No Man's Sky VISIONS Update Trailer Leaked

FreezePeach said:

The thing the NMS guys have figured out is while they are improving their variety however procedural it is they have been focused on building gameplay systems that applies universally to all that variety they've been making. So now just having the ability to build a giant base anywhere suddenly adds a lot of value to exploring and finding an ideal spot. BUt then you add all the other potential systems that are starting to grow and this is a way more elaborate experience than the curated ones. Which is really what Sean's goal has been. He's still searching for the way to take low dev resources and make a giant experience with endless possibility. Through the updates thats happening more and more.

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I will admit NMS so far has accomplished most of the gameplay that's seemingly supposed to be in Star Citizen -- the seamless transition from your mothership to your docking bay to your ship to space to surface to walking around, and it got there by going for an arcade production value. Star Citizen/Squadrion 42 is going for a more story-based structure but the basics are actually there in NMS.

Elite uses its universe for a different gameplay focus entirely. You could even say its focus has been in the opposite direction as NMS -- more centered on space gameplay whereas most of the NMS updates have been all about surface gameplay. I'm still hoping one of these upcoming NMS updates ends up being a space-oriented update.

Rodjer said:

Last time i booted the game was this July, i'm still bitter sorry.

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That's a shame, the game is better now than we ever thought it could be before launch. They gave us what was promised and so much more. It is a legitimately excellent game now that you can easily sink hundreds of hours into.

You should give it a try. Make a new game from scratch if you haven't since the Next update. Game really opens up after the first few jumps.

Just give me VR already!!!!!!!

Damn, not even most rappers have had beef for as long as the people who still hold sour grapes towards this game.

I bet if someone lied to your face and then became a better person a year or two from now you'd even give them a pass over NMS devs.

Not for nothing, but these updates are pointless for me if they dont add additional trophies.

For whatever reason, if the new stuff had new trophies, id totally jump back in, otherwise i dont feel any push to try the new stuff .

hell f2p games like warframe adds trophies for pretty much every update... why doesnt NMS add bew trophies.

SomaXD said:

Not for nothing, but these updates are pointless for me if they dont add additional trophies.

For whatever reason, if the new stuff had new trophies, id totally jump back in, otherwise i dont feel any push to try the new stuff .

hell f2p games like warframe adds trophies for pretty much every update... why doesnt NMS add bew trophies.

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Oddly enough they did add new trophies for the pathfinder expansion but then stopped afterwards.

I hope they move this game to next gen, still so much more they can do with this.

SomaXD said:

Not for nothing, but these updates are pointless for me if they dont add additional trophies.

For whatever reason, if the new stuff had new trophies, id totally jump back in, otherwise i dont feel any push to try the new stuff .

hell f2p games like warframe adds trophies for pretty much every update... why doesnt NMS add bew trophies.

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You're in luck then. One of the features that flashed on the screen was "Collectible Exploration Trophies".
(I don't know if they are official PSN/Xbox trophies, but trophies nonetheless)

do we have any idea on active player base? the game took a huge backlash after launch and im surprised they've kept with it.
also whats the main draw of the game? It was the center of the universe which when revealed was a massive let down so I assume things have changed since.

eyeball_kid said:

You're in luck then. One of the features that flashed on the screen was "Collectible Exploration Trophies".
(I don't know if they are official PSN/Xbox trophies, but trophies nonetheless)

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I think that was referring to the plants and various objects the video was displaying at the time. Like some physical objects to display in your home that you find by exploring.

Kapryov said:

I think that was referring to the plants and various objects the video was displaying at the time. Like some physical objects to display in your home that you find by exploring.

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Ah true, well it's something anyway. Kind of better than a typical trophy.
Nice avatar btw, miss that show.

cnorwood said:

Just give me VR already!!!!!!!

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Pretty much my stance with it, Can add all they want. It still feels sterile. VR would make it all worthwhile.

Looks interesting. I just got into this game again after a long hiatus and seeing it getting improved upon still pleases me.

MechaBreaker said:

So when we aren't praising, the only other alternative is being an extremist to you?

I think people should be more discerning with the companies they heap praise on.

And I don't think it's worthy to praise them when you consider how they got the means to continually update the game.

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Game was always good. Now it's great. Get over it.

C'mon Sean, hit the '"launch" button! :D

I hope the biome stuff is good.. I still felt like exploring the planets for more than a few minutes got boring as everything was so samey.

Sounds cool, but my system hasn't been able to run the latest two updates at a stable frame rate. Would be great if they gave it a performance pass, but I guess I just need to upgrade.

I kind of fancy trying this but would like to see how it controls. They should do a free play weekend or something.

This game looks better and better, damn. I'll definitely pick it up on the X when the price gets to 20-30 bucks, feels like they pretty much reached the game's original potential and then some.

I'm really curious if the next gen arrives if they will just port of this version; or come up with a true sort of "sequel". I can imagine the current game being designed around some baseline specs (PS4/X1); having a significantly more potent CPU (as rumored for next gen) could really change things up.

How does it run on PC? After all this updates I'm tempted to jump in.

Reticon6 said:

All this tells me is that we should be waiting years for games like this post-release.

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Many people think like that, but it's an unnecessary of limiting yourself. If the game looks good now, play it now. It doesn't matter what the game might be, but what it is. The hours I spent with this game already were fun hours, and they aren't rendered bad because the game is improved further at a later stage. If anything, it makes the game feel fresh, and gives you further incent incentive to keep coming back into the game.

Take an evolving game for what it is, and ditch the old "finished game" way of thinking.

BreezyLimbo said:

Oh man, procedural crashed Freighters. Awesome, that's the one thing I wanted since the freighter update.

Now they just need to add awesome space battles between freighters and tons of ships!

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That's such a very welcome addition, and I hope they keep improving quests/events like that. It felt way to limiting that all freighter crashes were the same.

Lichtsang said:

How does it run on PC? After all this updates I'm tempted to jump in.

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For me it runs very well. I don't have an exact list over my settings, but I have it a steady framerate of 60FPS in 1080p resolution, with a lot of detail cranked up, on an i5 2500k CPU and a GTX 970 GPU.

The update before next made the performance worse for a while, but it seems like they have improved it again since that.

Cecil said:

Many people think like that, but it's an unnecessary of limiting yourself. If the game looks good now, play it now. It doesn't matter what the game might be, but what it is. The hours I spent with this game already were fun hours, and they aren't rendered bad because the game is improved further at a later stage. If anything, it makes the game feel fresh, and gives you further incent incentive to keep coming back into the game.

Take an evolving game for what it is, and ditch the old "finished game" way of thinking.

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To use NMS as a benchmark to dismiss "finished game" is a spit to the face for every developer that developed a finished product.

The game was originally intended to have, at least the majority of what was shown on day 1. Evolving it was their way of trying to win back the favor of the poor reception. There's too many "completed" games out there to justify a framework of an experience of a game. Going by the way of their update schedule, my guess is late next year is when NMS should be played if it can't already be competing with other AAA titles .

Reticon6 said:

To use NMS as a benchmark to dismiss "finished game" is a spit to the face for every developer that developed a finished product.

The game was originally intended to have, at least the majority of what was shown on day 1. Evolving it was their way of trying to win back the favor of the poor reception. There's too many "completed" games out there to justify a framework of an experience of a game. Going by the way of their update schedule, my guess is late next year is when NMS should be played if it can't already be competing with other AAA titles .

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That's a really cynical and negative way of looking at what happened. Not sure that I can write anything that will convince you of anything.

I absolutely think that this game was always intended to be developed iteratively, and that everything they do now is a result based only of them trying to redeem themselves. I think that there are actually quotes from Sean Murray about that, from before the release, but I'm not really that invested in convincing anyone about it, that I want to spend time googling them now.

If you want "completed" games, go ahead and buy them. But many games are intended to be iteratively built, and trying to force a mindset of "completed" product onto them as well, feel contraproductive.

Buy hey, you do it your way. I'll enjoy the game in the meantime.

Reticon6 said:

Going by the way of their update schedule, my guess is late next year is when NMS should be played if it can't already be competing with other AAA titles .

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If you don't find it worth playing just yet, it's not gonna be so by late next year either. You are expecting it to become something is never gonna be. Which was the actual problem with most people who felt so disappointed with it by release.

It's really great to see the commitment they're team has to this game.
I haven't played it since the NMS NEXT but i'm keep updating the game.
TBH i really like it when Dev team of any game support their game like this and keeping it fresh with new content.
kinda similar to what UBI is doing with most of their recent games.

MechaBreaker said:

I don't get why people come out praising them everytime they put out an update.

They made fucking bank by being vague and obtuse, When they weren't lying, to their customers.

Sure, they could have been maximum assholes and just cut'n'run with the money after launch, but they're instead working on content, but that's a really low bar, when you consider that it's probably been paid for many times over, from the launch sales alone.

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For the simple reason that they didn't abscond with the money they made and pretty much cut off all pointless pr and focused on making the game as promised. its not ideal but in the current market its easily commendable for such a small team. watch how much free support BETHESDA's biggest game ever gets in comparison to the pr nonsense.

Man, some of the posts in here show people who just want to hate the game regardless of what's happened. If they'd released the game and never updated it people would crucify the team. Now that they've been releasing big amount of content years after launch for FREE, people are crucifying them!

As someone who bought the game at launch I was disappointed that a lot of the content that had been implied would be in there actually wasn't but I still enjoyed it a fair bit. Yes the fact they pretty much shut up shop for months after launch was very poor but they've knuckled down and the game that's out there now is vastly superior to the one at launch.

I struggle to think of any developer/publisher who would put out so much high quality content post launch entirely for free. Base building, freighters/autonomous missions, vehicles, survival mode, new machinery, a campaign, 'proper' multiplayer, new rendering engine, new biomes, etc etc. For such a small team to continue that kind of development is amazing and they should be applauded for what they've done since the game launched rather than continuously criticised for how it started off.

i played the game for a bit when the previous update dropped. it's really good but i think it's competing with a lot of big time sinkers for me (rdr 2 and d2 forsaken). perhaps what they could work on is having short term rewards. i feel like i'm wasting my time if i don't pour at least 2+ hours into the game.

Miniature Kaiju said:

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Not that these awards mean much but I truly believe that Hello Games deserves to win "Best ongoing game" at TGA. All things considered, their post-launch support has been amazing, this year in particular. Instead of cashing out like how other small studios would have done, Hello Games has been working their asses off to right the wrongs and not only bring consumers the experience they paid for but provide much more than that. But anyways Overwatch is heavily favored by critics so it's probably going to win again.

Miniature Kaiju said:

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So many applications ...

Wasn't super blown away by anything in this trailer compared to the last few, but the more NMS the better!

Just bought it on-sale last week.

It will be my "start of the new year" game.

I heard it can be a very chill experience :)

Lichtsang said:

How does it run on PC? After all this updates I'm tempted to jump in.

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IIRC there are a couple of tricks to get it running really well. Look up the old PC Performance thread.

Nestunt said:

Just bought it on-sale last week.

It will be my "start of the new year" game.

I heard it can be a very chill experience :)

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It can be, it can also be quite difficult with some frustrations and busywork. It was far more chill at launch when there was 10% as much stuff to do as there is now and there was no Survival/hard more option.

But generally it's awesome.

Lukemia SL said:

He also gave a talk at GDC in 2017.

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This is ridiculously interesting...

I think they should start working on a sequel, but it really seems like they are set on this, maybe introduce some monitisation, as its about time to make some extra cash, they can't release free updates for much longer.

RunesmithCaryll said:

This is ridiculously interesting...

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The part that I found insane was that the game without the audio at launch on Steam was .5GB with 1.5GB being audio. That's insane.

Slayven said:

Not a bad plan if you can do it

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Apparently all you gotta do is lie to people and then slowly build your game for three years after release. People praise him now. I mean it's better this way but lets not forget how they made their bank. They made enough money to update this game for life TBH.

Miniature Kaiju said:

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pretty much. it's hilarious to see people still trying so hard to maintain their madness at NMS. Hello Games has more than made up for any fuck ups, they've been exemplar about how companies can fix their mistakes and make right with their fans.

now, as someone else mentioned, give us VR! there was another game a while back called House of the Dying Sun which i kinda imagine might be like what NMS would be like in VR (well at least the dogfighting). NMS is so ripe for VR. oooh it makes me vibrate just thinking.

Lukemia SL said:

The part that I found insane was that the game without the audio at launch on Steam was .5GB with 1.5GB being audio. That's insane.

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It is. And Noctis IV was, like, less than 2MB.

Javier23 said:

It is. And Noctis IV was, like, less than 2MB.

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Well damn. That's data management.

Lukemia SL said:

Well damn. That's data management.

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It's the beauty of procedural generation. When everything, from geometry to textures and sounds, is created on the fly, you can pack giant games into tiny packages :D

BlacJack said:

Apparently all you gotta do is lie to people and then slowly build your game for three years after release. People praise him now. I mean it's better this way but lets not forget how they made their bank. They made enough money to update this game for life TBH.

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Yes, launch an ambitous game, and then spend money and resources with large free updates for years. Such an easy plan, why doesn't everyone do it?

Miniature Kaiju said:

It's the beauty of procedural generation. When everything, from geometry to textures and sounds, is created on the fly, you can pack giant games into tiny packages :D

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Yeah you know it, I see a lot of people on here hating on procedural generated content in games and it baffles me most of the time. I understand handcrafted content is still a great way to go but I cannot deny the results of what developers can do with procedural worlds and content.

Lukemia SL said:

The part that I found insane was that the game without the audio at launch on Steam was .5GB with 1.5GB being audio. That's insane.

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Just when he explained at the start the difficulty of knowing where to place a navigation marker - you never appreciate how complex the idea really is.

Nice to see that they're still updating it.
I went back after the "Next" update and had a great time.

Lukemia SL said:

Yeah you know it, I see a lot of people on here hating on procedural generated content in games and it baffles me most of the time. I understand handcrafted content is still a great way to go but I cannot deny the results of what developers can do with procedural worlds and content.

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When you want to generate vast amounts of content, procgen is unparalleled and it's not even close. One big problem it has, though, is the "bowl of oatmeal" syndrome: you can generate vast amounts of content with infinitely many random variants, but since variation lacks intentionality, you get a smoothly varying surface: just like every bowl of oatmeal has oats in different positions, they're all unique, but we don't perceive them as such as they're not significant.

Neural networks can change that, though. NN-guided procedural generation could learn from a human created learning set and extrapolate correlations from that. That would give the procgen some degree of intentionality, all the while retaining flexibility and capacity to generate tons of content on demand. Using NMS as an example, such a system could take all player-built bases, learn correlations of how players place rooms and decorations within them, and then generate bases completely by itself.

With newer tech like neural networks getting wider and wider adoption, we'll see procgen advance and become more common as tool in game development.

Miniature Kaiju said:

Neural networks can change that, though. NN-guided procedural generation could learn from a human created learning set and extrapolate correlations from that. That would give the procgen some degree of intentionality, all the while retaining flexibility and capacity to generate tons of content on demand. Using NMS as an example, such a system could take all player-built bases, learn correlations of how players place rooms and decorations within them, and then generate bases completely by itself.

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I wonder if HG uses some of the user-data (like scanned systems/flora/fauna/etc) in that way.