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

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Please don't think I'm having a go at anyone here or trying to start an argument, as I'm genuinely curious:

Was there a general expectation of being able to do more than just see other players? As in, trading, fighting etc?

My gut feeling is that the system is supposed to work kinda like Dark Souls, where you see shadows and impressions of others rather than actually interact. If that's the case they should really just say, as I think most people would be fine with that unless I've misjudged the comments.
 
Now that there is no proper multiplayer, FUCK YOU for splitting PC and console community. Horrible idea, utterly stupid!!

The more I think about this game, the more I hate how imperfect it is. Really. I don't give a shit if there's no multiplayer. The deception is wrong in many levels and I can let go of many changes, but I cannot understand the idea of a split between PC and Console Universe if multiplayer coop is not going to be part of the game.
 
Please don't think I'm having a go at anyone here or trying to start an argument, as I'm genuinely curious:

Was there a general expectation of being able to do more than just see other players? As in, trading, fighting etc?

My gut feeling is that the system is supposed to work kinda like Dark Souls, where you see shadows and impressions of others rather than actually interact. If that's the case they should really just say, as I think most people would be fine with that unless I've misjudged the comments.

Just seeing them, being able to walk besides them (if you want to). That's all.
 
Please don't think I'm having a go at anyone here or trying to start an argument, as I'm genuinely curious:

Was there a general expectation of being able to do more than just see other players? As in, trading, fighting etc?

My gut feeling is that the system is supposed to work kinda like Dark Souls, where you see shadows and impressions of others rather than actually interact. If that's the case they should really just say, as I think most people would be fine with that unless I've misjudged the comments.
I don't think there were any expectations with regards to advanced interactions like trading etc.

All that people wanted was the possibility to see other players. Now it looks like that functionality doesn't exist either. So no, it's not like Dark Souls or Journey. It's strictly a SP game and all that is shared are discovery names.

Haven't checked the thread since yesterday, anything new?

I don't see any new tweets from NMS :/

Still radio silence.
 
Please don't think I'm having a go at anyone here or trying to start an argument, as I'm genuinely curious:

Was there a general expectation of being able to do more than just see other players? As in, trading, fighting etc?

My gut feeling is that the system is supposed to work kinda like Dark Souls, where you see shadows and impressions of others rather than actually interact. If that's the case they should really just say, as I think most people would be fine with that unless I've misjudged the comments.

It was a general expectation that you can at least see the other player if you're lucky (or coordinated) enough to end up in the same place. And this was repeatedly mentioned by Sean before launch.
 
Please don't think I'm having a go at anyone here or trying to start an argument, as I'm genuinely curious:

Was there a general expectation of being able to do more than just see other players? As in, trading, fighting etc?

My gut feeling is that the system is supposed to work kinda like Dark Souls, where you see shadows and impressions of others rather than actually interact. If that's the case they should really just say, as I think most people would be fine with that unless I've misjudged the comments.

He said you could grief other players, so some sort of combat. Also considering trading is a pillar of the game like combat, maybe that too. Mostly just exploring together, really.
 
He said you could grief other players, so some sort of combat. Also considering trading is a pillar of the game like combat, maybe that too. Mostly just exploring together, really.

It was a general expectation that you can at least see the other player if you're lucky (or coordinated) enough to end up in the same place. And this was repeatedly mentioned by Sean before launch.

I don't think there were any expectations with regards to advanced interactions like trading etc.

All that people wanted was the possibility to see other players. Now it looks like that functionality doesn't exist either. So no, it's not like Dark Souls or Journey. It's strictly a SP game and all that is shared are discovery names.

Interesting, thanks guys. I wonder if there's meant to be some system in there and it's just broken, or if it's straight up not there at all and something they plan to do later. Hard to know with the Twitter silence I guess.
 
Interesting, thanks guys. I wonder if there's meant to be some system in there and it's just broken, or if it's straight up not there at all and something they plan to do later. Hard to know with the Twitter silence I guess.
The whole point of the twitter silence is that players keep up their hopes for a couple of days more - until the critical early sales are raked in. Just now I'm seeing articles and blog posts on gaming sites that excuse the current state of the MP by interpreting the latest hodgepodge of Murray tweets ("we want players to find each other", network problems, player tracker) and combining them into "MP is still there but currently not working due to network issues". I'm looking at articles from today and media outlets and players are still believing in the MP feature.

My stance is that there is no such feature and it won't be added in the future either. It's just not a realistic task for such a small team.
 
The whole point of the twitter silence is that players keep up their hopes for a couple of days more - until the critical early sales are raked in.

My stance is that there is no such feature and it won't be added in the future either. It's just not a realistic task for such a small team.

Modders could bring in even real co-op... BUT my hopes aren't very high to be honest.
 
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.

One in a million chance? Didn't it happen in the first day?

This makes me wonder how that's even possible with apparently that many planets.

Do people start on the same planet(s)?
 
He said you could grief other players, so some sort of combat. Also considering trading is a pillar of the game like combat, maybe that too. Mostly just exploring together, really.
No, not necessarily. It's been said already but you can also grief someone by harvesting resources to 0, killing off an entire species, or blowing up a space station.
 
No, not necessarily. It's been said already but you can also grief someone by harvesting resources to 0, killing off an entire species, or blowing up a space station.
I thought the bolded was a myth and that any changes regarding resources do not transfer into other games. I recall that someone said resources are respawning pretty quickly in your own game even.
 
i dont know why PC and PS4 servers are seperate.

When hackers get to it. They will warp straight to the center, rename the whole galaxy and slap Sean in the face. All on the same day!

Exaggerating alot but people will find out how to warp around the galaxy extremely quickly. I can already see what cheats that will be made: Super-speed for walking and for your ship, teleporation with actual bookmarks ( convenient for keeping up with your favorite planets ), infinite resources, no overheat for multi-tool, and probably the worst one, 1 shot kills.

I say 1 shot kill will be the worse because people will destroy space stations. Remember, Sean said you can destroy them and it reflects that destruction to everyone.
 
Modders could bring in even real co-op... BUT my hopes aren't very high to be honest.

Online Multiplayer isn't something you're just adding real quick - it requires a ton of tech resources and also has huge dependencies on design. With players being able to stop time when hitting the options button, I doubt there's any multiplayer in the game at all, since that should be impossible in a multiplayer game...
 
So...wait, how? Is it a fixed path if you're offline? I thought that since there are that many planets you'd have no way of knowing how far or close to eachother you are.

he meant they talked to each other outside of the game with messages.

one planet had been discovered already, so he contacted the discoverer and arranged to meet on a planet.
 
Not entirely. Remember, this wasn't a major feature. It might've been to you, but it was probably nothing more that a bullet point over at Hello Games.
It's relevant. Deal with it.

No matter how much HG downplayed it, every single interviewer asked them this question prominently. They also used it to fuel player's imaginations time and time again. They knew the possibility of meeting someone in NMS would be a big hook for players.

They should've been honest about it. They weren't.
 
When hackers get to it. They will warp straight to the center, rename the whole galaxy and slap Sean in the face. All on the same day!

Exaggerating alot but people will find out how to warp around the galaxy extremely quickly. I can already see what cheats that will be made: Super-speed for walking and for your ship, teleporation with actual bookmarks ( convenient for keeping up with your favorite planets ), infinite resources, no overheat for multi-tool, and probably the worst one, 1 shot kills.

I say 1 shot kill will be the worse because people will destroy space stations. Remember, Sean said you can destroy them and it reflects that destruction to everyone.

Isn't this an always online game? Unless they were morons like Ubi and have everything client side, next to nothing you described should end up being much of an issue.
 
Not entirely. Remember, this wasn't a major feature. It might've been to you, but it was probably nothing more that a bullet point over at Hello Games.

Yes, entirely. He is on video saying it multiple times, LOL. He lied. End of story. We all just want to know why, that is all. That is what all of this is about... Why??
 
Not entirely. Remember, this wasn't a major feature. It might've been to you, but it was probably nothing more that a bullet point over at Hello Games.

Wasn't the whole "if you actually meet up with another person it will be an incredible emotional experience" sold at some point?

It was, wasn't it?
And it was what actually got me interested in this game.

Will only play it next week when my press kit arrives, so getting it for free kinda curbs my dissapointment.
 
So... since they've said they want to add in Base Building in the near future... what will be the point of that if noone else will ever see / visit your base.

Lonely Man's Sky
 
It's relevant. Deal with it.

No matter how much HG downplayed it, every single interviewer asked them this question prominently. They also used it to fuel player's imaginations time and time again. They knew the possibility of meeting someone in NMS would be a big hook for players.

They should've been honest about it. They weren't.

Yup, especially with the whole "you'll never see yourself, the only way to know what you look like would be to see another player and they would see you" stuff.

Also, I still cannot get over how some people still maintain that Sean and Hello Games never ever mentioned multiplayer and gave no indication you would ever actually connect to another person while quoting quotes that specifically mention meeting other players.
 
The thing that really gets to me about this whole situation is how many people understood it wasn't multiplayer and yet apparently just as many people thought it was. There wasn't a single moment where I personally thought "yeah this team of 5 people are going to make a multiplayer exploration game where it seamlessly connects me to other people". Destiny doesn't even do that (loading/connecting screens galore) with a heavyweight studio like Bungie. Not to mention this game has destruction and deformation. It's just not feasible.

I'll admit I haven't followed every interview of Murray to know exactly what he said and when, but around the time of the announcement I recall him saying it was "virtually impossible" to meet someone else. Any sane person would think, "okay that means no".
Naturally, upon hearing that, some Twitch streamers decided to go all Lloyd Christmas "So you're telling me there's a chance?"

My stance is that there is no such feature and it won't be added in the future either. It's just not a realistic task for such a small team.
It's not a realistic task for the team but you expected it in the game on day 1.....
 
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.

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.

That's it. Every time you see another ship you'd think "is that another person?!". There's a real awe and enhanced discovery to that. Now knowing you're alone in the galaxy doing fetch quests just to reach more randomly generated empty (of people) spaces makes the whole thing feel abit flat.

Yes. This really makes a difference for me. It suddenly does feel less like a universe to me without players roaming the exact same place as I do (everybody explores his own copy now). But I also always imagined that players would start to stumble upon each other the closer they would get to the center of the galaxy. And when finaly at the center the probability to meet another person should actually be pretty high.
And that was one of the reasons to get there in the first place for me.

I think posts like these get to the heart of why people are disappointed. Barriers like this and the fixed day/night cycle (what happened to multiple star systems?) diminish what made the game so mysteriously compelling for many of us. The appeal of No Man's Sky was precisely the lack of barriers and promise of possibilities.

I still remain optimistic that such features will be added later down the line. If the game is flying off the shelves as reported we could see it change beyond recognition in a few years time. Look at Elite Dangerous and its recent planetary landings update for inspiration. Adding player interaction would appear to be quite a small update in comparison.

As for Sean Murray's silence on the matter, he really should come out of his bunker. Most of us have an enormous respect for what he and his small team have already achieved, he might find us pretty forgiving if only he'd come out with a straight answer.
 
Not entirely. Remember, this wasn't a major feature. It might've been to you, but it was probably nothing more that a bullet point over at Hello Games.
Features get scrapped all the time. That's not a problem. The problem now is the communication with the players, which are left wondering if a feature talked about multiple time and again heavily implied day of release (or day before, can't remember) is actually even in the game.
 
It's really on a big deal here from what I can see. I honestly haven't seen this mentioned anywhere in the real world.

Agreed. We were all talking about the game in the office yesterday, and the lack of multiplayer was shrugged off. If they get to it, great. The game is just so impressive as is.
 
lol no

This is not a simple shooter.

Online Multiplayer isn't something you're just adding real quick - it requires a ton of tech resources and also has huge dependencies on design. With players being able to stop time when hitting the options button, I doubt there's any multiplayer in the game at all, since that should be impossible in a multiplayer game...

I understand that. But I am not talking about an mmo approach here. I'm talking about maybe a 2-4 players co op mod, which is separated from the original game. World data is being generated on one PC/Server and the other players just connect to that.
And I absolutely understand that this may be impossible because the NMS engine might work in an absolutely different way and that it would take several dedicated fans to work together and to sacrifice an insane amount of time. But honestly I've seen stranger things to happen like the SWG emu servers go live, people working on the original Sw battlefront 3 game and just cause 2 getting MP on PC.
 
There is no "meeting up". There is no multiplayer. There isn't any position data being sent in the packets while playing the game, so it is functionally impossible for the game to support players meeting or seeing each other in game. No matter what Sean or anyone else has said in the past or today, this is the fact of the matter and it physically prevents players from seeing each other in game. It's just not coded into the game itself.

Now, could such a feature be added later on? Sure, possibly. Might the PC version have multiplayer while the PS4 version does not? Lord can you imagine the uproar if that were the case!!!

The sad reality is that Sean has repeatedly stated that players can see each other in game but it's hugely unlikely, when the fact is that players can not see each other in game. And personally I think that's poor marketing and very bad behavior on the part of Hello Games.

And hence, this huge thread in one day's time....

Through Christ, all things are possible. Maybe that's what Sean meant? Like, he didn't want to just flat out say 'no, you can't do that' because he also knows that only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.
 
Does it though? I can't think of any other examples where devs described things you could do or experience (regardless of how small the odds) and then it just doesn't exist.

Sure there's back and forth between stuff like raid vs incursion (The Division) but at the end of the day there was still end game content that required multiple players.

All the time.

It's primarily down to devs showing "BS slices" at gaming events like E3 which turn out not to be a representation of the final game. Ubisoft are kings at it. Watch Dogs kicked off this generation in spectacular fashion showing what lying/hyping and under-delivering does.

NMS might not have shown other players during E3, but they did show far bigger creatures that what we appear to have in reality.
 
It's not a realistic task for the team but you expected it in the game on day 1.....
I had my doubts about the game for a long time and I said in the past people are getting their expectations way too high. Want me to look up the posts? Largely my concerns revolved around the whole procedural generation aspect of it though.

My problem now is mainly with Murray's deceitful behavior - in the interviews and now on twitter pre and post radio silence.

The thing that really gets to me about this whole situation is how many people understood it wasn't multiplayer and yet apparently just as many people thought it was. There wasn't a single moment where I personally thought "yeah this team of 5 people are going to make a multiplayer exploration game where it seamlessly connects me to other people". Destiny doesn't even do that (loading/connecting screens galore) with a heavyweight studio like Bungie. Not to mention this game has destruction and deformation. It's just not feasible.

I'll admit I haven't followed every interview of Murray to know exactly what he said and when, but around the time of the announcement I recall him saying it was "virtually impossible" to meet someone else. Any sane person would think, "okay that means no".
Naturally, upon hearing that, some Twitch streamers decided to go all Lloyd Christmas "So you're telling me there's a chance?"
No, any sane person would think there is a possibility - not that the functionality doesn't exist when he says the chance to meet other players is slim. That fact that he described it as a rare thing just fueled players' imaginations even more.

Not having the functionality in the game at all but still using allusions and playing with players' expectations is complete bullshit and needs to be called out. Just yesterday he still spread this kind of misinformation on twitter (two players have already found each other ... mind blown blabla).
 
There is no "meeting up". There is no multiplayer. There isn't any position data being sent in the packets while playing the game, so it is functionally impossible for the game to support players meeting or seeing each other in game. No matter what Sean or anyone else has said in the past or today, this is the fact of the matter and it physically prevents players from seeing each other in game. It's just not coded into the game itself.

Now, could such a feature be added later on? Sure, possibly. Might the PC version have multiplayer while the PS4 version does not? Lord can you imagine the uproar if that were the case!!!

The sad reality is that Sean has repeatedly stated that players can see each other in game but it's hugely unlikely, when the fact is that players can not see each other in game. And personally I think that's poor marketing and very bad behavior on the part of Hello Games.

And hence, this huge thread in one day's time....

who do you think was in control of the games marketing?

I had my doubts about the game for a long time and I said in the past people are getting their expectations way too high. Want me to look up the posts? Largely my concerns revolved around the whole procedural generation aspect of it though.

My problem now is mainly with Murray's deceitful behavior - in the interviews and now on twitter pre and post radio silence.

I've been trhough this he will be under a gagging order AKA NDA.

yes NDA's can prevent you from talking about your own game.
 
I've been trhough this he will be under a gagging order AKA NDA.

yes NDA's can prevent you from talking about your own game.
Something is seriously wrong if an NDA prevents you from talking about which features are in your own game after it has been released. Makes no sense.
 
who do you think was in control of the games marketing?
In all honesty: Sean, the man who made the statements. Do you think Sony sends the developer out and tells him to spread lies about his game?

They probably made a list of talking points and one important one would be to get across to the audience that it's a shared universe.

But "players can see each other", "little bit of griefing" and "you can play with your friends" ... those were Murray's words.

I've been trhough this he will be under a gagging order AKA NDA.

yes NDA's can prevent you from talking about your own game.
Doubt it.
 
Isn't this an always online game? Unless they were morons like Ubi and have everything client side, next to nothing you described should end up being much of an issue.
It is not an always online game. You can play completely offline. Also, thanks to the guy that showed that the game does not send anything except when you upload your discoveries when connected to the server. I can almost guarantee everything is client side.
 
So when the PC version is out tomorrow, will this thing be cracked open and we will know this answer once and for all? Is that why the pc version was delayed 3 days?
 
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