The returns are really meant for literal unplayable games though. It's not Steam's fault that you didn't actually enjoy the game.
True, but even in Steam's return policy it says the the 2 hour, 2 week thing is just an initial guideline or 'no questions asked' period. You can send them a request via support for a refund on stuff exceeding that and they'll approve/deny on a case by case basis if they feel it's warranted.
Interesting. When I bought Arkham Knight I waited about a month (less than an hour played) for them to fix it. When it was obvious they weren't I requested a refund, but got denied because it was outside the 2 week window.
That makes sense. The 2 hour thing I feel they would be willing to be more lenient on based on the nature of the game itself, but it would be a hard sell to convince them to refund you a month out.
In that case if the game didn't work out the gate I would have gotten the refund right then or within the 2 weeks, instead of hoping the developers would fix it. After all if they did fix it, you could always buy the game again.
Hindsight 20/20 and all that though, but that's how I would do it in the future if I were in your shoes.
For NMS for instance I was prepared to refund the game day one because of the reports I heard about how it played on PC. Luckily it ran fine for me, but if it hadn't for any reason I would have just refunded it right there and either tried again at a later date or gotten the PS4 one.
You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.
It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look.
You will be issued a full refund of your purchase within a week of approval. You will receive the refund in Steam Wallet funds or through the same payment method you used to make the purchase. If, for any reason, Steam is unable to issue a refund via your initial payment method, your Steam Wallet will be credited the full amount. (Some payment methods available through Steam in your country may not support refunding a purchase back to the original payment method. Click here for a full list.)
You need luck with Steam support for it to fly. In my case, I bought The Division Gold Edition (With all DLC included) and played over 180 hours. Nice! But update after update, the game just got worse and I pretty much lost all interest in the game before the first DLC dropped. I asked Steam support if I could get a refund on the value of the season pass, and they responded within 24 hours that no, because I played the game for more than two hours.
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I think you're on a pretty slippery fucking slope when you try to spin NMS as currently featuring "multiplayer" in that sense.
I agree, which is why the second half is also important.
He clearly was very attached to the idea of coming across something someone else had already found. That was the aspect that, as far as I know, he spent the most time talking about.
My personal belief is that he thought that was cool and thought everybody else would also think it was cool.
But maybe he was just being manipulative. I find that idea depressing tho.
The returns are really meant for literal unplayable games though. It's not Steam's fault that you didn't actually enjoy the game.
True, but even in Steam's return policy it says the the 2 hour, 2 week thing is just an initial guideline or 'no questions asked' period. You can send them a request via support for a refund on stuff exceeding that and they'll approve/deny on a case by case basis if they feel it's warranted.
Interesting. When I bought Arkham Knight I waited about a month (less than an hour played) for them to fix it. When it was obvious they weren't I requested a refund, but got denied because it was outside the 2 week window.
That makes sense. The 2 hour thing I feel they would be willing to be more lenient on based on the nature of the game itself, but it would be a hard sell to convince them to refund you a month out.
In that case if the game didn't work out the gate I would have gotten the refund right then or within the 2 weeks, instead of hoping the developers would fix it. After all if they did fix it, you could always buy the game again.
Hindsight 20/20 and all that though, but that's how I would do it in the future if I were in your shoes.
For NMS for instance I was prepared to refund the game day one because of the reports I heard about how it played on PC. Luckily it ran fine for me, but if it hadn't for any reason I would have just refunded it right there and either tried again at a later date or gotten the PS4 one.
You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.
It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look.
You will be issued a full refund of your purchase within a week of approval. You will receive the refund in Steam Wallet funds or through the same payment method you used to make the purchase. If, for any reason, Steam is unable to issue a refund via your initial payment method, your Steam Wallet will be credited the full amount. (Some payment methods available through Steam in your country may not support refunding a purchase back to the original payment method. Click here for a full list.)
You need luck with Steam support for it to fly. In my case, I bought The Division Gold Edition (With all DLC included) and played over 180 hours. Nice! But update after update, the game just got worse and I pretty much lost all interest in the game before the first DLC dropped. I asked Steam support if I could get a refund on the value of the season pass, and they responded within 24 hours that no, because I played the game for more than two hours.
This is not how I thought that story would end.
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
I think you're on a pretty slippery fucking slope when you try to spin NMS as currently featuring "multiplayer" in that sense.
I agree, which is why the second half is also important.
He clearly was very attached to the idea of coming across something someone else had already found. That was the aspect that, as far as I know, he spent the most time talking about.
My personal belief is that he thought that was cool and thought everybody else would also think it was cool.
But maybe he was just being manipulative. I find that idea depressing tho.
I think he was being coy and naively thinking it wouldn't really matter since the world is so large. You'll never run into each other, so, is there multiplayer? Eh, why not?
Find me a video where he answers the question without a silly grin on his face.
I don't even care about the game having multiplayer or not, but let's not start breaking down and believe this wasn't misleading. HG should be blasted for that behaviour and communication strategy. So that others can't follow suit in the future.
Re: multiplayer, EA/Creative Assembly pulled the exact same thing with the original Shogun: Total War. They even promised it was going to get patched in and then just eventually shrugged and said it would be too much effort. I was beyond pissed, but it was still a good game.
This the same situation, or do a good number of you straight up not like the game as well? Are some people in love with the game? Apologies in advance. I went a few thread pages back and tried to get some general impressions, but couldn't quite figure them out. Definitely something about this game leaving me confused as to whether people think its any good
At the end of the day for me it comes down to a couple simple things. (Regardless of specifics in this or other situations and games.)
1) Game developers need to learn to give interviews or hire people who can.
2) Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product.
3) Game developers need to learn to say "no." The fear of losing installs because you can't say yes to everything that everyone wants is a shit practice. If you're going to ignore Rule 1, at least be honest and say what it is. Leave the self-selling hype to your rubber duck.
I feel most of the factual problems with No Man's Sky stem from the vagueness of how the game was presented. Sean speaks about this game from a 'spiritual' sense, just like Peter Molyneux does and just like Molyneux he says "yes" to everything. That's great! But if you sell that as PR you're fucking it up - customers don't want to buy unfinished ideas.
That isn't of course leaving the loudest players off the hook, but I don't think anyone needs to say "threatening violence over a video game is wrong." But, fuck those people for making a subjective battleground of artistic discussion an actual dangerous place. There is zero excuse.
Re: multiplayer, EA/Creative Assembly pulled the exact same thing with the original Shogun: Total War. They even promised it was going to get patched in and then just eventually shrugged and said it would be too much effort. I was beyond pissed, but it was still a good game.
This the same situation, or do a good number of you straight up not like the game as well? Are some people in love with the game? Apologies in advance. I went a few thread pages back and tried to get some general impressions, but couldn't quite figure them out. Definitely something about this game leaving me confused as to whether people think its any good
I've put 50 hours into it so far.
It's a very relaxing game, and I really enjoy just striking out, exploring, setting my own goals and working towards them.
I don't really have a plan, it's more each time I fire it up I just set out and start gathering, or hunting down critters, or trying to find a ship upgrade.
Next thing I knew I'm 50 hours into the game, have made no progress whatsoever towards the 'end' as far as I can tell, and am still enjoying myself quite a bit. At some point i'll actually accept the "atlas path" thing and maybe work towards that, but until then I'm content to just find new planets and explore them.
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+1
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
If you've played the newer Elder Scrolls games, imagine those but take out all the towns, quests, combat, etc.
I'm having tons of fun with it, but there isn't a lot of game to it. There are a couple of hooks to get you going (get bigger ships/better upgrades/more inventory space/learn words/scan wildlife) but none of those things will be very satisfactory if you don't enjoy wandering around, I think. The gameplay elements are all very repetitive (like, practically identical buildings/NPCs/etc.) so the variety comes from seeing the different planets.
It's basically a galactic berry picking simulator.
2) Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product.
I agree with your third point but I'm confused about this one. Like, generally if I wanted a developer's blurb about their own game I will go to that developer's site and read about it on their website. It's also good to have a steam page description, but it sounds like you're admonishing them for doing a bunch of PR in other locations? That doesn't make very much sense.
Oh, no. PR is fine, the problem is they didn't provide a single source of information. If they are that active on social media they should be aware of the confusion and the questions and try and clear that up.
Blizzard for example, they do the same thing. Lot's of their devs talk about very important hotfixes on various social medias and a lot of that never makes the blog or the patch list or whichever way Blizzard is presenting information that week.
There just needs to be a 'community manager' that can manage.
2) Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product.
I agree with your third point but I'm confused about this one. Like, generally if I wanted a developer's blurb about their own game I will go to that developer's site and read about it on their website. It's also good to have a steam page description, but it sounds like you're admonishing them for doing a bunch of PR in other locations? That doesn't make very much sense.
I think the idea is more that you should have some descriptive copy of your game's features somewhere centralized in addition to the stuff you slip via interviews. There's nothing wrong with having 300 interviews/twitter/facebook posts, but if that's the ONLY place fans and the press can find any information about your product, you're being too scattered and vague. Send out the standard press copy description of your title.
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Petesalzlvorpal blade in handRegistered Userregular
edited August 2016
ok, but i sorta think the "odds of finding someone else is pretty much zero" reasoning is a load of bull because i was doing my atlas path and came across a system that said first discovered by (i think it was badgerdude or something like that) on the same day that i had traveled to it. if there was multiplayer and this person was hanging out at the space station, of which there is only one per system, we would have bumped into each other. ive spent a lot of time sitting in space stations watching ships come in seeing what they look like trying to trade for profit, so that doesnt seem to me like an unreasonable possibility. im not upset that its single player only, but i dont like how they handled the expectation of what the game might be and then the reality of what it is. making claims like odds are next to zero is a pretty weak attempt at justifying misleading people.
oh! we were gonna put airbags in your car, but the odds of a collision are pretty low so dont worry about it.
If you've played the newer Elder Scrolls games, imagine those but take out all the towns, quests, combat, etc.
I'm having tons of fun with it, but there isn't a lot of game to it. There are a couple of hooks to get you going (get bigger ships/better upgrades/more inventory space/learn words/scan wildlife) but none of those things will be very satisfactory if you don't enjoy wandering around, I think. The gameplay elements are all very repetitive (like, practically identical buildings/NPCs/etc.) so the variety comes from seeing the different planets.
It's basically a galactic berry picking simulator.
Are you me? Because that's almost exactly how I've been describing it to friends.
2) Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product.
I agree with your third point but I'm confused about this one. Like, generally if I wanted a developer's blurb about their own game I will go to that developer's site and read about it on their website. It's also good to have a steam page description, but it sounds like you're admonishing them for doing a bunch of PR in other locations? That doesn't make very much sense.
I think the idea is more that you should have some descriptive copy of your game's features somewhere centralized in addition to the stuff you slip via interviews. There's nothing wrong with having 300 interviews/twitter/facebook posts, but if that's the ONLY place fans and the press can find any information about your product, you're being too scattered and vague. Send out the standard press copy description of your title.
Compared to a ton of people I was paying relatively little attention during the lead up to the game. Was the web site not up during that time? The web site has a version of what you're describing.
2) Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product.
I agree with your third point but I'm confused about this one. Like, generally if I wanted a developer's blurb about their own game I will go to that developer's site and read about it on their website. It's also good to have a steam page description, but it sounds like you're admonishing them for doing a bunch of PR in other locations? That doesn't make very much sense.
I think the idea is more that you should have some descriptive copy of your game's features somewhere centralized in addition to the stuff you slip via interviews. There's nothing wrong with having 300 interviews/twitter/facebook posts, but if that's the ONLY place fans and the press can find any information about your product, you're being too scattered and vague. Send out the standard press copy description of your title.
Compared to a ton of people I was paying relatively little attention during the lead up to the game. Was the web site not up during that time? The web site has a version of what you're describing.
It's still ridiculously vague, and doesn't contradict any of the false statements from the two year plus marketing campaign.
Love it or hate it, the dialog surrounding this game is pretty incredible. You got people absolutely in love with it who feel they got exactly what they are promised (me!) and others who feel they got lied to. It's basically Trump syndrome. The guys either a complete liar and whacko or the best thing ever.
Love it or hate it, the dialog surrounding this game is pretty incredible. You got people absolutely in love with it who feel they got exactly what they are promised (me!) and others who feel they got lied to. It's basically Trump syndrome. The guys either a complete liar and whacko or the best thing ever.
I don't think Sean Murray is a liar. I think he really planned on shipping that game he's been talking about, but ended up having to cut massive swathes of features and variety out to improve performance and meet deadlines. Just a guess.
+2
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
edited August 2016
So, per One Man's Lie, animals will sometimes attack each other.
. . . but ended up having to cut massive swathes of features and variety out to improve performance and meet deadlines.
Yeah, this, and specifically the last part, I'd guess. I'm thinking the "work on new features" stated for after the next patch will almost certainly be "finish/polish stuff we wanted in the game at launch, but SIE told us to hurry the fuck up because they gots quota to meet".
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
2) Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product.
I agree with your third point but I'm confused about this one. Like, generally if I wanted a developer's blurb about their own game I will go to that developer's site and read about it on their website. It's also good to have a steam page description, but it sounds like you're admonishing them for doing a bunch of PR in other locations? That doesn't make very much sense.
I think the idea is more that you should have some descriptive copy of your game's features somewhere centralized in addition to the stuff you slip via interviews. There's nothing wrong with having 300 interviews/twitter/facebook posts, but if that's the ONLY place fans and the press can find any information about your product, you're being too scattered and vague. Send out the standard press copy description of your title.
Compared to a ton of people I was paying relatively little attention during the lead up to the game. Was the web site not up during that time? The web site has a version of what you're describing.
It's still ridiculously vague, and doesn't contradict any of the false statements from the two year plus marketing campaign.
I mean it's kind of vague? But not very? I look at the about page and I see basically the game laid out there. As for it not contradicting false statements, that's not really relevant.
Original quote: "Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product."
My response was that the website pretty much checks the box of the developer putting out information regarding what their game is and what you do in it.
Whether or not they made false statements in interviews isn't really relevant to that exchange. Honestly, whether any part of their PR was honest or not isn't really relevant, since the original quote was with respect to "this is stuff game studios should be doing". The point I was making is that Hello Games' readily available reasonably formatted information repository is their website, and their website tracks pretty well as a common bar for game websites. Then, if you want more, you scrounge it up from forums and news sites and such.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I've seen animals attacking each other more than a handful of times, didn't realise that was on the list of 'broken promises. '
I have yet to see this, but to be fair I have two desert planets, two ice planets, one ocean planet, and an as yet unexplored moon. I need to explore more on all but the original planet and the lifeless desert one, but thus far almost every creatures has either been docile, or solitary attacker.
I have yet to hit a planet swarming with fauna.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I've seen animals attacking each other more than a handful of times, didn't realise that was on the list of 'broken promises. '
This was a correction the reddit OP had made that needed to be reverted. The specific comment was:
GI - "Do the animals eat each other? SM - "Yeah, they do."
Animals do not eat each other, nor should anyone infer there is any sort of food chain or complex life sim where animals go drink at watering holes or anything like that.
They sometimes attack each other, in the same capacity that they aggro on the player. This isn't the same as eating. Typically when an animal kills another one it leaves the corpse ragdolled where it sits. Very rarely, people have said they were unable to find a corpse and leapt to the conclusion that this must mean the eating behavior is in the game, somehow, super rarely. It's really just a despawn.
I've seen animals attacking each other more than a handful of times, didn't realise that was on the list of 'broken promises. '
Most things on the big list of broken promises is in the game, but not always as complex/good as planned (or imagined).
[fake edit: omg the stupid eating thing. Setting aside what "really eating" is, I was more bringing it up because Houn had expressed displeasure a number of times over the trailer showcasing AI that doesn't exist.]
Rivers are in. So are big space battles. Crafting is interesting when you get to linking things. Rarer elements do depend on the environment. And so on.
You could play the entire game flying in space and only landing on stations (I think; warp fuel/its components might not be available everywhere). Once I'm space rich I plan to basically fill a ship with upgrades and spend more time in space, dipping down just to look at planets.
I've seen sand, so I'm sure there are sand planets. I wanna find one.
I'm kind of in the middle. I think the "he lied!" stuff is super overblown but some of their preview stuff was definitely scummily presented.
I do find it pretty funny that NMS commits a crime I see a lot of games with animal NPCs do.
They feature flocking behaviour (the space Gazelle fleeing from the rhino) in the pre-rendered scripted trailer. It's never in the game! Craig Reynolds wrote the BOIDS code in 1986, and it's incredibly simple AI that looks great, but I've never seen a game developer actually use it.
Rivers are only "in" in the sense that it's possible for extremely narrow bodies of water to be generated. There isn't code designed to create rivers; if you see something that looks like one, it happened by accident. They don't flow.
I say this to separate it from a simulation like Dwarf Fortress, which actually has a part of world creation focused on running rivers and forming lakes based on real world feature formation. There are rivers and brooks and streams that run down from mountain tops to the ocean.
NMS doesn't have that level of detail...but there's also nothing wrong with being satisfied with what they give you and calling it a river. Just know that it's also valid for others to feel differently.
Like when I look back and he's all "hold onto your hats, I've never seen this planet before, it could be rubbish" there's a real "fuck off dude" element to that now. I'm not mad about it, it just makes me think he's a douchebag.
Like when I look back and he's all "hold onto your hats, I've never seen this planet before, it could be rubbish" there's a real "fuck off dude" element to that now. I'm not mad about it, it just makes me think he's a douchebag.
I genuinely believe they fucked up by not showing some of the dumber shit in the game. Like, show it's procedural so people can understand that not everything is going to be a majestic elk, you know? He only ever shows the most perfect world and the existence of something like that is bullshit in a procedurally done game.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
At the end of the day for me it comes down to a couple simple things. (Regardless of specifics in this or other situations and games.)
1) Game developers need to learn to give interviews or hire people who can.
But they already do. The irony of NMS is that it's the example of why publishers take so much control over the messaging of games just about industry wide, because when you let the people making it say things they'll constantly trip over themselves. I'm in the "This game is a 1 inch deep walking simulator priced like it had the content of a triple AAA game when it doesn't", but I'm not at all sympathetic to many of the claims of lying about features etc. I wouldn't have a single doubt that the idea of multiplayer was something they wanted, but being a small team, having a short time, the flood that destroyed their stuff and undoubted pressure to release the game from Sony ensured lots of things got cut. There are clear bullshots and things in those previews, like the way many of the animals looked actually coherent on their worlds - something procedural generation is very poor at unless you're immensely lucky. What happened here was overzealously overselling their vision, one that being the creative involved you have in the back of your mind "I can do that" and not really that they were full of lies or anything else.
Otherwise this is baffling. You only need to look at any gaming website to see what this looks like. Why Kotaku getting an article about some random feature or unannounced game leads to endless drama, debates about blacklisting from publishers etc. The way publishers are increasingly looking at "Influencers" (yes this is an actual term) as a means to market games direct to consumers, many of whom had to sign contracts stipulating they could only talk about the game in certain specific ways etc.
In many ways, NMS is a refreshing example of why companies bother with careful curation of their messaging through expensive PR companies. For me, it was just a lesson in waiting before I buy, unless I am 100% certain of the game in question.
Edit: And like on fucking cue, I go to my youtube today and 5 channels I follow are all playing Mankind Divided at the same time. It's a game I really want and such, but honestly the way PR/marketing works couldn't be more fucking obvious if they tried.
Eh, I think if you're enjoying the game without bothering with the Atlas/centre goals, keep at it.
Completing those will not increase your enjoyment.
The opposite in fact it seems.
Largely sure but I've seen the ending and it just makes me wanna reach it that much more quicker. I seem to be in the minority when it cmoes to a lot of stuff surrounding this game, though
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
edited August 2016
So regarding the possibly scripted E3 2015 demo, it looks like they definitely had prepared triggers/events/models for it, but maybe he did pick the planet at random. Or maybe the planet wasn't randomly picked either, who knows (not me, I've only done a cursory google skim so maybe there's more info).
I could see the planet generation being ready but not the walker spawning or stuff like that, leading to the prepared assets.
I dunno, it just seems really weird to me that someone would be so obviously proud of their game but also feel the need to lie about it.
Posts
You need luck with Steam support for it to fly. In my case, I bought The Division Gold Edition (With all DLC included) and played over 180 hours. Nice! But update after update, the game just got worse and I pretty much lost all interest in the game before the first DLC dropped. I asked Steam support if I could get a refund on the value of the season pass, and they responded within 24 hours that no, because I played the game for more than two hours.
He clearly was very attached to the idea of coming across something someone else had already found. That was the aspect that, as far as I know, he spent the most time talking about.
My personal belief is that he thought that was cool and thought everybody else would also think it was cool.
But maybe he was just being manipulative. I find that idea depressing tho.
This is not how I thought that story would end.
I think he was being coy and naively thinking it wouldn't really matter since the world is so large. You'll never run into each other, so, is there multiplayer? Eh, why not?
Find me a video where he answers the question without a silly grin on his face.
I don't even care about the game having multiplayer or not, but let's not start breaking down and believe this wasn't misleading. HG should be blasted for that behaviour and communication strategy. So that others can't follow suit in the future.
This the same situation, or do a good number of you straight up not like the game as well? Are some people in love with the game? Apologies in advance. I went a few thread pages back and tried to get some general impressions, but couldn't quite figure them out. Definitely something about this game leaving me confused as to whether people think its any good
1) Game developers need to learn to give interviews or hire people who can.
2) Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product.
3) Game developers need to learn to say "no." The fear of losing installs because you can't say yes to everything that everyone wants is a shit practice. If you're going to ignore Rule 1, at least be honest and say what it is. Leave the self-selling hype to your rubber duck.
I feel most of the factual problems with No Man's Sky stem from the vagueness of how the game was presented. Sean speaks about this game from a 'spiritual' sense, just like Peter Molyneux does and just like Molyneux he says "yes" to everything. That's great! But if you sell that as PR you're fucking it up - customers don't want to buy unfinished ideas.
That isn't of course leaving the loudest players off the hook, but I don't think anyone needs to say "threatening violence over a video game is wrong." But, fuck those people for making a subjective battleground of artistic discussion an actual dangerous place. There is zero excuse.
I've put 50 hours into it so far.
It's a very relaxing game, and I really enjoy just striking out, exploring, setting my own goals and working towards them.
I don't really have a plan, it's more each time I fire it up I just set out and start gathering, or hunting down critters, or trying to find a ship upgrade.
Next thing I knew I'm 50 hours into the game, have made no progress whatsoever towards the 'end' as far as I can tell, and am still enjoying myself quite a bit. At some point i'll actually accept the "atlas path" thing and maybe work towards that, but until then I'm content to just find new planets and explore them.
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I'm having tons of fun with it, but there isn't a lot of game to it. There are a couple of hooks to get you going (get bigger ships/better upgrades/more inventory space/learn words/scan wildlife) but none of those things will be very satisfactory if you don't enjoy wandering around, I think. The gameplay elements are all very repetitive (like, practically identical buildings/NPCs/etc.) so the variety comes from seeing the different planets.
It's basically a galactic berry picking simulator.
You're a monster.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I agree with your third point but I'm confused about this one. Like, generally if I wanted a developer's blurb about their own game I will go to that developer's site and read about it on their website. It's also good to have a steam page description, but it sounds like you're admonishing them for doing a bunch of PR in other locations? That doesn't make very much sense.
Blizzard for example, they do the same thing. Lot's of their devs talk about very important hotfixes on various social medias and a lot of that never makes the blog or the patch list or whichever way Blizzard is presenting information that week.
There just needs to be a 'community manager' that can manage.
I think the idea is more that you should have some descriptive copy of your game's features somewhere centralized in addition to the stuff you slip via interviews. There's nothing wrong with having 300 interviews/twitter/facebook posts, but if that's the ONLY place fans and the press can find any information about your product, you're being too scattered and vague. Send out the standard press copy description of your title.
oh! we were gonna put airbags in your car, but the odds of a collision are pretty low so dont worry about it.
Are you me? Because that's almost exactly how I've been describing it to friends.
I'd consider the space stations "towns" though.
Compared to a ton of people I was paying relatively little attention during the lead up to the game. Was the web site not up during that time? The web site has a version of what you're describing.
It's still ridiculously vague, and doesn't contradict any of the false statements from the two year plus marketing campaign.
I don't think Sean Murray is a liar. I think he really planned on shipping that game he's been talking about, but ended up having to cut massive swathes of features and variety out to improve performance and meet deadlines. Just a guess.
Yeah, this, and specifically the last part, I'd guess. I'm thinking the "work on new features" stated for after the next patch will almost certainly be "finish/polish stuff we wanted in the game at launch, but SIE told us to hurry the fuck up because they gots quota to meet".
I mean it's kind of vague? But not very? I look at the about page and I see basically the game laid out there. As for it not contradicting false statements, that's not really relevant.
Original quote: "Game studios who 'announce' to the world they have a game are also announcing they want people to buy it or have interest in it, therefore they are responsible for making that readily available in a reasonable format. Not split over 300 interviews/twitter/facebook accounts/etc. Making it vague or confusing is bad form. It's YOUR job to explain YOUR product."
My response was that the website pretty much checks the box of the developer putting out information regarding what their game is and what you do in it.
Whether or not they made false statements in interviews isn't really relevant to that exchange. Honestly, whether any part of their PR was honest or not isn't really relevant, since the original quote was with respect to "this is stuff game studios should be doing". The point I was making is that Hello Games' readily available reasonably formatted information repository is their website, and their website tracks pretty well as a common bar for game websites. Then, if you want more, you scrounge it up from forums and news sites and such.
I have yet to see this, but to be fair I have two desert planets, two ice planets, one ocean planet, and an as yet unexplored moon. I need to explore more on all but the original planet and the lifeless desert one, but thus far almost every creatures has either been docile, or solitary attacker.
I have yet to hit a planet swarming with fauna.
This was a correction the reddit OP had made that needed to be reverted. The specific comment was:
Animals do not eat each other, nor should anyone infer there is any sort of food chain or complex life sim where animals go drink at watering holes or anything like that.
They sometimes attack each other, in the same capacity that they aggro on the player. This isn't the same as eating. Typically when an animal kills another one it leaves the corpse ragdolled where it sits. Very rarely, people have said they were unable to find a corpse and leapt to the conclusion that this must mean the eating behavior is in the game, somehow, super rarely. It's really just a despawn.
[fake edit: omg the stupid eating thing. Setting aside what "really eating" is, I was more bringing it up because Houn had expressed displeasure a number of times over the trailer showcasing AI that doesn't exist.]
Rivers are in. So are big space battles. Crafting is interesting when you get to linking things. Rarer elements do depend on the environment. And so on.
You could play the entire game flying in space and only landing on stations (I think; warp fuel/its components might not be available everywhere). Once I'm space rich I plan to basically fill a ship with upgrades and spend more time in space, dipping down just to look at planets.
I've seen sand, so I'm sure there are sand planets. I wanna find one.
They feature flocking behaviour (the space Gazelle fleeing from the rhino) in the pre-rendered scripted trailer. It's never in the game! Craig Reynolds wrote the BOIDS code in 1986, and it's incredibly simple AI that looks great, but I've never seen a game developer actually use it.
Rivers are only "in" in the sense that it's possible for extremely narrow bodies of water to be generated. There isn't code designed to create rivers; if you see something that looks like one, it happened by accident. They don't flow.
I say this to separate it from a simulation like Dwarf Fortress, which actually has a part of world creation focused on running rivers and forming lakes based on real world feature formation. There are rivers and brooks and streams that run down from mountain tops to the ocean.
NMS doesn't have that level of detail...but there's also nothing wrong with being satisfied with what they give you and calling it a river. Just know that it's also valid for others to feel differently.
I genuinely believe they fucked up by not showing some of the dumber shit in the game. Like, show it's procedural so people can understand that not everything is going to be a majestic elk, you know? He only ever shows the most perfect world and the existence of something like that is bullshit in a procedurally done game.
But they already do. The irony of NMS is that it's the example of why publishers take so much control over the messaging of games just about industry wide, because when you let the people making it say things they'll constantly trip over themselves. I'm in the "This game is a 1 inch deep walking simulator priced like it had the content of a triple AAA game when it doesn't", but I'm not at all sympathetic to many of the claims of lying about features etc. I wouldn't have a single doubt that the idea of multiplayer was something they wanted, but being a small team, having a short time, the flood that destroyed their stuff and undoubted pressure to release the game from Sony ensured lots of things got cut. There are clear bullshots and things in those previews, like the way many of the animals looked actually coherent on their worlds - something procedural generation is very poor at unless you're immensely lucky. What happened here was overzealously overselling their vision, one that being the creative involved you have in the back of your mind "I can do that" and not really that they were full of lies or anything else.
Otherwise this is baffling. You only need to look at any gaming website to see what this looks like. Why Kotaku getting an article about some random feature or unannounced game leads to endless drama, debates about blacklisting from publishers etc. The way publishers are increasingly looking at "Influencers" (yes this is an actual term) as a means to market games direct to consumers, many of whom had to sign contracts stipulating they could only talk about the game in certain specific ways etc.
In many ways, NMS is a refreshing example of why companies bother with careful curation of their messaging through expensive PR companies. For me, it was just a lesson in waiting before I buy, unless I am 100% certain of the game in question.
Edit: And like on fucking cue, I go to my youtube today and 5 channels I follow are all playing Mankind Divided at the same time. It's a game I really want and such, but honestly the way PR/marketing works couldn't be more fucking obvious if they tried.
Completing those will not increase your enjoyment.
The opposite in fact it seems.
Largely sure but I've seen the ending and it just makes me wanna reach it that much more quicker. I seem to be in the minority when it cmoes to a lot of stuff surrounding this game, though
I could see the planet generation being ready but not the walker spawning or stuff like that, leading to the prepared assets.
I dunno, it just seems really weird to me that someone would be so obviously proud of their game but also feel the need to lie about it.