Two years on, and No Man’s Sky is finally living up to a significant portion of its promise. It’s not the first game to get a “Megapatch” and it won’t be the last.
Games these days are thoroughly mutable, but that can be a bad thing as well as a good thing. Let’s look at the things!
Its good for those who got scammed in 2016 I guess but too late for me to get interested.
I don’t appreciate being played for a fool. A game releasing in Early Access while pretending to be a finished product is beyond the pale. Another thing to consider is how long it takes for this concept to go too far south. Pre-order now for the exclusive finished product.
I highly disagree on FFXV.
It was a rushed product, with even in it’s unfinished state having bits CLEARLY cut out to be sold seperate. It’s rather a perfect example of how said “safety net” of patch culture can be abused to keep deadlines.
I don’t mind megapatches but I do mind when they get dressed up as DLC and we get charged for them. (Hi Destiny 2). I’m also not obligated to thank the developers or forgive them for cashing in early. NMS has entered that strange zone between “You lying liars” and “Oh you’ve fixed it” because yea they’ve fixed it, for free…but they still could have taken the money and run.
FFS, we should not be celebrating NMSN. Yeah, HelloGames FINALLY finished No Man’s Sky and gave people the game they were so hyped for years ago. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that they released an unfinished game not even worthy of Early Access status as a fully-finished AAA game- no less a hugely-marketed PlayStation exclusive [at the time]! If something like House Flipper or Astroneer pulled the same trick, we’d never hear the end of it.
Let’s not forget what’s going on with Sea Of Thieves. A game with far more on-release content than NMS, that was EXACTLY what the developers promised it would be, that was EXACTLY what players said they wanted, and that Rare is still actively and rather publicly updating- but people treat it worse than they ever have with NMS. It SCREAMS volumes as to how hypocritical the gaming community is. If you’re giving medals to No Man’s Sky Next for eventually becoming a finished game so-long after it’s supposed full release, then you have no right to criticise any game for not initially living up to its hype. Cheering for HelloGames now is basically giving all AAA developers a free-pass to sell you unfinished garbage so long as they EVENTUALLY give you what you payed for years after-the-fact. No Man’s Sky Next basically represents one of the biggest problems in the gaming industry, and anyone who supports it allows for that problem to continue unabated.
[and to further exhibit just what I mean about gamers becoming hypocrites, I’m a guy who’s still weighing up whether to give EA money so I can play Sims 4 on PC despite shouting at you all for wanting to give No Man’s Sky another chance]
I don’t buy new games anymore, partly due to aforementioned reasons. Also, it helps to not fall into the ‘must buy now’ mentality that publishers love to push these days. Just buy what you know is good, when you want to play it!
I really like when developers recognise their massive fuckups and continue to improve the game rather than just leaving it in a broken state. It shows that they somewhere actually care. No mans sky & hello games isnt the first game studio to go through with this and they wont be the last.
I still remember the horrible mess that was Rome 2 Total War at release. Broken in every possible way. A year later it was actually a decent game and during the last years its a good game, a very far cry from how it was on release.
_Sterdust down , i repeat Sterdust down!_
“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.”
How does it fee- AAAAAAH YOU HIT MEEE!
It’s contextual. Shadow of War and Sim City 4 don’t deserve forgiveness. Something that started humble, and grew, like Warframe, _doesn’t need_ to be forgiven in the first place. In general, fuck ’em, because they’ll just take advantage (like Shadow of War, milking all it can, then trying to play the good guy).
I look at all this stuff and my brain suddenly becomes Bernard Black trying to order new books “I don’t know……I don’t know…..Jez-I JUST WANT TO PLAY A GAME!”
And people think I’m mad for waiting 1 year at least, to buy a game these days…
GOLDEN RULE For gamers
Never pre-order
Never buy delux edition or something like that
Never buy day one dlc
Never buy Microtransactions
Never buy Kickstarter games
Did Ed Sheran just slap sterdust
There is another issue with Patch culture you kind of missed. If you happen to like the original game you can’t be sure it will be around later. Some games patched to be a completely different product than when they launched, some times even switching Genre’s. Oh and a company might just abandon the game too like Mass Effect Andromeda. Tons of promises for fixes, a few weak patches and two months or so later they gave up.
Basically just promise enough patches to sell a few more games and then give up.
Bethesda has been producing games for years that were best purchased at the very least a year later.
However, as much as I want to believe something like “yeah developers can screw up and it’s good when they make the effort to fix it,” we’ve already got numerous examples of developers releasing incomplete and minimally functional games with the hope that they can continue selling the game over time without going a year or two without revenue. Banking on the hope that the whole “it’s good now” mentality turns them into the next Rainbow Six Siege. Early Access without the label.
What they miss is that there is pleasing you. You said it in the video: Octopath Traveller is good now, and is a finished product selling for a finished product price.
And that’s what I think about this too. A lot of people are pulling the “you need to buy No Man’s Sky Next now, otherwise you’re sending message that fixing games doesn’t matter” defense for Hello Games. But nah. I see it as sending the message that they can release broken unfinished shite for full price and I’ll still buy the game, so keep on doing that instead of finishing games before selling them.
Here’s the message I’d rather send: I will buy your game if it’s finished and good at launch, or I won’t buy your game at all. I’m not going to buy the No Man’s Skys and the Shadow of Wars. I’m going to buy the Octopath Travellers and the Yakuza 0s.
Personally, I’m not too terribly big a fan of these “megapatches” either. There’s just something sort of inherently sad when a title launches with a laundry list of issues that need to be patched or improved on out the gate. Granted, I applaud developers that take the time to improve their titles after feedback, but sometimes it comes off as a, “we’ll worry about that later” situation.
Not going to give them a free pass now for finally giving us a semblance of the game they sold at full price 2 years ago.