plasticflesh
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Everything posted by plasticflesh
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This offline-online error makes sense to me. In that I noticed the game going offline and online willy nilly; but the game never warned me or kicked me off in the way other asynchronous online games might do. The game also made no compunction about my "uploading" my discoveries to the world database while the game was in offline mode. I imagined a scenario where the game holds onto that and sends it later in online mode. I speculate it just dissipated into the aether.
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Idle Thumbs 277: Coming Attractions
plasticflesh replied to Chris's topic in Idle Thumbs Episodes & Streams
"A Festival of Piracy" was a good title candidate. -
Idle Thumbs 277: Coming Attractions
plasticflesh replied to Chris's topic in Idle Thumbs Episodes & Streams
Trailer music tropes fascinate me. I'm very happy you talked about it in such great detail. That darn Inception horn, amazing how much that has persevered. Thank you for the excellent example of the "piano tinkle," I wasn't certain what you meant. I'm a little sad "Who let the dogs out" is no longer used in every comedy trailer. -
I've also lost interest in "getting to the center" as it seems there's no unique proc-gen there. All the unique proc-gen seems to be on the other-color-stars that requires advanced warp drives. I haven't farmed those up yet.
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"Experimental Branch" has been released for PC users. Some kind of beta hot-fix of various PC architecture functionality stuff.
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I register vague interest.
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Base-building combined with not being able to return to your home system could add up to some interesting story telling. The feeling of leaving your home, never to return. Who knows what, or who, you left behind? Or, the feeling of returning to a home after it has been abandoned, player bases are seeded into the world. And those bases might always appear abandoned, if multiplayer is never integrated, we remain in our separate instances, continuing to be ghosts that can hear our own footsteps. it sets up "No Man's Sky" to share a lot of thematic environmental qualities of "Gone Home." Which could be cool. But, it's also antithetical to the universe being so big no one ever sees each other. Wouldn't base building encourage people finding each others star systems even more? Isolated multiplayer interaction seems to be barely within scope, let alone a lobby full of cooperating builders. Perhaps every day the ghost town you live in will update itself.
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I do agree about the futility of base building. This is why I built up a fantasy about getting a space RV you could walk around inside of, and maybe even customize the interior into your base. I especially get this fantasy during warp-speed sequences, to walk away from the cockpit and go to the back of the RV, like in all the sci-fi movies and shows. But that won't happen any time soon for so many technically reasons. The warp-speed sequence between systems is clearly a loading screen animation, you can see the geometry for the cockpit load and unload when arriving. You can't even move your view around the 70degrees you normally could. The warp-speed animation I assume is when the generation happens, meaning there's no resources left over to goof off in the back of the RV with a zoo of space-cows. Maybe this could be possible, if the whole travel time took a lot longer. Terrestrial base-building seems like an easy promise to deliver on what they already have without having to get crazy technical.
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Visiting planets that have player-made structures would be so-cool, super cool. Like all my comments, I was not speaking from any facts about a mod-scene, just wildly speculating on the potential. But there does seem to be a mod scene. Norman's Sky Mods .com and the reddet thread I learned about it from, with some highlights.
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It would be really cool if the base-building included a lot of terraforming options. "From Dust" style. I'm super skeptical of this game getting a good mod scene. I'm equally skeptical of the game getting the desired "free-mode." This is due to the asynchronous multiplayer aspect. I could see the devs having concern over mode scene or free-mode people getting to name all the planets and animals. Not that there seems to be any shortage of planets. I see three ways Norman's Sky could resolve this- a: give free-mode players their own "universe" of name-able claims, which doubles the backend HG needs to maintain, and splits the player base; b: shared universe between free-mode and survival, but remove the ability of free-mode players to name entities. They can work this into their lore, the "travelers" get to name entities, but the free-mode players are something else. Maybe they play as the "sentinel" race, that could be cool. c: don't worry about it, let it be unbalanced, there's plenty of room in the universe d: no free-mode This again hinges on the question of balancing the amount of planets people can name. The survival aspects of the game serves as a gate to keep players from traveling too far. Was that itself implemented to balance the amount of claims a player can make? Or just to kludge together a game-loop to make it feel more like a "game"? Also,
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Twig, I agree, calling them cynical is not the best language, and you are right, it does reflect my cynical view of those mechanics. But I'd rather call them "cynical" than "shitty." Though I guess both descriptions are vague. "Uncompelling?" "Tedious?" "Boring?" All very judgemental adjectives, reflecting my bias.
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I wonder if those cynical features would have been added on if NMS was not so heavily featured as the PS4 flagship indie game.
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ApexTwin, I agree about the cynical take on the iterations. in my own most cynical point of view, the game is just a giant database of iterations; and exploring the universe is just a dramatic way of exploring the folder-structure of the database. I sort of perceive all games as highly dramatic menus. This is why the crafting annoys me, there is very little drama of interacting with that menu. It keeps me from engaging with the dramatic menus I would rather be interacting with - exploring the iterated worlds and creatures. I have a similar problems playing turn based jRPGs, which make little effort obfuscating the spread-sheet nature of the game. Perhaps I'm more of a spatial person, or I have a slow reading comprehension, or I'm just obsessed with fantasy and escapism; for these reasons I like to have as much of the data visualized as possible, and play action-RPGs instead. To its credit, Normans Sky has a well organized and legible inventory menu. But the drama of exploring a cartoon alien universe is something I've always been interested in; so I look over the rough edges. I subscribe to the fantasy of exploring the RNG planets. Am I apologizing for Normans Sky? Probably. Other examples of dramatic menus would be the crafting mini games from Fable 2, or the Sanctuary in Fable 3, or the Hunters Dream from Bloodborne.
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Massive lore spoilers:
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Hmmm that's a good point! It must be the same technology that transmits isotopes from your exosuit to your space-car.
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The missing piece of smoke and mirrors that upsets me the most is that the when you launch into hyper-drive to another solar system; the space-car makes no effort to adjust to the new coordinates, and simply flies straight forward into whatever planet you were looking at. My expectations for hyper-drive require the space-car to do a little automatic rotation until it stops aiming at space-furniture. it crashed a few more times on ps4 for me, but I'll blame that on the heat in my apartment. That said I also encountered a planet of little ewok-bird people. Totes adorbs
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What if there was a late-game quest where an Evil Empire gives you the keys to their planet-destroyer-space station. And you just cruise around in that making asteroid fields. It is later revealed that the brains behind the Evil Empire is a highly efficient mining algorithm.
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Also, any time I've gotten into a space dog fight, it is certain death. I just don't get the space combat at all, as of yet.
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Poor game crashed on me twice last night! The first time I forgive, I had it in suspend mode forever; it crashed while I was arriving at a new star system. Second time it crashed when I was flying like a jerk on some planet. Didn't lose too much, the game saves when you land on planets. I bet this game was impossible to get through Cert. I've been main lining towards an Atlas waypoint, with the hopes of getting some sweet upgrades. So I've been sort of rushing through star systems in an interstellar road-trip. Stop to get gas, try and spot some convenient road side attractions, then get back on the road. Starting to get harassed by aggressive animals. Which results in me standing on top of my space-car trying to photograph the malevolent animal in question, while it is underneath my space-car. Or just lobbing them with a plasma grenade and seeing them rag-doll into a crater-shaped grave.
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I completely agree! I avoid conflict. My agenda when playing games often is as escapism, and to model utopia. Base-building games help achieve this by modeling prosperity, until the bubble pops. But that's on me, on my expectations and my shoddy base building; my ineffectiveness in the face of conflict. How does this apply to Norman's Sky? Did I sit down and play Norman's Sky and say, let's visit utopia? It does look so chill; all this violence and capitalism is harshing my mellow. So perhaps when I criticize the survival and exploitation aspects of the gameplay, it is because I want to be playing a different game; where God mode is turned on, and I can float through all the planets effortlessly. Perhaps I am then missing the point. I could play Spore, or Universe Sandbox. A last aside. Conflict is a form of agony, of suffering; but in Greek, Agon is the term for struggle, contest, and skill. This is reflected in the words protagonists and antagonists. This was part of the Greek moral system Arete, which focused on individuals becoming the greatest possible versions. Agony was the contest in which they achieved this. So in this frame, conflict is good. I enjoy Norman's Sky a lot. I like taking photos of space cows. I also enjoy pedantry. But perhaps I am way out of my element. I also worry that the asynchronous-multiplayer aspect will limit the PC mod scene...
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Right, right... The game isn't a total genocide. the game never lets you shoot an Alien NPC. The gun cannot be raised in their huts, in their Trade Depots, or on their Space Stations. And the Sentinel system is there to police the more malevolent Space Explorers. When they kill animals, certain plants, or break an entry into locked adobes. Then there is the yet undetermined nature of your Space Explorer self. Who sent you? What is your mission? This is deliberately vague, I assume to let the player write their own fiction. Thus, in my personal fiction of the game, I imagine you are playing an advanced form of Pokemon Go or Ingress. This explains why everything is already colonized and named. You are just pretending to re-colonize and re-name everything. Westworld, for space explorers.
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That does sum it up well, Badfinger. No Man's Sky's exploitation is doubly confusing because you're actually not exploring fresh 'unclaimed' land. Your "discovering" places that are already named and have structures. I guess this is in line with classical colonialism, disrespecting the natives' entitlements to property. The Polygon post is a good brief on the materialistic subtext of No Man's Sky. This comes up on 3 Moves Ahead often, the hidden agenda of games, I believe it is Troy Goodfellow who brings it up? The big paradox to me is this. Is this games mis-representing reality by focusing on systems that translate well to gameplay? Or is this games reflecting the fundamental materialism of reality? I like to play "non-violent" games, casual base-building games. Terreria, Minecraft, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, Stardew Valley. The systems of these games all revolve around strip mining the world to morph it into human uses. This comes up even while playing Minecraft in creative mode, where the only resource is space itself. All the conflicts that then arise are over property disputes; you made your claim too close to mine, your build next to my build is an eyesore, etc. And there is a strong desire to turn the procedurally generated hills into a Euclidean flat land for streets and skyscrapers. The 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy has a sort of relevant monolog...
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I'm eager to see what the end-game planets might be like. I have this fantasy that they dial up all the sliders to max. Dark Souls Similar Face meets Minecraft Far Lands. I looked up some spoilers,
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Have you learned about the sprint hop?
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I waited to activate the pre-order ship as long as possible in order to not miss crucial tutorial messages. This lead to a different irritant: Constant pop-ups telling me to activate my pre-order ship, blocking the tutorial messages.