Billions of worlds, creatures, plants, ships, and possibility. ...No Man's Sky

[Duronos]

While it doesn't look like much variety, Sean has specifically stated he's not showing much to keep everyone from knowing to much because that would ruin the wonder. It's the reason why the planets that have been shown don't have much variety. If it's truly the case and there actually is more variety than we know about this is going to be the game that revolutionizes the space exploration genre and if he's true to his word then this game will sell via word of mouth for how awesome it is.

I believe it will be an amazing game, when a developer gets up on the E3 stage and is visibly shaking it's because he genuinely cares about his game and wants it to be the best thing ever.

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It's like why the fuck does everyone need to know something about a game before it comes out, that ruins it. If it's a bad game then word of mouth will fuck it up, it's not CoD so it won't sell just because it can. You know why WoW was so amazing when it first came out? We pretty much couldn't fathom it, I loved it because I didn't know anything and led to this different kind of wonder.

Just imagine you find a planet that's fully underwater and you've never seen this before... "THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME" you say to yourself and then the next thing you find is a planet that has a primitive race of people that live in the core (center of the planet). This is why these questions are best left unanswered, it would ruin the entire point of discovery.

[Azrile]

My only issue with procedural generation is that... well, it looks so procedural. It has an almost "soulless" look to it. And after you've played long enough, you start to be able to distinguish all the little "common strains" that run through the generated content. At which point, it starts to look... repetitive. It happened in Spore, and it happened in Minecraft... and those games actually let you create a large portion of the content, too.

My big problem with ´procedural´ is that there is nothing unique, there is nothing special.. there are no really cool spots. Yes, it will not look exactly the same, but you can bet that the next 100 yard will look just like the last 100 yard with nothing worth exploring. Also, you can see it in those videos.. if you are ´procedurely generating a map, you are going to have very bad lighting and shaders... there will be no atmosphere or feeling to a zone..

People are obsessed with ´omg, how big is the world´.. when in fact, it is very easy to make a big boring world... and then the players come back and ask you for ways to fast-travel so they can skip all the huge boring lands.

it is not exploring if there is nothing to find. I would rather have a much smaller world that is hand-crafted with unique locals and points of interest that make it worth your time to explore.

[Tech614]

While it doesn't look like much variety, Sean has specifically stated he's not showing much to keep everyone from knowing to much because that would ruin the wonder. It's the reason why the planets that have been shown don't have much variety. If it's truly the case and there actually is more variety than we know about this is going to be the game that revolutionizes the space exploration genre and if he's true to his word then this game will sell via word of mouth for how awesome it is.

Bullshit. At e3 on the Sony stage he flat out said he was jumping to a random planet they have never been to before and that he shouldn't be doing it.

Surprise Surprise it looked the same as the rest.

[Corvus]

Bullshit. At e3 on the Sony stage he flat out said he was jumping to a random planet they have never been to before and that he shouldn't be doing it.

Surprise Surprise it looked the same as the rest.

I believe that he was also playing a personal build that was tailored so the planets went to would be life bearing ones. All those interesting unusual planets weren't available to see in that build.

[Azrile]

The fact that there's 18 quintillion worlds (not billions, quintillions) isn't an awesome feature because you can explore it all. It's an awesome feature because you can be an actual explorer, without there being guides all over the internet for every place you could possibly think of visiting.

How awesome would WoW be if there were no guides. Nothing, not for any bosses, dungeons or quests?

and in the end, it won´t matter because they will mostly all look the same and not have anything unique about them.

[Tech614]

Billions of worlds....well...as others have pointed out....when would you explore them? Who would you meet? Billions of worlds and millions of players..chances are I am alone all the time. What happens with quests? Stories?

I think their is a major misconception going around that this is an MMO where you can "meet" other players. It's not. It's a single player experience, hence when you discover something you need to upload it to the servers because you're not playing on servers that could automatically record it.

[Kaleredar]

This game, to me, looks like Spore without the ability to make anything.


There's a problem with Procedural animation. It's soulless. Take minecraft for example. You don't marvel at sweeping canyons or giant forests because you know that some algorithm just spat them out. Eventually, you just lose interest in exploring because it has nothing to "show" you, or, rather, nothing all that worth seeing. (I feel the same way about dungeons in diablo 3)


And so SPORE was able to avoid this issue to a degree by letting you make things. Make your creature, make your spaceship, make your buildings, and all that jazz. That's fun. All of the space and city and tribe and creature stuff around spore was supporting that fundamental ability to make things, and even that wasn't enough to make Spore a "perfect game." Exploring in the space stage still gets exhausting and eventually you pretty much resolve that you wont see anything you haven't seen ten times before.


So if you gut that ability to create things that successful procedural generation games (like Spore or Minecraft) have, then... well, what DO you have? You just have a venue for the player to stare at things a computer plops out for you.

[Deleted]

Play 10 hrs a day and you explore 3650 worlds a year, 36500 worlds in 10 years and 100 000 worlds in 30 years. that is still a freaking far cry from a billion and even more from your fancy quintillion and I guaranteed you - you will have long died of boredom.

Yep, give me 50-100 handcrafted worlds over a billion random ones. No way I'd explore more than 50-100 ever, and I have no problem at all(!) if my 'gaming experience' is the same as everyone else.

[Tommy T]

From what I've seen so far, I'm not impressed by the gameplay.

The company deserve massive credit, but the gameplay seems a bit shallow at the moment.
Hope they improve on it.

[kenn9530]

His last dream only got published because it was bought out by its backer microsoft and thats after being delayed for 3 years in a row.

star citizen so far has had lots of work put into it, and around 1 million players who have donated and want to play the game, the game most likely has other backers helping support the costs of development, the game is at least 1 year away from being close to be ready but it will get released, its better to be released when its ready and wait a little longer rather than to rush it out.

I will be trying this game out as i need something to fill the space spot as elite dangerous doesn't quite have everything i want in it.

[Karon]

It will become very boring very fast.

It will be like that:
As soon as you have seen a certain amount of planets you've seen every 3D Model there is. After that it is just the same thing again and again just with different adjustments.

As long as the Resources are extremely limited, it won't matter how big they claim their game will be, it will be just 3.14e435 different versions of the same models.

Why don't we get infos about things that matter?

[Stonecloak]

Yea, not buying the hype for the game. Looks bland Imo.

[notanmmmonewbie]

There's a problem with Procedural animation. It's soulless. Take minecraft for example. You don't marvel at sweeping canyons or giant forests because you know that some algorithm just spat them out. Eventually, you just lose interest in exploring because it has nothing to "show" you, or, rather, nothing all that worth seeing. (I feel the same way about dungeons in diablo 3)

Yah i was like "ohh neat" at first but the more i hear about it and the more i read about that you guys say i'm now saying "meeeh" instead. Like i've been playing a lot of FO3 on the side right now and exploring is kinda neat. I think that i might just be exploring another underground maintenance place or house. But then you see stuff like two skeletons spooning on a bed, a skeleton that looks like he was backed into a corner doing some type of last stand stuff (with all his weapons laying around him), or a skeleton face down on the ground with a revolver nearby. Most people probably wouldnt care about that kind of detail but i actually stop and think to myself "wow i wonder what happened here". Obviously nothing happened since those are just set pieces placed there by the devs. But it does show that they are trying to tell a story of some kind with those set pieces.

If i'm exploring one of these billions of worlds am i going to care about that tree that was there and is still there when i leave for a few days and come back? Now maybe if i were to explore a planet barren of life, seeing a huge crater, and dinosaur skeletons all over the place then maybe that is telling me some kind of story? or maybe going to a planet and seeing ruins from some ancient human civiliation like how we have Aztec/Mayan ruins. Or a planet that is breaking apart all Star Trek 3 Search for Spock style and come to find out there is some kind of underground alien civilization (all Total Recall style) with some dead or dying alien there. Now seeing that kind of stuff on planets, maybe not all of them but most of them, would make me **want** to explore other planets. Right now IRL we are exploring the moon, Mars and maybe who knows one of the other planets. But imagine how crazy the science community would go if they found hard evidence that other life exists on the moon or on Mars. Do you think that maybe this would drive them even harder to explore further in our solar system/galaxy?

[DarkAmbient]

I really want this game to be awesome, but I have a sneaking feeling that it will feel like playing a tech demo rather than an actual game. I mean, what is the point of millions of planets to explore? So far they look the same except they have different colour grass and trees.

[Deleted]

Haven't they specifically said there will be planets that are inhospitable, toxic, radioactive, freezing, boiling, etc.? That you'll have to get gear to even explore them and such?

I mean, I know everybody wants to jump and tear into them for what's been seen so far, but still. Honestly, people are so eager to just... rip into things. Negative nancies. Does anybody even enjoy anything they do anymore?

Yeah, this video shows 2 very different worlds being played.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLcjvIQJns0

The only thing they have in common is grass. But the second world has these wierd, gigantic rock formations that the first one doesnt have.

[carnifex2005]

Yeah, this video shows 2 very different worlds being played.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLcjvIQJns0

The only thing they have in common is grass. But the second world has these wierd, gigantic rock formations that the first one doesnt have.

Here's a new video with a tour of five random planets, all with very different ecosystems...

[Flaks]

I don't think this game will be wildly successful financially or hailed as an exceptional game in any way.

What it will be is a pioneer for other games that'll build on this formula.

[Beazy]

I was extremely hyped about this game until I found out that the multiplayer wont allow you to play with friends unless you can somehow find your friends in an endless galaxy.

I don't want to explore the stars alone, I have Elite: Dangerous if I want to do that.

You have to admit one thing about NMS ~ going from space to planet surface is beyond fucking awesome.

[Super Kami Dende]

I don't think this game will be wildly successful financially or hailed as an exceptional game in any way.

What it will be is a pioneer for other games that'll build on this formula.

It's already being hailed as an exceptional game due to it's sheer size.

[Azrile]

It's already being hailed as an exceptional game due to it's sheer size.

Is this a joke? Using any free game engine, you can throw together a ´huge universe´ in a matter of hours.. Go to Unity and search for ´infinite runner´.. then you do that, and just randomly change the color of the prefabs that are spawned in front of you.... and you have a ´game that is exceptional because of it´s sheer size´.

And that is besides the point that an infinite number of plantets with slightly different hex codes is not ´a game´.... and was done already by Spore anyway.

No game should be called ´exceptional´ that has never been played just based on size. Ok, this planet here this one is #3C38AC and uses the exact same plants as found on every other planet, but on this planet they are colored #53C299 So there you have it, 1 billion planets that are all unique!!!!

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I don't think this game will be wildly successful financially or hailed as an exceptional game in any way.

What it will be is a pioneer for other games that'll build on this formula.

Unless you can procedural generate realistic looking plant models, creature models and AI, then you are just creating a whole lot of the same thing with slightly different colors.