No Man's Sky

[Homura]

I didn't think about it so much before, but you bring up a really good point.

Procedural generation is fine to some degree. Heck, it could help enhance a game by randomizing some stuff so the experience feels a little different each time and keeps the player on their toes instead of "oh, I know X item is here or whatever so I can rely on it being there if I replay it again." I think No Man's Sky relied way too much on it to the point where they thought it would carry the entire game. Also, I kind of see this whole thing not so much of a failure as a learning experience and example for other companies to keep in mind when designing a game.

Yup pretty much. Procedural generation is fine in games, but you kinda have to do something with it rather than just...I dunno nothing with it.

I think the big thing was the original success of procedural generation in rogue-like games such as Binding of Issac and Nuclear Throne. The difference here is that both BoI and NT were short games where a session lasts between 5 minutes (when you die) to maybe an hour, and randomization of the dungeons and items changes the experience significantly each time. However even those games have a goal to finish the dungeon. When you take it to a big scale from short 1-hour spurts to a 40-60 hour game without a clear and concise direction, it's not going to work well, specifically because you aren't actually playing a rogue-like.

I think NMS was trying to be like Minecraft perhaps. It's the closest comparison except minecraft literally has all the customization in the world. I personally find Minecraft and the like really boring as well. So I dunno, maybe it's just procedurally generated games aren't my cup of tea.

[Suicune's Fire]

I found that Angry Joe said some great points in his angry review video. xD

Spoiler: