Do you think No Man's Sky would have been received better if....

....Sean Murray had simply kept his mouth shut? Seriously, this has to be the most vocally damned game in a very long time. I mean, it does have a community (at least on the PS4--I don't know about PC), and is not overall a bad game. It definitely has a cult classic kind of feel to it that will probably grow as improvements are made. But I digress. Bottom line, if Sean hadn't talked so much, how different do you think the reception would have been? I ask because it seems like people who hate the game do so specifically on account of the promises (or the approximation of promises) that were not delivered on. What do you think, SW?

If they didn't overhype this, it would just turn out to be some random indie game nobody would give a crap about.

So how could it have been received more positively, if the big sites didn't care about this, if barely anyone cared about this.

Sean murray overhyped his game, and the big media outlets were all too happy to go along with it.

Was overhyped and price tag me thinks

It was definitely preposterously overhyped. The price should have been $20-30 on top of that. I think it could have flourished as a quirky indie game that appeals to a select crowd. But, alas, it was blown the hell up.

well it wouldn't have gone worse at least, so there's that and ye 60$

It kind of is what it is.

Developers overhyped this game > Sony overhyped this game > gaming media overhyped this game > we got to know about it > we bought it > found out it was a turd.

You remove any of these factors, and it won't end up the same result.

Honestly, the more I look into this game, it should've come with a pricetag of 5-10 dollars tops. It just has such a huge lack of content. Some indie games in alpha stages, or in early access have way more content than this game.

No, it would have been better if they never partnered with Sony. Sony set that game up to fail and then threw the developer under the bus in a really shitty way

Do you think No Man's Sky would have been received better if.... it didn't suck so badly.

Yes. Yes I do.

/thread

-Byshop

If Sony had never jumped on it being a major thing at their presser's and Murray had stayed quiet, it would've been a $24.99 game and may have been received better.

But that isn't how the world of money works. They hyped it so they could charge full price for a piece of boredom and make millions. But thank god the consumer public made a big enough thing so they had to refund many.

@cainetao11: Yeah, you make a good point:

They could charge 60 because there was so much want for this game. Heck, there was even a limited edition, more expensive than 60 and people still bought it.

If it never got the hype from Sean, Sony or the media outlets, nobody would even care for this game. There wouldn't be so much want. And perhaps they couldn't even charge 25.

I saw that thread about the hacked Twitter message saying NMS was a mistake but it was locked. I thought it was a good thread to discuss how the game was so bad that a hacker put an effort in hacking the Twitter account and spread the message. Why was that thread even locked.

Anyway, haven't followed this game at all, so did they add anything new and patch stuff up yet? Anything to make the game better if that's even possible.

I take it you're not the get-lost-in-the-cosmos-and-look-at-red-or-maybe-purple-trees type.

If Sony/Sean Murray hadn't continuously hyped up this game I reckon that it would have been forgotten along with most other indie open-ended/space/exploration/procedurally generated/crafting games.

Seriously, there's a ton of games like that. No Man's Sky was a bad game that got noticed by Sony, and became overhyped. That's all.

couldn't agree with this more.

You should be asking would the reception be different if Murray hadn't lied. Nothing do with overhyping although the hype was definitely disproportionate to what was incoming, just plain misrepresentation.

You can't get away with that shit when your every move is monitored on the internet. He was brazen. Then they blocked ALL reviews so people had to buy it blind (based on all his lies).

Yeah, I can see why people are pissed off. I hope for his sake he made a lot of money because nothing in the future with Hello Games or his name on it will sell for shit.

I was being a tad hyperbolic. I've actually put over 20 hours into the game but in the end it wasn't terribly satisfying and I just sort of stopped. I'm a big fan of space exploration games in general, and the idea of the game is very appealing. In some ways it's like Elite Dangerous but even better because it's teaming with life and stuff to interact with, but in the end it's just a bunch of randomly placed "cut and paste" elements over and over again. I don't feel like the game majorly over-promised on its premise, but I was seriously annoyed at how coy Sean Murray had been about what the game would and wouldn't do. To call what this game has "multiplayer" is a joke, though. They should have just been upfront about it being a single player game.

-Byshop

No doubt, they should have been transparent from the start. I agree about the coyness, too. Over time it went from slightly annoying to downright obnoxious in retrospect.

if it was a 30 dollar steam early access game nobody would have minded, but it wasn't, and it should have been

Sony inflated its importance by making it out to be a tentpole game.

Even if we ignore all the things that were promised and weren't included, it's still a terrible game.
I love exploration games, but having the entire game world being as a randomly generated environments with no real narrative or substance and expecting that to be interesting is completely absurd IMO. That combined with the ridiculously boring and repetitive gameplay cycle made it an awful experience. Especially with the $60 price tag..
If Sean hadn't lied about what's in the game I think the reception still would've been bad, just a bit delayed. Instead of everyone immediately noticing all the missing content, they would've just noticed how utterly boring the game is after a few days.

... If it was an actual game with an objective? Probably. That ending is the most hilarious slap in the face to consumers ive ever seen.