No Man's Sky

[Max Peck]

That's an excellent question. Maybe that's why it's not showing up on Amazon for order. Maybe it's only available for PC via STEAM?

It is also available on GOG, Humble and iam8bit (whatever that is), but I see no sign of a physical SKU.

[Buatha]

Okay, call it, msduncan!

Should I go Day One? Be my Atlas.

Do it. Sounds like a game that lets you fly off into the galaxy and discover crazy weird planets. I like that idea.

Bought-ed.

I normally eschew new games, but I wanted to name a planet! Besides, I took my son and daughter to see Ghostbusters at our Cinema Grill. That was $60 and it was gone in two hours. I'm sure I will get at least 15 hours at worst, so it's all relative.

[Sepiche]

Besides, I took my son and daughter to see Ghostbusters at our Cinema Grill. That was $60 and it was gone in two hours. I'm sure I will get at least 15 hours at worst, so it's all relative.

You hit precisely on the equation I use to enable my game buying: "Will I get a better dollars per hour ratio out of this game than I would a movie?".

[Lorini]

So if you guys come across a system named Three Doggies, that's mine . Take care of it please.

In other news I cannot get to the stupid beacon to save my life.

[Lee]

So if you guys come across a system named Three Doggies, that's mine . Take care of it please.

In other news I cannot get to the stupid beacon to save my life.

So you're playing and you aren't even going to tell us your impressions? As much as I am skeptical about the game, I really want to hear impressions from someone who didn't go into thinking it's the best game ever made.

[Lorini]

Nope, you don't want my impressions because this is a game I've really been waiting for....I've always wanted to explore a random galaxy in a PVE game. So far it's been alright although I always have trouble with controls so trying get to that beacon has so far been impossible. It's pretty cool how you don't get stuck (or at least I've always found a way to keep going) although you do die, I've died three times. I started on an irradiated planet so I died of radiation poisoning. And yes, the inventory management is too tight at the start I think...I have been playing for four hours and still no inventory upgrade. Lastly if you get the pre order bonus, be sure to use it before you get started. I didn't and now have to basically either start again to get stuff or figure out how you get warp drives. The pre order comes with warp drives.

[Lee]

Thanks for the impressions, always good to get a OOers opinion. Everyone who is playing it seems to really like it, except the Ars Technica first impression post.

[msduncan]

Still getting the game Friday. However:

A huge controversy has manifested after two players managed to find each other after literally only a few hours of play. What happened when they did? They couldn't see each other at all. No evidence of the other person's existence. This was all streamed on twitch from both players.

Sean Murray, over and over again, said on interviews that if two players met they would be able to see each other and actually play alongside each other. He qualified this as being astronomical chances of two players accidentally meeting up. So did Murray bank on the math and basically tell lies (over and over again) to generate hype? Or is there a bug currently that prevents them from seeing each other?

Either way, reddit is exploding with threads about this situation. Main stream gaming press is picking up on the story all over as well.

I personally still want the game because I assumed multiplayer was completely unlikely due to the math. However I am a bit miffed that Murray went on interview after interview and mischaracterized this feature. Or lied. Whichever word you want to use. It was really cool to think that there might be a person out there somewhere that you could stumble upon, however unlikely.

[killbot737]

In my case that's a nontroversy since I don't want to meet other people in game, at all.

You know what happens when you meet random people in a PvP game? You encounter griefing squeakers and general asshattery.

[Max Peck]

The only thing I've ever heard is that everyone is in a shared universe where you can find discoveries made by other players, not that you can actually interact with other players.

[Holman]

If multiplayer were possible then surely they would have included it as an option from the beginning: start in the same system as your friend or something similar. Lots of people would want to do that.

I've stayed out of this discussion because I've had a bad feeling about NMS from the first gameplay videos we saw. It seemed to me like a beautiful engine in search of a game, and the player's actual activities didn't seem like much to get excited about.

I'm still hoping it will be good and that with DLC it will grow to be great.

[msduncan]

compilation of just a few of the times he talked about meeting with other players, even if very rare

He said it. Repeatedly. Not sure why he would be untruthful about it, but apparently he was.

[Lorini]

It's not a multiplayer game. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I would advise you to decide to buy or not to buy the game as a single player game.

[msduncan]

It's not a multiplayer game. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I would advise you to decide to buy or not to buy the game as a single player game.

As I explained already -- I'm buying it. That doesn't excuse Murray from making shit up repeatedly.

[Lee]

IGN review in progress. Not negative, but not making me want to rush out and buy it either.

[Lorini]

It's not a multiplayer game. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I would advise you to decide to buy or not to buy the game as a single player game.

As I explained already -- I'm buying it. That doesn't excuse Murray from making shit up repeatedly.

Shrug. I'm sorry but I don't care. Steam lists the game as single player only. I'll be honest I don't understand this pitchfork attack on the guy led by Reddit. Why do people get so upset over him lying?? People lie every day all the time. As long as what's on the box/Steam is true it's all good. It feels like people are expecting devs to be some kind of perfect morally upstanding people. They aren't. Some are even stupid and craven. Buy the game, play the game and enjoy yourself. The rest of this crap is simply crap.

[Lee]

The point of view is not so much that it has multiplayer as that they misrepresented the game. If they "lied" about this, what else did they lie about?

[Isgrimnur]

I love how you jump to malfeasance rather than bug.

Polygon

[GreenGoo]

It's not a multiplayer game. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I would advise you to decide to buy or not to buy the game as a single player game.

As I explained already -- I'm buying it. That doesn't excuse Murray from making shit up repeatedly.

Shrug. I'm sorry but I don't care. Steam lists the game as single player only. I'll be honest I don't understand this pitchfork attack on the guy led by Reddit. Why do people get so upset over him lying?? People lie every day all the time. As long as what's on the box/Steam is true it's all good. It feels like people are expecting devs to be some kind of perfect morally upstanding people. They aren't. Some are even stupid and craven. Buy the game, play the game and enjoy yourself. The rest of this crap is simply crap.

I personally like truth in advertising. I expect it, and when I don't get it, I get annoyed at the company lying to me when they expect me to give them money based on those lies.

Sure, everyone has a personal line and yours seems to be closer (farther?) than most, and that's fine, but people don't like to be lied to, and they don't like it when they are repeatedly told a product does x only to find out that x was not included. This is often sufficient for a successful lawsuit, and if done on tv or other media is often a violation of advertising laws.

That can't be news to you.

Your opinion is the odd man out, not msd's. Which is totally fine of course.

[Lee]

I love how you jump to malfeasance rather than bug.

Not me, I couldn't care less, other than I am still trying to figure out if this is a $60 game. I was just summarizing why people are making a big deal. Everyone knows there wasn't multiplayer but they were led to believe they could meet.

[GreenGoo]

I love how you jump to malfeasance rather than bug.

Polygon

I can't get to the link, but those tweets don't refute msd's position.

And while some are going to jump on it as a conspiracy (this is the internet after all, and gamers too, which is a double whammy), finding out it's a bug that is going to be fixed asap rather than feature incomplete that may or may not be added later is of course a good thing.

[Max Peck]

From the Polygon piece, it sounds like it may be a problem with server load -- maybe a large-scale stress test could have caught it before launch, but I have no idea whether that would have been a viable option for them. At any rate, if it really is supposed to be a feature, I'm actually more enthused for the game than I was before.

[Lorini]

I really don't care if people agree with me or not. If this forum is nothing but everyone nodding heads at each other then I never should have come.

There's nothing misrepresented about this game. The box/Steam says single player. End of story. There's no lawsuit here. If someone, knowing that the game is officially advertised as a single player game, then wants to think that it's secretly multiplayer because of what he said, then hopefully next time they'll look at what's published. If they could have legitimately called the game multiplayer they would have said so on the box.

The thing is, very few people are on Reddit in the scheme of things, very few people are on Twitter either. Most people are going to look at the box and decide if they want to play. They will play the game as a single player game with an online component and hopefully enjoy themselves. They aren't even going to know about this misrepresentation. Which is my point. This whole churn is outside of the game itself and isn't going to affect most people playing the game.

Ten million discoveries were made yesterday, I think that's awesome. Can't wait for the PC release to see how many more will happen.

In game I left my first system and am in a new system. Except that I don't currently have enough money to buy antimatter which is needed to create a warp cell which is needed to power my hyperdrive to get to a new system. I now have a print out of dogs names so I can name stuff properly .

[msduncan]

I know what's on the the box, but when your lead is actively on twitter talking about multiplayer, it sends a bit of a mixed message. He's still implying and dodging direct questions about the two twitch streamers so the issue remains confused.

We are living in the 21st century. Social media is king and trumps instruction manuals and paper boxes. Sean Murray is *still* on Twitter today talking about two players finding each other but dodging the question on why they can't see each other or interact but still dropping veiled hints that they should.

[Lorini]

See that's the thing. There really aren't many people who have seen what he's said on Twitter. TEN MILLION DISCOVERIES were made yesterday. How many of those discoveries were made by people who saw what he said? Thousands? And it's all self feeding, people see stuff on Twitter/reddit/OO and they think 'well everyone must be seeing this stuff'. Except there's no evidence to back that up.

Have to wait til after the WhiteWater Kayaking Olympic event to start playing again, because after I start playing I won't stop til bed time and that would be like 2AM except I'm nearly 59 years old so it has to something like 11PM.

On the other hand, don't take what I'm saying as indication you or anyone else should buy the game. I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS GAME MY ENTIRE LIFE Y'ALL. This is like the perfect game for me. I'd always hoped that somehow I could get over the PvP in Eve Online but now I don't have to, because NMS has solved that issue for me. It's everything I've wanted a space exploration game to be.

[Lorini]

Btw, the REAL controversy here is that they've stated that there's over a quintillion planets. BIg problem. There is an American definition quintillion "a thousand raised to the power of six" and a British definition of quintillion "a million raised to the power of five." THESE ARE DIFFERENT NUMBERS FOLKS.

Just poking a little fun

[Isgrimnur]

"dated"

[msduncan]

Another set of players have encountered each other. And another reddit player is coming across planets and system that have been named shortly before him so he's on the track to find someone too. By find someone I mean "not be able to see them despite what Murray said multiple times".

Now the question is being asked: how robust is the seeding mechanism for starting locations if people are starting to encounter each other within 24 hours of launch.

[Lorini]

Another set of players have encountered each other. And another reddit player is coming across planets and system that have been named shortly before him so he's on the track to find someone too. By find someone I mean "not be able to see them despite what Murray said multiple times".

Now the question is being asked: how robust is the seeding mechanism for starting locations if people are starting to encounter each other within 24 hours of launch.

I think that's a much better discussion at least for me. We need a probability specialist to tell us the likelihood of this happening. If it can be proved that are not actually a quintillion planets then THAT would be a misrepresentation. I wouldn't care personally but I could relate better to people being upset.

[Buatha]

So, are the PS4 and PC universes shared or separate? I'm kind of going to be pissed if it's all shared and we're not starting out until the 12th.

[baelthazar]

Am I the only person playing this ATM?

I could not care less about finding other players or the whole "let's take Sean Murray down some pegs because we think he said something and blah blah blah" stuff. I'm here to tell you what I think about my limited time with the game (about 3-4 hours I would say, maybe a little more).

The game, visually, gives a great impression. I spawned on a strange world whose palette was largely shades of red. Running around me were animals that looked like a cross between an Armadillo and a dog. My wife helpfully suggested I name them Ermagerd Armadergs (which I did). The planet is now named Caracosa in the Aldeberan system. My ship looked like a garbage truck with wings, until I entered my preorder or limited edition code that gave me a ship that suspiciously looks like an X-wing with closed wings. As I said, visually, the game blows you away from the first second.

Unfortunately, the first hour of gameplay is a bit tedious. It is a "hunt down these resources and bring them back" type of thing that we have seen in almost every single survival crafting game. I said that it was sounding like the game is going to be a 3D Starbound and I was pretty right (at least from the get go) - it has the same underwhelming beginning where you have to do some fetching to get stuff so you can actually leave whatever hellhole where you began the game. It does not help that the game gives you no indication what resources are useful and what are not - but then proceeds to throw at you several different types and categories of resources (categories like Isotopes, Silicates, and Neutral versus types like Carbon, Plutonium, Platinum, and copper). And while these all SOUND like rocks, you may be surprised when you think you are looking at a plant (which normally produces carbon, like an earth plant) and it produces zinc or platinum. Now I am not saying that I like hand holding, but that is a little odd, so it would be nice to have some heads up on things like that. Like most survival crafting games, you start with inefficient tools - your scanner sucks, your mining laser overheats, your pea shooter... well... it is alright, but a little weak.

There are two most annoying parts about that first hour. First, you are sent on a quest to get some resources (heliacate or something). For me, the resource node (which turned out to be destructible terrain) was estimated at being 10 minutes to run to (not counting the extremely rough terrain, thank goodness for the jetpack). That meant a 10 minute run to get there and a 10 minute run back - 20 minutes of sustained crow flies travel (which is not possible). That was not particularly fun. Nor was it fun when, due to my baby acting up, I needed to quit after successfully making that run, only to find out that my progress did not save and I had to make the same run again. Oddly, this long distance run is BEFORE you have your thrusters fixed, so you cannot use your ship to make it.

The second major annoyance is that your inventory is WOEFULLY small. You will quickly fill both your exosuit and your ship hold and be faced with the real problem of not knowing what is valuable and what is worth throwing away (big hint, do not throw away isotopes OTHER than carbon). This problem persists until you upgrade your ship, which could be quite some time.

After you leave your first planet, the game opens up majorly. Yes, the next few hours are still a little limited, but you get a lot of freeform movement. You can, however, "gank" yourself if you land on planets without the needed resources to keep your ship charged (although I would think that you should be able to find what you need almost anywhere). At this point, the game becomes much more fun. You get a nice thrill when you find new objects, bases, places, and other things you can do. Almost nothing is explained, so experimentation is key (and almost always pays off in some way). If you see something that needs a component or an action - try it out. If you see a POI on your radar but have no idea what it is - go to it. See an item on the ground that is strange - pick it up. Everything is a surprise. Dying is pretty low-risk - you have to do a corpse run but that has been, so far, not bad. I have only died once when random space pirates came at me and overwhelmed me. Watch the sentinels on planets, however, those dudes are unpredictable (the planet discovery info will tell you if they are passive or always hostile).

At this point, past that first hour or so, I really like the game. It has a crazy amount of complexity in everything you pick up and do. I do not feel the controls are as wonky as the IGN reviewer suggested - I like them a lot - although it may be different for the PC crowd. Visually, the game is a masterpiece. I wish it made a better first impression gameplay wise, but I am also VERY familiar with the survival crafting game startup sequence, so I suppose I was more irritated that the visual originality was being overshadowed by a lack of innovation in gameplay.

[Lorini]

<raises hand> I'm playing I'm playing and my experience has been the same as yours although the first hour was awesome just because I could keep wandering around and finding stuff. I'm seriously thinking of keeping my PC pre-order, just to have two different experiences.

[GreenGoo]

I really don't care if people agree with me or not. If this forum is nothing but everyone nodding heads at each other then I never should have come.

Hah! I just wrote this in the R&P forum.

We are in agreement on this point, it seems.

I think we'll have to disagree on what it means when a representative of a company says something is true but it turns out to be not true.

Have fun!

[msduncan]

4 people on this sub reddit thread I'm in have already run across systems named by other people. In a galaxy of 18 quintillion planets the odds of that happening without a major flaw in where they are placing people is probably better than real life Earth being destroyed by collision with another planet.

*edited for Quintilian, not quadrillion

[jztemple2]

At this point, past that first hour or so, I really like the game. It has a crazy amount of complexity in everything you pick up and do. I do not feel the controls are as wonky as the IGN reviewer suggested - I like them a lot - although it may be different for the PC crowd. Visually, the game is a masterpiece. I wish it made a better first impression gameplay wise, but I am also VERY familiar with the survival crafting game startup sequence, so I suppose I was more irritated that the visual originality was being overshadowed by a lack of innovation in gameplay.

Thanks for posting your impressions. It's now going to kill me that I'm leaving the day before release for two weeks. I am definitely feeling the OO effect.

Question. Is there really much value to getting that pre-order bonus? I hate to pre-order a game I'm going to have to wait to play till way after release day, unless I'm getting a price break like for DE:MD.

[Lorini]

4 people on this sub reddit thread I'm in have already run across systems named by other people. In a galaxy of 18 quintillion planets the odds of that happening without a major flaw in where they are placing people is probably better than real life Earth being destroyed by collision with another planet.

*edited for Quintilian, not quadrillion

My son who is good at math but not a probability expert says that's not surprising depending on the number of players of course. Unless Hello Games reports the number of players we won't actually know. He said what he said based on the 10 Million discoveries assuming 10 discoveries per player. It's all speculation unless and until Hello Games releases the numbers.

[AjD]

I've been reading about the player meet-up snafu, and here's what I've learned so far (I'm no server expert, so expect a sort of newbie explanation):

Apparently, this game does massive multiplayer via instanced game worlds. It works kind of like GTA V, in that each "instance" on the server holds about 30 players. Those 30 players are all exploring the same version of the universe. They would see one another if they ran into each other.

The servers then create other 30-person "instances" for more players (in theory, as many instances as are needed to host all the people playing at any moment). Players on other instances can see evidence of other players -- planets other players have named; giant caves they've dug; etc. -- because that data is shared amongst all instances. But they won't ever see players who are hosted on different instances of the game world.

So... with hundreds of thousands of players (at any given time), it would take more than two players running into each other for them to see one another. They would *also* both need to be on the same instance of the game world. Which would be rare. And "rare" is the term Sean Murray used to describe that possibility in those pre-release press interviews. Also, right before the game release, Murray tweeted, "To be super clear - No Man's Sky is not a multiplayer game. Please don't go in looking for that experience."

Now, it certainly seems possible they could auto-merge two players (or more) into the same instance whenever they are in the same proximity. AND... Murray did say (last year on Colbert's show, I believe -- and probably elsewhere) you'd be able to see another player on those super rare occasions when you ran into another player.

FINALLY! Hello Games has reported that their servers are totally overloaded. There have been 10,000,000 discoveries (and counting). Earlier today, Murray tweeted about the meet-ups, "We hope to see those happening... too many of you are playing right now. More than we could have predicted." Some hypothesize they may be having server problems due to the huge load, and instancing isn't working normally right now. It doesn't appear Hello Games was expecting two people to find each other so quickly (Murray tweeted that it "has blown my mind).

So.... this may all be temporary. At some point soon, meeting up with another player may work fine. Or not. Who knows? When this game's details were first announced, I told my gamer son that it sounds like a giant experiment that's going to happen in real-time with millions of players at once. It's just such a weird, new game idea -- with new tech providing a previously unheard of gameworld size.

For me at least, part of the fun is watching this experiment unfold. It's one of the reasons I'm buying the game. I want to support crazy, new ideas like this (even if they have snafus at first). At least it's not another dumb shoot 'em up, "spiritual sequel," franchise or movie tie-in.

[TheMix]

It's also worth noting that likely 90% or more of those planets are not in consideration as starting areas. As I recall, the "goal" of the game is to reach the galactic center. Therefore, the starting points have to all be out on the rim - you can't start someone in the galactic center if the goal is to get there...

[LawBeefaroni]

4 people on this sub reddit thread I'm in have already run across systems named by other people. In a galaxy of 18 quintillion planets the odds of that happening without a major flaw in where they are placing people is probably better than real life Earth being destroyed by collision with another planet.

*edited for Quintilian, not quadrillion

My son who is good at math but not a probability expert says that's not surprising depending on the number of players of course. Unless Hello Games reports the number of players we won't actually know. He said what he said based on the 10 Million discoveries assuming 10 discoveries per player. It's all speculation unless and until Hello Games releases the numbers.

Going to guess that it's sized to fit the number of players. You can't have a single server with that many locations and you aren't going to run a ton of servers with a handful of players in many of them.

[killbot737]

So you're saying by Friday all 18 quintillion planets are going to be named DickButt Cockballs, except for a tiny few with dog names?

Maybe I'll cancel my preorder.

Thanks Obama!