Game Discussions The No Man's Sky Thread

[PiLhEaD]

The game engine for NMS looks, frankly, awesome...

Seconded - NMS is looking blooming awesome. Some of the vistas of the planets seen from space, incorporating the cloud layer, are jaw-dropping, and the on-planet view distance looks to have been improved measurably from earlier demos.

The planets, with their clouds, water, caves, flora and fauna are looking incredibly pretty, and I actually like the cartoon look - as has been said elsewhere, gameplay trumps graphics every time - and all managed without loading/transition phases/pauses. I'm also excited and intrigued by the races/factions/inter-relationships and associated storys that seem to be there to be translated and understood.

So, I'm off to put down a pre-order, and honestly, when NMS arrives, I'm not sure how much interest in ED is going to remain for me.

I was never sure why so many forum warriors were 'warning' FDev that SC would steal their user-base, as I always felt NMS was a far more potent threat. All recent evidence suggests this still to be the case - so I can understand some of the slightly unhappy/negative sounding comments recently from some of the (more ardent) FDev supporters.

Don't get me wrong - I will forever like ED, and respect FDev for what they have achived so far, but NMS looks to have upped the bar by way more than even the most drugged-up Russian gymnast could achieve...

Interesting times!

 

[Jason S]

The game engine for NMS looks, frankly, awesome.

Thirded, and in at least that I think they deserve the international recognition they are getting.

 

[Hellhawk666]

I was never sure why so many forum warriors were 'warning' FDev that SC would steal their user-base, as I always felt NMS was a far more potent threat. All recent evidence suggests this still to be the case - so I can understand some of the slightly unhappy/negative sounding comments recently from some of the (more ardent) FDev supporters.

The big difference is multi-player vs solo. NMS is, as far as I'm aware, more of a shared game than a multiplayer game, which puts it in a very different category to either ED or SC. In both of the latter the devs are creating games where they actively want players to interact, particularly with regards to combat, whereas Hello Games are pretty much striving to keep people apart.

I don't think that's a bad thing, as such. Complaints about how lonely space is have been constant since ED started, and NMS is quite reasonably embracing isolation instead of trying to force it, and keeping a strong focus on NPC interaction as a fundamental part of gameplay. It will be fascinating to see how well "The Atlas" functions as a sort of virtual glue to keep the playerbase of essentially solo players united.

If there is a threat to ED it probably always has been SC and always will be, simply because they are sharing so many game concepts. Hand-crafted vs procedural really doesn't matter much in the final analysis, except as regards how many players will be encountered in an instance. SC will no doubt feel a lot more populated than ED.

What's probably going to happen is that more than a few solo, exploration and survival-game oriented players will migrate to NMS (I most likely will), whereas some PvP and traditional MMO oriented players will move to SC. Infinity Battlescape, Emyprion, Planet Nomads and others will also likely claim a percentage as well. What I think is a foregone conclusion is that by this time next year ED will have a smaller playerbase, unless in that time they manage to pull something really impressive out of the hat.

Don't get me wrong - I will forever like ED, and respect FDev for what they have achived so far, but NMS looks to have upped the bar by way more than even the most drugged-up Russian gymnast could achieve...

Interesting times!

Yep, I know what you mean. FD have accomplished a great deal, and with time may produce a really marvellous and fully-rounded game, but the competition is getting very tough and is not going to let up.

 

[Riedquat]

How about that seamless transition from planet to surface?....

 

[Vreynn]

I'm glad to see Noctis IV brought up occasionally in the context of No Man's Sky. The wait for Noctis V has been dreadful and still potentially infinite. No Man's Sky may lack the same sort of surreal solitude, but it feels like it will come the closest to a modern Noctis IV experience in spite of the weapons and antagonistic forces.

 

[Pomerlaw]

The big difference is multi-player vs solo. NMS is, as far as I'm aware, more of a shared game than a multiplayer game, which puts it in a very different category to either ED or SC. In both of the latter the devs are creating games where they actively want players to interact, particularly with regards to combat, whereas Hello Games are pretty much striving to keep people apart.

I don't think that's a bad thing, as such. Complaints about how lonely space is have been constant since ED started, and NMS is quite reasonably embracing isolation instead of trying to force it, and keeping a strong focus on NPC interaction as a fundamental part of gameplay. It will be fascinating to see how well "The Atlas" functions as a sort of virtual glue to keep the playerbase of essentially solo players united.

If there is a threat to ED it probably always has been SC and always will be, simply because they are sharing so many game concepts. Hand-crafted vs procedural really doesn't matter much in the final analysis, except as regards how many players will be encountered in an instance. SC will no doubt feel a lot more populated than ED.

What's probably going to happen is that more than a few solo, exploration and survival-game oriented players will migrate to NMS (I most likely will), whereas some PvP and traditional MMO oriented players will move to SC. Infinity Battlescape, Emyprion, Planet Nomads and others will also likely claim a percentage as well. What I think is a foregone conclusion is that by this time next year ED will have a smaller playerbase, unless in that time they manage to pull something really impressive out of the hat.



Yep, I know what you mean. FD have accomplished a great deal, and with time may produce a really marvellous and fully-rounded game, but the competition is getting very tough and is not going to let up.

Elite is the only game that is out now. Fontier has to deal with an opposition that does not exist in playable form yet, hyped directly from the dreams of wannabe players. And some of those dream really, really hard.

I think they all have their place, and I don't see Elite dying soon. Elite has some unique feature; The flight model and dogfight (which is awesome in my opinion, I can't say the same for SC and from the looks of it, Infinity), a full, real size galaxy with realistic planets (does NMS have real scale planets? They look small, even when we ignore the cartoony graphics) amongst others.

 

[Eldrazzi]

Elite is the only game that is out now. Fontier has to deal with an opposition that does not exist in playable form yet, hyped directly from the dreams of wannabe players. And some of those dream really, really hard.

I think they all have their place, and I don't see Elite dying soon. Elite has some unique feature; The flight model and dogfight (which is awesome in my opinion, I can't say the same for SC and from the looks of it, Infinity), a full, real size galaxy with realistic planets (does NMS have real scale planets? They look small, even when we ignore the cartoony graphics) amongst others.

Up until a few days ago the planets shown were of the smaller variety and placed fairly close together. Full-scale (Earth size and bigger) planets have been confirmed as have distant planets (long flights), though no gas-giants will be in the game because they don't see the point of creating a planet that you can't land on. There will be planets that are BIG, look like gas-giants and that will be landable but toxic to the player without major upgardes to your suit.

 

[CMDR StackOfCups]

I posted this in another thread but it got closed. I'm REALLY hoping that 2.1 comes out before June 21st, as I'm afraid that NMS is going to blow ED out of the water. If 2.1 comes out after NMS ans NMS doesn't happen to surprise us and suck, I don't I'll even bother opening ED back up. NMS looks like it will do all that I wished ED would do and more. The only thing I'll miss (but let's be honest, wasn't ever that great anyway) is the BGS. Sounds like there will still be some form of it, but not to the extent of unofficially aligning with one and helping it expand across the galaxy. We'll see though.

I hope FD realize that NMS offers a lot of what ED has, but where FD have advertised them as amazing features, NMS is more like, "Well it's a means to an end so of course it's there and works perfectly and efficiently", namely, the seamless planet/space transition. Both are procedural, both are the same scale, only NMS does it instantly... and look at all that extra stuff they have to load too! Gah! And the Hello Games team is a small fraction of the FD team. It really doesn't make sense to me. I could enter the atmosphere and leave it again before I even dropped out of super cruise on some days (those moments where you're stuck in the drop animation for 30+ seconds).

Anyway... I love ED. I just hope I want to play it after the 21st.

 

[kilvenny]

I posted this in another thread but it got closed. I'm REALLY hoping that 2.1 comes out before June 21st, as I'm afraid that NMS is going to blow ED out of the water. If 2.1 comes out after NMS ans NMS doesn't happen to surprise us and suck, I don't I'll even bother opening ED back up. NMS looks like it will do all that I wished ED would do and more. The only thing I'll miss (but let's be honest, wasn't ever that great anyway) is the BGS. Sounds like there will still be some form of it, but not to the extent of unofficially aligning with one and helping it expand across the galaxy. We'll see though.

I hope FD realize that NMS offers a lot of what ED has, but where FD have advertised them as amazing features, NMS is more like, "Well it's a means to an end so of course it's there and works perfectly and efficiently", namely, the seamless planet/space transition. Both are procedural, both are the same scale, only NMS does it instantly... and look at all that extra stuff they have to load too! Gah! And the Hello Games team is a small fraction of the FD team. It really doesn't make sense to me. I could enter the atmosphere and leave it again before I even dropped out of super cruise on some days (those moments where you're stuck in the drop animation for 30+ seconds).

Anyway... I love ED. I just hope I want to play it after the 21st.

NMS is a great technical masterpiece of procedural generation, but at its heart are some design choices which avoid some of the heavy development effort that ED has.

1) Infinite made up universe rather than Milky Way.
2) Flight/combat model is much simpler
3) Graphical style means much less effort required on generating art assets
4) Absence of proper multiplayer

My feeling is we need to get our hands on NMS and see exactly what the game play is, so we can see whether they have managed to find the compulsive game play that will turn us into explorers, rather than just looking and seeing each planet and thinking, different colour scheme, that animal is made up of pieces of animals from the last four planets I visited. At the moment all we have is a set of statements of the game play that can be construed in many ways. eg The languages, it's clear we need to understand how to write in them, but how do we gain that knowledge? Is it by picking up things by exploring or crafting or by some sort of deduction, perhaps even something different?

My experience of procedural generation is that its very hard to build using procedural generation and not leave a feeling of deja vu. Hopefully they have cracked it, but even if they haven't a lot of people will still play it for a while. How long that while is intrigues me and until we get our hands on it we just don't know.

What I do know is that I will always come back to ED because the flight/combat model, the Milky way and the graphical style of ED are all key elements for me and nothing else currently has that combination.

 

[GG7]

I pre-ordered my PS4 digital copy of NMS yesterday on Amazon.com!

Nice to get that 20% off Prime discount deal, and also the pre-order bonus ship which comes with a Hyperdrive and weapons. Coming off of Elite, not being able to jump to another solar system from day one might have been a bit of a drag. Now I don't have to worry about that anymore!

I compared the pre-order deal that SONY is offering for NMS against the deal on Amazon, and Amazon seemed like a much better choice. As far as I could tell, the SONY pre-order only gives you a bunch of NMS Avatars, but no upgraded ship to use in the game from day one. I'll take the upgraded ship any day!

As for NMS vs ED... I consider them two completely separate beasts. Both with their own strengths and weaknesses. I'm not crazy about the overly stylized look of NMS compared to the much more appealing realistic look of ED, but NMS definitely looks to have a lot more stuff going on in it than ED has. At least for someone playing both on a console and not a PC.

For all I know, I will still be waiting for Horizons to come out for the XB1 when I sit down with NMS for the first time in June. At least having NMS around will make the long wait for the XB1 ED upgrades less of a drag.

Now if June 21st would get here already! I'm totally ready for another universe to explore!

 

[cpbtrading]

Didn't see this up here yet. Worth a watch, quite a bit of info.


[video=youtube;hGXDCV9HiZ4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGXDCV9HiZ4[/video]

 

[lysan]

When you walk around the camera seams to float, and you don't see your feet? that is strange to me. Its simply to fluent in my opinion.

 

[PiLhEaD]

I know we all have Google (or in my case DuckDuckGo) - but I found this, and a few things struck me.

[video=youtube;JspGiUCDVtw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JspGiUCDVtw[/video]

Firstly, what an incredibly nice guy Sean comes across as being, and I suspect quite a talented chap too.

But, more than that - is it wrong that I am every bit as fascinated by the 'how' as I am by the 'what' (the end-product, aka game)? And yes dammit, I did want a guided tour of the inventory and upgrade screen(s).

I liked the off-line ability (I still feel the pain too) but was also a bit worried by the 'you can destroy stations, and that is the same for everyone' - I'm guessing what the day-3 activity will be for a particular type of 'players'... [sour] ...that said, with the players so dispersed, it may be a real non-issue.

Overall I am still wowed by the fidelity of what we're shown. Quite how it will stack up after a few hundred hours of play (like ED) I'm not sure, but I will be finding out in June... July......

That such a small team can come up with this I suspect has a few in FDev and CIG feeling a chill wind on their neck... well maybe not at CIG, hidden behind their wall of money with the fires burning bright... :x ... but you get the gist... Now, does anyone want to take bets on how long it will take for the ADHD Steam community members with 500+ games in their profile to start [down]'ing NMS as 'there's nothing to do'... aka "an inch deep and five-miles wide"^tm

NMS seems to align very well with how I enjoy playing ED - I couldn't care less about PP or CQC - I like to trade, explore and just enjoy the ride - so in a way I'm lucky I got the lifetime expansion pass with ED as I'm less convinced now that I would be buying subsequent seasons once NMS lands (pathetic pun fully intended).

 

[Riedquat]

"an inch deep and five-miles wide"^tm

Well, Ive used that analogy myself for ED and still stick to it.

I also use this one : "It's not about having more things to do, its about having reasons to want to do them"


No Man's Sky's economy also operates without player involvement. AI-controlled characters travel between planets and spaceports, bringing material up to be sold and traded. They transport material into frigates to be taken to other systems. Murray remarked that one of his favorite activities in-game is just to sit in space and watch the economy progress around him. "I often like to just sit there [in space]," he said. "It's quite nice... you get to sit there and watch the trade economy in motion."

I would like to know more about this, because I have been told on these forums several times that it would be almost impossible to simulate persistant NPC's across such a huge gameworld, so I am interested to know how it will work in NMS, are those ships actually carrying those goods like they would in the X games?, or is it just an illusion like in ED ?

 

[dannysquid]

Well, Ive used that analogy myself for ED and still stick to it.

I also use this one : "It's not about having more things to do, its about having reasons to want to do them"


No Man's Sky's economy also operates without player involvement. AI-controlled characters travel between planets and spaceports, bringing material up to be sold and traded. They transport material into frigates to be taken to other systems. Murray remarked that one of his favorite activities in-game is just to sit in space and watch the economy progress around him. "I often like to just sit there [in space]," he said. "It's quite nice... you get to sit there and watch the trade economy in motion."

I would like to know more about this, because I have been told on these forums several times that it would be almost impossible to simulate persistant NPC's across such a huge gameworld, so I am interested to know how it will work in NMS, are those ships actually carrying those goods like they would in the X games?, or is it just an illusion like in ED ?

I suppose because it doesn't have to synch it for all players. Nothing is getting sent back and forwards.

 

[lysan]

Well, Ive used that analogy myself for ED and still stick to it.

I also use this one : "It's not about having more things to do, its about having reasons to want to do them"


No Man's Sky's economy also operates without player involvement. AI-controlled characters travel between planets and spaceports, bringing material up to be sold and traded. They transport material into frigates to be taken to other systems. Murray remarked that one of his favorite activities in-game is just to sit in space and watch the economy progress around him. "I often like to just sit there [in space]," he said. "It's quite nice... you get to sit there and watch the trade economy in motion."

I would like to know more about this, because I have been told on these forums several times that it would be almost impossible to simulate persistant NPC's across such a huge gameworld, so I am interested to know how it will work in NMS, are those ships actually carrying those goods like they would in the X games?, or is it just an illusion like in ED ?

Not being possible is kind of a non valid answer I guess. I don't know why we don't have it in ED, however the fact is that we don't.

 

[Dozer.k.a.o.]

Starts to look really interesting.... however


if there is no track ir support... beh!
if there is no decent controller support.... pff!

I don't expect any of both since it is a game originally made for consoles...

 

[mossfoot]

Starts to look really interesting.... however


if there is no track ir support... beh!
if there is no decent controller support.... pff!


I don't expect any of both since it is a game originally made for consoles...

Well since the new T-Flight HOTAS is PS4 compatible, I'm not concerned about the latter

 

[Vasea Azure]

Starts to look really interesting.... however


if there is no track ir support... beh!
if there is no decent controller support.... pff!

I don't expect any of both since it is a game originally made for consoles...

This is actually a good question - do NMS have a proper hotas support? Any official word on that? Because if not this might be a no go for me actually, no joke.

 

[Hellhawk666]

...
Firstly, what an incredibly nice guy Sean comes across as being, and I suspect quite a talented chap too.

He reminds me of a young David Braben

...
...
Now, does anyone want to take bets on how long it will take for the ADHD Steam community members with 500+ games in their profile to start [down]'ing NMS as 'there's nothing to do'... aka "an inch deep and five-miles wide"^tm

There will be some of that, no doubt, but probably more "played for a few hours and bored now - too repetitive" comments.

... in a way I'm lucky I got the lifetime expansion pass with ED as I'm less convinced now that I would be buying subsequent seasons once NMS lands (pathetic pun fully intended).

I feel exactly the same.

I would like to know more about this, because I have been told on these forums several times that it would be almost impossible to simulate persistant NPC's across such a huge gameworld, so I am interested to know how it will work in NMS, are those ships actually carrying those goods like they would in the X games?, or is it just an illusion like in ED ?

I'm betting it's an illusion, but in the context of NMS it probably doesn't matter. Either that or each system has it's own mini-economy and they don't interact. Just a guess.

Starts to look really interesting.... however
if there is no track ir support... beh!
if there is no decent controller support.... pff!
I don't expect any of both since it is a game originally made for consoles...

Doesn't bother me at all, actually, and I love using those devices to enhance the game experience in some games. From ED, SC, Evochron and other games I demand good TrackIR and HOTAS support. NMS looks like it may do flying more like it is in Empyrion or Space Engineers, and M+KBD will be entirely adequate. Again, just a guess - if it is a more "twitch" game then yes, good HOTAS and head tracking support would be most desirable.