The PUGcast Podcast: No Man's Sky Has Eighteen Quintillion Planets

No Man’s Sky finally has a release date, and we discuss our impressions of the game at length. We then move on to Square Enix’s predictions for Final Fantasy XV, and how game director Hajime Tabata thinks it might be as good as Final Fantasy VII. We also chat about the games we are currently playing, including The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, Unravel, The Division, and Life is Strange.

[SeanScythe]

Is it possible for that many planets and not to have Duplicates? How do I hook up with friends? Sorry but something that vast seems like it will become lonesome with no friends. I'm the guy that mutes strangers in most games because I don't want to hear crying babies or someone speaking a language I don't understand in my ears.

[raWfodog]

I think that there will be many factors involved when it comes to declaring a planet 'different'. First and foremost will obviously be its logical location in the 'galaxy'. With that in mind, then a planet can surely have similar traits as another planet such as flora, fauna, size, and atmosphere but still be considered a different planet.

[Tsuru]

The game is procedurally generated as its explored. Thus the chances of a planet being EXACTLY the same is infinitesimally small.

The game isnt meant to be a multiplayer game. Even though it is multiplayer the chances of you running into someone on the map is pretty small, though it will happen, and yet even if you land on the same planet, the chances of you running into them on that planet are just as small.. The game is so huge, that if you wanted to play with your friends its will take you a LOOOOOONG time to fly to them across the size of the map. Its a game of exploration, discovery and of course being the first to name things.

[garrettbobbyferguson]

"even though it's multiplayer"

We don't even know if it is multiplayer any longer. The only player interaction so far that we know for sure is that you can see a player's planet named "Dickbutt"

[Tsuru]

"“[Your friends] will be a long way away. People keep asking us about multiplayer and I think when people see this they are going to fully realize what it means to be that far away from somebody else who’s playing…

“People keep saying to us, ‘Yeah, but what if I knew where they were? Would I go there?’ And it’s like, yeah, but they are going to have to stay there for quite a while while you get over there. And then once you get over there you might land on the same planet and then you will say, ‘I’m on a planet the size of Earth and I am on a mountain. Where are you?'”
Murray describes the multiplayer of No Man’s Sky as having all of the online players “flying around with an open lobby,” but since the game world is so huge those players will almost never run into one another. The game is equipped to handle another player or two flying past, but there’s no need to make it capable of handling thousands or even dozens of players on screen at the same time."

[3-4-5]

Some may be similar, but might have different animals or different Monoliths or be guarded by different races.

[uth11]

That's only 600,000,000,000,000,000 per dollar?!? Not enough content! /s

[raWfodog]

On another site, I found:

"No Man’s Sky players start on an unexplored planet, with a relatively simple and thin mandate: Head to the center of the universe. On the starting planet, the short-term goal is to survive and explore, and to gather the resources needed to build stuff that will take you further."

http://www.digitaltrends.co...

So from this I take it to mean that everyone will have the first oppurtunity at discovering and naming new stuff on their own starting world. This logically seems to be the best way to spread out the discoveries rather than having everyone start from the same exact point.

[iceman06]

With 18 quintillion planets, I don't think unique starting points will be a problem. lol Seems everyone will be spread out all over the place. Same universe, different galaxies, different planets.

[WeAreLegion]

3/10 Too many planets

[esmittystud101]

Okay, so I have seen over ten videos on this game. It looks really good, its probably worth $60. But all the videos I have seen are the same. You get to a planet, you look at the wildlife, then you leave.

What else is there? Combat? RPG elements? Which, not all, but pretty much every game is RPG is some way I guess. So scratch that question. Also, what are our chances of running into anyone else playing since there is so many planets that basically build themselves?

I'm a whole lot of confussed if you couldn't tell.

EDIT: raWfodog answered alot of these. He just types faster then me. :)

[G20WLY]

In addition to all the stuff raWfodog shared, there is ground combat and space combat and you can mine minerals on planets, or steal loot from aircraft in space, in order to enhance your ships attributes and research new materials to upgrade handheld weapons (and, I'm guessing here, other abilities, since they've shown jetpacks in use and some planets are irradiated). You can trade at trading posts which are found on some planets and in space and you can interact with NPCs via dialogue trees, as you try to learn alien languages via exploration. You can build allegiances and that may result in certain others becoming hostile. The goal is to reach the centre of the universe, but even if you do that (some won't) the game never ends.

Sorry for the text wall, writing this on the fly ;^)

[esmittystud101]

Very helpful. Sounds good. Thank You.