No Man's Sky

[placidcasual]

[forameus]

 

I got kicked back to the opening page of the thread and came across the list of things Fide said we'd be able to do in the game.  Obviously these are taken from somewhere else, so we're not completely piling on the guy, but I thought it'd be an interesting read given the press Hello Games and Sean Murray have got for being a bit economical with the truth.

1. No Man’s Sky’s universe is infinite. Naw it's no.  It's huge, and may as well be, but it isn't infinite.  0 for 1.
2. You can only have one ship.  I guess by definition this is right, but you can change them  up.  Only one at any one time though.
3. You can’t customize your ship — but you can find one that you like.  Yeah, pretty much spot on
4. Earth isn’t present, but you might find something close to it.  This is tenuous at best.  What are they classing as something "close to" Earth?  I'd chalk this one up to bullshit too
5. You can play with your friends (although Murray’s previously said not to think of it as a multiplayer game).  Bullshit.
6. You can take pictures.  A goal back
7. You can swim underwater.  And another.
8. You can chop down a tree.  Ok, kind of.  You can mine trees, but you're not chopping them down exactly
9. You can choose to be a pacifist (although that doesn’t mean someone — or something — won’t attack you).  Again, technically correct, but the way the game actually came out, there's not really much of a distinction between a complete arsehole and a pacifist.  It's not like saying you can be a pacifist in GTA or anything. 
10. Some planets are the size of Earth.  I'm not sure about this one.  Obviously they're huge, but as big as Earth?  
11. You might visit a “dud” planet.  Frustratingly true
12. You have a health bar.  You do.  And a needlessly complex one.
13. You can land on asteroids.  Nein.
14. The game features black holes.  Yeah, it does.  They're not as exciting as they sound though.
15. You will sometimes get bored playing it. Lol.
16. It has no downloadable content.  It will, either paid or free.  So wrong again.
17. You can’t select the gender of your character.  True, but not exactly a good thing.  You can't select anything about your character.  In fact, you may as well just not have one.
18. Not all planets can sustain life.  True
19. You can’t collect plants.  True I suppose
20. You can’t build a shelter. True again, although they seem to be talking about that for future DLC (the ones they said you wouldn't have)
21. You can’t teleport to your ship.  No, but you can teleport your ship to you in certain places.
22. You can’t build a space station.  Nope, although again could be something they do later.
23. It has a shop.  It does.
24. It has no nonplayer characters.  It kind of does...I suppose.  If you like effectively cardboard cut outs that do nothing.
25. You can’t terraform a planet.  You can to a very, very basic degree with plasma grenades, but not on any large scale.
26. You can’t destroy a planet. Nope
27. You face many objective markers.  Indeed you do, the vast majority of which mean nothing.
28. You won’t notice any gravity differences between planets — your suit compensates.   brilliant.  You won't notice all these gravity differences THAT ARE DEFINITELY THERE GUYS
29. You can’t reach the edge of the universe: “You can go into the darkness for as long as you want.”  I don't think this is true.  For example, you head towards the sun in a system, and you'll never ever reach it, given it's effectively a 2D background.  That's not really going for as long as you want, as effectively you're not going anywhere.  Again, it's another tenuous one that could mean anything.
30. You can’t ride a dinosaur. True, because they don't really exist in the world.  Just clip straight through them

So all in all they got most of them right.  20 to 10 with some artistic licence.  Still, it highlights some of the absolute verbal skitters that Sean Murray has come out with.  I'm not in the camp of wanting to go burn down his house like some have been, I just think he's inexperienced, believed in a product and got wheeled out by Sony to talk about it.  They allowed it to happen, so shouldn't have been surprised when he started spouting Molineux levels of pish about it.  He should have been reined in, but he wasn't, and they all have to suffer as a result.

[XIII]

I think Fide is either Sean Murray or a Hello games employee. Either way we might need to send out a search party

[banana]

FFS the guy's allowed his opinion on a game, fair play to him for enjoying it 

[EdgarusQPFC]

26 minutes ago, banana said:

FFS the guy's allowed his opinion on a game, fair play to him for enjoying it 

I think people are taking the piss because he seemed to be a first row passenger on the hype train

[forameus]

33 minutes ago, banana said:

FFS the guy's allowed his opinion on a game, fair play to him for enjoying it 

He was pretty harmless with it, yeah, but when I mentioned the Jim Sterling review where it got 5, he made the usual fanboy response of claiming that he just did it for clicks, because "there's no way the game's a 5".  There's nothing wrong with having an opinion on a game, but when you're starting to rubbish other people's opinions on the game just because they disagree with yours, it makes you look a bit of a tit.  Same as the people who seem worked up that someone might actually enjoy playing the game.

[Mr. Brightside]

Saying there's no way it's a five is hardly rubbishing someone's opinion

[forameus]

55 minutes ago, Mr. Brightside said:

Saying there's no way it's a five is hardly rubbishing someone's opinion

Saying he did it just for clicks is though.

[Francesc Fabregas]

lol @ Fide, what a sweating VL he is, on this thread or anywhere else on the forum.

[forameus]

The updates just keep-on-a-coming on PS4, up to 1.09 now.  This one actually seems like it's changed a fair bit though.  Once again Hello Games haven't released a change list (or at least hadn't last night) but people were reporting the game just felt a little different.  Booted it up myself and have to agree.  It feels a little bit smoother in terms of movement, and the ugly pop-in you get on flying over planets appears to be less obvious.  

Unfortunately, no gameplay changes.  It's still an infuriating time sink.

[EdgarusQPFC]

Their official twitter has been dead silent since the 18th of August. That's fucking shocking. There are hundreds of thousands of unhappy customers wondering where the hell the game is that they promised and they have just went into complete silence. Okay they are releasing patches, gotta give them some credit for that, but no patch notes? Very poor show.

You know, a few years back i posted on here about how gamers need a regulatory body they can go to, who can sanction companies for their games, be it the lack of promised features, poor support, outright lies and all i got back was responses saying what a terrible idea that would be. Well, this is the kinda shite that can be allowed to happen when gamers just shut up and put up with it.

Edited September 21, 2016 by EdgarusQPFC

[XIII]

Gone silent since august you say? Sounds like Fide....

[forameus]

12 hours ago, EdgarusQPFC said:

Their official twitter has been dead silent since the 18th of August. That's fucking shocking. There are hundreds of thousands of unhappy customers wondering where the hell the game is that they promised and they have just went into complete silence. Okay they are releasing patches, gotta give them some credit for that, but no patch notes? Very poor show.

You know, a few years back i posted on here about how gamers need a regulatory body they can go to, who can sanction companies for their games, be it the lack of promised features, poor support, outright lies and all i got back was responses saying what a terrible idea that would be. Well, this is the kinda shite that can be allowed to happen when gamers just shut up and put up with it.

They are releasing updates, but the lack of patch notes is pretty poor.  Every single update the articles have been the same - "we don't have an exact changelist, but here's the things users are reporting".  I'd presume that as a software company they'll have some kind of ticketing system to cover bugs and features, which would make these kinds of lists pretty easy.  Hell, doesn't even need to be a list, just say a few of the headline things that are now fixed.

As for the regulatory body...I'm not sure the gamers themselves are mature enough to make that happen.  We're at the stage now where people are DDoSing review sites when they disagree with certain reviews, sending death threats to journalists who report on delays.  The sense of entitlement that some have would probably cloud the worse cases.  Plus it's pretty subjective.  I bought No Man's Sky for around £42 I believe.  It hasn't been what I expected it to be, but I've always said it's around the 5-6 out of 10 for me.  I've sunk a lot of time into it, and I'd probably say I enjoyed it.  In my eyes, they've satisfied the base level of what I expect when I buy a game.  Of course it could have been better, very much so, but I wouldn't want the developers hauled over the coals because a game was just alright and not amazing.  You'd have a long, long line of games waiting to be tried if that were the case.

But then of course there are plenty who didn't enjoy the game, and would completely disagree with what I've said.  Who's right?  

[EdgarusQPFC]

Earlier today the total players on steam playing dropped below 1000, From a Alltime peak of 212,000 
http://steamcharts.com/app/275850#3m

Games effectively finished at this point.

 

13 hours ago, forameus said:

They are releasing updates, but the lack of patch notes is pretty poor.  Every single update the articles have been the same - "we don't have an exact changelist, but here's the things users are reporting".  I'd presume that as a software company they'll have some kind of ticketing system to cover bugs and features, which would make these kinds of lists pretty easy.  Hell, doesn't even need to be a list, just say a few of the headline things that are now fixed.

As for the regulatory body...I'm not sure the gamers themselves are mature enough to make that happen.  We're at the stage now where people are DDoSing review sites when they disagree with certain reviews, sending death threats to journalists who report on delays.  The sense of entitlement that some have would probably cloud the worse cases.  Plus it's pretty subjective.  I bought No Man's Sky for around £42 I believe.  It hasn't been what I expected it to be, but I've always said it's around the 5-6 out of 10 for me.  I've sunk a lot of time into it, and I'd probably say I enjoyed it.  In my eyes, they've satisfied the base level of what I expect when I buy a game.  Of course it could have been better, very much so, but I wouldn't want the developers hauled over the coals because a game was just alright and not amazing.  You'd have a long, long line of games waiting to be tried if that were the case.

But then of course there are plenty who didn't enjoy the game, and would completely disagree with what I've said.  Who's right?  

If a developer promises features, doesnt deliver on them then does a runner, that shouldnt be tolerated. Sean Murray is effectively AWOL at this point. People paid a great deal of money for something that was a shadow of what was promised, there are so many examples of blatant lies in regards to what the game could do and it was all just to hype the game up and get peoples money. 

[Homer Thompson]

10 hours ago, EdgarusQPFC said:

Earlier today the total players on steam playing dropped below 1000, From a Alltime peak of 212,000 
http://steamcharts.com/app/275850#3m

Games effectively finished at this point.

 

If a developer promises features, doesnt deliver on them then does a runner, that shouldnt be tolerated. Sean Murray is effectively AWOL at this point. People paid a great deal of money for something that was a shadow of what was promised, there are so many examples of blatant lies in regards to what the game could do and it was all just to hype the game up and get peoples money. 

But games are already covered under the same kind of trading and advertising laws that stop other industries making wild claims about their products. If people think this game has been deliberately falsely advertised then there is already something they can do about it.

Anyone, though, who bought the game solely on some comments made by the developer months before release deserves to be ripped off. There are so many places, these days, where you can get reviews, gameplay footage etc

[forameus]

10 hours ago, EdgarusQPFC said:

If a developer promises features, doesnt deliver on them then does a runner, that shouldnt be tolerated. Sean Murray is effectively AWOL at this point. People paid a great deal of money for something that was a shadow of what was promised, there are so many examples of blatant lies in regards to what the game could do and it was all just to hype the game up and get peoples money. 

 

4 minutes ago, Mr X said:

But games are already covered under the same kind of trading and advertising laws that stop other industries making wild claims about their products. If people think this game has been deliberately falsely advertised then there is already something they can do about it.

Anyone, though, who bought the game solely on some comments made by the developer months before release deserves to be ripped off. There are so many places, these days, where you can get reviews, gameplay footage etc

I can see both sides of this.  I can completely see where Edgarus is coming from, but same from Mr X's side.  I don't think Sean Murray has deliberately misled people in the way that someone like Peter Molineux did.  The latter said in interviews that he only talked about certain features to keep journalists interested,  having no interest in actually realising them.  I think in Murray's case, he genuinely believed in the product.  I've not watched full interviews with him, but he does not look comfortable talking in front of a camera.  

I think a decent comparison is with Miles Jacobsen who runs the Sports Interactive studio.  I think that's pretty much the same role Sean Murray holds.  Now I know that SI have been around way longer, but you can tell that although Miles has an understanding of the tech (although I don't think he's a developer) he's a PR man at heart.  A salesman.  They wheel him out to do media for the game, and he does a good job.  He also gets it right up anyone that starts on him, which is brilliant, but I digress.  Murray's effectively been given his role, and he's terrible at it.  He clearly had a vision in his mind about what the game would be, and instead of being diplomatic when asked, he found himself promising things that would end up getting cut.  

The problem though is that most people will see those interviews and then immediately swallow them.  I remember being really, really excited when the concept was first announced (this was way back, like 2-3 years ago), but then heard very little about the game as I didn't seek it out.  As soon as the mainstream media got a hold of it, alarm bells started ringing.  Particularly when the hype train rolled faster.  I don't think demanding a refund based on what a developer says pre-release really works in this case, because had you waited until reviews were released (and I understand developers can get pretty creative with the ways of trying to stop that happening) then you would have been able to see that the "promises" made were not going to be realised.  The big issue is pre-order culture, and most of the blame of that lies with consumers in swallowing everything the industry throws at it.  

The real villain in this is Sony.  Absolutely baffling to me that they let Murray out of the studio, let alone put him in front of the camera.  But then they got what they wanted - they've made millions off the title, and it's no skin off their nose if it dies now.  

[EdgarusQPFC]

If you buy a product that promises to do A. B. C. And D. But when you take it home you discover that it can only do A. Then you have been ripped off. 

The reviews for this game were largely unhelpful, as are all reviews these days. "Professional" Gaming media is corrupt 

[Homer Thompson]

5 minutes ago, EdgarusQPFC said:

If you buy a product that promises to do A. B. C. And D. But when you take it home you discover that it can only do A. Then you have been ripped off. 

Yes, you have and there are already laws and regulations in place that cover false advertising etc

5 minutes ago, EdgarusQPFC said:

The reviews for this game were largely unhelpful, as are all reviews these days. "Professional" Gaming media is corrupt 

Of course it is. But there are literally dozens of independent people doing reviews on youtube and other media outlets. Im sure most people also have a site, or sites, where they generally agree with the reviews - much like I used to buy Edge rather than C&VG.

[Mr. Brightside]

If you buy a product that promises to do A. B. C. And D. But when you take it home you discover that it can only do A. Then you have been ripped off. 

The reviews for this game were largely unhelpful, as are all reviews these days. "Professional" Gaming media is corrupt 

[emoji23]

[forameus]

2 hours ago, EdgarusQPFC said:

The reviews for this game were largely unhelpful, as are all reviews these days. "Professional" Gaming media is corrupt 

As others said, if you look in the wrong places, you're probably right.  But there are sites where you'll get more helpful reviews.  The Jim Sterling one for this game was pretty much spot on.  Had I read that prior to ordering, I probably still would've as the positives were still there and would apply to me, but I imagine most would have read that review and made a choice in the other direction.