UPDATED: Report: No Man's Sky Release Date Delayed

[wulfy42]

From what I have watched, No Man's Sky is not for me. I'm not sure if it's for anyone to be honest. Exploration sounds cool, but the movement is fairly slow, the building is....well extremely basic (you can make cave systems and such), and I don't really see any real development as you play the game. In effect, you can almost start a new game (in another random place throughout a huge galaxy), and have the same exploration experience you would with your initial character after playing hundreds of hours. If you enjoy finding new life forms and naming them, and seeing thousands and thousands of randomly created worlds (way more then that exist, but that is probably all you'll see), then sure, it'll last you forever.

The problem is, they are exchanging longevity for content and enjoyment. If you could build up the worlds, increase your resources, perhaps create trade between them and have some kind of game progression that continues over years, that might give you some reason to keep exploring and playing (Although even that would probably get old eventually). I do not see this being a game most people will enjoy or even play for 100 hours (which in a game like this is a bare minimum to get your worth out of).

There are far better sandbox games out there to play in my opinion, and enough of them that it's already likely you have not played them all if you want to play that genre anyway.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Eh, nothing of value was lost (or in this case delayed) for me. Games seems to be too barebones to be fun.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Maybe they're hoping to add some actual substance to the game beyond bare-bones combat and exploration. :^)

I think it says something that, as far as I'm aware, everyone is still asking what the game actually is.

I was just coming here to make the joke that they need the extra time to figure out just what the game actually is so they can tell us before release. Because right now I know little and honestly care less.

 

[Strazdas]

What's the point?

To get to the center of the Galaxy. Otherwise, whatever suits your fancy.

I hope its not going to end up like Spore where you explore 10 star systems around you, get bored, rush to the center of galaxy and see the "Ending" that would better be fit as a easter egg joke than an actual ending, and not a single thing blocks you from actually rushing the center without any reprecutions.

 

[Callate]

I'm still looking forward to this. It's ambitious, and it may fall short of its promises; maybe well short. But if it gets even half-way there, it will still be pretty damn cool. The bits that have been coming out regarding alien languages and factories could be quite interesting indeed.

As far as the delay goes, my suspicion is this: you make a game that uses procedural generation to design and populate some ludicrous number of worlds (with the oft repeated promise that even the designers aren't going to truly know what's on most of them.) Then you start doing some playtesting, and you discover... One planet in twenty, or fifty, or a hundred, the algorithms pump out something that's broken.

Maybe it's just ugly. Maybe it just doesn't work quite the way it should. Or maybe it instant-kills the player in a way they have no way of predicting or preventing. Maybe it crashes the game. Or it could work entirely the other way- maybe it gives the one player in a thousand who runs across it some ridiculous advantage that they should never have, early and often.

"Rogue-likes" that depend on such procedural generation often have such flaws, sometimes counting on the "you didn't see that" nature of permadeath and world destruction to hide their flaws. NMS is counting on similar procedures to create a permanent universe that thousands, perhaps millions, of people will explore.

So I will wait and see. I haven't pre-ordered the game, or anything. But I'm still way beyond curious, and I think at the very least it deserves the chance to reach reviewers before everyone starts acting like it's the lovechild of Peter Molyneux and Derek Smart.

 

[Nurb]

There's no direct player interaction, there's no crafting beyond upgrading existing gear, no trading commodities, very very limited combat.

It's really just perpetual planet hopping exploration with no other objective.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

[insert cynical negative statement here]

This was to be expected. I mean...really?...people thought this would be simple? Does gaming even have a purpose? Everyone's looking for their next victory. But i'd rather just explore unthought worlds. Is it so hard to understand? Can one not imagine that people do not want to be purely "badass" or "hardcore" and that maybe exploration and discovery is enough? Or must we thrust our human (totally not compenstating for) might into every idea of life to mulch before we consider ourselves worthy...of ourselves?

 

[Einspanner]

There's no direct player interaction, there's no crafting beyond upgrading existing gear, no trading commodities, very very limited combat.

It's really just perpetual planet hopping exploration with no other objective.

In essence, a hyperspatial walking sim.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

So... I preordered it on PS4 a week ago, and the countdown timer for the preload hasn't been updated. It still reads as being 24 days and a few hours short of preloading.

I know we have to wait until August, but this current timer puts me at the end of June. Should I cancel my pre-order, or will the PSN somehow correct its projection? I wouldn't want the timer to end and to be stuck high and dry, with no other option than to repurchase the game.

 

[Vigormortis]

[insert cynical negative statement here]

This was to be expected. I mean...really?...people thought this would be simple? Does gaming even have a purpose? Everyone's looking for their next victory. But i'd rather just explore unthought worlds. Is it so hard to understand? Can one not imagine that people do not want to be purely "badass" or "hardcore" and that maybe exploration and discovery is enough? Or must we thrust our human (totally not compenstating for) might into every idea of life to mulch before we consider ourselves worthy...of ourselves?

Nope. Unless there's some wizard/gruff sergeant/learned mentor/demi-god/etc giving us a waypoint and some nebulous instruction of "go there and kill/acquire/rescue X", it's not a game worth playing.

Exploration and discovery are boring. I need a specific bad guy to fight or goal to attain! I don't want to find things on my own. I want someone to tell me what to do!

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Nope. Unless there's some wizard/gruff sergeant/learned mentor/demi-god/etc giving us a waypoint and some nebulous instruction of "go there and kill/acquire/rescue X", it's not a game worth playing.

Exploration and discovery are boring. I need a specific bad guy to fight or goal to attain! I don't want to find things on my own. I want someone to tell me what to do!

Hehe! If you were to find out that the objective marker could be moved to anywhere you choose, at any time, for no reason... how damaging an existential crisis will you suffer?

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I haven't really paid the closest of attention to this game, but after looking at it I'm somewhat interested but skeptical. Procedural generation is all well and good, but if there aren't enough variety of actual art assets then it doesn't really matter how you rearrange them, it will still begin to look all the same. After having played Starbound I've seen how quickly I can lose interest in these types of games once I've explored every "type" of environment, so at that point it doesn't matter whether the game world is the size of a few solar systems, a galaxy, or the entire universe, I have no reason to explore millions of near identical worlds.
I guess that's the problem with basing the game mostly on exploration rather than story or game mechanics; exploration becomes boring once there's nothing left to discover, so you'll need a generous amount of variety to maintain interest.

I'm also somewhat baffled by the fact they've decided to give players the ability to name creatures, planets, etc. They do realize that only about 1% of the audience will actually take it seriously and come up with proper names for it. Even the best profanity filter ever devised isn't going to stop the names from just being stupid memes, pop culture references, or phrases that are offensive if ways that don't depend on profanity.

Still, consider me cautiously optimistic.

[insert cynical negative statement here]

This was to be expected. I mean...really?...people thought this would be simple? Does gaming even have a purpose? Everyone's looking for their next victory. But i'd rather just explore unthought worlds. Is it so hard to understand? Can one not imagine that people do not want to be purely "badass" or "hardcore" and that maybe exploration and discovery is enough? Or must we thrust our human (totally not compenstating for) might into every idea of life to mulch before we consider ourselves worthy...of ourselves?

Nope. Unless there's some wizard/gruff sergeant/learned mentor/demi-god/etc giving us a waypoint and some nebulous instruction of "go there and kill/acquire/rescue X", it's not a game worth playing.

Exploration and discovery are boring. I need a specific bad guy to fight or goal to attain! I don't want to find things on my own. I want someone to tell me what to do!

Is there really any need for the smug sarcasm over people not being interested in the same types of gaming experiences? Not that I'm suggesting anything you just said is in anyway reflective of the actual opinions of people in this thread.

 

[shrekfan246]

Then the game came out and was met with uproarious praise. Everyone acted surprised at what it was, which confused me. ID and Bethesda had shown much of what was in the game leading up to the its release. They revealed so much, in fact, that I wondered how anyone could be so surprised by what the final game turned out to be. What it is was on display for months.

And now I can't help but feel the same thing is happening to No Man's Sky. The question is always, "But what do you DO?!" Even when someone, including the devs, provide an answer to the question, it's still met with, "Yeah, but, what do you DO?!"

It's like if someone explained the premise of Fallout 4 and I asked, "Okay, but what do you actually do in the game?" Then that person explains the gunplay, and I ask, "Alright, but what does that mean? What do you do with it?" They then explain the side quest structure, and I again ask, "Right, but what's the point? What's it all lead to? What do you do?"

I might be going out on a limb here, but perhaps a game like No Man's Sky just isn't for everyone. Maybe it's just not made to suit every taste. Which leads me to wonder why so many feel compelled to act as though it should be. To act as though they need to lambast the game for not having the exact specifications they want. It's like me complaining that a racing game doesn't have enough arena shooter elements to it.

You almost had me agreeing with you, there.

Like I said to my SO last night, the issue isn't what the game has shown, it's what they haven't. Yes, they've shown a large, supposedly randomly generated galaxy that will apparently always have something interesting for you to find (okay then, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt), they've shown flying through space and seeing big pitched fleet combat and landing on planets and searching through the flora and fauna and all sorts of wacky alien life and cool, and apparently (though I certainly missed it) they've said that your goal is to get to the center of the galaxy.

But there's still no hint on if the game has anything in the way of a story (unless I've missed that too, in which case I'd say most people probably have). And...

Sometimes exploration is the point. It may not be interesting to everyone, but there are people out there who do find that interesting. And if No Man's Sky turns out to only be about exploration, then those people will be satisfied.

To counter your own going-out-on-a-limb, I'm going to say that the vast majority of people prefer games that actually give them a motivation and reason to do the things they're doing. There's a place for games that simply allow for exploration (hell, I'd be interested in seeing some driving sims that are 1:1 recreations of countries) but that place simply isn't the mainstream market.

Not every game has to be for everyone, but pretending that what's been revealed somehow doesn't exist is just ridiculous.

"What do you do?" You wonder why people are wasting so much of their time complaining about a game they don't care about.

What they've revealed has shown nothing worth caring about, and I'd say that in general people want to care about it. No, every game doesn't need to appeal to everyone, but No Man's Sky has been marketed in such a way that it's clearly trying to grab a large audience, and it is failing horribly at doing so. Maybe the curiosity and intrigue will cause people to flock to it in droves, or once people finally have their hands on it talk will blow up about how amazing it is, or maybe it'll just launch and promptly be forgotten. Regardless of what you seem to think, they haven't released enough information that people actually understand what the game is about. If No Man's Sky was being built up as just some small, ambitious indie title then that would be fine. But it's not. It's been getting huge amounts of hype ever since it was announced, and it's being released as a full-AAA-priced title, and it still hasn't shown that it actually has any more substance than just a galaxy to fly around in.

And really, are you expecting people in the mainstream market to not talk about a game that's been building up its buzz enough to be on their radar? Why do people bash Call of Duty? Why do people go on and on about Adam Sandler? Why do people constantly talk about how awful pop music is?

Why are you surprised that people are actually discussing one of the few games that is actually an enigma in our modern times? People are confused and impatient. That should hardly be a shocking discovery for anyone who's been on the internet as long as you have.

[insert cynical negative statement here]

This was to be expected. I mean...really?...people thought this would be simple? Does gaming even have a purpose? Everyone's looking for their next victory. But i'd rather just explore unthought worlds. Is it so hard to understand? Can one not imagine that people do not want to be purely "badass" or "hardcore" and that maybe exploration and discovery is enough? Or must we thrust our human (totally not compenstating for) might into every idea of life to mulch before we consider ourselves worthy...of ourselves?

Okay, exploration is fine. Exploration for the sake of exploration just seems fruitless, though. Especially when it's randomly generated. The game will only live for as long as it takes for the player to start finding repetition.

I don't mind games that eschew combat (in fact, I think that a primary flaw in many Star Trek games has been that combat has played a bigger factor than exploration and diplomacy), but if there's no actual interaction with the game world or if there's no benefit to the player for engaging in said world's interaction, then what is the point of playing the game in the first place? If I wanted to see a bunch of pretty images, I could just look online. There's an endlessly vast repository of wild and amazing alien worlds to find in the depths of the internet. You can argue that it's not the same experience, but the addition of needing to manually fly and walk around to find things doesn't really add much to me.

The zen experience of flying around and discovering things will appeal to some, yes, but it clearly hasn't appealed to as many people as the game has been trying to appeal to. Public perception matters, and this is hardly the first time people have cared about whether a game is successful or not, or were disappointed when they discovered that a big-name game wasn't "for" them. And besides, I haven't seen many people asking for the game to change, they're just asking for the developers to actually come out with a hard response on whether the game is nothing more than discovering for the sake of discovery or not.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Okay, exploration is fine. Exploration for the sake of exploration just seems fruitless, though. Especially when it's randomly generated. The game will only live for as long as it takes for the player to start finding repetition.

I don't mind games that eschew combat (in fact, I think that a primary flaw in many Star Trek games has been that combat has played a bigger factor than exploration and diplomacy), but if there's no actual interaction with the game world or if there's no benefit to the player for engaging in said world's interaction, then what is the point of playing the game in the first place? If I wanted to see a bunch of pretty images, I could just look online. There's an endlessly vast repository of wild and amazing alien worlds to find in the depths of the internet. You can argue that it's not the same experience, but the addition of needing to manually fly and walk around to find things doesn't really add much to me.

The zen experience of flying around and discovering things will appeal to some, yes, but it clearly hasn't appealed to as many people as the game has been trying to appeal to. Public perception matters, and this is hardly the first time people have cared about whether a game is successful or not, or were disappointed when they discovered that a big-name game wasn't "for" them. And besides, I haven't seen many people asking for the game to change, they're just asking for the developers to actually come out with a hard response on whether the game is nothing more than discovering for the sake of discovery or not.

I understand where your coming from, it won't appeal to all for certain. But this site is really the only place i have seen such doubt towards the game. Most people i know in person and not from this site are generally excited and are following the game's development. The background goal of heading to the centre of the universe, planets with security bots, mining, resource gathering to improve your ship's ability to go further into space, alien lore to explore. Roguelike elements, isn't permadeath in this game? I have been casually keeping up on development and they have explained a lot already. But the mystery does make it enticing for some such as me. It isn't just looking at and naming planets. Where did they ever say that? Do you just want to know what the ending is then? I am confused as to how much information is required to please people for this game. Elite dangerous didn't really have any goal, yet no one complained about that. (Though probably someone somewhere did. This is the interwebs after all ).
Anyhow, it may not be popular here...but i can assure you that it has garnered excitement from the more casual scene, which some may argue is the larger group to appease.

 

[shrekfan246]

Most people i know in person and not from this site are generally excited and are following the game's development.

it has garnered excitement from the more casual scene

I would say that if you're following the development of the game, you're not that representative of the casual scene. I have not been following the development of the game, at least not closely, so most of what I know is what they've shown at events or what has been reported on at news sites or in videos by people that I watch. I've seen relatively little information about the game overall, to be quite honest.

The background goal of heading to the centre of the universe, planets with security bots, mining, resource gathering to improve your ship's ability to go further into space, alien lore to explore. Roguelike elements, isn't permadeath in this game?

I have been casually keeping up on development and they have explained a lot already. But the mystery does make it enticing for some such as me. It isn't just looking at and naming planets. Where did they ever say that? Do you just want to know what the ending is then? I am confused as to how much information is required to please people for this game.

See that first bit? What I want is to know if I'm doing all of that stuff just because I can, or if the game is going to actually attempt to give me more of a reason to do it than "because it's in the game".

To perhaps put it a bit more clearly, in a game like, say, Sid Meier's Pirates! or Mount & Blade you're thrown into a large open world with only a nebulous goal of living out your life. There is no real clearly marked "end" to the game, but everything you did throughout the course of it would impact the ending you get. Along the way, every little encounter adds up to create its own story, to add another page to the journal of your character's life and expand their overall position, whether it be through acquiring a city, becoming an Admiral, marrying a governor's daughter, besieging castles, or dying alone and destitute. These are all things that allow the player to craft their own narrative to help define the identity of their character, and the difference (at least from my perspective) is that it actually provides some personality for an otherwise blank-slate character.

It's all well and good that you can explore deep space, mine for resources, research alien civilizations, etc. etc., but is that something that everyone playing the game will do, or is it something that the player has their choice to do or avoid as they please because there's plenty of other things to do as well? Are there alien civilizations to directly interact with, form alliances or go to war with, or is your only interaction with them through the lens of combat? Are there different ships you can pilot, or do you just get one and then progressively upgrade it alone throughout your travels? Is the lore relevant to finding new planets or uncovering hidden secrets and technologies on planets, or is it just there to fluff out the universe? Is mining and resource collection solely for upgrading your ship, or can you trade commodities or create a home for yourself?

Elite dangerous didn't really have any goal, yet no one complained about that. (Though probably someone somewhere did. This is the interwebs after all ).

A fair few people did express their disappointment after release that it looked essentially like Space Euro Truck Simulator. But that was built off of the original Elite games, so there was already some expectation of what it would be going in. No Man's Sky seems like it's just taking the things that Elite or the X series did and stripping out all of the depth those games had.

Maybe I'm asking silly questions, and maybe they've all been answered already, but personally they're the kinds of things I've been led to ask based on what I've seen of the game thus far, because what I've seen has been extremely basic. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd wager that I've probably seen about as much as most people who aren't actively excited for the game have seen.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Most people i know in person and not from this site are generally excited and are following the game's development.

it has garnered excitement from the more casual scene

I would say that if you're following the development of the game, you're not that representative of the casual scene. I have not been following the development of the game, at least not closely, so most of what I know is what they've shown at events or what has been reported on at news sites or in videos by people that I watch. I've seen relatively little information about the game overall, to be quite honest.

The background goal of heading to the centre of the universe, planets with security bots, mining, resource gathering to improve your ship's ability to go further into space, alien lore to explore. Roguelike elements, isn't permadeath in this game?

I have been casually keeping up on development and they have explained a lot already. But the mystery does make it enticing for some such as me. It isn't just looking at and naming planets. Where did they ever say that? Do you just want to know what the ending is then? I am confused as to how much information is required to please people for this game.

See that first bit? What I want is to know if I'm doing all of that stuff just because I can, or if the game is going to actually attempt to give me more of a reason to do it than "because it's in the game".

To perhaps put it a bit more clearly, in a game like, say, Sid Meier's Pirates! or Mount & Blade you're thrown into a large open world with only a nebulous goal of living out your life. There is no real clearly marked "end" to the game, but everything you did throughout the course of it would impact the ending you get. Along the way, every little encounter adds up to create its own story, to add another page to the journal of your character's life and expand their overall position, whether it be through acquiring a city, becoming an Admiral, marrying a governor's daughter, besieging castles, or dying alone and destitute. These are all things that allow the player to craft their own narrative to help define the identity of their character, and the difference (at least from my perspective) is that it actually provides some personality for an otherwise blank-slate character.

It's all well and good that you can explore deep space, mine for resources, research alien civilizations, etc. etc., but is that something that everyone playing the game will do, or is it something that the player has their choice to do or avoid as they please because there's plenty of other things to do as well? Are there alien civilizations to directly interact with, form alliances or go to war with, or is your only interaction with them through the lens of combat? Are there different ships you can pilot, or do you just get one and then progressively upgrade it alone throughout your travels? Is the lore relevant to finding new planets or uncovering hidden secrets and technologies on planets, or is it just there to fluff out the universe? Is mining and resource collection solely for upgrading your ship, or can you trade commodities or create a home for yourself?

Elite dangerous didn't really have any goal, yet no one complained about that. (Though probably someone somewhere did. This is the interwebs after all ).

A fair few people did express their disappointment after release that it looked essentially like Space Euro Truck Simulator. But that was built off of the original Elite games, so there was already some expectation of what it would be going in. No Man's Sky seems like it's just taking the things that Elite or the X series did and stripping out all of the depth those games had.

Maybe I'm asking silly questions, and maybe they've all been answered already, but personally they're the kinds of things I've been led to ask based on what I've seen of the game thus far, because what I've seen has been extremely basic. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd wager that I've probably seen about as much as most people who aren't actively excited for the game have seen.

Well, admittidly, i only have a mild curiousity with the game. Following is probably too strong a word, more like occasionally remembering to check a passing article on it. Am not particularly excited for it in any sense, that may just be down to me being a miserable sod however. I may have come across as perhaps more defensive of the game than intended. There are still many questions in which time should reveal the answers. Though they have gained a small fanbase on social media already, whom appear to be of the less matured human kind. It is faintly worrying how they will cope with the servers upon release (not pre-ordering or buying before reviews here), there surely can't be any effective QA testing for this type of project, can there? With the scale of it, perhaps they would benefit from an open Beta or something just to check it won't implode from pressure. I empathise with your doubts, they have been sketchy with their marketing of the game, it's mainly just me trying to keep a positive note with the subject while speculation runs rife.

 

[shrekfan246]

it's mainly just me trying to keep a positive note with the subject while speculation runs rife.

Don't get me wrong, I hope the game is good. I'm probably coming across as more aggressive than I really intend myself, while I'm mostly just intensely curious about finding out more about the game because the developers have been so tight-lipped. I want to know how much depth is actually behind the basic gameplay mechanics because it looks like the exact kind of space game I've been wanting for a while now, but with what I've seen it seems like I'd unfortunately get bored of it fairly quickly.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

it's mainly just me trying to keep a positive note with the subject while speculation runs rife.

Don't get me wrong, I hope the game is good. I'm probably coming across as more aggressive than I really intend myself, while I'm mostly just intensely curious about finding out more about the game because the developers have been so tight-lipped. I want to know how much depth is actually behind the basic gameplay mechanics because it looks like the exact kind of space game I've been wanting for a while now, but with what I've seen it seems like I'd unfortunately get bored of it fairly quickly.

Nah, i didn't sense any aggression at all. To be fair, i have been feeling unusually surly last couple of days, so i apologise if it bled into the words. But maybe am just overthinking and worrying there. Have been wondering how reviews are going to deal with this game if the end goal is so distant and vague. Though perhaps it won't be much different from an MMO review. It will be interesting nonetheless, a useful experiment at least. Have been craving a vast space sim lately, so hopefully this won't stumble on release.

 

[Vigormortis]

Hehe! If you were to find out that the objective marker could be moved to anywhere you choose, at any time, for no reason... how damaging an existential crisis will you suffer?

I might collapse into the fetal position and begin to weep.

Don't do that to me. :'(

Is there really any need for the smug sarcasm over people not being interested in the same types of gaming experiences? Not that I'm suggesting anything you just said is in anyway reflective of the actual opinions of people in this thread.

Wasn't being smug. Sarcastic? Absolutely. But smug? Nah.

And my comment doesn't really have anything to do with people not being interested in the game. I'm cool with that. No skin off my bones for what people do and don't want to play. However, I have grown tired of hearing how "boring" the game looks because, despite HelloGames describing what can be done in the game, people "don't get what you're supposed to DO."

I mean, that's fine. They haven't been paying attention to the game and don't get what it's about. Or maybe they have. Either is cool. They're not interested in the game, based on what they know or don't know. That's fine too. Doesn't bother me. But, what does bother me, is seeing the same people making the same arguments and criticisms in discussions on a game they claim to have no interest in.

They've known for months they're not interested. Why the hell keep wasting their time commenting on it? It's baffling. I don't spend months of my life searching out discussions on the latest Bioware RPG just to complain that it's not the sort of game that interests me.

You almost had me agreeing with you, there.

Like I said to my SO last night, the issue isn't what the game has shown, it's what they haven't. Yes, they've shown a large, supposedly randomly generated galaxy that will apparently always have something interesting for you to find (okay then, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt), they've shown flying through space and seeing big pitched fleet combat and landing on planets and searching through the flora and fauna and all sorts of wacky alien life and cool, and apparently (though I certainly missed it) they've said that your goal is to get to the center of the galaxy.

But there's still no hint on if the game has anything in the way of a story (unless I've missed that too, in which case I'd say most people probably have). And...

They've talked about the game having lore; new, old, and emergent. Unless you're of a mind that the game has to have some overly-verbose narrative like Mass Effect, then, more likely than not, you may want to look elsewhere.

And they've showcased far more than just 'flying through space' and sight-seeing the local flora and fauna. All I can say is to look up the play-through showcases they've done with IGN and other sites.

To counter your own going-out-on-a-limb, I'm going to say that the vast majority of people prefer games that actually give them a motivation and reason to do the things they're doing. There's a place for games that simply allow for exploration (hell, I'd be interested in seeing some driving sims that are 1:1 recreations of countries) but that place simply isn't the mainstream market.

Which has what to do with this game? HelloGames haven't been hyping the game to be something it's not. The internet community and gaming news outlets have been doing that.

It's like the perception that Valve has been cruelly hyping up Half-Life 3 for years, tugging at the strings of the fans who've been waiting for the game. Yet, Valve have done very little talking about the game at all, save for a few interviews wherein the game was brought up. No 'hyping' involved.

A similar situation has happened to No Man's Sky. From the outset it didn't seem like HelloGames intended for the game to have mass market appeal. The internet gave it that image.

What they've revealed has shown nothing worth caring about

I disagree, but go on...

, and I'd say that in general people want to care about it. No, every game doesn't need to appeal to everyone, but No Man's Sky has been marketed in such a way that it's clearly trying to grab a large audience, and it is failing horribly at doing so.

Except, again, they haven't been. They've been showing what the game is and people have been drawing their own conclusions.

Despite this, however, they've certainly not failed at grabbing a large audience. A passing glance around the 'net shows quite a bit of interest in the game. In fact, the special edition pre-orders of the game have already sold out.

Maybe the curiosity and intrigue will cause people to flock to it in droves, or once people finally have their hands on it talk will blow up about how amazing it is, or maybe it'll just launch and promptly be forgotten. Regardless of what you seem to think, they haven't released enough information that people actually understand what the game is about.

Except for those who've been paying attention and understand what the game is about. Those who can accept that it may only be what's been discussed (which is far more than some in here seem to think) and haven't built some nebulous notion of the 'ultimate gaming experience'.

If No Man's Sky was being built up as just some small, ambitious indie title then that would be fine. But it's not. It's been getting huge amounts of hype ever since it was announced, and it's being released as a full-AAA-priced title, and it still hasn't shown that it actually has any more substance than just a galaxy to fly around in.

Again, that's not HelloGames' doing.

And do we really need to go into a discussion on game pricing in a indie-v-tripleA sense? Why can't a small indie dev put out a game at the $50~$60 price range? What makes content-lite triple-A affair like Battlefront automatically worth $60 when a robust indie title like, say, Torchlight 2 or Divinity are considered worth less than $40?

And really, are you expecting people in the mainstream market to not talk about a game that's been building up its buzz enough to be on their radar? Why do people bash Call of Duty? Why do people go on and on about Adam Sandler? Why do people constantly talk about how awful pop music is?

Why are you surprised that people are actually discussing one of the few games that is actually an enigma in our modern times? People are confused and impatient. That should hardly be a shocking discovery for anyone who's been on the internet as long as you have.

There's a difference between shock and aggravation.

I can be completely 'un-surprised' by people wasting their time lambasting a game, one that isn't even out yet, that they've claimed to care nothing about while also pointing out the hypocrisy and venting some frustration over the lunacy of it all.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I'm sure that gamers would rather end up with a good game a couple of months late than a broken game that releases on time.

Sure, but better than both those options is posting a release date for your game that you can actually meet with a non-broken game.

This is pretty much how I feel. I'm glad they are not releasing it broken, but at the same time, I feel companies shouldn't put a release date forward unless they KNOW they can make that date. Not think, not hope, not even "feel confident", but know.

I agree with both of these sentiments, but I also know that sometimes in game development, shit happens. Things don't materialize on time, you can't hunt down some elusive bug, or something breaks down in the process. It sucks, but it happens.

Yes, but the industry should be able to account for as you put it "shit happening". At the very least they should do what Bethesda did with Fallout 4 and not even announce a game and it's release date until just a few short months before it's actually being released instead of the industry standard which is to announce a game and it's release date at least a year before, a time gap large enough that SOMETHING is bound to happen to cause a delay if not a cancellation and thus realistically a developer can't expect to deliver. The it that happens would have to be massive yet somehow also unpredictable to be able to delay the release of a game much at all by that point, realistically by then the vast majority of the "it happens" would have happened and been dealt with already if not all of it. These companies also wouldn't have to exploit their employees to bring about the horrible job conditions rampant in game development if they didn't have to crunch in order to rush to meet a release date.

That said, I'm not excited about this game. It looks like it's really broad, but very shallow. You know, the sort of thing that is fun for about a week, and then boring as hell thereafter.

So, every Bethesda RPG ever, including Elder Scrolls and Fallout?

"Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle."

People who say that have no clue what the point of either Elder Scrolls or Fallout are supposed to be, or just want everything spoonfed to them. Open world Bethesda games are "here's why your character is here, here's the set pieces, now go nuts" to put it simply. To put more detail, the open world Bethesda games are designed with as much freedom as they could realistically give the player, the point being to GIVE their character motivations for what they are doing, how they react to the world and situations presented, and what their end goals are and how they achieve them, they are actually far deeper than most other RPGs could ever be. It seems that the No Man's Sky developers are going for the same angle with this game of theirs, but with even less actual story and goals built in, limited to "get to the center of the galaxy" as far as we've seen of it, and that's fine.