A polite discourse amongst friends on the importance of MP-elements in No Man's Sky

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The game has no other features that seem to complement coop. If you want coop space-faring adventures Elite & Starbound are totally worthwhile candidates. I have been mad by feature promises before but considering Sean said we had such a tiny chance of seeing another player. The folks that decided the odds were with them and decided to do it and were unhappy with the results are wishing for a game we don't have. Play your fucking single player game and love the shit out of it.
 
Something else to consider is that meeting people would have been much more common close to the center of the galaxy. The star systems right next to the center will be a much smaller number and much easier to run into people.
 
Two Words said:
Something else to consider is that meeting people would have been much more common close to the center of the galaxy. The star systems right next to the center will be a much smaller number and much easier to run into people.
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Well apparently a guy already made it there. So I guess it doesn't even take that long to get there. Spoiler:
It just takes you to another galaxy.
 
SomTervo said:
I actually checked Journey's PSN page and it does say it's singleplayer - however it does say it can have 2 players on Network and needs PS+.

I'm splitting hairs here, anyway. Might as well wait and see how all this pans out.

It's such a confusing situation.
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Journey PS3 and PS4 don't require PS+ to play with others online. The PS4 version was given an exception to the PS+ requirement.

Would you be able to PM me (or respond with) the link to where you saw Journey required PS+ to play oneline?
 
As someone with a passing interest in the game who didn't keep up with it much, I'll add my body to the "deflated interest due to lack of interesting QOL feature" pile. I'm not really sure how someone can't see why the idea is interesting or how a general audience would be led to believe it's a part of the game.

But the dev's "response" and this thread are worth it so far. I last checked this thread about a day ago (page 33-ish?) and to see a simple Yes or No hasn't happened yet is truly hilarious. And those stickers got me weak.

tumblr_o1puzpVJm41urz3l2o1_400.gif
 
So Sean should definitely have given a real answer by now, no question. Every day he doesn't just makes this look worse. Hopefully Sony isn't preventing him or anything like that, but I can't imagine what would be keeping him from saying something definitive.

But I can't help but roll my eyes at the way this is being waved around as some sort of smoking gun for why the whole game is a sham or something. All by the same people who've been trying to rain on this game's parade for two and a half years now, often under the guise of trying to keep folks' hype in check while coming off as a transparent attempt to feel superior to everyone else.

So it sucks to see so many people latching onto this as the "I told ya so" moment of the hype cycle. It sucks to see this gain so much traction and somewhat undercut the astounding achievement of what NMS actually is, and what it DID deliver on: pretty much every other thing promised by the developers (not imagined by people half-paying attention) and more still to come.

I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it, because it is a cool feature that I was excited to maybe one day utilize in the game. Sean needs to say something ASAP, whether it's a yes, no or "soon". It just sucks to see so much of the current conversation about the game dominated by the lack of a feature that so few people would ever get to use anyway.
 
I cannot believe my luck FFS

I am about 5 hours in and loving it. Only issue is I started on a planet which had already been discovered and I am basically following the same path as this other dude.

I figure he is taking the same story path and therefor the same systems as me!!
 
Kworn said:
I cannot believe my luck FFS

I am about 5 hours in and loving it. Only issue is I started on a planet which had already been discovered and I am basically following the same path as this other dude.

I figure he is taking the same story path and therefor the same systems as me!!
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Report back if you ever see him. And tell Sean via Twitter.
 
Kworn said:
I cannot believe my luck FFS

I am about 5 hours in and loving it. Only issue is I started on a planet which had already been discovered and I am basically following the same path as this other dude.

I figure he is taking the same story path and therefor the same systems as me!!
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You should send him/her a message and meet up.
 
Kworn said:
I cannot believe my luck FFS

I am about 5 hours in and loving it. Only issue is I started on a planet which had already been discovered and I am basically following the same path as this other dude.

I figure he is taking the same story path and therefor the same systems as me!!
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You gotta catch up to that guy/girl asap :p, does it tell you their psn id? Can you just msg him an ask to meet up, would be awesome if more people then expected were able to find eachother.
 
I think it was stupid to expect that Hello Games would build in code for synchronous multiplayer in a game where there's probably a 1 in a million chance that you would ever encounter another player. Anybody that follows game development knows that adding in network co-op increases your budget twofold. There's no way they would go through all the development and testing of full-on multiplayer just on the off-chance that two people happen to be in exactly the same place at exactly the same moment.

At the same time, it was incredibly shitty of Hello Games to pretend like player-on-player interactions were possible, when they very well knew they weren't building a backend or server infrastructure that could support that sort of play.
 
border said:
I think it was stupid to expect that Hello Games would build in code for synchronous multiplayer in a game where there's probably a 1 in a million chance that you would ever encounter another player. Anybody that follows game development knows that adding in network co-op increases your budget twofold. There's no way they would go through all the development and testing of full-on multiplayer just on the off-chance that two people happen to be in exactly the same place at exactly the same moment.

At the same time, it was incredibly shitty of Hello Games to pretend like player-on-player interactions were possible, when they very well knew they weren't building a backend or server infrastructure that could support that sort of play.
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This is pretty much why people are doubting an indie team of 15 people can buy the server requirements for a game that supports millions of people.

I think another huge clue is that the game just streams the graphics in as it comes to view. My guess is that nothing is simulated outside of what's going on the screen. If that's the case everything in the universe is static until you actually get there. Terrain deformation wouldn't show up in other people's games, not sure if that's been confirmed?
 
arbok26 said:
This is pretty much why people are doubting an indie team of 15 people can buy the server requirements for a game that supports millions of people.

I think another huge clue is that the game just streams the graphics in as it comes to view. My guess is that nothing is simulated outside of what's going on the screen. If that's the case everything in the universe is static until you actually get there. Terrain deformation wouldn't show up in other people's games, not sure if that's been confirmed?
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I'd also like to know that.
 
arbok26 said:
Terrain deformation wouldn't show up in other people's games, not sure if that's been confirmed?
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It has:

Can I leave my mark on the planets I visit?
In some ways you can. If you discover a planet or a creature, you can name it and add it to the galactic index. It will bear that name forever (or at least until the universe ends) and other players coming across it will know that you discovered it first.

You won't really be able to leave a physical mark on the game, however, at least not on the universe at large. As you travel to new planets, they are generated around you, and when you leave them, they degenerate. So, if you use a mining tool to blast a section of a planet, perhaps to draw a giant penis on the ground (I will just assume that is what you will do), once you leave that planet and fly away, the game will once again disassemble the planet behind you.

These types of changes (digging caves, drawing dongs) will not be visible to other players if they happen to visit that planet. As Murray told Game Zone:

“Changes the player makes are saved locally,” Murray explained. “So if you start destructing the terrain, that’s saved on your own machine. And if you try and make -- what we would consider -- really significant [changes], some of those [changes] are stored on the server, along with the discoveries that you make. But in general, a lot of what you’re doing is considered insignificant. If you kill a creature, we scratch that, we save that that’s happened, but we don’t feel the need to like, kill that creature for everybody.”

So it sounds like you'll be able revisit and view the dongs you've drawn, even if no one else can see them.
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Granted, what constitutes a "significant" act isn't clear, but he categorically rules out alterations to terrain.
 
Z3M0G said:
When you warp between world's it is rather long. Sure it could be per distance away, but I suspect the game may matchmake you with another player in the same region of space. So 2 players in the same planetary region of space. Would still make for rare encounters and require luck to cross paths.
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Why is this the case? If two players being in the same region of space is such an unlikely occurence because the universe is soo large, then wouldnt being on the same planet as anothe player essentially guarantee that the two would be instanced together since they are the only two players in that particular region of space? In other words, if two people being close to eachother is so rare, why arnt those two people guaranteed to be instanced together when they are close to eachother and nobody else?
 
GankzyMcfly said:
You gotta catch up to that guy/girl asap :p, does it tell you their psn id? Can you just msg him an ask to meet up, would be awesome if more people then expected were able to find eachother.
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They must have disappeared into the stars I guess. I got to a point where I went into this black hole and then did not see anymore systems discovered by them.

This shit is exciting and I have never experienced a game like it, and I have been gaming over 30+ years.
 
The PC version releases tomorrow. More people will poke and packet capture because it's easier on PC. I can say for sure for me, on PS4, there is no packets during movement in space or on planet. And the game world and time definitely pauses in Options menu, and is different for each player (planets are literally in different locations for everybody due to rotation).

This is not a slam and I really like the game.
 
arbok26 said:
Terrain deformation wouldn't show up in other people's games
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Does that even show up in your own game once you leave the planet?

1) Land on a planet
2) Terraform
3) Leave the planet
4) Land again
5) Are there traces of step 2?

If the answer is yes, same question but with a landing on another planet between steps 3 and 4.
 
Wok said:
Does that even show up in your own game once you leave the planet?

1) Land on a planet
2) Terraform
3) Leave the planet
4) Land again
5) Are there traces of step 2?

If the answer is yes, same question but with a landing on another planet between steps 3 and 4.
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You can definitely make a hole, leave the planet and then go back to it. The Twitch streamers (one of them anyway) did it and it was still there when they left and tried to go back again to try connecting. No idea about leaving the system and going back but I'd assume it would.
 
Zomba13 said:
You can definitely make a hole, leave the planet and then go back to it. The Twitch streamers (one of them anyway) did it and it was still there when they left and tried to go back again to try connecting. No idea about leaving the system and going back but I'd assume it would.
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Alright, it has to be stored somehow then, I assume locally. This means than on PC, people should be able to terraform planets by modifying save files. I hope we will see some modding tools and not just cheat engines.
 
gossi said:
The PC version releases tomorrow. More people will poke and packet capture because it's easier on PC. I can say for sure for me, on PS4, there is no packets during movement in space or on planet. And the game world and time definitely pauses in Options menu, and is different for each player (planets are literally in different locations for everybody due to rotation).

This is not a slam and I really like the game.
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If this whole situation isnt cleared up prior to the pc release and it ultimately turns out the feature is not in the game then ill have to take everything Sean says in the future about the game and future games with more then just a single grain of salt.
 
Wok said:
Alright, it has to be stored somehow then, I assume locally. This means than on PC, people should be able to terraform planets by modifying save files. I hope we will see some modding tools and not just cheat engines.
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It's an easy thing to store. The game is based on voxels (which are smoothed out so it doesn't look like Minecraft), so all the game really has to do when you blast a hole in the ground is store a tiny bit of data saying that the voxel at position X,Y,Z has been destroyed. The next time you go the the same location the same terrain is generated again, with all the voxels in place (because that's how it works), and the ones marked as not existing anymore are removed from the generated result before it's rendered. It's simpler than what Minecraft does, because in NMS you can't place voxels down again, so it only has to remember which ones have been destroyed.

This shouldn't be all that difficult to sync between players in the same MP instance either, if they wanted to do that. It's not much data to send across.
 
JaseC said:
It has:

Granted, what constitutes a "significant" act isn't clear, but he categorically rules out alterations to terrain.
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Thanks for this. So it answers my question earlier in the thread about whether each player only sees their own version of the universe, which they do apparently with some exceptions (like naming, and whatever 'significant event' means).

Knowing this I don't expect the ability to see other players would have been implemented tbh. Even if it was, given this information, you'd only ever see your version of events locally. It doesn't read like the servers are doing a whole lot apart from saving names of things.
 
Still radio silence on this, ha?

I guess Sean lied (most probably by omitting to tell that the feature he was so vocal about isn't there anymore) and they're now trying to kick the can down the road until after the PC release before coming out and stating the true.
 
Welp I take that this game is not worth the 60$. My dad would have bought it if there would have been the chance to meet someone. He is a bit disappointed that they didn't do that at all. It feels like Spore with crafting and a bit cool traveling, but it looks beautiful here and there.
 
border said:
I think it was stupid to expect [...]

At the same time, it was incredibly shitty of Hello Games to pretend
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Sure, it would have been stupid to expect that...but not when the DEVELOPER says otherwise. Then you just sort of accept that.
 
border said:
I think it was stupid to expect that Hello Games would build in code for synchronous multiplayer in a game where there's probably a 1 in a million chance that you would ever encounter another player. Anybody that follows game development knows that adding in network co-op increases your budget twofold. There's no way they would go through all the development and testing of full-on multiplayer just on the off-chance that two people happen to be in exactly the same place at exactly the same moment.

At the same time, it was incredibly shitty of Hello Games to pretend like player-on-player interactions were possible, when they very well knew they weren't building a backend or server infrastructure that could support that sort of play.
Click to expand...
This is absolutely not on the consumer. It is good to have doubts - especially when you know a bit about the technical background and know what an enormous effort it would take to have actual MP in this kind of generated, expansive world. It ultimately doesn't matter though when the developer confirms these features several times in various interviews. Many people were flabbergasted that a 15-person-team was able to make a game of this scale in the first place, why would they suddenly doubt the announced MP feature? Not all gamers are tech geeks either and they had to rely on Murray's words.

I really think that possibly meeting someone was a really big hook for many people with this game; much moreso than in other games. The developers knew this. Every single interviewer prominently asked "can you see other people?" or "can you interact with other people?". And each time Murray either confirmed it or gave a vague answer that left room for interpretation (which you then obviously fill in with his earlier confirmations).

What was needed here was a clear statement. HG chose to stick to vague allusions, just to let people dream and ultimately they did this for sales. This is the really despicable part, not the fact that the feature didn't find its way into the game. It's the deceit.
 
I think for many people it was part of the appeal, knowing that several thousand players are in the game at the same time but you are still alone for most of the time.

Now you are just alone, at this point it doesn't even matter if the named planets are done by other players or a name generator.
 
PdotMichael said:
I think for many people it was part of the appeal, knowing that several thousand players are in the game at the same time but you are still alone for most of the time.

Now you are just alone, at this point it doesn't even matter if the named planets are done by other players or a name generator.
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I don't think the lack of this feature will matter that much for the gameplay and enjoyment. But it was certainly cool that you could try to meet up with friends somehow, even if it took a lot of effort. Or that you could maybe see a ship or other player somewhere and have that be a big moment for the community.
 
Mendrox said:
Welp I take that this game is not worth the 60$. My dad would have bought it if there would have been the chance to meet someone. He is a bit disappointed that they didn't do that at all. It feels like Spore with crafting and a bit cool traveling, but it looks beautiful here and there.
Click to expand...

You're saying your dad's purchase hinged on whether or not he could essentially win the lottery?
 
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