So...now that the dust settled down a bit, let`s have a closer look at the whole thing.

- the tech: I`m absolutely convinced that the whole (alleged) launch clusterf**k, describing the game as broken
and demanding refunds was just a typical Internet-era snowball-like mass hysteria, driven mainly by preceding
hatred and need to bring that overhyped-procgen-console-sellout-crap down.

Alas, my boring, mid-range 8.1/i2600K/780Ti/GSync rig handled the game without a hitch. Constant >80 fps, with
totally normal, very occasional chug. Played for 10+ hours over the weekend and haven`t had a single crash nor
saw any serious bugs. The gamepad controls sometimes got bit "floaty" and once I saw a few wrongly placed items
above the ground, that`s about it.

We all got the same code. There is no mysteries and chaotic factors in play here, just a cold, sciencey
hardware/software interaction. If it works for me - and many, many others with standard rigs - then the problem
is on your side.

I mean, what happened to PC Master Race? The fearless `ware warriors who don`t need to be told to install beyond-basic stuff like drivers or VC++ , or go into options and unlock the framerate, surely? Check the minimum specs before buying and such things?

Now, there`s no doubt some people had genuine problems, and that there are genuine bugs...you know, just like with any other launch of an uber-complex game. The Witcher seems to be a Holy Grail for many and is often called in for comparison (so fair, lol): have you forgotten that the 1st iteration was only playable when EE appeared, or
that it took them several patches to get the third`s performance stabilized? And that`s from a veteran studio backed by rich shopfront, over a decade of development, with hundreds of staff working on it. Let`s have some perspective, huh?

Never even mind other AAA titles, like GTA IV which will be forever unoptimized. But no matter! These are
beloved franchises, so people don`t mind that sub-30 fps performance because brand loyalty is stronger than
logic. The hypocrisy at play here is disgusting, really.

- the gameplay: No surprises here. Exactly what was promised and described in endless write-ups during last
year. For those who bothered to read, of course. Or, read without heavy bias clouding their vision. It`s all
there: aliens, combat, linguistics, trade, exploration, random events and so on. In a real Universe.
Mindblowing, really, that such a small team managed to pull it off. But, it`s easier to dismiss it as "boring".

Sure, anything can be given that treatment. You could say that collecting 100 nekker teeth is "boring", going on 1000 "raids", or runnin`n gunnin down the same corridor in yet another FPS?

Depends on a point of view, really. For me, NMS is an ultimate role-playing game, revival of cherished old school
principles, mindbending technical achievement and a great promise for future. If you find it empty and boring
that`s fine, but perhaps it`s not a game for you. Andromeda will be out soon, why not try that or heap of other
space games already released? Why exercise the truly-beyond-call-of-duty extreme hatred?

I don`t like MOBAS, Fifa, Hearthstone or Guitar Hero. The genres these games represent do nothing for me. But,
apart from an occasional joke, I don`t go on tedious crusades against them, they`re just "not for me". So
simple. And NMS despite being a "space" game has so many different design decisions that it really puts it on a
separate shelf.

- the "hype": Ahh, that ol` chestnut. It`s a funny one: from where I`m sitting the only really bad hype was
produced by those who just couldn`t stand this game from the beginning and kept an ongoing campaign of
misinformation - despite a ton of factual information revealed in the last year. I mean, seriously, are you
trying to blame Sony or Hello Games for bigging up and believing in their product? A game which is totally
groundbreaking (even if you hate this style) and hasn`t been downgraded or lied about what`s in store?

To cap it off, two most often repeated downright misconceptions (lies?) about NMS:

-it was never advertised as a multiplayer game. In fact, Mr Murray went to extreme lengths to explain it isn`t

and what the online component is all about. And yet, to this day, some still
insist "you promised us multiplayer..."...unbelievable.

-deal with SONY was for promotion/marketing, not funding. The game is self funded from profits from HG`s
previous games. In the age of endless Kickstarter panhandling and real sell-out deals, it`s rather commendable,
no?

All in all, I really, really wish more people would concentrate on celebrating the incredible achievement this
game represents instead of harping on about some banal, sometimes imaginary, and mostly absolutely normal issues - normal, given the scope of this project and the size of the team that produced it.

Especially seeing the state the gaming is in today, mostly that of the AAA variety (I see NMS is sort of a hybrid, half indie yet half AAA - when it comes to scope. Also, the tech is unbelievable, even if the spaceship isn`t built from a million shiny polygons in UE5...but like so many things about this game, it`s different - take off, fly around the entire planet, land anywhere, see stuff - not an empty texture - take off again and fly to another trillion planets. Yeah, beats GTA V - for me)

We`re being fed constant diet of sequels, reboots, remakes and rehashes, all employing the same safe, tried and tested - but oh-so-boring - formulas. Most of them plagued by microtransactions, extreme DLC, always-online or other sad schemes. Indie gaming is in better shape but often also seems stuck in a rut, especially the yet-another-nostalgic-copycat style. So, to finally have a game that displays real innovation and incredible vision is something to cherish and be happy about. And that`s from an old cynic who usually is being slammed for being "too negative".

Well, I`m trying not to, this time. And No Man`s Sky is the reason for that.

Nope.

Totally agree with dexterward.

i stopped reading right here. funny how its always the people who dont have problems that think the people who do have them are in the wrong.

the game plays good for you? great...go play it. but dont belittle or marginalize all the people who paid the same price as you did for a game thats broken.

and by the way...its only broken because the company that made it made it wrong. it didnt need to be broken...all those people who cant even launch the game can launch it under the emulation...which means its a code issue...not a hardware issue.

stop blaming the people who paid full price for a game and as of yet havent been able to play a single second of it when the blame falls 100% entirely on the devs who pushed out a broken game..

if YOU werent able to play it, you would be annoyed too...but since you can play it...screw everyone else right? typical.

Your correct with we all got the same code with the "sciencey hardware/software interaction",

My beef is what the minimum specs were before it released. Just exactly what core i3 is the minimum, after all there are multiple ones. Sure you can blame us with AMD rigs for the game not working for us, but it would have been great to know before hand about the SSE4.1 and openGL 4.5 requirements. Would I have bought it when I did if I knew about that, no.

For me that blame falls on Hello Games alone. They should have stated well before the release about those requirements.

As I have mentioned in a previous thread, it used to all come down to CPU speed and Ram, then came video cards, then came differences in speed for different CPU manufacturers, then came cores and x86/x64 OS's. I could go all the way back to my TSR-80 color which only had ram. Hell I remember the FAT32 fiasco of the early 90's.

Hello Games just listed components and left us all to wonder what was being utilized. www.systemrequirementslab.com analyzer said my PC met minimum requirements the day before launch. A few hours after launch, it still said I could run it. I can run it emulating SSE4.1, though its not playable. If I were to buy this game in a physical store, I can remember how fast my CPU is and how many cores, I don't remember exactly what make it is besides manufacturer, its not an everyday thing.

After my forced win10 upgrade with AMD stating they were no longer going to update older GPU's, I decided then my next PC is not going to be AMD. I didn't plan on making a new PC until next year though.

I don't blame GOG for a thing, they can't give us a patch they don't have. It sucks I might have to file for a refund if I can't run NMS when the 30days are up.

The original version always ran fine for Herrick. The riDICKulous loading times were what was killing it. This is a failure shared by Murray and the fans. Murray said you could see other players. When asked if players could "grief" each other he responded with, "A little bit". You can't respond like that and later on say, "Don't go into this game looking for a multiplayer experience". He never said, "Those features are not in our game" or "We are dropping those features." In fact, he tweeted about adding scanners to help players find each other after he said don't go in looking for a multiplayer experience.

The fans failed because multiplayer was never shown in any sort of video or preview. No details were given about how one would even communicate with other players. This should've set off a HUGE red alert for anyone looking for even rudimentary multiplayer function.

I don't think Hello Games really know what's supposed to happen when two players encounter each other. I don't believe they ever tested it. Someone posted on Steam that there are no third person models of players and that there can't be a third person animation of getting into one's ship because of how fast getting into a ship is.

EDIT: I've been playing the game for at least 2 hours a day since it came out and I'm enjoying it. I didn't expect multiplayer or good combat. The only thing I'm really let down by are the ugly textures on planets and the horrible pop-in when flying.

So, dexterward, I suppose I must be imagining all the problems with the game crashing then despite having a Core i7 processor and having upgraded my graphics card AND nuked and reinstalled my entire system (win 10 pro with anniversary update)?

Because you happen to not have experienced any problems, everyone who reports them MUST be delusional and it's all in their heads. How about you pull yours right out of your arse and take a good look around?

Did he say that? Or are putting words in their mouths because you choose to want to think that?

We know there are problems for some people. Does that mean that those of us with NO problems are deluded and it`s all in our heads? That we are imagining no problems in our games?

Stopped here... You have no idea how software development and PC works, sorry.

The beginning of his post comes off as smarmy as hell, even though it gets more reasonable toward the end. There are always a number of people who will simply gripe for the sake of griping. I happen to love this game, or more properly I would if it bothered to actually work, but every three minutes I get this friendly bunch of notices: The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{D63B10C5-BB46-4990-A94F-E40B9D520160}
and APPID
{9CA88EE3-ACB7-47C8-AFC4-AB702511C276}
to the user NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE SID (S-1-5-19) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.


The first two are from event log and the last two are from the system log and they only ever happen when NMS crashes, otherwise they never happen. And these are identical on both a directly Win7 upgraded to Win 10 pro upgraded to Win 10 Pro with Anniversary update AND on a clean install of said Windows. Furthermore, they are identical with both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

I should add that as of this writing, NMS crashes have started to destabilize the Windows Explorer process, which means I'm going to need to reboot my machine in just a few minutes.

And let's not even get started with the problems people with AMD processors are having.

What it means that there hasn't been proper testing and there has been (demonstrably) extremely sloppy coding and unprofessional lack of Q&A. Given that, there are a lot of users who have legitimate cause to be pissed off, so anyone who starts a post with the the kind of "I don't have any problems, so it must be just hate-bitching" pitch as dexterwad did is asking to get their heads ripped off and stuffed up their backside and they fully deserve it.

They are welcome to get right up on that particular high horse AFTER most of the major problems have been fixed and this bullshit becomes only an occasional phenomenon.

It`s easy to cherrypick a long post and take things totally out of context. Another way is to read it all and try to see it as a whole, but that`s harder, I know - especially in the Twitter era.

I make no apologies for being "smarmy" and I`m not gonna " take the my head out of my ass" any time soon - the reason is that after all the garbage and hostile input coming from the other side my output can be a little bit irritated.

Few points:

-I`ve been building and troubleshooting PCs for more than 2 decades, and observing the gaming scene for nearly four. This is why I refer to that launch shenanigans as "hysteria". As mentioned in the OP of course some users have legitimate gripes but I do consider majority to be throwing toys out of the pram.

First of all, modern PCs are rather complex affairs and so is running games on them. It takes one bad setting (that might be "right" for another game) or old driver or a lack of a driver or malware that went unnoticed or overheating component or whatever for the whole thing to fold. Despite that "all my other games run fine!". Trust me, I`ve been there and questioned my own sanity cursing the devs (for example Bethesda, because all of a sudden Skyrim stutters) only then flipping some "switch" days later and everything working fine again.

But it`s still a problem on your side.

Now, for those with legitimate complaints - the AMD debacle for example, like I said cut those guys some slack. If this game was funded and developed by SONY, okay, maybe they would have 50 people and millions of bucks to cover testing on all the possible combinations. But they didn`t. I`m sure they are working on it as we speak though.

Again, put those things into perspective, please: name one AAA launch that went super smooth? I`m sure you will, but please ask yourself: was this a tiny studio building an universe as well?

-to those with gripes about performance itself (not bugs or crashes) - this is so relative and part of the hysteric backlash I was talking about. When other AAA games come out and run like a dog on your just-above-min-spec rig (or better yet, unoptimized garbage console ports that run like dog on your state of the art rig), you won`t complain because you`re grateful it runs at all and anyway, hey, look at all those polygons!

And if you do complain, then fair dos, but again: Hello Games have about 10 people on board. Chew on this for a minute or two.

Another thing: if you think that because this game hasn`t got zillions of shiny polygons floating around and so it should run in 200+ fps, maybe it`s you who "have no idea how software development and PC works". Simply put, to shift this amount of data and calculations so y`all can zip around fully realized universe takes a bit of power I`d say. Other thing is, not all games have to have super-realistic textures and triple-filtered chromatic bezeloids with SSMMAHBA+/- on top. This game doesn`t need this kind of stuff given it`s art style I`d say...and I`d rather have them spend the processing power on AI, gameplay and worldbuilding.

Now, of course I`m pretty sure that with time it could be optimized better regarding performance. But here we go back again to the point about HG being a tiny indie studio. Give them some time.

-lastly, about multiplayer. Yeah, I saw this attack video telling me that HELLO LIED. Another hysterical, entitled rubbish. So they said something when the game was in-dev 2 years ago? Wow. If all that devs say about their games in ealy stages was true, GTA for example would be the only game you need, because I remember R* empty promises rather well.

Since I remember - last year+ they always said there will be only "online component": Atlas and (maybe) meeting other people. NO MULTIPLAYER as you know it. Now, the thing with meeting others is apparently broken - guess what I`m gonna say: "Give them some time." :D

I`m open to any discussion, as long as you take time to read it all and respond without cherrypicking. Again, my annoyance stems from the fact that most of negative feedback was here already before that game was even launched. And so large chunk made their minds up for assorted reasons, then used some completely normal launch hiccups as attack fodder - while I`m sure they would be totally fine if NMS was a mod developed by Valve, for example.

FFS, they sent death threats to Murray for delaying it. Witcher 3 was delayed twice, remember anybody threatening CDPR?

How is it then that some games run on most system extremely well (like 2016 version of Doom) and others ... Well, don't? I'll take the liberty of answering this question: Quality assurance and following proper practices.

Practices because if the game's developers follow proper practices, chances of the application not working on various systems is low. Quality Assurance because the more varied configurations is the game tested and optimized for, the less likely is it to not work on other configurations. Both come from my experience as a software developer.

If what you say were true, all other major AAA releases would meet with the same kind of backlash - however, it seems that, say, Doom 2016 has next to nobody complaining about technical issues or performance, in spite of it also running on various configurations. That's because it went trough proper QA process.

Now you might argue that "No Man's Sky was developed by 15 people, of course it doesn't have QA or such experienced programmers as Doom!" and you would be right, but since both games cost the same, they should be judged by the same standards. Here is a nice list with sources :-P With that said, I'm not one to yell and scream about pre-release promises - I quite simply don't trust them since, when being developed, it's quite difficult to really promise anything and then keep it.

Yes, this is precisely my argument. But now you mix the price in - clever ruse :)

Firstly, I personally don`t believe that the price is the equaliser allowing for the same judgement re: performance. Doom is a 60$ reboot built by a big veteran studio and NMS is a 60$ maverick game built by a 13 man team. The only yardstick for the "price" - for me - is the quality of gameplay and longevity. And since I see myself playing NMS for way more than 100 hours - no problem here.

There are other things: DOOM is a room-sized shooter with spawning enemies, can`t imagine anything simpler, design/code/performance-wise. NMS on the other hand...well :)

Don`t forget that experienced studios like Bethsoft or CDPR take many patches to get their games in shape. And this is the part of being bit blinkered: because these are beloved franchises we forgive them (or not: Bethsoft hate can be as irrational as anything). Here we had console-garbage-procedural-crap narrative from way before launch. I have good memory and remember countless posts a la "wow, Witcher/GTAV runs <30 fps on my rig but coz the game`s so cool it`s all good"

Regarding that "promised land" list...well...you already answered that yourself, so nothing to add :) Sure, one can nitpick ad nauseum given how long this game has been in-dev, but is there really point to that? On the other hand such OCD-like lists and attack vids only point me again to people who just need2hate and been doing so since well before launch.

What about the significant differences between trailers and gameplay?

Most notably, the autopilot. You CANNOT do some of the flight in the trailers, your ship hits an invisible wall and slides along it.

Sauropods: The big Brontosaurus-looking things in the trailer. Anyone seen one of them? Maybe a dozen planets in, and nothing here.

There's no large moving ships or space battles. Those are just destructible cargo containers.

It doesn't matter anyway: In a galaxy with all those suns, planets, and moons, there seems to be THREE races. No more.

Well, admittedly, there ARE different creatures on different planets. No, I haven't seen any (have seen various other things though), but have seen creatures NOT in the trailer.