No Man's Sky

[The JareBear]

Re: No Man's Sky

My honest prediction is the "biological" side of the game might be more static than we want at the beginning. Maybe that gets improved with patches and expansions. I think expecting Witcher 3 style lore/depth when it comes to living things you interact with probably isn't realistic

Who knows though. As I've said before (sorry if I sound like a broken record) the base exploration mechanic is what had me sold day 1 and will be more than enough for me personally.

I was talkin to my boy Bolt about this game and basically I told him my opinion is this game just won't be for everyone. I bet some people play for 3 hours and never go back but other people will play for 3 years.

[canes21]

Re: No Man's Sky

I think we all know about the base exploration mechanics as that's been the most talked about part of the game. That's either got your attention or it doesn't. But basic exploration can only get a good number of us so far.

If there is no significance to discovering animals outside of the fact that I can name them and will have a log of how many species I've found, then that will lose its luster quickly. I don't want them to just be a bunch of basic AI that's shaped differently and that's it.

The same can be said for aliens and traders. Is the AI exploring? Are all trader routes predetermined and static or will new ones be created as new settlements are popping up? Will routes be destroyed or abandoned if pirates or even the player are always harassing ships along that route? If attacks are prevalent, will security be added? Is there a hierarchy system for aliens?

I'm afraid that aliens will never progress themselves and will only cease to exist because of players. I'm afraid that each planet will host a handful of unique animals that basically all still act like any other planet's, they are just shaped/colored differently.

Exploring loses a lot of its value to me if I'm not actually going to find things that will change my experience a whole lot. I want players to be able to find animals, resources, aliens, etc. that change that part of the galaxy for good. I want aliens to explore and look for new planers they can settle on as well. Maybe they use up their planet's resources and are dying out and desperately need a new home and are even willing to get violent with others to survive. I want to stumble on aliens that are relatively primative and can offer nothing to me, but it'd be insane if I could bring technology/resources that jump them forward as a civilization.

This game doesn't need a set storyline, but just set(maybe poor wording, I know it isn't a simple as just setting something up) the AI up to be dynamic enough to allow for history to be made. Exploration does not go well with static. Everything needs to be dynamic enough that the lore of the game is created by itself and is not needed to be written. I know it's not going to be even close to the extent I wish it would be, but hopefully things are set up enough that this game won't just keep a tiny niche playing past month number 2.

[mestevo]

Re: No Man's Sky

It's an Indie Arcade Survival Sandbox.

My guess based on footage and information: I kind of just expect everything to be generated/re-generated when you enter/leave an area or the game itself. Probably the entire planetary system you're logging into. Life will be plentiful, both in space and on every planet. The only persistance will be the existence of each system and their location in the universe.

There are no servers, so meaningful change is limited to a database of 'creature w/ xyz12ab parameters named POOP by Goober on nn/nn/nn.

On a system level, per play session, it looks like you could have a lot of fun. If anything differs from the above perhaps the simulation runs the surrounding systems to expand the footprint of the trading you can interface with.

[canes21]

Re: No Man's Sky

I'm pretty sure they said most planets will have zero life.

[PVarck31]

Re: No Man's Sky

I'm pretty sure they said most planets will have zero life.

This is correct. They said only 10% of planets will have life. And only 10% of those will have advanced life.

[canes21]

Re: No Man's Sky

I just want to clear things up in case anyone thinks I am expecting some groundbreaking AI in this game. I am not. I just hope the AI is independent enough and dynamic enough so actual events play out in the game and it isn't all predetermined trade routes and movement. I am not expecting to go to a planet and find a mining camp that has ships transferring the resources to a central location that imports and exports other materials throughout space. That is deep and this game would not be out for awhile more than likely if that were the case.

I just hope that when I see a ship that lands on a planet to "import" resources, it is actually carrying resources and when it lands, it loses those resources to that planet which then actually gains them. That's as deep as I feel it needs to be. If that ship keeps making landings throughout a solar system or whatever its route may be, I hope it is actually gaining/losing resources in a believable manner. I don't want it to be scripted movement that is actually making zero impact on the world.

If it was simplified down to a certain alien race needs certain resources and they have ships that import them, it would be neat to figure out where those ships are coming from by watching what comes in and where it comes from or goes to and then set it up to eventually stop those ships from coming in which causes the race to face the consequences of not getting their resource. However, I feel like those ships are just for show and no matter how many landings they've made, whenever you decide to destroy them will not matter as they will drop the same loot at any point and their loss will have zero impact in the universe.

I also don't expect a complex technology system that no game has matched before. I'd love to see a tech tree similar to the Civ games, but expanded to match the scaling of this game. Set the AI races up with certain characteristics that will help determine what they research or try to obtain and then the game really becomes dynamic, especially if the AI can move from planet to planet and search for resources they need or just want to stockpile to trade. Civ's AI is very basic and the tech tree helps make each playthrough different because of all of the branches. Imagine a system like that that was just a little larger and placed into a universe that had AI settling(also like Civ) and having random feuds(also like Civ). The story would write itself. The universe would be "living" and as dynamic as any other game out there which (in my opinion) would make exploring 100x more exciting as you'd want to continue to see what is happening around the map and would keep you checking up on already met races to see how they're doing. You may like one race so much you go to war with them to help fight for their survival and in the end you wipe out another race completely.

That is the type of dynamic gameplay that this type of game should have in my opinion and I just know that chances are everything is truly static and nothing like that will even be close to how it plays out.

[The JareBear]

Re: No Man's Sky

I understand, Canes. I feel ya

I feel this is an ambitious project for an indie studio and hopefully it succeeds and the game continues to grow and evolve from wherever it starts at

[dickey1331]

Re: No Man's Sky

A lot of my friends are talking about this on Facebook which is unusual so it seems to be gaining some good traction. Will be interesting to see sales numbers and reviews with it getting such high expectations.

[mestevo]

Re: No Man's Sky

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[Tommyklaid]

Re: No Man's Sky

This game could either be extremely boring or the most EPIC title to sort of fly under the radar...

Hoping for the latter...would love this to just knock our socks off.

[PVarck31]

Re: No Man's Sky

That planet has been shown in many videos, but if this game works like we're told we will prob never see that planet when we play.

Only thing I don't like is how easy it seems to survive without thermal protection on super cold planets. That's like -325F. Unless the thermal protection is something different than your regular space suit. Assuming you are wearing a regular space suit.

[canes21]

Re: No Man's Sky

That planet has been shown in many videos, but if this game works like we're told we will prob never see that planet when we play.

Only thing I don't like is how easy it seems to survive without thermal protection on super cold planets. That's like -325F. Unless the thermal protection is something different than your regular space suit. Assuming you are wearing a regular space suit.

I was under the impression that the shield is slowly going down, then once it's gone you're toast. I feel like they're decently equipped for the purpose of the demo.

[PVarck31]

Re: No Man's Sky

I was under the impression that the shield is slowly going down, then once it's gone you're toast. I feel like they're decently equipped for the purpose of the demo.

It would be cool if you couldn't visit an extremely cold or hot planet until you have the right equipment.

[The JareBear]

Re: No Man's Sky

It would be cool if you couldn't visit an extremely cold or hot planet until you have the right equipment.

I'm hoping this is how it ends up working

[canes21]

Re: No Man's Sky

I could've sworn I read that or heard them mention it in a video before, but I may be remembering wrong. I'd imagine that it will be since tech is such a focused part of the game. It would be odd to exclude that in my eyes.