Anyone getting No Man's Sky?

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That's not exactly true...

On release I had frame rate issues, but never a single crash on my Asus GL552VW. Well, I did have one crash just before the patch. I was going to warp while pointed toward a planet. The game did not like that at all, but did just fine when I pointed toward empty space.

Since yesterday's patch, the game runs smooth as butter on my rig with mid/high graphics settings.

Actually, I think the bad reviews come from a mix of tech issues and general disappointment in the game from people (right or wrong) who feel misled about game content/features.

I think one problem with all the "dropped features" in this game comes from making it for PS4. Standard harware is good, but also limiting. I think the PS4 just couldn't handle all the features they wanted to implement.

Personally, I hope we get a No Man's Sky v.2.0 for PC that takes advantage of the more robust platform... or at least mods that do.

I only even discovered this game yesterday because a couple game reviewers I liked started going on about how this game has caused a lot of uproar on the internet; another victim of the hype train.

It looks alright, but not all that interesting. Doubt I'll play it.

No, it's barely distinguishable from the million of other early access survival games on Steam, which are much more reasonably priced. I could buy about four of these for the same price as this one game, and most of those early access games have more content despite No Man's Sky being billed as a full title.

Here's a cool idea from reddit for anybody who might be getting bored...

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGa ... stem_pick/

Pick a random, unknown planet, fly directly in and abandon it and all your stuff!

Then set out on foot to find a new ship etc....

Also, if you want a challenge, play dead is DEAD--no saves or graves. Death means you must start over.

I wouldnt be so sure about that without actually playing them, if I were you.

As TB says in one of his videos, the ENTIRE GENRE is filled almost entirely with unfinished games. It's a genre that hasnt actually gotten going yet. Hell, I dont remember if he listed ANY games as "finished" other than Dont Starve. Despite trying to list some finished games.

I've played so many survival games, and there are three... and ONLY three.... I consider to be "finished" by my own personal standards. Or, I guess I should say, in such a state that I can apply that label to them despite non-stop development.

Those games are Minecraft, Terraria, and Dont Starve.

And that's IT.

Starbound? No. Doesnt quite make that list. It's good, and there's plenty to do... but it reskins the hell out of it's content. It gives the illusion of having more than it does (all survival games do this though. ALL of them. But this does it more than most).

NMS? No. It JUST showed up. It'll need more time. I quite like it but it reminds me of Starbound in it's earlier days.

Something like Day Z? That zombie one that's so popular? Or whatever that's called? ......I fell asleep trying to watch that one because it's so bloody boring, so I dont know why I'm mentioning it... I havent had my caffiene yet.

Right now, there's really nothing "complete" about survival games, and basically ALL of them, particularly on their store page, will do anything they can to trick you into thinking they have more content than they do. As someone who pretty much only plays procedural games these days.... having a deep-seated, blazing hatred for story-based games, and thus, most hand-crafted games.... I can spot this easily now. Though I'll usually try the game in question anyway.

Except Day Z. That one can go sit in a toaster somewhere. That game is like, Counterstrike levels of dull here, to me. Which is quite a feat...

But yeah, dont go into any of them expecting tons of content. Most survival games are made by indie devs, and their costs are low for a reason. Procedural re-arrangement is used to flesh out most survival games (including NMS here) instead of raw content. Like with Roguelikes and similar games.

The major selling point of the game is procedural generation, many games have implemented similar mechanics but none have made use of procedural generation on such a large scale. Technically, other games do not have more content in terms of size.

I think it is good that many gamers are open to new concepts and the success of No Man's Sky shows that the gaming industry is growing beyond the linearity of past generations.

I still think the product should have been released at half the retail price with an early access label on steam due to the poor optimization on many systems.

Aye, pretty much.

And honestly, there's no such thing as a procedural game that doesnt come with a bonus of added repetition. It's the nature of the beast. Procedural games are designed, usually, for the sorts of players that like extreme replayability, and that dont mind running into content over and over.

Roguelikes, for example. Or things like Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon... I could name a million of these, and no matter which one it is, no matter how much content it might seem to have, it's GOING to be very repetitive, and in the hands of the wrong gamer (aka, the sort of player that just isnt going to get into this type of thing) it's going to feel like there's not much to it. My friends tend to think this way, when it comes to games like these. They've played Isaac, but not much. They wont touch the others.

NMS is honestly like that. I'm fine with it because I just dont mind that aspect. I'm really, really used to procedural content at this point, and have had a chance to help in the development of multiple procedural games now. I love games that do this; it means that no matter how many times I play them, I never know just what to expect on a particular run through the game.


As for the bit about optimization, to be honest, my current thoughts on that are that it was released too early. Not on purpose, either; they probably ran out of time. That's a really, REALLY nasty thing with game development, but EVERY developer runs into it, sooner or later. Hell, there's a game I"m helping with right now... the name of which I wont list here... involving a developer I've been contracted to before a couple of times now. And the whole thing is running into this very issue right now. The next couple of days are going to be a real snot, as this project goes. And it's frustrating as hell. And this happened with their last game, too, the one that I had a really major role in. That final week was utter hell. I'd really rather not go through that again. For reasons, this current situation is different, but still, it's nasty.

And chances are that's what happened with NMS. And I'm willing to bet that the suits at Sony are a big part of WHY they ran out of time.

Here's the first mod I'm tempted to install. Probably will when I get more playtime *damn you school/real life!*...



I hope Hello Games releases modding tools soon. Mods will save this game and drive sales.

More like No Man's Buy tbf

I agree, I suspect that it is difficult for independent developers to scope out the amount of resources and work required for a game. Overwatch has around a hundred people working on it to consistently add content and even that is a process that will continue for years, game development must be a hard measure if you are not experienced with large open world titles.

I can understand why smaller independent titles are highly praised, even if they are only a few hours long. No Man's Sky flew too close to the sun, it aimed to compete with big budget developers that has been in the industry for years.

At the same time, it is difficult for certain players to grasp the idea of procedural generation as many players are used to playing on the same map for years and years. I think the concept of procedural generation is great, I would love to see a competitive multiplayer game use procedural generation.

Hm, yes, I can say with certainty that it is indeed very hard for smaller devs to do that stuff; what's more, most smaller devs wont even ATTEMPT making a game with "next-gen" graphics like the AAA guys do. There are occaisional exceptions (such as Miner Wars and Space Engineers, both of which went pretty far with this) but those are very rare. People seriously underestimate the costs involved here. Even basic 2D sprite-work costs a ton, or low-level 3D stuff.

That being said, to some degree, negative player response to "repetitive" games is something I personally blame on what I refer to as the damage done by overblown graphics and cutscenes. It's not enough to have good gameplay anymore... you have to have big "set piece" moments and things like that, and procedural games simply do not have those (and the devs very, very rarely give a damn about the idea at all, when it comes to indie games). But AAA devs have pushed forth the idea that such things are all-important, and they've done this ALOT. The core thing I noticed about NMS... which was no problem whatsoever for me... was that people seemed to expect CONSTANT totally new stuff, at every possible turn. Stuff that promises new visuals all the time (not possible! People assume that "procedural" means it can do stuff like this, but that's just not how it works) or things that dont even make sense from a gameplay perspective (like giant sand worms, those were in an E3 video if I recall correctly, but just looking at the things I can think of like 10 reasons why they would be a horrid idea and need to be cut from the project).

A lack of action in the game also probably hurt it. I will say that the combat is pretty bad.... that certainly did nothing to help it. Space combat can be fun, but ground combat is just derpy. So that does really put a dent in things, as normally in a sandbox game, combat serves as the main way to break up the pacing and keep things varied.

Also I agree with you on procedural generation, I love the concept and most of the games that I play frequently use it. Actually, come to think of it, pretty much ALL of the games I've been playing frequently use it. It occurs to me that I dont buy non-procedural games all that often since the "exploration" factor with those tends to wear off very fast (and replay value also is low).