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[NaDannMaGoGo]

Holy shit at the cult/defense force of Murray and Hello Games still existing.

It's mind blowing. That guy's getting filthy rich from this game that is 15% code, 25% assets and 60fucking% lies that are well documented.

Seriously, how can you defend someone that's been caught lying so many times.

The most delusional people gotta be those who actually think that studio might deliver on some or even many of the premises. The quality of procedurally generated content they promised is actually ridiculous. It is rocket science, if not harder, to create massive procedurally generated worlds with proper physics, creatures that don't look stupid and have unique, yet, believable AI, proper alien factions, great space battles, and so on and so forth. Everyone interested in programming should've been aware that they were bullshitting right from the get go. Fuck, while not necessarily too closely related, it's ridiculous to assume that a small dev team is getting this humongous sort of project done when they cannot even do a basic proper UI.

Alas, only a tiny percentage of people are programmers or understanding of what these guys were actually promising and unfortunately our 'great' games journalists largely prefer mindless hyping instead of appropriate skepticism. So Hello Games' lying path to success unfortunately worked well :/

 

[Lagamorph]

Question is, given what we got, what the hell have Hello Games spent the last few years doing?

 

[red720]

Question is, given what we got, what the hell have Hello Games spent the last few years doing?

They are only a team of 15. They've probably been working flat out.

 

[gossi]

Question is, given what we got, what the hell have Hello Games spent the last few years doing?

They're 12 people (who stretched to 15 at launch). The people who made 'Inside', a side scroller, had double that. The problem with this game is it was marketed as AAA, and priced as that. It was not a AAA game by a long stretch. Assassin's Creed often has 7 studios across the world with 800 people working on one title. This, uh, didn't.

The BBC did a tour of their office in launch week, it was all the staff in one sweaty room with food at their desks who hadn't slept in a week.

 

[patapuf]

Question is, given what we got, what the hell have Hello Games spent the last few years doing?

Eh, look at other games in the genre, they take very long to make and usually spend significant time in early access and get built on incrementally even after release.

Minecraft was in EA for years too, for example.

Their offices were also flooded during development.

Making games is very time consuming and especially games with small teams can have very long dev cycles.

 

[E92 M3]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

 

[NoFaceNico]

Question is, given what we got, what the hell have Hello Games spent the last few years doing?

I find it completely believable that they were working on the game the whole time. But that's the problem. The game looks like what you would get if you wanted to deliver what we saw in the trailers but then gave the job to a 13 man indie dev team. People were sold on the idea of a small indie team doing the incredible and charging a well earned $60 for it.

 

[Transistor]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

I was completely satisfied with the game on lunch. But when I started getting crash after crash after crash and had to restart my game because my save got corrupted, the game is unplayable at that point.

 

[Hektor]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

And 50 hours he got his money worth.

 

[SomTervo]

Hello Games didn't say "we hope to have multiplayer, but wait and see", and they wouldn't face such harsh criticism if they had said that.

This is the beef.

Imagine a parallel universe where they said what you said above. We'd have a bunch of news articles from big outlets saying "No Man's Sky might get multiplayer added" and that would be it.

There'd be no furore.

No hate train.

No refunds.

(At least not because of the multiplayer promise.)

And 50 hours he got his money worth.

The entire "50 hours" thing comes down to whether he got his money's worth. Which is entirely subjective.

I'm at 30 hours and sort of feel like I got my money's worth. It's certainly functional and I enjoy it.

But the guy cited as playing 50 hours clearly felt like he had a long way to go. He was enjoying it. Perhaps to him it didn't feel quite like his money's worth yet. And then sudden, infinite crashing ruined the experience, making it very much not worth his money, sabotaging the whole thing or stealing a lot more experience he might have.

 

[nelchaar]

Maybe because I went on a media blackout and never got my expectations raised, but the game is exactly what I thought it was.

 

[Panajev2001a]

They're 12 people (who stretched to 15 at launch). The people who made 'Inside', a side scroller, had double that. The problem with this game is it was marketed as AAA, and priced as that. It was not a AAA game by a long stretch. Assassin's Creed often has 7 studios across the world with 800 people working on one title. This, uh, didn't.

The BBC did a tour of their office in launch week, it was all the staff in one sweaty room with food at their desks who hadn't slept in a week.

It does not help when your offices are flooded... but still about the price, I think that by perpetuating this false truth that unless a game is a super recognised AAAA developer with 500-800+ people on deck that it's price cannot be as high as $59. Especially considering inflation and the risk such a game has on a small studio that normally does not have the marketing machine to drive the numbers that AAAA games target.

Also, although not everyone here dabbles in DLC's and season passes, a lot of gamers spend way more than $59 on a videogame nowadays, so it is even more unfair to restrict all the A and AA games to $20 or less. I do hope we can avoid the loss of perceived value we had in mobile games and what that caused: essentially all games driven by that and piracy to a micro transaction heavy F2P setup.

 

[gossi]

For the record although I refunded by UK copy, I kept my US copy because the game is basically what I expected. A ragtag, limited indie space exploration game.

 

[liquidtmd]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

'Hello. Just a quick heads up. Things have changed'

Nine words. That's all they needed to say pre-launch in respect to the things they outlined but didn't make the final build.

A short statement. Something. Anything. It would have helped. Many would have understood and to those who didn't, tough.

Some may well be ignorant but nothing was done to enlighten them

 

[Steejee]

Question is, given what we got, what the hell have Hello Games spent the last few years doing?

Desperately trying to get everything that Murray promised for the game actually working.

I imagine they had prototypes for just about everything he did promise working at some point. The problem is that a prototype doesn't always translate into a full feature - it could be too resource intensive, too buggy, be too subtle or opaque as to render it pointless, or simply not be fun. Instead of waiting until those pieces were in a good enough state to guarantee they'd be in, he said they'd be in the moment someone had shown something functional. Murray just likes to promise the sun, moon, and stars to anyone that asks, reality be damned. In other words, they need a real PR person.

I don't know for sure if that's what actually happened, but it lines up pretty well with my experiences in software.

 

[SomTervo]

Question is, given what we got, what the hell have Hello Games spent the last few years doing?

We heard a lot of rumours late in 2015 that the game was struggling to fit on PS4 in a big way.

I personally believe that they built the game they wanted to make, which was close to the hype they generated, but then had to slice it down substantially in 2016 to make it 'fit' onto the PS4's hardware.

This is totally besides the shitshow of constantly implying multiplayer up to/through release. I'm mainly talking about the massive cut-down on universe scale, background systems, etc.

Maybe because I went on a media blackout and never got my expectations raised, but the game is exactly what I thought it was.

I think the experience is about 90% what they promised and I'm very happy with it. Exploring lots of strange planet-scale-planets in a spaced-out, relatively chill way

However the game (as in mechanics, features, simulation) is about 50% what they promised (mainly background systems and hype-inducing details which would have impacted it) and, far worse, they handled the changes really fucking badly, practically promising a lot of it right up to release (closely enough at least).

For instance, if you read interviews with Murray from 2016 he really directly implied, almost flat-out stating that multiplayer would be in the game (at least that you could definitely meet other players).

If you weren't on media blackout you'd be going in absolutely with this expectation. Indeed, even if multiplayer was here, I think it would be a minor feature that wouldn't impact the experience. But it's how they talked about it that is the issue.

 

[patapuf]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

One can think the outrage is overblown but the pre-release marketing was misleading and full of promises that were never fulfilled. More damningly, Hello games never made any attempts to clarify that some features they promised never made it into the game. That's a fact.


Now as i said, if you think that's not a big deal that's fine, but there's really no need to defend those kind of marketing campaigns, no matter the size of the team.

 

[rochellepaws]

Holy shit at the cult/defense force of Murray and Hello Games still existing.

Sadly a section of the gaming community hold a very low opinion of their peers and will always side with the developer or media in these sort of disputes. I'm sure the accusation of being "entitled" has been dropped more than once over the course of the thread.

Personally I think it's great to see the consumer standing up for their rights and Sony/Steam honouring those rights. From a developer perspective I hope the message this sends out is that misleading the customer is no longer a sensible or profitable business practice.

 

[samn]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

except they tweeted about how multiplayer was in the game on the day of release.

 

[Jacksinthe]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

Bro so much changes. That's not the problem.

The problem is when shit changed or was never implemented, Sean kept talking.

The ignorance lies with ignoring shit like, you know, facts. Every interview and every question was always being answered based on the narrative of the interview. Examples...

Colbert show narrative: it's just so big-
The chances of you seeing someone are so small, you'll never see your character, the only way to know what you look like is to have someone else see you and tell you

Another interview narrative: you can do anything-
You can land on asteroids and comets, you can play with friends, you can grief other players, you can customize your character

When you constantly answer in the positive to the narrative and excitement of the moment, you are spreading bullshit.

Tweets a day or so before launch:
NMS is not a multiplayer game

Tweets POST launch:
We are blown away two players met
(Questioned why they couldn't see each other) servers hit hard
We added a search for other players
Game data mined, MP doesn't exist

It is disingenuous to ignore those pesky facts, unless you just so happen to be a computer scientist who believes people are having fun wrong™

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Desperately trying to get everything that Murray promised for the game actually working.

I imagine they had prototypes for just about everything he did promise working at some point. The problem is that a prototype doesn't always translate into a full feature - it could be too resource intensive, too buggy, be too subtle or opaque as to render it pointless, or simply not be fun. Instead of waiting until those pieces were in a good enough state to guarantee they'd be in, he said they'd be in the moment someone had shown something functional. Murray just likes to promise the sun, moon, and stars to anyone that asks, reality be damned. In other words, they need a real PR person.

I don't know for sure if that's what actually happened, but it lines up pretty well with my experiences in software.

Ita most likely this with combination of a publisher deadline. I mean, a lot of ideas are in the game, but they are extremely simplified or altered due to time.

Factions exist, but not in the grandiose manner talked about. Some large ships exist, but not the major fleet battles seen in the trailers.

Spoiler

portals exist, but they dont do anything and it seems that entire system has been replaced with black holes

There was an interview before launch where Sean talked about how the launch version is how they mainly envisioned the game, especually when talking about multiplayer and how they want it to be a solo experience. This was basically the closest he got to saying that there was no multiplayer at launch, why he didnt outeight say it, who knows. Maybe he lied, maybe he couldnt under NDA, my guess is there is a story comming soon similar to a bungie expose after Destiny.

 

[SomTervo]

Another interview narrative: you can do anything-
You can land on asteroids and comets, you can play with friends, you can grief other players, you can customize your character

Jeez, when did he say the bolded?

FYI another good example is March 2016 when he said "it's a really low chance you'll meet another players, but we've designed it so that when it happens it will be cool" etc.

 

[graybot]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

Pretty much this

I think its fine and the metacritic score is about right

The outrage from some on both sides of the argument would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. Its a computer game at the end of the day.

But as often in the gaming industry things get so blown out of proportion by overly passionate/bordering on insane consumers.

 

[Prime crotch]

Jeez, when did he say the bolded?

FYI another good example is March 2016 when he said "it's a really low chance you'll meet another players, but we've designed it so that when it happens it will be cool" etc.

In his dodgy way he confirmed griefing when asked directly about it: "can you grief other players?" "yes" but then again, maybe naming things in a dumb manner is griefing to him

 

[SomTervo]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

As said elsewhere (and I'm a big fan of the game) there's a lot of stuff promised that you might not realise has been cut. The extent of it is actually pretty insane. It's mainly details, but the devil is in the details. The list of stuff missing (which they categorically said existed as recently as March 2016) would have made the game a complete masterwork if it had been included.

A lot of people were getting hyped based on that.

Now a lot of people are refunding based on that.

In his dodgy way he confirmed griefing when asked directly about it: "can you grief other players?" "yes" but then again, maybe naming things in a dumb manner is griefing to him

Yeah, he probably meant "yes you can grief by naming planets with dumb names".

Man.

If they don't announce at some point before 2017 that these things were developed but cut I'm going to lose my shit.

 

[FloatingDivider]

In his dodgy way he confirmed griefing when asked directly about it: "can you grief other players?" "yes" but then again, maybe naming things in a dumb manner is griefing to him

Oh my god he named his planet A.SS.Hole to get around the profanity filter such amazing griefing. I wonder if that was legit his thought-process. Did the interviewer tell him one word or less for his responses or something. The amount of times this guy just said yes to whatever he wanted was mindblowing.

 

[8-Bit Sunset]

Ok I found this funny
SHOCKING interview about No Man's Sky :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6HHU-j5Css

Good for a giggle.

 

[Prime crotch]

Yeah, he probably meant "yes you can grief by naming planets with dumb names".

Man.

If they don't announce at some point before 2017 that these things were developed but cut I'm going to lose my shit.

Maybe, but what he said was "Yes", meaning griefing as in common parlance is inferred to mean mp.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

The way Murray spoke in interviews and on twitter sounds like he didn't even know what was in his own company's game. Maybe he's really hands off and his employees just tell him what he wants to hear.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Jeez, when did he say the bolded?

FYI another good example is March 2016 when he said "it's a really low chance you'll meet another players, but we've designed it so that when it happens it will be cool" etc.

Pick any of the numerous videos floating around on YT as of late and it'll probably be in there.

Can you customize your character:
Sort of

Anyone would take that as a mild bit of customization, even just something silly like hair color or suit color which, in the end, means yes.

Of you ask me if I have any bosses in my game that are gargantuan and I say "a few", that's a confirmation even though I didn't say how many or yes. That's just common vernacular.

 

[Beefy]

Damn this thread is getting even more crazy. I don't get how people can stick up for a company that was in the wrong. I also don't get the consumer blaming "it's your fault deal with it" , it all seems crazy as fuck to me.

I don't get how people get so emotionally attached to a game, that they are willing to defend it over everything.

 

[Veggy]

I've had a steam ticket open since Saturday and still no reply, anyone else had this problem? (particularly from UK/EU)

 

[FloatingDivider]

Pick any of the numerous videos floating around on YT as of late and it'll probably be in there.

Can you customize your character:
Sort of

Anyone would take that as a mild bit of customization, even just something silly like hair color or suit color which, in the end, means yes.

Of you ask me if I have any bosses in my game that are gargantuan and I say "a few", that's a confirmation even though I didn't say how many or yes. That's just common vernacular.

Oh but what he meant to say is you've got an inventory system which is incredibly limiting but you can make it even more limited by locking out certain slots to gain an utterly irrelevant boost to a thing you'll never need because there are no hazards in this game. That's sort of like character customization right? Atleast rpg-lite lvls of depth for sure. /sarcasm

I imagine Sean was an idea guy leading a team of inept yes men.

 

[Froli]

I've been following since the beginning and got pretty much everything promised. Other than that, things change in development and multiplayer was never the focus of this game.

Lots of ignorant outrage on the Internet.

The cult/Murray defense force is indeed really fucking strong on this thread.

 

[FloatingDivider]

I've had a steam ticket open since Saturday and still no reply, anyone else had this problem? (particularly from UK/EU)

Yes they're just swamped because Valve doesn't hire any extra cs reps and it's been the same 5 guys for the last decade or something. Don't expect a positive answer either. You'll be in this for the long haul trying to get your money back while they throw the most asinine boilerplate at your shit. Just hang in there.

 

[marvelharvey]

Also odd seeing No Man's Sky seemingly delisted on the top 10 sellers page, last I remember it fell down one or two spots.

Actually, I can't even find it 12 pages into the top sellers. Has Valve removed it from the charts? Does anyone else see it?

Also, I wonder if there's been a negative-review campaign on reddit or somewhere. Early last week, NMS was sitting at 57% positive reviews, but now it's tumbled down 42% with only a minor change in total number of reviews.

 

[Veggy]

Yes they're just swamped because Valve doesn't hire any extra cs reps and it's been the same 5 guys for the last decade or something. Don't expect a positive answer either. You'll be in this for the long haul trying to get your money back while they throw the most asinine boilerplate at your shit. Just hang in there.

I should be ok since I live in the UK and have under 3 hours played, I'm just gonna throw stuff like this in their face

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act#digital-content
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-rights-for-consumers-when-buying-digital-content

 

[Panajev2001a]

Damn this thread is getting even more crazy. I don't get how people can stick up for a company that was in the wrong. I also don't get the consumer blaming "it's your fault deal with it" , it all seems crazy as fuck to me.

I don't get how people get so emotionally attached to a game, that they are willing to defend it over everything.

I can see strong emotions on either side. Some people are saying "the outrage is overblown, I am getting my money's worth" and some people are answering "omg, how can you support those thieves who created such a worthless pile of lies!!!!!" ... and yet the latter is also crying about a defence force who seems to be much quieter and a lot less aggressive. Count the N-th thread created to complain about the game from a different angle to the threads created to defend it and do the maths .

 

[FloatingDivider]

Actually, I can't even find it 12 pages into the top sellers. Has Valve removed it from the charts? Does anyone else see it?

Also, I wonder if there's been a negative-review campaign on reddit or somewhere. Early last week, NMS was sitting at 57% positive reviews, but now it's tumbled down 42% with only a minor change in total number of reviews.

No people are just going back in and updating their reviews to accurately reflect the value of the game. The game actually had a negative new positive review count yesterday on account of people updating their reviews.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The cult/Murray defense force is indeed really fucking strong on this thread.

Uhm... I see a person saying he enjoyed what he got and your answer... I did not see him being aggressive while you came swinging back with cult name calling.

 

[Beefy]

I can see strong emotions on either side. Some people are saying "the outrage is overblown, I am getting my money's worth" and some people are answering "omg, how can you support those thieves who created such a worthless pile of lies!!!!!" ... and yet the latter is also crying about a defence force who seems to be much quieter and a lot less aggressive. Count the N-th thread created to complain about the game from a different angle to the threads created to defend it and do the maths .

I said this thread, I haven't looked in the other one. Yes you get insane people from both sides that over blow things. But for me when you start sticking up for a business over a consumer then that is just crazy.

 

[Hektor]

Uhm... I see a person saying he enjoyed what he got and your answer... I did not see him being aggressive while you came swinging back with cult name calling.

What I'm seeing is a person defacto contradicting himself while defending the game and then moving on to call the other people ignorant.

 

[poros1ty]

Actually, I can't even find it 12 pages into the top sellers. Has Valve removed it from the charts? Does anyone else see it?

Also, I wonder if there's been a negative-review campaign on reddit or somewhere. Early last week, NMS was sitting at 57% positive reviews, but now it's tumbled down 42% with only a minor change in total number of reviews.

Last time I checked yesterday it was hovering around 180 on the global top seller page on steam, which would be page 7.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I said this thread, I haven't looked in the other one. Yes you get insane people from both sides that over blow things. But for me when you start sticking up for a business over a consumer then that is just crazy.

That general feeling I can definitely sympathise with. I do think that sometimes when things seem clear cut, omg he is anti consumer, things may not actually be that way.

 

[Pepto]

What a brilliant thread. People really show their colours.

 

[amdb00mer]

does IGN employ any computer scientists? there's your answer. If you don't think this reply makes any sense, you're not a computer scientist and don't understand it. simple enough?

I'm going to assume you were joking because of an earlier post.

The reason I mentioned IGN is they did their IGN First for an entire month showcasing all these features. However their review, even though it is a 6, never mentions the missing features they supposedly played or reported on during their IGN First segment. Makes me wonder if they even touched the game before release or only used supplied videos and descriptions from Hello Games.

 

[Zemm]

Actually, I can't even find it 12 pages into the top sellers. Has Valve removed it from the charts? Does anyone else see it?

Also, I wonder if there's been a negative-review campaign on reddit or somewhere. Early last week, NMS was sitting at 57% positive reviews, but now it's tumbled down 42% with only a minor change in total number of reviews.

It was place 180 or so on the top sellers chart yesterday, which is absolutely terrible for them, great for us.

 

[Panajev2001a]

What I'm seeing is a person defacto contradicting himself while defending the game and then moving on to call the other people ignorant.

I can understand that, but I am also seeing anger towards people who enjoy something that you and others do not. It is not like the voice about the game's hype machine and end result lacking many of the items people may have been led to believe has been stifled. It is difficult to see people appreciating what they have played without a pack of posters essentially swarming over it and in some cases doing it quite aggressively.

 

[eso76]

Consumers have a thousand tools to form a very precise idea of what they're buying.

You couldn't wait ? well, that's too bad but it's entirely on you.
People still think they need to preorder and are even outraged when the embargo for reviews is lifted, god forbid, on launch day.
Like it's their right to throw their money at a developer a pig in a poke, but at the same time they want to be able to withdraw the money if they're not happy with their purchase.
Bullshit.

Stop preordering. Stop rushing to buy your new game on day 0.

Steam should not offer refunds, unless there's fundamental issues with the game (like, it was advertised as working on your system, but it doesn't).
What they could do is offer a cheap trial (3$ for the first hour of actual play time ?) and the possibility to rent games in hours.

 

[OldmanAndroid]

Damn this thread is getting even more crazy. I don't get how people can stick up for a company that was in the wrong. I also don't get the consumer blaming "it's your fault deal with it" , it all seems crazy as fuck to me.

I don't get how people get so emotionally attached to a game, that they are willing to defend it over everything.

This is my first post in this thread, but just wanted to say that Ive always favoured buyer beware over consumer rights. I believe that companies should have the right to lie/mislead in their marketing (to an extent). The market should correct this. The press has the right to give unfair negative reviews. Word of mouth will spread, especially in a world with internet. Companies that do this should fail.

I'm a person who always blames myself. If I bought a shitty product, I should have read more reviews. Why didn't I check the yelp reviews before going to this restaurant? That's on me. I bought Brute Force on day one, and was so mad at myself for not waiting for more reviews to come in.

For the rest of my life, companies are going to lie to me to try and get my money, and I support that! Of course we need consumer rights in terms of safety, etc. But I also like having the choice between a nice $10 stapler, or a shitty $1 stapler from the dollar store.