Things Elite Dangerous can learn from No Man's Sky
- Thread starter vitz3
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Most of the things I love about NMS are the things that really differentiate it -- it's trying to achieve something completely different. I love the look but don't think ELITE should go for the same look. I love learning the languages but this is too puzzle-gamey for ELITE. The crazy and fun variety is lovely, but again, it feels you'd be missing out on the vast loneliness that ELITE inspires (the best thing about it IMHO).
It's like asking what Dark Souls can learn from Super Mario's haunted house levels. Two very good games with different agendas.
But once they start doing worlds with atmospheres and life, NMS will be enormously useful to gauge what works and what doesn't. It's a nice benchmark.
To be honest, I assumed ELITE would be learning from NMS's interface, but despite its visual loveliness it's not nearly as user-friendly as I'd hoped.
It's like asking what Dark Souls can learn from Super Mario's haunted house levels. Two very good games with different agendas.
But once they start doing worlds with atmospheres and life, NMS will be enormously useful to gauge what works and what doesn't. It's a nice benchmark.
To be honest, I assumed ELITE would be learning from NMS's interface, but despite its visual loveliness it's not nearly as user-friendly as I'd hoped.
The NMS simulation is extremely simplistic and gamey (No bad thing, it suits the NMS style).
There is nothing FD can learn from that.
Considering the cool and realistic way FD is procedurally generating this universe I think it might be the other way around. Actually these games are very different in style and approach. They just do things their own way and that is fine.
As ED currently does not have atmospheric landing most of what you mention does currently not apply and once FD adds atmospheric landing I assure you they will do it much, much, much better and more convincing than in NMS. What NMS does is nice and good for a game of that type, but it is not good enough for the ED universe.
I do like the PG system NMS uses to generate life forms (there is a cool video about that somewhere), although they do create some very unlikely and very often samey stuff with it.
I hope FD will create a similar but more convincing biological PG system.
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I think so too.
Atmospheres and some weather effects even without life will be a welcome addition, especially if they don't delay the many different kinds of atmospheres for too long. I would, for one, love to fly through atmosphere of a different chemistry than ours, for the visuals if for nothing else.
That happens quite frequently, I find that I can often notice all the "flaws" and "problems" in something as I am very detail-oriented and literally can't "ignore" those imperfections. The difficulty is that you can sometimes stop "seeing" all of the good aspects as well until you encounter a truly flawed/broken game and see how bad things can actually get. I went from being quite critical of FD with 2.1.05 to actually being quite impressed with what they're planning with 2.2 and this was at least in part due to how disappointing NMS turned out to be. A similar thing happened to me with Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline, there were certainly many "flaws" and "imperfections" with BF4 but overall I still enjoyed the game. Then when I saw the mess that Visceral made of Hardline I had a lot more respect for what DICE achieved with Battlefield 4. Sometimes you need to play a truly mediocre/disappointing game every so often to truly appreciate a well-designed game again.
Yes, me too. We have become used to ED and sometimes forget how well this game is made.
Of course there are difficulties we encounter during this journey we make wit FD, but that is just how things are and always will be.
In general the quality of ED is astounding.
In my view there are two areas FD might think about based upon the way NMS planets are busier in terms of POI's and there is a need to repair your ship.
1) On some planets increase the number of POI's.
2) Add Engineers blue prints for repairs to modules. I would actually have the blue print at ship, module and module level, so there is effort required to forage the right blue prints for your ship and as you change ship there is more reason to locate engineers. Players can then repair their ships by foraging the correct resources according to the recipe for the blue print. No need to go to the engineer for the repair, you simply get the components and hit repair. No need for RNG on the repair either.
1) On some planets increase the number of POI's.
2) Add Engineers blue prints for repairs to modules. I would actually have the blue print at ship, module and module level, so there is effort required to forage the right blue prints for your ship and as you change ship there is more reason to locate engineers. Players can then repair their ships by foraging the correct resources according to the recipe for the blue print. No need to go to the engineer for the repair, you simply get the components and hit repair. No need for RNG on the repair either.
I suspect it's about right for barren rocky worlds. They can up the interest when we start landing on inhabited/atmosphere worlds.
I know that NMS has quieted my gripes for a while...... ED is sooooo far ahead of that game where it counts.
FDevs can't learn anything from NMS. Only thing better is the actual seamless transition from space to planet. But the planets from space look completely different when you arrive. The generation is better than most but still pretty bad. The flight model is beyond a joke and into the territory of "something is wrong in their heads" to think this is a good idea in a game about flight. No support for anything other than a gamepad. The only thing they could possibly learn, but is already in the works is more things to do on the planets. Other than that NMS was dead when it landed. And the last few patches have made the game worse. Back to Elite, and see if they can learn from NMSs mistakes.
If you thought FDevs did a minimalist job on ED when released NMS took that about 50 steps further down the not realized features path. Funny watching all the Youtube vids where they show all of Seans comments then expose what is actually in the game. It makes you wonder how the industry can allow this type of blatant fraud. I know Sony is now changing their refund policy due to NMS. Surprised Sean hasn't taken refuge somewhere to avoid all the negativity, but he must have known it was coming, or he's a complete idiot.
Not sure what happened to NMS other than Sony maybe tearing it apart for the consoles. Again a published game that has a night time, offers a torch, but it's useless because it never gets dark enough to use it, and it can't be used during the day cycle if you did for some reason find a spot in a cave that was a little dark. That was just a minor but seemingly standard practice I've seen from many devs lately. So much is so wrong with NMS it's amazing it was released.
If you thought FDevs did a minimalist job on ED when released NMS took that about 50 steps further down the not realized features path. Funny watching all the Youtube vids where they show all of Seans comments then expose what is actually in the game. It makes you wonder how the industry can allow this type of blatant fraud. I know Sony is now changing their refund policy due to NMS. Surprised Sean hasn't taken refuge somewhere to avoid all the negativity, but he must have known it was coming, or he's a complete idiot.
Not sure what happened to NMS other than Sony maybe tearing it apart for the consoles. Again a published game that has a night time, offers a torch, but it's useless because it never gets dark enough to use it, and it can't be used during the day cycle if you did for some reason find a spot in a cave that was a little dark. That was just a minor but seemingly standard practice I've seen from many devs lately. So much is so wrong with NMS it's amazing it was released.
Agree to an extent but I don't think NMS has ever been promised as "a game about flight" and they promised lots of things!
Sorry to cut out the rest as I agree with them all but this is a pet peeve of mine which I can't pass up addressing. I'll talk about this every opportunity I get on the forums so please indulge me.
The transitions from space to surface and vice versa in ED ARE INDEED SEAMLESS. The engine doesn't do any loading or unloading on approach.
What you perceive as a 'seam' is the delay when the game actually freezes time in your client to wait for server response concerning the instances it can place you in if there are any nearby commanders, or your own if there are not. This is a purely networking related issue and has nothing to do with the graphics engine. IT IS ALREADY SEAMLESS.
The other prominent 'seam', the station approach is a necessary evil as the stations are too small to accurately bull's-eye within supercruise speeds. We simply can't do it so when we have a station targeted, the game 'helps' us by placing us at a resonable distance to not make gameplay too tedious.
I'll say again once more. The whole system you are in, is there, loaded in the client and it is seamless. It doesn't load and unload assets (other than ships and non-permanent POIs). In fact, if you have the time, you can travel between everything in the system seamlessly in normal space flight. It has been done between very close together stations and planets before and there are videos on youtube.
The seeming 'seams' are just the game helping players get where they want faster because of the supercruise mechanic. The range of velocities in supercruise and normal space flight are so different, they simply can't be synced together so the game needs to check where everything goes when you transition between them. Otherwise the travel is seamless.
Did I say the game loads up the whole system when you arrive and everything is in there, ready to travel SEAMLESSLY if you simply choose to do so without going to supercruise? Well, it does.
I respect the fact that ED to you is the king of the hill, however that doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. Coupled with that fact NMS did get some things right despite the lies / fudges and you have the basis for this thread - I don't believe it's meant as a dig at ED, but rather "what did NMS get right that ED could learn from"
For me a few things stand out immediately:
- Variety in space stations (FD have hinted that 2.2 will add more)
- Surface scanner (FD said, I think, that they are changing (?) the way the radar and scanners work "soon")
- Crafting (FD are going to tweak crafting but IMO it's still RNG on top of RNG which is bad)
- Exploration is fun in NMS .. ED needs more variety and tools.
There are more, depending upon your perception / opinion of both titles.
The main difference between NMS and ED is that NMS does not need to talk to servers to determine stuff prior to landing on a planet. ED does, which introduces a stall effect for some people - that gives the illusion of it not being seamless. Doesn't matter to players if the game can do it without pausing - the fact remains - interrogating the servers introduces lag/delays which look like transitions.
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Yes, this is true. However, ED has to talk to the server one way or the other and NMS doesn't because they simply lied about implementing multiplayer.
ED can't, in any shape or form, learn how to do 'seamless' transitions from NMS because NMS doesn't know how to do them in a multiplayer environment either.
At the risk of derailing the thread that is a supposition - we have no idea why HGs made NMS single player as they haven't said yet.
Also note I didn't claim they could
Cool story bro. Myself 50 hours and rising ...
Are you sure ED can't learn anything from NMS ? You (and others) are suggesting that NMS got everything wrong compared to ED ? LOL
To name 2 : crafting & exploration are far better in NMS than ED IMO
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At the risk of derailing the thread that is a supposition - we have no idea why HGs made NMS single player as they haven't said yet.
Also note I didn't claim they could
You are right though, I shouldn't have claimed they couldn't just like you can't claim they could. I don't want to derail the thread either.
I made no such claims though - you talking to the right person here ? :S
Yea NMS is bloody awful those graphics just make me want to rip my eyes out
Its like some cartoon space adventure from the 1950s
I didn't say you made a claim. You didn't make that claim and I said I shouldn't have made a claim either. In other words, I'm agreeing with you
Yea NMS is bloody awful those graphics just make me want to rip my eyes out
Its like some cartoon space adventure from the 1950s
The "let's bash NMS" thread is this way ----------------->
I didn't say you made a claim. You didn't make that claim and I said I shouldn't have made a claim either. In other words, I'm agreeing with you
Ahhh ... *cough* Nothing to see here
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