What did you imagine was at the centre before launch?

I’m looking for other people’s ideas of what they thought no man’s sky would be before the game released?

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A single player exploration game with unlimited (relatively) worlds containing strange life. The center didn’t really interest me.

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Welcome to the forum @Justc.
I did not think about the center before launch. After launch, I was confused but amazed and never thought of the center. Before Beyond, the center seemed unattainable, or at least too hard to attempt. After Beyond’s Living Ships, reaching the center became simple. I have been to the center of Euclid. Of course, by now I knew there was nothing there. Now I realize that each galaxy has it’s own center. There is no one universal center. One of my big hopes is that someday, the story will take us to the center and we will have a real ‘end game’ moment. A conclusion, of sorts to the storyline. Of course, in reality, the center of a galaxy is a black hole. Could a black hole take you to another dimension? I have no answers. My thought before was that the game would have an ending of sorts, at the center. That we were being drawn there. The current storyline leans the same way.

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Honestly, I was a bit curious about what happened when you got there, but no interest other than that. My focus was and is xenophotography and exploration. Not trade. Not combat. Not accumulating wealth. Not really even fleet actions. A nice-looking fleet, now, is another story – more photo ops! :slight_smile:

My focus is a main reason why I deleted my Normal mode games and now have just Creative ones – better for calmly getting photos. Only down side is that (currently) you never see the underground Horrors.

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I expected that animals and plants and biomes and ruins would get crazier and crazier the further we travel towards the centre. I did not expect to go through the centre.

(I haven’t even gone through once, I am “mad” at the silly centre for pouring oil on the reviewers’ angry fire after the release by being so underwhelming, lol, I have been boycotting it!) :wink:

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I had forgotten that, I thought as you get closer planets would be crazier and the last planets before the centre a mix of everything from the most boring to the craziest with everything in between. I had an idea I thought I had guessed what hg would do for reaching the centre would be to allow you to create your own galaxy but you could mess with the numbers so for example percentage of chance for things.

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I began playing from the first day & right up until release, I’d remembered Sean Murray mentioning something about ‘you never need to go there & you could just keep on exploring forever’ or words to that effect. Therefore, I’d always assumed, that there wasn’t anything of interest at the centre. I just explored all over the place in my little silver explorer.

After release, I abruptly stopped listening to the online community, (who were ranting) & tuned out simply because I was enjoying myself exploring the massive empty universe in my tiny little ship. (I actually was ignorant to several features that became available after Pathfinder due to not paying attention to forum discussions).

After finishing the Atlas missions, I ended up sitting at a basic farm base for a long time & to this day I’ve never been through the center.
Towards Atlas Rises I stumbled onto this forum & found this lovely community & subsequently learnt quite a lot & began extending my travels.

I’ve been to the inner & outer fade. I’ve seen the Pilgrim Star (& brought back some fungi as a souvenir). I’ve traveled extensive distances all across Euclid via warp, (much more work back then).
I have reset the Atlas & spent some time in the Hilbert Dimension in a separate save.
Maybe one day I’ll head to the center just so I can say I’ve done it but at this stage I’m not that inclined.

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I didn’t start playing until Pathfinder just before Atlas Rises. I was kind of aware there was a reset of some type and other galaxies to explore.

First time going through was a really cool moment mainly due to 65dos. However I was not aware that absolutely everything would be broken on the other side and I was totally unprepared for it. Went from oh wow to FUUU***** no in 90 seconds lol.

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Yeah. In pre-launch interviews Sean mentioned going to the galactic center as something you could do but didn’t need to. That sort of fit what I saw as a “choose your own adventure” type of game. Explore at will, go where you want, do what interests you. Move on or don’t.

It would be a nice “treat” if different galaxies maybe had some truly unique life forms or artifacts or something that would encourage you to “move on” past Euclid. For me, at this point, Euclid still holds my interest.

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From memory, the center was the main objective of the game. The mystery behind it and all. Everything else was things you can do along the way there and things you can continue to do with friends. A universe you can live in. I followed the game from years before the game was released and was still a concept. The infinite universe and variety had my curiosity. But the center had my attention. In a game, the destination is just as important as the journey is to me.

What I imagined of the center:

Pre-launch: My initial thoughts was that the center was going to be a game changing place. A place filled with aliens, alien structures, alien tech, etc. A place that felt like you were playing a whole different game. I imagined it was going to take whatever story the game was going to have(which it didn’t) and turn it on its head and say something about the universe’s origin and then release havok in the universe, a new alien threat/enemwe had never seen before, and we have to do something about it.

After launch and playing on day-1:
After about 5 or so hours and realising that the game content came to a halt, I knew the center was going to be a disappointment. I waited a week or so, realised it would take too long to get to the center so I youtubed the ending. Ever since, I never went there. Till this day, I never been to the center, although I still slowly travel that direction sometimes(no portals)

Today:
The center remains a dead-end of sorts. But I still like to imagine that one day the center will actually be something really cool. A good reason to go there. With a full deep story to go along with it. I love games with a good story.

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Hmmm. My recollection is that Sean played down the galactic center. The original concept was for things to get weirder and more hazardous as you got closer, but there was never any mention of special artifacts or structures.

He was purposely vague, saying, “There’s a reason you might want to go to the center.” But he was referring to the (to many) underwhelming current game’s process.

People who expected much more had overhyped themselves. Self-overhyping was a major problem at launch.

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I imagined that at the center a huge battle was waiting for me. Sean Murray back in the time said that “the more you’ll get to the center, the more the difficulty will be increased”. So I thought that maybe some kind of “Truth” will be waiting there. Maybe a bright place with one or more planets containing the most secret explanations of the game. And a HUGE battle in the sky…

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The sad thing is that this would even be possible in a procedural game… You remember RayRod who took apart the game files and manually changed these values to find out what they do? His NMS looks very different from ours. (I assume it also runs at half the speed, the landscape is no longer traversable by exocar, and structures overlap…) :wink:

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You are correct, there was no mention of artifacts or structures there. I admit I was overhyped too. However, I was imagining that based on how the original monoloth design was showed off(that original design was really cool, i wonder why it was scrapped) and how game difficulty would get harder and variety would change as you got closer to the center. I wanted to see more alien-like structures.

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Yeah, what every explorer wants is to find interesting patterns… Alien languages are patterns… Things getting weirder in one direction is one pattern… Ruins, buildings, and structures are patterns - because an explorer wonders, why were they built, and where are these builders now? Why does this animal have such feet? Etc.

We were hyped thinking HG had found a way of generating blazillions of interesting meaningful explorable places. :cry:

The structures we have now are placed arbitrarily, often we think, „why is this trade station half in a hillside and not on this plane next to it with a view upon the ocean?“ Or “why is there a thinarmed cow doing breaststroke?”
Procgen is hard. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I did notice when I got near the center, there is a higher % of red, green, blue systems and they come in clusters.

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