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No Man's Sky info from Game Informer

goonergaz

Member
I agree with the Minecraft comment...I got bored after a couple of hours, but I'm hopeful the variety of planets will help overcome this...plus the drive for upgrading - I guess you can explore until 'bored' and then make your way to the centre...still might take a lot of time to get there.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
So every planet has robots on them? Lame. Not only does that not make any sense, considering the scope of the game, it also kills my immersion. I want to be the first thing to set foot on some of those planets.

They have to constrain the scope, but this does seem like a big constraint. It sounds like every planet will basically be the same but with different window dressing, and increasing difficulty of the robots.

That said, at least we can now see the structure of the game. Just that structure isn't necessarily as awe-inspiring-ly varied or large as our imaginations might have drawn out after the first trailers of the games. I flagged that as a concern before, that the initial introductions left a lot to the imagination. Even if I might have hoped for something more ambitious in terms of variety of planet dynamics and inter-planetary dynamics, at least it's realistic now.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
It just sounds like too FPS for me. Practically Destiny with random maps. Which is fine and probably fits the audience, it's just not for me. Fight, mine, upgrade, go to the next planet, repeat.

For space fighting I will have Elite: Dangerous in two weeks.
 

Rosur

Member
The personal hype for this couldn't possibly be any bigger.

Speak for yourself. Exploration as a core concept never gets old as long as the moment to moment gameplay is engaging and you continually give me new content to explore.

If you want to look at it as a game to play through once and be done with it, the interview states that they expect the completion of that quest to take from 40 to a 100 hours of playtime, which should leave most people well satisfied in terms of length.

With that sort of length time I do see this going to be a full price title. Though still hoping for a £15/$20 indie title.
 
They have to constrain the scope, but this does seem like a big constraint. It sounds like every planet will basically be the same but with different window dressing, and increasing difficulty of the robots.

That said, at least we can now see the structure of the game. Just that structure isn't necessarily as awe-inspiring-ly varied or large as our imaginations might have drawn out after the first trailers of the games. I flagged that as a concern before, that the initial introductions left a lot to the imagination. Even if I might have hoped for something more ambitious in terms of variety of planet dynamics and inter-planetary dynamics, at least it's realistic now.

Updated info suggests the robots aren't on every planet...

The malevolent force robots are on SOME PLANETS. Sorry about that guys.

That's a huge relief. I want whole swathes of the universe to be completely devoid of any life. The haunting emptiness will be amazing to experience.
 
They have to constrain the scope, but this does seem like a big constraint. It sounds like every planet will basically be the same but with different window dressing, and increasing difficulty of the robots.

That said, at least we can now see the structure of the game. Just that structure isn't necessarily as awe-inspiring-ly varied or large as our imaginations might have drawn out after the first trailers of the games. I flagged that as a concern before, that the initial introductions left a lot to the imagination. Even if I might have hoped for something more ambitious in terms of variety of planet dynamics and inter-planetary dynamics, at least it's realistic now.

What have you read that points to what you are suggesting?

I mean first of all robots *aren't* on ever planet: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=141536818#post141536818 but even if they were how does that then mean everything will be the same bar graphical differences?

And someone please tell me how this is anything like Destiny. I ask because if it is then I really misjudged/understood that game and need to buy the shit out of it asap.
 

forms

Member
It just sounds like too FPS for me. Practically Destiny with random maps. Which is fine and probably fits the audience, it's just not for me. Fight, mine, upgrade, go to the next planet, repeat.

For space fighting I will have Elite: Dangerous in two weeks.

I am playing Elite: Dangerous, and having felt the combat in that game, my interest for No Man's sky went from OUTTADISWORLD to fizzle.

If nothing else it is a stunner to look at, and the exploration might surprise by not feeling rehashed the tenth time but instead awesome. All about the feeling in the game, I suppose. That magical formula that everyone chases.
 
What have you read that points to what you are suggesting?

I mean first of all robots *aren't* on ever planet: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=141536818#post141536818 but even if they were how does that then mean everything will be the same bar graphical differences?

And someone please tell me how this is anything like Destiny. I ask because if it is then I really misjudged/understood that game and need to buy the shit out of it asap.

The developer rhetoric feels very Destiny-esque in some respects.

I'm sure it won't be the crushing disappointment Destiny was though.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I am playing Elite: Dangerous, and having felt the combat in that game, my interest for No Man's sky went from OUTTADISWORLD to fizzle.

If nothing else it is a stunner to look at, and the exploration might surprise by not feeling rehashed the tenth time but instead awesome. All about the feeling in the game, I suppose. That magical formula that everyone chases.

So you say that whatever flight and space fight sequences you saw from NMS piqued your interest more than E:D? Because what I see in videos so far it's very simple arcade kind of flying and space fight.

On the other hand, reading the additional details, it's just partially a Destiny and there are more things to it, but I'm still cautious about it.

Edit:

[*]Upgrades to three categories are available, suit, weapon and ships. Suit and weapons can be permanently upgraded. Ships cannot, you have to buy ships with whatever upgrades you want. Upgrades come in a scale of quality from 1 to 5.

[*]The are ancient robots left behind by who knows what. They are a constant, they will be different types but they will act the same way, you can use tactics you learn to defeat them. They describe it like Halo and its main types of enemies. "we discovered we needed something like that in the game. We're still experimenting with this quite a bit."

[*] Ship combat weapons have different uses. Lasers eat shields, plasmas melt hulls, torpedoes are super powerful but slow. You have to manage cooldowns, no ammo.

No, still not feeling it. Seems to grab a lot of various ideas in it, but with little diversity and simple mechanics, the upgrade system sounds something very simplistic and nothing that can't be done in some hours. And everything seems centered around repeating the same sequences of steps for each planet on your way. I hope the 40 hours of doing the same thing will worth for what's in the center.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
What have you read that points to what you are suggesting?

I mean first of all robots *aren't* on ever planet: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=141536818#post141536818 but even if they were how does that then mean everything will be the same bar graphical differences?

I mean that outside of exploring the scenery and finding objects and killing the local fauna - environmental interactions - it seems the main source of gameplay on the planets will be these robots, where they're present.

It seems like the structure is basically: galaxy -> solar systems (with space station belonging to particular faction, and a 'police' force that can respond to attacks on the station, miscellaneous ship traffic) -> planets (with resource gathering, fauna, scenery exploring, and some planets having robots protecting fauna).

So when I say 'the same', I mean, it sounds like every planet will have basically the same scope for interaction, plus or minus the robots.

In other words, ideas about cities, or simulated societies at war with each other, and procedural 'stories' on each planet at various levels of a present civilisation that might be present on a planet - these more ambitious ideas that people might have been tempted to think about - aren't going to be explored. It sounds like this a galaxy of very naturalistic planets, where it's 'just' nature and sometimes robots. That's totally understandable from a scope POV, but I do wonder if it could get repetitive. Maybe not, we'll see. (This isn't a problem distinct to NMS, I don't want to give them a hard time about it... it's a big problem for any game that's trying to promise 'a galaxy'...NMS may even represent the state of the art in this, but it may simultaneously display how far we have to go in simulating 'open-world/galaxy' sci-fi in a really deep & broad way).
 

Enco

Member
The personal hype for this couldn't possibly be any bigger.

Speak for yourself. Exploration as a core concept never gets old as long as the moment to moment gameplay is engaging and you continually give me new content to explore.

If you want to look at it as a game to play through once and be done with it, the interview states that they expect the completion of that quest to take from 40 to a 100 hours of playtime, which should leave most people well satisfied in terms of length.
But whats the point in exploring?

To see the cool stuff?
 
Well in that initial trailer the ships looked a lot like Cobra's from Elite, looks like the nod was more then just visual.

Right? This game takes so much from Elite/Frontier, but I love those games so much that I don't care. This has a new spin on it and generates even more shit to see, and has a different visual style obviously. I wonder what David Braben thinks of this.

But whats the point in exploring?

To see the cool stuff?

What's the point in exploring any game, then?
 

Enco

Member
Right? This game takes so much from Elite/Frontier, but I love those games so much that I don't care. This has a new spin on it and generates even more shit to see, and has a different visual style obviously. I wonder what David Braben thinks of this.



What's the point in exploring any game, then?

Exploration is nice to have on top of a solid quest system.

But when all there is is walking to different locations for the sake of the scenery, I'll end up getting bored.
 

EGM1966

Member
I have to say, even as someone who currently likes a little narrative with my games, that I'm a little surprised how many people are asking "what's the point or the purpose" of this game.

Don't thry realize that the sense of purpose in any game outside the mechanics is essentially artificial?

Sure TLOU has a strong narrative, for example, but the gameplay remains gameplay you do for the fun of it, the interaction. The sense of purpose to play is artificial: TLOU could as easily be a film with no gameplay.

In any game ultimately you play to experience the gameplay narrative or not, how is No Man's Sky any differet?

Now I can understand people preferring a plot or narrative or little icon saying "go here next" but that's all artificial layering on the gameplay. There's as much generic reason to play this title I can see as with any other.

It's just puzzling me how strongly this is being voiced for this one title.

I can't tell if its a lot of "concern" or if it's people who like look of it but struggle without the edifice of a "plot" to guve artificial direction. I guess it's probably both.

I dunno but it puzzles me.
 

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
^^^ Well said, EGM.

I also appreciate good narrative, structure and a well thought-out quest system in games, but not all of them have to include these as prerequisites.

It's not necessarily the case that NMS will have none of the above, either.
If you end up getting bored because there's "nothing to do" (i.e. no quest marker telling you to go here, meet this person, fill up this EXP bar), then don't feel bad. We can't all like all games, and not all games can cater to all tastes and sensibilities.
 
Exploration is nice to have on top of a solid quest system.

But when all there is is walking to different locations for the sake of the scenery, I'll end up getting bored.

The way I see it, the goal is to level up by improving your suit (so you could access more hazardous areas/planets, higher areas (jetpack) and survive longer), improving your weapons/tools for better and different scanning and combat against aggressive wildlife and the robots and buying a better ship to survive in space, jump longer distances and eventually get to the center of the galaxy.

The incentives here are to improve gear, earn money and survive in the increasingly challenging environment as you naturally travel the galaxy.

When you arrive at a planet, it instantly (or by scanning, whatever) shows several unknown icons on the surface as places of interest. Think of getting into a new area in Far Cry 4, but instead of climbing a tower, you already have several icons, but again, instead of knowing what those are, they're all question marks and you need to walk/fly to them to discover what they are. They might be a large deposit of rare minerals that'll give you a lot of easy cash, or a giant sand worm that's extremely hard to kill but also gives you a lot of money if you survive killing him (but might also trigger the robots which adds an additional level of danger to the task). And to add, you might not have to kill the sand worm, just scan it for cash if you manage to get close enough without getting killed.

And as they've mentioned, every single little or grand action you do gives you money, which you then spend to upgrade yourself. So exploration will be encouraged as the main mechanic of discovering new ways to earn cash.

What people probably don't get is that exploring the entire planet, aside from the points of interest, might not be worth it at all, depending on the planet. Some people like that kind of stuff and they'll go into every single cave they find. This will probably be seen as grinding since almost everything you do will give you more cash. On "cash rich" planets, staying longer might prove fruitful because you might find a large quantity of small mineral deposits and such, so in the long run you might earn more cash than folks constantly jumping from one planet to another. It all depends on how they'll balance all of this, and it seems they will.
 

Acheteedo

Member
Yep, that's all definitely too good to be true. I just can't let myself believe that this game will end up as they say it will.
 

Haunted

Member
Exploration is nice to have on top of a solid quest system.

But when all there is is walking to different locations for the sake of the scenery, I'll end up getting bored.
If you need a yellow exclamation mark, a progress bar that slowly fills up and a pat on the back at the end to feel that you have achieved something and done something worthwhile, this is probably not the game that does that.


It's the age-old game design debate of intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. My stance is that the act of exploration in an interesting, varied and vast universe is already meaningful and rewarding enough on its own, so it doesn't require any extrinsic rewards to motivate me.

But that obviously differs from person to person.

For further reading on the topic, I recommend this and this article. There are tons of psychological studies out there related to the topic of behaviourism (though unrelated to gaming) that you can read as well. There's a bunch of further reading mentioned in both articles above. It's certainly a fascinating topic.
 

KageMaru

Member
This game sounds better the more I find out.

About the MP, if we know where our friends are, is there anything stopping us from meeting up and just explore together? We wouldn't be joined by matchmaking or connected in a group/squad but we could still explore and fly around together.
 

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
The way I see it, the goal is to level up by improving your suit (so you could access more hazardous areas/planets, higher areas (jetpack) and survive longer), improving your weapons/tools for better and different scanning and combat against aggressive wildlife and the robots and buying a better ship to survive in space, jump longer distances and eventually get to the center of the galaxy.

The incentives here are to improve gear, earn money and survive in the increasingly challenging environment as you naturally travel the galaxy.

When you arrive at a planet, it instantly (or by scanning, whatever) shows several unknown icons on the surface as places of interest. Think of getting into a new area in Far Cry 4, but instead of climbing a tower, you already have several icons, but again, instead of knowing what those are, they're all question marks and you need to walk/fly to them to discover what they are. They might be a large deposit of rare minerals that'll give you a lot of easy cash, or a giant sand worm that's extremely hard to kill but also gives you a lot of money if you survive killing him (but might also trigger the robots which adds an additional level of danger to the task). And to add, you might not have to kill the sand worm, just scan it for cash if you manage to get close enough without getting killed.

And as they've mentioned, every single little or grand action you do gives you money, which you then spend to upgrade yourself. So exploration will be encouraged as the main mechanic of discovering new ways to earn cash.

What people probably don't get is that exploring the entire planet, aside from the points of interest, might not be worth it at all, depending on the planet. Some people like that kind of stuff and they'll go into every single cave they find. This will probably be seen as grinding since almost everything you do will give you more cash. On "cash rich" planets, staying longer might prove fruitful because you might find a large quantity of small mineral deposits and such, so in the long run you might earn more cash than folks constantly jumping from one planet to another. It all depends on how they'll balance all of this, and it seems they will.

By gum, this person gets it.

Your last paragraph in particular is right on the money. It's clear from multiple posts in this thread alone that people who are genuinely excited for this game don't want every planet to be interesting. We don't want super dense, over-populated systems. Some planets and areas will be rich in materials, wildlife and threats alike. Others will be completely barren. Some will fall in-between. That draw of the unknown - that's the appeal. That's life!

Edit:
It's the age-old game design debate of intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. My stance is that the act of exploration in an interesting, varied and vast universe is already meaningful and rewarding enough on its own, so it doesn't require any extrinsic rewards to motivate me.

Yeeees, yeeees, now we're talking. Thank you for bringing this discussion and those articles to our attention.
 

Haunted

Member
This game sounds better the more I find out.

About the MP, if we know where our friends are, is there anything stopping us from meeting up and just explore together? We wouldn't be joined by matchmaking or connected in a group/squad but we could still explore and fly around together.
Just the size of the universe, I suppose.

It's like... even if you can identify via the star map where you are relative to each other and you decide to both start heading into the direction of the other and meet halfway... it could literally take years before you actually meet.
 

TimFL

Member
Yep, that's all definitely too good to be true. I just can't let myself believe that this game will end up as they say it will.

Same. Ever since I first heard about this game I had the same thought.

It can't be that ambitious.
 

MattyG

Banned
Setting aside any skepticism I have (which is a lot), this sounds amazing. I love the idea of having an entire galaxy to explore. I'm just wondering how travelling will work, what the distace between planets will be, how many planets, etc. I'm so excited to see more gameplay at VGX and hopefully we get a release date (preferably in early 2015).
 

Kinthalis

Banned
So the only quest is getting to the centre of the universe?

There's exploration and that will be fun for a certain amount of time. What's after that though? Minecraft was fun to explore for a bit but exploration gets boring when there's nothing to do.

Unless I've missed something and there's a good reason to visit lots of planets and engage in quests.

Eh....

Center of the universe?

You mean Galaxy, right?
 

EGM1966

Member
If you need a yellow exclamation mark, a progress bar that slowly fills up and a pat on the back at the end to feel that you have achieved something and done something worthwhile, this is probably not the game that does that.


It's the age-old game design debate of intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. My stance is that the act of exploration in an interesting, varied and vast universe is already meaningful and rewarding enough on its own, so it doesn't require any extrinsic rewards to motivate me.

But that obviously differs from person to person.

For further reading on the topic, I recommend this and this article. There are tons of psychological studies out there related to the topic of behaviourism (though unrelated to gaming) that you can read as well. There's a bunch of further reading mentioned in both articles above. It's certainly a fascinating topic.
Good post. Liked the links.
 
For further reading on the topic, I recommend this and this article. There are tons of psychological studies out there related to the topic of behaviourism (though unrelated to gaming) that you can read as well. There's a bunch of further reading mentioned in both articles above. It's certainly a fascinating topic.

Thanks for this, I find Klei's article about their findings on the subject especially interesting and useful, mainly because unknowing of this info I made the comparison between No Man's Sky and Don't Starve and that I'm currently analyzing Don't Starve's gameplay to see what makes it tick and how to improve on the formula. Very interesting reads, I especially like the simple example of the study with girls that were rewarded for drawing versus the girls that weren't rewarded and were just drawing for fun. This approach of obvious rewards and goals has become a problem in the last decade and it's probably one of the reasons why Dark Souls is so captivating with its obscurity and apparent difficulty.

By gum, this person gets it.

Your last paragraph in particular is right on the money. It's clear from multiple posts in this thread alone that people who are genuinely excited for this game don't want every planet to be interesting. We don't want super dense, over-populated systems. Some planets and areas will be rich in materials, wildlife and threats alike. Others will be completely barren. Some will fall in-between. That draw of the unknown - that's the appeal. That's life!

Edit:


Yeeees, yeeees, now we're talking. Thank you for bringing this discussion and those articles to our attention.

Yeah, you can't really have the surprising and overly exciting moments without the mundane. And let's not forget, people find even the most mundane tasks interesting enough to repeat over and over. However, some people's doubts about just how boring and repetitive the game will get are valid, but this can be said for any game with similar systems in place. Dark Souls downright forces you to repeat a very small list of actions over and over again, forcing you to walk through the same locations, killing the same enemies just so you could survive a bit longer and manage to overcome these obstacles. You don't really know what the goal is, there are no quests, all you know is that you can't really stand still and that there's a whole interesting world out there to kill. And it does that with the simplest of mechanics, engaging combat, experience, gathering loot and improving your gear. No Man's Sky might hit or miss these core elements, but we can't know that yet, it might go either way.

Just the size of the universe, I suppose.

It's like... even if you can identify via the star map where you are relative to each other and you decide to both start heading into the direction of the other and meet halfway... it could literally take years before you actually meet.

We won't really know this without more info or when the game comes out. The thing is, the size of the galaxy and the distance between planets is partially irrelevant, it all depends on how fast you travel in said space, how much time you need to get from one system to another, buy fuel, jump etc.

Elite: Dangerous has 400 billion systems in the galaxy, but a player has already gotten to the center of the galaxy in just around 95 hours, while the game hasn't even been released yet. He was focused on getting there as fast as possible, refueled by flying close to stars and even with running into a lot of problems, server and stability issues, he managed to get to the center in four days, and he mentions that it could most certainly be done in a shorter time.

It all depends on the obstacles they implement in No Man's Sky, how fast you can earn cash for fuel, space travel speed, hyperjump distance etc. It might very well take years in NMS to meet with other players (although I highly doubt it), it all depends on how they handle it. My hunch is that it will most certainly take less time than what they're anticipating because people are extremely capable when motivated. They should (if they haven't already) do optimized speed runs by the most capable players in the team (or playtesters) and get some hard data because depending on how reaching the center affects the game globally, it could potentially ruin or save the game.
 
Kinda worried that they're actually trying to add to much stuff to the game. I feel like I would more want it to be more of a relaxing exploration game, where you just see stuff, instead of a hybrid FPS/Space Combat/RPG/Trading/MMO game.
 

E92 M3

Member
Kinda worried that they're actually trying to add to much stuff to the game. I feel like I would more want it to be more of a relaxing exploration game, where you just see stuff, instead of a hybrid FPS/Space Combat/RPG/Trading/MMO game.

They've stated multiple times that we can play however we want. The gameplay options are there for those that want. I know I'll be focusing on exploration more so than anything else.
 

Philippo

Member
If you need a yellow exclamation mark, a progress bar that slowly fills up and a pat on the back at the end to feel that you have achieved something and done something worthwhile, this is probably not the game that does that.


It's the age-old game design debate of intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. My stance is that the act of exploration in an interesting, varied and vast universe is already meaningful and rewarding enough on its own, so it doesn't require any extrinsic rewards to motivate me.

But that obviously differs from person to person.

For further reading on the topic, I recommend this and this article. There are tons of psychological studies out there related to the topic of behaviourism (though unrelated to gaming) that you can read as well. There's a bunch of further reading mentioned in both articles above. It's certainly a fascinating topic.

I agree with this post, but you know quests aren't all based on exclamation marks and progress bars? That's generalizing too much.
 
My concern for this game is that it is trying to be a non-narrative game where you make your own adventure, but it removes a lot of the customization and creativity that you can get out of a game like Minecraft.

Think of it this way, there is no story in Minecraft but people can build whatever they want to which is what has driven the longevity of the game. You can't even build ships in this game. Everything is kinda just there and you can mine and buy stuff. That's about it.
 
cbL49Y4.gif


I really want for at least 70% of this to be true.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
They've stated multiple times that we can play however we want. The gameplay options are there for those that want. I know I'll be focusing on exploration more so than anything else.

The main question is how all these things are balanced and if there is enough diversity for each of those and whatever you want to do has enough to keep you playing for long. At list this is my concern. When you try to do too many things at once it's easy to overstretch, especially when you don't have a big budget at hand or a big publisher to back you up.
 
Too much (unfounded) hopes and expectations are put on this game. As far as pre-release hypefest letdowns go, this one's going to be bad.

What hopes for this game seem unfounded? I'm hyped for what has been shown in trailers and what the developers have talked about in interviews. They haven't suggested anything that seems impossible to do.
 

E92 M3

Member
The main question is how all these things are balanced and if there is enough diversity for each of those and whatever you want to do has enough to keep you playing for long. At list this is my concern. When you try to do too many things at once it's easy to overstretch, especially when you don't have a big budget at hand or a big publisher to back you up.

I am keeping the same expectations that I had from Minecraft (right after the world generation update). I loved just walking around and exploring caves/environments while building small homes along the way.
 
Kinda worried that they're actually trying to add to much stuff to the game. I feel like I would more want it to be more of a relaxing exploration game, where you just see stuff, instead of a hybrid FPS/Space Combat/RPG/Trading/MMO game.

It can be a relaxing space exploration game if you want it to be

Players venture out for improved weapons, scanners, space suits, and ships. While there are no specific classes, adventurers can tailor their skills to a specific playstyle or blend in a bit of everything. If you're mostly interested in combat, you can shoot down pirates and other known villain factions to earn money and invest in fighter ships with more defense and firepower. Players who want to branch out and discover new worlds should buy science craft with longer hyperdrive range and speed, and suits that allow exploration in toxic atmospheres or longer underwater time. Space truckers should invest in bulky cargo ships so they can haul tons of planetside resources to trading posts and spaceports.
 

Tigress

Member
They've stated multiple times that we can play however we want. The gameplay options are there for those that want. I know I'll be focusing on exploration more so than anything else.

Well, I like the gameplay element as well but I hope they still have ways in there to make your ship better for sneaking by fights rather than getting into them. I would like the ability to choose how I deal with seeing a confrontation ahead. That's all I really want (I don't want to be railroaded into only one way to ever deal with them).
 
My concern for this game is that it is trying to be a non-narrative game where you make your own adventure, but it removes a lot of the customization and creativity that you can get out of a game like Minecraft.

Think of it this way, there is no story in Minecraft but people can build whatever they want to which is what has driven the longevity of the game. You can't even build ships in this game. Everything is kinda just there and you can mine and buy stuff. That's about it.

Think of it this way - it's as much a non-narrative game as if you'd have a version of Far Cry 4 set in Kyrat without the story missions. There is a place (fictional Himalayan region = an unknown galaxy) with a distinct setting and a hint of lore (civil war, conflict of factions, family history = a malevolent force keeping the planets intact, the center of the galaxy holds some answers, also conflicting factions depicted by space battles, faction-oriented bases and ships etc.) and lots of random tasks to do (pick flowers, hunt animals, do escort, rescue or assassination missions = scan everything, discover points of interest, new species, ancient temples, portals to other places, earn cash, do escort missions, make trade runs, ambush unsuspecting traders in space etc.).

In this respect, Minecraft doesn't have these narrative elements so it's not exactly the same thing. In NMS, you make your own adventure in the boundaries of the setting you've been thrown into.

But I get your concerns, and the amount and variety of stuff you do in NMS might not be enough, we'll see.

EDIT:

Well, I like the gameplay element as well but I hope they still have ways in there to make your ship better for sneaking by fights rather than getting into them. I would like the ability to choose how I deal with seeing a confrontation ahead. That's all I really want (I don't want to be railroaded into only one way to ever deal with them).

They've mentioned some bits like the robots ignoring you if you're behaving well in their vicinity, or buying cloaking tech for your ship, and they've mentioned before that you can avoid conflicts if you want to, so I'm assuming there are at least some mechanics in place to let you do pacifist runs, but there will probably be some challenge to it.
 

E92 M3

Member

Yes.

Well, I like the gameplay element as well but I hope they still have ways in there to make your ship better for sneaking by fights rather than getting into them. I would like the ability to choose how I deal with seeing a confrontation ahead. That's all I really want (I don't want to be railroaded into only one way to ever deal with them).

You can play however you want. They've stated that everything is up to player. If you want, you never have to fight at all, and instead support yourself with gathering and trading.
 

Chaplain

Member
Beyond Destiny, I have yet to see an online game that had an Alpha/Beta go smoothly day 1 the past two years. I could be wrong, but doesn't even WoW have day 1 traffic-related issues with every expansion?

I think at this point public betas need to be done just to see what happens when hundreds of thousands of players (if not millions) all hit a games server on day of release. It is more a showing that they want to do whats best for their consumer, not to mention the bad press they will receive if they do not do it if their servers do not work on day one. Which would mean users would have to wait weeks to play the game they paid for (see Driveclub, BF4, Halo Collection, etc.).

Apparently they aren't having one but I agree. Having the entire player base share the same world and just being able to run into each other sounds like a huge technical challenge.

I agree. They need to do it regardless if they want to or not (from my view). This is what I would do if I was the one making the decisions. I would not want a huge day one problem due to servers that could have been avoided if a public beta would have been released before launch.
 

Handy Fake

Member
To be honest, the sheer exuberance and hope in Sean Murray's eyes in every interview I see him in leads me to believe he is over the fucking moon with the game's development.
 

Tigress

Member
They've mentioned some bits like the robots ignoring you if you're behaving well in their vicinity, or buying cloaking tech for your ship, and they've mentioned before that you can avoid conflicts if you want to, so I'm assuming there are at least some mechanics in place to let you do pacifist runs, but there will probably be some challenge to it.

Cool. The cloaking bit is more what I was talking about (I mean I know you can just not get into the fight but I was hoping they would have ways you could make yourself specialized for that if you wanted to focus more on stealth vs. combat. I just want customization basically). I was just kinda worried with this new info and how much they focused on talking about the combat that they had changed directions and focused it more on combat than what they were saying before.

Not that I plan on always sneaking by. I just want the option to decide how best to handle each one.

So excited for this game!!!!! The more I hear the more I'm excited (worst thing I heard was corrected, I didn't like the idea that the robots were on every planet cause that would feel too artificially put in just for game mechanics and immersion in a game is the most important aspect for me in any game but it sounds like that was not communicated correctly at first).
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
What I've heard of this and Elite suggests a goal for the game is really for you to just "live."

They kind of just want you to decide how you want to get buy: fighting, trading, transport, research, etc. without an actual "end" to work towards, just without the building element of Minecraft. That building element seems to be somewhat replaced by an infrastructure built from the presence of NPCs who formulate an economy and factional landscape.
 

Staab

Member
This needs to come to PC like right fucking now, I don't want to buy a PS4 just for this but I'm not sure I'll be able to wait out the exclusivity period :(
 
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