No Man's Sky Thread

[yourbeliefs]

Looks like no early review copies of No Man's Sky are being released.

 

[king3pj]

Too bad. I have some interest in the PC version of this game but I'm not paying anywhere near $60 until I see some impressions from people I trust. There has been a ton of hype around No Man's Sky for a few years now but we have still seen very little of the game.

I can kind of see them not wanting to let people in ahead of release since it is a shared world and one of the big things they have talked about is trying to be the first person to discover and explore new planets. Also the things you do to the environment will affect what other players see when they land on that planet. You can mine the planets minerals making big holes in the landscape and you can make entire species of animals go instinct. That being said, the whole open ended hook for this game means it's not the kind of thing someone can crank out a review for after a day or two of playing. Early review copies are kind of necessary for a big game like this.

Because of the things I said in the second paragraph, I wonder if No Man's Sky will even be worth playing when it goes on sale in a couple months. If everything has already been discovered and most of the planets have already been stripped down people who come to the game late will get a completely different experience than the people who were there from day one. I know there are supposed to be a ton of procedurally generated planets but give a few hundred thousand gamers a couple months to explore and there might not be much left.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well I have it in my GF Queue so I'll get to experience it relatively early.

 

[lakebum431]

Too bad. I have some interest in the PC version of this game but I'm not paying anywhere near $60 until I see some impressions from people I trust. There has been a ton of hype around No Man's Sky for a few years now but we have still seen very little of the game.

I can kind of see them not wanting to let people in ahead of release since it is a shared world and one of the big things they have talked about is trying to be the first person to discover and explore new planets. Also the things you do to the environment will affect what other players see when they land on that planet. You can mine the planets minerals making big holes in the landscape and you can make entire species of animals go instinct. That being said, the whole open ended hook for this game means it's not the kind of thing someone can crank out a review for after a day or two of playing. Early review copies are kind of necessary for a big game like this.

Because of the things I said in the second paragraph, I wonder if No Man's Sky will even be worth playing when it goes on sale in a couple months. If everything has already been discovered and most of the planets have already been stripped down people who come to the game late will get a completely different experience than the people who were there from day one. I know there are supposed to be a ton of procedurally generated planets but give a few hundred thousand gamers a couple months to explore and there might not be much left.

I don't care if you have 1 million gamers exploring, it is going to take a LONG time to discover all of the planets. There are going to be 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 of them. Per this article:
https://blog.eu.playstation.com/2014/08/26/exploring-18446744073709551616-planets-mans-sky/
Even if a planet is discovered every second, it’ll take 585 billion years to find them all!

 

[king3pj]

I don't care if you have 1 million gamers exploring, it is going to take a LONG time to discover all of the planets. There are going to be 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 of them. Per this article:
https://blog.eu.playstation.com/2014/08/26/exploring-18446744073709551616-planets-mans-sky/
Even if a planet is discovered every second, it’ll take 585 billion years to find them all!

I stand corrected. I knew the number was big since they are procedurally generating them instead of manually designing each planet. I didn't know it was that big though. As long as they do a good job of starting people far enough away from each other in the universe there should be plenty to discover.

 

[lakebum431]

You're right. ensuring that people are way out by themselves is the key.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Looks like no early review copies of No Man's Sky are being released.

False alarm folks

 

[meStevo]

They're still 'limited', the original report was accurate. Really odd of Sony.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[yourbeliefs]

So Sony wasn't going to send out review copies because they wanted a day 1 patch done first. However, because some vendors broke the release date, various outlets and players got the game early, meaning various legitimate places can't review the game but random people can.

http://kotaku.com/the-no-mans-sky-review-copy-debacle-1784873415

 

[Derwin0]

Watched a good bit of the gameplay many are streaming on twitch.

Based on this, I decided not to do the pre-order (in order to get the pre-order goodies), and wait until the big post-release price drop, when gamestop is flooded with returns.

The game looks okay, but looks like it gets boring pretty quick.

 

[yourbeliefs]

The Day One patch for No Man's Sky does actually dramatically change the game.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/7/12397380/no-mans-sky-day-one-patch

Speaking of the Day 1 Patch, a developer wrote a really informative article for Polygon, discussing why Day 1 patches are so common, as they aren't so much because to fit a deadline, but because the certification process is such a mess that NOT using one would be even worse.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/7/12399170/no-mans-sky-day-one-patch-certification-launch-dates

Oh, and on a side note my copy from Gamefly shipped out today.

 

[king3pj]

I watched about an hour of Giant Bomb's No Man's Sky quick look last night and I'm sold. I just pre-ordered the game on Steam. I was already very interested in the game so as long as it didn't look completely terrible they weren't going to do much to change my opinion.



Normally I'm against pre-orders but Steam's refund policy has basically removed all of the risk from doing it. The pre-order bonus is a ship with better weapons and a better hyperdrive so I will actually get something useful from giving them the money two days early.

If it turns into an Arkham Knight situation where the game just doesn't work on PC I can get my money back. Even if I just decide I don't like it or for any other reason I can get my money back.

The only real debate for me was whether to pre-order from Steam or GOG. Lately I've been leaning towards GOG whenever a game is on both. This time I went with Steam for a couple reasons.

The main reason is Steam has a much better refund policy. As I said before, I can get my money back from Steam for any reason in the first two weeks after purchase as long as I play for less than two hours. GOG's refund policy is that you can only get your money back if the game doesn't work, and only after you go through troubleshooting with their customer support. Since this is a pre-order and I have no guarantee how the game will run Steam's refund policy is important to me.

The other reason is that I know I will want to take lots of screenshots of the crazy looking planets I'm exploring. On Steam that's as simple as pushing Shift+F12. GOG Galaxy still doesn't have this simple feature built in. Surprisingly, Nvidia's Shadowplay doesn't have a screenshot feature either.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Just make sure you don't call the game "Mediocre." That's all it took for people to launch a DDoS attack on Jim Sterling's website and take it down for a day. Scott may revoke your Lifetime Supporter Status if your views lead to a similar fate for SatGuys..

http://www.thejimquisition.com/no-mans-site/

 

[king3pj]

Just make sure you don't call the game "Mediocre." That's all it took for people to launch a DDoS attack on Jim Sterling's website and take it down for a day. Scott may revoke your Lifetime Supporter Status if your views lead to a similar fate for SatGuys..

http://www.thejimquisition.com/no-mans-site/

Is there a service where you can pay for DDoS attacks or something? Video game brats have been shutting down massive companies like Blizzard, Microsoft, Sony, and Steam and I know most of these gamers who have temper tantrums over almost anything aren't smart enough to pull it off themselves. People this upset about a bad review just because it's a hyped up PS4 console exclusive can't be the brightest bunch.

Unfortunately I don't see this trend going anywhere unless the people responsible start getting caught and end up in jail. Maybe if there is a real risk of some jail time these idiots will decide shutting down a server for a couple hours isn't worth it.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well I think part of the problem is that it's done via controlled, bot computers that are doing nothing but sending tons of data to take down a site. But yeah the bigger story is that people are using DDoS attacks to get back at people who don't agree with them, and are doing it over a GAME. I'm listening to The Podquistion right now at work and Gavin was telling about how he saw a user on Reddit post why he cancelled his preorder of the game and he listed sound, logistical reasons for why he decided to do so. He later edited the post to say that he had received death threats.

I plan on streaming it when I get the game in (assuming I can get Twitch streaming to work on my PS4) and even though I have only 2 subscribers you never know if people are out there trying to just put down people who didn't think this was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

 

[king3pj]

Well I think part of the problem is that it's done via controlled, bot computers that are doing nothing but sending tons of data to take down a site. But yeah the bigger story is that people are using DDoS attacks to get back at people who don't agree with them, and are doing it over a GAME. I'm listening to The Podquistion right now at work and Gavin was telling about how he saw a user on Reddit post why he cancelled his preorder of the game and he listed sound, logistical reasons for why he decided to do so. He later edited the post to say that he had received death threats.

I plan on streaming it when I get the game in (assuming I can get Twitch streaming to work on my PS4) and even though I have only 2 subscribers you never know if people are out there trying to just put down people who didn't think this was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It goes both ways. If you look at the Steam forums for No Man's Sky there are plenty of people calling it the worst game of the year and saying nasty things about the developer because he mentioned the possibility of meeting up with other players over 2 years ago.

They have since been pretty clear that this is not a multiplayer game but you will be able to see signs of what other people have done in the environment. People were expecting this to be a multiplayer survival game like ARK Survival Evolved or Rust in space and are furious that it is really a single player game. I'm personally really glad it's not that kind of game. If it was I would have a lot less interest in it.

 

[Derwin0]

Well the reviews have confirmed my fears of boredom after the initial playing, so glad I didn't pre-order. I'll wait until the price drop before I bother with it.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Broadcasting NMS now.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Here's my 2+ hour play session from yesterday. It took me two hours to figure out how to get off the first planet. Part of that I attribute to my own ineptitude, but part of it I also attribute to the game for not properly explaining stuff, such as in my second playthrough when I didn't realize how to recover my suit from environmental conditions. I suppose you could argue that how to do various things is in the menus, but I figured at least from the first time I was playing that maybe they could have said, "Hey your life support systems are at 25%. Here's how you can fix it" as opposed to just leaving that for me to discover in the menus (which aren't very well designed either IMO.) More than likely I'll be playing again tonight but this time I'll be trying to answer a distress beacon.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Streaming again (or at least will be by 8pm)

Here's the stream I recorded. My patience is really starting to wear thin with this game..