No Man’s Sky Has Already Lost 78% Of Its Playerbase

I already knew this game was gonna bomb the day they announced what it was. No one has ever made one of these type of games that were good and usually they died out quickly. Who remembers Spore?
 
DiabloRojo said:
I think you're either completely misunderstanding the scope of what we're talking about or just have no understanding of development and publishing.

First, maybe you also haven't been buying games for very long because there have been PLENTY of releases delayed due to being unfinished.

Now, when a game is released unfinished, it will be immediately outed as such (as this one has been) and very few people will buy it. The publisher will lose out and everyone learns the hard way not to push the release of unfinished games. So if there are no pre-orders, the creators and publisher(s) know damn well they have to release a solid product, else no one will buy it.

So, people should not pre-order because it lets publishers take your money before they finish a product. Once they have your money, they have no incentive to finish a game, which is exactly what Koolthulu said to begin with and, coupled with its massive hype train, is exactly what happened with No Man's Sky.
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You're assuming something that there is absolutely no proof of. That if people stopped pre-ordering games they'd be delayed more to finalize them better. That assumption as far as I can tell is completely baseless. Just because you don't pre-order the game the publisher will still want to meet quarterly profit margins. So if they planned the release for the Q1 financially, they'll release it so the profit still counts for that quarter. There is absolutely nothing you can do about that.

I've been buying games for about 20 years. Not that it is relevant. Yes many games were delayed but not because people weren't pre-ordering them. But because the developer had enough pull with the publisher to allow a delay.

So basically you want to police what other people do with their money. I don't think that's fair. I don't think the number of people pre-ordering games is that significant anyway. And since most publishers count on cashing in on day 1 DLCs and later DLCs they know if they release a questionable product people will loose interest in the game before buying any DLC. So it's in their best interest to release a quality product regardless of pre-orders.

Besides no mans sky is not simply unfinished. It's turned out ot be a boring game to begin with. I don't think there is an epidemic of unfinished games being released. Even with the ominous simcity relase the biggest problem was server capacity, delaying the game wouldn't have helped that.
No mans sky was also somehow got into public awareness as an AAA game, when in fact it's an indie game. And the hype got so big that even the devs thought they were working on an AAA title hence the 60 price. But it's total crap. So many red flags came up about the game in the last year that I went from being very interested to completely ignoring it by now.
 
That's another thing, I'm still shocked anyone thought paying 60 dollars for this game was a reasonable expense after seeing the gameplay and demo videos. It's like.. what color is the sky in your world? Going off the skies in no mans sky... an ugly hazy purple or green. Now this guy is laughing all the way to the bank. He's got all the money of people that were not quick enough on the draw for a refund.
 
Trundle around a planet collecting resources to upgrade your stuff...sounds a bit too much like reality. I would include the fact that those upgrades allow you to scoot off to another planet, but since it's the exact same routine only under a different colored sky, it is kind of a moot point.

Drop some acid to vary the familiar creatures, put on some pink sunglasses and go to work. No Man's Sky.
 
Not played it myself. but a couple of old wow buddies have picked it up and they both said it was fun.....for about 2 hours!

Looks to be very hit and miss on the content (from what I hear), so maybe with updates and a sale it can keep it's head above water.
 
I whole-heartedly agree that this was at the wrong price point, but that was most likely a Sony call; not the developers. This is definitely a $20 game. I am, however, enjoying the game. I find it very relaxing and a welcome change from the games I usually play. Its not a game to be rushed and it encourages exploration.

The folks that are rushing to the end, of any game just don't make sense to me. Sure you can finish a game like the Witcher 3 in 30-40 hours, but you miss a ridiculously enriching experience when you do; the "One Pump Chumps" of the gaming universe.

Like all games, it's not for everyone. NMS is all about the journey, not the destination. I really like the fact its easy to pop in and pop out and have enjoyed the variety of environments.
 
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I honestly didn't expect them to remove 70% of the features Sean Murray promised in pre-release interviews. I remember Peter Molyneux pulling the same crap before the first Fable came out, saying things like "every time you swing your sword your characters muscles will get slightly bigger." Because Sean Murray looks up to John Carmack and seemed like he was as passionate about this game as Carmack was about Doom I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I got burned on this game.

A lot of people are calling Sean Murray a liar. I can't say that he is for sure, but the only other possibility is that his development team made changes to the game without his knowledge. Occam's Razor points to him just simply lying.

For anyone who hasn't yet played the game, it can be summarized extremely well by one thing someone said in a Steam review, "a mile wide and an inch deep." It's a fisher-price exploration game. No challenge, no difficulty. You can't even crash your ship into a planet, no matter how hard you try it is physically impossible to crash your ship(how did you crash in the first place?). Planets all look slightly different but they all have almost every resource you need, so there's no real point in traveling to others in search of rare materials. The algorithms used for geography generation have relatively flat elevation curves, so you'll never go to a planet and see towering mountain ranges, or dive into huge oceans with abyssal trenches.

I tried flying to a star in one of the systems I was in, it's impossible. It's not a real star, just a light in the skybox. I used my pulse warp for over 3 hours trying to reach it. There are asteroids literally everywhere in each system. This is what allowed me to travel so long. I just warped towards the "star" until my fuel ran out, zapped a couple asteroids to refuel then continued. I traveled 80 million km and didn't get any closer to the star. Planets definitely do not revolve around the star. I doubt they ever did. Planets also do not rotate. There are no seasons on planets, no polar differences, you won't see ice at the poles, In fact I never came across any snow or ice.

The last time I played I was getting bored with seeing the same aliens everywhere, I warped to a new system, checked the space station to see what race was there, Vy'keen? ok move to the next, Vy'keen again, move to the next, Gex here, not much different from Vy'keen honestly, move to the next, back to Vy'keen, next system is Korvax, probably just a Vy'keen in a helmet. Move on to the next, and its back to Vy'keen. How do these aliens breed? There's no women around anywhere. Must be asexual reproduction. Well surely the whole universe isn't like that, lets keep going, Gex > Vy'keen > Korvax > Vy'keen > Korvax > Gex > Gex > Korvax > Korvax > etc...

wow such variety.
Uninstalled.
 
M76 said:
You're assuming something that there is absolutely no proof of. That if people stopped pre-ordering games they'd be delayed more to finalize them better. That assumption as far as I can tell is completely baseless. Just because you don't pre-order the game the publisher will still want to meet quarterly profit margins. So if they planned the release for the Q1 financially, they'll release it so the profit still counts for that quarter. There is absolutely nothing you can do about that.

I've been buying games for about 20 years. Not that it is relevant. Yes many games were delayed but not because people weren't pre-ordering them. But because the developer had enough pull with the publisher to allow a delay.

So basically you want to police what other people do with their money. I don't think that's fair. I don't think the number of people pre-ordering games is that significant anyway. And since most publishers count on cashing in on day 1 DLCs and later DLCs they know if they release a questionable product people will loose interest in the game before buying any DLC. So it's in their best interest to release a quality product regardless of pre-orders.

Besides no mans sky is not simply unfinished. It's turned out ot be a boring game to begin with. I don't think there is an epidemic of unfinished games being released. Even with the ominous simcity relase the biggest problem was server capacity, delaying the game wouldn't have helped that.
No mans sky was also somehow got into public awareness as an AAA game, when in fact it's an indie game. And the hype got so big that even the devs thought they were working on an AAA title hence the 60 price. But it's total crap. So many red flags came up about the game in the last year that I went from being very interested to completely ignoring it by now.
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They can plan their financials any which way they want, but you know what impacts revenue numbers the most? People not buying your game. If people stop pre-ordering it gives them, the customer time to see how good the game at launch is and if it doesn't meet their expectations no money is given. Pre-orders are a HUGE chunk of revenue. It's been increasing something like 30% YoY.

The AAA hype was due to the Sony Effect. Once they got into the mix hype mode went to FTL speeds :)
 
Koolthulu said:
Sadly it doesn't matter how quickly people gave up on the game, since the company already got their money for what is basically an early beta. People need to stop getting caught up in hype and preordering games. This stuff won't stop until us gamers make it stop. I heard they are already hinting at paid DLC.
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It will NEVER stop. We're just going to lose more and more consumer rights as far as gaming goes.

M76 said:
You're assuming something that there is absolutely no proof of. That if people stopped pre-ordering games they'd be delayed more to finalize them better. That assumption as far as I can tell is completely baseless. Just because you don't pre-order the game the publisher will still want to meet quarterly profit margins. So if they planned the release for the Q1 financially, they'll release it so the profit still counts for that quarter. There is absolutely nothing you can do about that.
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Well yes and no. The assumption is baseless because I think as long as a game has good marketing, people will NEVER stop pre-ordering. Never. You almost don't need a good product now to make profit if your marketing is strong enough. People throw money at shiny things, that's how our economy works.

I think what he was getting at is if everyone stopped pre-ordering games, then the ones that were lacking in quality would stop getting as many sales because word of mouth would get out faster. So it wouldn't stop the first or even second generation of games to do this. But if everyone stopped pre-ordering, eventually the companies would realize that they need to make the game good in order to make a significant profit. So it might not delay games, but it actually might mean management would have to adjust its expectations and plan better so that developers have enough time to make a decent game. So instead of giving developers a year and half to work on a game, they would realize they actually need 2 years or else they'll lose sales, etc. So they would either scale down how large a game it is or else adjust the budgeting accordingly. None of this has any chance of happening though, since again, consumers like shiny things.

M76 said:
I don't think there is an epidemic of unfinished games being released.
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I totally disagree, but I think we may have different definitions of "unfinished." If you mean "missing core features", then I would agree.

To me, a finished game has no need for a day 1 patch, because it's already been playtested thoroughly, and they literally can't work on any bugs without getting more feedback because they've already fixed all they can find before they ship. In other words, it's finished. Future patches are only for small things that would have been difficult to foresee ahead of time. It's should run from beginning to end without serious bugs. If you compare a "finished" game now to one from the 90s, you would see a difference in just how "finished" the modern one really is. Nowadays, day 1 patches are the norm because developers are shipping the game before it's even completed and are working on it right up until launch day to get it as functional as possible. Modern games are late betas on launch, not finished products.
 
MavericK said:
Honestly, I think this one dethroned SimCity.
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Has any digital reseller been offering customers refunds yet? Did the game live up to feature promises? Nope, from what I gather. Does it work enough that a game is there to be played? It seems so.


On those grounds alone, it ain't passed SimShitty AFAIK. Granted I haven't been following it.
 
Skripka said:
Has any digital reseller been offering customers refunds yet? Did the game live up to feature promises? Nope, from what I gather. Does it work enough that a game is there to be played? It seems so.


On those grounds alone, it ain't passed SimShitty AFAIK. Granted I haven't been following it.
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Sort of...tons of crashes both on PS4 and PC with NMS, so I think "works enough" is debatable. No reseller refunds but I'd be curious to know how many Steam refunds it had. Did not live up to feature promises at all.

I was more going from the level of zealous hype that occurred with NMS, resulting in death threats from the implication that it was going to be delayed (and it was), DDoSing of sites that posted negative reviews, etc.
 
Scizyr said:
I honestly didn't expect them to remove 70% of the features Sean Murray promised in pre-release interviews. I remember Peter Molyneux pulling the same crap before the first Fable came out, saying things like "every time you swing your sword your characters muscles will get slightly bigger." Because Sean Murray looks up to John Carmack and seemed like he was as passionate about this game as Carmack was about Doom I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I got burned on this game.

A lot of people are calling Sean Murray a liar. I can't say that he is for sure, but the only other possibility is that his development team made changes to the game without his knowledge. Occam's Razor points to him just simply lying.

For anyone who hasn't yet played the game, it can be summarized extremely well by one thing someone said in a Steam review, "a mile wide and an inch deep." It's a fisher-price exploration game. No challenge, no difficulty. You can't even crash your ship into a planet, no matter how hard you try it is physically impossible to crash your ship(how did you crash in the first place?). Planets all look slightly different but they all have almost every resource you need, so there's no real point in traveling to others in search of rare materials. The algorithms used for geography generation have relatively flat elevation curves, so you'll never go to a planet and see towering mountain ranges, or dive into huge oceans with abyssal trenches.

I tried flying to a star in one of the systems I was in, it's impossible. It's not a real star, just a light in the skybox. I used my pulse warp for over 3 hours trying to reach it. There are asteroids literally everywhere in each system. This is what allowed me to travel so long. I just warped towards the "star" until my fuel ran out, zapped a couple asteroids to refuel then continued. I traveled 80 million km and didn't get any closer to the star. Planets definitely do not revolve around the star. I doubt they ever did. Planets also do not rotate. There are no seasons on planets, no polar differences, you won't see ice at the poles, In fact I never came across any snow or ice.

The last time I played I was getting bored with seeing the same aliens everywhere, I warped to a new system, checked the space station to see what race was there, Vy'keen? ok move to the next, Vy'keen again, move to the next, Gex here, not much different from Vy'keen honestly, move to the next, back to Vy'keen, next system is Korvax, probably just a Vy'keen in a helmet. Move on to the next, and its back to Vy'keen. How do these aliens breed? There's no women around anywhere. Must be asexual reproduction. Well surely the whole universe isn't like that, lets keep going, Gex > Vy'keen > Korvax > Vy'keen > Korvax > Gex > Gex > Korvax > Korvax > etc...

wow such variety.
Uninstalled.
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You are wrong the planets DO have day and night cycles the relative positions to each other do change but they still remain too close to each other... You are right they don't orbit a star realistically if they did each system would feel so much bigger also rather than having so much fuel around I would have liked it to be gas clouds for a ram scoop of some sort to refuel with... Like elite dangerous...
 
The percent daily drop in players is precipitous. In the first month, The Division averaged a 1.9% per day drop in players. It's total audience was down to about 37% of peak. In the first 9 days, No Man's Sky dropped an average of 8.5% per day. In only 9 days, its total player base was down to 20% of peak. You can't find a single day for the Division at 20% until 39 days after launch.

Something about NMS is failing to retain sustained interest.

Disclaimer: These are some very rough numbers manually pulled from githyp. If I can get a raw data dump from somewhere, I'll do better.
 
Dunnlang said:
The percent daily drop in players is precipitous. In the first month, The Division averaged a 1.9% per day drop in players. It's total audience was down to about 37% of peak. In the first 9 days, No Man's Sky dropped an average of 8.5% per day. In only 9 days, its total player base was down to 20% of peak. You can't find a single day for the Division at 20% until 39 days after launch.

Something about NMS is failing to retain sustained interest.
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Yeah, NMS simply doesn't have intense action, an engaging story that draws you in, or hell even much of a carrot on a stick at all. It literally is a game you can set down for a year, and jump right back into playing where you left off because you don't have to remember what you were doing.
 
I look forward to paying $10 for this and messing around for a few hours. It really is Spore all over again.
 
I almost pre-ordered this for PS4. Then I almost pre-ordered it for PC.... and I did neither. And I am so happy I didn't.

I'll pick this up and play with it when it hits $10. The Angry Joe review is dead on... despite all the crashes and technical issues (which they might eventually fix), they took so much out of the game there isn't really a "game" anymore.
 
Burticus said:
I almost pre-ordered this for PS4. Then I almost pre-ordered it for PC.... and I did neither. And I am so happy I didn't.

I'll pick this up and play with it when it hits $10. The Angry Joe review is dead on... despite all the crashes and technical issues (which they might eventually fix), they took so much out of the game there isn't really a "game" anymore.
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Even if they left all that Angry Joe pointed out was missing, that still would not have saved the game. It was empty from the ground up as a concept. It's more of a tech demo than any game that is charged as nothing more than a tech demo, because the gameplay is of a sort that virtually no one but the most crippled autistic types could get into.
 
Koolthulu said:
Sadly it doesn't matter how quickly people gave up on the game, since the company already got their money for what is basically an early beta. People need to stop getting caught up in hype and preordering games. This stuff won't stop until us gamers make it stop. I heard they are already hinting at paid DLC.
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But but ..... one born every minute you know :cool:
 
I've been harping on the whole "procedurally generated" worlds thing from day 1. Now I think I have something to compare it to. People loved the concept of a procedural universe because it means it would be big. It means there would be lots of shit to do and technically never end. I always said the fault lies in the fact that their technique to generate worlds wasnt sophisticated enough, and that all worlds would feel similar, and those that dont would feel too chaotic and random. Basically you'd always know the world was false and random. Take for instance a game like GTA V. Do you think a game like this would work for shit if the city and neighborhoods were randomly generated? I mean heck they could have built the entire planet as a play space if they wanted to do this. but they didnt. The sheer size and scope of this game is breathtaking. Rockstar just hit a homerun in every possible sense, and you know why it works? Because despite how incredibly vast and large the world is, it still all had a human touch to it, meaning that it isnt random, it's designed. And it took them years to do this, but they knew it had to be done. No Man's essentially tried to shortcut their way around this problem of an immensely detailed world by just having an algorithm do all the work for them. Well sorry that just doesnt work, at least not with the tech they're using. They would have been better off hand developing every world, spending 5 years to do it, only making maybe a dozen or so but making them as detailed as they possibly could to give people a reason to visit.
 
Dunnlang said:
The percent daily drop in players is precipitous. In the first month, The Division averaged a 1.9% per day drop in players. It's total audience was down to about 37% of peak. In the first 9 days, No Man's Sky dropped an average of 8.5% per day. In only 9 days, its total player base was down to 20% of peak. You can't find a single day for the Division at 20% until 39 days after launch.

Something about NMS is failing to retain sustained interest.

Disclaimer: These are some very rough numbers manually pulled from githyp. If I can get a raw data dump from somewhere, I'll do better.
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‘Pokemon Go’ Loses 12 Million Users After Just One Month
Pokemon go had 45 million users and lost 12 million (note the article says "daily users" meaning people who played more than once), that's a 26% loss.
 
nysmo said:
I've been harping on the whole "procedurally generated" worlds thing from day 1. Now I think I have something to compare it to. People loved the concept of a procedural universe because it means it would be big. It means there would be lots of shit to do and technically never end. I always said the fault lies in the fact that their technique to generate worlds wasnt sophisticated enough, and that all worlds would feel similar, and those that dont would feel too chaotic and random. Basically you'd always know the world was false and random. Take for instance a game like GTA V. Do you think a game like this would work for shit if the city and neighborhoods were randomly generated? I mean heck they could have built the entire planet as a play space if they wanted to do this. but they didnt. The sheer size and scope of this game is breathtaking. Rockstar just hit a homerun in every possible sense, and you know why it works? Because despite how incredibly vast and large the world is, it still all had a human touch to it, meaning that it isnt random, it's designed. And it took them years to do this, but they knew it had to be done. No Man's essentially tried to shortcut their way around this problem of an immensely detailed world by just having an algorithm do all the work for them. Well sorry that just doesnt work, at least not with the tech they're using. They would have been better off hand developing every world, spending 5 years to do it, only making maybe a dozen or so but making them as detailed as they possibly could to give people a reason to visit.
Click to expand...

The only way I think a procedurally generated world could work in a game, is after we get a sentient AI turned game dev that could create faster than human beings, and never sleep (aka standard software dev hours during pre launch). This AI would need to get to the state where it could write interesting stories all by itself, and create vast worlds and characters. Then, and ONLY then, would this method yield something useful.
 
sfsuphysics said:
‘Pokemon Go’ Loses 12 Million Users After Just One Month
Pokemon go had 45 million users and lost 12 million (note the article says "daily users" meaning people who played more than once), that's a 26% loss.
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I know this is old, but I was speaking of a drop to 20% of lower total from peak. A 26% loss would be a drop to 74% total of peak (after one month). Even Pokemon Go (a threadbare game at best) is not hemorrhaging like NMS.
 
Dunnlang said:
I know this is old, but I was speaking of a drop to 20% of lower total from peak. A 26% loss would be a drop to 74% total of peak (after one month). Even Pokemon Go (a threadbare game at best) is not hemorrhaging like NMS.
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Especially since the 26% drop is over at least a month, where the 78% is a week.
 
Koolthulu said:
Sadly it doesn't matter how quickly people gave up on the game, since the company already got their money for what is basically an early beta. People need to stop getting caught up in hype and preordering games. This stuff won't stop until us gamers make it stop. I heard they are already hinting at paid DLC.
Click to expand...

The pre-release leaks and then the PS4 gameplay actually got me more interested in the game than I had been. They hype was crazy and many took it too seriously. Its hard to blame many people though given a lot of the misinformation/lies about what the game offered and what it delievered. The most annoying was/is the bugginess of the game. I'm sure I'll overall regret buying NMS but I don't hate it. It is definately not a $60 game though.
 
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