No Man's Sky

[Beastro]

Rebel Galaxy, although having a great atmosphere and soundtrack, is going to be pretty disappointing to most given the 'broadside' combat and non cockpit view.

What's wrong with broadside combat, especially given the often crappy treatment Newtonian physics gets in "fighter" space combat?

 

[Matalarata]

Nothing, but RG is a space game in 2D, you can't move up or down from the plane you're in. Factions are very basic, the world is extemely simple and you can fly your ship using a total of 8-10 buttons. So basically apples and orange when compared to Elite or any other complex title. That said, it's good for what it is and considering how much I've paid for it, I'd say it's the best bang for your bucks.

 

[Black]

There's no up or down in space, buddy.

 

[Matalarata]

In RG there is, mate. Definition of up and down in said space is "where you can't go"


edit: I was just trying to say it's useless to compare Elite, X or even this particular NMS turd to a spaaace game lacking even basic roll and pitch commands. But I guess you're right, if a bit pedantic...

 

[Beastro]

There's no up or down in space, buddy.

 

[Black]

In RG there is, mate. Definition of up and down in said space is "where you can't go"


edit: I was just trying to say it's useless to compare Elite, X or even this particular NMS turd to a spaaace game lacking even basic roll and pitch commands. But I guess you're right, if a bit pedantic...

Free your mind.

 

[---]

No Man's Sky's player count has dropped 88 percent, but that's not unusual fine

For the moment No Man's Sky holds the title for the biggest launch on Steam of 2016. 212,620 people were playing it simultaneously on launch day, according to Steam Stats, putting it far ahead of everything else to come out this year. But it's subsequently suffered a tremendous fall-off, shedding 88 percent of its concurrent user count in less than two weeks. That sounds like a lot, but is it?

If you look at this Reddit discussion of No Man's Sky's decline, you'll see plenty of eager grave dancing. One poster notes that even the infamous bomb Aliens: Colonial Marines “only” saw a concurrent user loss of 85 percent over its first month of release. "The only way to keep people playing at this point is to make it free," another poster said, claiming that he was bored after a single day; a third, riffing on the apparently-failed promise of being able to meet other players in space, added, "Players sure as heck aren't going to be running into each other now."

SteamSpy and SteamDB help us take a closer look at the data: No Man's Sky peak concurrent player count on August 11 was 212,604; on August 22, it was 25,689. Hourly concurrent players are similarly down, from a high of 127,224 on August 14 to 22,852 on August 23. That's a hell of a drop, but it comes with some caveats: It doesn't reflect the total population of the game but rather the number of people playing it simultaneously, and that measurement of intensity of interest is bound to drop as a game's newness wears off and players become less likely to sink 14 hours at a time into it.

But compared to other, better-received recent releases, NMS may not be cratering as badly as it appears. Far Cry Primal, for instance, saw its peak player count slide 82 percent over its first month of release; Fallout 4 dropped by 74 percent; Doom fell by 85 percent; Battleborn slid by 82 percent; Stellaris dropped by 82 percent; even The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which we recently placed atop our Top 100 Games list, saw its peak player count slide by 71 percent during its first month of release. The hugely popular Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain slipped by an almost identical amount. One notable exception is Stardew Valley, which saw its peak user count slip by just 30 percent over its first month.

So although No Man's Sky has tailed off faster than other big games, it's not too far outside the normal decay that recent blockbusters seem to experience. Arguably it's a larger drop in concurrent players than you'd expect for a game that promised virtually endless hours of open-ended exploration—18 quintillion planets and all that. A single-player shooter with a ten-hour campaign is obviously going to see a more precipitous drop in its peak player count than an open-world RPG with 127 side quests waiting to be cleaned up. And that really speaks to what we found in our review: 45 hours of gameplay yielded 200 planets, 500 new species, and a dearth of interesting stories. When the core of your game is discovery, you'd better have some cool stuff to discover.

It's arguable that the huge launch of No Man's Sky made the corresponding fall-off inevitable, and it's also worth bearing in mind that none of this touches on the PS4 version of the game. But as a case study in hype, expectations, and disappointment, I have no doubt that we'll be talking about No Man's Sky, and its fallout, for a long time to come.

http://www.pcgamer.com/concurrent-players-no-mans-sky/

 

[Hobo Elf]

88% is a titanic number for a game like this. It was supposed to be played forever, after all.

 

[justincz]

 

[Great Deceiver]

They got their money, why would they care about retaining players? Game is a scam anyway.

 

[Metro]

88% is a titanic number for a game like this. It was supposed to be played forever, after all.

Eh, it's not surprising given the average gamer today. People don't spend hundreds or even dozens of hours in a game. They see what's new and hyped, D1P it, then play for maybe ten hours before moving on to the next big thing.

Also, 'dat PC Gamer article:

When the core of your game is discovery, you'd better have some cool stuff to discover.

When the core of your game is discovery, you shouldn't use procedural generation to create 'content.'

 

[DDZ]

I am guilty of that;

I also don't get buyers remorse because I simply do not care.

Spoiler

 

[J_C]

When the core of your game is discovery, you'd better have some cool stuff to discover.

When the core of your game is discovery, you shouldn't use procedural generation to create 'content.'

This should be printed a million times and sent to the developer. You don't want your players to get bored during discovery, you want them to discover cool things. And you cannot achieve that with procedural generation alone.

 

[Theldaran]

I called it the next Evolve in a local forum, people didn't believe it. Here we go.

 

[Urbanolo]

Not sure if anyone noticed, but NMS has a hilarious metascore of 64 for the PC version of the game. It's also the score that is listed on the steam page.

I wonder what Sean Murray is doing right now (besides counting cash), considering how he tried so hard to make reviewers feel sorry for smashing the game. See the letter attached to the review copies.

Also as I don't really follow social media, did he comment on the outrage the game has created?

 

[Black]

Not sure if anyone noticed, but NMS has a hilarious metascore of 64 for the PC version of the game. It's also the score that is listed on the steam page.

I wonder what Sean Murray is doing right now (besides counting cash), considering how he tried so hard to make reviewers feel sorry for smashing the game. See the letter attached to the review copies.

Also as I don't really follow social media, did he comment on the outrage the game has created?

Murray will soon leave California on his quest to find what can change the nature of a progressive indie dev from San Fran. To achieve enlightenment he'll have to face his true self and heed lessons of his mentor- Phil Fishdicks.

 

[Nael]

They got their money, why would they care about retaining players? Game is a scam anyway.

Yeah, but they'll never work in this town again!

 

[Makabb]

There is a mod now which brings real life sizes, mods will realy fix this

Proper forest

 

[circ]

There is a mod now which brings real life sizes, mods will realy fix this

lolbololob. Are you being facetious? I can't tell.

I got it to work again, there was a new GOG patch. SOOO. The problem was I had TOO MANY discoveries and that caused a threading issue. DUDE. YOUR WHOLE GAME IS BASED ON DISCOVERIES I THOUGHT. I had 2 systems, 5 planets done, not even completely. 100 plants at most, 50 animals. 100 or so 'locales'. DUDE. If it bugged the fuck out from that and you have 13 trillion planets then... WHAT THE FUUUUCK??

So I got my ship slots maxed, suit, pew pew tool. Now photon cannons (?) actually work well, fully upgraded, two shotting everyone. Sounds legeet.

In other space pew pew games you can't max your ship straight away because usually you don't have access to other areas. So you settle with upgrading it gradually and you're fine with that. In this piece of shit I couldn't get over the fact that my ship could be maxed at any point, with systems that are completely uninteresting, so I left the ships mostly broken salvage heaps for the next upgrade. WHAT STUPID DESIGN U GOT THERE.

I started following the Atlas path. First it says it wants me to catalogue things, just because, then it sends me to system after system collecting retarded objects on its own space station. Admittedly, the Atlas manifest looks cool visually, but I'm guessing the story was just thrown in at random with no idea what it's for.

Also ran into Gek. Not surprisingly their ancient monuments look exactly like the previous race's. Considering the tech in those monuments it could happen, but without any personalized touches? I don't think so. Also these two races are at war with each other, but the Gek's are a cutesy trader race. What, they renege on a deal?

There's no point to anything. There's no point to anything. There's no point to anything.

 

[Makabb]

There's no point to anything. There's no point to anything. There's no point to anything.

This is Sean Murray metaphor of life through No mans sky

 

[MercenarySnake]

So can you mod any fun into the game?

 

[Makabb]

This has been found in actual NMS code

 

[Latelistener]

So can you mod any fun into the game?

If it was at least optimized, costed only 20-30$, and had a good editor.

 

[kris]

88% is a titanic number for a game like this. It was supposed to be played forever, after all.

Eh, it's not surprising given the average gamer today. People don't spend hundreds or even dozens of hours in a game. They see what's new and hyped, D1P it, then play for maybe ten hours before moving on to the next big thing.

As for both other gamers I know and myself you are incorrect. sure, there are a few games that is just played a few hours, either to be picked up later or forgotten... But generallly I instead see people invest loads and loads of hours into a few chosen games. This was supposed to be that kind of game, but they failed to achieve that.

 

[Theldaran]

88% is a titanic number for a game like this. It was supposed to be played forever, after all.

Eh, it's not surprising given the average gamer today. People don't spend hundreds or even dozens of hours in a game. They see what's new and hyped, D1P it, then play for maybe ten hours before moving on to the next big thing.

As for both other gamers I know and myself you are incorrect. sure, there are a few games that is just played a few hours, either to be picked up later or forgotten... But generallly I instead see people invest loads and loads of hours into a few chosen games. This was supposed to be that kind of game, but they failed to achieve that.

He's not talking of people with a certain taste. He's talking of the general public that are mostly consumers with no real love for videogames. For them it's just a charade, a fad.