No Man's Sky - Interceptor

[patters2.0]

8 minutes ago, Blu3Flame said:

Steam didn't 'cave', you can get non automated refunds regardless of playtime on any game. Once you've got a refund that way you'll have trouble with their support if you try to do it on another game though.

I see. I had read that normally it's only up to something like 2 hours of playtime, but I suppose that's probably automated refunds only.

[Darren]

Thanks @patters2.0. You're right, what a fiasco!

[Blu3Flame]

7 minutes ago, patters2.0 said:

I see. I had read that normally it's only up to something like 2 hours of playtime, but I suppose that's probably automated refunds only.

 

Yes. It's 2 hours for a simple click and get your money back, otherwise it goes to support to be reviewed. They've always been fairly lenient if it's your first refund of that type.

[patters2.0]

There's also been a heck of a lot of shoddy reporting on gaming news sites about this, so no wonder I've maybe got an over exaggerated view of the negative events. Reddit isn't the healthiest place for hype-driven game launches.

One day the NMS servers glitched and a user claimed that all his discoveries older than two weeks had gone - gaming websites ran the story without even checking it, and it turned out to be bullshit. Hello Games of course took a kicking.

[robdood]

@patters2.0 AngryJoe's review was actually pretty spot-on, I thought.   The first few hours of NMS are the best, imo.  I've put in about 60 hours btw, and have put it down while still 30k LY from the centre.  The final 'grind' to reach the middle is so tedious.  

 

And I think you're being a bit disingenuous with your Murray quotes there to back up your position.  There were plenty of things that were (allegedly) already in the game at the time of interviews just 4 months before release that turned out to be missing from the final game. 

 

The tech is grand, but the actual 'game' other than it being a nice chillout / screenshot taker is very thin.  Shockingly so, I'd say.   In your earlier post you described the good qualities of the game: 

8 hours ago, patters2.0 said:

The every-frame-worthy-of-a-screenshot art, the inspired musical sound track, the sound design itself (in particular the suit voice which harks back to Half-Life's HEV, the clunking starship engine and roll thrusters), the crafting, the 'feel' of the universe - are all really special

Let's see how much of that relates to actual gameplay, things you have to think about and make decisions on...

- screenshots

- audio

- crafting

- feel 

 

Out of all of the gameplay elements, like the things you actually DO in the game, you cite crafting?!  The really slow laborious bit where I have to use a stupid pointer interface with a slow spinning confirmation circle every time?  The thing where i I want to craft some hyperdrive fuel I have to make each of the prior 4 items in turn, using aforementioned clunky interface?  Jesus mate.  I know you bought a PS4 just for it, but championing this aspect of the game seems a bit mental to me.   But what else could you have mentioned?  The weak combat?  The mining?  The cataloguing of creatures?  The awful vending machine NPCs with a piss-poor reputation system that does nothing? 

 

Yes, there are some dickheads who piss and moan a bit too loud on reddit etc, but not everyone who has issues with the game is like that.  You're talking about NMS as if it is somehow immune from criticism, but it is possible to love and hate it at the same time, you know?  Here are some interesting reviews of NMS, imo, that aren't afraid to tell it like it is. 

 

 

 

I'm most disappointed with it because I was expecting a pretty tough, exciting space survival 'sim' of sorts.  Instead we have a really barebones survival game, where the balance of discovery is so skewed you find 90% of the blueprints in the first 10 hours, then spend 30 hours trudging towards the centre doing the same things over and over.   I'm really hoping they do continue to work on it and make it a more interesting game, I'm hoping to come back in 6 months and see what's updated. 

 

You mentioned Elite earlier too - you should really check Elite Dangerous out, you know.  

 

 

 

 

[Davros sock drawer]

8 minutes ago, dood said:

 

I was expecting a pretty tough, exciting space survival 'sim' of sorts.  

 

 

I'm really not sure why you thought that. Everything pointed to it being a super chilled out experience.

 

I wouldn't be happy if the game had turned out how you wanted it. Not everything has to be difficult.

[robdood]

 

8 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

 

I'm really not sure why you thought that. Everything pointed to it being a super chilled out experience.

 

I wouldn't be happy if the game had turned out how you wanted it. Not everything has to be difficult.

I don't mean 'difficult' I mean 'interesting' and 'challenging' cognitively. 

 

You basically don't even have to think while playing it.  That is what I'm most disappointed with. 

[Broker]

35 minutes ago, patters2.0 said:

The sort of people who whined that Sean Murray had 'promised' them stuff that wasn't in the game petitioned Steam so hard they caved in and allowed refunds regardless of playtime. Apparently even Sony buckled too and allowed PS4 players refunds (presumably in the PSN store). Plenty of people on Reddit admitted to having played for over 100 hours and still got their money back. Some former Sony executive Tweeted that was tantamount to theft and there was a big ole Internet ruckus. Recall, the only evidence these people had was stuff like:

 

-(Interviewer) Can you play this with other people?

-(Sean Murray)<pauses> Erm Yes. But it's not that type of game.

 

From about 2014 I think:

-Here's a space battle, you can join in, you can take sides.

 

Apparently according to the disgruntled the first answer is a contractual engagement to provide a multiplayer environment. Sean is probably thinking that the server-side discovery cataloguing makes it arguably sort of multiplayer, and you can certainly socially play it with other people comparing discoveries and the like. Lots of Redditors have found that it's a great game to play with their young kids for example.

 

The second answer apparently 'entitles' people to expect a full faction mechanic within the game which isn't really there. Some reviewers like AngryJoe on Youtube literally claimed space battles never occur (I have had quite a few - they're the distress signal things). Now you can indeed take sides. Help the pirates blow up the cargo ship, or fend them off. Admittedly it doesn't really impact the game besides subtly affecting your standing with the three alien races, but yeah let's all demand our money back. I wouldn't be surprised if Sean Murray decides to go get a job as a developer for a bank after finding out just how awful so much of the buying public actually are.

 

There were some other things that riled people - apparently he had in some press interviews mentioned that the planets' rotation was modelled which turned out not to be the case (HG since claimed playtesters found that confusing), but really there aren't huge differences between what was shown off and the finished game.

 

At least the obnoxious haters now have their refunds so what's left is a core of people who actually like the game.

 

Jesus, you could at least try to be vaguely balanced if you're going to swoop in. 

 

Hello Games were talking about multiplayer and using games like Dark Souls and Journey as examples all the way through development. At launch, they had in no way made it clear if the game had any kind of multiplayer in the released versions and when two people tried to meet up and it didn't work they tweeted about it once (server issues) and then never mentioned it again. It's fine to get excited in development but when features get cut you tell people, not act like it's an exciting mystery when you know there's nothing there. They've also been severely misguided with their enthusiasm for the center and the journey there, could have done with cutting some trailers that showed the finished UI and draw distance, and really shouldn't talk shit about other people using skyboxes when their game does as well.

 

I'm not saying all of the crazy stuff directed at HG is justified, but throwing out every complaint as crazy is completely unfair. The huge backlash against the game was caused by something, and personally whilst I think Sony PR are mainly to blame HG have acted a bit like Molyneux, and a fair few people already made that mistake once.

[Davros sock drawer]

Well, you said "tough", so I thought you meant difficult.

 

Different strokes. I think they've got the balance of it about right. I don't want to be constantly on my toes,and I like being able to switch my brain off a bit. In fact sometimes I wish I could be left alone more to relax and take screenshots. 

 

The "thin-ness" you describe is part of what I like, and in fact I would take stuff away from the game and make it less game-like. I think they were put under a lot of pressure to add content that more traditional games usually include, and they hurt the game overall. 

[patters2.0]

20 minutes ago, dood said:

@patters2.0 AngryJoe's review was actually pretty spot-on, I thought.   The first few hours of NMS are the best, imo.  I've put in about 60 hours btw, and have put it down while still 30k LY from the centre.  The final 'grind' to reach the middle is so tedious.  

 

 

AngryJoe's job is to make ranty reviews and I get that, but he did call out some things as bullshit which are totally in the game - flying snake things among others. It's true that the game elements are not really firmed up, that it was more of a sandbox, and I think that's why I'm running out of steam now. A big part of the drive was upgrading gear to see what the red stars are like, then green, then blue. And that's pretty much done now. Like you I'm expecting more to do in future updates.

 

As for Elite Dangerous, well I have been looking. I still remember the aching grind just to get better lasers and the thrill of finally getting the military lasers. But I was 12 years old then and had shit loads of spare time. I'm scared of the time commitment of a modern Elite. Destiny had quite a hold on me for a while last year and I'm not sure it was healthy

[macosx]

Going to be interesting to see what they add to the game to make it more satisfying for the long haul.

It definitely needs some mystery or epic places or loot to find. What's the point of building something so big if it's all familiar and rote in 15 hours.

Top of my  wishlist:

Would definitely like some more variation added to the algorithm pool of elements for animals and planets

Deeper combat and ship customisation.

Meaningful trading and faction stuff

Make mapping your journey easier. Maybe even a fast travel portal to base thing.

Out of ship camera view and proper photomode on PS4

 

Mind you all this would be a universe reboot wouldn't it?

[Davros sock drawer]

27 minutes ago, macosx said:

 

What's the point of building something so big if it's all familiar and rote in 15 hours.

 

 

I'm still finding new sights to see, and I must be well past 100 hours.

 

It depends what you're looking for.

[patters2.0]

56 minutes ago, dood said:

@patters2.0 Here are some interesting reviews of NMS, imo, that aren't afraid to tell it like it is. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for linking - both excellent reviews, in particular the first one (pretty funny) which talks about the same emergent moments of crisis that I mentioned, and why they're so good precisely because most of the rest of the experience is so comfortable: "Maybe this is the fucked planet where if I land, I'll be fucked." 

 

The second review I think hits it spot on by saying that really it's a zen game rather than a traditional game. To paraphrase: "NMS does things badly that other games do so well, but the things it does well it does all by itself."

 

I have plenty of friends who play all games strategically, always with an eye on the underlying systems. If you're that type of player then you're not likely to enjoy NMS. I think I must be a zen gamer then. I can never be arsed with playing things looking for loopholes in systems maxing out stats etc. I just like to turn off my brain and imagine being in the game world.

[macosx]

Congratulations! You've warped into the Apologist Zone @Davros sock drawer

[patters2.0]

35 minutes ago, macosx said:

Mind you all this would be a universe reboot wouldn't it?

I think that's the big issue hence the day one patch requiring a new start. In one interview Sean Murray mentioned that the systems are chaotic, so the slightest tweak to the algorithms can throw out the world generation in unexpected ways. With that in mind I suspect that wrestling those algorithm constraints into a workable universe at all must have been very challenging.

[Davros sock drawer]

16 minutes ago, macosx said:

Congratulations! You've warped into the Apologist Zone @Davros sock drawer

 

It was the only new formula I learned yesterday.

 

I don't doubt that the game can be better (I agree with most of your wishlist). It's tempting to play it and think "If only...".

 

But the more I play it the more I think "No, hang on a minute - This is fucking brilliant, just as it is". I think some of the changes or advancements people are suggesting would change the game in an undesirable way for me. I play it as much for the rote repetition as anything else. It's very relaxing.

 

I mean, take this Reddit post. Somebody posted an amazing shot of a huge cruiser, larger than any I've seen in the game. One of the replies:

 

Land on it. Shoot open the hangar doors. Survive a firefight against the passengers in a procedurally generated interior. Containers here, barricades there. One of the passengers has a keycard to the storage area. Take all the resources on the inside. Pilot the battleship and fly it into the planet. Steal one of the better ships in the hangar before the battleship crashes into the planet. Land several miles away and watch the huge chunk of metal collide with the planet, obliterating the terrain and creating a massive permanent crater. Rare and new materials lying dormant under the planet's surface become accessible due to the crater being so deep. Land your ship close to the epicenter. Some magma is leaking out of the planet's crust. Rare elements scattered everywhere.

If only. Currently they are just pretty models sat in space.

 

I mean, ignoring the "Moon on a stick" nature of that post, I wouldn't want NMS to be like that. It's not GTAV in space, it's a 70's Sci-Fi book cover generator.

[robdood]

Well, from my experience of playing with mods, you can tweak stuff with minimal impact.  But sometimes you do end up inside the floor after changing things to do with terrain layout etc. 

 

So in short, they'd definitely need everyone to delete their saves.  Lol!  They're never going to change it.  

[Davros sock drawer]

I think there are some very simple tweaks they can make, obvious improvements like Photo Mode etc, but I think certain aspects of the game are just going to remain the way they are.

 

You never know though, there might be a sequel.

[macosx]

17 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

I wouldn't want NMS to be like that.

 

nor me, just the systems they have to be a bit deeper

[Gorf King]

I find it difficult to discuss this game without some of the more zealous critics going overboard about the terrible lies for which Murray should be disgraced, and the insane wish lists of everything everyone wants to see in a game set in space; and on the other hand, some people who maintain that there's really nothing significantly wrong with the game at all, it's a pinnacle of design and absolutely brilliant. I'd call the game divisive, but I don't even think it is - it's more a sort of litmus test for fanboys to see which of the only two available colours they will turn.

 

Not to restate everything again, but it's obvious that many of the mechanics of the game are completely underdeveloped or even, in some cases, broken. And it's equally obvious that the game was missold on several occasions. (The stuff Murray said about, for example, meeting other people I don't believe now was ever really in the game at any stage, and I think he's been very misleading and quite dishonest about that.) But at the same time, it does some stuff very well - and by 'some stuff' I mean the basic idea of procedurally-generated planets. It is, as Davros says, a sci-fi book cover generator. And the extent to which you'll enjoy it is equal more or less to the extent to which your appetite for slightly different sci-fi book covers remains unsated after you've seen tens or hundreds of them, looking for the small variant in each. (For me that started to wear a bit thin after about thirty, when most were more similar to everything I'd seen before than they were dissimilar in any way. But your mileage may vary.)

 

There's really nothing much more to the game than that, and I don't think it's going to change drastically in the next six months or so. Maybe not even in the next year. All the rest of the stuff - the Atlas path, the centre, the basic way crafting works, the differences (apart from aesthetic) between the ships - I think that's all just going to stay underdeveloped. I can't see how some of these tacked-on or truncated things are going to change radically now. I think No Man's Sky will remain essentially a book cover generator, and all the progression and 'gameplay' aspects will remain anaemic. I think it'd be wise to just accept that.

 

In terms of enjoyment the divide will remain between people who are happy to pay for and play that, and those who think that should merely be the aesthetic basis for a game - that a game is more than that. But I don't think there's any reasonable denying at this point that this is not how the game was sold. I think it's obvious that expectations were raised a lot higher than that. If the game had been sold as 'a 70's Sci-Fi book cover generator' and little or nothing more than that, there wouldn't have been all this kerfuffle. I'd say that maybe that's what they should have done. But then, there are a lot of people who wouldn't pay £50 for a 70's Sci-Fi book cover generator, and therein lies the rub, and a lot of the ill feeling about the title.

[David Kenny]

I'm still playing the game having bought it at launch and still enjoy it, but for me it could have been massively improved by offering a genuine survival mode. As dood says it's simply too easy to basically see everything the game has to offer in the first few hours. I've died once in the whole game and that was just because I tried to take on 30 pirates in a crappy ship. There is too much stuff on each planet, too many buildings, too many resources. There's never any real peril in setting out from your ship, nothing you meet is going to bother you too much and if your life support runs out there's a plethora of carbon and plutonium around to pick up.

 

Crucially what I'm asking for is already in there, all it would need is to tweak the algorithms to reduce the incidence of virtually everything and then increase the scanner range. I get the sense from some of the tech blueprints you pick up (for things you have by default and can't destroy, for energy storage items that are less than useless) that the game was actually supposed to be a genuine survival game, starting you out on a planet with nothing at all. Not even a ship. And that surviving would be genuinely difficult. Requiring you to make difficult decisions about hauling gold to the nearest trading station (which might be a long way away) and keeping enough energy cells around to make sure you don't die. I wonder if Sony/HG got nervous about the fact that the game was clearly going to sell well, and a difficult survival game would put a lot of people off.

 

Anyway I really like the game, and am amazed by what they've achieved, but I would have loved the game if it was a lot more challenging.

 

 

[Davros sock drawer]

I'm clearly in the minority here, but I've died about 25 times I think...

[robdood]

It doesn't even need to be challenging, just engaging - during the time I played, I'd love to have felt anything else other than 'Ooh that looks nice' or 'oh god this is boring/annoying'. 

 

Sad times.  

[patters2.0]

1 hour ago, Davros sock drawer said:

It's a 70's Sci-Fi book cover generator.

That was the actual art brief for the game. This is an interesting talk by Grant Duncan the game's art director, quite possibly already published in this thread given its size.

 

 

[jonamok]

I have enjoyed every single minute of NMS during the (I guess) 30 to 50 hours I must have put into it by now. And I've been a passionate defender of the game during that time. But with the Atlas path done (meh) and such achingly slow progress towards the next obvious goal (galactic centre), not to mention the black-hole blowing up of my warp mods, I feel like I have hit the brick wall at full speed.

 

There was no growing sense of ennui, no gradual decline in my enjoyment, it just went from 'crack on a Blu-Ray disc' to 'can't be arsed' in the space of an hour. I suddenly realised all the other games I have to play, and I haven't fired NMS up in four or five days. Nearly did on Sunday night, but found something else to do (Narcos binge). Not sure I will go back to it for a while yet. Crafting warp cells and mining stuff to jump 600ish times to get to the centre, vs the 10 or 20 jumps to complete Atlas, is a very different ask of my limited game time.

 

However, for those 30+ hours it was a fantastic experience and totally worth the £37 I paid for it. I may be back. I may regain the love. But I'm okay with it either way.

[Not Thread Owner]

2 hours ago, dood said:

 

You basically don't even have to think while playing it.  That is what I'm most disappointed with. 

 

That's the best bit though.

[martingee]

My interest is waning but I still love the setting and atmosphere is creates.

 

More random screengrabs (spoliered for length and at least one spoliery image)

 

 



 



 



 



 

 

Admittedly the worlds I've landed on don't seem to be vastly different to each other, I've only actually been on one that has any grass for example.

[patters2.0]

It's actually quite brilliant in nothing more than they've created something that people both love and hate, with not much in between. That's art

[Not Thread Owner]

10 minutes ago, patters2.0 said:

It's actually quite brilliant in nothing more than they've created something that people both love and hate, with not much in between. That's art

 

I'm one of those people who has ignored everything to do with the game since not long after it was announced, to avoid spoilers. As a result, it's pretty much what I was hoping for, and I'm loving it. A few bugs, sure, but the gameplay is right up my street.

[patters2.0]

Well I was in an odd situation regarding the hype. I had ignored the last two years of media because I thought - it's on PS4 and I'm not going to get both consoles. Then as it was readying for launch I started watching all the interviews to work out whether I should get a PS4 just to play. And despite watching all those interviews my conclusion was that yes it was (I love a chilled out exploring game), and I'm not disappointed either. Plus, now I can play The Last Of Us and Uncharted 4.