As someone who played this game on start I want to share that I enjoyed it. This game was and still is a chill exploration experience at the core. There’s a lot of stuff bolted on top, but it’s just a busywork. If you enjoy that kind of games you’ll love it.
Another thing to point out: technical patching is top notch. I’m talking about how fast they come around to support new console, new VR helmet etc.
Somewhat of an aside but, personally, I also found GTA V and Red dead redemption 2 to be boring because these games didn't respect my time. I could play for two hours and still feel like I accomplished nothing except for "interacting with the world".
> I could play for two hours and still feel like I accomplished nothing except for "interacting with the world".
Two hours is like three or twelve story missions, depending on where in the story you are. Did you spend most of that time farting around doing stuff that wasn't main story [0], or are you just not really into the stories being told? IME, Rockstar's 3D games have always been not-all-that-great third-person shooters, but made up for it with the storytelling and world-building.
> ...because these games didn't respect my time.
If I were Global Overlord for a month, I'd permanently banish the sentiment "This video game doesn't respect my time". It's fine to say "This game bored me." or "I just didn't enjoy this game.". Unless we're talking about predatory "free" to "play" games [1] that survive by deliberately reaching deep into the wallets of whales, mixing pride into the discussion and claiming the injury of disrespect is very silly.
[0] ...of which Red Dead 2 has an absolute assload -most of which will bore folks to tears who don't really dig the "late 1800's outlaw going on about his day" thing-, and GTA V has a fair bit...
[1] Games that you have to pay up front to play can also belong in this category.
RDR2's intro absolutely did not respect my time. I sat down with an hour free to play it, and in that time, I did not reach a save point. There was some story, but it was very slow, and I had precisely zero interest in repeating it. I ran out of time, turned it off and never came back.
Almost all of the story missions are:
1) walk/drive/ride to this place
2) Talk to NPC
3) Do an extremely boring task (follow someone, drive somewhere, etc)
4) Walk somewhere else
5) Talk to someone else.
6) Collect XP or another reward.
Yeah. Like, the train heist and other cool gameplay segments were fun. But the missions to go to some random town and talk to someone and escort them back? Horrible.
That’s fine, it has a sustained concurrent players online of > 7k every day for the last 6 months [0]. Few games on Steam achieve that.
While several people are complaining about a one-time-cost game with an absurd amount of updates that had a rough launch, thousands of people are continuously happy, the subreddit expresses joy. It’s okay to “not get it”; but at some level, this much hate and dogpiling over a game that’s not harmful and not fostering a toxic community is … embarrassing for those participating in the hate.
What hate? What dogpiling? People are simply talking about how they aren't into the game and find it shallow.
I sense a lot of unwarranted defensiveness from certain fans of the game. Having sustained concurrent players on Steam isn't going to transform the game into something it's not for the people who just aren't into it.
I've relaunched it multiple times over the years when a new content update comes out, and I get the same feeling of shallow blandness every time and move on. The core gameplay simply does not do it for me.
> I don't know where the negative comments are coming from. Maybe players who played early.
A lot of people simply aren't as enamored with the shallow gameplay, even in the current version. I'm not surprised that they've sold a lot over the years since they've been putting out free content updates year after year to lure people into reinstalling it every six months or so.
I'm really pleased for the devs and I like that they stuck to their guns and found their audience but...
as someone who decided to get on board at the start of this year I understand the negative comments. I'd really like to explore the universe and run a space station and whatever else but my 5 hours in the game were all schlepping round basically identical planets collecting different coloured stuff to convert into other different coloured stuff.
all of that said, Im glad NMS exists and that people get a lot out of it even though it's not for me. Hell, I prefer games that are divisive than something that's just blandly acceptable to the largest number of players like. alot of modern AAA titles.
Yeah, whilst I probably wouldn't go that far I take your point. I suppose the difference is in how people respond to the way games dress up their mechanisms and how interesting they find the decisions around the processes they perform.
The negative comments, including the one I'll make here, are from fans who want the game to be more than it is and see the potential but continually get disappointed with its biggest flaw.
That flaw is that for all the features they bolt on for free, the actual depth never feels that much deeper. It feels like the shallow pond got wider.
The worlds and universe still feel repetitive and empty. There is very little emergent gameplay. Mechanics are not complex compared to simulator sandboxes like E:D or more in depth survival crafter games.
And so you end up with what often feels like a kids toy with the edges filed off. Its very colorful, and they keep giving us me shinier versions for free, but it still feels like playing with Duplo when I want it to be LEGO or K'Nex.
And I say the above with nothing but respect for Sean and the team and what they have accomplished. I will be a launch day LNF player as well.
> I don't know where the negative comments are coming from. Maybe players who played early.
It's the sandbox concept. Some people load into Minecraft and think, "AWESOME! I'M GOING TO BUILD A MALL!" Some people load into Minecraft and think, "WTF is this? Why is there no story? What the hell am I meant to do?"
I'm not going to cast judgement. It's a preference. The people who bounce off NMS are the latter. NMS is a very fun sandbox. The story is secondary to making your own fun.
> It's the sandbox concept. Some people load into Minecraft and think, "AWESOME! I'M GOING TO BUILD A MALL!" Some people load into Minecraft and think, "WTF is this? Why is there no story? What the hell am I meant to do?"
It's not that, I lost hundreds of hours in Minecraft. I loved every minute of it. NMS is just too boring with horrible UX and boring planets.
Eh. As a Mac user, my AAA choices are limited. I mostly play Borderlands 2 & 3, and NMS. I’m not a huge gamer, and these have been enough for me. I just play in bursts, when I’m taking breaks from coding.
I don’t like playing with others, as the experience of being fragged by a 15-year-old, shouting biologically impossible suggestions to me, is not really on my bucket list.
I’ll play it. It won’t be super exciting, but, if I was serious about gaming, I’d get a dedicated Windows rig.
the launch of the game was very poorly received. they had pre-made videos sold off as actual gameplay and the worlds and space were very shallow. it wasn't anything they had promised. they have spent over a decade rectifying that.as someone who didn't refund I'm happy now, but it was a very rough and rushed launch.
Because HN has become more and more liked reddit/twitter.
To me fighting games, racing games, sport games and a lot of other genres are superrrrrrr boring. Do i write it under every post? nope? do I farm for karma because I know shitting on NMS is what gets me karma? nope.
People just drop there opinion.
I'm checking out HN less and less.
This week i saw a post were US folks will not have access to drinkable water and the only discussion was about the title...
What is a fraudulent ad?
If a massive health influencer promotes a "healthy" powder that in labs does not show health benefits - do we consider it a fraudulent ad?
On Facebook? It's ads for products where they do a bait and switch or claim to have some kind of "difficulty" and never ship a product or ship some garbage instead.
Example: My wife saw an ad for decorative skulls that were made in such a way that you can safely put them in a campfire for Halloween. They had a video and everything, it looked pretty good. She orders a set and they get delayed, then she gets and email saying that US Customs would not let them in the country and they instead ship a $0.50 plastic Christmas tree ornament instead and immediately ghost her.
We reported the company to Facebook but it continued to run for weeks. I've also seen ads for $500 Aventon E-bike "closeout" that's clearly a scam, reported it, and had no action from Facebook. Another ad for an all metal "puzzle kit" of a V8 engine listed for $50 that I guarantee is fake. Every day I get ads that would not have passed the smell test from any reviewer yet continue to run.
Hmmm... this is literally the intro of the narrative arc in the game that I'm making.
Governments confiscating 3D Printers, powerful GPUs, robotic parts to prevent "simple people" the access to "dangerous technologies".
For their own good of course.
Just to be clear, I don't think this is useful or good legislation. While the idea that the state is a shady body that's out to fleece an honest and unsuspecting peoples is a great story beat, I just don't think it's particularly accurate to reality and we shouldn't pretend that it is just because it sounds good in a HN comment.
Uh, Marx is the one who said "Under no pretext..." but who's keeping score at this point.
Yes, I get that you're trying to express a deeply RWNJ partisan view but as a proud LWNJ I must express that the real world is much more complicated than "commies are nuts yo". Perhaps the issue is rampant authoritarianism?
"If there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it, you know, just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now.", Mamdani, 2020
"We have to ensure we are unapologetic about our socialism", Mamdani, 2021
"There are also other issues we firmly believe in [...] weather is the end goal of seizing the means of production", Mamdani, 2021
"We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.", Mamdani, 2026
It's funny. You people go up in arms calling Elon Musk a fascist because he made a suspicious gesture with his right hand. But, then you have a guy outright telling you he wants to "seize the means of production" and you make excuses on why he is not actually a communist.
>
Anna Grzymala-Busse, a Stanford University international studies professor, said that seizing the means of production is a socialist and communist goal. "The difference is that with communism, there is also one ruling party that brooks no opposition and no pluralist civil society," she said.
Collectivism and some amount of state controlled means of production are typical of many leftist systems. America already does this in many places: military, power, education, civil works. Communism stands out among other -isms on the left in that it is single-party and incompatible with democracy.
> suspicious gesture with his right hand
It was a Nazi salute. Don't believe me? Go to a crowded street corner and do the "suspicious gesture," and gauge the reaction.
He doesn't have a point, because he doesn't know how socialism and communism are alike, and how they differ. He's arguing against what he imagined I wrote.
I think the representatives pushing for this legislation is evidence that a significant portion of their polled constituents want restrictions on printed ghost guns. Is that more or less believable than a manufacturing lobby pushing legislators in NY state for printer DRM?
>I think the representatives pushing for this legislation is evidence
Why is that considered evidence? There are many cases of elected representatives doing things that do not align with the wishes of their constituents. There are also many cases of regulators regulating things that their constituents don't care about at all, but help a politician's career by building their reputation as one of "getting things done".
Actual evidence would be polling, citizen organizations, donations etc. None of which seem to exist for this issue.
Great question. The web being text oriented - I believe that typography is one of the most important aspects of a great website (visualization being the other).
At Future Simple (http://www.futuresimple.com) we think about that a lot, sometimes agonizing over it. We still have a lot of work to do :) - as any designer will tell you - we are never satisfied with our work...
Future Simple - http://www.futuresimple.com
Disrupting small business software. Just raised $1.1M from great investors in Chicago. Building some crazy things now...
Spending our time around Lincoln Park. About to get a cozy place downtown soon.
Mmmm... that's an interesting approach. I think it's perfectly fine for creating quick jpg mockups but I wouldn't use it for the real app for two reasons:
1. Attribution.
2. Differentiation is design.
About differentiation : my framework is inspired by the web development frameworks and agile development philosophy (Especially ruby on Rails). The "Convention over configuration" approach.
In most case, you will use the commons GUI elements provided and you will save some time.
If you need to make it look different, you already have a foundation to quickly customize the appearance. The idea is to no repeat yourself designing the same elements (radio buttons, forms, tabs, windows, always 90% the same..) to concentrate to the really important design problems to solve.
1. Total Revenue - ~$500m-$700m
2. Copies Sold - ~15-20m
3. Steam Review Score: 84.36%
4. 40 Free Major Updates
I don't know where the negative comments are coming from. Maybe players who played early.
NMS is a great example of a developer who was devoted to their customer base, kept updating the game for free, and saw great market success in return.
This is a story to be celebrated.
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