'No Man's Sky' Releases Huge New 'Foundation' Update (thenextweb.com)

"No Man's Sky changed a great deal this morning, getting new modes and a ton of gameplay tweaks thanks to update 1.1, the largest one yet," reports Kotaku. Calling it "the first of many free updates," the game's developers introduced a new Minecraft-style Creative Mode which "allows players to explore the universe without limits, and build a huge base," plus a tougher Survival Mode, "creating a much more challenging endurance experience." The Next Web calls it "features that really should have been in the game from Day One." Now, when you stumble upon a desolate outpost, you can build your own base on it, which can be upgraded with new housing, hydroponics, research, and storage buildings. If all goes well, you'll start to attract alien settlers who bring their own skills to your new society. As your stockpiles of resources begin to swell, you'll want to schlep them across the galaxy to other bases and trade terminals. Which is where freighters come in... Oh, and did I mention you can now stack items five times per inventory slot, meaning you can carry more stuff? Handy. "The discussion around No Man's Sky since release has been intense and dramatic," Hello Games announced Friday, describing update 1.1 as "putting in place a foundation for things to come... the first small step in a longer journey." Hello Games founder Sean Murray tweeted "We're getting better as quickly as we can for the players who invested in us," adding "Thank you for sticking with us." At 2 a.m. this morning, he tweeted "If you could have lived our lives over the last months, you'd know how meaningful this is," adding "Here's the update..."

Comments

So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[drinkypoo]

The news here is that a minuscule percentage of the original supposed functionality is a "new" feature.

It sounded too good to be true. Guess what?

I kickstarted the game from the Space Quest guys and well, you know. Not even thinking about backing another game until that one actually exists.

Re:So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[binarylarry]

At least they aren't like Stardock and are trying to SELL this update (to their customers who they screwed with a botched initial release).

Re:So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[Dutch Gun]

Don't worry, it's not just you. Slashdot seems to be filled with mods anxious to silence those they disagree with.

For what it's worth, I do happen to agree with you about No Man's Sky. Too little, too late. Hello Games have already been exposed as liars. And the gameplay is still going to be shallow and repetitive. A few extra features won't make up for that. I was really excited about the game too, as I'm definitely an "explorer" type gamer.

Re:So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[drinkypoo]

I was really excited about the game too, as I'm definitely an "explorer" type gamer.

Me too! That's my very favorite thing to do in a video game, explore space. But if it's only interesting once (and not all that interesting at that) then there are old games which accomplish that which I can play for five bucks.

Re:So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[Rei]

And that was the problem - they made there be absolutely no reason to explore. All resources were available everywhere, as were all types of buildings in the game. It takes away all incentive to explore, except for aesthetics. Which is great, except that since all of the creatures and plants are made of premade assets, and the terrain is just standard diamond-square fractal terrain with a handful of primitive generators / modifier functions, you run through all of the variation that the universe has to show you quickly as well.

They try to compensate for everything-being-everywhere with grind. Which is a terrible solution. People wanted NMS to explore, not to sit around waving a laser at a giant column of rock and stopping regularly to recharge the beam and shields.

And even if you did find some reason you wanted to stick around on a planet... well, you better literally never leave, because everything about the universe makes it incredibly difficult to ever get back to anywhere that you've been before. Their "goal" of getting to the center of the galaxy, that they deliberately slowed down to a painful grindy crawl and tried to prevent anything that might shortcut it, is the root of this (and of course, there's nothing at the center but a big F-U to players anyway)

If they had done proper playtesting and player feedback, they could have made a far better game. There was so much potential. Some things that could have been done to make it better were hard, but a lot of them really weren't.

Re:So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[drinkypoo]

If they had done proper playtesting and player feedback, they could have made a far better game. There was so much potential. Some things that could have been done to make it better were hard, but a lot of them really weren't.

Here's what I think happened: they made all kinds of claims about what they could do, and got someone at Sony's attention. They showed Sony an above-average demo and Sony said "sure, but we want it ready before the holidays, so you can get it out and see what breaks and get it fixed." And so they committed to a grossly overly ambitious timescale, and found out along the way that some of the things they had planned were going to be a lot more difficult than they thought. And since they're just teeny, tiny little fish, they couldn't say no when Sony said they'd better damned well have something ready to ship.

Sony has an interesting history of sometimes keeping multiplayer games running way beyond the sensible time to can them, so it's anyone's guess what's going to happen here. But I'd bet they're contractually obligated to provide a fairly sizable time span of patches and updates. They could end up positively chained to this thing.

Re:So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[Dutch Gun]

I think it's very difficult to create a randomly generated world or universe that's actually interesting to explore, because human brains are extremely good at recognizing patterns, and people start seeing those same patterns everywhere you go in that universe. The randomly generated universe created an excellent setting for a game, but I don't think that by itself was meaty enough as a game mechanic to keep people satisfied.

You can contrast this experience with Diablo I & II, where exploring a randomly generated world and fighting randomly generated enemies was the foundation of those games, but Blizzard understood that this wasn't enough by itself. Even though I'm an explorer archetype, exploration without a real goal or driving force still gets a bit boring after a while. You need layered mechanics, such as addictive loot collection or an engaging story to help complement the weaker exploration aspect.

Re:So the news is that it still doesn't make good

[kalpol]

One of the best games ever. I actually got hold of Alec Kercso in the late 90s and had a short discussion with him about Starflight, he said while developing it he had a great feeling of being a small ship in a huge universe, something no other game that I know of has really done since. In fact Minecraft is the only other game I can think of that I've played where you can really feel lost and scared in a big place.

Since when is a press release a story?

[BarbaraHudson]

And why would anyone believe, or even care, what Hello Games says now considering how far from their hype the original release was? What next - "Go to millions of systems to collect Pokemons?"

Re:Since when is a press release a story?

[thegarbz]

The real story here is that Hello Games still think they haven't burnt all their karma and their house down.

It take skill to screw up as royally as they did. Their name is forever tainted. The story here is that they still exist. I would have thought they dissolved and changed their name before daring to show themselves again.

Re:Since when is a press release a story?

[guises]

I care, a little. Everyone who didn't foolishly pre-purchse the game (you know, like you're never supposed to do) probably has some interest in whether and when it will turn into something worth playing.

Re:Since when is a press release a story?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

After a disaster like NMS, I would prefer a game developer to try to make things right, like Hello Games are doing, by releasing free content and enhancing the game, rather than simply disappearing.

But maybe I'm not so bitter about them because I didn't buy their game. I was very interested, but you could smell the hype from a mile away. And those promotional videos, you could easily tell that they were scripted and not real in-game material. So I decided to wait and see.

Really, all those butthurt kids whining about NMS need to get a clue. Don't fucking preorder and wait for the reviews.

Re:Since when is a press release a story?

[vel-ex-tech]

Just wait until Star Citizen releases. I've seen people on the forums who have spent nearly $1,000 (yes, one thousand real world US dollars) backing that game to get one of the capital ships at launch. I think only one or two of the low-end capital ships (yachts?) are playable so far, supposedly another one is coming in December with 2.6. But the single-player game, Squadron 42, was already supposed to be out and now we're just hoping we'll get a few missions come January.

I suppose at least whatever we get will blow No Man's Sky away. I'm just hoping it won't be Freelancer 2.0 with more polys. Well, scratch that. I backed it for the basic Aurora MR package and I'd be perfectly happy if it were Freelancer 2.0 with planets that actually orbit. I still play Freelancer Discovery every now and then for the hell of it. Heh, I'm sure the $1,000+ backers will raise hell, though.

I Already Stopped Playing

[TechyImmigrant]

1000 more black holes with the associated grind for each black hole to get the stuff to repair what broke in the last black hole in order to get to the center, when something might happen.

Nope.

Now they're offering that I can sit still and build stuff thus making less progress towards the galactic center.

Nope.

Re:I Already Stopped Playing

[thegarbz]

I Already Stopped Playing

EVERYONE has already stopped playing. There was 500 active players on steam last week, down from the 220,000 when the game launched.

never happy huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't even play games, but after all the negativity and hate they received... they actually dug in and made an update nobody expected to have came. i for one am glad to see them try to fix their mistakes. other game makers could learn from this because many games ship and the company takes the $ and runs, never even trying to make their customers happy. after all the hate they received, they deserve a little respect for attempting to make it right.

Re:Cut content?

[TheRealQuestor]

Don't ever believe the hype and don't always trust reviews. NMS is actually quite a fun and interesting game. For a few hours anyway then it tends to get a tad monotonous. Is it worth 60 bucks? No even on a good day. Is it worth playing? Very much so

I'm going to build a dome

[Hognoxious]

If all goes well, you'll start to attract alien settlers who bring their own skills to your new society.

Skills like drug dealing and rape?

No thanks. I'm going to build a dome over mine, and make the bug-eyed monsters pay for it.

All 400 active users will love this!

[thegarbz]

Okay so normally we joke about a low number of users when talking about Windows phones, or BeOS users. But really Steam lists 400 active users last week.

The game launched with some 220k active users which within a month was reduced to less than 10k. The game is dead. The it is truly amazing that Hello Games haven't abandoned it completely. They are literally now adding features to a game that pretty much no one plays and that has gone down as one of the (if not *the*) biggest disappointment in video game history since the release of Duke Nukem Forever, and the latter had no where near the hype surrounding it.

Re: All 400 active users will love this!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the game. I've liked it since day one. I think people over imagined and hyped it in their own mind. This is an infinite generated universe.

This is a chill type game. I'm impressed and now it just got better with base building. Then again I started on Atari 2600 & pong - so maybe I appreciate it more.

Re:All 400 active users will love this!

[drinkypoo]

The it is truly amazing that Hello Games haven't abandoned it completely.

They are probably contractually obligated to Sony. Perhaps there are more players still playing the PS4 version, so Sony hasn't yet abandoned it. When Sony does, then these jokers can, too.

Re: All 400 active users will love this!

[Rei]

"A chill type game" in an "infinite generated universe" was exactly what I was looking for in NMS - and was sorely disappointed when it turned out to be nothing more than poorly designed grind game, with the procedural generation just being randomly pieced together premade assets.

It seems neat until you wear through the veneer, and then it's... oh, this thing is just plywood held together with duct tape

Refunded

[war4peace]

What went refunded stays refunded.
Sorry Hello Games, I'm not falling for it again.

Re:Flamebait? I see my trollmod is following me

[Calydor]

So not only do ACs get ignored based entirely on being ACs, now we also ignore good points made from registered accounts based on ... the name of the account?

Welcome to kindergarten.

It starts to get more compelling, cheaper now..

[SuperKendall]

Given how the game was at $60, I decided to pass. But I see now on Amazon the game is just $20 (!) for the PS4, thinking with the update it may be worthwhile...

I head the PC player counts were pretty low, but it seems like more PS4 gamers might have stuck with it.

Foundation update

[Chris Mattern]

Hari Seldon not included.

Re:Flamebait? I see my trollmod is following me

[Dogtanian]

It's not your comments, it's your handle.

Er, what ?

I can only assume that you're not familiar with established use of the term as a somewhat (intentionally) infantile and facetious reference to an alcoholic drink and nothing more?

See Wiktionary, Oxford Reference, etc.

(Perhaps you were imagining something less pleasant? Or maybe people *do* get it, but they're just opposed to alcohol consumption in general...?!)

It does quite a bit actually

[HalAtWork]

- Base building
- Teleporters work
- Farming / Biodome / Specimen collection
- Making camp
- Setting up harvesters
- Leave messages for other players on terminals
- Purchase/manage/customize/enter freighters
- Grow crops on board, recruit crew
- New resources & tech
- More NPC variation
- Better cockpit indicators and panels in ships, more scanning options
- New anti aliasing options on PS4
- Added free exploration and survival game modes
- Tons of audio/visual/gameplay tweaks

So it adds a lot of what was missing, and some additional stuff.

Missing:
- Sand worms
- Varied planetary physics
- In-atmosphere battles
- Rivers
- Ringed planets
- Hacking locked doors
- Radio chatter
- Seeing other players
- Asteroid landings

The missing list is getting smaller.