise) over delays.