Starfield hasn’t hurt No Man’s Sky’s popularity – it may have even helped it

No Man's Sky has had a great month, coincidentally around the launch of the other big space adventure of the day.

No Man's Sky has been one of the best examples of a video redemption story, and developer Hello Games never stopped expanding the game with new content, and more features. Just recently, the procedural space adventure celebrated its seventh anniversary with the Echoes update, and it doesn't look like there's an end in sight to this support.

But do these updates bring back players? The answer is an emphatic yes! Hello Games founder, Sean Murray, recently revealed that No Man's Sky is having "its biggest month in the last few years." Interestingly, this is happening across all platforms where No Man's Sky is available - so PC, consoles, Mac, and even VR.

Questy,
@Questy@lemmy.world avatar

This feels a lot like the release of Diablo 4 and it’s positive effect on Path of Exile. People get a new game, they are disappointed, they try an established game and get what they thought they were buying originally.

MantidSys,
MantidSys avatar

I haven't bought Starfield, and I don't plan to, but I watched some gameplay and... Well, the game is a pile of issues. And the few bits that are acceptable are bits I've already seen from NMS - and their implementation is usually better than Starfield. So as I'm watching Starfield footage, all I can feel is a desire to reinstall NMS and play that instead... And I'm not even a big NMS fan. It's not a good sign if your 'revolutionary' game already feels beat out by competition that had existed before your game was even halfway in development. Bethesda had all the time and manpower in the world to compete with NMS, and still fell short.

Goronmon,

"I have never played the game but here are my strong opinions about it." is the sort of commentary I'm seeing more and more of these days.

And I have to say, it's not something I'm a huge fan of.

metaStatic,

As the price of games continues to sky-rocket my backlog continues to grow.

At this pace I'll maybe play Starfeild before I die.

MantidSys,
MantidSys avatar

Fair enough, but there's a difference between reading headlines/articles to make a judgement, and watching actual real-time gameplay for several hours to make a judgement. The only difference was that I wasn't the one holding the controller. If several hours of uninterrupted unedited gameplay isn't enough to make a surface-level observation, I'm not sure what is.

Plus, I was just saying how what I saw made me feel, and I said I'd rather play one game over another. If we want to talk about unnecessarily strong opinions, let's start with you attempting to shut down my honest two cents to reinforce your negative worldview. Let's all be kind to each other, okay? :)

Sibbo,

That’s like comparing apples and pears. Starfield is about story. NMS is not. Just because both are sci-fi doesn’t mean they can be compared.

MantidSys,
MantidSys avatar

Well, sure. And Starfield follows in the wake of Fallout 4's lackluster RPG experience, offering shallow conversations and the illusion of choice. After Fallout 4, I'm not sure I can get myself to play another game modeled after the same system of "Would you like a quest? [Yes/Yes but sarcastic/One question first then yes/Maybe later]". If the story is railroaded, Starfield and NMS aren't too different then - there's a main quest line, with things to learn and people to meet, and you check off the boxes until it's done.

But as to whether they should be compared, I think it's unavoidable. There's too much overlap, and no other games like it. Games in which you can customize a space ship, explore thousands of planets, make a home base on any planet you want, and are incentivized to explore and find new places and meet new people? NMS, Starfield, Elite Dangerous, maybe Star Citizen. With some similar gameplay elements and a small pool of games, comparison is natural and expected. Nothing wrong with that.

StarkWolf,

I just think it's really funny that instead of the phrase "apples and oranges" you went with pears. Pears being the single most comparable, similar fruit to apples out of any other fruit. Starfield draws a lot of inspiration from No Man's Sky, it's perfectly fair to compare them whether or not they are literally the same game.

Tywele,

I guess they are German because in Germany we say “Äpfel mit Birnen vergleichen” (comparing apples with pears)

Lmaydev,

I’m really enjoying starfield so far but I haven’t played much.

It’s Skyrim in space. Seems great.

What issues are people having? I’ve been intentionally avoiding reading about it.

MantidSys,
MantidSys avatar

Most of what I see as 'issues' are personal preferences. Stuff like railroaded dialog choices even worse than Fallout 4, or stiff/awkward voice acting, or landing on planets being randomly generated despite claims otherwise. But as for actual issues, two things stood out to me: spaceship flight is very dangerous because bumping into things has a good chance of bugging the physics engine and killing you instantly (but other times, barely even registering damage). And seeing a player get stuck because they got a bounty without even knowing it, and then the bounty was making them shoot-on-sight by guards and them having no clue how to deal with the bounty. I'm sure there's a perfectly simple way out of the situation, but without any communication to the player, that's nothing but frustration. Add in broken NPC pathing/animations (people getting stuck inside objects like bar counters), making it all-too-easy to fall down ladder holes in ships, and horrible performance optimization (with Todd Howard being quoted telling people to just buy better computers), and I think it'll need a bit of polish before really considering giving it a shot.

hakonlo,

Yeah, it’s not a zero sum game.

thingsiplay,
thingsiplay avatar

@geosoco Somehow I don't see both games related. One is an RPG with story and characters and first person shooter elements. The other one is more exploring and less of an RPG.

PP_BOY_,
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

NMS might be the most impressive glow up in the past decade of gaming

TwilightVulpine,

It's a great redemption story. As much as people were mad, the promises always seemed pretty unrealistic at first, especially for a small studio like that. How far they have come at making them true is nothing short of incredible.

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