# No Man's Sky - First star to the right, and straight on till morning
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701
**Category:** The Game Room
**Tags:** video-games-e-games
**Created:** [July 12, 2016, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701 "2016-07-12T01:16:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 12
### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2016, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/221 "2016-08-13T16:28:05Z")
> [@Jules\_Andre](#):
>
> I was mildly interested in NMS, despite having paid no attention to the hype. I saw a trailer recently and it seemed interesting, and it happened to be coming out soon. But it also seemed to be a 6 hour game. After 6 hours, you’re just doing the same thing over and over, with no purpose or goal. A friend who bought it on PS4 loves it, but basically confirmed that suspicion.
>
> Still, I watched a stream, and I wanted to try it. I wanted to see how varied the planets actually were. So I bought it for PC. It crashes on startup 100% of the time (which, I now see from checking online, is very, very common). So I got a refund. I’ll wait six months, however long it takes to get discounted. This game isn’t worth $60. I’m glad the crashes broke the spell so I could get out of the purchase.
Out of curiosity, what CPU do you have?
---
### Author:  [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/222 "2016-08-13T16:43:34Z")
> [@Kinthalis](#):
>
> Apparently, the PS4 retail copy in Europe had a sticker with a PEGI 7 or something like that rating… but if you peeled it off, out came a PEGI 13 rating with a disclaimer: “Online experience might vary”.
I’m in Europe and that isn’t exactly how it went down.
The Collector’s Edition, which is a very small percentage of copies, had the sticker. My normal version has the PEGI 7 logo and no mention of online play. Sony is saying that the collector’s edition was a printing error.
---
### Author:  [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2016, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/223 "2016-08-13T16:48:26Z")
PEGI information on the back of a Nordic PS4 standard version of No Man’s Sky:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2346328/nms.jpg](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2346328/nms.jpg)
---
### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/224 "2016-08-13T17:13:32Z")
> [@Frylock](#):
>
> cave depth, complexity and frequency
I nearly got lost in one last night!
---
### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2016, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/225 "2016-08-13T17:20:17Z")
> [@Frylock](#):
>
> The monoliths I’ve only seen as Heridium, in every video I’ve seen and on every planet I’ve visited.
>
> There are these giant lumps that appear, and those can be several different metals. But I am pretty sure there are no gold monoliths.
>
> Edit: You know, I"m starting to think I maybe remember an Aluminum monolith, so maybe I’m all wrong about this.
> [@Jragon](#):
>
> There are Aluminium and Nickel monuments, but I think Gold and Emeril are only in the giant lumps.
I did run into a golden monolith but it contained Emeril rather than Gold. Another planet had immense cylinders of Gold, though.
---
### Author:  [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2016, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/226 "2016-08-13T21:00:12Z")
If you need to mine a monolith, create a ‘pocket’ in it with your mining laser and then jet-pack inside. The metal will shield you from environmental effects like radiation and sentinels will ignore you which lets you mine them with impunity.
---
### Author:  [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2016, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/227 "2016-08-13T22:34:30Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Paying people in India and other low wage places to astroturf online hype/reviews/anything is remarkably cheap. A few thousand dollars can buy a ton of astroturfing.
>
> But I think there’s lots of legit fanboyism going on too. People have hyped themselves up for years over this and invested a decent chunk of change - there’s a strong incentive to justify your behavior if you’re not introspective about it.
> I just had a thought. Since they were delaying the game so long anyway, they should’ve delayed the game longer and made it a launch title with PSVR. It would’ve made a good VR title, the fact that it isn’t really what it’s cracked up to be would be masked by people experiencing it in a new way and having that make it feel revolutionary. VR would’ve made it seem closer to the revolutionary and unique experience it wanted to be.
>
> I guess they’d have to make it run a whole lot better - VR demands higher frame rates and higher FOV than they use by quite a large margin.
How cheap we talkin?
'cause I wouldn’t mind astroturfing myself a little bit.
“Wow kinthalis, you truly are a visionary. I’ve been folllowing your posts closely and every time you inspire and delight!”
Oh, jeez, thank you very much poster I’ve never seen before!
---
### Author:  [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/228 "2016-08-14T00:31:23Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Have you ever been angry when a really stupid movie comes out that’s been overhyped, and the reviews come out and say it’s bad and not what it promised to be and has all sorts of problems, but people ignore that and go see it anyway due to the hype?
>
> What if it was up against other movies that had merit and were small projects with similar appeal but higher quality and those movies withered because all the money was going to the super hyped one?
No, I really don’t care what response a movie or any other piece of entertainment gets. Why would I?
> [@](#):
>
> What advantage did you get by preordering this game? You couldn’t even preload the thing. I truly don’t understand the preorder mentality. I understand kickstarter backing - if you don’t do it, the game may not be made at all. But whether or not you preordered this game had no impact on its development cycle at all. You received no advantages for doing so. No discount or anything. So why do it? Why not see if it’s actually any good before committing $60 to it?
I pre-ordered it because I knew I would be getting it anyway, and it saved me a trip to the game shop when it launched, that is all, simple convenience. I don’t pay a lot of attention to reviews and have never held off buying a game while waiting to see what other people think of it. If it interests me I’ll get it, if it doesn’t I won’t. I wasn’t looking for an advantage or to get ahead of the game or anything like that, I just knew I wanted it, and ordered it. What’s so hard to understand?
> [@](#):
>
> It’s hard to believe anyone could be in a “gaming slump” that they needed to preorder a new game to cure. Aside from the fact that preordering a game doesn’t actually allow you to play it, there are thousands of amazing games out right now for PC. You could find something better, something cheaper, something that was a known quantity with reviews and gameplay footage and something you could actually play now.
First I don’t like playing games on the PC. Settle down, it’s just a personal preference, get over it.
I was buying a few games and NMS was one of them, the fact I wouldn’t be able to play it immediately wasn’t a problem. I was in a game purchasing mood and it was one of the games I purchased.
> [@](#):
>
> It won’t be a disaster because they’ve already made tens of millions of dollars off of it. Who cares anymore? The marketing team delivered masterfully - which means it doesn’t matter that the development team didn’t.
It will be a disaster if they want to continue making games but have this debacle hanging over them.
---
### Author:  [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/229 "2016-08-14T00:56:45Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Have you ever been angry when a really stupid movie comes out that’s been overhyped, and the reviews come out and say it’s bad and not what it promised to be and has all sorts of problems, but people ignore that and go see it anyway due to the hype?
Honestly, no, I can’t say that I have.
What if it was up against other movies that had merit and were small projects with similar appeal but higher quality and those movies withered because all the money was going to the super hyped one?
I normally wouldn’t care very much, but it’s always sad to me to see when advertising/hype completely takes something over. We’d all like for things to be a meritocracy and not simply a battle of marketing budgets. If this game was a $20 game with 30,000 concurrent users on day one - like a lot of other niche indie games with fun ideas like, say, Starbound, Rimworld, Rust, 7 days to die, Don’t Starve, etc. it would’ve been fine.
But instead, Sony’s marketing department got ahold of it and suddenly this game that should be a $20 indie title is a full blown $60 title. And despite this it explodes anyway, having one of the biggest launches ever on steam by concurrent numbers, higher than a lot of legit AAA games with broad mass appeal and not that far behind behemoths like Grand Theft Auto 5.
And it’s not like it turned out to be great and exactly what everyone wanted. The user ratings are very poor. Features were flat out lied about. Hints that the final stages of the game at the center of the galaxy were going to be this amazing thing that no one should spoil were misleading. It’s a technical mess (not just on PC, the damn thing runs on like 50 FOV on PS4 to keep the frame rate acceptable) because despite having an AAA marketing budget and an AAA price and an AAA timeframe to develop the game, no one bothered to hire QA testers and put out AAA quality.
The defenders treat it like it’s a $20 niche indie game. Dismissing all the flaws by saying “what did you expect, it’s a 15 man development team!” leaving out the part about how a 15 man development team doesn’t get to charge $60 for games. They want Terraria/Don’t Starve/etc-level acceptance of limitations but GTA-5 level price and launch success.
> [@](#):
>
> And then we even had 3 days after the console launch to see that it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be and it was at least disappointing. And yet after that, we still had a whole lot of people who preordered and kept their preorders. Why?
Because a lot of people, like me, looked at the gameplay footage and said “That still looks fun, I want to play it anyway.” And it is, and I’m enjoying it.
---
### Author:  [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/230 "2016-08-14T01:03:13Z")
Sorry, there was an issue with the formatting there and I missed the edit window. Paragraphs 2-6 are **SenorBeef** ’s words, not mine.
---
### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/231 "2016-08-14T03:22:34Z")
Steam peaked around 140k users today. Given that today was a Saturday, the day after launch, you’d expect it to meet or exceed its Friday numbers. But that’s a steep decline. Probably because hundreds of thousands of refunds were issued.
---
### Author:  [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/232 "2016-08-14T04:01:43Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Steam peaked around 140k users today. Given that today was a Saturday, the day after launch, you’d expect it to meet or exceed its Friday numbers. But that’s a steep decline. Probably because hundreds of thousands of refunds were issued.
Or - and this is equally likely - people have shit to do on the day during Saturday?
I can’t speak for the US, but the average age of gamers in Australia is about 34, so statistically they’re likely to be doing Family Stuff or playing sport or something on Saturday.
If literally hundreds of thousands of people had refunded their copy of the game, I’d expect one of the major and reputable gaming outlets to have a story on it. I haven’t seen that story yet. Not saying it isn’t true, but I’d suggest there’s probably other factors at play too.
I agree this game has been way, way overhyped - but I also know the marketing-led hype stopped months ago and the residual has been carried on by the fans - many of whom are not doing anyone any favours by getting their undies in a twist over (IMHO) trivial stuff like exactly how multiplayer the game really is.
Sure, the developer hasn’t done himself any favours by coming across as a bit unspecific on some subjects; I understand his desire to want to preserve a sense of wonder and magic, but I also think there’s a time to say (for example), “Look, at launch we’re not going to be implementing any sort of multiplayer mechanic but it’s on The List for further down the track once we see how the sales numbers are and what would actually be involved in doing it.”
Let’s be completely honest here - let’s say that it _was_ actually possible to meet another player. So what? As the developer has said, the odds of it happening are astronomical. So assuming people did, I’d suggest you’d get a couple of YouTube videos and the occasional Reddit thread about it and not much else.
IMHO it’s really, really not a huge deal and certainly doesn’t warrant the “HOW VERY DARE YOU NOT IMPLEMENT THIS THING!” reaction it’s been getting.
The game definitely isn’t perfect and still has an unpolished feel about it, but so far I’m enjoying it. The real question isn’t “Is it fun now?”, it’s “How fun will this be after I’ve been to 100 planets?” or “What updates and features will get added to the game after everyone has visited dozens of planets?”
Take Civ V - when it came out it was widely regarded as incomplete, lacking, and not as good as Civ IV by many people; it took some expansions to get it up to the “Super Excellent” level.
While I wish developers got things right out of the gate, I’m also glad we live in a world where it’s possible for developers say “You know what? We will add base-building to this; we’ll make the ships customisable”, if they decide to go down that road.
The point is, it’s not an awful game, no matter how much some people have apparently decided it should for some reason.
---
### Author:  [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/233 "2016-08-14T06:25:31Z")
I find it deeply amusing. The reactions from the self-appointed guardians of the culture, not the game. I didn’t think it looked interesting to me. If anybody has a problem with a game they bought, at least now they can easily get a refund. Progress.
As for accusations of astroturfing, that could be one guy doing that because he thinks his opinion is important. It’s not, other than in a personal way. Neither is mine.
But by all means, please continue to pontificate. It’s tasty, provided the bites are kept small.
---
### Author:  [@Jules\_Andre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jules_Andre)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/234 "2016-08-14T07:58:54Z")
> [@Frylock](#):
>
> Out of curiosity, what CPU do you have?
CPU? An i7 2600K. I think the issue might be that my video card is either just at, or just below, the minimum requirements. I really don’t want to upgrade, but it’s almost time.
---
### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/235 "2016-08-14T08:43:31Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#):
>
> Or - and this is equally likely - people have shit to do on the day during Saturday?
On what basis do you conclude that this is equally likely?
Concurrent game daily peak players is actually remarkably stable, but the peaks are typically on Saturday and Sunday with about 10-20% more players than the weekday peaks. Most games follow this pattern.
So people weren’t too busy on Saturday to play GTA 5 or Civ 5 or Rocket League or hundreds of other games. But people are too busy on Saturday to play No Man’s Sky.
Meanwhile, the game has terrible reviews and a whole lot of people have said they’ve refunded.
But you suppose that it’s equally likely that there’s a No-Man’s-Sky-specific Saturday drop off in popularity because people are too busy for gaming which only applies to that game (meanwhile every other game sees a minor Saturday boost) than that Steam offers refunds and that people are using it on a game with poor reviews and widespread technical issues.
> [@](#):
>
> If literally hundreds of thousands of people had refunded their copy of the game, I’d expect one of the major and reputable gaming outlets to have a story on it. I haven’t seen that story yet. Not saying it isn’t true, but I’d suggest there’s probably other factors at play too.
Valve is a private company and has no obligation to release sales reports nor reports about refunds. It’s against their interest to publicize refunds since it’s likely to remind people that such an option exists and create a perception that everyone is doing it which would encourage more refunds. So where are these stories going to come from? If you want anecdotes you can go to any reddit thread about the game and see dozens of people talk about how they refunded it.
> [@](#):
>
> I agree this game has been way, way overhyped - but I also know the marketing-led hype stopped months ago and the residual has been carried on by the fans - many of whom are not doing anyone any favours by getting their undies in a twist over (IMHO) trivial stuff like exactly how multiplayer the game really is.
Whether or not a game is multiplayer or not is not trivial. It wasn’t so long ago that they were spinning the game as sort of an MMO. But yes, that’s one of the more minor complaints.
The main complaint I’ve seen is that there’s simply not much meat to the gameplay. After you go to 20 planets, you start seeing the pattern. Blue cat-headed-lizard turns into red lizard-headed-cat. There’s not much of interest about the crafting and survival elements either. Survival is pretty easy - you just run around shooting your laser at whatever has a label on it and you’ll survive just fine. There’s not really any crafting, just upgrading your suit and ship. There’s so little to do with the materials you gather that you end up selling most of it. And there’s not any sort of even minecraft-level challenge to collecting resources. You don’t have to delve into deep carve caves to grab uranium, you don’t have to find specific animals that would process something like pearls. You just walk around the surface finding different nodes and lasering them, all the same. There might as well just be one resource type and you collect +1 of it every time you point your laser at a node.
The exploring gets repetitive fast, there’s no challenge to the survival, there’s no meaningful crafting, and the resource system is extremely samey and has very little gameplay challenge or variety. So for an explore-gather-survive game it’s pretty much empty on those core components.
The space component isn’t any better. Space combat has the complexity of an atari game, you just point at things and shoot. There’s no galactic economy so it’s not like you can play your own version of a pirate or merchant like you can in something like freelancer.
So even if the launch were honest, and there were no lies about multiplayer and no technical issues, the actual things that it purports to be are lacking. People are in the honeymoon phase now because a lot of people have said that the first 5 hours are fun, but it gets pretty repetitive after that, and because people really want to justify and like how much they invested in this game, both emotionally and financially. But this one is going to drop off the radar fast. It’ll be trivially easy to demonstrate with the steam numbers in the coming weeks.
---
### Author:  [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/236 "2016-08-14T10:46:14Z")
[quote=“SenorBeef, post:235, topic:759701”]
On what basis do you conclude that this is equally likely?
[quote]
I’m being slightly facetious, but my point is that more than 100,000 people refunding a USD$60 game would mean that more than USD$600,000 in refunds were issued for one game in one morning/afternoon.
That’s enormous so like I said, I’d expect at least one of the reputable gaming news outlets to have done something on it. Several of them have excellent journalists who aren’t beholden to the games companies and are reading the same Reddit threads you are, so the fact they haven’t written that story suggests that _maybe_, perhaps, you’re reading a bit much into things at this stage.
> [@](#):
>
> The main complaint I’ve seen is that there’s simply not much meat to the gameplay… So even if the launch were honest, and there were no lies about multiplayer and no technical issues, the actual things that it purports to be are lacking. People are in the honeymoon phase now because a lot of people have said that the first 5 hours are fun, but it gets pretty repetitive after that, and because people really want to justify and like how much they invested in this game, both emotionally and financially. But this one is going to drop off the radar fast. It’ll be trivially easy to demonstrate with the steam numbers in the coming weeks.
The thing is, Steam refunds are only good for two hours of gameplay. So you can’t get to five hours and go “Well, this sucks” and refund it. It doesn’t work like that. Obviously there will be people who played it, found it boring or confusing or it didn’t work and refunded it; that’s a given. Maybe in a few weeks the numbers will drop off, they almost certainly will. Deus Ex is out in about 10 days; that’s going to be pretty popular too.
My gut feeling is _No Man’s Sky_ will be a game you load up, derp around in a bit for, do some stuff, name some things, admire the scenery then go and do something else. It’s not particularly stressful, it’s not difficult, but it’s different. And in space.
Personally, I’m still enjoying the game and I’ve got considerably more than five hours in it. There’s some issues - the inability to set your own waypoints is a huge one; I came across a crashed awesome ship but didn’t have everything I needed to get it working so I went away to get it, came back and couldn’t find the crash site again, for example.
The way I’m playing the game is I’m telling my own story as I go, creating a photolog of things I’ve seen and generally enjoying the “Alone in a strange universe” aspect. I get that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s definitely mine. I’m enjoying the game as is and am looking forward to seeing what they do with it.
IMHO _No Man’s Sky_ it’s basically a space-based version of games like_The Long Dark_, _Stranded Deep_ and _Subnautica_; they all have essentially no plot and drop you in a hostile environment and say “Have fun! Try not to die horribly.” Two of those games have almost no buzz at all and one of them is fairly well known partly because of it’s unusual setting (Canada after the apocalypse).
My point is just because you’re angry at the game’s existence doesn’t mean the game has no value whatsover for anyone else - or that anyone who is enjoying the game is a fanboy or somehow “invested” in it for some reason. People like different things; it’s why now is one of the best times to be a PC Gamer and I say that as someone who’s been gaming on PCs since the days when full-colour display screens were a luxury not available to everyone.
---
### Author:  [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/237 "2016-08-14T10:57:23Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#):
>
> Let’s be completely honest here - let’s say that it _was_ actually possible to meet another player. So what? As the developer has said, the odds of it happening are astronomical. So assuming people did, I’d suggest you’d get a couple of YouTube videos and the occasional Reddit thread about it and not much else.
You’re making a flawed argument that we often see against evolution: that an outcome is unlikely to occur out of pure random chance, so it won’t happen. But people’s movements are not caused by pure random chance. It’s right there in the title of this thread: people would have written instructions how to use constellations and named planets as landmarks to reach Straightdopia.
---
### Author:  [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/238 "2016-08-14T12:40:57Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#):
>
> Let’s be completely honest here - let’s say that it _was_ actually possible to meet another player. So what? As the developer has said, the odds of it happening are astronomical. So assuming people did, I’d suggest you’d get a couple of YouTube videos and the occasional Reddit thread about it and not much else.
Also, you know, people exploring the game with their friends.
---
### Author:  [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrogance_Ex_Machina)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/239 "2016-08-14T13:32:20Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#):
>
> Personally, I’m still enjoying the game and I’ve got considerably more than five hours in it. There’s some issues - the inability to set your own waypoints is a huge one; I came across a crashed awesome ship but didn’t have everything I needed to get it working so I went away to get it, came back and couldn’t find the crash site again, for example.
I don’t have the game myself so I can’t confirm but I heard you can tag structures and crashed ships with your scanner to keep their waypoints from vanishing. Others have had the same complaint so even if there’s a way to do it it must be fairly hard to find out, though.
---
### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2016, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701/240 "2016-08-14T16:06:10Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#):
>
> I’m being slightly facetious, but my point is that more than 100,000 people refunding a USD$60 game would mean that more than USD$600,000 in refunds were issued for one game in one morning/afternoon.
>
> That’s enormous so like I said, I’d expect at least one of the reputable gaming news outlets to have done something on it. Several of them have excellent journalists who aren’t beholden to the games companies and are reading the same Reddit threads you are, so the fact they haven’t written that story suggests that _maybe_, perhaps, you’re reading a bit much into things at this stage.
How would anyone know the difference between 100,000 refunds and 100,000 people who just decided they weren’t going to bother to play a game that they were so hyped up for that they preordered it? Valve’s sales and refund information is private.
There is one small piece of evidence, but it doesn’t show the scale - yesterday No Man’s Sky dropped out of the top 100 best sellers on steam. That’s a 24-hour rotating window of what games are selling best. Apparently refunds count against new purchases, so for some significant fraction refunds out-stripped day 1 purchases in order to make it disappear completely from the best seller’s list. Whether that was 30,000 refunds and 25,000 sales or 300,000 refunds and 150,000 sales can’t be determined from that information. But more refunds than day 1 sales is pretty huge. I doubt any other game has ever achieved that honor.
In fact, I wasn’t aware that refunds counted against the top seller list simply because no other popular game has ever dropped off the top seller list day one. No game has had more refunds than day 1 purchases before. It’s unprecedented.
But even if you’re right - you’re saying that people didn’t refund but that they dislike the game so much that they’re not playing it on day 2. Either way that’s a pretty big deal. On day one, the game peaked at 212,231 simultaneous players. On day two at the same time, 141,035. That’s a one third drop.
Unfortunately after a few months steamcharts stops keeping daily player counts and only keeps weekly and monthly averages, so I can only compare it to the day 1 and day 2 of recent games.
Starbound: 35,935; 53,921
Dead by Daylight: 12,774; 11,761
Total War: Warhammer 111,909; 104,413
Hearts of Iron 4: 40,632; 35,637
Doom: 28,297; 24,858
Those weren’t data points I cherry picked to support my point, just going down the game list looking for stuff that came out recently. The pattern is that they either increase in day 2, or decrease slightly around 10% or less. I’m pretty sure that if I could see the exact data back to big hyped games like GTA 5 or Fallout 4 we’d see the same pattern. If we looked at less hyped games that didn’t have a ton of preorders, we’d see more games actually increasing as word of mouth spread.
I watch player counts on game a lot because I’m curious about the life cycles of games - a big game getting a 30%+ drop on day two is unprecedented in my experience. Nothing I can recall even comes close.
So even if you say there’s no proof of refunds - and because of the way valve doesn’t have to report things, anecdotes are the best you’d ever see - it simply means that people missed their refund windows or were unaware that they could refund, and simply stopped playing it on day two. That isn’t really any better for your case.
> [@](#):
>
> The thing is, Steam refunds are only good for two hours of gameplay. So you can’t get to five hours and go “Well, this sucks” and refund it. It doesn’t work like that.
I mean, okay. I’m not sure if you’re making a defense of the company’s bottom line, but otherwise “getting a refund after an hour” and “wanting to refund after a few hours but couldn’t, so stopped playing” both seem like very negative reactions to me.
Incidentally, people who’ve played this say that the first few hours are really fun and then it wears thin quickly after that. It may be a game that’s somewhat resistant to the two hour refund window because of that. But it also means after a few days-weeks the player count will drop like a rock.
> [@](#):
>
> Personally, I’m still enjoying the game and I’ve got considerably more than five hours in it.
Cool, good for you. All the things I’m saying aren’t a personal attack or a plea to make you unhappy with the game. I’m sure there’s a small niche for which this game scratches the itch despite the disappointment. But it’s not a game with wide, mainstream appeal like the big blockbusters, but that’s what the marketing managed to create.
> [@](#):
>
> IMHO _No Man’s Sky_ it’s basically a space-based version of games like_The Long Dark_, _Stranded Deep_ and _Subnautica_; they all have essentially no plot and drop you in a hostile environment and say “Have fun! Try not to die horribly.” Two of those games have almost no buzz at all and one of them is fairly well known partly because of it’s unusual setting (Canada after the apocalypse).
I actually agree, that’s exactly what this game is. It’s a high-concept small-studio game with rough edges and niche appeal. You know what the difference is? Subnautica is $20, Stranded Deep is $15, and The Long Dark is $20. And they all had the decency to admit they were Early Access/in development/unfinished/rough games. If No Man’s Sky was the same, it would be acknowledged as a success within its target demographic and would have a solid following.
But it didn’t. It pretended to be a full AAA priced game with AAA marketing that was ready for retail release. Hence the massive disappointment.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701.md?page=11)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-mans-sky-first-star-to-the-right-and-straight-on-till-morning/759701.md?page=13)