Does anyone know what the roughly square-aspect monitor in the middle of his 3-monitor setup is? Looks interesting but I can't zoom in far enough to see a logo, and the Upgrading the Gaming PC[0] post. Thanks
Unfortunately, even with all the updates - they never fixed my main gripe - each planet is just lifeless, and it's basically the same few square kilometres copy and pasted over the whole planet (I'm about 120h played).
I wished they somehow made it more exciting to explore.
And apparently this is one of the main criticisms of Starfield. The Bethesda designers either never played No Mans Sky to understand the problem, or they simply believed a large enough budget could mask these problems.
Same. Played thru the original version. The overall vibe of the game was great and incredibly polished for a game half done, but yeah it was stretched very thin and started to lose feeling after a while.
That said,idk if I would like the fame at all now. Base building seems antithetical to the original nomad-like setting. And there's only loss to have adding identity to the protagonist after having played it as "yourself"
You can do really complex and interesting stuff with procedural generation, even at-scale. You need a large breadth of well-designed rules, and then you need temporal simulation over that breadth. That simulated history is just as important as having a lot of high quality rules when you want to create a living, breathing world. Ultima Ratio Regum is an example of how important this time aspect really is, that a place needs to have a history.
The real limitation is that virtual worlds get boring. It really doesn't matter how sophisticated they are. Generative AI can't help with that. It's not a problem of the structure, or needing some additional variety, or more sophisticated set of constraints. It's the simple fact that while you can day dream about endlessly flying around a galaxy, landing on planets, eventually it just becomes rote. It's a normal biological process of adaptation and normalization. Like how when you first move somewhere, everything is fresh and full of potential, and then 3 years on everything that was novel and cool has become just background noise.
> You can do really complex and interesting stuff with procedural generation, even at-scale. You need a large breadth of well-designed rules, and then you need temporal simulation over that breadth. That simulated history is just as important as having a lot of high quality rules when you want to create a living, breathing world. Ultima Ratio Regum is an example of how important this time aspect really is, that a place needs to have a history.
When I was younger I was really excited about procedural generation, because it seemed like a way to give games replayability. And it does do that for certain types of strategy and builder games, e.g. MOO2 or Factorio.
But, so far at least, it really doesn't work for first person games. You end up with a universe that's seemingly, but also endlessly boring.
The problem isn't the quality of proc-gen. The problem is that every gameplay loop roughly consists of 'scan for a thing in a proc-gen world, then click on it.'
Improving the quality of the proc-gen won't fix that.
This is a high-tech sci-fi setting! This gameplay space should have been the dev's oyster! Have resources which can be pinpointed with the scanner! Have ones that you have to triangulate the location of! Have clouds that you'd be collecting via ramscoop! Have drones following your ship! Set up a mining station! Mini-games for dealing with alien tech. More ruins and salvage opportunities than just that one species of aliens! Capture animals for questgivers! Have the actual experience of flying not be an on-rails theme park ride that's fun about twice.
I could go on and on.
This obviously costs money and time. But without it, you get a 'game' that's as wide as an ocean, and shallower than a puddle.
this is an understatement (on both fronts) in my opinion.
the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it.
"the engoodening of no mans sky" was a youtube video that came out ~5 years ago and covers the story of the launch up until the point the video was made. since then they've had several more really amazing (and compeltely free) updates.
"Sean we forgive you" became a meme for a reason. The fact that to this day they keep working on the game is truly noteworthy; they could have called it quits at any point in time, especially after NMS got good enough.
Obviously it's not purely ego driven (if at all), so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative.
I suppose the fact that it sold so much throughout the years gave them enough runway to actually work on it with no worries? And I suppose that people would be skeptical of a new game launch by this studio, thus dooming them to work on NMS for eternity... we'll see how Light No Fire's launch will do.
That and I'm pretty sure they are using NMS as a backport target to test systems for Light No Fire (which is an instant buy for me, Hello Games have completely redeemed themselves in my eyes).
at this point, i think they continue because of the goodwill it builds. as the other comment says, light no fire will be an instant buy for me because of the support they've given no mans sky over the last decade
> so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative.
I've been wondering about this for a few years now. Do they really sell enough new copies of the game to fund development of several new expeditions a year? I suppose they must, but it's still surprising - more so as the years went on.
Honestly though, at a certain point, they could've started charging for the expeditions as DLC and I wouldn't have even complained.
> the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it.
Everyone says this and I really disagree. It's been a year or so since I last play but I have been playing off and on about every year.
Whenever I start a new game, it feels basically the same. Once I get into the universe, there are way more things to do but nome of them feel like they matter.
The game is a classic example of a mile wide and an inch deep. Every update just seems to bring a new system that feels, in itself, feels about as satisfying as the game did on launch.
Despite the valiant and admirable effort to continue updating the game (and for free), I still don't think it's come close to the game that was promised. It's still the launch game in my eyes; nothing seems to matter. I can just also build a base (or any of the other new features) that doesn't matter too.
It's a fun game for maybe 30 hours a year (300 hours!) and that's an accomplishment but I don't think it's come close to fulfilling it's original promise.
This is totally valid and many people feel similarly. I wouldn't entirely agree that it's only an inch deep (this isn't Elite Dangerous for goodness sake) - but it's certainly sometimes harder than it should be to find the deeper parts of the game.
The Expeditions can really help with this, as they provide a more traditional linear, quest-driven way of going through the game.
This. I really feel that the good will they burned up with the launch - and I'm not denying it was very poorly handled - they've made up for 10x over since then. Every expedition is like a whole new DLC, but they've released every single one of them for free.
I don't always seem to be able to stick to my values, but this time it was easy to just write them off and never look back.
I think maybe because there's just so many games being released every single day that this is a sufficiently competitive market. It's not like I'm deciding to never take the city bus again.
I'm curious who refused you the refund? I seem to recall it being refunded pretty steadily by everyone who sold it digitally. Maybe I am misremembering.
Still entirely fair to have been turned off by the experience. Plenty of developers or publishers I don't purchase from anymore due to similar shenanigans.
At least it didn't drive you to smoke crack like it did to of my friends. Though ironically he still plays to this day though a lot less than he used to.
I think it's fair to say they started off bad, but redeemed themselves.
In contrast Star Citizen is far more ambitious but shows 0 sign of ever actually landing.
NMS is still a great fun space game to play, the lore / back story of each faction is quite bleak though and the lack of good individual characters does leave it feeling more like exploration sandbox than a really compelling world you care about.
Here's a "fun" one. The XBox 360 release is closer to the US release of the NES, than it is to today. I read this one before and had to double check it, because that stings lol. But yeah, it's true. If you're planning to have kids, don't wait til a good time, because wow do the decades fly by - and "good times" like you might envision never come. There's always something that could be better, and with the world going through so many inflection points - predicting the future now is less possible than ever before.
I can't believe how little this article says about the game itself. It's basically the author taking a victory lap for being the game's #1 fan since launch. If I didn't already know what the game looked like, I would leave still not knowing.
If you add civilizations and intelligence to procedural generation- you get really fast into foundation prime radiant territory- where you generalize from huts to radioactive ruins or substrate (matrices) - the rise and fall of civilization from first principles. To put that into deterministic math- is fascinating - but then to add the players input and have the fate diverge..
As in deterministic circumstances + a historic noise + a formula for civilizational fungi.
Yeah the scope and detail of the universe is great, but it still feels like a well polished demo to me. The interactions with intelligent beings are very repetitive and boring. I can wander around and build things, but I never really feel strongly engaged like I do in a game like Valheim or GTA.
Would be interesting in your observations on the other side of this, but to me it seems related to those studies showing the trough of happiness is on average the mid-30s to mid-50s.
Most studies ascribe this to being the overlap of peak career hustle, childrearing, taking care of aging parents, and personal health scares all hitting at once.
Putting aside the obvious emotional toll, to me it looks/feels like a dearth of free time. Personally I find it hard to find blocks of time to do anything "for myself" that are more than 30-60 minutes. Video games now, compared to my youth, seem to be much deeper and entail much longer time commitments.
i certainly played less in my 40s/early-50s than i do now, mostly due to lack of free time and other commitments, so i totally understand what you and the parent are saying.
but i never stopped playing entirely. in those 30-60 minutes where my wife would watch her weekly show, i would pick up where i left off in a game. i find most games today are pretty well-designed around being able to play in spurts, even if the game is long + deep.
for longer story games, though, i usually keep a notebook beside me to jot down some context to help me pick it back up if i know it will be a while (mainly because my memory isn't what it used to be).
The real killer is the inability to commit the time needed to actually get into something. Games that I used to bang through in 2-3 days now take 2-3 months, if I finish at all. It's all just a bunch of random pockets of 1-2 hours here and there, and you can't even really get into it because as soon as you do, it's time to stop and might be days before you come back.
+1, that's why I don't do Single Player (story-driven) games anymore.
But a MP game (currently "The Finals") for me, works much better. It's easier to pick up for a few hours and then drop again for a long time. Sure, you might not be hyper competitive but that's fine.
Also works pretty well for racing games (like Forza MotorSport / Horizon) imo.
It's probably more personal circumstances than age, and your priorities definitely shift as you get older. I'm not in my 40s yet (mid-30s) and my decisions around games I want to play has changed.
I get to play games maybe a few hours per week (mostly in the weekend), so the idea of starting a new Assassin's Creed and spending 80 hours (many months) on a singleplayer game is pretty unappealing. (TBH, I was never super into SP games, but the appeal now dropped to 0).
At the same time, I've been having a blast with "The Finals" since launch and it's pretty much the only game I play. Easy to pick up and play 1-2 rounds :)
Not true. I just bought No Man's Sky on a Steam sale a few months ago and have been having a blast with it - only very occasionally neglecting my adult duties because of it.
"The Galactic Hub" is the best. Very active community, ongoing ambitious projects (many completed), it's really so much fun. It's also easy to get in to it. They have a "taxi service" on discord where a user gets on the mic and coordinates with you to bring you to the hub worlds so you don't have to do it manually.
If you're remotely considering it, join up. I hop on every month or two and it's a treat.
[0] <https://nmsspot.com/2023/01/20/upgrading-the-gaming-pc/>
Technically it's 8:9 so not a perfect square, 2560 x 2880
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-28mq780-b-dualup-monitor
You should also look at the LG Dualup if this kinda thing interests you.
https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/programming/rd280u.html
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-28mq780-b-dualup-monitor
Unfortunately, even with all the updates - they never fixed my main gripe - each planet is just lifeless, and it's basically the same few square kilometres copy and pasted over the whole planet (I'm about 120h played).
I wished they somehow made it more exciting to explore.
That said,idk if I would like the fame at all now. Base building seems antithetical to the original nomad-like setting. And there's only loss to have adding identity to the protagonist after having played it as "yourself"
The real limitation is that virtual worlds get boring. It really doesn't matter how sophisticated they are. Generative AI can't help with that. It's not a problem of the structure, or needing some additional variety, or more sophisticated set of constraints. It's the simple fact that while you can day dream about endlessly flying around a galaxy, landing on planets, eventually it just becomes rote. It's a normal biological process of adaptation and normalization. Like how when you first move somewhere, everything is fresh and full of potential, and then 3 years on everything that was novel and cool has become just background noise.
Dwarf Fortress also does an excellent job of this
But, so far at least, it really doesn't work for first person games. You end up with a universe that's seemingly, but also endlessly boring.
Improving the quality of the proc-gen won't fix that.
This is a high-tech sci-fi setting! This gameplay space should have been the dev's oyster! Have resources which can be pinpointed with the scanner! Have ones that you have to triangulate the location of! Have clouds that you'd be collecting via ramscoop! Have drones following your ship! Set up a mining station! Mini-games for dealing with alien tech. More ruins and salvage opportunities than just that one species of aliens! Capture animals for questgivers! Have the actual experience of flying not be an on-rails theme park ride that's fun about twice.
I could go on and on.
This obviously costs money and time. But without it, you get a 'game' that's as wide as an ocean, and shallower than a puddle.
But yeah, super crappy launch.
the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it.
"the engoodening of no mans sky" was a youtube video that came out ~5 years ago and covers the story of the launch up until the point the video was made. since then they've had several more really amazing (and compeltely free) updates.
Obviously it's not purely ego driven (if at all), so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative.
I suppose the fact that it sold so much throughout the years gave them enough runway to actually work on it with no worries? And I suppose that people would be skeptical of a new game launch by this studio, thus dooming them to work on NMS for eternity... we'll see how Light No Fire's launch will do.
I've been wondering about this for a few years now. Do they really sell enough new copies of the game to fund development of several new expeditions a year? I suppose they must, but it's still surprising - more so as the years went on.
Honestly though, at a certain point, they could've started charging for the expeditions as DLC and I wouldn't have even complained.
Everyone says this and I really disagree. It's been a year or so since I last play but I have been playing off and on about every year.
Whenever I start a new game, it feels basically the same. Once I get into the universe, there are way more things to do but nome of them feel like they matter.
The game is a classic example of a mile wide and an inch deep. Every update just seems to bring a new system that feels, in itself, feels about as satisfying as the game did on launch.
Despite the valiant and admirable effort to continue updating the game (and for free), I still don't think it's come close to the game that was promised. It's still the launch game in my eyes; nothing seems to matter. I can just also build a base (or any of the other new features) that doesn't matter too.
It's a fun game for maybe 30 hours a year (300 hours!) and that's an accomplishment but I don't think it's come close to fulfilling it's original promise.
In a lot of ways its Space Minecraft, so you have to make your own fun, your own stakes. If you don't like it, then you don't like it.
The Expeditions can really help with this, as they provide a more traditional linear, quest-driven way of going through the game.
This. I really feel that the good will they burned up with the launch - and I'm not denying it was very poorly handled - they've made up for 10x over since then. Every expedition is like a whole new DLC, but they've released every single one of them for free.
I think maybe because there's just so many games being released every single day that this is a sufficiently competitive market. It's not like I'm deciding to never take the city bus again.
Still entirely fair to have been turned off by the experience. Plenty of developers or publishers I don't purchase from anymore due to similar shenanigans.
In contrast Star Citizen is far more ambitious but shows 0 sign of ever actually landing.
NMS is still a great fun space game to play, the lore / back story of each faction is quite bleak though and the lack of good individual characters does leave it feeling more like exploration sandbox than a really compelling world you care about.
This is an article for fans, with an audience of fans. Explaining the basics would be unnecessary for the vast majority of readers.
Now, maybe posting to HN requires you address your new audience as well, but I'm just pointing out the above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9RyEiEzMiU
That presentation was foundational for me personally wrt quite a few things.
As in deterministic circumstances + a historic noise + a formula for civilizational fungi.
https://emshort.blog/2016/09/21/bowls-of-oatmeal-and-text-ge...
I guess I will never try it, once you hit your 40s, games lose their appeal anyway.
you say this as if it is a law of nature, but into my 60s, i still quite enjoy relaxing with a good game. no mans sky is one of them!
Would be interesting in your observations on the other side of this, but to me it seems related to those studies showing the trough of happiness is on average the mid-30s to mid-50s.
Most studies ascribe this to being the overlap of peak career hustle, childrearing, taking care of aging parents, and personal health scares all hitting at once.
Putting aside the obvious emotional toll, to me it looks/feels like a dearth of free time. Personally I find it hard to find blocks of time to do anything "for myself" that are more than 30-60 minutes. Video games now, compared to my youth, seem to be much deeper and entail much longer time commitments.
but i never stopped playing entirely. in those 30-60 minutes where my wife would watch her weekly show, i would pick up where i left off in a game. i find most games today are pretty well-designed around being able to play in spurts, even if the game is long + deep.
for longer story games, though, i usually keep a notebook beside me to jot down some context to help me pick it back up if i know it will be a while (mainly because my memory isn't what it used to be).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/
Its last major new content was released on May 27th of this year.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/275850/view/69538767...
A video from a gaming news channel on it... No Man's Sky Treated Players Right, Now It's Unstoppable https://youtu.be/jxxRXe1hRjQ
And the steam stats for it - https://steamdb.info/app/275850/charts/#6m
As I write this, there are 10,467 people playing it now. (The stats from 2017 where in the 1000 - 2000 players playing it).
Comparing it to Factorio (which is a great game) it has 19,103 players playing it now.
As a person on the far side of my 40s, No Man's Sky occasionally gets dusted off for some play.
Also works pretty well for racing games (like Forza MotorSport / Horizon) imo.
I get to play games maybe a few hours per week (mostly in the weekend), so the idea of starting a new Assassin's Creed and spending 80 hours (many months) on a singleplayer game is pretty unappealing. (TBH, I was never super into SP games, but the appeal now dropped to 0).
At the same time, I've been having a blast with "The Finals" since launch and it's pretty much the only game I play. Easy to pick up and play 1-2 rounds :)
What kind of games did you play before and how do you enjoy spending your time now?
If you're remotely considering it, join up. I hop on every month or two and it's a treat.