No Man's Sky [PS4, PS5, XO, XBSX|S, PC, NX, XGP]

[Deleted member 11852]

hmm, what they have in mind to support those massive amount of player convergin in ccenter. It will be awesome if all player will truly be in one multiplayer space. Not some instanced space like some MMO do...

I've not seen an interview where they've mentioned much about multiplayer interaction.

Hello Games are just a bunch of teases at the moment

 

[orangpelupa]

yeah, from what they talked, it could be that the multiplayer wont be realtime. it can be like dark souls or drivatar on forza.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Well, they said its a shared universe,but since each player is spawned on a different planet and each planet is the size of real life planet, they believe it is possible that you might never meet another person. But if you are near someone you will see them.
Also, they said that if the destruction caused by you causes a major change in topography then it will be shared with all, but minute changes like cutting down a tree might not get shared.

THey are a small team,I wonder how they are even coping with a project this big !

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Also, they said that if the destruction caused by you causes a major change in topography then it will be shared with all, but minute changes like cutting down a tree might not get shared.

This sounds quite cool! Where did they all about this?

 

[Gradthrawn]

New preview over at The Verge. I thought the following addresses some of the questions asked earlier about objectives, purpose and focus:

No Man’s Sky spurns the conventional structures of pre-written narratives, set-piece action sequences, and discrete levels. There are no quests in this game. You don’t go planet-hopping to find a damsel or a merchant in distress and then fetch them three healing salves and four wolf pelts of varying colors. In fact, at the outset, you can’t hop very far at all. Each player is handed only the bare necessities for survival, dropped onto a planet on the rim of a galaxy, and left to his or her own devices. A basic life pod will putter you up to the nearest space station where you can begin to figure out how to get such devices, upgrade them, and do something useful or interesting with your life. Most people will start by either mining resources or trying their luck as a bounty hunter or freight security guard. What career paths lie beyond those basic professions is part of the exploration you’ll have to do.

Having to come up with your own objectives and measures for success will be a bewildering premise for a generation of players habituated to receiving explicit directions followed by a pat on the back for every small achievement in a game. Mario jumps and a shiny gold coin pops into the air. The only thing that happens in No Man’s Sky when you jump is that you land back down. Manually piloting your spaceship from the ground to the nearest space station isn’t just the scenic route to leaving the planetary surface, it’s the only way into space.

 

[London Geezer]

Ok I'm starting to get very interested now.

 

[iroboto]

New preview over at The Verge. I thought the following addresses some of the questions asked earlier about objectives, purpose and focus:

Wow, sounds like EvE Online all over again. Which I don't mind, I actually quite loved, except the part of travelling through the low-sec/null-sec jump gates, man, the number of times I had to sit outside watching the donlan reports brings back memories of pure exhaustion.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Most people will start by either mining resources or trying their luck as a bounty hunter or freight security guard. What career paths lie beyond those basic professions is part of the exploration you’ll have to do.

So you're in a space with a significant degree of civilisation such that there are interactions and human-driven targets (protect the freighter, mine X amount of materials) from the outset. It doesn't sound a lot different from other open world games, which makes the article a bit pretentious. It's also worth noting that being set challenges is often a good thing which is why games do them so much. Why are Achievements/Trophies so popular if people don't like 'handholding' and given objectives? One of the biggest faults with From Dust was a limited scope of challenges. It quickly ended in a completely open playground, which proved rapidly exhausted as a source of amusement.

Putting it another way, how many people dumped in a woods with no technology for a holiday would actively enjoy it? I expect a lot these days would want stuff to do rather than a completely free, unguided experience.

Open ended needs to be carefully managed. Ultimately it's not open-ended, but has the impression of being so. The objective is actually already described - to reach the core. That's your objective as the player. You mine resources and take jobs to fund that progress. Take away that pursuit and just have planets and arbitrary encounters, space battles who's sides you don't know and don't understand where you randomly shoot people, and the experience would be very dull very quickly.

The 90-10 rule is thus both good and bad. If 90% of planets are barren, and 90% of those don't have much by way of interesting life, you're down to having to search 100 planets to find one 'good one' with interesting lifeforms etc. So it will be rare which makes it exciting and an achievement, but it's also boring in between. Making it not boring in between will be important to reaching either a mainstream success or a tiny, enthusiastic niche who'll enjoy pottering about' in their space ship.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Putting it another way, how many people dumped in a woods with no technology for a holiday would actively enjoy it?

Me! I don't suppose you caught The Island with Bear Grylls when it was on TV? Well, it's a massive appeal for me to simply survive it difficult circumstances. Precisely why I like games like this and Day Z.

Of course I'd much rather be plopped on a beautiful desert island instead of a rainy English forest.

 

[Ruiadas]

So you're in a space with a significant degree of civilisation such that there are interactions and human-driven targets (protect the freighter, mine X amount of materials) from the outset. It doesn't sound a lot different from other open world games, which makes the article a bit pretentious. It's also worth noting that being set challenges is often a good thing which is why games do them so much. Why are Achievements/Trophies so popular if people don't like 'handholding' and given objectives? One of the biggest faults with From Dust was a limited scope of challenges. It quickly ended in a completely open playground, which proved rapidly exhausted as a source of amusement.

Putting it another way, how many people dumped in a woods with no technology for a holiday would actively enjoy it? I expect a lot these days would want stuff to do rather than a completely free, unguided experience.

Open ended needs to be carefully managed. Ultimately it's not open-ended, but has the impression of being so. The objective is actually already described - to reach the core. That's your objective as the player. You mine resources and take jobs to fund that progress. Take away that pursuit and just have planets and arbitrary encounters, space battles who's sides you don't know and don't understand where you randomly shoot people, and the experience would be very dull very quickly.

The 90-10 rule is thus both good and bad. If 90% of planets are barren, and 90% of those don't have much by way of interesting life, you're down to having to search 100 planets to find one 'good one' with interesting lifeforms etc. So it will be rare which makes it exciting and an achievement, but it's also boring in between. Making it not boring in between will be important to reaching either a mainstream success or a tiny, enthusiastic niche who'll enjoy pottering about' in their space ship.

The obvious counter argument there is Minecraft, which is totally open with no objectives and still manages to keep people sucked in for hours based on their own self-created goals. I don’t think it will work but I guess that is the idea behind why they (Sony and Hello Games) think No Man's Sky will be successful. I imagine Star Citizen’s popularity is also playing a role here. It certainly isn’t a game for me as I think life holds enough open-ended challenges that when I sit down to play a video game I want a more guided experience.

As a note, a buddy of mine is a huge space-flight sim fan and he was saying that what No Man’s Sky is trying to do is the ‘holy-grail’ space-flight sim that devs have been trying to get for years (the FPS to space flight in a seamless experience) and there are a couple games out there that do what No Man’s Sky does. Since no one seems to have ever heard of them you can guess how popular they are. The only difference that my buddy sees is that the visual aesthetic of No Man’s Sky is a lot more unique/well defined than the existing selections (Parkan 2 as an example: http://store.steampowered.com/app/289400/ ) and maybe the prettier visuals will get people to play.

 

[Gradthrawn]

So you're in a space with a significant degree of civilisation such that there are interactions and human-driven targets (protect the freighter, mine X amount of materials) from the outset. It doesn't sound a lot different from other open world games, which makes the article a bit pretentious. It's also worth noting that being set challenges is often a good thing which is why games do them so much. Why are Achievements/Trophies so popular if people don't like 'handholding' and given objectives? One of the biggest faults with From Dust was a limited scope of challenges. It quickly ended in a completely open playground, which proved rapidly exhausted as a source of amusement.

Putting it another way, how many people dumped in a woods with no technology for a holiday would actively enjoy it? I expect a lot these days would want stuff to do rather than a completely free, unguided experience.

Open ended needs to be carefully managed. Ultimately it's not open-ended, but has the impression of being so. The objective is actually already described - to reach the core. That's your objective as the player. You mine resources and take jobs to fund that progress. Take away that pursuit and just have planets and arbitrary encounters, space battles who's sides you don't know and don't understand where you randomly shoot people, and the experience would be very dull very quickly.

The 90-10 rule is thus both good and bad. If 90% of planets are barren, and 90% of those don't have much by way of interesting life, you're down to having to search 100 planets to find one 'good one' with interesting lifeforms etc. So it will be rare which makes it exciting and an achievement, but it's also boring in between. Making it not boring in between will be important to reaching either a mainstream success or a tiny, enthusiastic niche who'll enjoy pottering about' in their space ship.

To better understand the motivations of the developer and the direction their going with No Man's Sky, you might want to check out this video of Sean Murray (Hello Games) having a discussion with Ted Price. He discusses some of the points you bring up (like hand holding).

 

[iroboto]

The obvious counter argument there is Minecraft, which is totally open with no objectives and still manages to keep people sucked in for hours based on their own self-created goals.

Minecraft you have modes in which you just build things to your hearts desire, so it might be a little bit different than just self-created goals, minecraft is very much a content creation game.

The wording of the article is titled

"This is the Most Ambitious Game in the Universe: 'No Man's Sky' swaps fetch quests and missions for a living, breathing universe of infinite possibility"

I agree with Shifty here, it's pretentiously written. One could easily point out that EVE is MUCH more ambitious than any game out there; what it attempts to do dwarfs any game I've ever known of or played.

As Murray explains, "people underestimate how vast our (in-game) universe is. If we were lucky enough to have a million players and started them all on one planet, they would still be really far apart." So the enormous cluster battles of EVE Online are unlikely to ever materialize in No Man's Sky.

The writer underestimates player needs for being social. They will find a way to group up, and in a large way, if there are no trading hubs formed, players will form their own trading hub. Clans form from there, and then battles. Something that occurs on a daily basis in any MMO.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Ode to Minecraft

Minecraft you have modes in which you just build things to your hearts desire, so it might be a little bit different than just self-created goals, minecraft is very much a content creation game.

That's creative mode, there is also survival mode which is what I immediately thought of when I read the passage from the Verge article. I would also have mentioned Minecraft if Ruiadas hadn't beat me to the punch.

In Minecraft's survival mode you're dropped into a world with literally nothing. Zip. No instructions, no tutorials, nothing. I started playing Minecraft in the beta and my first dozen games all ended with me dying in the pursuit of knowledge of how not to die that way again. If you go into Minecraft without having read what to do, you will be overwhelmed with its scope and terrified at the dangers. Expect to die A lot. will die. A lot.

You goal is to survive your first night then learn how to survive the world. I bought Minecraft in August 2011 and rarely a week goes by without me playing it. But I have friends who don't "get it" or just don't like it. They crave a purpose in games and clear objectives. I understand this, it's not for everybody. But for those of us who revel in working out what's possible, who like to create in worlds with few arbitrary gameplay systems, where you can create your own fun (literally), then Minecraft represents an unparalleled sandbox which never gets old. I love Terraria (never off the Vita version) for the same reasons.

No Man's Sky looks like it will appeal to me in that way, along with the more traditional galaxy exploration that I loved in Elite. From what I've seen of the game it looks great but if there are mechanics for players to make their mark in the galaxy, as in create things that others can see, build upon and use, then they'll be tapping into that non-game element that make Minecraft outsell most AAA titles. It's that feeling of being part of a world that you can shape around you, rather than just being an avatar against somebody else's immutable world.

 

[iroboto]

That's creative mode, there is also survival mode which is what I immediately thought of when I read the passage from the Verge article. I would also have mentioned Minecraft if Ruiadas hadn't beat me to the punch.

In Minecraft's survival mode you're dropped into a world with literally nothing. Zip. No instructions, no tutorials, nothing. I started playing Minecraft in the beta and my first dozen games all ended with me dying in the pursuit of knowledge of how not to die that way again. If you go into Minecraft without having read what to do, you will be overwhelmed with its scope and terrified at the dangers. Expect to die A lot. will die. A lot.

You goal is to survive your first night then learn how to survive the world. I bought Minecraft in August 2011 and rarely a week goes by without me playing it. But I have friends who don't "get it" or just don't like it. They crave a purpose in games and clear objectives. I understand this, it's not for everybody. But for those of us who revel in working out what's possible, who like to create in worlds with few arbitrary gameplay systems, where you can create your own fun (literally), then Minecraft represents an unparalleled sandbox which never gets old. I love Terraria (never off the Vita version) for the same reasons.

No Man's Sky looks like it will appeal to me in that way, along with the more traditional galaxy exploration that I loved in Elite. From what I've seen of the game it looks great but if there are mechanics for players to make their mark in the galaxy, as in create things that others can see, build upon and use, then they'll be tapping into that non-game element that make Minecraft outsell most AAA titles. It's that feeling of being part of a world that you can shape around you, rather than just being an avatar against somebody else's immutable world.

Yup, I get that. I purposefully left the survival mode out of my comment because I wasn't sure how the player base split was for Minecraft, I just wanted to note that a big part of Minecraft, survival or creative mode, is really 'creating things' in both modes. I get your appeal to the game.

I don't have any negative thoughts towards No Man's Sky in particular, I am also quite excited for it. I just felt the article blew the game out of scale, my only real gripe.

Eve is still the ultimate sandbox experience, lacking only the mechanical space sim part of it.

The world is quite mutable and obscenely large, you could fit a LOT of ships around a planet if you wanted to and see them all but never be able to fly to them in a reasonable amount of time without warping. Your actions do affect the universe in that game - so I was a little taken back when reading this article, written nearly like EvE didn't exist at all.

 

[holsty101]

...

That was a good video, the bit about how 4 of them developed it for ~ a year without letting the other 6 know anything about it was kinda crazy/awesome.

If there isn't one already there should be a dedicated Devs-on-Devs* interview/etc channel.

* maybe not that title...

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

The writer underestimates player needs for being social. They will find a way to group up, and in a large way, if there are no trading hubs formed, players will form their own trading hub. Clans form from there, and then battles. Something that occurs on a daily basis in any MMO.

I would tend to agree, since someone mentioned Day Z - I'll give my answer in that light. I've never played Day Z, but when I watched the first recorded game play it seemed awesome. There were two players playing together, one of them recording their session. They were in the same "world" but both spawned extremely far part. Having no vehicles but only allowed to walk or run and having stamina draining from running (and altering zombies by making noise), they were often walking or sneaking around. They were trying to reach each other by relating landmarks, etc (both were new to the game), and after about 30-45 minutes of game play the video ended. When it ended they had just figured out how to use some railroad tracks that might lead them to each other, but hadn't by the time the video ended.

The next video I watched a few weeks later of Day Z was of a clan that had managed to get all the parts needed to repair a helicopter, had assault rifles and fuel, new the entire map and where all the cities were and were flying supply missions into towns to loot and become more powerful. It was a complete 180 from the first video I had watched.

So, yes. Players want to play together, they will try to find each other and they will try to team up to share resources to collectively become stronger than they would alone. I think it's quite unbelievable that a single universe will be able to be created that is so vast that players could never encounter each other unless such players are actively avoiding contact. In which case, that's not exactly the same, is it?

 

[iroboto]

I think it's quite unbelievable that a single universe will be able to be created that is so vast that players could never encounter each other unless such players are actively avoiding contact. In which case, that's not exactly the same, is it?

lol it's pretentiously written; I'm fairly positive the idea is that when you're out there in no man's land running into another player is completely chance and an encounter on its own.

I felt this way playing WoW in PVP areas; at the the end of the day the opposing faction is around and it's pretty fun when you are trying to stop each other from questing. You feel this way in Eve pretty much all the time, in fact most of the time I'm watching comms because you need to know when someone is trying to track you down and attempt to obliterate you.

But as we've agreed on earlier, players will always be quick to identify points of interest/tangible benefits and will gravitate towards these areas.

 

[zed]

The world is quite mutable and obscenely large, you could fit a LOT of ships around a planet if you wanted to and see them all but never be able to fly to them in a reasonable amount of time without warping. Your actions do affect the universe in that game - so I was a little taken back when reading this article, written nearly like EvE didn't exist at all.

googled eve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkziKL6iuGw
I dont know something about landing on a planet is lacking a bit, perhaps theyre not doing it right?

WRT no mans sky, I feel theyve bitten off more than they can chew, WTF have the alien creatures for a start, thats an added huge chunk of complexity

 

[Shifty Geezer]

WRT no mans sky, I feel theyve bitten off more than they can chew, WTF have the alien creatures for a start, thats an added huge chunk of complexity

For the exploration! Think Afrika. For some, shooting adversaries and becoming more powerful will be the draw. For others, pootling about in spaceships discovering new creatures will be the draw. It has no set release date, so they can take their time as long as someone is funding it, meaning they can put in as much as they want including alien critters.

 

[iroboto]

googled eve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkziKL6iuGw

I dont know something about landing on a planet is lacking a bit, perhaps theyre not doing it right?



WRT no mans sky, I feel theyve bitten off more than they can chew, WTF have the alien creatures for a start, thats an added huge chunk of complexity

lol true. They have dust for that

Corporations build their own starbases instead. And that comes with a battery of additional starbase structures like turrets and shields, as well as their own warp gates.

But they have an entirely player driven universe and economy which ties into real world currency spurs some unexpected
things

What no mans sky is bringing to the table is fresh and new. The transition between planet and space is seamless and offers possibilities of feeling awesome that eve can't produce. In many ways eve lacks a personal touch, it's quite cold actually as a game where for the most part the game does feel spreadsheet like; no mans sky what you see is what you get which can be romantic in its own way.