akachan ningen
Member
So, having looked at all the new gameplay videos, it all still looks too simple. None of it seems to be all that challenging or sophisticated.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
So, what do you DO in No Man's Sky?
- Thread starter cpp_is_king
- Start date
I assumed that was for presentation/time purposes
RandyBobandy
Banned
Yeah, it's way too fast. There's no depth in the atmosphere. Nothing wrong with like a 10 second decent into a planets atmosphere. Even if the ship burned up a little
I believe the systems and planets are relatively 'small' to make things a bit more playable. But I agree; the effect could use some work.
Icyflamez96
Member
What we've seen so far kinda kills the sense of scale. I don't want it to be realistic, but the way it is now is a bit extreme to me.
Here's a reddit post that shows the issue well.
But yeah they could have just intentionally picked those types of planets for demonstration reasons. I hope it will vary.
Here's a reddit post that shows the issue well.
But yeah they could have just intentionally picked those types of planets for demonstration reasons. I hope it will vary.
I don't see how that hill can only be 150m across, considering the giant dinos look like ants compared to it.
Yup, that's exactly what it is and Sean's already said it will.
Icyflamez96
Member
Oh crap read that wrong lol. Yeah planet size will definitely vary, so hopefully I will see some atmospheres that look more satisfying to go through in the future.
Oh yeah idk about his measurements, but overall it's a good demonstration on why have an issue on it at least.
I dunno, I'm suspecting there is some sort of "LOD" levels at play, so the planets will "become bigger" once you hit the surface.
Icyflamez96
Member
reposting for new page
legacyzero
Banned
I absolutely LOVE that pages background. Is there any way somebody can grab it and post it for me? Im on mobile.
Miles Quaritch
Member
I'll tell what you can't do...
Have sex with hot genderless aliens.
Hello Games have failed. Wrap it up. Game over.
Have sex with hot genderless aliens.
Hello Games have failed. Wrap it up. Game over.
thehillissilent
Member
It's funny that we keep fielding questions about what the game is about. I do believe the developers are partly to blame in this. They have been purposefully vague which is frustrating to people. However, we have had multiple threads about this issue. In fact, I made one back in September (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=886607).
What people don't seem to get is that No Man's Sky belongs to the (Space Flight, Trading and Combat) genre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_flight_simulator_game#Space_trading_and_combat_simulator. However, the game is heavily marketed to be focused primarily on exploration and discovery.
This genre is very familiar with PC gamers. In fact Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, and X Rebirth belong to this genre. Elite II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier:_Elite_II) had planetary landing all the way back in 1993. The technology in No Man's Sky isn't new. It has been done before. It has just been brought to console for the first time. No Man's Sky seems to be an arcade experience. If you want a "Hardcore" experience, get Elite Dangerous (which will get Planetary lading and explorations in an expansion) or Star Citizen. Also, the thing less frustrating about those games is that they were very open about what the game was from the beginning.
What people don't seem to get is that No Man's Sky belongs to the (Space Flight, Trading and Combat) genre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_flight_simulator_game#Space_trading_and_combat_simulator. However, the game is heavily marketed to be focused primarily on exploration and discovery.
This genre is very familiar with PC gamers. In fact Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, and X Rebirth belong to this genre. Elite II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier:_Elite_II) had planetary landing all the way back in 1993. The technology in No Man's Sky isn't new. It has been done before. It has just been brought to console for the first time. No Man's Sky seems to be an arcade experience. If you want a "Hardcore" experience, get Elite Dangerous (which will get Planetary lading and explorations in an expansion) or Star Citizen. Also, the thing less frustrating about those games is that they were very open about what the game was from the beginning.
I can see some legitimate concerns about this. Some due to the story and some due to gameplay. I hope I can express what I am trying to say in a way that we can achieve an interesting discussion.
I am a player interested in story-driven games. Now, what I mean is not a guided experience in a way that, for example, military shooters do these days (corridor level design, invisible walls, scripted events everywhere, etc.) but instead what, for example, Half-Life does for a FPS, Mass Effect (especially the first one ) and The Witcher I and II do for RPGs and Gone Home does for "Walking Simulators" (I don't like this name and I hope we can come up with a better one for it). Now, none of the games I've mentioned are, in any way, related to how No Man's Sky plays. Which is not a bad thing. After all, it can also be a story-driven game based on what it tries to be.
My concern with NMS is if I can still have a story-driven experience. Another game that is not comparable to it is Skyrim, but is an example of a game I couldn't enjoy because I was easily detached of the main story after a few minutes. It is such a huge world with a lot of side activities and you can also focus completely on the main story, but the way it was built makes it hard to think about the story at all times. Another Bethesda game, Fallout 3, gives you an objective a few minutes after it starts and it carries that throughout the whole game. You need to find what your dad is up to and why. As you wonder through new cities, you wonder if you can find something about him.
So, to me, I wonder what kind of game NMS will be. I know they already said you have to reach the centre of the galaxy. They didn't tell why and I understand. They also said you can play without focusing on the story. That's OK, there are games that use the same kind of approach and still can be played as story-driven experiences. But it is all about how you will go forward in the story as you play. Will you find new information/lore as you discover some planets? Maybe the robots will provide clues about what are you really facing? I know this will probably not be answered until the game is released, which is something I am OK with because, if I buy it, it will be on PC. Since it is a timed-exclusive PS4 game, I can gather more information to decide.
I hope you guys don't see this as me bashing the game or saying it would be different with other games. No Man's Sky has a very interesting idea, but I don't want to go play it expecting something it isn't. And some of the answers I want may not be available until it is released. It is their strategy and I am not saying it is a bad one. I get it. I am in no rush to get the information I want either. So many amazing games coming up.
I am a player interested in story-driven games. Now, what I mean is not a guided experience in a way that, for example, military shooters do these days (corridor level design, invisible walls, scripted events everywhere, etc.) but instead what, for example, Half-Life does for a FPS, Mass Effect (especially the first one ) and The Witcher I and II do for RPGs and Gone Home does for "Walking Simulators" (I don't like this name and I hope we can come up with a better one for it). Now, none of the games I've mentioned are, in any way, related to how No Man's Sky plays. Which is not a bad thing. After all, it can also be a story-driven game based on what it tries to be.
My concern with NMS is if I can still have a story-driven experience. Another game that is not comparable to it is Skyrim, but is an example of a game I couldn't enjoy because I was easily detached of the main story after a few minutes. It is such a huge world with a lot of side activities and you can also focus completely on the main story, but the way it was built makes it hard to think about the story at all times. Another Bethesda game, Fallout 3, gives you an objective a few minutes after it starts and it carries that throughout the whole game. You need to find what your dad is up to and why. As you wonder through new cities, you wonder if you can find something about him.
So, to me, I wonder what kind of game NMS will be. I know they already said you have to reach the centre of the galaxy. They didn't tell why and I understand. They also said you can play without focusing on the story. That's OK, there are games that use the same kind of approach and still can be played as story-driven experiences. But it is all about how you will go forward in the story as you play. Will you find new information/lore as you discover some planets? Maybe the robots will provide clues about what are you really facing? I know this will probably not be answered until the game is released, which is something I am OK with because, if I buy it, it will be on PC. Since it is a timed-exclusive PS4 game, I can gather more information to decide.
I hope you guys don't see this as me bashing the game or saying it would be different with other games. No Man's Sky has a very interesting idea, but I don't want to go play it expecting something it isn't. And some of the answers I want may not be available until it is released. It is their strategy and I am not saying it is a bad one. I get it. I am in no rush to get the information I want either. So many amazing games coming up.
KCroxtonJr
Member
The story is YOUR story, the things that happen during your journey to the center of the galaxy. Don't expect it to be like other story-driven games where you are spoon-fed lore and things like that, most if it will likely be you putting the things you see together to figure out what is going on. The center is of course the main goal, but they have also said that is not the end of the game. The closest thing to compare the progression of the game I think would be Minecraft, but with more to it if that makes sense.
Since I didn't play Minecraft, I can't be sure I will enjoy. I guess the way they will do the narrative will tell me if I will be able to enjoy it or not. I know it is not a character-driven game, but the story can still be interesting. If it's the kind of game that can tell me something new about the lore whenever I discover something important (instead of just collecting something and then going away to find the next thing), then I may be able to enjoy it. I love environmental storytelling, as long as it is interesting.
legacyzero
Banned
Thanks!
The_Squirrel_Menace
Member
Wait.. There will be multiplayer in no man's sky? I thought it was single player only?
I don't think comparing NMS to minecraft is correct. Sure there are similar things like procedural world generation and "infinite" worlds but the gameplay is very different. NMS feels like anti-minecraft to me because it's about exploration and searching in solitude. Minecraft is about creating, building and destroying with heavy emphasis on multiplayer and social interaction.
Everyone's playing in the same galaxy.
The odds of meeting other people randomly are fairly small however. Unless this game sells 1 billion copies.
legacyzero
Banned
Sean stated that there will be "a traditional multiplayer that we're not talking about right now."
Vague still.
Veritigo_X
Member
Since the Adventure Update back in beta, Minecraft hasn't been all about building. A lot of people like going out and exploring along with building a castle. Whenever I play hardcore maps I never settle down in a single area because it isn't worth it. Even in multiplayer, building stuff can get boring and it's sometimes fun to go explore with friends and find a temple or just see what the world looks like. That "going out and exploring" gameplay in Minecraft is similar to what I imagine No Man's Sky will be like.
theDeeDubs
Member
I'm remaining skeptical about it. While I think their tech is cool, I'm not someone who typically likes procedurally generated things. They tend to be large in scope but feel a little, for lack of a better description, soulless to me compared to something handcrafted. Where a game like Minecraft overcame this was in bringing along your friends to share in your experiences of the randomness. I feel like NMS will be hurt by keeping you separated. Sharing "wow I saw randomplanet01293 with randommine87718" with your friends won't be near as fun as building a village with your buddies in Minecraft for instance.
Part of it is I just enjoy experiencing a handcrafted world. Like discovering an out of the way nook in a handcrafted world makes me pause to realize that someone took the time to design this as an added aspect of the narration, as opposed to just some random assortment of things randomly generated. It takes the art out of the artwork for me.
Part of it is I just enjoy experiencing a handcrafted world. Like discovering an out of the way nook in a handcrafted world makes me pause to realize that someone took the time to design this as an added aspect of the narration, as opposed to just some random assortment of things randomly generated. It takes the art out of the artwork for me.
Rockabimmy
Member
Not sure if others mentioned this too but I'd love to see some kind of photo mode in this. That would compensate the "lack of gameplay" for me entirely..
MastorofPuppetz
Banned
I hope you can plant seeds and grow a garden, I like gardens.
KCroxtonJr
Member
I wasnt talking about the minute to minute gameplay, I was talking in terms of story and progressing to the "end goal". In minecraft there isn't a spoon-fed story or missions to take you to the end. The story is YOUR story of everything that happened during your journey to the goal.
Cool I will buy the game with the sole purpose of hunting other players down.
you chances meeting another player are pretty slim considering the scale of the galaxy.
and you might not even recognize them as another player.
Yeah names won't be floating above their heads haha.
Yes you are right about that. But NMS is still much more like a traditional open world game than minecraft. You can't really affect anything else but your character and the world stays static. There are goals but what you can actually do is still relatively limited. But the exploration mechanics are definitely much more versatile.
D
Deleted member 752119
Unconfirmed Member
Well said. That's my take on it as well in terms of whether I'll like it or not. I'm not big on exploring just for the sake of exploring games. I need some semblance of story and objectives to keep me going.
If it's lacking those, that doesn't by any means mean that it's a bad game. Just that it's probably not my cup of tea. Which is fine as I have pretty narrow tastes and still have more games than time to play them as is!
Well I'm sorry to say that NMS may just not satisfy you, it has a story but is not story driven so far it seems to be about chilling around a universe with a variety of retro ships and bizarre worlds and aliens to discover.
ichtyander
Member
Even though I love the idea and setting, it's something I've dream about for years, I share the concerns some people have. Even though NMS doesn't have to have goals, it can very easily become uninteresting to the majority of people if it doesn't have any incentives.
In the best procedurally generated games and the ones that rely on emergent gameplay, you are usually driven by a clear and present danger:
- Zombies and monsters come out at night - must build a fortification and defenses
- Hunger or other parameters are constantly dropping - you need to fill them up to evade death
- Staying too long in one place spawns one-touch-death enemies - always keep moving, never stay in one place too long
- And of course in multiplayer - adapt to the usual unpredictable nature of players and do whatever it takes to survive
On top of that, the games that have crafting mechanics also rely on the player actively searching for resources, since crafting directly increases your chances of survival and character progression.
These are naturally "survival" elements. I'm just saying that a lot of games lately, and probably NMS, rely on these elements. Survive these dangers we're constantly throwing at you, good luck. I guess Pac-Man can be described the same way, but these survival games consist of multiple, more "complex" mechanics that interact with each other to create unscripted, emergent situations, to create a story just by setting the stage without a script. I think NMS is trying to do the same thing. I keep comparing it to Far Cry 4, I guess simply because it's what I'm playing at the moment, but as a stupid example it's comparable to the constant eagle attacks. You run into random groups of freedom fighters, enemies patrol the wilds and run into one another causing conflicts, then an eagle appears and everybody goes batshit crazy and shoots the damn eagle that keeps attacking them and stealing pigs. There's an example of emergent gameplay (although it might be a tiny bit more scripted in FC4) that shows the story of the prevailing problem of eagles stealing pigs in Kyrat.
However, and this is probably what most people have a problem with, even with all the info we have so far, we don't really know what the main dangers and incentives are in this game, how they influence the minute-by-minute gameplay. We don't know if there's hunger, zombies at night etc. All we really do here is speculate, and we might have some educated guesses but we also probably don't have all of the info.
With what we do have, we might draw some conclusions and here's my take on it:
- In the beginning, the player is weak, has basic mining, scanning and combat possibilities. Has a ship (or not) that doesn't even have a hyperdrive, so he's only able to travel withing the solar system. You have a hint that you should probably, possibly go to the center of the galaxy, but you really probably don't ever have to do that. For some people, this is enough of an incentive. It says - don't stand still, you can be better and stronger, travel further, so work on that, it can be fun and rewarding for a while. Even in things like Proteus, you don't stand still, not because you're being chased by monsters, just because you can. What drives you is to discover what you can do, not what you're told to do. Sure, when people discover you don't do a whole lot more than walk, they are disappointed and drop Proteus, but that's Proteus' problem.
- This can quickly become boring and not enough though. So the player needs a push. We've established that the player starts exploring. He runs into creatures, different environments and things that earn him cash. Looking around and basic interaction (scan, arrive, shoot, mine) gives cash, and cash gives you those improvements, making you better and stronger. This is a hook that they need to pull off at least relatively well.
- Now that you earn cash by doing basic actions in order to progress, they introduce the dangers. Wild aggressive animals, toxic and radioactive environments, oxygen levels, robots actually punishing you for wanting to earn cash, space ships attacking you in space, all of them are obstacles to your established need to improve yourself. In fact, some of these obstacles are so dangerous that they require special gear and abilities that you don't have but can purchase with loads of cash and by finding the right dealer who's god knows where, on what planet.
- So you improve your gear, get new abilities, which open new doors and let you into areas and activities you haven't had access before. Maybe the ancient alien temples with artifacts holding information about the nature of the galaxy (they've mentioned those) are behind a perimeter of intense radiation, so you're able to get those much later as you upgrade your suit and ship. On top of that, you participate in little emergent situations like guarding a trading ship on its route (again, think of FC4's karma events but without the markers and info), making trading runs yourself, attacking a space station, enraging the local police and killing them (for loads of cash, and because you're an asshole), follow random ships to their docking station because you want to buy them etc. All of these little situations also earn you cash and some of them may even be crucial to improving your gear, like randomly bumping into an NPC ship that looks cool and very powerful, then following it dock to a station and buying it.
This gear improvement seems, to me at least, a key aspect of the game, one of the things that push you forward and something they're clearly implementing with a purpose in mind. If the dangers and challenges are difficult enough, this can be enough of an incentive in and of itself. It's what I dislike most in Ubisoft's open world games like AC or FC - you have tons of fun activities you can do, but the rewards are so insignificant because the dangers, money, equipment - they don't mean a thing. You can very easily breeze through the game without ever really worrying about survival and overcoming obstacles. Unlike, say, the Stalker series, where you have a lot of the similar mechanics in place, but you're constantly worried if you'll have enough food, health, ammo, whether you'll clumsily step into an anomaly that crushes you into a pulp or get killed by bandits etc.
And to finally get to your point about story, I think these simulated systems can tell the story of the common occurrences in No Man Sky's galaxy, which in turn give you better understanding of the nature of it all. I don't think we'll see a lot of text, if at all, no logs or journals, no alien bases with giant bosses to kill or anything like that. Although, those artifacts related to the nature of the galaxy are something more concise, maybe hints you can speculate on etc. Like having Dark Souls but without the item descriptions.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
No, there's a single predetermined universe seed that's on everyone's disc/download. From this seed everything is generated pseudo-randomly (as in seemingly random, but the same every time) through a series of mathematical functions. A certain input (which is your position in the universe, and also the current time I believe) will always generate the exact same output. So even though no actual data about the planets is saved anywhere, the same planet will always be in the same place for everyone playing the game, and that planet will always have the same tree on the same hill and the same pebbles on the same beach. That's how mathematical functions work. You give an input, and you get an input. If you give the same input twice, you'll get the same output twice. So while it's true that everything is generated from scratch every time you go there and doesn't exist anymore when you're gone, that does not mean it will be different the next time you go there (or for another player). It will always be generated the same way.
Beyond that, major changes - like wiping out an entire species, if such a thing is possible - will be uploaded and shared with all other players so that they will see that change when they visit that planet. That's just a matter of generating the planet as usual, and then applying those changes to the result.
Well said. That's my take on it as well in terms of whether I'll like it or not. I'm not big on exploring just for the sake of exploring games. I need some semblance of story and objectives to keep me going.
If it's lacking those, that doesn't by any means mean that it's a bad game. Just that it's probably not my cup of tea. Which is fine as I have pretty narrow tastes and still have more games than time to play them as is!
Exactly. See, the narrative of a game is really important to me. It is why I can get easily bored in open-world games. You do these things that, in the end, don't influence the story at all. Your character may do a lot of violent activities and then go to a mission where you still learn something from a NPC that can "help" you defeat enemies. Even though you can already do a bunch of side activities easily.
No way I can compare Mass Effect 2 to No Man's Sky, but the side quests there were an incentive to get to know the characters and avoid their death at the end. It can also help you be attached to some of them in the sequel, since you know their history. I know NMS isn't about characters, but I would be satisfied if I could learn the lore as I defeat robots, for example. Maybe as I loot them, I find something that can lead me to investigate a solar system with specific attributes. And there I find a document of some kind that tells me how they were built. That would help me get engaged to the story.
It depends on how they will do the narrative. If it is basically "go reach the galaxy" and you only get some story bits when you get there, then no, probably it is not my kind of game. If it is like I said above, maybe it is.
Even though I love the idea and setting, it's something I've dream about for years, I share the concerns some people have. Even though NMS doesn't have to have goals, it can very easily become uninteresting to the majority of people if it doesn't have any incentives.
In the best procedurally generated games and the ones that rely on emergent gameplay, you are usually driven by a clear and present danger:
- Zombies and monsters come out at night - must build a fortification and defenses
- Hunger or other parameters are constantly dropping - you need to fill them up to evade death
- Staying too long in one place spawns one-touch-death enemies - always keep moving, never stay in one place too long
- And of course in multiplayer - adapt to the usual unpredictable nature of players and do whatever it takes to survive
On top of that, the games that have crafting mechanics also rely on the player actively searching for resources, since crafting directly increases your chances of survival and character progression.
These are naturally "survival" elements. I'm just saying that a lot of games lately, and probably NMS, rely on these elements. Survive these dangers we're constantly throwing at you, good luck. I guess Pac-Man can be described the same way, but these survival games consist of multiple, more "complex" mechanics that interact with each other to create unscripted, emergent situations, to create a story just by setting the stage without a script. I think NMS is trying to do the same thing. I keep comparing it to Far Cry 4, I guess simply because it's what I'm playing at the moment, but as a stupid example it's comparable to the constant eagle attacks. You run into random groups of freedom fighters, enemies patrol the wilds and run into one another causing conflicts, then an eagle appears and everybody goes batshit crazy and shoots the damn eagle that keeps attacking them and stealing pigs. There's an example of emergent gameplay (although it might be a tiny bit more scripted in FC4) that shows the story of the prevailing problem of eagles stealing pigs in Kyrat.
However, and this is probably what most people have a problem with, even with all the info we have so far, we don't really know what the main dangers and incentives are in this game, how they influence the minute-by-minute gameplay. We don't know if there's hunger, zombies at night etc. All we really do here is speculate, and we might have some educated guesses but we also probably don't have all of the info.
With what we do have, we might draw some conclusions and here's my take on it:
- In the beginning, the player is weak, has basic mining, scanning and combat possibilities. Has a ship (or not) that doesn't even have a hyperdrive, so he's only able to travel withing the solar system. You have a hint that you should probably, possibly go to the center of the galaxy, but you really probably don't ever have to do that. For some people, this is enough of an incentive. It says - don't stand still, you can be better and stronger, travel further, so work on that, it can be fun and rewarding for a while. Even in things like Proteus, you don't stand still, not because you're being chased by monsters, just because you can. What drives you is to discover what you can do, not what you're told to do. Sure, when people discover you don't do a whole lot more than walk, they are disappointed and drop Proteus, but that's Proteus' problem.
- This can quickly become boring and not enough though. So the player needs a push. We've established that the player starts exploring. He runs into creatures, different environments and things that earn him cash. Looking around and basic interaction (scan, arrive, shoot, mine) gives cash, and cash gives you those improvements, making you better and stronger. This is a hook that they need to pull off at least relatively well.
- Now that you earn cash by doing basic actions in order to progress, they introduce the dangers. Wild aggressive animals, toxic and radioactive environments, oxygen levels, robots actually punishing you for wanting to earn cash, space ships attacking you in space, all of them are obstacles to your established need to improve yourself. In fact, some of these obstacles are so dangerous that they require special gear and abilities that you don't have but can purchase with loads of cash and by finding the right dealer who's god knows where, on what planet.
- So you improve your gear, get new abilities, which open new doors and let you into areas and activities you haven't had access before. Maybe the ancient alien temples with artifacts holding information about the nature of the galaxy (they've mentioned those) are behind a perimeter of intense radiation, so you're able to get those much later as you upgrade your suit and ship. On top of that, you participate in little emergent situations like guarding a trading ship on its route (again, think of FC4's karma events but without the markers and info), making trading runs yourself, attacking a space station, enraging the local police and killing them (for loads of cash, and because you're an asshole), follow random ships to their docking station because you want to buy them etc. All of these little situations also earn you cash and some of them may even be crucial to improving your gear, like randomly bumping into an NPC ship that looks cool and very powerful, then following it dock to a station and buying it.
This gear improvement seems, to me at least, a key aspect of the game, one of the things that push you forward and something they're clearly implementing with a purpose in mind. If the dangers and challenges are difficult enough, this can be enough of an incentive in and of itself. It's what I dislike most in Ubisoft's open world games like AC or FC - you have tons of fun activities you can do, but the rewards are so insignificant because the dangers, money, equipment - they don't mean a thing. You can very easily breeze through the game without ever really worrying about survival and overcoming obstacles. Unlike, say, the Stalker series, where you have a lot of the similar mechanics in place, but you're constantly worried if you'll have enough food, health, ammo, whether you'll clumsily step into an anomaly that crushes you into a pulp or get killed by bandits etc.
And to finally get to your point about story, I think these simulated systems can tell the story of the common occurrences in No Man Sky's galaxy, which in turn give you better understanding of the nature of it all. I don't think we'll see a lot of text, if at all, no logs or journals, no alien bases with giant bosses to kill or anything like that. Although, those artifacts related to the nature of the galaxy are something more concise, maybe hints you can speculate on etc. Like having Dark Souls but without the item descriptions.
Yeah, that would be interesting. But still not enough for me. Hopefully I can know more about the narrative after the game is released.
This is worth bringing up because some of those space sandbox games don't have main stories at all. The designers literally just ask you to "live" in their universes without pushing you towards one particular goal. They're totally built on you creating your own story. Outside getting to the center of the galaxy, this is what No Man's Sky is. We've already made comparisons to Minecraft and other open-world survival games. In these space-type games the main incentive is just getting more resources to get better equipment. In No Man's Sky it'll be that along with exploring more planets. Hopefully the procedurally generated planets don't get too repetitive after a while.
Also, if we're going to make comparisons to hand-crafted open-world games like Skyrim, a lot of people would agree that in some of these games the main quest is actually the least interesting part of the experience. A lot of people believe this is the case with Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, Far Cry 3, and Far Cry 4. A game like Far Cry 3 or Far Cry 4 would probably be just as good to a lot of people if it just dropped you in the world with all the side objectives to do and no linear main story.
I understand some people have to have a pre-written main story in their games. Pure sandbox games like space sims probably aren't for them.
From what has been said so far there is no real narrative, there are no 'quests' as such no real dialogue or communication to the player, it's up to you to discover any theme and overall basis to the galaxy as you go. Every player will get to the centre in their own time with their own experiences and own interpretation of what is/has happened.
You don't start with a 'oh it's you the one from the prophecy!' or any of that, you just start with a ship, on a planet and a galaxy to discover.
This is all from what we have heard so far, the game could still be a year away and HG are definitely holding story points back so I may be wrong in hindsight.
Well, to be clear, when I talked about Skyrim, I didn't want to compare it specifically with No Man's Sky. In fact, none of the games I mentioned are comparable to it because there are very different gameplay mechanics. Skyrim is, to me, a great example of how easily you can get detached from the main story in less than half an hour after the beginning. And it is one of the reasons I didn't enjoy it. As for Mass Effect 2, it is more like a great example of how to do engaging side quests that don't detach from the main story.
Oh, I know. In fact, I am tired of prophecy protagonists. What I meant was that it can be interesting to me if you find more about the lore (since they have said there is a story) as you find ways to get closer to the centre.
Game Informer update on the galactic map: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/12/08/galactic-map-puts-scale-of-no-man-s-sky-in-perspective.aspx
This doesn't seem to be the case given the planets we've seen.
Game Informer said:
This doesn't seem to be the case given the planets we've seen.
Veritigo_X
Member
Wow that gif of the galactic map...when I saw it in the trailer I thought it was just some random star graphics just for the purpose of the trailer. I had no idea that was the actual map.
One quote from this article stood out to me:
Glad to see they will make it easy to navigate the map. As it is now I can see how it would be easy to get lost.
I just hope we see a lot of variation. I don't want every planet to be the same size. Even if you just talk about our own solar system, Earth and Venus are simliar in size, but the terrestrial bodies drastically drop off in size from there. If they are all similar in size, maybe most of them will be like the size of Mercury or Titan. I think it'd be great if we could get worlds that range from something like Ceres to maybe something slightly larger than Earth. And again, I'm hoping for things like moons and large asteroids.
Shining Sunshine
Banned
Wow that gif of the galactic map...when I saw it in the trailer I thought it was just some random star graphics just for the purpose of the trailer. I had no idea that was the actual map.
One quote from this article stood out to me:
Glad to see they will make it easy to navigate the map. As it is now I can see how it would be easy to get lost.
ichtyander
Member
Wow that gif of the galactic map...when I saw it in the trailer I thought it was just some random star graphics just for the purpose of the trailer. I had no idea that was the actual map.
One quote from this article stood out to me:
Glad to see they will make it easy to navigate the map. As it is now I can see how it would be easy to get lost.
Yeah, at first I thought that thick colorful nebula screen was a visualization of the unfinished galaxy map but it looks like that's the look they're going for. If the map does indeed look mostly like that, no wonder you wouldn't be able to find other players. I always thought it would be something like in Elite: Dangerous:
http://a.pomf.se/nydaxi.webm