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How NovaQuark "learned" from No Man's Sky


blundertwink

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This article was written in the wake of No Man's Sky's disastrous release...it's humorous reading it now, because JC is specifically talking about overambitious kickstarters promising too much...but how NQ is going to be different and "totally transparent": https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-10-07-building-a-space-sim-in-a-post-no-mans-sky-world 

 

Quote

We're not saying anything that is not true. We're stating the facts. We have this technology, but it's going to be released at the end of 2018.

 

I know this ship has sailed a long time ago, but it's a reminder of how much better off NQ is without JC at the helm...and how misleading he was with almost everything he said. 

 

I think articles from the past like this are helpful to understand why so many alpha backers left and won't be coming back -- his "facts" never seemed to be based in reality. 

 

It isn't just that NQ missed the mark vs. Kickstarter goals that were never realistic...that's understandable (and typical)...it's that JC talked about how they were different, they would be transparent, and they "had the technology". 

 

He talked it up for the sake of funding...and he was successful.

 

NQ of today isn't perfect, but it's SUs ahead of the exaggerations and obvious lies of 2016...and really interesting that in the years since, DU is still an alpha while Hello Games has (IMO) completely regained the trust of their customers and then some. 

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NMS fairly quickly made one of the most impressive comebacks in the industry because they had no direct control over why the game released in the state it did AND were able to overcome the fallout of a botched launch because they both had the skills and the funding to hunker down and get to work on fixing it. THIS YouTube video tells the story very well from both public perception and what actually happened.

 

NQ started out with a dream, no real experience in making even the basics they needed work and from the start were underfunded and had to battle budgets and technical deficiencies.

 

 

Today NQ may have the money to stay afloat as a company, they very clearly lack the funding to actually develop a game and they continue to need to cut corners and cut cost to try and make it to the release of the game. The big problem for NQ is that IF they are to survive post launch, they will need a LOT of money and players to scale up very quickly and quite extensively to where they can accommodate the numbers they need to even continue development. The question is whether they can deliver a game capable of carrying that requirement and grow quick enough to maintain a player base to remain a viable product. It remains a big question mark if they can.

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22 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

NMS fairly quickly made one of the most impressive comebacks in the industry because they had no direct control over why the game released in the state it did AND were able to overcome the fallout of a botched launch because they both had the skills and the funding to hunker down and get to work on fixing it. THIS YouTube video tells the story very well from both public perception and what actually happened.

 

NQ started out with a dream, no real experience in making even the basics they needed work and from the start were underfunded and had to battle budgets and technical deficiencies.

 

 

Today NQ may have the money to stay afloat as a company, they very clearly lack the funding to actually develop a game and they continue to need to cut corners and cut cost to try and make it to the release of the game. The big problem for NQ is that IF they are to survive post launch, they will need a LOT of money and players to scale up very quickly and quite extensively to where they can accommodate the numbers they need to even continue development. The question is whether they can deliver a game capable of carrying that requirement and grow quick enough to maintain a player base to remain a viable product. It remains a big question mark if they can.

 

Doubtful. Best word to describe DU is Boring.  No political intrigue.  No governments or bigger pvp zones or reasons to do stuff. At its heart DU is 3 very crappy single player games hiding in a trench coat pretending to be an MMO. 

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I like what's been done so far but it is still a Beta, or Alpha if you think of it like that but I have to say my experience of Alpha makes me see this as a Beta. As for politics you are not really going to get that until PVP gets going with players of 'vision' doing the things they want and watching the fallout happen and create the politics. Which basically means people who want to build something or rule something or steal stuff play and interact will make the politics happen.

 

I think to make it more 'interesting' you would need niche activities in areas, which people are encouraged to go to and do (for instance WOW has its mounts) and this would make that happen. Though personally I am enjoying making ships for various tasks - mainly haulers of different sizes at the moment, so you could argue that the interest of the game comes from what you put into and the 'people' mentioned in the above paragraph could make it more 'interesting' without anything else being needed.

 

Also on a side note and thinking about PVP and making things more 'interesting' I am reminded of WarOwls law: 'If it supports custom maps, there is a Dust II', I have been tempted to create dust II area somewhere with some spawn pads and forcefields to stop cheating especially with a war update coming soon. I do think you would need to be better at Lua than I am to make it work though. 

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1 hour ago, Overstimuloredom said:

Sometimes I wish the two projects could be one. It's just not an option on any pragmatic level, but just imagine...

DU has what NMS lacks in sandbox, NMS has what DU lacks in content.

 

NMS also has what DU lacks in core technicality -- they knew that what they wanted to achieve wouldn't be realistic with an off-the-shelf engine so they rolled their own. 

 

The game might seem simple, but their procgen is extremely advanced and merely looks effortless. The details involved rival anything DU has achieved in complexity (e.g. voxel-to-mesh tech which uses a public / academic algorithm). Frankly, it's probably easier to run into people in NMS than in DU...

 

NMS also has a very strong design / style and streamlined UX -- it often feels like NQ doesn't have even a single person focused on UI/UX on staff. 

 

Still a lot to learn from NMS -- don't compromise, just keep improving, don't lose hope, don't lose sight of the core premise of the game...and don't make promises based on lies (very relevant for their marketing team come release)!  

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Obviously, let's not forget Halo games has 10 million in the bank and little to no overhead, allowing them to hunker down and start fixing their shit..

Meanwhile NQ has considerable operating cost and no money in the bank to speak of, certainly not the buffer they'd need to do what Halo games did for NMS which allowed them to turn the game around. 

NMS's core was solid, the layers on top were the problem. DU's core is very limited, based on what IMO is a misguided fantasy of many tens of thousands of players creating everything in game while paying a monthly fee for the priviledge of doing so.

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22 hours ago, ADCOne said:

I like what's been done so far but it is still a Beta, or Alpha if you think of it like that but I have to say my experience of Alpha makes me see this as a Beta. As for politics you are not really going to get that until PVP gets going with players of 'vision' doing the things they want and watching the fallout happen and create the politics. Which basically means people who want to build something or rule something or steal stuff play and interact will make the politics happen.

 

I think to make it more 'interesting' you would need niche activities in areas, which people are encouraged to go to and do (for instance WOW has its mounts) and this would make that happen. Though personally I am enjoying making ships for various tasks - mainly haulers of different sizes at the moment, so you could argue that the interest of the game comes from what you put into and the 'people' mentioned in the above paragraph could make it more 'interesting' without anything else being needed.

 

Also on a side note and thinking about PVP and making things more 'interesting' I am reminded of WarOwls law: 'If it supports custom maps, there is a Dust II', I have been tempted to create dust II area somewhere with some spawn pads and forcefields to stop cheating especially with a war update coming soon. I do think you would need to be better at Lua than I am to make it work though. 

Oh god yes. I think the addition of AvA would be huge, with the death match arenas we could build. That was one of my biggest draws are initially; being able to build actual combat maps for competitive AvA inside DU. 
 

Give us our bread and circus!

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The biggest difference is that Hello Games even with a small teams (26 employees in 2020, 42 today according to linkedin) produced a steady and timely stream of big improvements to their game. And also released a second game "The Last Campfire 2020" while they where at it.

 

NQ on the other hand at one point having more then 150 employees (68 today), got hardly anything done in the same time frame as with No Mans Sky.

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