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[Gabeux]

Hmm I was noticing something and got curious. Space games are mostly made on PC, from what I know, and they are probably always very niche - and so are survival games, unless you count "survival" games like Rust and DayZ that somehow sold a lot.
Somehow, in NMS case, there's all sorts of people buying, playing it, and thinking it will be the game of their dreams without doing any research. Without ever playing a space or a survival game.

Any ideas on how something like that happens? I mean, you could argue Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen doesn't really seem niche games after receiving so much funding, but everyone I met on E:D were nerds like me or even 'nerder'.
Is this what happens on the console world? A big publisher slaps its name on a game and suddenly everyone thinks they are going to adore it?
I don't really remember this happening on PC. Even The Sims which was largely accepted by wide ranges of audiences still took a long while to really be noticed on a large scale, IIRC.

It's like...I managed to enjoy X Rebirth (with absurd amounts of mods, some of which I modded even further) while even people who enjoy X hated it.
Is it because of the arcadey control/UI scheme of NMS that make people feel they are going to enjoy a type of game that they never cared for or heard about?

I'm genuinely curious, I can't really remember from the top of my head some other game that went through a similar situation.

re: about multiplayer - I still don't get the 'Sean lied' bit. Even on that video, there's no clear evidence of him saying that NMS was an MMO, and anyone could also compile all the times he said the multiplayer is more like Journey than an MMO, that you shouldn't expect co-op play or whatever. I believe he tweeted last week that you should not to get the game if you were looking for a multiplayer experience?

[Cthulhu]

And the server was offline for most of launch day, hence discovery upload being down. So no player matching. Even if they hadn't also said that not all players could match with all other players.

Sean has literally spent the past two years saying that this is not a multiplayer game, that you're not going to be able to interact meaningfully with other players, and that people who want that should play games that offer it. If some loony ignores all of that and daydreams about NMS being a MMO Space Minecraft then assumes that that's how the game is going to be, that's not marketing, it's mental illness.

So is there no mulltiplayer or was the multiplayer just down?

[Aklyon]

Regardless of whatever the crap people are complaining about, it looks like a game I'd get once its half off or so. As much as I like the sound of the exploring and (when I wasn't being very irritated by how much the guy flat ignored the life support warnings until he was running out), the giant bomb video was pretty neat, $60 is a bit too much for this.

[Flying Dice]

And the server was offline for most of launch day, hence discovery upload being down. So no player matching. Even if they hadn't also said that not all players could match with all other players.

Sean has literally spent the past two years saying that this is not a multiplayer game, that you're not going to be able to interact meaningfully with other players, and that people who want that should play games that offer it. If some loony ignores all of that and daydreams about NMS being a MMO Space Minecraft then assumes that that's how the game is going to be, that's not marketing, it's mental illness.

So is there no mulltiplayer or was the multiplayer just down?

The server was down for most of the day, and multiplayer has been described as the sort of drop-in lobby type you see in other single-player-with-online-components games. Number one guess is that they just couldn't match because the server was borked, but it's also possible that they just didn't get matched for one reason or another.

But of course people are doing the usual internet thing and taking statements from very early in development along the lines of "You might potentially be able to meet other players, but it'd be really rare" to mean "SpaceCraft MMO".

Never mind that they've spent the past two years rolling back and saying that it's not a multiplayer game. Never mind that it shipped labelled as single-player. The reddit+Steam hate machine is determined to lynch them because something a dev said in interviews years back and has since changed their stance on is a literal back-of-the-box promise about game features at launch.

I'm just waiting for Friday so that I can play instead of having to wade through shoulder-deep lakes of #firstworldproblems and delusions to find actual content on places that exist to host content.

[Neonivek]

Sean has literally spent the past two years saying that this is not a multiplayer game, that you're not going to be able to interact meaningfully with other players, and that people who want that should play games that offer it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0uYnwqlslU&feature=youtu.be&t=1m33s

^ this one million time this, but people denial is up to 11 it seems. (same argument you can find from Sean in the video I linked) if the CEO q&a aren't an official statement then I don't know what else could get these people out of stendhal's

Welcome to Spore!

Let me lay down what will happen. People STILL blame the developers for lying about Spore because of ONE video that the team has denounced and contradicted constantly.

No Man's Sky isn't gonna get leniency.

[Gabeux]

Damn..the Spore..the forbidden word!

I followed Spore development for what, 5 years? A lot was promised that felt the game was complex and had a lot of depth, that the ending was going to be amazing, and that Space Stage was going to be much more interesting. I remember they really hyping it up and never really describing and demo'ing the game as it was.
With NMS, I saw an attempt to de-hype a lot of stuff, to describe what you could do, and even show it. The only thing that was really left in mystery was the extent of things you could do with/to another player, and how exactly the game gets harder/crazier/weirder as you get to the center.

Not saying you're comparing it to Spore, just saying that this time the developers actually tried to defuse the hype-bomb, whereas in Spore they hyped you with the strength of a thousand suns and (IIRC) EA wanted to release it much earlier so they had to make do with what they had, which was - albeit fun if you like sandbox games - shallow and felt more like a..weird toy.

To me, this time, it falls down on the publisher, journalists and the people who make insane assumptions. Back in Spore, in my opinion, it was EA and Will Wright.

I do agree with you, though. The people will hold Hello Games responsible for their own mistakes.

[LoSboccacc]

so, for a change of topic, how's the biome generation instead? do animals behave? like predators prey, herbivore herb, those sort of things.

[Gabeux]

I want more info on biomes too, I couldn't get to know anything for sure from streams. But animals have different diets and behavior, and sometimes you might find herbivores who are or are not docile.
I can't confirm it since I saw most of these things live, but I've seen animals ignore players (be docile), some run away scared, some give a sort of warning (like territorial behavior), and some be outright aggressive and hunt you to the depths of hell.

E: I did see carnivores preying and killing other animals, but I don't remember seeing 'herbivores herbing'. Then again, no one I watched was actually testing or observing those things.

[Flying Dice]

Surprisingly, IGN actually did a decent series of pre-release videos with a lot of direct interviews. There was one that covered, loosely, how creatures are generated. I'll try to dig it up, but the gist was this:

e: Here we go.

They start by having the artist design base forms for different creature types. Their algorithms extrapolate those into different species by changing all their physical features in different ways. Those extrapolations then undergo the same process to create more species, diverging in different and more radical ways each cycle. So you're going to have batches of creatures which loosely resemble each other, but you're also going to have ones which are radically different.

IIRC the behaviors and such are not directly connected to the physical form (though really bizarre stuff tends to be more dangerous/aggressive), but instead to the environment in which the creature exists. There are also activity cycle variations--some creatures are nocturnal, some diurnal, some active throughout the day and night.

Also, from what  I recall, both creatures and terrain are supposed to get more extreme the closer you get to the core. It's just a stab in the dark, but I suspect that they might have actually layered the creature divergences like that--the stuff most closely related to the base forms tend to be near the galactic rim, while the stuff that's undergone a lot of cycles of generation is close to the core.

--

I've seen in video coverage a little wonky terrain where you have overhanging cliffs and arches that are nearly paper-thin at the edges, but nothing as bad as you normally see with extreme voxel terrain--it usually ended up looking like weird shale sheets. The main issues with terrain are the old voxel non-physics where you can carve out floating chunks, and with the clear chunk-area lines on the surface of large bodies of water. There also looks to be some weirdness with how ships land on really uneven terrain, but honestly that's preferable to having your ship tip over and break because it landed on a rock.

[E. Albright]

But preorders are a scam. Or have you forgotten Master of Orion III and Spore?

Honestly, I get the feeling that common reactions to MoO3 are very akin to how some people are flipping out about NMS. MoO3 was pretty clear about what it was and wasn't if you followed the dev progress. It was a macromanagement empire builder. It was not a micromanagement empire builder. It absolutely was not MoO2 with upgraded graphics and more involved, in-depth implementations of the same familiar mechanics. A lot of people seemed to have read news and information put out during development, and responded with "Yeah, you have to say that, but we both know what it's REALLY gonna be..." That's the vibe I'm getting with a lot of people's apparent outrage about NMS not being a co-op or MMO game despite it being billed as "not that". The age-old conflict of hype built upon hype of hype built upon hope vs. what was advertised and/or delivered.

(Full disclosure: I absolutely adored MoO3, albeit for very, very different reasons than I loved MoO2. I am largely agnostic about NMS.)

[Gabeux]

I was meaning to ask about the Atlas, but I think that could be spoilery for those who want to go blind. I'll put it into spoiler tags but I really have no information on it.

Spoiler: Atlas, Paths (click to show/hide)

It's mentioned the game has 'Three Paths' you could choose, and one's clearly the Atlas. The second one might be some sort of Freedom path in which you refuse help and guidance from the Atlas.
Accepting its help seems to net you a bunch of rewards, but I expect rewards to be handed on other paths too. I think it's weird, though, how everyone I watched accepts the Atlas help with very little thought. Why, in a game about complete freedom and exploration, should you 'accept guidance' of a being that wants to behave and present itself as your God?

I think playing without the Atlas support might be Hard mode, or at least take longer to get to the core, but I'm really curious and interested on what it could mean to refuse and deny it.

Of course, this is the sort of spoilery thing Sean didn't want anyone to know about and discover by themselves, but meh.

[miauw62]

Sean's actions don't matter that much in the end. What matters is what people believed the game would be, which is very clearly false to anybody who has dealt with a game like this before. But the game was marketed by Sony, to mainstream audiences. Audiences who are generally pretty unfamiliar with the limitations of procedural generation. It was pretty fucking obvious that something like this would happen, with them encouraging the hype train at every possible point. It didn't even have to be "multiplayer". It would just have been something else if this hadn't happened.

[Flying Dice]

I just... really don't get the attitude that because people ignore what the devs are saying and make assumptions the game should be changed to match those erroneous assumptions. Do you think that Tarn should change DF to suit the whims of the occasional weirdos that pop up in Suggestions trying to dictate what the game is supposed to be?

Agreed about Sony a Shit though. The need for PS4 support is probably a big part of why you can't fly super-close to terrain.

Also: the real subreddit and the best ad.

[Shadowlord]

Also: the real subreddit and the best ad.

I call your wossname and raise you a seinfeld reference.

[Neonivek]

I just... really don't get the attitude that because people ignore what the devs are saying and make assumptions the game should be changed to match those erroneous assumptions.

Because Spore happened. No really

Though in Spore's case... It was impossible and they actually tried.

Though Spore's major fault is that Will Wright didn't have enough creative control (or rather his team had too much creative control) and thus the game went from its "Grand universal simulator" to... 5 minigames.