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[Fushichou187]

Damn. I wonder how much development is costing them now?

Tacking 7 weeks onto a release schedule doesn't mean seven weeks of development. You've got to QA the final build, run it through cert, and then add in manufacturing time for all the physical versions, etc.. A seven week delay could only mean a 2-3 weeks of extra dev time, which in the grand scheme of things isn't going to completely tank the budget.

 

[c0Zm1c]

True it's got nothing to do with spore really aside from the big concepts. But in my mind if Will Wright couldn't pull of a game with this kind of universe sized scope and make it interesting/compelling, what hope does any dev have? It's really hard to imagine anyone making a game with this level of ambition/size and knocking it out of the park. I sure hope they do but i'm not gonna bank on it with my hype levels.

From what they have shown of the game it all looks quite familiar to me to be honest; I think the ambition comes down more to how it takes detail in a open universe game to the next level rather than it presenting genuinely innovative gameplay.

I've never played any of the Elite games, but of the Elite-like games I have played I definitely see what No Man's Sky pulls from that type of game, especially in terms of the gameplay loop and what we will actually be able to do in the game (that has so far been shown). That is why I think comparisons with Spore (and Minecraft lol) are way off the mark, on any level.

Whether or not it's compelling is a different story, but I think you have to want to play this kind of game if you're ever going to enjoy it. If you go into it expecting something entirely new, or something not like any other open universe game out there, then you might indeed be in for a big disappointment.

 

[UncleSporky]

He's right. But those who complain will be the only ones to blame. These guys are not lying to anyone and they've repeatedly established what the whole game is about. If you buy this game at a full price and then drop it a few hours in because it's boring you're an idiot and you didn't inform yourself properly before dropping the 60 bucks or you didn't have very realistic expectations in the first place. It's just Noctis IV with a facelift. You either like the concept or not, but don't pretend it was supposed to be anything else.

This is going to be a deafening rallying cry at release for the people who have gone all in on info about NMS. No one else out there knows about the multiplayer, no one knows that you can't build anything persistent on planets, etc.

Friend of mine who is really well informed about games in general just asked our chat group if we would play NMS with him when it comes out and I had to break it to him.

Honestly I don't think it's fair to say people have no excuse. The marketing has been bad on this point. I think the majority of people who buy the game are going to be disappointed to learn the truth about the game, and you can only blame them so much before some burden has to be shouldered by the devs as well.

I'm picturing a million people buying the game and 900,000 of them being disappointed, and the last 100k shouting from the rooftops that we all knew the game would be like this...but that doesn't really fix the problem or satisfy anyone.

I mean, does this rationalization happen for every game people are disappointed in? People who soaked up every ounce of info about Aliens Colonial Marines and knew what it was going to be and just end up bitter and jaded at the masses who didn't accept it for what it was? And does it ever really work?

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

This is going to be a deafening rallying cry at release for the people who have gone all in on info about NMS. No one else out there knows about the multiplayer, no one knows that you can't build anything persistent on planets, etc.

Friend of mine who is really well informed about games in general just asked our chat group if we would play NMS with him when it comes out and I had to break it to him.

Honestly I don't think it's fair to say people have no excuse. The marketing has been bad on this point. I think the majority of people who buy the game are going to be disappointed to learn the truth about the game, and you can only blame them so much before some burden has to be shouldered by the devs as well.

I'm picturing a million people buying the game and 900,000 of them being disappointed, and the last 100k shouting from the rooftops that we all knew the game would be like this...but that doesn't really fix the problem or satisfy anyone.

I mean, does this rationalization happen for every game people are disappointed in? People who soaked up every ounce of info about Aliens Colonial Marines and knew what it was going to be and just end up bitter and jaded at the masses who didn't accept it for what it was? And does it ever really work?

Like what? Sounds to me like you just already expect it to suck

 

[UncleSporky]

Like what? Sounds to me like you just already expect it to suck

I didn't say anything about the game sucking, I'm saying that the average person has the not-unreasonable assumption that NMS is some sort of Minecraft 4X thing, based on trailers and screenshots and general hype surrounding the game.

I expect other people to think it sucks, because they expected something else, and I foresee a bitter community insistent that this disappointment is a personal failing of the majority and not a fault of the game or marketing/messaging.

Someone had to be corrected on multiplayer just last page! And this is gaf, where everyone is well-informed!

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

I didn't say anything about the game sucking, I'm saying that the average person has the not-unreasonable assumption that NMS is some sort of Minecraft 4X thing, based on trailers.

I expect other people to think it sucks, because they expected something else, and I foresee a bitter community insistent that this disappointment is a personal failing of the majority and not a fault of the game or marketing/messaging.

I mean, someone had to be corrected on multiplayer just last page! And this is gaf, where everyone is well-informed!

Based on trailers they've shown you alone every single time. They've said a million times theres no traditional multi but maybe could be added later. So yes i t Would be the persons fault not the marketing

 

[loganclaws]

I've been excited for the game since the very first reveal, watched every interview and even joined the Reddit community for it before they went batshit insane. What you say has always been in the back of my mind. The game is very niche and after the novelty of 18 quintillion planets wears off I think a lot of people are going to be upset. I'll be happy to be wrong if it turns out I am.

Exactly. And to all the other people who replied to my post, no I'm not happy about it, but I do find it entertaining how some of you think this game will be somehow interesting for more than 2-3 hours at most. Procedural generation usually makes exploration mundane as there are no special hand placed challenges or encounters. But let's just wait and see. If you go back through my post history, I made a deal with 5 lucky winners who will get a free copy of the game if the user metacritic is above 85 (I think that was the number we agreed on, I'll have to go back and check) after three months from release. My expectation is that the game will go the way of Spore and Black and White, innovative but extremely lacking in gameplay.

 

[More_Badass]

Exactly. And to all the other people who replied to my post, no I'm not happy about it, but I do find it entertaining how some of you think this game will be somehow interesting for more than 2-3 hours at most. Procedural generation usually makes exploration mundane as there are no special hand placed challenges or encounters. But let's just wait and see. If you go back through my post history, I made a deal with 5 lucky winners who will get a free copy of the game if the user metacritic is above 85 (I think that was the number we agreed on, I'll have to go back and check) after three months from release. My expectation is that the game will go the way of Spore and Black and White, innovative but extremely lacking in gameplay.

You won't even be off your first planet after two hours.

And to understand why people would be, you have to understand that exploration for many is just as engaging and compelling as space battles and trading. Not because of challenges or goals or missions, but simply because the simple desire to see more. It's about seeing what's out there, what weird species and structures and landscapes exist.

And much like how a roguelike can stay fresh by adding new things to your pool of items so you're still seeing new pick-ups later on, the devs have said their algorithms makes the worlds and species more alien and unEarthlike as you get closer to the center. So you simply won't be able to see all the wildfire and environments that are possible in the beginning or even middle of your journey

 

[c0Zm1c]

I do find it entertaining how some of you think this game will be somehow interesting for more than 2-3 hours at most.

That's on a level with the people that scoff at Euro Truck Simulator and other such games.

 

[Icyflamez96]

.

 

[RedSwirl]

This will be a cool game to play for an hour every once in a while. Nothing wrong with that.

To be honest, that's how I've been playing Elite: Dangerous and Space Engine. Once every few nights I might pop into Elite and scan a few star systems, or I might look at a few planets in Space Engine. It's a fun thing to keep coming back to, mostly because it's different from what's typical of games with full-blown production values.

That said, No Man's Sky looks like it's going to have very different pacing compared to Elite. In Elite you consistently bounce from system to system. Getting around in itself is usually not difficult. In NMS, at least at the beginning, it seems you're going to be stuck on planets for a little while before getting enough resources to get off-world, and then there will be planets you still can't reach until you've upgraded enough. Elite doesn't really have those constraints. You upgrade your ship in Elite, but your ship usually isn't an impediment to simply getting from place to place. That slower pace is probably going to increase the sense of anticipation upon seeing a new planet you want to reach. That might change once you've got fully upgraded stuff though and can move around more quickly.

 

[Icyflamez96]

Exactly. And to all the other people who replied to my post, no I'm not happy about it, but I do find it entertaining how some of you think this game will be somehow interesting for more than 2-3 hours at most. Procedural generation usually makes exploration mundane as there are no special hand placed challenges or encounters. But let's just wait and see. If you go back through my post history, I made a deal with 5 lucky winners who will get a free copy of the game if the user metacritic is above 85 (I think that was the number we agreed on, I'll have to go back and check) after three months from release. My expectation is that the game will go the way of Spore and Black and White, innovative but extremely lacking in gameplay.

Minecraft exploration kept me hooked on that game for hundreds of hours... lol. Along with it's gameplay options of course, but the procedurally generated environments played a huge factor in the appeal. (Never used creative mode for more than 2 hours accumulative)

 

[Fushichou187]

.

Looks like the reference for some of those shots in the new Horizon trailer tbh. Beautiful.

 

[RedSwirl]

Scanning planets in Elite: Dangerous alone has been worth 70 hours of my time. That's just me though, I have my own tastes like that. NMS definitely won't be for everyone, but it'll at least be something different, particularly in the retail console game space. Even if it doesn't sell 10 million copies I think it'll do well enough for a dozen-person team that's still self-funded.

Honestly I don't think it's fair to say people have no excuse. The marketing has been bad on this point. I think the majority of people who buy the game are going to be disappointed to learn the truth about the game, and you can only blame them so much before some burden has to be shouldered by the devs as well.

I'm picturing a million people buying the game and 900,000 of them being disappointed, and the last 100k shouting from the rooftops that we all knew the game would be like this...but that doesn't really fix the problem or satisfy anyone.

I mean, does this rationalization happen for every game people are disappointed in? People who soaked up every ounce of info about Aliens Colonial Marines and knew what it was going to be and just end up bitter and jaded at the masses who didn't accept it for what it was? And does it ever really work?

This game's long development has probably turned its marketing from a strength to potentially its biggest weakness. Being intentionally vague in order to keep the sense of mystery is a great thing that more games should probably do, but Hello Games has been doing that for over four years now. They're still not sure if they should have even revealed it at the 2011 VGAs. At the same time, the flood might have caused Hello Games to can NMS without that reveal and the expectations that came with it. At this point a full-blown conventional marketing campaign might do it more good.

 

[c0Zm1c]

This game's long development has probably turned its marketing from a strength to potentially its biggest weakness. Being intentionally vague in order to keep the sense of mystery is a great thing that more games should probably do, but Hello Games has been doing that for over four years now. They're still not sure if they should have even revealed it at the 2011 VGAs. At the same time, the flood might have caused Hello Games to can NMS without that reveal and the expectations that came with it. At this point a full-blown conventional marketing campaign might do it more good.

It was revealed at VGX in December 2013 (the flood happened shortly after that in late December), so they've been showing it off for 'just' two and a half years.

 

[More_Badass]

It was revealed at VGX in December 2013 (the flood happened shortly after that in late December), so they've been showing it off for 'just' two and a half years.

That's not much compared to a lot of other indie games. Rain World alone had been around since 2012, and House of the Dying Sun/formerly Enemy Starfighter first had preview articles in 2013

 

[eyeball_kid]

Tacking 7 weeks onto a release schedule doesn't mean seven weeks of development. You've got to QA the final build, run it through cert, and then add in manufacturing time for all the physical versions, etc.. A seven week delay could only mean a 2-3 weeks of extra dev time

No, the 7 extra weeks of development is separate from the 4 weeks they already had for cert and manufacturing from the original June 21 date.

 

[BarringGaffner]

Tacking 7 weeks onto a release schedule doesn't mean seven weeks of development. You've got to QA the final build, run it through cert, and then add in manufacturing time for all the physical versions, etc.. A seven week delay could only mean a 2-3 weeks of extra dev time, which in the grand scheme of things isn't going to completely tank the budget.

well no, because they would have already factored in all that before delay.

 

[Fushichou187]

Okay seriously now.. there's some sort of Hello Games x Guerrilla Games fuckery going on here. There is nooooooo way this is just a coincidence.

 

[Icyflamez96]

Okay seriously now.. there's some sort of Hello Games x Guerrilla Games fuckery going on here. There is nooooooo way this is just a coincidence.

Woww lol

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

Okay seriously now.. there's some sort of Hello Games x Guerrilla Games fuckery going on here. There is nooooooo way this is just a coincidence.

I can understand both being based on sauropods dinosaurs, but the flattop and the neck spikes too? Yeah, that's way too specific.

 

[Fushichou187]

I can understand both being based on sauropods dinosaurs, but the flattop and the neck spikes too? Yeah, that's way too specific.

And the horned deer like creature in the foreground, and the flying creatures, etc...

 

[JackEtc]

Okay seriously now.. there's some sort of Hello Games x Guerrilla Games fuckery going on here. There is nooooooo way this is just a coincidence.

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

And the horned deer like creature in the foreground, and the flying creatures, etc...

Well, damn, I didn't even pay attention to the deer or flying animals either, just the dinos....what the hell?

 

[Net_Wrecker]

The shots aren't that unique, really.

We need nature ---> Grass, trees, mountains
We need more nature ---> Duh, deer in the foreground
We need scale ---> Dinosaur, bro
We need weird alien looking scale though ---> Flat head dinosaur, bro. Everything's weird when it's flat
We need variety and intrigue ---> Flying creature in the background

Fin.

Replace dinosaurs/mountains and flying creatures with weirdly curved/sharp edge glass buildings, and flying cars for futuristic games.

 

[Movalpolos]

Okay seriously now.. there's some sort of Hello Games x Guerrilla Games fuckery going on here. There is nooooooo way this is just a coincidence.

Holy shit lol, nice catch.

 

[Fushichou187]

The shots aren't that unique, really.

We need nature --> Grass, trees, mountains
We need more nature -- Duh, deer in the foreground
We need scale ---> Dinosaur, bro
We need weird alien looking scale though --> Flat head dinosaur, bro. Everything's weird when it's flat
We need variety and intrigue ---> Flying creature in the background

Fin.

Replace dinosaurs/mountains and flying creatures with weirdly curved/sharp edge glass buildings, and flying cars for futuristic games.

I dunno. There's a lot of smoke going on in those shots for there to be no fire, as you've laid out. On top of that is the fact that NMS' assets are procedurally generated-- though that doesn't stop them from hand crafting a particular asset and setting up a particular screen shot for press-- and that Horizon shot is a screencap from their E3 2015 trailer (2:30 mark, https://youtu.be/Fkg5UVTsKCE?t=2m30s).

 

[GribbleGrunger]

My God, I just can't wait for this game. We're going to be visiting planets that no one else will ever see, NO ONE! Am I the only one that finds that exciting?

 

[Ethelwulf]

My God, I just can't wait for this game. We're going to be visiting planets that no one else will ever see, NO ONE! Am I the only one that finds that exciting?

And I hope planets are truly different. Not just random grass color or random temperature.
Looks very cool anyway!

 

[Auctopus]

My God, I just can't wait for this game. We're going to be visiting planets that no one else will ever see, NO ONE! Am I the only one that finds that exciting?

Yes, you are the only one who finds that exciting. That's why people were sent death threats when the game was reportedly delayed.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

Yes, you are the only one who finds that exciting. That's why people were sent death threats when the game was reportedly delayed.

Come on, Fella, there's no need to be sarcastic. Most people have been saying they hope each planet is different (see above) and nearly all the others have been wanting to know 'what you do'. I'm talking entirely about just the idea of visiting a planet no one else has visited. Just that simple idea is what gets me excited.

 

[Fushichou187]

Come on, Fella, there's no need to be sarcastic. Most people have been saying they hope each planet is different (see above) and nearly all the others have been wanting to know 'what you do'. I'm talking entirely about just the idea of visiting a planet no one else has visited. Just that simple idea is what gets me excited.

That's exciting for me as well. What I think is incredibly impressive though is that they're making a game with such a scale that you could be on the fence about NMS, don't pick it up in August, maybe wait for a flash sale during Black Friday in late November, and despite the amount of time that has passed, despite everything that all of us will have seen and explored up till then, you'll still be setting out and exploring places none of us will probably ever see; perhaps you'll be the only person ever to come across a particular life form or structure. It's a game whose scale rewards day 1 adopters and skeptical consumers alike.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

That's exciting for me as well. What I think is incredibly impressive though is that they're making a game with such a scale that you could be on the fence about NMS, don't pick it up in August, maybe wait for a flash sale during Black Friday in late November, and despite the amount of time that has passed, despite everything that all of us will have seen and explored up till then, you'll still be setting out and exploring places none of us will probably ever see; perhaps you'll be the only person ever to come across a particular life form or structure. It's a game whose scale rewards day 1 adopters and skeptical consumers alike.

Yep. I'm still going to avoid spoilers for a while because I'm convinced there's going to be content we have no idea is in the game, but once I'm fully immersed I'll be watching tons of let's plays just to see what other things people have discovered. I always have a problem when playing a game because my son is better than me and far more thorough so I'm constantly asking him not to jump ahead of me because exploration is one of the main reasons I play games. No Man's Sky is the PERFECT game for us.

On another note, I'd be interested to find out if there will be a difference between play styles depending on whether you're an introvert or and extravert. I'm an introvert but like to explore too and I noted the first thing I'm going to be doing is going 'inward' (dig down to find caves). I wonder if an extravert is more likely to want to explore 'outwards' and update the ship to leave the planet they're on as soon as possible.

 

[ChackanKun]

.

Im buying this game just to see stuff like this.


Any word on the performance on the PS4? Stable 30 or sub-30?

 

[SomTervo]

no one knows that you can't build anything persistent on planets, etc.

This is patently wrong, though? Well, we dont know if you can build yet (untrostworthy runours say you can) but what you do to a planet is absolutely permanent and persistent (for your own universe at least)

And I hope planets are truly different. Not just random grass color or random temperature.
Looks very cool anyway!

We know they will be, especially closer to the center of the galaxy/universe.

The closer you get to the center of the universe, the more the game breaks and warps its own planet- and animal-building algorithms.

You'll get more surreal and bizarre looking planet shapes, atmospheres, colours, plants and animals. The laws of physics/reality will start to break down.

I think they've only shown glimpses of this stuff so far. There's one bit in a trailer where they fly through a planet that's more a collection of islands.

 

[UncleSporky]

My God, I just can't wait for this game. We're going to be visiting planets that no one else will ever see, NO ONE! Am I the only one that finds that exciting?

No, that's really not all that exciting. If it was I would just sit there hitting "new world" in Minecraft over and over. Same situation there. After you've seen a couple dozen such worlds it starts to get old.

This is patently wrong, though? Well, we dont know if you can build yet (untrostworthy runours say you can) but what you do to a planet is absolutely permanent and persistent (for your own universe at least)

Terrain deformation is saved locally, but again I said build, as in making houses etc. I also thought I had read that once you leave a planet, anything you did to it is typically gone, i.e. it's saved locally as long as you stay nearby. Not sure if there's a more recent source that says otherwise.

Stuff being saved locally bodes even worse for whatever multiplayer aspects are in the game, I picture someone going into a deep pit they've dug and the other person sees them just clip through the planet's surface.

 

[Milton]

This game will be a mile wide and an inch deep.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

Im buying this game just to see stuff like this.


Any word on the performance on the PS4? Stable 30 or sub-30?

As far as we know it's 60fps.

 

[azertydu91]

That's on a level with the people that scoff at Euro Truck Simulator and other such games.

that's an interesting opinion about why some people can't understand the hyp eabout this game.

I, for example, can't understand ho woyu can have fun in a game like Euro Truck Simulator,maybe the main difference is that I can understand that it's not my type of game.

But for some reason some people can't understand the diference between not your type and bad game.

Some people just don't have fun by exploring countless planets and for some here they just said that and I'm OK with that, but criticizing the game for not being what you like to play has nothing to do with it's qualities.

Some people just can't understand that just like I can't understand Euro Truck simulator, just because it's beyond my gamer grasp.I haven't thought about it that way.

Thank you I may be a bit more tolerant about those games that don't click for me.

 

[Kikorin]

I can't be excited about this game because is all procedurally generated. I don't get how can be interesting explore lot of planets where there are no hand made locations. Anyway I'll be glad to change my mind if reviews and feedback from users will be positives.

 

[More_Badass]

I can't be excited about this game because is all procedurally generated. I don't get how can be interesting explore lot of planets where there are no hand made locations. Anyway I'll be glad to change my mind if reviews and feedback from users will be positives.

What exactly do think procedural generation entails? That the game will just randomly place trees here, or maybe there, or what not?

How is hand-crafted locations intrinsic to the joy of exploration? Isn't the thrill of the unknown what makes exploration enjoyable?

 

[OfTheOverflow]

Yes, you are the only one who finds that exciting. That's why people were sent death threats when the game was reportedly delayed.

Thank yoouu

 

[UncleSporky]

What exactly do think procedural generation entails? That the game will just randomly place trees here, or maybe there, or what not?

How is hand-crafted locations intrinsic to the joy of exploration? Isn't the thrill of the unknown what makes exploration enjoyable?

Maybe one aspect of it is that at its core, ultimately there isn't any thrill of the unknown, because with it all being generated you quickly get to the point where it is known.

With a game that has all hand-placed content like Skyrim, there is thrill of the unknown at least on a first playthrough because who knows what's over the next ridge, could be a hidden magical sword in a tree stump, a little shack where you discover somebody got mauled by a bear, a chest hidden among the reeds under a bridge. Cool things to find all over, and you expect there to be things to find because you know it was designed that way, for people to be surprised by cool things all over. You know there is stuff out there but you don't know what it is or how it will manifest.

With procedural generation the way NMS is doing it, you learn all the elements there are out there and simply know that over the next ridge, there will either be more trees or more ocean...nothing really very surprising or exciting. There will be a cave and maybe it will have a cool shape, but there won't be anything in the cave that's thrilling and unknown because you've figured out how these caves are generated and what they look like and how they all dead-end. By contrast to the above, you can be confident that there isn't anything really special out there.

I don't excitedly generate new Minecraft maps for the thrill of the unknown because I know what the deserts look like, what the tundras look like, what the forests look like. I know I won't see anything I haven't seen before, because I know how it is generated.

 

[OneEightZero]

This game will be a mile wide and an inch deep.

Gotta dig deeper. To the core, man.

 

[Carn82]

I can't be excited about this game because is all procedurally generated. I don't get how can be interesting explore lot of planets where there are no hand made locations. Anyway I'll be glad to change my mind if reviews and feedback from users will be positives.

I guess a lot of nature must be really boring then..

 

[More_Badass]

Maybe one aspect of it is that at its core, ultimately there isn't any thrill of the unknown, because with it all being generated you quickly get to the point where it is known.

With a game that has all hand-placed content like Skyrim, there is thrill of the unknown at least on a first playthrough because who knows what's over the next ridge, could be a hidden magical sword in a tree stump, a little shack where you discover somebody got mauled by a bear, a chest hidden among the reeds under a bridge. Cool things to find all over, and you expect there to be cool things to find because you know it was designed that way, for people to be surprised by cool things all over.

With procedural generation the way NMS is doing it, you learn all the elements there are out there and simply know that over the next ridge, there will either be more trees or more ocean...nothing really very surprising or exciting. There will be a cave and maybe it will have a cool shape, but there won't be anything in the cave that's thrilling and unknown because you've figured out how these caves are generated and what they look like and how they all dead-end.

I don't excitedly generate new Minecraft maps for the thrill of the unknown because I know what the deserts look like, what the tundras look like, what the forests look like. I know I won't see anything I haven't seen before, because I know how it is generated.

The game is designed as such so that what you encounter later in your journey is more alien and less Earthlike than at the start. So like a roguelike expanding your item pool as you progress, you can't see or know everything after the the first dozen or two dozen planets because the game hasn't introduced it all yet. So what's over that next ridge will change depending on far along you are in your journey

And of course the generation is more than just trees, caves, and ocean. Alien ecosystems, different weather and environment types that require different gear to endure, building "dungeons", etc.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

Maybe one aspect of it is that at its core, ultimately there isn't any thrill of the unknown, because with it all being generated you quickly get to the point where it is known.

With a game that has all hand-placed content like Skyrim, there is thrill of the unknown at least on a first playthrough because who knows what's over the next ridge, could be a hidden magical sword in a tree stump, a little shack where you discover somebody got mauled by a bear, a chest hidden among the reeds under a bridge. Cool things to find all over, and you expect there to be cool things to find because you know it was designed that way, for people to be surprised by cool things all over.

With procedural generation the way NMS is doing it, you learn all the elements there are out there and simply know that over the next ridge, there will either be more trees or more ocean...nothing really very surprising or exciting. There will be a cave and maybe it will have a cool shape, but there won't be anything in the cave that's thrilling and unknown because you've figured out how these caves are generated and what they look like and how they all dead-end.

I don't excitedly generate new Minecraft maps for the thrill of the unknown because I know what the deserts look like, what the tundras look like, what the forests look like. I know I won't see anything I haven't seen before, because I know how it is generated.

I completely disagree. Wouldn't you have been surprised if you suddenly came across a building on a planets that previously you thought were only about the landscape and wildlife? Wouldn't you have been surprised if on entering those building you happened upon an NPC? There are other things we don't know but clearly this is why Sean didn't want us to know anything about this game other than the tech behind it. Unfortunately he clearly had to offer the 'what do you do' crowd something to shut them up. I personally think he should have stayed quiet. Exploration is about finding new things and with No Man's Sky those things are not going to be on every planet. You might visit ten planets before you experience particular content and so it would be unexpected and exciting.

You have absolutely no idea what else is in the game and you have absolutely no idea how deep the procedural generation is.

 

[UncleSporky]

The game is designed as such so that what you encounter later in your journey is more alien and less Earthlike than at the start. So like a roguelike expanding your item pool as you progress, you can't see or know everything after the the first dozen or two dozen planets because the game hasn't introduced it all yet. So what's over that next ridge will change depending on far along you are in your journey

And of course the generation is more than just trees, caves, and ocean. Alien ecosystems, different weather and environment types that require different gear to endure, building "dungeons", etc.

Environmental survival gear is just a roadblock to getting to see that next unexciting copse of trees. I've played that game before, it was called Edge of Space and it was entirely not worth it. And we were even able to construct buildings in that game...

 

[GribbleGrunger]

Environmental survival gear is just a roadblock to getting to see that next unexciting copse of trees. I've played that game before, it was called Edge of Space and it was entirely not worth it. And we were even able to construct buildings in that game...

So we've established you don't like No Man's Sky.

 

[UncleSporky]

So we've established you don't like No Man's Sky. You can leave now.

Who knows whether or not I like No Man's Sky? Even if I loathed it I would be as welcome in this thread as you are.

I don't foresee a lot of enjoyment simply on the basis of seeing newly generated planets, but perhaps the combat will be fun, perhaps some new game elements will open up when you reach the center of the galaxy, perhaps they've retooled much of what we thought we knew about the game from earlier statements and previews.

My primary concern is not with No Man's Sky itself, but the depths people have gone to convince themselves of what it will be like, how much they will enjoy it, and the hostility we've already seen toward more casual consumers. I can see the storm that's brewing as we move toward release.