Do you think future AAA games set in space should take cues from No Mans Sky?

[Deleted member 48434]

Back before it's release, there was a reason No Mans Sky got hyped up so much.
Seamless space to surface transition, and a veritable huge expanse of space to explore, the final frontier, simulated.
No menus, you you and the ship, free as a space bird.
It was all very exciting. Of course, then it released and then we learnt it had nothing else to offer and the procedurally generated worlds were ass and not worth exploring. I hear it's made some massive improvements, but, when it comes down to it, I don't care much for "survival" games.

But, you know, that base idea of open world space, I think combined with a good story, and a good world to be immersed in, and it could be legendary.

I've been holding out hope that this is what Besthesda's starfield will be ("Skyrim x NMS" essentially), but, you know... Bethesda...

 

[Deleted member 59109]

I'd prefer them to take some influence from Mass Effect, with more story focus and every planet having a lot of attention to detail, but having options to explore would be fun too.

 

[NightShift]

Beyond Good and Evil 2 seems to be what you're talking about.

 

[hobblygobbly]

NMS took those cues from other games like Frontier: Elite 2. Nothing NMS has done is new to the space exploration/trade/etc genre, except for its procedurally generated animals, and more beautiful worlds.

Other "space sims" have done what NMS did in more depth mechanics wise and tech-wise (like modern Elite: Dangerous), and even decades before.

These concepts have been around for ages, but these were always niche, and NMS is probably the most mainstream of these types, and if AAA hasn't taken cues from games like Elite for decades then I don't know when they will. The games taking cues are games like NMS from its predecessors.

 

[tr1b0re]

NMS took those cues from other games like Frontier: Elite 2. Nothing NMS has done is new to the space exploration/trade/etc genre, except for its procedurally generated animals.

Other "space sims" have done what NMS did in more depth, and even decades before.

Click to shrink...

I mean...the actual stuff in space sure, but there aren't many space sims that have planets quite like NMS that you can walk on and explore outside of your ship (before it came out anyway, Star Citizen might be an exception)

 

[Neural]

No thanks. I prefer smaller, carefully crafted games, like Outer Wilds.

 

[sredgrin]

Outer Wilds.

 

[Mark It Zero!]

I'd rather have a small, handcrafted game with a good story than an entire procedural galaxy. I hope BGS don't go overboard with the size of the gameworld relative to the quality of the story.

 

[TheSentry42]

If anything I'd want them to take cues from Outer Wilds!

(Not Outer Worlds - Obsidian RPG)

 

[Deleted member 48434]

No thanks. I prefer smaller, carefully crafted games, like Outer Wilds.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, actually, I literally just finished that, and that's kinda what prompted me to want to make this thread.
I need more space exploration.

Small planets, big planets, doesn't matter. As long as it's all seamless and space shenanigans are allowed.
Perhaps I should have used Outer Wilds as my reference. I thought NMS would be a more understandable comparison though, for the scale of what I am envisioning.

 

[ArchLector]

I just want a modern version of the game Freelancer - maybe it's nostalgia talking but it has the perfect version of space to explore like an open world, ships to mod and a massive single player campaign that was a glorious space opera. It doesn't have planet exploration but that could be added in a modern game.
Hopefully Starfied will scratch this itch.

 

[Dragoon]

I care about characters and story, so no. Now if it's a pure exploration VR title sure.

 

[hydruxo]

I think the seamless space travel from planet to space station to planet again is easily the most impressive aspect of NMS, so yeah I hope some AAA games next gen try to utilize that in some way. Obviously NMS gets away with it because the planets are procedurally generated, but you can't deny that being able to lift off from a planet and keep planet hopping without load screens is pretty great. Even with the disappointment of No Man Sky's initial launch, I had fun with just traversing space.

Hopefully with next gen's SSDs we can see a more substantial evolution of seamless space travel. I don't know that it's feasible to have a ton of planets to visit with things on them that are worthwhile, but maybe like 7-8 planets in a game that you can hop between without waiting for loading screens. I think the biggest challenge is just making those planets worth visiting and not just empty shells with copied and pasted locations.

 

[br0ken_shad0w]

That's what Star Citizen is supposed to be, but considering the state of that game, who the fuck knows when it will come out and if it will live up to its unprecedented hype.

 

[RedSwirl]

It would be nice to one day see a AAA developer devote AAA resources to a game like NMS and Elite. If you want something that applies those concepts to a more traditional storyline with pre-built level design, the closest thing in production right now seems to be Suadron 42 -- the singleplayer companion to Star Citizen. Here's a video of about an hour of gameplay:



Basically, it looks like Crysis combined with some of the concepts Mass Effect 1 tried to deliver on. Who knows if it'll ever come out though. The relationship between Squadron 42 and Star Citizen seems not unlike that between Red Dead 2 and Red Dead Online. I wish more open-world games in general would do that -- make a story-based game and a pure sandbox game set in the same open world and just package them together.

I've spent a lot of time on NMS and Elite, and I like them a lot for their sense of scale. Outer Wilds is really great, but I still like 1:1 scale solar systems. Those games however are built to be "pure sandboxes" where you can do whatever you want. When it comes to "conventional" open-world games with storylines and such, a lot of people seem to want a certain density of content -- they don't want to have to travel too far without something interesting happening which tends to discourage real-scale worlds and especially procedurally generated space games. If you're dealing with a game where you're procedurally generating 1:1 scale planets and star systems, I think you have to accept the fact that 99.999999999% of that explorable space isn't going to have any interesting "content" in it. It's just gonna be there to provide a sandbox and the overall feeling of traveling through space.

I think it' be interesting if a new RPG tried what the first two Elder Scrolls games did -- Arena and Daggerfall. I haven't played those games but I hear they combined pre-built level design with procedural generation to make a 1:1 scale Tamriel where the distance between each town was many real-world miles, and each game had hundreds of thousands of towns. There was still a linear storyline with everything you'd expect therein, it was just set in a world with real-life scale. It'd be cool if someone figured out how to do that in a space game.

I feel like NMS could actually make for a foundation for a good and unique action RPG. Someone should try to make a game that is to NMS what Dragon Quest Builders is to Minecraft.

That doesn't necessarily mean procedural generation I guess though. I haven't played Mass Effect Andromeda though but didn't that game try to make its planet landings seem seamless? I could imagine something that gets back to what Mass Effect 1 tried to deliver -- a set of star systems with planets where you can explore large hand-crafted areas on the ground. The thing that clinches NMS and Elite though is the feeling of exploring 3D outer space in real-time, warp jumps, and planetary landings. If someone could get that to work in a game where you can just land on certain ares of each planet that would still be really cool.

 

[Deleted member 48434]

It would be nice to one day see a AAA developer devote AAA resources to a game like NMS and Elite. If you want something that applies those concepts to a more traditional storyline with pre-built level design, the closest thing in production right now seems to be Suadron 42 -- the singleplayer companion to Star Citizen. Here's a video of about an hour of gameplay:



Basically, it looks like Crysis combined with some of the concepts Mass Effect 1 tried to deliver on. Who knows if it'll ever come out though. The relationship between Squadron 42 and Star Citizen seems not unlike that between Red Dead 2 and Red Dead Online. I wish more open-world games in general would do that -- make a story-based game and a pure sandbox game set in the same open world and just package them together.

I've spent a lot of time on NMS and Elite, and I like them a lot for their sense of scale. Outer Wilds is really great, but I still like 1:1 scale solar systems. Those games however are built to be "pure sandboxes" where you can do whatever you want. When it comes to "conventional" open-world games with storylines and such, a lot of people seem to want a certain density of content -- they don't want to have to travel too far without something interesting happening which tends to discourage real-scale worlds and especially procedurally generated space games. If you're dealing with a game where you're procedurally generating 1:1 scale planets and star systems, I think you have to accept the fact that 99.999999999% of that explorable space isn't going to have any interesting "content" in it. It's just gonna be there to provide a sandbox and the overall feeling of traveling through space.

I think it' be interesting if a new RPG tried what the first two Elder Scrolls games did -- Arena and Daggerfall. I haven't played those games but I hear they combined pre-built level design with procedural generation to make a 1:1 scale Tamriel where the distance between each town was many real-world miles, and each game had hundreds of thousands of towns. There was still a linear storyline with everything you'd expect therein, it was just set in a world with real-life scale. It'd be cool if someone figured out how to do that in a space game.

I feel like NMS could actually make for a foundation for a good and unique action RPG. Someone should try to make a game that is to NMS what Dragon Quest Builders is to Minecraft.

That doesn't necessarily mean procedural generation I guess though. I haven't played Mass Effect Andromeda though but didn't that game try to make its planet landings seem seamless? I could imagine something that gets back to what Mass Effect 1 tried to deliver -- a set of star systems with planets where you can explore large hand-crafted areas on the ground. The thing that clinches NMS and Elite though is the feeling of exploring 3D outer space in real-time, warp jumps, and planetary landings. If someone could get that to work in a game where you can just land on certain ares of each planet that would still be really cool.

Click to shrink...

From what I've read, this thing looks like a Duke Nukem Forever scenario to me.

 

[Deleted member 65994]

I think the new rachtet and clank would use some elements like this.

 

[MC_Leon6494]

take the largely seamless travel and some of the aesthetics but not much beyond that. NMS is a lovely game to look at, great colors and sometimes the procedural generation just hits every note. Maybe use procedural generation in development and then mold those creations into something with a stronger hand-crafted feel

 

[c0Zm1c]

Hopefully not. As much as I like No Man's Sky it does have something of an identity problem. Partly story/mission-driven, partly survival sandbox and kind of sloppy overall if I'm honest; it can't really decide what it wants to be and feels quite a bit at odds with itself. While less impressive I think games like Space Engineers and Avorion execute things better, but then, they focus on being just sandbox games (which is what I wanted out of No Man's Sky) and are not really the kind of stuff AAA studios make.

 

[StraySheep]

Don't know if that is a bullet point that is worth the money and time to implement for me.

 

[GhostofWar]

I mean...the actual stuff in space sure, but there aren't many space sims that have planets quite like NMS that you can walk on and explore outside of your ship (before it came out anyway, Star Citizen might be an exception)

Click to shrink...

While you can't walk, elite dangerous had planetary exploration for a while. There's obviously less dynamic stuff happening on the surface because it would be hard to sync right in a multiplayer, still kinda cool though.

Elite Dangerous: Horizons - Planetary Landing Gameplay Trailer

For more Elite Dangerous news, follow us on these sites:Wesbite: http://elitedangerous.com/Facebook - http://fb.me/EliteDangerousOfficialTwitter - https://tw...

www.youtube.com

 

[wafflebrain]

More Outer Wilds less NMS style please, though for something mp focused like Star Citizen and Elite it makes more sense using traditional proc gen for the worlds, though more hand crafted cities for social hub areas would be nice. The former is already beginning to utilize a more advanced form of proc gen for the world surfaces and biomes. Really any landscape that looks more natural and has more realistically scaled mountains, biomes etc is preferable to what NMS has. They did tweak the world generation algorithim seed a bit over the various updates but its still relatively the same in terms of most planets having the same looking terrain after you've walked out for a certain distance.

I'm very excited to see machine learning/AI asset generation develop in complexity more so we can start seeing large environments that look believably natural say along the lines of how Kingdom Come Deliverance or Witcher 3 handles things like the transition from tree lines to grassland, valleys, mountains etc. There was one post I read on here awhile back discussing how things like foliage generation in a game world based on the position of the sun still hasn't really been done yet. For example details like areas where trees not getting enough sunlight don't have as many branches and leaves. Point being there's a lot of room for growth wrt details in natural areas in games. This kind of micro detail would likely require some cloud utilization to offload some of the strain on local storage but I'm sure someone could figure out how to cram more into a given area using a proc gen solution. Give me all the details. /rant

edit: Great DF video showing off Star Citizen's current generation model, this is scratching the surface I feel for next gen proc gen at huge scale, smaller details etc:

 

[Greywaren]

I'd rather they take inspiration from Outer Wilds.

 

[Komo]

From what I've read, this thing looks like a Duke Nukem Forever scenario to me.

Click to shrink...

I mean tho DNF wasn't playable for years. Star Citizen has been playable for a while.

 

[fieldafar]

To everyone mentioning Outer Wilds in this thread:

 

[Ausroachman]

Personally nms is in my top 5 games this gen, I admire it purely for its ambition from such a small team.

Like everyone above I wish its planets were more interesting to explore and everything starts to look similar after awhile

My perfect update would be death stranding terrain fidelity and traversal (having to plan your journeys), massive cliff faces etc and also more meaningful planet quests or monsters like monster Hunter etc

I would love to see unique loot that only exists in a small amount of planets which gives you a real sense of exploration and reward. Perhaps treasure hunts like sea of thieves etc

 

[Deleted member 48434]

I find myself going down the Star Citizen rabbit hole right now and, while Squadron 42 DOES sound like something I'd want (In fact it sounds amazing)... I also feel like the whole thing is a mass fever dream. It just doesn't sound real to me, yet all those videos exist. It is such a weird feeling.

 

[Thatguy]

Star Citizen and Beyond good and evil 2 are both doing this. You can play SC today and it's basically a next gen experience and will be in development probably for decades to come. It's the one game that will make other developers think twice about making an open universe game since their budget will be no where close to what SC has. I could see a licensed game try it like star wars at some point.

 

[Dictator]

Back before it's release, there was a reason No Mans Sky got hyped up so much.
Seamless space to surface transition, and a veritable huge expanse of space to explore, the final frontier, simulated.
No menus, you you and the ship, free as a space bird.
It was all very exciting. Of course, then it released and then we learnt it had nothing else to offer and the procedurally generated worlds were ass and not worth exploring. I hear it's made some massive improvements, but, when it comes down to it, I don't care much for "survival" games.

But, you know, that base idea of open world space, I think combined with a good story, and a good world to be immersed in, and it could be legendary.

I've been holding out hope that this is what Besthesda's starfield will be ("Skyrim x NMS" essentially), but, you know... Bethesda...

Click to shrink...

The one thing to mention about NMS is that I think there is some handwaving and smoke and mirrors when traversing between planetary distance and when entering an atmosphere, your origin position moving to places, and not you traversing a massive world. Doesn't the game still have like a white flash of sorts when you enter a planet atmosphere? It did the last time I played it. I think when the game came out people found out how to break that illusion and decouple world origin from player origin and actually travel larger distances instead of the world moving around you essentially. This then caused massive bugs of course since the engine is not a real large world.

 

[Fawz]

I don't think there's anything that NMS has done that is revolutionary or even well executed, in no way does it shape the industry (except as a lesson on how not to botch a launch and how to salvage it). There are plenty of games that have done the various elements in NMS better, both before and after NMS did them.

Besides all proper game development looks at all recent entries in the genre to compare against and use as inspiration, so same as anything else it'll be looked at. It shouldn't be used as a model though, it's far from a standard games should aspire for. If we're talking about the false promise of the huge seamless galaxy with no loading, then sure that's something people have been striving for for ages now

 

[Pancracio17]

Transitions should be even more seamless now with these new consoles. Maybe now you could design cities in space that have no designated entryway or spaceport and you can approach and enter it from every angle.

 

[RedSwirl]

Hopefully not. As much as I like No Man's Sky it does have something of an identity problem. Partly story/mission-driven, partly survival sandbox and kind of sloppy overall if I'm honest; it can't really decide what it wants to be and feels quite a bit at odds with itself.

Click to shrink...

I think that identity crisis comes from things other than the proc gen though. When Hello Games first started showing off NMS a lot of people got the idea it was going to be a sort of arcadey version of Frontier Elite 2, and maybe that's what they were originally going for, but something didn't come together for launch. As the updates came in, fan expectations and demand sort of steered NMS more towards being a survival game, and at this point a lot of the game is really just Rust or Ark with space ships.

Some of the perception of that though might come from unfamiliarity with the "Fight, Trade, Explore" style of genre which is comprised of games like NMS, Elite, some of the Wing Commander games, Freelancer, etc. These are games that deliberately have different paths that almost feel like different games packaged together: you can collect bounties, mine stuff, explore, and do any of those things without ever delving into the others.

 

[tr1b0re]

While you can't walk, elite dangerous had planetary exploration for a while. There's obviously less dynamic stuff happening on the surface because it would be hard to sync right in a multiplayer, still kinda cool though.

Elite Dangerous: Horizons - Planetary Landing Gameplay Trailer

For more Elite Dangerous news, follow us on these sites:Wesbite: http://elitedangerous.com/Facebook - http://fb.me/EliteDangerousOfficialTwitter - https://tw...

www.youtube.com

Click to shrink...

Yep I play ED as well, while its great on the realism front, its not the same as walking on a planet with your own two feet (plus NMS also has exocraft, much like Elite)

 

[c0Zm1c]

I think that identity crisis comes from things other than the proc gen though. When Hello Games first started showing off NMS a lot of people got the idea it was going to be a sort of arcadey version of Frontier Elite 2, and maybe that's what they were originally going for, but something didn't come together for launch. As the updates came in, fan expectations and demand sort of steered NMS more towards being a survival game, and at this point a lot of the game is really just Rust or Ark with space ships.

Some of the perception of that though might come from unfamiliarity with the "Fight, Trade, Explore" style of genre which is comprised of games like NMS, Elite, some of the Wing Commander games, Freelancer, etc. These are games that deliberately have different paths that almost feel like different games packaged together: you can collect bounties, mine stuff, explore, and do any of those things without ever delving into the others.

Click to shrink...

Well, yes. I didn't even mention procedural generation. But about that, Sean Murray said it is his dream game but it might just have been his dream tech demo in reality, with the game - whatever it was to be - coming after. That might sound reductive, insulting even but when your dream is the ability to travel the stars and explore a wealth of amazing, unprecedentedly detailed worlds up close in a game it is quite the dream to have!.. it just doesn't entail much 'game' by itself. The problem is that the game part somewhat erodes that dream (well, in my experience and opinion it does.) Not the flying the ships, the gathering of resources or even the base building, etc. That is fine by and of itself but No Man's Sky borrows way too much of the hand-holding and gating progress found in other less imaginative games. It might be the fault of those fan expectations and the "but what do you do?" crowd (in particular) that the dream has ended up shackled by mundane game design practices.

 

[RedSwirl]

The problem is that the game part somewhat erodes that dream (well, in my experience and opinion it does.) Not the flying the ships, the gathering of resources or even the base building, etc. That is fine by and of itself but No Man's Sky borrows way too much of the hand-holding and gating progress found in other less imaginative games. It might be the fault of those fan expectations and the "but what do you do?" crowd (in particular) that the dream has ended up shackled by mundane game design practices.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely. I find the crafting and survival elements to be a bit too egregious in NMS. It often feels like busywork when you want to craft one thing, but have to go through two or three prior steps. There's a lot else to like in the game though, it's just all kind of messily put together. You can feel how the different pieces were sort of bolted on over time. My hope is that some kind of next-gen NMS2 can be even more ambitious with the technology and go in with a clearer vision of the gameplay from the start.