Bay 12 Games Forum

If you like it that's your business goes without saying.

But your "features in the gaps" argument doesn't make the cut, and you know it

Nonsense.  Features that have been missed is entirely logical for a game this size using procedural generation as extensively as NMS. And we are hearing more players who have spotted the so-called 'missing' features.  The link is in this thread to someone who fought a huge pirate battle. Comments on RPS report predatory AI in animals and being able to replicate everything in one of the trailers except for sandworms. 

Perhaps joining-a-faction isn't implemented. Well, egg on the developer's face then.  But that's not nearly the same as the laundry list of 'issues' that mostly boil down to 'I personally haven't seen these things and I feel cheated because I don't understand how huge problem spaces and procedural generation work and fell for the massive overhype'.   It's perfectly reasonable to not like it! But not liking it doesn't mean the developer lied.

Games media overhyped NMS dramatically without explaining or possibly without understanding how procedural generation and the sheer size of their game would impact the play experience. That's a problem created both by the developers and the media outlets.

Some features in the trailers may have been cut as development went on, which is irritating and upsetting but happens to many, many games. 

None of these are the same thing as shamelessly defrauding people of their money with a broken game or deliberately lying for sales, which is the accusation people are throwing around.

Quote from: Ghills on August 22, 2016, 10:45:02 pm

Quote from: Chiefwaffles on August 22, 2016, 10:25:28 pm

"[Features] players are not used to"

This is a pretty pretentious statement. I may be reading a bit much into it, but at this moment you're basically just implying that others simply aren't sophisticated enough to appreciate NMS.

The above is an exaggeration, but my point remains. It's possible to not like a game because you don't like it and never would. It's possible to not like a game because it's objectively bad. It's possible to like a game even though it's objectively bad.

I'm sure there's at least one person out there who enjoys playing Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

That's not what I meant at all. I meant exactly what I said - NMS relies on things that are uncommon and disliked by a significant fraction of gamers.  There's no value judgement there any more than saying that some people like blue more than red, or white over wheat, or whatever other preference. 

I'm not the arbiter of gaming taste, or any other kind of taste.  I just don't want to be mocked for liking something others dislike.

I don't know, everything I would like about No Man's Sky (which is much of it) Spore did better while also having real progression in the way of giving the player more varied abilities over time.

I say without any irony that Spore does everything No Man's Sky does but better.

It didn't quite hit the peaceful exploration and freedom of choice buttons for me, but yeah, Spore was decent.

I really don't care about progression, at least the way most games present it. Leveling up and becoming more capable is what real life is for.  Collecting a treasure tove of weird and pretty screenshots is the most game progression I really want. I freely admit that I'm an incredibly odd duck gaming-wise, so when I find games I actually enjoy I'm very happy.

"[Features] players are not used to"

This is a pretty pretentious statement. I may be reading a bit much into it, but at this moment you're basically just implying that others simply aren't sophisticated enough to appreciate NMS.

The above is an exaggeration, but my point remains. It's possible to not like a game because you don't like it and never would. It's possible to not like a game because it's objectively bad. It's possible to like a game even though it's objectively bad.

I'm sure there's at least one person out there who enjoys playing Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

That's not what I meant at all. I meant exactly what I said - NMS relies on things that are uncommon and disliked by a significant fraction of gamers.  There's no value judgement there any more than saying that some people like blue more than red, or white over wheat, or whatever other preference. 

I'm not the arbiter of gaming taste, or any other kind of taste.  I just don't want to be mocked for liking something others dislike.

I've had dwarves climb up trees, and die of dehydration, since they refused to climb down.

Those drunken idiots never cease to amuse and/or annoy me.
[/quote

What i'm hearing is that Toady rewrote dorf personalities to mimic cats.

Quote from: forsaken1111 on August 22, 2016, 09:28:33 pm

if these features are in but blocked by a bug, then they are not actually available. If they are in but so rare that not one person has seen them in a week then they are effectively nonexistent.

Exactly. If the player doesn't see the content, it doesn't exist. The developers therefore need to think more carefully about how to make sure the player does see the content...possibly by reducing the number of planets generated from 18 quadrillion to maybe, 10,000? 100? Maybe the developers could even go further, generating thousands of planets and then hand-selecting the best and most varied planets to include in the game itself, while throwing away all the "mediocre" or "bad" planets. Etc., etc.
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Someone posted in the NeoGAF thread that you can see the graves of other players. The report claimed that you don't know whose grave it is...just that somebody died. That's probably the closest you're going to get to player "interaction".

A follow-up Google search claims that only one grave per player is active at any given time though, so stumbling upon another player's grave either is a very rare event, which is probably why it hasn't been reported until now.

Yes, with the caveat that there are plenty of things in games which many players never see but are still in the game.

NMS devs made design choices which I quite like, but many other players are not used to and don't like.  It's a polarizing game.

There's nothing wrong with either opinion, and implying that people are deluded because they like the game is insulting and foolish. 

I do. You don't. I'm not participating in this any longer.
Because seriously. I don't deny that it's possible to enjoy the game, but it's absolute idiocy to somehow rationalize that the content is there but somehow not a single person has seen this supposed "feature"?

It's totally possible, for 2 reasons:

1) The devs aren't ensuring it shows up by hand. That's the whole issue with procedural generation, the strength and the pitfall. If you understood procedural generation, you would understand this.

2) People miss things in smaller games all the time, even when those games are hand-designed levels. A procedural generation game made of stupidly large amounts of territory and where it's very possible things progress without the player around...yeah, there's a ton of stuff players are going to miss.  It's a bad design decision on a lot of levels, but it is what was promised.  People simply seem to not understand that. I happen not to mind the downsides so I like the game, though I don't blame people who dislike it.  But don't try to pretend I'm stupid or deluded for liking something you dislike.

I'm sorry, are you rationalizing that players just haven't discovered all the content yet?

That's actually unbelievably idiotic. You're doing exactly what you're denying.

How do you play DF and not realize how procedural generation works?

I think I accidentally felt up my cat. He seems mostly over it, though.