OK, what would make the game 'deeper'?

[Simons Mith]

A common criticism of the game is that it's 'wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle'. I just did a big batch of bug-reporting with a bit of feature-requesting mixed in, and I started to wonder seriously about why that criticism rings true, and what could be done about it. Cos' it's a subtle problem, and the fix(es) aren't obvious. If they were, they'd already have been done.

But I think I might have hit the real fundamental reason why some people think it feels shallow, despite all the work that's gone into it, and I suggested some ways to address it. Would be interested in other perspectives.

The fundamental reason: the game procedurally generates loads and loads and loads of stuff (which is good right?), but even it doesn't bother to keep track of it. The result is that whether it's well-written or badly written, players know that the content isn't going to matter 20 minutes from now, so they don't bother caring about it either.

This manifests in many, many different ways, pervading almost all aspects of the game:

The scannable plants, animals and minerals with fluff descriptions, all faithfully logged, but the actually useful in-game information - what they drop - is not recorded. That's because the game doesn't think this stuff matters either, so it doesn't bother. It may be subliminal, but players still pick up on that kind of 'attitude' very quickly.

The NPCs that repeat the same dialog word for word every time you interact with them.

The elaborate names for ships, settlements, crashed freighters, waypoints, that are shown in one place in the game UI and one place only, and never get transferred anywhere else or reused.

The planet naming, where there's /never/ the slightest hint in the naming that planet A is in the same system as planet B.

The fact that you can have a 'Vykeen Recruit' spout the same dialogue as a many-year combat veteran, and a 'Vykeen Commodore' can be afraid on the evening of his first battle. (I don't remember the exact details - haven't seen that second dialogue in a while.) Again, the game does nothing to check the name it's just given the alien against the words it's about to assign it. Recruit is string 33 and Commodore is string 22, and in the game's eyes they're both equally good and equally suitable.

The new discovery logs - these now faithfully record all sorts of stuff that just vanished into the ether in the past, and I'm really pleased to have them, but it didn't cross Hello Games' mind to record interactions with /people/. The game still considers its own NPCs less important than the 'diary of a long-dead Traveller'. I suspect neglect of NPCs is probably /the/ dominant contributor to the feeling of shallowness.

The drop pods, every last one of which is broken until the player fixes it, and every last one of which is broken in exactly the same way.

The distress signals that routinely go unanswered for years or decades at a time. Basically the only person who ever bothers responding to a distress signal is the player.

If you pulse into deep space in a random direction, you get just as many items spawning en route as if you'd chosen a meaningful destination. For this we can infer that the spawn rate is entirely player-centric; wherever /you/ go stuff is certain to happen. Very immersion breaking. And on the flip side, if you want to go somewhere you're certain to be left alone, you're out of luck; even in deep space pirates will find you, and derelict freighters will pop up out of nowhere in your path.

And so on.

The fixes: well, articulating the core problem should be a big help, I think. Now I know why all of the things I've listed bugged me, and I've shared the lot with HG. Let's give them some time to see what they do with it.

Comments, refinements, quibbles and even rebuttals welcome

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Part of the problem with storing that info- is where do you store it and is it really valuable to store for most players. My save file would be jacked royally if it stored all the details you mentioned after 4000+ hours.

I don't see a legit way to store it server side. My take is that HG is a very small team that used technology to create something similar (but NOT the same) as you might see from a huge Triple A game studio. They have less than 30 people for crying out loud.

People got a pretty good sized package pool, but they want an Olympic sized in the ground pool with a jucuzzi attached. It just comes down to what can be realistically done with a small crew.

It also comes down to HG's reasons for not wanting to be a big development house. They like the benefits of staying small and working on projects that don't require substantial meetings and sign offs and project deadlines and STRESS.

I have yet to hear anyone say they did not get their money's worth out of the game....they just want MORE MORE MORE- for free by the way.

[RustyNail]

Making an "ocean" deeper? That's gonna cost big time. HG would need a good vision for the game to start with; and the money and personnel to carry through to completion.

Whoever the bean counters are at HG know that it's smarter for them to pluck the low hanging fruit.

Your idea of making the game deeper is so easy to say; but so hard to do - at least if they were to attempt something I would call "deeper".

[Ninefinger]

I have been hoping for real depth with the different races, like having a good AI scripting in depth stories with new encounters to have with each new alien. Adding depth to story and learning actual cool and interesting things and happening upon interesting situations.

Near infinite possibilities for dialog that is immersive and well written and thought out by an AI system would be amazing. I would go from alien to alien all over the planets to see what new and interesting story they have to tell and I dont care if its all the same 20 or 30 different possible quest things like go grab this and go here to do this with that and bring it back to me etc.

There are tons of little different things im sure the AI could come up with for us to do. But it will be the stories that could have the potential to add a lot of depth. All the different things on different planets could be things we need to hunt down for various different things to hear more of the story unfold.

I will admit for the sake of this post that although I am a Giga Chad Alpha male I have been known to feel the occasional emotion from time to time and when a good story is written well and the characters involved go through some relatable or imaginably relatable heart wrenching stuff it can be emotional and that's a sign of good writing. A good example if this for me at least was hearing some of the stories from residual holograms in The Division, some of the stories in that game although they were just audio clips if you actually payed attention and pictured it as real it has some impact.

[UncreativelyNamed]

The only thing I would like to make the game "deeper" would be for standing to mean something. Like, if you don't have "x" level of standing with a species, no one even talks to you. Or, if you have really good standing you get some perks. You do get some now, mostly in additional interaction options with NPCs, but I'd like more. Like maybe if you're in a system dominated by a species that you have really high standing with, maybe NPCs from that species come and help you in fights or at least be bullet sponges for you. Sort of like how squadrons (supposedly) work, but you wouldn't have to recruit one. Or maybe you can get tech from a vendor free or for a reduced cost. Or you get extra/better gifts when interacting with them. Things like that. Conversely, if you have bad standing with a species, you get the reverse. NPCs randomly attack you, you have to pay more for tech, etc.

Of course, if the devs were to implement something like this, there should probably also by dynamics in standing. Like, degrading over time if you do nothing to maintain it. And it should probably be harder to acquire because, as it stands, standing is ridiculously easy to get even when you use the difficulty settings to set it to the highest difficulty. But also as it stands, it's not as if it matters because standing doesn't really do anything.

Other than that, I don't really feel a need for "depth." I'm a true sandbox fan/player. Give me a bunch of tools, a bunch of possibilities, and I will assemble them all by myself to create a way to play that I enjoy. In fact, I will usually assemble multiple different ways to play that I will enjoy and then bounce between them in different saves. I don't want a story. At all. I don't want to be forced into doing anything, though I like to do the occasional mission here and there, if the reward is something I want/need.

So, NMS as it is, is pretty perfect for me -- which is why I surpassed 1000 hours in it just today, after only having bought the game this past April -- so I really wouldn't change anything major about it. My fear, actually, is that the devs, in an attempt to give the game more "depth" to make people happy, winds up making the game too directed for my likings, and I will then need to work around it, if I can. And if I can't, I won't enjoy playing it anymore. That would suck because it took me a long while to find this game from among "space sims" that were too RPG-ish, too directed, too shooty, etc.

[Dirak2012]

The problem is that everything is optional, in most games there is a single path to reach your goal, with several hard to complete milestones.
NMS doesn't have any of that, farming isn't needed, mining isn't needed, cooking isn't needed.
Everything is infinite and optional, so everything ends up being worthless.

[TheJebblue]

I would like to dig deeper and to see deeper oceans and to not see my terrain changes undone at random intervals by the game engine. That is depth to me. :-) And I like the new pirate freighter battles, more of that.

[WreckWren]

One way to increase depth would be to add complexity to the mining, shooting etc systems.
For example:

• add options for projectile type, which would change damage, range, ammo/power requirements etc - bonus: add locational damage
  
• add options for different mining beams & options to power with different materials for different speeds on different objects
  
• reduce "bullet sponge" effect on enemies & objects

[retroquark]

So as with any design by community and committee - the solution in the end was to /not make the game/ that was made in the first place, because it's design, and/or developer can't - according to rational people who are extremely qualified, because they play games a lot and have tons of achievements - can't be "fixed".

The problem with the game now is that it appears to want you to do pointless things, and appears to give you rewards for it. It looks like the game leads you to do extremely arbitrary and pointless things for no reason. Because it does do exactly that: there is no reason to do most things you are led to do in the game. And it does give you comically pointless rewards for it.

Let me explain the problem in this way: if the point of the game clearly was to just explore and find things - no one who didn't want to play that game, in this way it was clearly meant to be played, would complain. Sony people would still complain, of course. That's how we ended up with strongholds that no one wants, multiplayer that no one needs, and statically built exocraft that are completely pointless, never mind achievements for travelling such and such amount of light years, or walking a million steps. We wouldn't have had the solar systems shrunk, all the randomness removed, and the universe literally rebuilt to make the critical resources available in front of your face at the first opportunity. It's why the planetary missions were changed, it's why upgrades can be bought anywhere, and why choosing which type of ship you wanted to create was replaced with an averaged out linear upgrade path. It's why the ships move at set speeds with the same speed limits, it's why there's autopilot and lock-on so they can effortlessly shoot a million ships out of the sky.

But no one else would complain. Because if you didn't advertise these pointless things as being the major draw of the game in the first place -- then the game doesn't lead you to do something that clearly is pointless, does it?

I honestly don't understand people like this. At the beginning, from the moment the game was stuck in being "oh, it's released unfinished" - this entire community has collectively been trying to "support" Sony's community managers from finding "the one" thing that would make the game the best ever. The one subjective thing that can be switched around or added, so that the game becomes gloriously epic! We've gotten numbers that spin around past fifteen digits, we've gotten duller planets (but all the dead planets have been removed, of course), we've gotten events popping up in every corner of the universe directly in front of your ship (because that's clearly how space works - it's a corridor like you're sitting on the subway - everyone knows that). And people speak to you like in a Bethesda game, because you're the only person in existence that is worth talking to. And so on.

Is there anything from any game that has been released in the last two decades that hasn't been retrofitted into NMS at this point?

But none of that was what the game was about.

So the solution is to destroy the game, to make a new one, and to gateway it all and statically create a quest-line that everyone should follow, because some jackass on the internet didn't want to play the game that was actually made. It's pointless to you, because you can just explore and do whatever. Because who wants that, right? NOT YOU, so clearly no one else could possibly want to play a game that has NO GOAL.

You guys can play any amount of stupid ♥♥♥♥ and just waste time with whatever - there are more games out there than anyone can play through even if it was their job to do it - but for some reason, sticking around and fueling the Sony community managers' addiction problems, to drive their partners in the development studios they now are tasked to "help make the game the best it can be", to absolute abusive madness -- this somehow has value. This gives you presence, and a sense of being heard. By getting extra digits on the number of credits you can save up.

One thing is how much effort HG and Sony has wasted on making Stronkholdd!!! and MULTPLATYTRRR, extremely complicated ship-models that are only used in static events, etc. -- but what about some of you? Have you guys spent more time complaining about the game than playing it at this point? And then going "oh, but I love this game, that's why I want it reduced to a static planet system with quick-travel in between". Which you got! You can travel just between your quick-travel hubs and grind just like has been requested!

It's just mind-boggling. What's missing from this game now? It's something that can't be quantified, an unnameable thing that can't be known! It is just something we know that isn't there!

I have seen more self-awareness in religious cults than this.

[Dirak2012]

This is a list of things that I would like to see...

Pull out all the stops in the planetary generation, even if it breaks every single planet and base in the game. Make planets truly alien, not merely poor's man carbon copies of Earth's biomes.

Make it so warp travel is only possible with a freighter, you land with your spaceships, but you must attach an exocraft (only one) to the ship, so you can travel and explore.

Hugely nerf the melee/jump combo, to make exocraft relevant again. And for the love of god, remove the ship summoning and the exocraft teleporting.

Make planetary hazards so severe that you actually need to build a base to survive.

Resources should be rare. Currently, you land in any planet and you can find fuel just looking at your feet. Make it possible that you can actually end up stranded and die for lack of resources.

Now, nothing of this will ever happen, but this is part of what I would like to put the game in the right path again.

[Poppagee]

NMS is my Star Trek game in the sense that I explore new systems all the time looking for my "Perfect" planet in the harshest galaxy. Knowing that someone may come behind me and sees that I was there first causes some small satisfaction. But it needs more flavoring. I would like to see more settlement interaction with the galaxy. Maybe settlements that have conflicts with other settlements on the same planet. A bounty system on the player for negative ranks with the alien races. Kill on sight for example. Hit a certain level, space stations fire on the player. I play the hardest version of the game I can and now space battles are somewhat concerning for me but I shouldn't be able to wipe out entire fleets in pirate systems without battles simply because sentinels arn't there to protect them. So maybe more fighter support for all types of freighters and ships. Maybe contested systems between the races. Elite Dangerous Esq. Have the ability to manipulate lifeforms on planets. Your personal bio lab. Have the ability to create biomes on planets. Have bases that need to be defended for whatever reason: location, alien rank level , pirate target. Have the ability to defend the base with placeable weapons. Weird consequences for digging artifacts. Weird consequences for disturbing ancient bones. Massive ship graveyards in space to explore and salvage. Beserk Sentinel systems where you enter and you just get attacked. These are things that could add flavor just off the top of my head,

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Dirak2012:

This is a list of things that I would like to see...

Pull out all the stops in the planetary generation, even if it breaks every single planet and base in the game. Make planets truly alien, not merely poor's man carbon copies of Earth's biomes.

Make it so warp travel is only possible with a freighter, you land with your spaceships, but you must attach an exocraft (only one) to the ship, so you can travel and explore.

Hugely nerf the melee/jump combo, to make exocraft relevant again. And for the love of god, remove the ship summoning and the exocraft teleporting.

Make planetary hazards so severe that you actually need to build a base to survive.

Resources should be rare. Currently, you land in any planet and you can find fuel just looking at your feet. Make it possible that you can actually end up stranded and die for lack of resources.

Now, nothing of this will ever happen, but this is part of what I would like to put the game in the right path again.

Good points. That sounds like the first 5 hours of The Planet Crafter. Unfortunately, once you reach the point where the planet has breathable air, the game starts to get not very interesting. It becomes more just managing a production line.

You are also right that your ideas are unlikely to happen. Pretty clear the point of updates is to draw in new sales and only on rare occasion do they throw the base a QOL improvement. I don't really complain because I got my fun money out of the game 4 years ago. I just like checking out the new stuff.

[SirProsik]

Sometime around the time Visions came out the scope of the game changed from keeping the game 'intelligent' to opening it up to a wider audience and more platforms allows that. For example prior to Beyond release going into a plant chamber, you could find cobalt, nitrogen, etc. Now all that plants provide is carbon. Another example is the broken machinery around the planet had usually 3 items required to repair rather than remove gunk/rust to repair. The drop pods also were more complicated to repair vs now.

So long story short the game is getting simpler and allowing for a wider audience.

[gianlum]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Mr. Bufferlow:

Part of the problem with storing that info- is where do you store it and is it really valuable to store for most players. My save file would be jacked royally if it stored all the details you mentioned after 4000+ hours.

I don't see a legit way to store it server side. My take is that HG is a very small team that used technology to create something similar (but NOT the same) as you might see from a huge Triple A game studio. They have less than 30 people for crying out loud.

Storing the info is a simple problem to solve.
A simple solution is to store the information about each planetary system you visit in a separate file, this way you can have a lot of informations saved and keep the size of each file relatively small.
The name of the file is the seed of the system or the galaxy coordinates or whatever unique identifier you can/want use.
You can also go a step further and create a directory for each system and a file inside for each planet.

All the other informations can be stored as are stored now or splitted in separated files.

The implementation cost is not that high, even for HG, and this solve the problems of a 4000+ hours (or even bigger) save.

[gianlum]

A way to make the game deeper is to give features a meaning. What I would do in no particular order...

- make the landing on the exotic planets possible only with a living ship
- nerf the exosuite environmental protection limiting the upgrade you can install to 1 for each type
- add (readd) to all the exocrafts a basic environmental protection which is drained slower that the exosuite one. Then you can install the upgrades to it to make it better
- leave the ship with only the basic hyperdrive engine which can jump to every star type but has only a range of 25/50 light years
- differentiate the ships slots count: a fighter can have more tech slots than an hauler but less cargo slots, so ship type has a meaning.
- differentiate the slots capacity so that exosuite<ship/exocraft<freighter<base container
- set different max installable upgrade by type for every ship type/class
- make the ocean adeeper and make the deeper part explorable only with the Nautilon
- remove the option to craft the fuel for ships/freighter/exocrafts/frigates and made them only purchasable
- add more variety to the station's missions where you need to gather some resource or craft an item so that you need to gather more than the usual 250 of a resource or craft more than 1 item at time, adding all the products/resources/items to the pool to choose from
- add some way to "use" the hired techs after the base quest is completed.
- add some sort of wear and tear to everything so that from time to time you need to service them (bases/freighter/exocrafts/frigates/ships), maybe using the hired techs
- add a way to claim a space station of an abandoned system and require a big amount of resources to repair it and then use is as base/shipyard

[Felis_Exploria]

Based on the suggestions here, the real problem is the limitations of a procedurally generated world. After 100 hours, the repetition becomes obvious and to some, boring. With most other games, people just move on. Because HG keeps updating and adding, these players stick around. They will complain if there is "nothing new" in the update / expedition. They also lose sight of the fact that HG chose procedural generation to reduce the need for memory. Adding all that "depth" would result in a memory crunch and poor performance. Just look at the number of "fix a memory related error". Far less grief will be felt if people just accept the limits of procedural generation, enjoy the content that gets added, and move on or take a break when they get bored. It happens with every other game they play.