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[Damiac]

Totally opinion based, warning of that right now, but rarely does a game I'm hyped about turn out awful. To me, at least. I usually have a complaint or two while loving whatever game. If it does turn out awful, to me, which is rare, then I usually had major doubts the whole time. I dont have any major doubts about NMS. I'm pretty good at predicting what I'll,  personally, like. I'm just sad that so many people are harsh and pessimistic, though it's entirely their right to feel that way. The gaming world has given plenty of reasons to feel like that. But I'm not psychic,  as  far as I know, so take what you will from this post.

That is a fair statement.  I feel like if I had a list of your favorite games I could actually take your word for what you just said, and if I found your list meshed with what I like, your statement might actually convince me to be less pessimistic about this particular game.  Not that I'm particularly pessimistic, from what I've heard of this game I doubt it's really going to be up my alley regardless of how well it does whatever it does.

[GrayFox]

Some games I didn't really have any doubts about

- Mostly all the GTA series past 3. (I didn't know about three til the day it came out. I didn't follow it before then.  Games already out don't count. I didn't like 4 quite as much, but it was lots of fun)
- Almost every MGS game, except the first one was already out before I knew about it. (phantom pain is awesome, though the ending.... let's not discuss the "ending")
- Most Saints Row games (though I haven't played the most recent one yet)
- Mad Max
- Final Fantasy 8, 9, 10, 12 (seven was already out, one of my favorite games. I haven't played 13 yet)
- Starbound (opinions vary greatly, but I've played it 300+ hours)
- Stardew Valley
- Civilization 5
- Most of the Super Smash Bros. games (I didn't know about the first one til after release. Melee was probably the one I was most hyped about. It's probably also the one I played most.)

that's all I can think of right now, probably several others i forgot at the moment

[Shadowlord]

Huh.

Spoiler: opinions (click to show/hide)

I say because I thought Starbound was terrible and prior to release/early access/whatever I was expecting it to be great, I found civ V boring, the multiplayer even more boring, and the loading screens most boring of all, I haven't liked a GTA past 2, SSB was okay but not great, and the last one I played was on the Wii. Never played final fantasy or metal gear solid (never owned a playstation) or mad max (movie tie in, expected it to be shit, good reviews confused me, but whatever, can't run it anyways), looked at stardew valley and could not understand the appeal - haven't tried it.

(I enjoyed saints row 2, 3, and 4, however, and still play 4 occasionally.)

[GrayFox]

Max Max isn't really based on the movie. It has its own story. I haven't finished it yet though.
The controls are a little strange, and there are a few things I wish were different, but it's great. I played it almost obsessively when I first got it.
I've never been as hyped as I am for No Man's Sky, however. I may have said this, but  I do keep my extreme hype levels in check, in a way. I don't go crazy over features the devs have never shown/promised. If I think of something cool, I assume it's just a fantasy unless confirmed. On the other hand, other people out there on the great interwebs tend to let their imaginations run away from them...aaaaand then they get angry about things left out of whatever game they're anticipating.

[puke]

Perhaps I should have said "The theoretical purpose of forums".

Why?  That wouldn't have been nearly as funny.

Some threads can get very upper boards

why the upper boards hate?  Whenever I check Toady's post history to see whats up in FOTF or whatever, it is always the lower boards I see drawing his moderation attention.  Anyway, lets not turn this into upper/lower wars, I didn't even know that was a thing so lets not make it one.  At least not here in the middle board, haha.

[Damiac]

Some games I didn't really have any doubts about

- Mostly all the GTA series past 3. (I didn't know about three til the day it came out. I didn't follow it before then.  Games already out don't count. I didn't like 4 quite as much, but it was lots of fun)
- Almost every MGS game, except the first one was already out before I knew about it. (phantom pain is awesome, though the ending.... let's not discuss the "ending")
- Most Saints Row games (though I haven't played the most recent one yet)
- Mad Max
- Final Fantasy 8, 9, 10, 12 (seven was already out, one of my favorite games. I haven't played 13 yet)
- Starbound (opinions vary greatly, but I've played it 300+ hours)
- Stardew Valley
- Civilization 5
- Most of the Super Smash Bros. games (I didn't know about the first one til after release. Melee was probably the one I was most hyped about. It's probably also the one I played most.)

that's all I can think of right now, probably several others i forgot at the moment

Well, I suppose we have some overlap, I enjoyed GTA 3, VC, SA, 4 not so much, 5 was OK, I guess I just got worn out on it.
I really liked SSB melee, I still fire it up from time to time, but I have nobody to play with
I liked Civ 1, 2, 3, 4, but my enjoyment kind of fell off after a few play throughs of 4.  If I see 5 on sale for cheap I might try it out... but the AI in those games is always so stupid... and they cheat.

[symonthewise]

http://ca.ign.com/videos/2016/04/11/no-mans-sky-21-minutes-of-new-gameplay-ign-first

A bit more detail on gameplay.

[Lukeinator]

noice. Hype increased.

[Greenbane]

http://ca.ign.com/videos/2016/04/11/no-mans-sky-21-minutes-of-new-gameplay-ign-first

A bit more detail on gameplay.

Watched the whole thing.

Hard to be impressed unless you've never ever played a procedurally-generated game. First thing I noticed is how apparent the console-imposed limitations are: the game looks pre-2010. The rest... meh. Looks like a bunch of very basic systems stitched together, and they talk about it all as if it were groundbreaking, as if there had been no Minecraft, no Evochron games, hell, no Starbound (and its location generation seed disguised as "coordinates"). And the sequence showing off the theoretically vast galaxy? As I said earlier, you can boast about your game having eleventibillion quintillion planets, but it means absolutely nothing if you can't fill a good portion of them with interesting stuff. And that remains a monumental question mark, not in the slightest dispelled by the "exploration" part of the video.

Maybe the video (and most of the marketing material) is aimed at console gamers, for whom procgen is very rare? I don't know, I didn't see anything truly remarkable, only a mixture of blandness and deja vu from other games which have already, if in part, done the same.

[symonthewise]

I still got the sense that the dev was being coy with the game. This might be his style though, he doesn't want to explain away the mechanics.

Anyway I think it looks cool. Whether designed my human or algorithm, most game content is repetitious, a series of similar sorting problems.

This is not a very compelling critique, for me.

[Greenbane]

I still got the sense that the dev was being coy with the game. This might be his style though, he doesn't want to explain away the mechanics.

Anyway I think it looks cool. Whether designed my human or algorithm, most game content is repetitious, a series of similar sorting problems.

This is not a very compelling critique, for me.

It's not really possible to objectively judge whether the game's going to turn repetitive too soon with the available information.

But from the gameplay standpoint, I didn't see anything which stood out. Combat looked uninspired, survival boiled down to shooting a hole into a cave and instantly refilling "environmental protection", interacting with other characters was as involved as smashing a crystal for plutonium. Yeah, I'm sure they become more useful as you learn more alien words, but they seemed as mobile and alive as the chairs next to them. And I'll be daring enough to claim I saw the first hint of repetitiveness: shooting at the freighter in orbit and the small battle that ensued seemed profoundly similar to what happened after shooting at the factory door planetside.

So on the whole, despite the IGN guy and dev's attempts to tell me everything was amazing, I wasn't shown anything that actually was.

[symonthewise]

Maybe your expectations are too high.

I'm not sure what it compares poorly against, taking what we can from the video. How would you rather the suit do its recharge thing? Go to a terminal and wait 10 seconds? Presumably they still want you to be able to roam around without too much difficulty. That is the balancing act of designing a game.

This is again not really a compelling criticism. Personally I like the simplicity of the environmental damage system. It may add some urgency to exploration, but not be too tedious. As the dev says, a player may set up a base and work out from there to collect resources or explore. This is a very personal sort of play style preference deal.

The Ign guy did seem like he was trying his hardest to wrap his lips around the devs balls, but I thought dev guy was pretty reasonable, if coy, in his presentation.

Anyway, sadly I do not own any hardware capable of running this, nor does it look like the type of thing to make an interesting lp, so I'll probably not see much of it.

[Putnam]

Oh. you're using that statistic. The planet one.

It's technically true. I've repeated it! But it's also true of every single game that uses procedural generation and 64-bit numbers.

Dwarf Fortress uses... I don't even know? It's a big frigging number. It's a 20-digit number of at least 7 bits per digit (and I say 7 because I only tested 65 characters, by looking at existing seeds and testing a few characters that weren't in them; I'd need to test 129 to determine if it's 8​). This makes it at least 2,560 bits. Sorry, actually 10,240, I forgot the game uses multiple seeds. That's about 3.525*10³⁰⁸² worlds to explore.

[Greenbane]

Maybe your expectations are too high.

My expectations are as high as the asking price. I really don't see myself shelling out 60 dollars for something this basic.

It is unfortunate that my criticism isn't compelling to you, but what concerns me the most is that neither is this piece of promotional material.

Oh. you're using that statistic. The planet one.

It's technically true. I've repeated it! But it's also true of every single game that uses procedural generation and 64-bit numbers.

Dwarf Fortress uses... I don't even know? It's a big frigging number. It's a 20-digit number of at least 7 bits per digit (and I say 7 because I only tested 65 characters, by looking at existing seeds and testing a few characters that weren't in them; I'd need to test 129 to determine if it's 8​). This makes it at least 2,560 bits. Sorry, actually 10,240, I forgot the game uses multiple seeds. That's about 3.525*10³⁰⁸² worlds to explore.

Yeah. You don't bring up that kind of statistics in procedural generation. They're meaningless and only fool the uninformed, leading them to believe the fallacy that in such massive quantity there has to be a remotely comparable amount of quality, somehow.

And to repeatedly boast about that kind of thing is a worrying sign that you don't have anything more solid to stand on.

[symonthewise]

The critique is not generally substantive, to me or any intelligent observer.

I'm not opposed to the notion this game is, as you say, basic. Perhaps a comparison to a better game with similar but deeper features, stated clearly and specifically, would make for a more compelling argument.

Otherwise you are merely disagreeing over personal preference. For example, I don't like bullet hell games. It doesnt matter how great someone designs one, I won't be interested.

Allow me to play your side to demonstrate a better (and fairer) argument. I am concerned about the trade aspect of this game. Trade is really only interesting in a market (preferably dynamic and complex) and, as the dev said, it seems changes revert as soon as you leave the local area. This suggests to me that the markets you're dealing with will have to be quite small. The smaller the market the more simplistic the trade and thus, I fear, it may be too shallow to be interesting.

 Additionally, what is the capital earned from trade for? A great example of a sprawling dynamic market in a similar setting would be eve online. Aside from the scale of the economy being so large, money is integral to maintain a fleet for competing in combat with other player run factions, which creates motivation for players to act in the market. If NMS has no such impetus, what would compel us to trade? For upgrades maybe? Then what is resource collection for?
 
These questions and many others were left unanswered by the dev, leading me to accuse him of being coy as you might remember because I believe he knows what people want to hear from him, so we will have to wait and see. It is also possible I am missing something, perhaps trading plays a niche but still useful and interesting role in something not elaborated upon in this video.

Aside from that, what a pathetic showing on ign guys part. I can't help but imagine if total biscuit got a hold of the NMS dev he'd wring some more detailed info out of him. SLURP SLURP SLURRRRRP