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No Man's Sky Under Investigation For False Advertising (polygon.com)

No Man's Sky is one of the most talked about games this year. The game sees the protagonist explore the space and experience uncertain places. But its controversial promotional material may also have played an instrumental role in making the title a sleeper-hit success. Polygon reports: No Man's Sky's promotional material has come under fire since launch, and it's now the subject of an ongoing investigation. The U.K.-based Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) confirmed to Polygon that it's received "several complaints about No Man's Sky's advertising," which angry customers have criticized as misleading. "I can confirm we have received several complaints about No Man's Sky advertising and we have launched an investigation," the ASA told Polygon. A representative for the ASA declined to comment on the particulars of the investigation, but a thread on the No Man Sky's subreddit details some of the most prominent issues Steam users have with the game's store page, which they passed on to the organization. Screens and video on Steam suggest a different type of combat, unique buildings, "ship flying behaviour" and creature sizes than what's found in the actual game itself. The store page overall has also been criticized for showing No Man's Sky with higher quality graphics than can be attained in-game.

148 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. don't get your hope up by aepervius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    the producer just need to take down the screenshot/video on steam and replace it with a current one and they are fine.

    --
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    1. Re:don't get your hope up by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Should force Steam to issue refunds for anybody that wants one who bought before that point though.

      --
      Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    2. Re:don't get your hope up by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, I already bought it on the basis of those screenshots.

    3. Re:don't get your hope up by subanark · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Anyone? Even people who put 100+ hours into the game? It shouldn't take that long to determine that the game doesn't live up to expectations.

    4. Re:don't get your hope up by war4peace · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sorry but no. There's a shitload of videos and text which show without a shadow of doubt that promises were made and left unfulfilled. people bought the game based on the information at hand which was more than misleading. Misleading is when you hint something, which proves to be less that was was alluded to. Like "Big Trunk", which is misleading because it has no frame of reference (and even so, it's stretching things), But Sean Murray specifically said there will be some sort of multiplayer, that ships will handle differently based on their looks, that NPC factions are warring in space, that you can land on asteroids, that you can grief other players ("A little bit, yeah"), and so on. Those were ALL captured on video and available on Youtube and other channels.

      It was a big fat web of lies and deception and it was only a matter of time until shit hit the fan.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    5. Re:don't get your hope up by wardrich86 · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Maybe if I just put in another 100 or so hours I'll be able to find those sweet areas that they used to make the promo material with!" -No person ever

    6. Re:don't get your hope up by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Anyone? Even people who put 100+ hours into the game? It shouldn't take that long to determine that the game doesn't live up to expectations.

      Oh my dear god, not this all over again? We discussed this here already, and it's been discussed why that's wrong. Please go back to the prior discussion and read about it.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:don't get your hope up by subanark · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Maybe if I bitch and moan about something I really don't care about, I can get free money" - A lot of people

      I think getting $1/hr of entertainment is a good deal for anyone wanting to get the latest game hot off the presses. Better $/hr than a movie is.

    8. Re:don't get your hope up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "You said this medicine would cure my cancer. I drank it, but it didn't work and I still have my cancer. When I sent the nearly empty bottle to the lab, they said it contained something called 'snake oil.' I demand a refund!"

      "But you drank it! If you had return the product unused, of course we would issue a refund. But you have enjoyed the product."

      "No, I haven't!!"

      "Yes, you have."

    9. Re:don't get your hope up by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 1

      Anyone? Even people who put 100+ hours into the game? It shouldn't take that long to determine that the game doesn't live up to expectations.

      Ultimately, yes.
      The seller is already protected by a statute of limitations, and additional magical-made-up temporal barriers are unnecessary and will harm the industry. HG 'needs' to fail, and should fail, in order for the free market to thrive.

    10. Re:don't get your hope up by darkain · · Score: 1

      You insensitive clod! I go to the $2 theater on half-price tuesdays! You can't beat a buck a movie on the big screen!

    11. Re:don't get your hope up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What does that have to do with fraudulent advertising?

    12. Re:don't get your hope up by Dread_ed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It doesn't matter how many hours you put in if you were enticed by and promised things that don't exist in the game. You could love the game, give it honestly rave reviews, and play it every day for 8 hours. Doesn't matter. Your playing or not playing the game, or a better way to put it is, the behavior of the purchaser subsequent to purchase has no bearing on the advertising tactics and their honesty/dishonesty in describing the game. Money should be refunded based on the request of the purchaser because of the actions of the selling company previous to purchase. Everything that happens after purchase is immaterial.

      Why? Because even if someone played the game for 400000 hours, they would never get what was promised in the advertising. IMHO the penalties should go up with play time. It means that person has been defrauded of the missing material more than someone who barely plays the game.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    13. Re: don't get your hope up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It would discourage comanies from repeating the same mistake, if they were on the hook for refunds.

    14. Re:don't get your hope up by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, OP is probably right not to get your hopes up. The ASA is pretty toothless in practice; their track record is usually "Don't use that advert again!" and the occassional slap on the wrist fine and/or requirement to print a retraction in the media. I don't recall a single instance where they've actually required compensation, let alone refunds, be paid to someone who fell for the misleading advertising before it got pulled.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    15. Re:don't get your hope up by Alumoi · · Score: 1

      Sorry but no. There's a shitload of videos and text which show without a shadow of doubt that promises were made and left unfulfilled. people bought the game based on the information at hand which was more than misleading. Misleading is when you hint something, which proves to be less that was was alluded to.

      And this is different from marketing how?

    16. Re:don't get your hope up by elrous0 · · Score: 2

      Well, at least now we know why they were so cagey about releasing the game earlier for reviewers or releasing a beta version.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    17. Re:don't get your hope up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yeah...all due respect, but if you're buying a game based on the pre-release hype and some pre-rendered screenshots, you aren't making smart purchases in the first place. Hard to feel sorry for someone who doesn't have a healthy dose of skepticism about the games industry promising another "you can do EVERYTHING and it all works perfectly" title.

      Sean Murray's only been doing what the fine folks at conferences like E3 have been doing for years now, pre-rendered lies and Molyneux-level delusions of grandeur, only to turn out a buggy piece of shit and collect the cash. It makes him a scumbag, yep. He deserves to be investigated and possibly charged for false advertising, because everything that came out of his mouth about NMS was pure, unadulterated bullshit. You know who else has been lying to the gaming fans for years? Practically everybody else in the industry, that's who. Valve was PROFITING from the very same until they caved to user demands and started offering refunds, not much different than the console manufacturers. The only thing separating Valve from Sony and Microsoft at this point is the illegal gambling, but I digress.

      In fact the only thing I see different this time is the rage. All of this crap has been passed off as acceptable for far too long in the gaming industry, but this time people are shitting themselves they're so angry. Mostly vanity streamers who insist on chroma-keying their own acne-ridden face over the game they bought on pre-order flipping their lids. On the plus side, it might actually make some of the "triple-A" developers think twice about pulling the same thing...on the other hand we also live in the time that Ride to Hell: Retribution was actually sold to people as a game rather than an "enhanced interrogation method."

    18. Re:don't get your hope up by war4peace · · Score: 2

      In marketing you're not allowed to advertise non-existing features of a product. Or if you are, you get fined at least.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    19. Re:don't get your hope up by wardrich86 · · Score: 1

      Sorry, my original comment sounded snarky in the wrong direction. I actually absolutely agree with you, and despite the negative press I still plan to eventually grab the game.

    20. Re:don't get your hope up by NotAPK · · Score: 1

      Not valid at all. What if you watch a film hoping it will get better. But it doesn't. By your logic the media has been consumed, except it was a pile of crap. I believe under such circumstances one is entitled to a refund.

    21. Re:don't get your hope up by NotAPK · · Score: 1

      Who is the guy? To where do we send our bags of feces in protest?

    22. Re:don't get your hope up by NotAPK · · Score: 1

      Fuck off with your caveat emptor bullshit.

      Don't blame the victim.

    23. Re:don't get your hope up by war4peace · · Score: 1

      You're assuming it was "entertainment"...

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    24. Re:don't get your hope up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Oh my dear god, not this all over again? We discussed this here already, and it's been discussed why that's wrong. Please go back to the prior discussion and read about it.

      Really? You're not going to bother explaining that?

      Well, in any case, for people who don't want to go hunting for earlier, unmentioned discussions, here's the gist of it:

      It's not abnormal for games to put content behind gates. You don't get all the weapons on the first level of Doom, you have to go through earlier levels to get to later levels, you unlock powers as you play through, that general idea. No Man's Sky initially appears to be following this pattern: your first planet has plenty of resources for the survival aspect, but you need to leave and go out into space and visit other planets to unlock new tech and get new ships. There are two content paths (follow the path of Atlas or reach the center of the galaxy) that you can take to do this. Each path supposedly takes 40-60 hours of gameplay to complete.

      Problem: What I just said about needing to leave and go out into space? Turns out, you don't. You can grind up just about everything on your first planet. (There's an exception - alien languages - but it's completely meaningless. Each planet is tied to one of three alien races, so you'd need to grind on one of each to max literally everything.)

      Now you'd assume - and a lot of initial looks did - that the first planet intentionally had bountiful resources to ensure you didn't get screwed when you start the game. The logical assumption is that as the game progresses and you travel towards one of the two goals, the planets become more hostile and more resources become available to offer new tech and new features.

      Nope. They don't.

      About the only way to verify that, in fact, the content promised really is missing is to put a good 40-60 hours of gameplay in. I made it about 10 hours (although Steam says I played for 20, probably due to tech issues and AFKing) before giving up on the planets ever being any different from one another.

      No Man's Sky is one of those games designed to provide just enough gameplay experience to get you past the refund cutoff before revealing that's all there is.

    25. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      I wonder if that defense would have worked for Enron. "What? Well, why were you stupid enough to believe what we said. DUH!"

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    26. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Honest question: What else should I base my decision to buy a game on if not screenshots and gameplay previews?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    27. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      It may come as a surprise, but there are actually honest people out there who want to deliver what they promise. They are actually, believe it or not, the majority of businesspeople out there.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    28. Re:don't get your hope up by PCM2 · · Score: 1

      It may come as a surprise, but there are actually honest people out there who want to deliver what they promise. They are actually, believe it or not, the majority of businesspeople out there.

      I know some pretty disillusioned contributors to Kickstarter projects that would say otherwise.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    29. Re:don't get your hope up by Tharkkun · · Score: 1

      Sorry but no. There's a shitload of videos and text which show without a shadow of doubt that promises were made and left unfulfilled. people bought the game based on the information at hand which was more than misleading. Misleading is when you hint something, which proves to be less that was was alluded to. Like "Big Trunk", which is misleading because it has no frame of reference (and even so, it's stretching things), But Sean Murray specifically said there will be some sort of multiplayer, that ships will handle differently based on their looks, that NPC factions are warring in space, that you can land on asteroids, that you can grief other players ("A little bit, yeah"), and so on. Those were ALL captured on video and available on Youtube and other channels.

      It was a big fat web of lies and deception and it was only a matter of time until shit hit the fan.

      Was it said during the beta development process or was it printed on the box, or listed as a feature in advertising such as the Steam Page, Feature list on a video? Because stating what things they want to put in the game during development isn't false advertising, a promise or anything of the sort. It's your job as a consumer to find out what is in the final release either by reviews, word of mouth or a direct feature list.

    30. Re:don't get your hope up by Tharkkun · · Score: 1

      In marketing you're not allowed to advertise non-existing features of a product. Or if you are, you get fined at least.

      Was it marketing or just a sneak peek in the development process like so many other companies do today? They are very different things.

    31. Re:don't get your hope up by war4peace · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was false advertisement.
      Example: Sean Murray showcased some planets during live gameplay, said to be "random planets from the game" and after analyzing the game files, people have discovered those planets as statically scripted ones, left in the game files.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    32. Re:don't get your hope up by war4peace · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Steam Page STILL shows screenshots of stuff not in the game. That monolith you see on the Steam Page screenshots? Not in the game. The big space battle? Not in the game. The nice colors? Not in the game. The huge animal in the screenshot? Yes, you guessed it... not in the game.
      Oh and all screenshots there are from a scripted static planet which people have found in the game files. There are three such planets in there.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    33. Re:don't get your hope up by war4peace · · Score: 2

      Yeah but this is not the 80s and the quality of the game was the quality that was expected, given the hardware capabilities of the console.
      Apples and oranges.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    34. Re:don't get your hope up by theArtificial · · Score: 2

      Are you one of these people? What's your point? That some people made some bad calls? Are you claiming Kickstarter is where the vast number of business people reside? Or that Kickstarter is a retched hive of scum and that the vast majority of projects on there flop?

      If I understand you correctly "Some people lost some money on a website"

      I've bought tons of stuff online and I've backed a number of projects on Kickstarter. I hardly think it's full of saints. Each of the projects I've backed have been realized - and they're all software. I went with projects where people have done things before and it was $50. I'm curious as to what projects were backed? How much was wagered on the endeavors? I'd like to see first hand the appeals made to better understand their judgement, if you'd kindly enlighten us.

      --
      Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
    35. Re:don't get your hope up by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I don't recall a single instance where they've actually required compensation, let alone refunds, be paid to someone who fell for the misleading advertising before it got pulled.

      Can't you already just return stuff in the UK if it doesn't do what it says on the tin? This seems like low-hanging fruit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    36. Re:don't get your hope up by lgw · · Score: 1

      It was direct conversation. "Will the game have X?" "Yes, it will have X" (sometimes with gameplay footage). But no X.

      Games can get away with some of that, if the game is actually good, as we all know sometimes a feature get removed at the last minute because it just isn't working out. But NMS basically delivered nothing beyond the engine. It was a tech demo, with no actual content.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    37. Re:don't get your hope up by lgw · · Score: 1

      Once you start taking money from customers, you can't go around lying about what the product will be. And it wasn't "we want to put in X", it was "Yes, the game will have X" (sometimes with gameplay footage).

      Plus, there were bogus screenshots on the Steam page too, but that's almost beside the point.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    38. Re:don't get your hope up by CronoCloud · · Score: 1, Interesting

      that ships will handle differently based on their looks

      They do! Those big firefly-esque ones handle differently than the little colonial-viper-ish ones.

      that you can grief other players ("A little bit, yeah")

      Technically, he's right. You could do it by going to a world someone will later return to and mining resources, they were planning on getting, or taking a crashed ship, or if they did any terraforming with the grenades, using your own grenades to destroy what they did. (If you do enough terraforming, it sticks)

      And I do believe that selling enough of certain items to vendors will change the prices offered. You sell enough Emeril to a vendor...it will lower the price it offers.

      Now maybe that's not using an x-ray cheat in an FPS to constantly sniper shoot someone, but it is a form of griefing.

    39. Re:don't get your hope up by CronoCloud · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't know....maybe wait for the actual reviews? Yeah, that does mean we have to wait a bit more when a new game comes out.

      Admittedly, there have been/are games that I would pre-order, or get on day 1 or 2, but they'd be from some specific developers in specific genres and in specific series.

      Bethesda, Bioware, Blizzard for example. Squaresoft in the past, but not today.

      I wouldn't probably worry about reading console-specific reviews for games that got an earlier release on the PC or another platform and were well regarded. (Divinity, Wasteland 2, Day of the Tentacle, that sort of thing.)

      I also tend to trust print or "traditional professional game website" reviews more than dudebro "pro" youtubers, I'd trust the opinions of some random gamer who only streams once a month or so, than bearded 20 year old who wants to be the next hyperactive PeePeeDie

    40. Re:don't get your hope up by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      That 100 hour thing, is utterly arbitrary, it really depends on what was being sold. So if the advertising is, buy No Mans Sky and play for 100 hours before getting utterly bored and stop playing the game but if they are marketing infinite interesting game play and do not provide it, than 100 or 200 hours, yep, money back. People playing the game bored shitless for hour on hour hoping to eventually find the interesting part, only to get really pissed off with nothing but empty repetition have good reason to be pissed off and not only should they get a refund, they should be paid for their valuable time lost investing effort in a game that did not reward it, as they claimed it would. So not only the money back, but paid for the time to buy and spend and install the game, as well as the labour they invested in the game ;D.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    41. Re:don't get your hope up by antdude · · Score: 1

      Free playable samplers.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    42. Re: don't get your hope up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You don't get your money back when a movie doesn't live up to the trailer hype (Star Wars Ep1??)

      Sorry. That's the way life is. Stop believing the hype, and stop pre-ordering like a fucking moron.

    43. Re:don't get your hope up by Boronx · · Score: 1

      If you pre-order based on hype, you are dumb. Improve yourself.

    44. Re:don't get your hope up by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      Yes, but that's covered by legislation and consumer rights bodies that are entirely separate from what the ASA deals with. Their remit is solely misleading and fraudulent advertising and it does not touch on the product itself; you could have a completely worthless product but provided your advert does not misrepresent it then there's not a lot that the ASA can do about the product *or* the advert.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    45. Re:don't get your hope up by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      I don't know....maybe wait for the actual reviews? Yeah, that does mean we have to wait a bit more when a new game comes out.

      The "traditional professional game website" reviewers were falling all over it and jerking themselves off about how great the title was. Those were also the same sites fawning over pieces of shit like Dragon Age 2, and threw a hissyfit calling consumers "entitled" over the complete shitshow that was the Mass Effect 3 ending.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    46. Re:don't get your hope up by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Their ruling gives people something to cite when requesting refunds from the seller. The law says that products must be "as described". They are not the seller (not the game developer, the place you bought it from) can either rectify the problem or give you a refund.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    47. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      So I should base my decision whether or not I buy a game on the recommendation of someone who makes his living reviewing games (and hence his income is dependent on people looking at his reviews), exists in a system where being the first to deliver is key (first review gets eyeballs, being 2 days late is ... useless), probably gets the game early from the company to put out a review and will nearly certainly be removed from the "gets game early for free" list if he calls it a stinker and the bomb of the year?

      I ... I'll go with the screenshot, the chance of it being honest is higher.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    48. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      The last game I remember that actually had a sampler that represented the game at least halfway decently was Tropico 4. That was, what, 5 years ago?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    49. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Friends don't use friends as canaries.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    50. Re: don't get your hope up by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Under the Consumer Rights Act and the earlier Sale of Goods Act, you are entitled to a refund for a variety of reasons. Any claims made by the seller that influenced your decision and are false gives you grounds for a refund (or a replacement with a version that meets these requirements). I had the battery on an Apple laptop fail after the warranty expired, but because of the SoGA they replaced it without quibble: their website claimed that it would retain 80% of its charge after 300 discharge cycles and the system monitor showed that it was retaining about 15% of its charge after about 120 complete cycles.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    51. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      I honestly don't get Kickstarter. Basically, what it is is a venture capitalist venue for dummies. And I mean that in the most pejorative sense possible.

      Kickstarter projects are by definition rather high risk ventures. You are investing into something that is being built. But people treat it like they're just buying something that IS already built, albeit with some rather insane delivery times. That this has to lead to disappointment is a given.

      There is a pretty good reason "ordinary" VCs want equity when they back you with money. They are carrying the risk together with you. And there is a pretty good chance that the money is gone because the project never materializes. They accept a high risk, so they want a high reward. That's sensible.

      What people on Kickstarter do is to accept a high risk for a pittance of return. What do you usually get? You get the product they try to produce. Maybe at a reduced price (read: at cost), maybe in some superspecial edition that ONLY backers get (and everyone who later pays a buck extra).

      Sorry, but if you accept that deal, you better have other reasons to back the project (like, say, you really, really want to see this done and you love it SO much that you'll willingly throw away money for the CHANCE to MAYBE see it happen).

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    52. Re: don't get your hope up by spongman · · Score: 1

      You would if the trailer was full of amazing stuff that wasn't in the feature.

    53. Re:don't get your hope up by Rei · · Score: 3, Insightful

      More to the point, a lot of the statements made by Sean / Hello Games and their actions seem to have been deliberately designed to keep people in past the refund point. They spent a lot of time plugging the concept that there's "secrets" and "easter eggs", that planets / star systems get more interesting the closer one gets to the center, etc. Then - after someone managed to get to the center on the first day by grinding nonstop all day (the game is extremely focused on grind), their first reaction was to.... quadruple the grind with a day-one patch (introducing a distance-measuring bug at the same time). Basically:

      1) Tell people that there's amazing things at the center
      2) Make it take a long time for people to actually get there
      3) By the time people discover that there's nothing there, they're long past the time that they can claim a refund

      The very nature of the game works against players in this regard. A player's first thought, upon discovering that they're not finding anything like in the trailers is, "Well, there's 18 quadrillion planets... the stuff in the trailers must exist somewhere, the game can't be just the derpy stuff I've been encountering so far." By the time one has explored a statistically significant number of planets to come to the realization that, no, they've basically seen the whole game, that it really is that shallow... they're long past the time in which they can claim a refund. The game is also packed with "trophies" for doing trivial actions - which is also something companies take into account when deciding whether to give refunds ("Sorry, you've already done X % of the trophies....")

      It's amazing how many people you find (or at least used to find ;) ) on the reddit sub for the game who seem to basically be trying to find a way to make themselves enjoy the game while they searched for things that they had been led to believe existed. They usually transitioned from this phase to very angry as they learned the extent of the fakery. Even the named stars you see in the loading screen aren't actually places people have named, they're just a hard-coded list.

      Don't get me wrong, there are some people who actually enjoy it. But they're an extremely small number; the game is approaching half a percent of its initial player base. For a while most seemed to be using it as a screenshot-generating walking simulator. Now a lot of them seem to be spending their time carving rocks into very poor approximations of statues via the crude mining system.

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    54. Re:don't get your hope up by Rei · · Score: 1

      Indeed, it's amazing how many people on the NMS reddit sub have written posts about "I'm trying to find a way to enjoy this game and it hasn't been working... please make suggestions!"

      Sadly, you can't force fun. I think people would have been a lot more likely to forgive the missing features and even the explicit unambiguous lies** if the game had at least been fun. Except that it's not. HG is terrible at gameplay design. Their formula for gameplay is really simple: "don't let them get hurt, make everything available and easy to acquire, and then - so that the game isn't over in a matter of minutes - load the game down with grind." And if people finish too quickly? "Dramatically increase the grind."

        ** While a lot of people singled out the multiplayer lie as a big one (where even the manufacturers had been duped, with the boxes having to add a sticker to cover up the multiplayer label), the whole planetary dynamics one may be even more brazen. With multiplayer, they tried to pretend that the reason players couldn't see each other was because the servers were overloaded - even though there's no player model in the game files, no attempts to send packets, no open ports, no references to multiplayer anywhere in the game files, day/night cycles and NPC positions aren't synced between instances, and you can outright pause the game. But in the rotation case, after having made fun of games that just use skyboxes and talked up their real-world dynamics, they made up this whole story about how playtesters had been "confused" by things moving around, so they "slowed down" planetary motion. The reality is, of course, that they use skyboxes. Nothing moves relative to anything else, and nothing can; planets are just placed at random coordinates in a box. You can't have things orbit the sun when the sun is just a painting and doesn't even match the location of your light source. Unless they want us to believe that to "slow down rotation", rather than simply setting speeds to zero, they removed their entire solar system model and entire lighting model and re-did them with an entirely faked one.

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    55. Re:don't get your hope up by Rei · · Score: 1

      More to the point, they continued lying about the content right up to launch (e.g. incl. at the release party) and in tweets after the release (the "slowed down planet rotation", the "people can't see each other because too many people are playing" lie, etc).

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    56. Re: don't get your hope up by Rei · · Score: 1

      Nice reading comprehension. In the game files. The game files distributed contain the actual assets used by the game, and then a bunch of random stuff not used by the game, in different directories. These unused assets range all the way to the whimsical, such as a lego-man dummy player model on a unicycle, to a monkey in a hat, to the Fallout logo. Among the "not used by the game" stuff are the files that were used to fake the E3 demo, in an "E3" directory. These models are only partially rigged, and thus could not actually be used in the game. More to the point, if you try to include a model that large in the game, you can't even see it. Creatures in game don't behave like in the trailer, their actions don't affect the landscape like in the trailer, etc - all of that was hard-coded. Faked.

      Really, once you start digging into the game files, it's amazing the depth that their fakery went. Even the "player-named star systems" that you see during the loading screen are just from a hard-coded list in the game files.

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    57. Re:don't get your hope up by Rei · · Score: 2

      They do! Those big firefly-esque ones handle differently than the little colonial-viper-ish ones.

      No, they don't. They all have the same speed, turning radius, etc. The only difference is that on the big ones, when you get out you can take falling damage ;)

      You could do it by going to a world someone will later return to and mining resources

      Nope. It has no effect. Resources don't sync between instances.

      they were planning on getting, or taking a crashed ship, or if they did any terraforming with the grenades, using your own grenades to destroy what they did. (If you do enough terraforming, it sticks)

      No, it distinctly does not. And this has been known since the first day after release. Two players even sat around mining stuff in front of each other - even day/night and locations of sentinels, etc aren't synced between player instances. Heck, more to the point, if you mine something, leave the system, then go back to the same spot, all of your changes will be lost, even in your own local instance.

      And I do believe that selling enough of certain items to vendors will change the prices offered. You sell enough Emeril to a vendor...it will lower the price it offers.

      It does not. More to the point, it escapes me how you could not realize this, as this is the way most people make money - searching out a starred system and selling the same item over and over again, because the price remains fixed no matter how much you sell.

      Is there anything more you'd like to just make up about the game? Or did you pick up a copy from Bizarro Universe or something that's a different game from the one that the rest of us have?

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    58. Re:don't get your hope up by Rei · · Score: 1

      Nothing that the person wrote in that post is in any way accurate.

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    59. Re:don't get your hope up by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      Not valid at all. What if you watch a film hoping it will get better. But it doesn't. By your logic the media has been consumed, except it was a pile of crap. I believe under such circumstances one is entitled to a refund.

      I disagree, refunds for defective products only in most cases. Buyers remorse is no excuse for a refund. If you buy a movie ticket and end up not enjoying the movie then shit one for you. If you buy a movie ticket and it ends up being an opera then you might have a point.

      --
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    60. Re:don't get your hope up by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      What's wrong with horse meat?

      Nothing in itself, as long as it's advertised as horse meat.

      In countries where horse meat isn't generally eaten (like here in the UK and I assume the US), it's usually synonymous with illegal attempts to pass off potentially spoiled or poor quality meat as something else.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    61. Re:don't get your hope up by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      It may come as a surprise, but there are actually honest people out there who want to deliver what they promise. They are actually, believe it or not, the majority of businesspeople out there.

      I know some pretty disillusioned contributors to Kickstarter projects that would say otherwise.

      I know it's heretical to say this on slashdot, but why not just not invest in Kickstarter projects and wait for a viable product from a real company instead?

      At the very least you should treat your contribution as a mixture of donation and gamble.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    62. Re:don't get your hope up by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 1

      Read it again. Given a 2 hr movie, he's paying $0.50 per hour of entertainment.

    63. Re:don't get your hope up by Triklyn · · Score: 1

      more or less. only stuff that I think won't get done except for with kickstarter support. and i'd much rather see done than not done.

      think the last thing I backed was wasteland 2. don't really love it that much, but i support them making those types of games.

    64. Re: don't get your hope up by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 1

      If what you say is true and tested by you, then the theaters you go to absolutely suck and you should stop giving them money in the first place.

      Though rare, there have been a few times that I've received a refund on a movie that was so utterly bad that no one in the chain deserved to get my money. The most recent notable instance was the 2011 remake of "The Thing." Granted since then I've become a hell of a lot more selective in what I'm willing to go to the theater for.

      Finally, before someone says "You haven't received a refund after sitting through the entirety of a movie," yes, I have. I have sat through an entire movie, thoroughly hated it, and received a refund afterward without being grilled about it. This situation only ever happened twice, when I was with a group of friends carpooling and there was nothing else within walking distance to occupy my time while I waited for them to finish. I always had my reasoning statement to back up my request, but I've not once had to use it.

    65. Re:don't get your hope up by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      Showing your age there. There's gamers that can legally drink but have never seen a game sampler produced in their lifetimes.

      I'm sorry but demos are still very much a thing, especially in the the console scene, the stores have sections for them. Not every game gets one sure, but plenty do.

      --
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    66. Re:don't get your hope up by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      Friends don't use friends as canaries.

      Perhaps, you were the Canary?

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
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    67. Re: don't get your hope up by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Only... it's not in the game, tard.
      The game features procedurally generated planets, which was a huge selling point, and they backed it with a set of three planets that were NOT procedurally generated. They were manually made and shown as "random stuff we just found by playing the game, now".

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    68. Re:don't get your hope up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      $1/hr is a solid base. But there are plenty of games I would happily pay $60 for that only really have 10-20 hours of content (1 play through).

      Bastion comes to mind (although I have to admit I never would have played it if it were marked up to $60. Knowing how amazing it is afterwards, I often wonder if there's a way I can support them with my money other than just buying multiple copies of the game to share with my friends.)

    69. Re:don't get your hope up by Maritz · · Score: 2

      This was covered fairly extensively in other articles. People are making a fairly reasonable argument which is that they pressed ahead thinking the 'good' content was still to come. They had a reasonable belief that this other content existed, because they'd seen all the trailers and previews showing that stuff.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    70. Re:don't get your hope up by Maritz · · Score: 1

      I'm not a math genius but it would appear to be that 0.50 goes into 2 four times, not twice...

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    71. Re:don't get your hope up by Ranbot · · Score: 1

      Should force Steam to issue refunds for anybody that wants one who bought before that point though.

      Steam already has a consumer-friendly refund policy... They give full no-questions-asked refunds on all purchases within 14 days and 2 hours or less play time; and refunds within 48 hours of purchase as long as tradeable in-game items have not been used or sold. Read it here: http://store.steampowered.com/...

      I think that's plenty flexible for someone to figure out if a game is living up to its advertising.

    72. Re:don't get your hope up by Ranbot · · Score: 1

      Fuck off with your caveat emptor bullshit.

      Don't blame the victim.

      If someone doesn't realize that game advertisers have been exaggerating their product since the first day Pong hit the store shelves that's not being a victim, that's being utterly naive and stupid about how the whole advertising industry works. Buyer beware.

      I would also use a different term than "victim" for people who failed to use Steam's no-questions-asked refund policy on all game purchases within 48 hours; or within 14 days and less than 2 hours of game time. http://store.steampowered.com/...

    73. Re:don't get your hope up by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 1

      Read it aga...oh never mind. I'll spell it out for ya, Francis.

      $2 Theater on Half-Price Tuesdays.

      Normal price for a movie: $2.

      Half-Price: $1.

      $1 divided by a 2 hr movie = $0.50 per hour.

      Got it, now?

    74. Re:don't get your hope up by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Considering that I rarely buy games before they make it into the bargain bin, that's highly unlikely.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    75. Re:don't get your hope up by cwsumner · · Score: 2

      Steam's refund policy was never intended to be a solution to fraud. Fraud is a different charge that can put people in jail. Just because nobody died, doesn't make it Ok.

      So complain to the people that handle fraud cases, police, justice dept, or what is appropriate where you live.

    76. Re: don't get your hope up by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Stop preordering like fucking morons.

      I almost exclusively buy and play games over one year after initial release. You get the better deals, you get all the bugs patched, you get the real reviews after the hype has settled, you potentially get mods and other community improvements, you might get all the DLC included...
      Basically, it's the much better deal and the much better gaming experience all way round.

      Preordering a black box full of promises and then bitching about the contents make you look like a fucking moron.

    77. Re:don't get your hope up by Rei · · Score: 1

      Love that analogy!

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    78. Re:don't get your hope up by Magius_AR · · Score: 1

      Those were also the same sites fawning over pieces of shit like Dragon Age 2, and threw a hissyfit calling consumers "entitled" over the complete shitshow that was the Mass Effect 3 ending.

      You must not have waited long enough. Dragon Age 2 has an 82 metascore (anything around 80 is thoroughly average on that site) and a 4.4 User Score (abyssmal). Mass Effect 3 has a fair metascore of 89, given the fact everything other than the ending was awesome about that game.

      Seeing as how my general rule is to ignore anything under 80 on Metacritic and to filter out everything in the 80-85 range based on User Scores, I'd say the system works.

  2. Long overdue by MitchDev · · Score: 4, Informative

    Long overdue to start making these game companies follow the same truth in advertising laws other companies have to obey...

    1. Re:Long overdue by phorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Totally agree. NMS is really just the current culmination of years of rot. The whole industry is rotten - especially when pre-orders started becoming a big thing - with promise big and under-deliver being a common theme.

      Of course, one could say that about a lot of the software industry in general, not just games. At least with games there are ads and demos which misrepresented the end-product that one can use as evidence.

    2. Re:Long overdue by HBI · · Score: 1

      I never understood the concept of pre-order anyway. Why would I want to plunk down money for a game I haven't seen, months or weeks in advance? Are they going to run out of copies on release day? Maybe if it's really great, but very unlikely.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    3. Re:Long overdue by phorm · · Score: 2

      Yeah, pretty much. These days it's "pre-order our game and get a portion of the stuff that would normally have been part of the full game, but is now DLC. Oh, and a fancy box/mini-figure/skin"

    4. Re:Long overdue by billcopc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even in the age of physical copies, pre-order made little sense. If a product is successful, you make more of that product to sell. If your supply chain can't keep up with demand, you build more production capacity to capture that demand before a competitor does.

      In the digital age, consumers have zero need to pre-order. There is no scarcity. If anything, publishers should thank their lucky stars that we still pay retail prices for a file that costs less than a penny to deliver, instead of blowing roughly half the sticker price on packaging, distribution, mark-up and overstock.

      Pre-orders are basically rewarding big publishers for harassing us with obnoxious marketing campaigns.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    5. Re:Long overdue by Tharkkun · · Score: 2

      Yeah, pretty much. These days it's "pre-order our game and get a portion of the stuff that would normally have been part of the full game, but is now DLC. Oh, and a fancy box/mini-figure/skin"

      Here's the thing. You can pre-order anything, especially digital copies. But you don't have to pick it up. So if you find out 2 days later from reviews of the game that it isn't something you like you can still refund it.

    6. Re:Long overdue by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      They know damn well pre-ordering games makes no sense. That's why they engage in the scummy tactic of making DLC exclusively for pre-order copies. And by DLC, of course, I mean content that's already present on the physical copy.

    7. Re:Long overdue by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

      Pre-Orders doubly reward the publisher. A price premium on the pre-order. And all those customers buy in before they see what the current DLC scam will be.

    8. Re:Long overdue by MitchDev · · Score: 1

      True, I was including all software, not just games ;)

    9. Re:Long overdue by MitchDev · · Score: 1

      In a digital world, it's not like they are going to run out of copies to sell. It's almost like a kickstarter project minus kickstarter....

    10. Re:Long overdue by MitchDev · · Score: 1

      Not to mention the lack of anything resembling a manual anymore....

    11. Re:Long overdue by gameboyhippo · · Score: 1

      And this is why I only trust the promo videos of Nintendo. Even when their 3DS games look like junk blown up on a 55inch TV, they don't flinch and try to smooth things out to make it look closer to what the gamer would actually experience.

      I can't wait for Nintendo 7.

    12. Re:Long overdue by MitchDev · · Score: 1

      Nintendo 7? NX? The thing that really is just starting to sound (especially with Nintendo trying to be all mysterious about it) like a DS with a TV jack?

  3. Not impressed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No man's sky was advertised on deep adventure with a lot of new things to discover. I bought the game before launch. The result? Grinding, again and again. While it was fun at first to learn a new word, seeing that even learning 150 words don't seems to affect very much the gameplay, only some gift that aliens can give to you when you're answering correctly their questions, it's kind of booring.

    The ship manoeuvrability is close to none, the big ships you're seeing is not avalaible to buy..... No really what's I've paid for.

    1. Re:Not impressed by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Funny

      A friend described it as "Like Elite Dangerous, if you stripped everything interesting out of it and designed it for kindergartners."

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    2. Re:Not impressed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The questions are: "Have you learned your lesson?" and "Will you ever preorder a game again?"

      If you answer "yes" to the second question, then your answer to the first is "no". And nothing in the industry will ever change.

    3. Re:Not impressed by Tom · · Score: 1

      And here I was wondering if it's worth taking a look after the inevitable price-drop that will follow the bad PR. Thanks for saving me from that. Love Elite too much (though the original still is the only real one).

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    4. Re:Not impressed by Briareos · · Score: 1

      Or "Baby's First Elite Dangerous", according to Yahtzee...

      --

      "I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole

  4. NAtive resolution by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    >> has also been criticized for showing No Man's Sky with higher quality graphics than can be attained in-game.

    It definately looks like on the PC version at least, they're rendering it at a much lower resolution than the screen resolution then upscaling it.

    My guess is that because its a small team, the PC version has been intentionally shot in the foot so that they can use the same code for both it and the console version, rather than have to do any more work.

  5. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Grammar*

  6. Re:What? by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Informative

    > 2) Grammer??

    I think you mean Grammar. Pot meet kettle.

  7. Re:What? by war4peace · · Score: 1

    Did somebody order a large portion ow whoooosh?

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  8. Re:awwww, how pathetic by war4peace · · Score: 1

    Sean Murray, is that you?

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  9. Re:Consoles, anyone? by GrumpySteen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The artwork on Atari 2600 cartridges boxes was never presented as the way the actual game looked and it certainly wasn't a gameplay video that showed things that aren't in the game.

  10. Re:Long overdue (say what?) by stevez67 · · Score: 1

    What is this "truth in advertising" you refer to? The purpose of advertising is to sell things to people that they don't need and likely can't afford, and that can't be done through truth in advertising. I have yet to see an ad for a game that is not "enhanced" in some way. The same is true for most consumer products; they're photo-shopped more than supermodels

  11. Fraud by HBI · · Score: 1

    I think people are missing the basic concept of "fraud" and how it invalidates a contractual relationship. Probably a lesson worth learning before you keep getting unlubed penetration from companies for the rest of your life.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:Fraud by Ranbot · · Score: 1

      I think people are missing the basic concept of "fraud" and how it invalidates a contractual relationship. Probably a lesson worth learning before you keep getting unlubed penetration from companies for the rest of your life.

      You're right and now I'm am totally going to sue Nintendo and Capcom for misleading me with their cover art on Megaman 1. The game didn't look anything like the advertising! https://goo.gl/images/t6Se07

      My point being that advertising trying making games [or any product really] look better than they actually are has been going on since Pong and shouldn't surprise anyone. IMO, the complaint against No Man's Sky fits better in the "consumer beware" column than fraud.

  12. Re:What? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Cheers!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  13. Meh, just stick to Elite on the 64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Works great.

  14. Re:What? by Dishevel · · Score: 2

    To be fair, he failed at spelling, not grammar.

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  15. I thought there were bigger issues than that. by Ecuador · · Score: 2

    I thought there were bigger issues than just souped-up screenshots/videos. I mean, I know that people bought this thinking that it is a vast, procedurally-generated "universe" that was persistent/simultaneous for all users so you could conceivably "meet" someone (and it was indicated that it was the only way you could "see" how you "look" in the game).
    Which would have been an amazing feat of engineering, but it turned out they were lying and simply relying on the "vastness" that gave a low probability for two users to be close enough to discover it is impossible to meet (which is, of course, exactly what happened a week or so after it was released). Vast procedural universes that were not persistent/simultaneous for all users are a few magnitudes less impressive and have been done since the 80's (in fact they could fit in a floppy disk - see Elite/Elite II) and it is not how this was described.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:I thought there were bigger issues than that. by Tharkkun · · Score: 2

      I thought there were bigger issues than just souped-up screenshots/videos. I mean, I know that people bought this thinking that it is a vast, procedurally-generated "universe" that was persistent/simultaneous for all users so you could conceivably "meet" someone (and it was indicated that it was the only way you could "see" how you "look" in the game). Which would have been an amazing feat of engineering, but it turned out they were lying and simply relying on the "vastness" that gave a low probability for two users to be close enough to discover it is impossible to meet (which is, of course, exactly what happened a week or so after it was released). Vast procedural universes that were not persistent/simultaneous for all users are a few magnitudes less impressive and have been done since the 80's (in fact they could fit in a floppy disk - see Elite/Elite II) and it is not how this was described.

      Two people also were in the exact spot in the universe but couldn't see each other. They blamed it on the network load of the servers which it could've been but my guess is they didn't expect people to communicate outside the game to find each other. Once they did their bluff was called and not being able to find someone in the vast universe was actually not being able to see them.

  16. LOL, very long... like since the first video game. by DarthVain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Look at how Atari games were sold... Think that image on the cartridge has any meaning? Remember Nintendo Power magazine? Remember like every back of box to every video game ever sold? More recently, remember youtube videos of every cut scene ever?

    It's been so prevalent for so long, its now common practice for companies to embed "Actual Game Footage" in videos now because we've been lied to for so long.

    Anyway from all accounts it was all very sleazy, sketchy, and douchy what they did. However... The ending not what you thought it was supposed to be? Remember Mass Effect 3?

    I doubt this will do anything, even in the UK where the lawsuit was filed. The company is probably already toast, in reputation if not financially... yet.

    The only game I ever pre-ordered was Masters of Orion 3... All this type of thing does is delay sales for the industry. I looked at buying No Man's Sky... But thought to myself, I think I'll wait until the reviews come out. Glad I did. Just more gamers reluctant to jump on new games right away.

    Just waiting for Star Citizen to actually release as advertised...

  17. Re:Long overdue (say what?) by starX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The purpose of advertising is to sell things to people that they don't need and likely can't afford, and that can't be done through truth in advertising.

    Spoken like a crook. And there are a lot of crooks and snake oil salesman out there, and this is clearly within that particular genre. But the purpose of advertising is to connect people with a product they might need or want, and to convince them that they need or want it. At the end of the day, if I want to sell you product X, all I can do is talk about its advantages, and how it might help you personally, and I can do all of that without ever telling you a lie. You must decide if you need it / want it or can or can't afford it.

    On the other hand, if I do lie to you, and tell you product X will do something it won't, then I have committed a form of fraud, and you have a reasonable civil tort against me. But a reasonable degree of photo manipulation may be expected due to the nature of the medium. Breakfast cereal, for example, is filmed with glue instead of milk because milk goes bad REALLY fast under the heat of a studio light. An image may be photo-shopped to restore definition or color lost in the process of photography. That doesn't mis-represent the product so much as it helps present the best-face of the product. I might reasonably want to show my video game sprites rendered by the best commercial hardware available, but if I render that at colors and resolutions impossible to achieve with currently available hardware, than I have committed fraud. And it seems the NMS developers have done that. /P.

  18. ... pretty much got what I expected ... by ninjagin · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've got about 140 hours in on PC, and I may be at the crest of what I can do. I've got my suit and tool and ship maxed out for inventory, with suit and ship maxed out with upgrades. Some 20,000,000 units in the bank. Learned 2 of the 3 alien languages (halfway through the last one, by now). I'm pretty much down to achievements at this point, and jumping from system to system. Visually, it's got a lot of appeal. It's pretty soothing to play -- a bit like "Endless Ocean". I didn't really expect to get great spaceflight mechanics or anything like that. I pretty much grind out on burglarizing Operations Centers and Manufacturing Facilities, looking for new tech blueprints to make a handful of technologies and materials I don't already have ... and learn that last language. It's beginning to get a little dull.

    So what's it missing?

    • Well, the NPC aliens are pretty much finger-puppets that iterate through a set of 4-5 interaction templates and then repeat them. They don't walk around anywhere or appear outside of the stock set of buildings.
    • The economy is pretty simple and even though it is nominally "galactic", you can't find or buy everything at trade terminals. There is seemingly no influence of supply or demand in it.
    • The animal life is kinda cool to watch and interact with. There ware some truly bizarre creatures out there. But, your only interaction paths seem to be feed and or shoot 'em. It gets tiresome just running around scanning them to 'collect them all'. I've only seen worlds with about a dozen or so animals, so it's not terribly rich.
    • The flora is pretty much static, but there are some grassy worlds where there's a lot of movement in the terrain, but it's simplified down to just the grass that moves, and everything moves together at the same time in a somewhat unsettling rocking oscillation that I can't handle for more than 5 minutes at a time. There are other games like Crysis where the wind will move leaves in the trees, or your shots will blow away branches on the trees, but we have no detail like that.
    • There's a flimsy-yet-huge quest string (Atlas) that is casually interesting, but it seems to crop up randomly to remind you that it's there. There's no notion of one thing or achievement or activity that leads you to seek out the next. There are no real side paths and the NPCs don't seem to be involved in any quest activity. It'd do well to have a bunch of quest strings, like a hundred per planet and a hundred per system (maybe rated by difficulty?) that you could sink into.
    • Each planet is a starter-world. That is, if you started the game afresh, everything you need to max everything out is pretty much right there on that first planet. Yeah, there are variations that force you to leave for other worlds (like toxic atmospheres and/or aggressive sentinels) to advance completely or get new materials, but once you have everything maxed out, 80 percent of all buildings and their loot or capabilities become so useless that they can be ignored. I don't even pick up random loot anymore to sell, because I don't have any way to spend the money and no use for the random crap, regardless. When you have all the upgrades, there's nothing left to build.
    • It just seems to lack a lot of rich creative content. I'd like to see more ship types, to have the ability to customize the appearance of the ships, too. I'd like to see and maybe build unique buildings. It would be great if I could build my own settlement or compound and be able to advertise it for visitors. Crafting for different types of suit skins and color schemes or ship types would be welcome .. anything you could sell as a finished thing. There just need to be more aliens, everywhere... outside walking around, harvesting resources, sleeping under trees, hunting creatures, visiting monoliths and ruins, shopping at trading posts, drinking in pubs, playing holographic monopoly or something. I've never run into a settlement that has more than three aliens and each on
    --
    .. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
    1. Re:... pretty much got what I expected ... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Surely this is a joke. How can you possibly have any tech blueprints left to find, 120 hours into the game? Most people essentially max out on their first planet.

      You have a serious tolerance for grind. I don't know whether I should congratulate or feel bad for you. ;)

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
    2. Re:... pretty much got what I expected ... by ninjagin · · Score: 1

      Not kidding. It's hard to know what tech blueprints are left, though, because you don't have any in-game list of them to refer to. I know I have all the ones for suit and ship and tool, but materials and some of the other ship components are more mysterious. Example: I had Atlas Pass 1 and 3, but not 2. I got 2 last night. You're right, I do have a lot of grind tolerance, and I do like crafting games. In a way, this game is a great grinder because there's a lot to see along the way, but grinding without an outlet (like making and selling) reaches a point of stale-ness. It might be cool if one could re-hab derelict spacecraft and sell them on the galactic market, maybe, as an outlet for the grind.

      --
      .. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
    3. Re:... pretty much got what I expected ... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Since it's not clear from your post, have you actually played NMS?

      The reason that most people essentially max out tech on their first planet isn't because they're "completionists", it's because there's so little content in the game. NMS is an "everything can be found everywhere in bulk" sort of game. Including tech blueprints.

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
  19. Who can we cheat if not customers? by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    Oh, so now its wrong to cheat people who have already submitted to other forms of abuse through Digital Rights Manglement?

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  20. Re:Overreaction from haters by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    Yea, just because it was completely misrepresented is no reason to complain. The paying customer still got something and that's all that matters.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  21. Re:What? by Dishevel · · Score: 2

    I have always seen it as ...
    Spelling: The rules governing the creation of words.
    Grammar: The rules governing the communication of ideas using words and punctuation.

    It is though possible that it is just the way I see it and not a fact.

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  22. Re:LOL, very long... like since the first video ga by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    Step out of the time machine. Back then you could not expect the game to look anything like the advertisment on the box. Why? Because anyone who had at least a minimum of knowledge of the matter KNEW that this is impossible with the technology back then. If an Atari 2600 game promised you "exciting racing action" you did NOT expect a first person view in 1900x1200 resolution and Dolby 7.1 sound. You had certain expectations, within the limitations of the capabilities of the console back then, and usually (!) they were fulfilled. Yes, there was a LOT of crappy Atari games, which also contributed to the eventual crash in 83, but that's not the point now. There's a lot of crap today as well, but, guess what, that crap is usually not full of unfulfilled promises.

    When you have today someone promising you different ships behaving differently, different multiplayer modes, a procedurally generated universe with multiple NPC factions waging war around you (and without your participation), and that you can take sides and that the NPC factions will react accordingly, then you can actually believe that. Because it is not only possible, it has been done before.

    This is not a completely outlandish expectation like it would be for an Atari 2600 game.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  23. Retro advertising by MtHuurne · · Score: 1

    Jesus Christ. My Atari 2600 Superman game had a cartoon of Superman on the front of the box, but only a pixillated blob in the actual game. You didn't hear about people demanding a refund because of that. Of course the advertising lies. What kind of surprise is that for anyone?

    That the game wouldn't look as good as the cartoon should have been obvious to every Atari 2600 owner. However, what did happen in the 80's is that a game with ports to multiple computer systems would have screenshots on the back of the best looking port, not of the port that was actually in the box. That was misleading, in my opinion.

  24. Re:Can we sue the makers of Dead Island then? by war4peace · · Score: 1

    I loved it.
    Dead Island had an intro which was better and more entertaining than all No Man's Sky together.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  25. I wouldn't call it just False Advertising by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    False advertising is when a product says it has features it doesn't.

    FRAUD would be more likely the term applicable for a Kickstarter that didn't provide what it promised.

    In fact, one could almost suggest it's a RICO action.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:I wouldn't call it just False Advertising by Boronx · · Score: 1

      Probably, but it really is hard to sympathize with people who want to *donate* their money to developing a video game.

    2. Re:I wouldn't call it just False Advertising by mmdurrant · · Score: 1

      Is that any different than people donating to create movies/albums/charitable efforts? People combining resources so they can pay other people to produce a product they want isn't that radical.

      --
      I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
    3. Re:I wouldn't call it just False Advertising by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Is that any different than people donating to create movies/albums/charitable efforts? People combining resources so they can pay other people to produce a product they want isn't that radical.

      If you donate money to a charity you don't expect anything back personally in return.

      If you want to be part of a group making something, you need to decide whether it's a business or hobby. Personally, I count giving money to strangers in the expectation of receiving a product later as business.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  26. Re:Whiny entitled UK gamers, nuff said. by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

    I treat it as a sort of zen-like palate cleanser between other games. Kind of like how I use Minecraft.

    In NMS I sometimes give myself a little goal say (try to find a tool upgrade) then I go around and do that. Or I use a beacon to find more points to visit then spend some time clearing points, or spend time trying to find crashed ships or mine some Emeril.

    NMS has the same kind of "physicality" to me that Minecraft does. It feels like I could "touch it" and that it feels "solid". They feel more like "places" and less like games. Lego games have the same sort of feeling, like I'm controlling an actual physical lego-whatever in some kind of super huge lego diorama.

    What bothers me the most about the game is the UI, and the lack of "save anywhere"

    To me the game would be somwhere around a 6.5 to maybe 7.5 or so on a 10 point scale. I don't recommend buying it without spending some time watching some streaming of it, or watching a friend play it, or playing a friend's copy, the game isn't for everyone. I also think that HG shouldn't be charging $59 for it. IMHO it should be in the Indie-game at the $20-$25 price point category.

  27. Re:Whiny entitled UK gamers, nuff said. by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

    (I would say just about gaming, but that's all I ever see them post about.)

    I do sometimes comment about other things, I pop up in Fedora and Linux threads now and again.

    start a blood war with CronoCloud by saying you enjoy mouse and keyboard for gaming.

    You must not have been paying attention, I like mice, they're fine, but they're not the be-all and end-all of input devices. Given my druthers in some games I prefer hybrid control systems, analog stick for movement, mouse for aiming.

    It looks like this: https://forum.warthunder.com/i...

    But I personally don't use that method with War Thunder.

    But it is keyboard movement I truly loathe, keyboards were designed for text input, not game control. Oh sure, devs put keyboard controls for action games into games because of gamers too cheap to get a frickin joystick for their C64's/DOS machines....but it wasn't optimal then and it isn't optimal now.

  28. The game is pretty bad. by under_clocker · · Score: 1

    Saw the YouTube vids on this game and decided to stear clear . No multiplayer ? And that UI looked like it was designed by k mart pastel dept ...

    1. Re: The game is pretty bad. by under_clocker · · Score: 1

      And yes , I meant to write stear and not steer as a way of implying the high bull sh factor of this game .

    2. Re: The game is pretty bad. by Purity+Of+Essence · · Score: 1

      Thanks for clearing that up?

      --
      +0 Meh
  29. Re:Long overdue (say what?) by Gussington · · Score: 1

    What is this "truth in advertising" you refer to? The purpose of advertising is to sell things to people that they don't need and likely can't afford, and that can't be done through truth in advertising.

    Maybe in the stupid world you live in. Most of the sales information I receive is in the form of Enterprise Solutions, and it has to be accurate or that company gets sued. Just because your experience is from the gutter, don't assume that is the same for all of us.

  30. Re:Overreaction from haters by Boronx · · Score: 1

    Don't pre-order.

  31. it's opposite of a sleeper.hit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    well yes if you bought it boxed.

    steam has a 2 hour refund limit by default.

    and even sony has been giving refunds for it.. which is uncommon

    anyways, with steam the problem was false trailers and rabid fanbois combo. the fanbois just said that you had not found the stuff yet.

    nms was opposite of a sleeper hit. it was a first week cash grab based on pre launch marketing lies(yes the stuff ceo says publicly IS MARKETING! yes the stage shows constitute legally as marketing!).

    and the another problem was the sean murray cultists who parroted the lies even post launch.

    also if you still doubt that the guy is full of shit with pockets full of money from the launch.. just look at his twitter now. he ia sooo full of shit. sad thing is theres games that do the promised stuff thats realistic to achieve(persistent editing of millions of planets is not one of those things).

    never ever give him a fucking cent more.

    and for some reason the fanbois also ignore, like sean, all the other games that did the promised stuff better that were released in past 30(!) years! they did nothing groundbreaking and the engine lacks the stuff that ignited the hype in the first place.

    1. Re:it's opposite of a sleeper.hit. by Rei · · Score: 1

      Indeed. I was amazed at how weak the generation engine is. Don't get me wrong, it's very pretty - they're using a good graphics engine and have artists with a good eye. But the terrain is just standard diamond-square (fractal noise terrain) modified with random hard-coded primitives. No biomes, no continents, just noise and a global sea level. The animals are just built by swapping out pieces of armatures and randomly choosing premade textures. They don't even bother to check that any of the parts make sense (lots and lots of "derpasauruses" who missed leg day), or that the metadata about the animal matches its form (it's amazing how many vegetarian T-rexes you'll encounter). Plants are often not modified at all. In a lot of cases they inexplicably put the exact same thing on numerous planets (the same aggro crab), or even every planet (the same giant coral, the same mushroom-covered rock, etc - found on every planet in the game).

      So. Weak.

      --
      Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
  32. Make your own by MayeulC · · Score: 1

    How about the community with all its great moders, designers, texturers, etc. work on its own game? Call it FreeSky or OpenSpace (maybe not), and implement every feature you wanted in the game from the start, instead of trying to force those down a game that's not designed for it.

    1. Re:Make your own by cwsumner · · Score: 1

      How about the community with all its great moders, designers, texturers, etc. work on its own game? Call it FreeSky or OpenSpace (maybe not), and implement every feature you wanted in the game from the start, instead of trying to force those down a game that's not designed for it.

      I hear that Elite-dangerous is at least trying.

      But the one I play is X-Rebirth and earlier X3-Terran conflict. Egosoft has been working on big space games for 25 years, and they have a lot of stuff working. But no multi-player.

  33. Re: LOL, very long... like since the first video g by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Wow, you sure have some rather specific taste. Maybe you should stop buying puzzle games when you're only into racing.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  34. Re:Whiny entitled UK gamers, nuff said. by Rei · · Score: 1

    I tried to convince myself that it was a "relaxing", "meditative" experience, a "palate cleanser" if you will.

    After a while, I just couldn't convince myself of even that minimal goal. It's just... nothing. The terrible gameplay actively discourages you from doing the only thing that the game really offers (exploration), and the exploration is only skin deep due to the shallowness of their generation algorithm.

    And really, how can you say NMS feels "solid", when you can walk right through the animals and things don't fall when you mine out the ground from underneath them? What's the opposite of "solid" in this context?

    --
    Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
  35. Re: Long overdue (say what?) by MitchDev · · Score: 1

    You can tell who the marketing weasels are out there when they defend these practices...

  36. Re: LOL, very long... like since the first video g by MitchDev · · Score: 1

    Yeah, most games are playable, even if they suck. AC sounds like he has no idea what he actually wants in a game, or has ridiculous expectations of them.

  37. Re:Long overdue (say what?) by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    What is this "truth in advertising" you refer to? The purpose of advertising is to sell things to people that they don't need and likely can't afford, and that can't be done through truth in advertising. I have yet to see an ad for a game that is not "enhanced" in some way. The same is true for most consumer products; they're photo-shopped more than supermodels

    There is a range of behaviour between total honesty and downright lying. In a civilised society, we try to balance things with laws so that companies can still use marketing and advertising to help sell stuff without being allowed to defraud their customers entirely.

    Now, the free market libertarian answer is to have no such laws and let everybody fight it out through the courts. Which, er, require a legal system to work. Extreme libertarians would presumably just have literal fighting, so the person with the biggest fists/guns wins.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  38. Re:How come? by Rei · · Score: 1

    I actually liked the gameplay concept. There's nothing wrong with the concept for many people. The problem is that they failed to actually deliver the concept.

    I think the difference between the concept and the reality does, however, lay bare a more important element. What most people want out of procgen isn't just that the algorithms can generate diversity... it's that they can generate scenarios that even the coders wouldn't have expected. Some algorithms can do that. Others cannot. NMS's absolutely cannot, they're just standard fractal noise terrain with random primitives, animals that are just armatures with random parts swapped out, etc. For anyone thinking of taking up the mantle of such a game after the failure of NMS, I think that's really going to be a key aspect. Because players are always going to explore worlds faster than developers can make new content, so if your engine is limited to making "things that the devels have thought of", it's always going to wear thin rather quickly.

    The real world we live in always keeps presenting new fascinating worlds every time we explore a new place, for a key reason. Real worlds are built by fluid and rigid body interactions (primarily fluid, at least on the large scale) with variable chemistry. Physical properties like viscosity vary over numerous orders of magnitude in different pressure and temperature environments, and there's thousands of different chemical constituents that can be found in bulk, depending on the environment. Furthermore, each body is exposed to anisotropic conditions (bombardment, solar radiation, Coriolis force due to its rotation, etc), and widely varying local conditions like gravity. Basically, the computer equivalent would be CFD with chemical equilibria. Now, of course you can't do some extreme-detail CFD simulation of planets in realtime. But IMHO, if you want interesting generation, you want a generation algorithm that can emulate these sort of *effects*, even if the underlying core mechanism is radically different. Terrain generation algorithms generally make a goal of emulate the effects of uplift/folding, erosion, volcanism, impacts, etc. Recognizing how radically, many-orders-of-magnitude different these can all be in different environments, and with different materials in the same environment, seems key to making landscapes that can defy even creator expectations.

    I think Pluto should be the gold standard. Before NH arrived, who would have thought that what we'd find was a giant scar facing Charon where the mantle bubbles out in supermassive convection cells, with mountain-sized icebergs drifting around the soup and collecting in iceberg-mountain ranges on the shore (just to name a couple of the really bizarre things New Horizons discovered)? The issue isn't "could you code a generation algorithm to emulate Pluto?"; of course one can. The question is, "could you code a generation algorithm that would have come up with things as weird as Pluto, without having to explicitly spell them out, without you ever having seen them before"?

    --
    Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
  39. Re:Remeber game box covers? by Rei · · Score: 1

    ASCII? You spoiled child, back in my day our games graphics were displayed with blinking readout lights on a board. Old Flashey, we used to call that board. A game of "Hit The Button At The Right Time" used to cost a dime, which was two hours wages at the time, but oh, how I sunk so many dimes into Old Flashey...

    --
    Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
  40. Re:Long overdue (say what?) by houghi · · Score: 1

    Do understand that not lying is not the same as telling the truth. I can not give you essential information and that would lead you to buy a product that does not do what you expect it to do.

    I could sell you software on a CD, but not tell you you need to buy a separate key to unlock it for 500 more. I did not lie.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  41. Re:What? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    You're assuming it was done on purpose. I do not. I think most people that complain about other people's grammar are just as bad.

    You're assuming that it was done on purpose: I am not. I think that most people who complain about other people's grammar are just as bad as the people they complain about.

    Pedantry really is the gift that goes on giving.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  42. Re:Long overdue (say what?) by Triklyn · · Score: 1

    i'm pretty sure i could sue you for a refund if you sold me a cd and then kept the keys for 500 more.

    and the judge would probably rule in my favor, and order you to pay for my court fees.

    here's the car you bought. but if you want the keys give me an extra grand.

    fuck you.