No Man's Sky is prone to creating some incredible situations for its players, and one such instance just happened.
Against all odds, two players met on one planet from the humongous universe, causing Sean Murray, game lead of No Man's Sky and founder of Hello Games, to admit that his mind was blown away by the news.
Two players finding each other on a stream in the first day - that has blown my mind
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) August 10, 2016
Hello Games reiterated several times that the chances of two players crossing paths in the game are infinitesimal, but No Man's Sky still allows gamers to scan for peers that may be in the vicinity. Murray points out that his team intended for such encounters to happen, but the time span required for such a thing taking place was expected to be much longer.
Hello Games explains that although the "scan for other players" feature is part of the Galactic Map, it never hoped to see it happening in the first day of the game. The gaming company also hid some Easter eggs in its survival space title so that players experience memorable moments while exploring the procedurally generated universe.
"We want people to be aware they are in a shared universe," the Hello Games founder notes.
Keep in mind that although shared, the universe comprises no less than 18 quintillion planets. As players spawn first on a random-based algorithm, the possibility of two of them crossing paths is "almost zero." It looks like this percentage increased consistently because of the tremendous number of players who are enjoying No Man's Sky simultaneously.
Hello Games is grateful and humbled by the massive fleet of explorers that log in to its servers every day, the company said in a tweet. At the same time, its network coders were put to great test to keep "Discoveries still working at all."
Murray did not address the fact that the two players who synchronized to meet in one particular spot in the game's universe were not able to interact with one another, or even see each other. However, the Hello Games founder hinted at the game's servers being under a lot of pressure because of the unbelievably large number or players who log in at the same time. This might mean that a connection issue is to blame for the two players not seeing each other.
At the time of writing, the gaming company was not explicit about whether or not players can see or meet someone else in normal servers' functioning conditions. To create even more confusion, Hello Games affirmed early this week that No Man's Sky is not a multiplayer game, and players should not go into it looking for that type of experience.
In a separate tweet, Murray notes that more than 10 million alien species have been discovered so far, despite the short period of time the game was live. To put it in perspective, the figure shames the number of known species on Earth.
How are you finding your No Man's Sky experience so far?
