Let this be a lesson to Valve and Half-Life 3.RaikuFA said:One word: Hype. That's what killed this game. People praised it as the second coming and we got... Minecraft in space.
This. Even if the flood screwed them over in terms of lost work, Hello Games are still guilty of lying about what would be in the game. If they'd come out and said that the game would be suffering from the flooding, I would have understood, but they didn't. They instead kept the hype train rolling, promising or, at the very least, not denying what would or wouldn't be in the game, so they're still at fault.Bad Jim said:I can't help but notice that the flood was two and a half years ago. So it doesn't excuse any promises made since then, which is nearly all of them.
This. I thought it was standard procedure to use cloud services to store a lot of pieces of your game, and to keep off-site back-ups in case something happened to your office (break-in, fire, flood, etc.).Czann said:Losing their stuff in that flood I understand. But if they lost their work because it wasn't backed up elsewhere... That would speak volumes about their preparedness and management competence.
This is a pretty prevalent issue these days. People get so excited and build these games up to be things they can never deliver on. As a result, perfectly decent and functional games get slammed into oblivion because they weren't life changing.RaikuFA said:One word: Hype. That's what killed this game. People praised it as the second coming and we got... Minecraft in space.
Then why not outright say that their game will be limited in scope and just simple fun? Why not say "no, Mr Interviewer, there is no multiplayer functionality"? Why not say "no, there is no faction system and no random battles for you to fight in"? Why not say "the ships you can fly are all the same except for cargo slots"?Elijin said:The best part is there's nothing dev studios can do about it. Anything short of outright saying their own game is going to be limited in scope and just simple fun, will let people run rampant with hype.
A few thingsI think what basically happened was that despite their lost work, they were hellbent on making this game a reality. So... They started over almost completely. Which basically means what should have been a 4-year dev cycle got smashed into a 2-year one. And for the scale and scope of what they were planning, two years is NOT enough, which resulted in having to put out a mediocre game. And as to all the runaway hype, well... I guess they just wanted to see this game succeed so badly, after all the work that they had to put in. So they lied. I don't think this is NEARLY as black and white as a lot of people are making this out to be.
Because it is a basic safety measure. Your office might not be flooded, but it could burn down in a fire, it can be broken into and robbed, a massive electrical surge in the building could destroy all electrical equipment etc. etc.. If you've got sensitive information in your office, such as the game you are making, it is only prudent to store a back-up off-site. Doesn't matter if it is via a cloud service (I hear several indie devs use stuff like dropbox to store their back-ups), a bank vault, your own apartment or your parents gun cabinet. It is a simple and basic safety measure that will prevent you from seeing two years of your life's work gone just because some junkies broke in and stole all the PCs so they could score meth.Arnoxthe1 said:1. Hindsight is always 20/20. I'm sure they made backups but why would they ever think to make them offsite? I'm pretty sure they weren't expecting a massive flood to destroy everything.
Such as? Everybody keeps parroting this, but nobody gives examples.Arnoxthe1 said:The devs DID lie. Many times.
Well here's a Reddit post documenting what Sean Murray said and what he actually delivered.Johnny Novgorod said:Such as? Everybody keeps parroting this, but nobody gives examples.Arnoxthe1 said:The devs DID lie. Many times.
Watch Angry Joe's review of the game. He lays it all out pretty darn nicely.Johnny Novgorod said:Such as? Everybody keeps parroting this, but nobody gives examples.Arnoxthe1 said:The devs DID lie. Many times.
Yep. Ultimately what most of the complaints about No Man's Sky comes down to a lot of people not paying any actual attention to what Hello Games said about the game, hyping it into the stratosphere then being disappointed when it wasn't as good as their completely unrealistic expectations made it out to be. In fact, Hello Games delivered a game far far more impressive than their tiny team should've really been expected to.Elijin said:This is a pretty prevalent issue these days. People get so excited and build these games up to be things they can never deliver on. As a result, perfectly decent and functional games get slammed into oblivion because they weren't life changing.
The best part is there's nothing dev studios can do about it. Anything short of outright saying their own game is going to be limited in scope and just simple fun, will let people run rampant with hype. And then because we live in this weird age where anything short of life shattering is a "mediocre waste of time" it will be trashed still.
Well, whenever an interviewer asked Sean about if something would be in the game, he'd reply "yes". So really, it's just as much his fault: if there's not going to be multiplayer, then don't say there will be multiplayer when asked.immortalfrieza said:Yep. Ultimately what most of the complaints about No Man's Sky comes down to a lot of people not paying any actual attention to what Hello Games said about the game, hyping it into the stratosphere then being disappointed when it wasn't as good as their completely unrealistic expectations made it out to be. In fact, Hello Games delivered a game far far more impressive than their tiny team should've really been expected to.Elijin said:This is a pretty prevalent issue these days. People get so excited and build these games up to be things they can never deliver on. As a result, perfectly decent and functional games get slammed into oblivion because they weren't life changing.
The best part is there's nothing dev studios can do about it. Anything short of outright saying their own game is going to be limited in scope and just simple fun, will let people run rampant with hype. And then because we live in this weird age where anything short of life shattering is a "mediocre waste of time" it will be trashed still.
There's any number of possible explanations for why that failure for two players to meet up happened, especially since it was already a 1 in a ridiculously high number chance any player would ever meet another player in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if Hello Games just decided to drop the feature entirely considering the odds against it myself. Sean Murray DID say there would be no multiplayer. He was asked the equivalent of "can players meet up?" and "is there anything players can do to interact with each other?" his answers were "Yes, but it's really really unlikely" and "No." Ergo, no multiplayer. Multiplayer is not just the capability to SEE another player, but the ability to INTERACT, which Murray made quite clear there was no means ingame of doing so.Mangod said:Well, whenever an interviewer asked Sean about if something would be in the game, he'd reply "yes". So really, it's just as much his fault: if there's not going to be multiplayer, then don't say there will be multiplayer when asked.
I couldn't have said this better. This was going to be a $20-$30 indie darling until someone started thinking they could go AAA without the resources to do so.Gethsemani said:This. I thought it was standard procedure to use cloud services to store a lot of pieces of your game, and to keep off-site back-ups in case something happened to your office (break-in, fire, flood, etc.).Czann said:Losing their stuff in that flood I understand. But if they lost their work because it wasn't backed up elsewhere... That would speak volumes about their preparedness and management competence.
NMS suffered from the fact that it had a great idea, an exhilarating pitch and was made by a developer who had nowhere near the resource to pull it of. 15 employees just isn't enough if you want to provide lots of unique content at the scale of NMS, especially when you consider that it takes several hundred people to make your average Ubisoft open world. NMS biggest failure was the Hubris of its' developers and an incredibly aggressive marketing campaign from its' publisher.