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Joseph Anderson Vs No Man's Sky
- Thread starter Froli
- Start date
Posts like this are upsetting. Procedural generation has so much potential. It's shitty procedural generation that's the problem. Spelunky is incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqk5Zf0tw3o
orthodoxy1095
Banned
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
That ending... out. I feel bad for Joseph, after putting through with all that nonsense the game gives him one final punch in the balls.
I don't think I've talked much in threads since playing this game. Basically, I drifted away from it after a few hours. I intended to do some more exploration, at least until I could reach all the different classes of star system, but kind of just... drifted off.
The people saying they were right to criticism NMS in all the threads are only right because of all the stuff Murray said would be in the game but turned out to not be in the game.
While watching part of that video I tried to compare it in my mind to Elite: Dangerous, which is technically very similar. In it you explore planets, get resources, and get money to... continue doing all that stuff but more efficiently. The difference is Elite probably has more meaningful upgrades to get, deeper interaction with factions, and actually more planet variety depending on how you look at it. Multiplayer goes without saying. Before starting NMS I'd been playing Elite purely as an explorer where you do nothing but warp into a system, scan planets from orbit, and warp out. But these systems contain different colors and sizes of stars, desert planets, mineral planets, water worlds, gas giants, icy moons, brown dwarfs, and extremely rare Earth-like planets. In short, it uses real science to bring a lot of variety into the exploration than NMS's conventional sci-fi take misses.
The people saying they were right to criticism NMS in all the threads are only right because of all the stuff Murray said would be in the game but turned out to not be in the game.
While watching part of that video I tried to compare it in my mind to Elite: Dangerous, which is technically very similar. In it you explore planets, get resources, and get money to... continue doing all that stuff but more efficiently. The difference is Elite probably has more meaningful upgrades to get, deeper interaction with factions, and actually more planet variety depending on how you look at it. Multiplayer goes without saying. Before starting NMS I'd been playing Elite purely as an explorer where you do nothing but warp into a system, scan planets from orbit, and warp out. But these systems contain different colors and sizes of stars, desert planets, mineral planets, water worlds, gas giants, icy moons, brown dwarfs, and extremely rare Earth-like planets. In short, it uses real science to bring a lot of variety into the exploration than NMS's conventional sci-fi take misses.
IAmAnAgnostic
Member
orthodoxy1095
Banned
Erhm, no?
Even if you divorce the game from the promises and hype, it's still incredibly shallow and underwhelming.
My thoughts on Spelunky and I assume Minecraft aside (I'm not a big fan of either), the GMT video demonstrates (maybe unintentionally) that the nature of "good procedural content" is, in practice, less procedural content. Selective and restrained procedural content.
That's not NMS. The dream that NMS presented is not a worthwhile one. Leaving so much up to chance, downplaying design itself so thoroughly, is not how good games are made. NMS demonstrates that so perfectly.
jim2point0
Banned
I'd also highly recommend checking out Noah Caldwell-Gervais. He's another great long-form reviewer that had a pretty good take on No Man's Sky.
He talks about how this games possibilities could have been expanded upon if it wasn't set up to let you do every possible thing the game has to offer on every single planet.
He talks about how this games possibilities could have been expanded upon if it wasn't set up to let you do every possible thing the game has to offer on every single planet.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
Holy crap, what a strong ending, and hearing all the other stuff he went through before reaching it, makes it so painfully understandable how he just turned off the game after that
Starting to see some rising numbers on his videos, that's great, Noah's fantastic at analysing and presenting his opinions.
BouncyFrag
Member
Wow. That ending was a perfect storm of the terrible, poorly planned game systems working in conjunction to make what is a horroble, half-assed ending even worse. Bravo HG, bravo.
somme
Member
Same here!
KojiKnight
Member
Icyflamez96
Member
The people who presented the "what do you do" question disingenuously aren't any more "right" for doing so just because there are a bunch of features talked about pre-release that didn't make it to the final cut. That doesn't make any sense.
Not saying it was ever wrong to just think the game looked uninteresting, but people who thought that should just say that. The "what do you do" question when presented in such a fashion was just inflammatory and counterproductive to discussion.
And no one should be using Sean's over promises/lies as leverage to deprecate either side. It's at no blame of any observer that HG didn't deliver on many promised features in the final game. I still think the game would have been awesome if it was actually what they said it was going to be.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
I don't think that's true.
First of all, the dream of procedural generation is still alive. Look at something like Space Engine.
The future is far away, but the future is bright.
Second, the principle difference between something like No Man's Sky and Spelunky or Minecraft is that the former has bad game design, while the latter two have good design layered on their procedural generation.
Consider the difference, Minecraft is a game that encourages player investment with well-thought out but basic gameplay loops. The most basic gameplay mechanic is duh, mining (or perhaps more broadly "harvesting). And to find suitable mining spots, you need to explore. These two mechanics feed into player investment which comes mostly in the form of building. Players build crazy castles and mansions and they concoct amazing red-stone machines. Boom, player investment and engaging with the world. Each time you spawn a new world seed, you'll never know where the materials you need to build are going to be. Having basic biomes means you at least need to wander a bit to see different things. You'll never know what the landscape is going to look like and how you might need to adjust your home base to fit it, or how you'll need to terraform it.
And with survival mechanics, Minecraft further encourages you to explore, and then later encourages you to try things like farming. Again, investing you in calling a place "yours" and stamping an identity and ownership on a completely procedurally generated world. Throw in multiplayer and you have some fairly engaging player co-op building and even PvP going on.
Compare this to No Man's Sky which is a glorified seek-and-find cum tourism simulator. The resources you need are only needed to power your suit, tool and ship (or to sell). There's nothing else you can do with them. You can never build a home base, you never can or even need to create a resource farm. Land on a planet, go "hey that's a pretty landscape," press the screenshot button and then you just wander around looking for the stupid little zinc plant that looks the same on ever damn planet so you can press square and harvest it. You can't even build or customize a ship and are left only with the option of buying procedurally generated ships from vendors.
And on top of the no building or customization, there's no player interaction. So forget building together or fighting one another, you can't even engage in the basic enjoyment of exploring together.
You could even make your same claim about the preponderance of survival-resource-crafting games inn Steam. Doesn't the failure of No Man's Sky show those are a dead-end market bubble waiting to pop? And the answer is again, no. The fundamental flaw of No Man's Sky isn't its procedural generation or its focus on survival-resource-crafting. The flaw is that it basically does nothing with those ideas. There's almost nothing that makes the game more engaging or that draws the player to invest something back, and that's what's caused the backlash, and I think that's the lesson to be taken away from it.
The Dutch Slayer
Member
bwhahahaha HOLY SHIT that end game insane :')
bitbydeath
Member
Yet he still played for 58 hours, not many games can captivate people for that long so despite what people say he still got way more out of it than his monies worth otherwise he would have stopped 50 or more hours ago.
I honestly feel that if the devs released a polished game that was ÂŁ20-25 then they wouldn't have received half as much shit as they have.
But instead they went balls to the wall full AAA price, released a buggy POS and left features out.
I mean wow. Has anything on this kinda scale been done before? Seriously what a fuck up and it goes to show that hype will sell anything.
Nice video on the topic but about 20 minutes too long.
But instead they went balls to the wall full AAA price, released a buggy POS and left features out.
I mean wow. Has anything on this kinda scale been done before? Seriously what a fuck up and it goes to show that hype will sell anything.
Nice video on the topic but about 20 minutes too long.
I too can OCD my way into doing some useless task for a long time. Doesn't mean I enjoyed that task while I was doing it, or at least enough to justify the time spent on it.
Plus he notes that he stakes his reputation on finishing games.
Did you watch the video?
he was "hate-playing" the game. It wasn't captivating him. It was making him mad/disappointed and it wasn't about to let a shitty game beat him, so he made himself suffer through it just so he could see it all, as his own personal goal. He wanted to finish what he started.
Watch the video my friend. You'd be a lot more informed.
Sniffynose
Member
I quit on PS4 after a few days, the crashes and losing my save games were enough for me. When I read about the ending I was kind of in denial, I mean they went on and on about not giving out spoilers, and it turned out that was just to hide the fact there was nothing at all to be spoiled.
I've said it quite a few times on various forums, I'd still like to play the same shown on those steam store page videos and what we saw pre-release.
We got a pretty empty she'll of what seemed like a grand vision which sucks.
I've said it quite a few times on various forums, I'd still like to play the same shown on those steam store page videos and what we saw pre-release.
We got a pretty empty she'll of what seemed like a grand vision which sucks.
I agree with everything said in this video.
The most annoying part is maybe the fact that you cannot walk too far from your ship because it would only force you to walk all the way back. If you could call your ship at any time, or teleport yourself to it, you could at least try to enjoy the game as a walking simulator with interesting looking environments. I never followed the urge to go to a certain place at the horizon because I knew that I'd have to go back. And jumping in and out of the ship is too cumbersome and destroys the sense of exploring.
Well, in the end it does not matter, since the environments are not really interesting and there is nothing to explore. But from a gameplay perspective, these easy-to-fix flaws are just incomprehensible.
The most annoying part is maybe the fact that you cannot walk too far from your ship because it would only force you to walk all the way back. If you could call your ship at any time, or teleport yourself to it, you could at least try to enjoy the game as a walking simulator with interesting looking environments. I never followed the urge to go to a certain place at the horizon because I knew that I'd have to go back. And jumping in and out of the ship is too cumbersome and destroys the sense of exploring.
Well, in the end it does not matter, since the environments are not really interesting and there is nothing to explore. But from a gameplay perspective, these easy-to-fix flaws are just incomprehensible.
Roufianos
Member
Or that bigger doesn't equal better.
Open world collectathons and copy and paste quests have been the worst part of this gen so far.
On topic, this game looks like complete shit.
bitbydeath
Member
I'm still trying to understand how you tried to spin this as him actually being "captivated" w/ NMS.
He never watched the video but feels an insatiable need to defend.
bitbydeath
Member
How do you spin it as not?
That's like watching 20 Lord of the Rings movies and then claiming you actually don't like the genre/story.
bitbydeath
Member
I'm simply pointing out how stupid the controversy is.
Sad Affleck
Member
Exactly. There are a lot of awesome games that use procedural generation to great effect.
Pestilence11
Member
I enjoyed the game such as it was and probably sunk 80-100 hours in but you can't be serious lol
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Captivated is not the right word as he was making himself as informed as possible for the sake of this video critique. Doesn't mean that the game is captivating in anyway shape or form, especially with this amount of not very easy to miss design flaws coupled with baffling decisions like making sure EVERY planet is the same with a new palette. I'd sincerely recommend watching the video before posting and making assumptions about the creator of said video or at least make it less obvious that you didn't bother watching the content in the OP.
chillybright
Banned
You are the one who is spinning simply because you still haven't watched the video.
The "controversy" that someone didn't like No Man's Sky? Wow what a world shaker. No time to actually watch a video before we rush to defend that.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
I've played plenty of shitty games for long periods of times.
It's what you do when you want to be informed about a game. Or in Joseph's case, when he wants to be informed since this is what his channel is about...
CassidyIzABeast
Member
If you're going to critique a game as thoroughly as he does you're kinda obligated to see it through to the end.
Saw this earlier after LGR retweeted it. Kudos to him for putting up with the pain, suffering, and monotony to make this video so thorough - makes me appreciate what critics have to go through. It's interesting that he brings up the question if it is a statement on the overly large worlds that rely on procedural generation as a crutch. There was some talk of this in the opening week, but it fizzled out when the backlash got into full stride. It wouldn't excuse the poor quality of the gameplay loop, but you have to wonder after such an in-depth dissection if there is something to it. Even if it's not (it's probably not), it'll be interesting how NMS affects future games touting such features, especially after Deus Ex took the opposite approach and is getting unanimous praise for it.
Also, lol at the ending. It's such a perfect "fuck you" send-off.
Please watch the video. You're embarrassing yourself.
Also, lol at the ending. It's such a perfect "fuck you" send-off.
Please watch the video. You're embarrassing yourself.
He played that long purely for the sake of his video. In the video he points out that he became bored of it quickly, but has a channel policy to finish every game he starts before critiquing it. In fact, he points out that this is the game that almost made him abandon his "finish every game" policy, but he stuck with it to find out what happens when you reach the galactic center.
Edit: I see now that others have already pointed this out.