No Man's Sky Update 1.03 (Day One) Patch Notes

Hot damn, Hello Games were not lying when they said they don't want people seeing their game because the patch adds so much content.

And to get this all free! Too few companies support games post release like this, even less for no cost to the customer. Getting a nice warm and fuzzy CD Projeckt Red vibe. Especially about how they want every future update to be free as well...and huge and significant.

Midnight Monday can't come soon enough. Staring at it preloaded on my PS4 is torture.

"pooping valuable resources" about sums up what makes video games great.

Sounds to me a like bunch of things that they REALLY wanted in the game, but didn't quite finish before they went gold ('cause they had to ship at some point).

Also holy shit that ending blurb:

"Next up we’re adding the ability to build bases and own giant space freighters. Temporal AA and my new cloud rendering tech should be coming soon too. It will really change the game again, and enhance it visually.

Yes. Please. This. Stuff like this. Every patch.

This game is gonna be great

This is the kind of support that makes me, someone who preordered this game on PC, want to get the physical PS4 version as well. Then I would not only have a nice hardcopy of the game, but my girlfriend would be able to play while I'm glued to my computer.

"Exploits – infinite warp cell exploit and rare goods trading exploit among other removed. People using these cheats were ruining the game for themselves, but people are weird and can’t stop themselves ¯\_(シ)_/¯"

I was on the fence about this game before, but I think this just sold me on it.

I'm actually more interested in this game today than I have been since it was first talked about. I'm kind of glad pc has a slight delay to it. I'll have a chance to see some release coverage before I make a decision about getting it on Steam.

I got the game in the mail yesterday and played for about 6 hours. I was annoyed when I heard that everything was getting wiped for launch day but this completely changed my mind. I'm completely willing to start over now. I would do it just for the upgrade to resource slots alone.

LOL treating a day one patch as added content.

Amazing how so much can be added at the last second after so many delays as well....incredible.

kind of odd that this all came in a day one patch but i also think they said NMS will be a platform they're constantly adding onto so maybe not that surprising. video games are tough to make, who would have guessed?

also say what you will about everything else but sean really just seems like a down to earth, cool guy.

Solved: reason why no review copies have been sent

The only concern I had about this game was how they would patch it and this is all I needed to read from them to understand they are serious about keeping it updated. It makes me wonder how long someone like Notch was really in the trenches patching Minecraft to make it better and better until he finally felt like it was done. You can tell just reading those patch notes they are not done at all. I hope they sell a ridic amount of copies and can afford to keep this going for awhile.

For big releases, this has become the norm over the last 3 years.

The rollercoaster reaction to this game since the original trailer has been baffling to me. "It's amazing! Wait, what do you do in it? New trailer looks great! Wait, there's some pop-in in a press demo. What's with this delay? Soundtrack might be good. This guy beat a prerelease build in 30 hours, fuck NMS. This patch fixes everything!"

Feels like a game release these days is the least important part of a game's lifecycle sometimes.

i've never seen the huge backlash happen BEFORE the game was released, that's for sure.

It's not even a backlash, it's internet fanboys being ridiculous. This is why I don't go on media sites (except for GB) or forums any more. Look at what happened with Suicide Squad. . . no one had seen the movie but went insane because the rotten tomatoes score was crap and then started bashing that site and the reviewers. It's always been bad, but I don't think it's ever been this bad and stupid before. I'm terrified to see what my kids are going to experience as they grow up.

No it hasnt. It has become the norm that games dont work as intended without an day 1 patch.

This is the first time i have seen players celebrating great post release support based on an pre release patch.

Almost like the game isn't done.

Something kind of off-putting about a day one patch being this substantial. Last minute optimizations and bug fixing has become the expected but this is practically just "Whew okay now the game is finished, close one."

@atwa: game was billed from the get go as a thing they always wanna build upon and support, so when it's "done" might not have an answer

I imagine if they had a team the size of some major developers they could have implemented these things earlier. As it stands they dont.

Duh?

Games have to be released at some point. The question is what was left before they go out the door.

You then have the time between Gold and release. In the past you went on vacation because digital/patching wasn't a thing, or you needed people to play the game before you could QA/patch it.

In the present you have groups like EA that use that time to start on the first DLC. If the game is way behind schedule but needed to come out due to budget, you'll often see them use that time to do QA/set up the patch for the major issues they expect they'll see.

There isn't anything wrong with devs working on a game after Gold, or setting up a day one patch so they can get it out faster/earlier. Or using that time to start DLC/additional content/features. This nostalgic rumination of how in the past "We didn't need no day one patches/content!" is stupid. We didn't need them because the devs couldn't actually make them, not because they didn't want them. As long as the game works fine on day one with the additional content/patch, it's no different for the consumer.

I was just about to post a thread on this, but more under the idea of "has this been done before?" since he says straight up things will be missing from the game if you continue to play the unpatched version and can only be part of the game if you delete it. Does anyone know of games that have done that? I can't think of any right now but it's bad from a design standpoint and gives people a bad impression of the game with all these pre-release copies.

It sounds like they really weren't ready and had to hit a release date. I have no doubt they are hard workers (please don't work until 6am) but this seems like finishing the game you were already making and not adding to it.

Considering the stressful ways of the modern game industry regarding release dates and all that, I'm not at all offended by these heavy duty patches. If anything I'm happy they are so full of new content. Even though I'm not planning on playing this game myself, I find myself happy for the players who are excited for this game and it's future.

@nals: I'm super confused by the small outcry from some people about Day 1 Patches or working on a game after gold, especially when in this last year or so we had Witcher 3 which had both a day 1 patch, constant patches afterwords to make it run better for all, FREE content DLC of varying quality, then great expansions. All of that work started as soon as the original game went gold and disks started getting stamped...

Oh well, one more day of reading people's stupid responses to this game that I am going to enjoy to no end. Then SPACE.

Some people got to have something to nag constantly about, otherwise they don't feel whole I think.

@sunbrozak said:

Thanks, that was a good read. Basically what I was saying, that they just had to a hit a date. That's a likely situation but obviously we will never know.

Honestly, I don't buy it. These changes sound too dramatic for six weeks (implied; at most) of development. At least, I feel that whatever capacity these changes exist in won't be enough to significantly change the way the game feels. Design-wise, it seems like that timeframe wouldn't be enough for proper QA; asset-wise, well, for it to matter, I don't think they'd be able to implement enough in six weeks.

I could be absolutely wrong. It's also possible they sent out a gimped build when they went gold (I'd have no idea why they'd do that, though), or that they've been working crazy hours. Either way, I think it's safer to remain skeptical (of course, you could say that about any game pre-release). These guys weren't afraid of making Molyneux-esque promises before this build of the game went out, without the audacity to redact or extrapolate upon them (which, honestly, is great for marketing a game; not so great for actually tempering your audience). They are also, by self-admission, a tiny indie studio, which ties back in to my first point. Again, this isn't the end-all-be-all of my doubts, but it definitely feeds them.

Also, this sucks:

• Exploits – infinite warp cell exploit and rare goods trading exploit among other removed. People using these cheats were ruining the game for themselves, but people are weird and can’t stop themselves ¯\_(シ)_/¯

No. If there's an imbalance in your game, it's not up to you to decide if I'm "ruining" it for myself. And if I do find the game to be ruined utilizing a method laced within the design of your game, the onus is on you, not me.

There's nothing wrong with Day 1 patches or working on the game after it goes gold; I mean, I'd prefer if they actually had the time necessary to deliver the product they want to you experience on day one, while also able to send the whole thing through cert, but it doesn't matter as you have to download it to play on launch anyway. You'll never see the game pre-patch (unless you get a leaked copy, for shame), so there's no issue there.

The problem arises when the day one patch doesn't fix enough of the game, and it's still broken on launch. I'm not saying that's the case here, but certain games should never have been released in the state that they were, patch or no (I'm looking at you, Arkham Knight PC, although no amount of patching was ever going to fix that mess).

The best example of walking this line that I have is Paradox Interactive; their games usually come out undercooked, but the patches are significant, and all paid DLC is usually accompanied by major overhauls that are given out for free. It divides the community between new people ("This game is broken/unfinished!") and old veterans ("They'll get there, just give them time.") every single release.

A lot of the changes that Hello Games make will be attributed to tweaking the usage of whatever procedural formula they have; things like frequency of life, sky color, planet biomes, terrain generation, and so on are actually (or billed to be) small mathematical changes that shouldn't take many man-hours to implement. Some of the crazier stuff (things requiring art assets like buildings or rooms in them like bars) was probably in the works but either yanked out to make the deadline or had the assets ready to go but was never allowed to be generated by the engine as something didn't quite mesh yet.

If they had added building construction or some massive new feature like that which wasn't present at ALL, I'd be skeptical too, but all of the above seems within the realm of possibility to me, assuming they aren't lying about how a lot of this is implemented (and assuming I'm not totally off base with the tech they are using, which is very possible, I admit.)

It's almost as silly to say you'll enjoy something to no end before you've played it as it is to say it's going to suck before you've played it. Don't get me wrong I hope you have all the fun in the world, but to say peoples apprehensions about this product are "stupid" as opposed to your dead set opinion that it's going to be awesome no matter what is a little silly.

Day one patches are fine as long as they fix critical errors and not as others have said are used to actually finish the game post-release. If we are going to treat videogames as ethereal "works in progress" that don't have a finite finish date then lets treat the payment for such games in the exact same manner. I'll plop down $10 now and my investment in the game will likewise be a "work in progress" until they've officially finished it. I know that sounds silly because at some point you are going to get $60 worth of entertainment out of the product, but it seems incredibly unfair to ask the paying customer to pay for a finished experience while they continue working on it.

Either way I hope it turns out well because why would anyone want a videogame to fail.

Yeah, I really hate that line. There is always going to be a set of players who are playing for max efficiency; that's what the entire subsets of speedrunning, idle games, and even leaderboards are built upon. It isn't my fault that Bethesda made the fastest/easiest way to grind smithing to be crafting iron daggers over and over again, and it isn't my fault that Hello Games overlooked some imbalanced exchange rates. It's certainly not a 'cheat' or an 'exploit' to use the path of least resistance or be smart about your resource usage.

It's totally fine if they want to take it out or rebalance it because it isn't in the 'spirit' of how they designed the system or whatever, but blaming the players for finding and using it is fucking asinine in a really off-putting way.

@humanity: "but it seems incredibly unfair to ask the paying customer to pay for a finished experience while they continue working on it."

If I spend full price $60/£40 on a game I fully expect them to continue working on it post release.

@thepanzini: Sure but to what end? Shouldn't it BE in a finished state at the point when you're buying it? The gaming industry is the only place where it has become acceptable to sell people products that you finish up at a later date. This is not acceptable in literally any other industry. I wouldn't buy an unfinished car or a halfway cooked meal, or a book with spelling errors and such.

Like I said, if they gotta put in some bug fixes that help stabilize the experience thats great. If they add on some superfluous features at a later date thats cool too. Doom added an ability to make the position of the guns on your screen resemble the original. Hyper Light Drifter added a co-op mode. Those are fun additions that didn't impact the base game. If that is what Hello Games is doing right now then right on, keep up the great work, but if they're adding things that are necessary to make the base game work after it has shipped then I'm staunchly against that.

@humanity: What is a finished state? The Witcher 2 Enahnced Edition added so much they practically created a new game, was the original unfinished? Destiny, The Division and Witcher 3 are recent examples of games with consistent post release updates, you can easliy argue that the Witcher 3 wasn't finished until patch 1.20 which brought the new UI three months after launch, same with The Taken King for Destiny.

@humanity: This is a neat read, helped me understand a lot more about post "gold" game development.

@ajamafalous: What would you really expect from those guys though ? Pretty much everything they've done with the promotion of the game has shown them as having a super idealistic philosophy about how people are supposed to experience their game. At this point the whole ordeal this marketing campaign has become is probably gonna be more memorable than the game itself.

I Was a bit annoyed that they were wiping everything and i have put about 20 hours into it but after reading the patch notes i cant wait to start again !
The only thing i do regret a bit is getting a permanent ban from twitch because i was streaming a game that i bought legitimately by pressing the share button on the ps4 and streaming to a website about streaming games. It was sony that got me banned but it was their console that allowed me to stream it in the first place :/ when i got mgsv early they didnt allow streaming via the ps4.

@humanity: apprehension and snark seem to come waaaay before postivity nowadays, tho. i am all for the needle swinging in the other direction; it gets pretty fucking tiring.

I mean... hopefully that stuff all works and doesn't break anything? I feel for those guys having to hit a date, but hopefully that doesn't just mean they just rushed in all these other features without testing everything properly. That's a lot of stuff to be putting in post "gold".

And, yeah, I do find it a little gross that they shipped the thing in a state that even the developers don't believe in (no review copies until after this patch rolls out, etc).

@nonused: Its not uncommon for unfinished builds to have code for systems that aren't quite fully cooked, and as such are turned off only to be fixed and re-enabled in future builds. Wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for the build on the disk and what got adjusted and enabled due to this patch.

*puts on tinfoil hat* What if this is just part of the marketing? Because these notes kind of make me want to get the game. Especially the bit about exploring dead moons.

now i'm curious where 1.01 and 1.02 went

@ajamafalous: it's also pretty shitty that retailers broke street date and people went against his wishes and streamed the game anyway in a state he never meant for it to be seen in. yeah probably wasn't the best response but it's understandable at least.

@szlifier said:

I think its also because so many people watched the leaked footage and were uneasy. This alleviates some of that with addressing pop-in and exploits.

@ripelivejam: I find boundless optimism just as grating. It's always a good idea to keep balance in all things. Of course it's the internet which makes it impossible to keep the needle steady in the middle when you have millions of puberty fueled teens with very important opinions pushing and pulling at both ends.

@takayamasama that is a cool and interesting read. It ironically comes from the studio that launched Nuclear Throne on PS4 in a somewhat broken state and months later is still in the process of patching it as far as I'm aware. While the article was certainly fascinating and the points he makes are salient ones, a regular paying customer shouldn't be concerned with any of that. Shouldn't even really be aware of it. As cold blooded as it sounds, it's not my nor any other "gamers" problem how long or complicated the cert process is. Let me explain to Rami how complicated and stressful my job is. How hard I have to work each month to earn my living, how many bills I have, how many issues I have to deal with on a daily basis. Does he care? No, he cares that I legally obtain his game. That I pay him for his hard work. No one is going to give you any slack in that department, you either pay up in full or you don't get to play. So if there is no slack in one direction, why should there be slack in another? Why don't they simply strive to make the game "perfect" before submission instead of ironing it out in the 2-3 months they have left over?

Remember the outrage about having to have your console online at all times with the XB1 launch? What if I wanted to play my game in a cabin in the woods! What about those poor soldiers in submarines that just have to play Halo! These day-one 1gb++ patches have inadvertently made that vision a reality. In this situation, someone that doesn't have very good internet or has limited bandwidth will get a gimped product simply because they can't download those 3 extra months of work, because "cert is hard."

I sympathize with Rami and other smaller studios. At the same time, it really shouldn't be my problem.

@nonused: I work with code daily. You'd be surprised at what one person can achieved in that space of time, let alone a full team with a foundation of which to work off.