No Man's Sky

[jupiter]

Oh yes, I did hear about that argument.

Thankfully, I'm not the sort who looks too deeply into games prior to playing them. Helps me to take the game at face value rather than what was promised/hyped.

The problem is that the game sold a lot of pre-orders on that hype and it turned out to be lacking much of what was being promised and talked about.  Lot of pissed off people.  The game ran poorly on PS4 also, which you don't see as often from console games usually.  I know of people having tons of crashes.  I had a game crash and a few times the framerate would randomly drop down to like 5 before fixing itself.

Oh, for sure. For those who were trying to make an informed decision on whether to preorder or not, it's totally justified to feel cheated and want your money back. I'm glad Sony is refunding for folks, honestly. I'm curious if NMS will follow through with all these patches and not fall the way of Arkham Knight on Steam.

I heard they just were about to release a PS4 patch that was supposed to fix a lot of the issues, not sure about PC.  It's possible it'll be fine, it was just rushed out and Hello Games is a tiny team.  Arkham Knight was a special case in that they apparently couldn't even fix it at a certain point.  There was just something inherently broken in the game that a patch couldn't fix.

Yeah, that was super sad. Watched my bf play it on the PS4, and it ran great and was really interesting to watch. NMS is definitely an ambitious independent game, and I'm curious about what we'll think of it (if at all) a year from now.

I honestly hope they get their stuff together and fix it the way Diablo 3 was fixed. where they add in most/all of what was promised and then some.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what will happen. It's kind of sad that games these days assume they can afford to release as a shell and add in features down the road. Not that I don't enjoy the shell that NMS is, or the shell that D3 was.

[kamikazekeeg]

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what will happen. It's kind of sad that games these days assume they can afford to release as a shell and add in features down the road. Not that I don't enjoy the shell that NMS is, or the shell that D3 was.

All NMS had to do was to release as Early Access, charge a cheaper price of say 30 to 40 bucks for the initial buy in, and say that'll they'll be in development for another year to get everything else they want into the game.  Then when they get to a finished state, they bring it back up to full price, release it physically with all the treats, and basically get to sell the game twice.  This way people aren't upset they released an unfinished shell of a game, but they get money to support the game for the things they clearly wanted to implement, but likely Sony demanded they release what they got.

[tripredacus]

I don't think Early Access would have cut it. The game has a more polished and complete feel when you consider how it plays and do not take into account what they previously said would be in the game. What got me to make the purchase was watching someone play the PS4 version on Twitch. Remember, the game came out on PS4 a week earlier than on PC. PC owners would have been able to see exactly what gameplay was like if they watched that. I didn't pre-order until I saw actual gameplay and I like what I saw.

The developers should have prepared for communicating with the players. Not in a direct, have conversations with them on social media type way, but have something ready. Like, they would have known the game did not release with everything working or enabled. Take the portal monoliths for example. They obviously have future plans for the game, they could have released a generic timeline for things to keep people happy.

[kamikazekeeg]

I don't think Early Access would have cut it. The game has a more polished and complete feel when you consider how it plays and do not take into account what they previously said would be in the game. What got me to make the purchase was watching someone play the PS4 version on Twitch. Remember, the game came out on PS4 a week earlier than on PC. PC owners would have been able to see exactly what gameplay was like if they watched that. I didn't pre-order until I saw actual gameplay and I like what I saw.

The developers should have prepared for communicating with the players. Not in a direct, have conversations with them on social media type way, but have something ready. Like, they would have known the game did not release with everything working or enabled. Take the portal monoliths for example. They obviously have future plans for the game, they could have released a generic timeline for things to keep people happy.

There's a lot they could've done, but they apparently decided that pretending the game was some grander experience than it really was and trying to keep up some sort of mystique around the game was more important than actually making sure people understood what their game was about.

[jupiter]

Honestly I'd be surprised if Hello Games didn't have some choice words for Sony. I'd like to get an inside perspective on how Sony treated them during this games production.

That'd probably be a cool idea for a short documentary with interviews from both sides. This is pure speculation but I'd guess that Sony had a lot to do with the way this game was pushed, and the way things were cut as well. Get on that journalists!

Then again I'm always a fan of the little guy, so I'm definitely biased in my speculation here.

[kamikazekeeg]

Honestly I'd be surprised if Hello Games didn't have some choice words for Sony. I'd like to get an inside perspective on how Sony treated them during this games production.

That'd probably be a cool idea for a short documentary with interviews from both sides. This is pure speculation but I'd guess that Sony had a lot to do with the way this game was pushed, and the way things were cut as well. Get on that journalists!

Then again I'm always a fan of the little guy, so I'm definitely biased in my speculation here.

My guess is that Sony was more behind the games release date.  It's clear that they had bigger plans with everything they talked about, but weren't even close to accomplishing those ideas and Sony wasn't going to let them drag things out for another year or two of development they desperately needed.  Not that Hello Games is blameless, Sean is a disastrous mess of a PR guy lol

[jupiter]

He really is though, haha. He's got odd mannerisms and speech patterns as well. Almost makes you think he's a bit "challenged" or something.

Anyway I'm still having some fun with it and it looks like there is confirmation for free updates to add to/improve the game beyond just bug fixing later down the road according to this quote from the "news" section of their main site, posted on sept. 2nd;

"...We’re developers, and our focus is first on resolving any issues people have with the game as it is, then on future free updates which will improve, expand and build on the No Man’s Sky universe."

It's good that the updates are free at least, there was some question as to paid dlc, but they may as well have just released in early access as was mentioned earlier.

[tripredacus]

It seems like there have been some updates to PC already... or at least I have noticed some gameplay changes. One is suit notifications. I do not always get a warning at 75% now.

Is there any list of what all the sounds are in the game? There are still some sounds that mean something but I don't know what they are yet.

[necrosexual]

Honestly I'd be surprised if Hello Games didn't have some choice words for Sony. I'd like to get an inside perspective on how Sony treated them during this games production.

That'd probably be a cool idea for a short documentary with interviews from both sides. This is pure speculation but I'd guess that Sony had a lot to do with the way this game was pushed, and the way things were cut as well. Get on that journalists!

Then again I'm always a fan of the little guy, so I'm definitely biased in my speculation here.

My guess is that Sony was more behind the games release date.  It's clear that they had bigger plans with everything they talked about, but weren't even close to accomplishing those ideas and Sony wasn't going to let them drag things out for another year or two of development they desperately needed.  Not that Hello Games is blameless, Sean is a disastrous mess of a PR guy lol

tbf, i don't think murray is trained in public relations OR speech. i think we tend to forget, but these devs... these indie devs are usually normal people. they don't have experience with public speaking... they're not trained in that, that's not what they went to school or trained for, their expertise is making games and compiling code, not public speaking.
murray is... i think murray is what happens when you don't have a PR guy pulling you back, and what happens when a game is so ridiculously overhyped, and there are hundreds of questions and emails and tweets all coming at you, and you know that you know that what you wanted to put out is nothing like what the speculation/hype is putting forward... it's a whole fucking mess. and i don't understand how anyone could wish for this level of notoriety during development

honestly, when the game was announced back in 2013... and i saw people LOSE THEIR GODDAMN MINDS i kept wondering... WHY? as someone who is very fond of (too fond?) exploration in games above most other things (challenge and socialising, especially) i know i'm almost very much alone in that... and this game was presenting just that. explore everything. survive the elements. explore some more. what's the point? who cares, there's not one. keep exploring. and seeing even 'dudebro' gamers lose their motherfucking shit over this game confused the fuck out of me.

and boy oh boy did i ever realise why when i had one guy ARGUE with me, in 2014, that this game would be awesome because potential big spehzz dawgfitez. ...wew.

i knew then that this shit had exploded into a hype train, and journalists weren't helping and murray's half-answers and non-answers weren't helping, either.

and i imagine if you're murray... this pretty much no-name before then? if you're that guy, watching this explosion, knowing the vitriol gamers sling when you say "uh, no... that's not how it's going to be", watching the hype get bigger and bigger... murray was really dodgy. you can look back and watch him in interviews get uncomfortable and dodgy. it's kinda painful. it makes me wonder how much was:

1) murray seeing this hype cloud get so dense that he didn't want to deal with the outrage if he straight-up said "uhm no, no, you have it all wrong" (basically, putting off the anger/pain/bullshit for later)
2) murray seeing this hype cloud and seeing $$$
or/and
3) something to do with sony

i don't think it's much a coincidence that as the hype built up and as more and more people (i won't call them 'fans', they were not 'fans', they were just hyping shit up) started making more and more requests, murray began to talk more and more about things that people are bitching about (like multiplayer)... things that, back in 2013, they were pretty adamant on not 'really' having (no lobby system, no starting out with friends, etc). i don't know much of what happened since 2013 and early 2014. i stopped paying attention, as i do. but as gamers got more and more insistent on things, so too did murray. and now he's radio silent. it's all strange.

needless to say, i do think this game was NOT meant for most people, and i don't think it ever WAS meant to be for most people. it was clearly, on onset, a game in which you did a fucking lot of exploration... more exploration than ANYTHING else. that people thought there would be dogfights between players, base building (huh? the whole point of the game is to planet hop though??), a lot of terraforming and other things is kind of bizarre. maybe i'm wrong, though, but that's all you COULD take away from the 2013 e3 reveal, honestly, because there literally wasn't anything else other than talk of a bunch of planets to explore in space.

(now you can argue all day about how shit the exploration is, be my guest, that is where this game should be criticised, not for what it 'is not'. not for not being elite: dangerous or star citizen)

i think this is such a compounded issue... that it's really hard for me to sit around and read NMS complaints and people absolutely trashing murray and not just wonder why... people are breaking this down into "murray is a big fucking liar and a piece of shit". but then, i also was completely baffled that the average dudebro annual CoD-consumer was actually looking at NMS with any interest whatsoever, so maybe the joke's on me.

fwiw: i don't want to sound like a total fucking asskissing shill. i haven't bought the game. i'm still waiting for the price to drop. i have been just... following this drama, so this is a complete outsider's perspective. i hate shit like this a lot in the gaming community. it really tears the whole thing apart, so i tend to do a lot of lurking for things like this, taking in a lot of opinions and trying to piece together fact from... the hype. yes, there is the now famous reddit list, but a lot of that seems like obvious "we didn't have time" shit, and the blame can likely be put on sony for the lack of time, and the lack of a PR agent telling murray to shut the fuck up for the promises that couldn't be realised.

i don't know, at this point, i'm rambling because i'm incredibly tired and trying to drag myself to go get cigarettes.

late edit: it's interesting to note that the master list on reddit... seemed to, before it was deleted, keep getting knocked off. "i've seen the pics, it's in" "this is actually in"
it seems things are being discovered by the week...

[kamikazekeeg]

Well it wasn't just Murray not being good at PR from the point of being an awkward developer, it was that he kept promising things and hinting that other aspects would be coming, through the entire development cycle, up till release practically.  He never seemed to say no to anything or that there just won't be multiplayer at all or really gave any sort of firm grasp on what the game would really be.  I think Murray is just as much at fault as Sony was for continuing to push this game as much as they did, though Sony was likely at fault for pushing the game out too early.

This was either a game that needed 2 or 3 more years of development to even get close to achieving what it was pretending to be, or scaled back to a 20 to 30 dollar walking simulator with very little gameplay other than interaction with aliens and artifacts.  The only people I see saying they like the game are those that pop on for short bits of time to explore a new planet, see the weird creatures, and then quit, because they just want it for a bit of visual distraction.  Anyone else that would've wanted a deeper crafting survival game or a space sim got a game that was terrible in both aspects.

[kashell]

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/179928/20160928/no-mans-sky-under-investigation-for-misleading-marketing-in-the-uk.htm

Ha...

[kamikazekeeg]

Not surprised.  The game on Steam is still advertising itself with it's nonsense early trailer videos that aren't remotely representative of the actual games release.  I doubt any of the pictures are from the released game too.  Then again, it's mostly dead on Steam now and it's buried under negative reviews.  The game certainly deserves it.

[tripredacus]

I'm not as into it as I once was, but I am not disappointed with my purchase.

[kamikazekeeg]

I'm not as into it as I once was, but I am not disappointed with my purchase.

It's cool you were able to find something to enjoy, but they are still advertising a game that doesn't exist and spent a lot of time promoting aspects that aren't there and seemingly refused to actually deny whether it had certain features or not.

[desocietas]

I'm not as into it as I once was, but I am not disappointed with my purchase.

I feel the same way, but I also count myself fortunate to not have been caught up in all the hype or research into the game prior to the purchase.