No Man's Sky

[Alex79]

Are you sure? As I understand it the PS4 release is 9th/10th and PC is Friday 12th confirmed...

Sorry you're right, I misread a headline and didn't read the story! It simply said worldwide release August 12th and I assumed it meant all formats - the story actually went on to say the NA release on PC had been pushed back a couple of days.

[Alex79]

I should have read properly, silly I am.

I got the game this afternoon, but now I know progress will be entirely reset with the day 1 patch, I might hold back till its out.

How come you got it early? I don't think I'd be able to wait, surely you want a little peep? Just a teeny one? Haha.

[chase210]

I ordered it from a website that shipped it on like, Thursday afternoon, so I got it this afternoon. Might just take a peek... get used to the controls if nothing else.

[Flabyo]

I'm expecting mostly sevens across the board, and then a backlash online to rival the one against Bioshock infinite.

I'll probably enjoy it anyway.

If you do have it early, be aware they're going to server wipe just before the official launch date, so don't do too much yet.

[chase210]

Notes for the launch day patch!

Update 1.03
When we went gold five or six week ago, we posted on twitter, and literally every reply was like “hope you are going on a nice holiday!”. Some of us have, but I didn’t want to, not yet. I pictured myself somewhere staring out the window thinking about this game I’ve been working on for five years.
We’re under a pretty intense spotlight right now, and hopefully it’s easy to imagine how hard it would be to switch off from that, or how deeply we care about people’s first impression of the game.
In fact most of us were back here the day after we went gold, working on this update. We’re already proud of what we put on a disk, but if we had time, why not continue to update it?

Hello Games will continually update No Man’s Sky this way. This is the first of many.

It will be available on Monday for press for review once it exits submission, and on launch for public on PC and PS4. We expect future updates like these to continue to be free.

For 99.9% of people, all you have to do is install the update before you begin to play.
If you had an early copy somehow, your save game will technically work post update, but you will miss out on new content and experiences if you don’t delete your save before updating (should be obvious why from notes below). We highly recommend deleting your save if you have played before updating your game (we won’t do this in future, but it’s a day zero update).

Servers will be wiped on Sunday and again Monday in the lead up to launch.

Beware these notes contain some spoilers. Here are some things our little team has been up to over the last four or five weeks:
The Three Paths – there are now new, unique “paths” you can follow throughout the game. You must start the game on a fresh save, with the patch, as early choices have significant impact on what you see later in the game, and the overall experience.
The Universe – we changed the rules of the universe generation algorithm. Planets have moved. Environments have changed biomes. Galaxies have altered shape. All to create greater variety earlier. Galaxies are now up to 10x larger.
Diversity – Creatures are now more diverse in terms of ecology and densities on planets.
Planets – we’ve added dead moons, low atmosphere and extreme hazardous planets. Extreme hazards include blizzards and dust storms.
Atmosphere – space, night time and day skies are now 4x more varied due to new atmospheric system, which refracts light more accurately to allow for more intense sunsets.
Planet rotation – play testing has made it obvious people are struggling to adjust to this during play so it’s effects have been reduced further…
Terrain generation – caves up to 128m tall are now possible. Geometric anomalies have been added. Underwater erosion now leads to more interesting sea beds.
Ship diversity – a wider variety of ships appear per star system, and are available to purchase. Cargo and installed technology now vary more, and ships have more unique attributes.
Inventory – ship inventories now store 5 times more resources per slot. Suit inventories now store 2.5 times more per slot. This encourages exploration and gives freedom from the beginning. We’re probably going to increase this even further in the next update, for people in the latter game phases, and will allow greater trading potential.
Trading – trading is deeper. Star systems and planets each have their own wants and needs, based off a galactic economy. Observing these is the key to successful trading. We still working on adjusting this based on how everyone plays, but all trading values have been rebalanced across the galaxy, giving a greater depth. A bunch of trade exploits were uncovered and have been removed
Feeding – creatures now have their own diet, based on planet and climate. Feeding them correctly will yield different results per species, such as mining for you, protecting the player, becoming pets, alerting you to rare loot or pooping valuable resources.
Survival – recharging hazard protection requires rare resources, making shielding shards useful again. Storms can be deadly. Hazard protection and suit upgrades have been added. Liquids are often more dangerous
Graphical effects – Lighting and texture resolution have been improved. Shadow quality has doubled. Temporal AA didn’t make it in time, but it’s so close
Balancing – several hundred upgrades have had stat changes (mainly exo-suit and ship, but also weapon), new upgrades have been added.
Combat – Auto Aim and weapon aim has been completely rewritten to feel more gentle in general, but stickier when you need it. Sentinels now alert each other, if they haven’t been dealt with quickly. Quad and Walker AI is now much more challenging, even I struggle with them without a powered up weapon.
Space Combat – advanced techniques have been introduced, like brake drifting and critical hits. Bounty missions and larger battles now occur. Pirate frequency has been increased, as well as difficulty depending on your cargo.
Exploits – infinite warp cell exploit and rare goods trading exploit among other removed. People using these cheats were ruining the game for themselves, but people are weird and can’t stop themselves ¯\_(シ)_/¯
Stability – foundations for buildings on super large planets. Resolved several low repro crashes, in particular when player warped further than 256 light years in one session (was only possible due to warp cell exploit above).
Space Stations – interiors are now more varied, bars, trade rooms and hydroponic labs have been added
Networking – Ability to scan star systems other players have discovered on the Galactic Map, increasing the chance of collision. Star systems discovered by other players appear during Galactic Map flight
Ship scanning – scanning for points of interest from your ship is now possible. Buildings generate earlier and show up in ship scans
Flying over terrain – pop-in and shadow artefacts have been reduced. Generation speed has been increased two fold (planets with large bodies of water will be targeted in next update)
Writing – The Atlas path has been rewritten by James Swallow (writer on Deus Ex) and me. I think it speaks to the over-arching theme of player freedom more clearly now. Early mission text has been rewritten to allow for multiple endings.

I grew up reading Carmack’s .plan files for Quake, so it’s fun to be writing one of my own

Next up we’re adding the ability to build bases and own giant space freighters. Temporal AA and my new cloud rendering tech should be coming soon too. It will really change the game again, and enhance it visually.

This universe we’ve built is a pretty large canvas, we’ve got a lot of ideas. This is the type of game we want to be.

Love,
Sean

Hyped as fook I am.

[Lego Solo]

I really want this game regardless of how its received. It's not going to please everyone and frankly it's going to be a hard game to review and probably shouldn't be judge by its scores.

I can't wait to step into my ship, take off and explore. I'll probably never "finish" it but that's not the point for me. I want to pretend to be a space pirate, a trader or even just a deep space explorer. My inner child who loved Star Trek and the possibilities it held has woken up and I for one am going to let him out and play till its way passed his bedtime.

[hazeredmist]

I honestly don't know if I'm picking it up yet, or not. I love almost everything about how it both looks and sounds (the soundtrack is now up on Spotify and it's kind of incredible). But, everything else I know about the actual moment-to-moment gameplay isn't very encouraging to someone like me who doesn't really get along with survival games. I've tried stuff like Minecraft and The Forest, and, I just can't get my head around having a reason to actually play them. I'm hoping there's more story in the game than the previews have led us to believe.

This echoes my feelings to the letter. I think I'm going to give it a week or so and see what the reaction is like. Some stuff about this game excites me, other things turn me off. Hello Games are excellent though, it's good to see them getting so much publicity, even if it might be keeping them up at night!

[Alex79]

I thought the game sounded cool before, it sounds even better after reading those patch notes. This is going to be amazing.

[Stanshall]

Patch is downloading now, not that I can play it yet but it's live anyway! Probably going to go to bed at about 9 so I can wake up at 4 when it unlocks on US PSN and play it until I feel a bit ill. On my hols at the moment and my wife will be in work. Weather forecast looks average at best so I can really treat my body like an amusement arcade for about fourteen hours without too much guilt.

[ratsoalbion]

Sounds wonderful!

I'm also off work and my g/f is also away, which is making my plan of holding on until Friday for the PC version increasingly challenging...

[Stanshall]

I'd be tempted to get physical and trade it in on Friday morning, beat the rush! I am an impulsive oaf, though.

Really really enjoying the HG live stream on Twitch right now. Can't figure out how to copy the link from within Twitch but it'll be up there if you search by people. They seem really relaxed and happy, having a good laugh. Can't imagine their relief and excitement.

[macstat]

I watched a little bit of No Man's Sky stream, hosted by Hello Games and i cant figure out if this game has any purpose besides exploring/gathering resources. This is actually my main concern with NMS, if this lack of direction wont make it boring after a couple of hours. Technology they created is very impressive, planets, wildlife, atmospheric anomalies and all that are really cool, but after couple of hours will it be enough to keep me playing ?
Its kinda like with Elite Dangerous, i really like this game, its controls, visual style, feel of outer space. Its just got very repetitive after a while.

I just hope im totally wrong and they just didn't show those parts of game.

[Stanshall]

I've played about three hours so far and it's definitely a resource gathering, trading, grinding, exploring, discovering new tech and upgrades kind of game. It's repetitive in the same way Monster Hunter is, except without the boss fights. Which sounds a bit shit,I know, but it's very satisfying so far.

I think with this kind of thing, the balance is so important. It's very much 'to make one A, you need three B, and to make one B you need five C'. To me, a few hours in, I don't feel like I'm grinding, I feel like I'm steadily gathering and crafting at a good pace. I've probably unlocked twenty or thirty assorted upgrades but you have to be selective about which ones you install, due to space. Now, again, that might sound rubbish but it's fun to craft a gun upgrade on the fly and ditch your scanner range booster, because you suddenly get attacked by some bruisers.

It does direct you a little bit more than I'm used to, or particularly like, but on the other hand, it's got me off the ground and warping between systems in a few hours. I've met a few traders, some space stations, freighters and I'm starting to learn some of the internal rules. I've got lost in caves, found some secrets, nearly drowned in a radioactive lake and I'm only on a break because I realised I need some elevenses to keep my systems at 100% for another run at it.

I'd also say it's one of the loneliest games I've ever played and it definitely has its own sense of atmosphere (bdum). From watching the streams, I kept urging the player to wander off further from the ship and explore such and such landmark but now I understand. It's not just the practical value of having protection from the elements, it's also a strange emotional anchor, an illusion of home and every time I'm clambering back out of some cave and see my ship just over a hillock, I feel relieved. That's quite hard to get right but they've definitely nailed it.

[Alex79]

Some early impressions : http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1259409

The comments from the Pure Playstation review (awarded 8/10 out of the box) are interesting :

Yes, I know there’s a day-one patch on the way. What I care about is reviewing what people will have straight out of the box on the day they get their copy, the game that was handed over the counter to them when they parted with their cash in good faith. If the update drastically changes the experience of the game, so much so that’s it’s unrecognisable from what’s originally on the disc, then there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way games are being made; I wouldn’t pay for Chocolate Rice Crispies, receive plain Rice Crispies and then be told to wait while Kelloggs gets the chocolate flavouring together. Silly analogy, but it’s the same principle.

Well, maybe I agree and maybe I don't. I see their point, but they've willfully ignored what Hello Games have specifically asked from reviewers. On the flip side, is it ok to radically change the game with a day 1 patch to the point they've asked reviewers to hold off from their reviews until it's been applied? Really bizarre situation that I can't really remember ever happening before - at least not on this scale. I think it's really bad form that the game is now available to buy and nobody really can put a proper review up yet. Should they have delayed the release for another week? I don't know, it would have been very damaging for them short term, but longer term nobody would remember or care.

[ratsoalbion]

Personally I wouldn't pay much attention to any written review of this that appeared before (say) next Monday at the very earliest.

Back in the olden days games would routinely appear in stores weeks before reviews went to print.

I am interested in the impressions of my peers though, so all feedback here and on social media is being logged.

Put it this way, my resolve for holding out until Friday for the PC version is being seriously tested right now...

[ratsoalbion]

Comparison of versions has persuaded me to be slightly grown-up and wait until Friday (or Thursday midnight anyway).


PS4 mostly runs at 30fps with drops to as low as 13fps, whereas the PC version should run at a smooth 60 on my new card. Plus it's £10 cheaper.

[Sean]

I caved and pre-ordered yesterday. Gotta say all the reports of the game constantly crashing are giving me worry. I suppose a game like this is borderline impossible to do a complete QA test on, though.

[Flabyo]

I'll probably pick it up tomorrow at some point. There's no much else I have any interest in any time soon, already decided I'll wait for Deus Ex to drop in price (unless it picks up 10s across the board).

The user reviews on metacritic are pretty amusing (for a 'watching a car crash' value of amusing) and fall into the following camps:

1) "I have played the game and like it" 9's, a few 10s.
2) "I have played the game and don't like it" 3s and 4s.
3) "I have watched videos and think it looks great, so give it a 10"
4) "PS4 exclusives are dumb, why isn't it on xbox? ZERO"
5) "Only dumb XBots don't like this, I haven't played it, but its on PS4 so 10!"

Metacritic user reviews can do one.

[ratsoalbion]

Here's a fairly measured 'first few hours' piece, which raises some issues its author has with repetition:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/t ... pointment/

[Stanshall]

After about nine or ten hours today, I'd like to share some reflections on a game which I'm enjoying enormously, and which I only stopped playing to cook dinner. I'll start with the reservations and things which I think I'd have liked to know, as reassurance. While these mechanical and gameplay loop observations are spoilers in a way, RNG also means that they might not even be true for your game.

- Storage space is really restrictive for a good few hours. I think this is to encourage you to learn to work with the basic materials and recharge the most commonly used items. I gave up on hoarding anything else until I managed to get a bit more space in my suit. I got lucky and upgraded my suit by about a third capacity in ten minutes due to RNG, but this was about three hours in. I've now probably increased my ship's capacity by 50% in nine hours. Only now am I not too fussed about storing stuff purely to trade. In short, the first few hours are pure survival and getting the basic tools and equipment up and running. For you, though, its might take twenty minutes depending on your starting planet and location.

- I had thought that planets might have different environments across them but it seems that there's one ecosystem per planet, and although the geography can be very varied, it has a similar range of stuff all the way round (from my initial impressions). This does mean you're quite likely not to stick around on one planet for more than a couple of hours, without feeling it's a bit repetitive. On the other hand, this is really helpful for collecting all the flora and fauna and getting the bonus for completing a planet. That said, I haven't done that yet!

- At the moment, I still have to choose whether to go heavy on the blaster stuff and be daddy combat or manic miner. This also applies to the ship. I feel woefully ill equipped for space combat and just hide in the nearest space station or enter orbit, which is a bit of a con. I should really get chased down but I suppose it would just mean getting killed every time. Hmm, ambivalent.

- It's very addictive. There's always one more thing on the horizon. One more word to learn or upgrade to unlock or trading post or space station or crashed ship or ancient ruin or deep cave or pink sea. It stimulates my imagination. After this many hours with most games I'd be feeling a bit queasy but it's quite a good natured, generous beast. I suppose I've not even moved one blade of grass across the football pitch in relative terms, which is pretty mind blowing. Obviously, I could just focus on warping as fast and far as possible but it's not even all that easy or feasible.

- It is a repetitive loop. It just is. If you didn't ever see the point or fun in grinding for Souls or Legendary Marks or Jaggi hides or materia then I really don't think this game will do it for you. There's obviously some lore to it and some melancholic dialogue and unpredictable encounters but it's not about the story ten hours in, and I doubt this will change too much. There are some vague ideas behind species and some sense of guidance but I'm playing this for the loop. Fly, explore, farm, trade, upgrade. Now do it again on a wintry gas planet. Now on a radioactive swamp valley. You get the point.

Despite these reservations and reflections, I'm having a whale of a time and I'm going to jump back in now.