Thank you, Hello Games

June 14, 2019 5:50 AM

No Man's Sky fans (previously) are buying a billboard to say thank you to Hello Games.
posted by tomcooke (17 comments total)

Kudos to fans for expressing their gratitude in such a tangible way and even more for the plans to donate all excess funds to charity. I gave No Man's Sky two chances and I don't think I'm ever going to get back to it, but I can recognise a labour of love when I see it.
posted by hat_eater at 6:02 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

I love how much work Hello Games put back into the game and appreciate their efforts to follow through on the promises they made.

I went back a few months ago and the game is wonderful and has so much more to it. If you bounced off of the game because you felt like it was sold as one thing and you got something else, it's worth re-considering. There is a lot of depth to the game and the community is very chill and helpful.

I'm happy this happened. Thanks for sharing.
posted by Fizz at 6:04 AM on June 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think I'll fire it up again, since I haven't played after the last couple of big upgrades. I just hope the repair process for the capital ships is automated now, as that was a bit of a slog.
posted by Harald74 at 6:06 AM on June 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I think the thing that surprised me the most is the base-building/farming aspect of the game that now exists. I didn't think that was going to be a thing and it is very rewarding to jump in and stardew in outer-space with alien languages. :)
posted by Fizz at 6:09 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

It really is amazing how Hello Games just hunkered down and fixed the game. The launch really went so poorly; fans were very excited for the game to come out (it's the reason I bought a PS4). And it came out and it was so promising and yet so empty. But they put their heads down for a year, worked on content, and released it. Then kept working on more and more content for free. There's another major content patch coming this summer, Beyond. Also a VR release.

The most surprising aspect of the development to me is the increasing embrace of multiplayer. The original game didn't seem like it would have any player interaction at all. With such an enormous randomly generated universe the odds of running into anyone seemed so low. And then Sean outright lied and said they'd built a whole thing for players to interact, a feature very much not in at launch.

But the community created its own multiplayer and found each other. Initially just sharing the same part of the galaxy, together alone, interacting only via sharing the map and naming planets. Then the game started supporting multiplayer. Now we have a single planet with 50+ bases built on it and folks visiting, sharing resources, etc. It's pretty amazing. The Beyond update is focused on enabling even more multiplayer. It could be terrific.
posted by Nelson at 6:26 AM on June 14, 2019 [8 favorites]

I'm hoping they stop restricting creative mode players from experiencing the dang story. I'm not interested in playing an entirely annoying inventory/resource juggling "game" -- I want to explore and see what they've created at my own pace. Similarly, I hope they finally introduce a more varied set of biomes and plant/animal types -- everything's very samey samey right now, and after a hundred planets or so there's very little that isn't just recoloured versions of what you've already seen. Oh, and a planet shouldn't just be a million square miles of one biome, there should be like, climate ecosystems and stuff.

I guess what I'm saying is that it still feels pretty empty to me. Though I have been known to just boot it up and wander around for a couple hours if I don't want to be surprised by anything and just take a hike in familiar landscapes.

I know it isn't dwarf fortress but ... I want more emergent behaviour, and I would gladly trade longer load/transition times to get it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:01 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

Is it at the stage where you can just wander onto a planet, see someone in the distance, walk up to them then and go 'Hello! I like your farm' have nosy then wander off?
posted by Damienmce at 7:03 AM on June 14, 2019

Yes, multiplayer does allow that interaction right now Damienmce. There's also an affordance for easily finding other people and their farms in the first place. If you want to explore multiplayer more I recommend learning about the galactic hub.

I agree with sean that after awhile everything is samey-samey. This actually got worse a release or two ago, the early versions seemed to have more diversity in planet generation, palettes, etc. And there's precious little emergent behavior or surprise in the game once you've played 50-100 hours and seen everything. OTOH that's true for almost all games, even ones with strong generative elements in them like Minecraft. Complexity is hard to create.
posted by Nelson at 7:28 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the complaint I had last time that sort of burnt me out was when the exploration game started needing too much of the creative game to seem to proceed. It's one thing to manage a 3 system farming empire if you want to, it's another thing trying to remember where you found the greebles the last time so you can make another panel for your magically transporting space hut.

Still, it's nice to see it expanding after all this time. Best $12 I spent on a new game.
posted by Kyol at 7:30 AM on June 14, 2019

(although, to be fair, I think I've only put in like 30 minutes since freighters and stuff were introduced, some of my complaints might be dated..)
posted by Kyol at 7:31 AM on June 14, 2019

I guess what I'm saying is that it still feels pretty empty to me.

Empty is the best word for it. It's great that they're continuing to work on the game, but everything they've done has taken it further away from what made it seem (before it came out, when they were still pushing the procedural generation stuff as the game's selling point) like it was going to be unique and fascinating. If anything, the worlds generated by the latest versions seem to be even more homogenous than they were in the early ones, I think because they're built from a smaller range of higher-quality objects. Oh well.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:38 AM on June 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm really glad that changed it to this instead of going with the "GIB BEYOND" message they were mulling originally.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:14 AM on June 14, 2019

I'm waiting for the VR version and then you'll never see me again.
posted by Memo at 9:18 AM on June 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I really do love No Man's Sky - I paid the full price for it, and spent approximately 11 hours playing it before deciding I want that refund, and then finding out I don't qualify. It was infuriating, that full price at the time was a lot of money to me.

Since 2017 I have not bought a single game on Steam or on anything else, and have weaned my self off of playing video games in general. I will occasionally play here and there the indie titles I do own. And I still love hearing from friends about modern video games and occasionally watch over their shoulders as they play. But boy am I glad that that awful experience has pushed me out of that habit.
posted by mit5urugi at 10:49 AM on June 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

And there's precious little emergent behavior or surprise in the game once you've played 50-100 hours and seen everything.

Quite a ripoff compared to all the AAA games that will give you 10 or even 12 hours before you've seen everything.
posted by straight at 5:38 PM on June 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

I still enjoy and play NMS. Sure, I was a little disappointed (but not terribly so) at launch; the reality just did not live up to the hype. But they're trying. And they keep building. Everybody wants something a little different, and there's no way to please everyone, especially in a game like this. But now, hundreds of hours in, I still pick it up and wander for a few hours. It's not perfect, but if I acknowledge that it's not perfect and move on, after a while I remember all the reasons that I play, and I find that for now, it is good enough.
posted by xedrik at 7:48 AM on June 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

Is there a way to play it on OSX?
posted by newdaddy at 10:51 AM on June 15, 2019