Wednesday, November 27th 2024
No Man's Sky Serves Live Service Master Class As Steam Reviews Tip Into 'Very Positive'
It's no secret among gamers that No Man's Sky had a rocky launch. When the game launched over eight years ago, it was nearly universally slammed by gamers for its lack of completion and failure to deliver on lofty goals. Since then, though, the game's developer, Hello Games, has issued several updates, adding content and improving mechanics to a point where most consumers—at least those on Steam—are apparently happy with the state of No Man's Sky.
According to SteamDB, in January 2017, just three months after No Man's Sky launched, it had more than twice as many negative Steam reviews as positive. That situation started to change in around July 2018, when a spike in positive reviews rolled in after the nearly revolutionary No Man's Sky Next update. At that point, No Man's Sky still had a roughly 50-50 split between positive and negative reviews, but it was already trending upwards after the initial wave of just over 55,000 negative reviews. Since then, with every major update, the number of cumulative positive reviews seemed to climb a little more. As of today, however, No Man's Sky has an 81% positive review rating on Steam, having recently passed the 80% threshold to be considered "Very Positive."
The news of No Man's Sky's long-term success after it flopped at launch comes shortly after news that Ubisoft disbanded the development team behind Prince of Persia The Lost Crown just 10 months after its somewhat disappointing commercial performance. In a similar vein, Sony recently axed its newest hero shooter, Concord, mere weeks after launch, due to abysmal reviews and player counts. With No Man's Sky, however, Hello Games sort of proved that a dedicated development team that takes feedback and implements changes can turn things around, even if it takes a while.
Sources:
SteamDB, Steam
According to SteamDB, in January 2017, just three months after No Man's Sky launched, it had more than twice as many negative Steam reviews as positive. That situation started to change in around July 2018, when a spike in positive reviews rolled in after the nearly revolutionary No Man's Sky Next update. At that point, No Man's Sky still had a roughly 50-50 split between positive and negative reviews, but it was already trending upwards after the initial wave of just over 55,000 negative reviews. Since then, with every major update, the number of cumulative positive reviews seemed to climb a little more. As of today, however, No Man's Sky has an 81% positive review rating on Steam, having recently passed the 80% threshold to be considered "Very Positive."
24 Comments on No Man's Sky Serves Live Service Master Class As Steam Reviews Tip Into 'Very Positive'
Hopefully Sean learns his lesson and keeps his mouth shut on the next game, and lets a PR guy handle advertisement.
You want a "masterclass" in running a live service game? Fortnite. There you go. NMS is the glue eating special kid int he back that got no-child-left-behind-ed into the upper grades because we cant hold anyone back.
It is a completely different game now compared to the vanilla version, so much so that controls I remember having were changed/moved/adjusted, there is base building, actual co-op and so much more that I'd have to spend another 20+ hours just to relearn the basics and then some for everything else they added to the game.
I think it's impressive how much extra time and money they put into the game to make it what it is today. The game is on the list of co-op games my brother and I want to get playing, but who knows when that will even be with all the games we already have.
Master Class in Story line, no way much too short.
Naah, they're done next year.
Sure it shouldn't have been released when it was (had a lot to do with Sean Murray doing a serious impersonation of Peter Molyneux during PR), but that was major pressure from Sony seeing dollar signs. The point is they actually fixed their game and there are only a few willing to do that. CD Project Red fixed a bad Cyberpunk 2077 launch as well. Sure the PS4 and XBone were beheaded but again more investors wanting it done no matter the consequences.
Many other games just get ignored or beheaded when it isn't all great and then they move on with another thing, but they stuck to their game and really fixed it and added even more than that. That is what the master class is about.
If Sony didnt own them, this launch would have destroyed hello games. There's no way they could have worked on the game for years, with the newer larger team, and kept all the updates free to create the NMS we know today without the backing of Sony.
Most of those issues are still in the game. Ship combat is better, but still not really enjoyable, one might call it functional now. Procedural generation still doesn't really surprise all too often, except when you land on a unique seed with special stuff in it meant for the story, or when the color palette and the environment line up to be a beautiful match; a rare event, since much more often you're in a clown show of colors. You can build bases now and gather tons of shit for them, so the game 'has purpose / goals' now, one might say, but it still bores the shit out of me faster than completing a single task.
To me NMS is still a game that's great if you're fresh into it, the 'firsts' are great experiences. And after that? The formula, the concept is dead to me. It feels aimless, despite all of its possible goals, perhaps in part because of its procedural background. You just know there's an infinite amount of combinations to land onto, but why would you want to? The actual gameplay is still very basic, rather clunky, and not quite fun - and certainly not as immersive as you'd want it to. The game looks cartoony and that hurts it. Another issue is that up to this day there is heavy LOD/texture pop in, the celestial bodies are still fake, space is still 'fake', there's no real idea of distance or speed or positioning in it. Overall, the whole simulation basically still sucks monkey balls, especially for a game that sells itself on being a simulator.
So yeah... Master class? I beg to differ. The game's beyond saving, but sure, they do push a lot of post release content out.A real live service or post release master class to me is Starcraft, Warcraft 3...
Released in a good state, brought to perfection post release, and supported by a super solid game concept. And let's recall the fact you paid your 50 bucks for those games - ONCE - and never had to open your wallet again, only when they released expansions that basically gave you a whole new game on top of the game. And here's the kicker, Blizzard could apparently just pay all those Bnet servers for you too on that money. Not a year, or two years, but many, many years worth of it. Somehow we lost that along the way, in an era where Moore's Law was making computing cheaper every year? Strange, strange indeed!
And here we are in 2024, some decades later, cheering about the odd game that doesn't go to absolute shit post launch, but instead starts at absolute shit and becomes a functional product. Not good or great, but functional. Call me a pessimist, but man we've sunk deep.When I try to run this, the game won't even install. The launcher looks nice, I guess. I wonder if things have changed now that W11 24H2 is out in the wild officially...
Nope!Well I guess its a matter of perspective. If you manage to still not entirely match your statements of what the game was going to be a good EIGHT years post launch, something's fundamentally screwed in people's heads.
Its even worse when we then applaud this developer for still not quite living up to its projected vision. Because NMS is still NMS. They just added a lot of features to it, but at its core the game hasn't changed much, still suffering from a lot of the same issues.