from Sibbo@sopuli.xyz to starfield@lemmy.zip on 11 Sep 2023 12:44
https://sopuli.xyz/post/3367815
I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.
While it was not a Cyberpunk-grade overhype, I think it must still have been overhyped. Because if you see it as Skyrim with better graphics, it is pretty much what you’d expect.
Some of the common criticism seems to be intrinsic to the sci-fi genre. In Skyrim, you walk 100 meters and then you find some cave or camp or something that a game designer has placed there manually with some story or meaning behind it. And as a player, you notice that, because most locations in Skyrim feel somehow unique. Even though for example the dungeons have rooms that repeat a lot. Having a designer place them manually with some thought gives them something unique.
In interstellar sci-fi, a dense world like this is simply impossible. Planets are extremely large so filling them manually with content is simply not possible. And using procedural generation makes things feel meaningless. Players notice that fast. So instead, Starfield opted for having a few manually constructed locations that are placed randomly on planets, unfortunately with a lot of repetition. But that is a sound compromise, given the constraints of today’s game development technology. The dense worlds that we are used to from other genres simply don’t scale up to planetary scale, and as players, we have to get used to that.
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I cannot possibly disagree more with your assessment that the interstellar setting is necessarily boring and that’s something we should accept.
But, if so, then why would we need to “just get used to it”? I’ve certainly never felt compelled to force myself to play a boring game
I don't think OP made the point clear, but I agree with the spirit.
Fundamentally it is this:
Sense of scale
Meaningful content at every turn
CHOOSE ONE
Examples
Daggerfall - infinite scale, but quests, dungeons, meaningful content have to be specifically targeted or else be lost in the gigantic procedurally generated world.
Elite Dangerous - spending 20 minutes supercrusing across a binary star system really makes you feel the size, but also that's 20 minutes of not doing anything.
No Man's Sky - The universe is effectively infinite, and there is something useful almost everywhere! But (almost) none of it is handcrafted, so the random content gets stale in the scale.
Star Citizen - Basically no content, but absolutely unmatched as an immersive space experience, as it doesn't compromise on scale for QoL or filler content in the slightest. Worth noting that most people hate this.
Meanwhile Skyrim is impressive because the world is pretty big, but there's also something interesting to do every 5 steps. Starfield tries to maintain this while also tossing in some NMS-style randomized infinite content, but ends up suffering the same feeling of staleness once you spend any time exploring it.
This is the best, most succinct, and fair assessment I’ve seen of Starfield since launch.
Starfield has the advantage of 100+ hours of hand-crafted, voice-acted quest content, of course. What they need to do about the procedural content is the same thing Hello Games did, just add more procedural pieces that can get put together in novel ways, so the planets and outposts aren’t so obviously exactly the same. I’m hoping the system that inserts buildings on planets will just take new content, because modders could really blow that wide open.
Yeah, this is the big issue. The facilities and stuff should have been procedural as well. They should be a ton of handcrafted components, but they procedurally pick pieces and put them together.
Preferably they’d also take into account where they are to make things more interesting. If there’s Helium 3 around, make it generate a helium 3 facility with plenty of explosives and stuff sitting around. Things like that.
As it is, it’s the same few facilities that have the exact same layout at all locations. They even have the same loot in the same positions most of the time, and things like the heat leaches are always at the exact same spot.
They went halfway with procedural generation and it doesn’t really work to make the game feel full.
To be fair, the assets themselves are top notch. The textures & models are as good as I’ve seen in any game. The art direction is excellent. It’s obvious they spent a huge amount of time just making these things; we may have gotten as many as they could make in a reasonable amount of time. Compare it to NMS where procedural buildings cut into the terrain in awkward, unrealistic ways and have glitchy invisible walls - or Cyberpunk where the textures & models frankly aren’t very impressive but are made up for with excellent art direction & graphical/lighting techniques.
That said, yeah, it’s an understatement to say it’s way too noticeable that they’ve copy-pasted a handful of facilities & natural features. You notice it when you see the second one. They didn’t even try to hide it.
Empyrion is such a different game, but so many times on that my buddies and I would just land somewhere to get fuel and spend hours exploring and building on some random planet with plenty to find, explore, and fight. And that is entirely procedurally generated with randomly placed points of interest.
I’ve honestly never seen this much of an unapologetic shameless dogshit take. To actually think, “no, it’s the players who are wrong” in this situation takes some real delusion.
Like this is the most “mask off” fanboy post.
They should have just pulled an outter worlds and made several hand crafted planets.
It’s crazy how much better the plot and setting are in that game despite the fact it has maybe a 1/10 of the content Starfield does.
Man Outer Worlds was so cringe to me. I tried really hard to get into it but it felt like it just kept rehashing the same jokes over and over. “Haha I’m owned by a company and they’re cheap and I’m silly!” Just over and over and over. After 10-15hrs I put it down for good.
It’s like someone delivering a punch line and waiting awkwardly for the chuckles packaged into a game.
This is exactly how I felt playing it. The game played like a much improved fallout, but it took modern fallout’s shitty cynical “everything is a joke” attitude and multiplied it by 10. It was insufferable.
Starfield has managed to tone it down, but every once in a while I see the fallout “jokes” pop up.
I played Outer Worlds and, I think I completed it. The setting got old and the plot… what was the plot again…? I’m like 90% sure I finished it but I couldn’t tell you what happened.
Contrast that to Starfield, I’ve completed two faction quest lines and they were both superb. They took unexpected twists and turns and were full of lore and interesting characters. The Crimsom Fleet quest line was epic, and payed off in just the right way for me (seriously the discovery at the end is 🤌). The Rjujin quest line was also great, and took such an unexpected turn from the initial thing of applying for an office job. Also the toy you get from the questine is really fun to play with, crazy that someone might play the whole game and miss it because they thought applying for a corp job would be boring.
At the moment I’m taking a break from story missions, and I’ve been taking pirate hunting bounties, and just exploring. I’ve found loads of random encounters and followed threads to some epic stuff. And I’ve still only just started the main quest line.
The game is so much deeper than Outer Worlds, while also being far broader. Also, Bethesda make open world games, if they had released something as stripped back and linear as OW, they pull have been torn apart for it, even more than they are now.
I think that's what some people are missing with the world gen. Landing on some random planet in a random system probably shouldn't yield some uniquely woven tapestry of civilizations that were once there, or a story about a family persevering through harsh climates and conditions only to have a random encounter with the Ecliptics and be wiped out. It's a random planet in a vast universe.
There is stuff to find and stories to be made, but you're pulling a ball out of a bag full of balls and hoping that it's made of gold. Bethesda quest lines traditionally have unfolded with exploration because they were pretty limited in area with which to work. Skyrim is 60km x 60km, backfill from there, spread things out as needed. It can't really work like that with Starfield.
I’m viewing this game as more of a modder’s platform. It’s really the whole reason I play BGS games. As such, it works perfectly the way it is. It’s decent out of the box, but once the CK comes out and the mods start rolling in, it’s going to be perfect.
I just found it too boring to play. I play games to have fun.
Mods will likely fix that issue. Some Skyrim mod collections turn it into a Survival/action rpg that is far more fun than the base game.
Okay, but why am I buying a game purely so that someone else can make it worth my money? I played THE FUCK out of vanilla skyrim and loved it far before modding it. I could not even finish FO4 on release and have never gone back (I’ll say it, it was boring! Skyrim actually kept me engaged/caring, FO4 cannot) I’m fine with heavily modding my game, but fuck me the base game needs to be at least enjoyable first
Oh I don’t disagree with any of your points. That’s just what I expect from a Bethesda game now. It shouldn’t be full price to be honest.
Very fair, have a nice day/night!
Same. Tried to honestly enjoy. Some magic is just not there in this one.
7/10 really seems to be an appropriate rating for this game. It’s not bad, it’s just a Bethesda RPG and nothing more.
Yeah I might even go 8. A lot of the game is very high quality from the quests to the level design and details. Dogfighting is good, the rest of space stuff is meh. Ship designer is good overall.
I really wish they could have let us fly more freely, or at least give that illusion. There is also a lot more room for polish and quality of life improvements. Like let us walk through ships before we buy them, and maybe fly it in a simulator without spending money. That tech should be easily available. Ground vehicles would be a no-brainer, that could certainly lead to more gameplay opportunities.
I have to believe some of this functionality will be added in patches and DLC.
or mods
Oh man of I could customise a buggy as well, and have that buggy drove out of my customised ship, I’d be so bloody happy about that
If I recall correctly wasn’t the lack of this in fallout due to engine limitations? I hope they fixed those. I hope we don’t have train headed npcs in starfield
They already have the horse-in-a-bag mechanic from TES games. I’d settle for pulling a land speeder out of nowhere.
Space Engineers and Empyrion let you do that and it’s very fun. Empyrion is more of a game, Space Engineers is more about engineering. In Empyrion we have a big capital ship as our base, it has a landing platform on the back with 2 fighter ships, and a vehicle bay and ramp in the belly with mining hovercraft. Everything is block based and there is a ton of freedom, we could stack 6 fighters on the back if we can get the landing gear to latch. Or make the landing platform bigger.
Empyrion would be much closer to our dream game if you could fly ships while other people were onboard and not forced to sit in meaningless passenger chairs. It feels really bad.
Space Engineers is so much more fun with the right mods, just way more punishing to get messed up in combat!
For now it's the bunny hop boogie.
Hear me out! Vasco…is a transformer! Robot transforms into a dune buggy!
I’d agree with you, its a solid 7/10, if reviewed it after only playing the game for a couple hours.
but from the 10 hour mark and beyon, to where I am now, I’d say its a 5/10.
Theres just to many small things that make the game frustrating to hell once you get out of that initial starter window.
Like, Ship parts. You get great details on engines, shields, reactors, etc. But no detail on landing gear, which would be great to have when your error message is screaming at you for more landing gears, and you dont know how much each one supports, or what the difference is, and you have no numbers to tell you how many more you need… And Hab components. Just tell me what work benches each one has, at least, and if things like the infirmary are just cosmetic or provide some boon to having it.
And surveying planets. You know why exploring was fun in skyrim/fallout4? Cause you were going from point A to point B, and were discovering things on the way, and getting distracted. on Starfield, land in the middle of a map, and have to wander around hoping you can find enough to scan to complete the survey for the planet, or at least the biome, before fast traveling back to the ship. This can take hours, even with amp… and amp’s buff time is so little that if you plan on using it you have to stockpile a lot of it, and micromanage it.
Speaking of buffs like Amp… theres no HUD display that I can find that indicates how much time you have left on your buffs. I barely use any buffs cause of this alone.
And speaking of the HUD… Why are the things we get given tucked up in a corner where we cant see, at a time when our eyes are in the bottom middle reading text? I have no idea what I’ve gotten from quest rewards, because I never see the notification.
Also, the artificial delay and slowness built into the interface. Why? Theres mods that easily remove them… but why are mods necessary? Why make the menu system artificially worse?
While individually, any one of these things (both the mentioned examples, and the unmentioned ones) could just be ignored with a sigh and moved on from, the fact that pretty much every system in the game missed its mark by an infuriatingly tiny step, that would take almost no effort to polish in to a gem, I cant help but just be utterly frustrated with the absolute potential the game had, thats left on the vine to wither, because they decided to stop right before getting things right on seemingly every. single. mechanic and interface.
And not to mention the bigger issues, like improperly handled DirectX calls that can cause bad performance and crashes, that was discoverd yesterday, or the fact that to much basic outpost shit is locked behind perks.
Yeah, they already covered all of your complaints when they said “It’s a Bethesda RPG” lol.
But agreed, not terrible but there’s a lot holding it back from being great.
The “Its a Bethesda RPG” excuse doesnt cut it this time. at least with their previous games, they managed some kind of improvement over the previous games.
Starfield is a straight regression.
it is actively, mechanically worse than previous games. The perk system and the settlement building is actively worse than Fallout 4. The exploration and inventory management of Skyrim and Fallout 4 are actively worse in Starfield. The Menus are actively worse. The faces and facial animation are actively worse.
and I don’t say this to heap mindless hate on the popular thing. I say this because I want it to be better. It had so much potential to be better. But they got within like 5 feet of the finish line and just… stopped, and said good enough, for some bizarre frustrating reason.
Have you recently played fully vanilla fallout 4 or Skyrim? Because without a doubt the menus are exactly as bad as those games, but mods like FallUI and SkyUI make them amazing.
Faces and face animations are definitely improved, I have no idea how you could say they’re worse, much more fluid and much less jarring generally (again unless you’re mistaking heavily modded fo4 and Skyrim, which both have mods that improve all of this)
Settlement building does seem to be a regression, but I have only put in like an hour on it, and again vanilla Fallout 4 is VERY limited compared to modded.
Perks eh, I do like the more detailed Skyrim and fallout styles (I think skyrims was better overall but they’re intentionally different) while Starfield feels much more basic on that aspect, but I don’t really feel like it “needs” a whole lot more on that aspect, it works but I’m sure a perk overhaul mod will come through.
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Except the core isnt alright.
People need to stop treating bethesda like its some poor indie dev that did its best. its a multi billion dollar company, owned by a multi billion dollar company. They have the resources, time, and access to expertise to be better than this.
And these low, handwaved low standards of “Its just bethesda, what do you expect”, are exactly why Starfield is worse than previous games. And future cames will be worse still. Why put in effort when people like you just shrug and go and give them a free pass with comments like “what do you expect, its bethesda”.
Lol the core of the game is definitely better then alright, and it will be fantastic when modders can spend years tweaking things as they like and adding additional content.
Many people like Bethesda games even when they are known to be a little buggy, it is what is it, get over it.
There is a reason Skyrim endured for over a decade at this point and most other games don’t come close.
you seem to be taking valid, level headed criticism a tad to personally there, friend.
You may want to take a step back and take a breath.
So much of the criticism is not valid and people move the goal posts, too many people talking about shit they don’t even begin to understand because they’re just parroting what they hear from other people who also haven’t played the game.
It’s maddening
So multiple people finding flaw and criticizing it just means its not real, and its just anti-precious company propaganda?
Seriously.
Step back and take a breath. You are getting way to wound up on behalf of a multi billion dollar company that doesnt give 2 shits about you
From an outside perspective YOU seem to be the one taking this conversation too seriously, fwiw.
An unironic “No, U!” now.
Seriously, Friend… Go calm down.
I am not the person you were originally talking to, hence the “outside perspective” I mentioned. We’re not friends, and I have no need to calm down.
There are certainly flaws in Starfield, I never claimed otherwise, but I will push back on bad arguments and provide my own perspective and experience.
I have played thousands of hours of Bethesda games vanilla and heavily modded, they make good games that are made excellent via mods, and they specifically approve and uplift mods and modders, that’s something very few other companies (especially at this level, indie games/developers can be very good about this as well) do, and their games are all the better for it.
But people just act like they’re leaving it to modders to fix the broke stuff, while my 96 hours in this game so far has proven (to me) they definitely did focus a lot more on qa and making sure there are no game-breaking bugs. I already a fiend for making saves because of experiences of running into game breaking bugs on past vanilla Bethesda games, but I literally haven’t run into a single one yet with Starfield.
Are there random floating things sometimes? Yes Are there funny physics glitches that happen? Most certainly Are all the animations perfectly smooth and life like? Nope
Do any of the above bugs or weirdness effect my enjoyment of the game? Nope, it’s a fun game with a lot to do and see.
Dude wants an easy game
It really feels like the creators didn’t do much playing of the game itself. So many things that are just lacking for a game like this.
Just so many things. Yes modders will fix it probably, but they shouldn’t have to and there will likely not be as much interest in doing so since the game isn’t as majestic and awe inspiring as skyrim (IMO).
I agree.
Game isnt a big expansive game like TES, or Fallout.
Its a series of tiny rooms, Most of which are just randomly generated, separated by half a dozen menus and loading loading screens. Theres no place to really stretch your legs, because more than likely you are going to be spending most of your game time running around on a randomly generated map looking for some PoI your quest requires, or the last flora/fauna/mineral your survey requires, so you can leave and never come back to this particular and specific tiny room again.
and even that wouldnt have been so bad, if there was some variety to the PoIs. But outside of the presumably handmade maps, like New Atlantis, It just feels like you are running into the same handful of PoI’s over and over again, with the exact same layout, the exact same loot (just leveled and with a fancy new descriptor infront of its name) in the exact same places, and encountering the exact same miniquests on these randomly generated maps, like “Oh no, I’m sick, I hope you have the med.icine skill to fix me without cost” and “Oh no, there are pirates in the same PoI you’ve cleared out 37 times previously, go clear them out”
I have no problem with randomly generated segments, but Whats the point in randomly generating maps if its just gonna have the same handful of PoIs in it with absolutely zero change in them? I’d rather have a handful of map types and randomly generated PoI’s, at least that would provide some compelling and playable variety… and if not completely randomly genned, at least randomly change some things in the PoI so I know not to enter, take the first right, pick the blue door just to get a freaking AA rifle, like the 37 other previous times I did this PoI.
This is exactly the frustration I’m experiencing. You have put this to words so perfectly. Every single menu or ux decision makes me just wanna pull my hair out.
It’s so close to being a gem but there’s so much friction trying to do the stuff in the game thanks to the UI
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Starfield is the classic Bethesda experience but the hype around it implied it wouldn’t be. The classic Bethesda experience is fine, it’s a good base of a nice, free-form game that lacks polish. They are also games that need at least a few mods to actually be good. Vanilla Skyrim, etc sucks after you start modding it. Even if all you download is an end, a weather, the unofficial patch, and the better dialog and message box controls mods. Playing starfield I was immediately like “where is better dialog and message box controls?”
The game has potential but a thing that bothers me is landing on a planet and it says I explored 90% of it before I even exited the ship. I went to earth and there was no evidence of there ever being life and major cities. No ruined homes, no cities, no like… Mt Rushmore head that broke off and found where it isn’t supposed to be, no statue of liberty torch. Nothing. They could have crafted a really cool ruined earth and instead it was just… sand and rocks. What do you think is behind that rock? Another rock. And when it comes to Earth, you don’t need to have everything be where it needs to. The tip of a pyramid in Egypt makes sense but I see nothing wrong with finding the broken Washington monument in the middle of what was the Atlantic ocean. Or the broken big Ben in the middle of what was Japan. If any planet should have gotten randomly generated assets of ruins or even just manually crafted, it should have been Earth.
Most planets are empty and give you almost no reason to explore them. The game is about exploring planets, but playing this game makes me want to play Starbound instead.
I also don’t know why everyone compares it to Skyrim when I feel like I’m playing Fallout 4 instead of Skyrim. Skyrim would have been an improvement, I wasn’t a fan of FO4.
I messaged my friend a couple hours into the game and said “…I dunno dude. This feels like Fallout 4 but in space.” I’ve never finished an FO game, despite trying many times, because they just feel boring and overwhelming at the same time (for me anyway). I was late to the Skyrim party, first played it on Switch and loved it - loosely because the story drove me forward and kept me engaged.
Witcher 3 and CP2077 had me hooked the entire time. Even though they’re entirely different games, I also miss the little nuances in NMS - like actually flying into a planets atmosphere and landing, being able to zoom around the planet in my ship, engaging “warp.” All without a whole lot fewer loading screens or opening menus. To be fair, I got tired of NMS super quickly because resource mining and grinding aren’t my thing.
All that to say that I’m enjoying it though I’m not sure how long it’ll stick with me. It’ll hold me over until Phantom Liberty comes out.
I played a few hours but after a quest frustrated me I haven’t picked it up since.
I did go through an abandoned science facility but it was just like going through a facility in fallout for me.
I tried playing fo4 many times but could never really get far into it. The west time i tried a completely different playthrough where you are just cranked up on drugs and go in running with melee weapons, but that build takes a while to get going. I also tried actually building a settlement with that build and I couldn’t even make a square room and gave up lol. (There was always a gap no matter how I placed the walls…)
I see you can build crazy ships and maybe that might be fun.
But I don’t know, the game doesn’t quite do it for me.
Yup. Same here…the building stuff was never for me either. I’d love to be the person who thoughtfully builds pretty settlements but normally I’m just plopping things down so I can move along.
Different strokes for different folks, as they say. I’m def not knocking on those who enjoy it and get the most out of it.
Thats kinda why they made it optional to build in the game, especially after a certain point in the game where you have two options and can choose not to build which i wont mention details due to it being a spoiler.
I’d say creation engine is showing its age more than it lacks polish. The game looks pretty good and I’ve encountered virtually no bugs so far. People’s faces are a bit off though, as many have pointed out.
Creation engine is a double edge sword, on one had, it is super moddable. The mods you can put in for skyrim are insane. You can turn it into a completely different game.
I would say that the game isn’t unpolished because of the engine though. Not in the ways I’m talking about anyway. The quests, dialog, locations, animations are all just a bit off, unpolished, and stiff. None of these really have anything to do with the engine aside maybe animations and locations. And given the eldersouls mods that give very animated combat animations, the combat mods that add wound systems and combos, etc, I don’t think that’s what’s holding them back.
Yes creation engine is old, but I dont think it’s what makes the game feel unpolished for me.
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I’d agree with you, but like I’ve stated over here
So much of the lack of polish is just potential left on the vine to wither and die cause they refused to take the last tiny steps to make so many of the mechanics into something easy to use and enjoyable.
They don't have to make a game based in reality. They could have made their own system where the planets are small and filled that handful with lots of stuff. They chose to make real systems and have huge planets, it doesn't matter if there's 10, 100, 1000 planets if they are all barren and empty. The approach they took wasn't good for a bethesda rpg, they need the hand crafted world where they can keep things popping up. That's just the start of the problem with the game though, it is far too similar to their existing RPGs, I get playing it safe with a formula (I mean Larian do too), but you have to have great lore and story to back it up if that's what you want to do. Bethesda made no attempt to disguise it, it is as shameless as Ubisoft's rehashed games. They need a new engine if that is what's limiting them.
People keep saying this but I’d say at worst Ubisoft does games in pairs, occasionally trios. If you play AC: Odyssey and AC: Black Flag, I assure you they will be VERY different experiences. Mechanics/combat alone are a huge distinguishing factor.
Yeah, cause Black Flag was from the end of the time they actually made games and Odyssey is in their prime rehashing era.
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I tried odyssey, but it was just the same as origins. I don't like the new AC at all, they shouldn't even be using that IP for these games.
Barren and empty worlds have their place in such game. If nothing more, you need contrast between lush worlds and empty rocks/iceballs to make the former stand out. I think I can call myself an Elite vet at this point with 3000 hours in, and all the landable worlds, of which there are literally more than a trillion, are barren. They still offer gorgeous views and are essential for creating the appropriate artificial lonelyness of virtual space exploration. Also, geology spotting, jetpack mountaineering and base jumping can be a fun activity during long expeditions.
Also, barren worlds will be the playgrounds for modders. Skyrim had a problem that squeezing in modded larger playerhomes and settlements was often really hard task and created tons of incompatibilites. Basically no such concerns in Starfield.
Even the less barren ones you walk 900m to a cave, just to find like 2 corpses in there. Barren worlds are useful for the reason you mentioned, but they didn't need 1000 planets that they clearly struggled to do anything with.
There’s the problem. You bought a BSG rpg wanting it to not be a BSG rpg. They will always make this style of game. If you want a different style of game, they will disappoint you.
Ive been playing BSG rpgs since Morrowind, and so I got exactly what I was expecting, with some cool extra bits on top. And as such, I absolutely love it!
I didn't buy shit. I avoid triple A games cause they all the same disappointing overhyped crap.
Ah, so you don't even know what you're talking about anyway. Good grief.
True, only way to view a game is to play it. No other methods at all that exist.
Sorry but if your opinion is solely formed around all the fake outrage "reviews" then it's no wonder you dislike the game. However, that still has no basis in the actual truth of the matter of what this game is and isn't. And yes, your comments make it very obvious that your opinion in this matter is in fact quite stupid, sorry not sorry for the ad hominem but this is just painfully ridiculous.
Ive watched over 25 hours of someone playing it. Why do you keep making such rash assumptions?
I could call your opinions just as stupid as you think mine are, as that is what they are, opinions. But I am not going to stoop to doing that. The fact you are getting so defensive over this shows me the discussion isnt worth continuing. Good luck out there.
As if that's the same. Jesus fucking Christ dude. You could at least admit that you have zero arguments.
Why would it matter if they have huge vast empty spaces vs. still huge but comically looking empty spaces? That argument just doesn't make sense and I heard it so much from the whole Elite vs Star Citizen debate already. No, those smaller planets aren't filled with more interesting things because they're smaller, the gaps between points of interests are still procedurally generated and just as empty as the other game. But after seeing realistically scaled planets it makes even SC planets look like cartoon planets, sort of like the ones from NMS. It just doesn't look right. There's just no gameplay benefit to it.
My complaints personally are just about bad dialogue and quest design. The world is hardly my biggest issue.
I can get on board with some of this. I like many quests personally but I really wish Bethesda would write more interesting material than some of the dialogue randomly spouted off by NPCs. I know it’s a game and that action cliches happen in many games but it gets old after seeing overacted pirates or marines talk about their hardships. It just isn’t believable.
yeah, That's fair criticism. This dialogue and quests are pretty flat.
I just finished another play through of Cyberpunk before jumping into Starfield and the dialogue seems SO generic in comparison. Not to mention the whole “Oh hi, here’s my space ship and robot. Bye!” was really offputting.
Starfield reletive to other bethesda titles has the most tame start. Its part of the reason why people dont like the intro hours into the game.
That entire beginning is definitely the worst part of it imo. No idea why they thought this was a good idea. It's not even just bland and weird in regards to the story but it is also a terrible tutorial experience. I only learned that you can mine super fast by holding right click after like a week form reading online comments of others. I can definitely see how some more casual people will be severely put off by such an experience.
I’m enjoying the game, but an annoying number of quests involve a pointless “go talk to this person to find out what to do”, you get there and it’s always some mundane instruction “go collect this thing from there”. and you waste a few minutes for that
I’ve put 40hrs in and almost none of the quests have been interesting, they go nowhere, characters have little personality, the buildup never has a payoff, the “choices” are shallow and have no effect on anything. It feels like the quality of a community mod.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Create a handful of small, dense "gamefied" worldspaces and people will complain that the world is not big and open enough and that it's not realistic or immersive to have such small and dense "planets". Create thousands or trillions (in case of Elite:Dangerous) of procedurally generated planets with realistical amounts of POI-s, and people will complain about boring, sparse worlds with little to do on and where it takes too much time to go anywhere. Try to hit a middle ground, and people will still complain.
Same thing with spaceflight. In Elite you can fly seamlessly everywhere in a system. Only real loading screens are jumps from one system to another. People complain regularly about long travel times (average being only a few minutes), how travel is not gameplay and how "boring" it is and that instantly warping from planet to planet would be so much better. And then people complain about warping mechanics in Starfield.
The developers can never win with the internet-dwelling "gamers" with these sorts of games. There will always be a very loud minority who complains that the game is not what they imagined would be their perfect game. Bear in mind that most people who like the game are busy playing the damn game and not leaving reviews.
As for overhype, oh, there was so much of it in space sim circles. People seriously believed that Starfield will be killing Elite and Star Citizen in one fell swoop. Of course, most of these people were already discontent with Elite and Star Citizen and when Starfield obviously didn't fulfill their wishful thinking, they're now even more discontent and loud.
Me personally? I'm waiting til I can get a new GPU so I can start tinkering with spaceship builds (really love the NASA-punk aesthetic, especially the interiors), guns and suits. And Starfield seems to have perfected jetpack combat, one aspect I really like about Elite, but which is kind of limited there (can't swap jetpacks, and the combat suit has a crap jetpack even after upgrading it while the suit with the good one is not that suitable for combat). Can't wait to make my Mobile Infantry build operating from a Firefly-class ship🙃
Not sure why you got down voted. You hit the nail on the head. I like elite but stopped playing after “mile wide and inch thick” syndrome became clear. I never got into star citizen because even though I got a ship it always gave me problems to run.
Slightly off topic rant: people talk about “space sims” like its an actual thing you can simulate (uhhhh we haven’t invented that stuff yet sir) and it drives me crazy. I like flight sims but even when I know the real thing is more difficult and complex I know the dynamics have some relation to reality unlike a super magical warp drive thing.
Kerbal is a space sim. Engineers might be too.
Very good point. I meant that calling elite and star citizen sims seems silly to me
I feel like you’re straw manning the issues with the game. Sure some people are disappointed by the lack of depth in the setting. But there are PLENTY of other things to be not like: primarily in my book, the game should be called “Loading Screenfield” since you spend more time in loading screens than anywhere else.
There is a pretty big thread from a few days ago where people discuss the things that are underwhelming about the game. Overall, it’s not a bad game, but not great either. Considering the number of actually great games it’s competing with right now (looking at you BG3 and soon Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty), I think it looks even more meh in comparison.
I think the Steam rating seem pretty spot on.
Not going to argue whether there are too many load screens before I can upgrade my PC and play it. What I will say, though: Starfield is not exactly unique in having lots of load screens, and I think that limitations of Creation Engine play the main part. Travel in Elite is also a load screen after every minute or two if you need to travel to any star system more than a few jumps away. Same goes for X3, which consists of roughly 50x50 km sectors connected by warp gates (loading screens) and in early game you'll need to always go through many sectors to reach anywhere.
Depends on whether one considers these (unarguably good, especially BG3) games as competition for Starfield. I think competitors to anything should be considered in the genre of that something--eg Infant Annihilator is not competing with Purple Disco Machine, they're just so wildly different things. I'm a big space ship nerd and for me neither BG3 nor Cyberpunk is not even remotely competing for attention. The competition to Starfield could be Elite, Star Citizen, No Mans Sky, X4. Either Star Citizen or No Mans Sky are maybe the closest competitors thematically.
Elite is the main competitor for me, and has excellent space flight mechanics, plus is the only game in existence to have a 1:1 scale simulation of the Milky Way galaxy. Starfield has arcade-y space flight (more of a space shooter than space sim), but seems to have done the on-foot gameplay better than Elite--especially when it comes to on-foot exploration and the life on planets. Starfield also has ship interiors and the ability build ships from ground-up. All of of this fills the niches Elite lacks, so in a sense they're more complementary than competitive.
Two things: First, that in NO way makes it better.
Second, I haven’t played X3 in a LONG time, but X4 has a similar structure of warping between systems. Thing is, there isn’t any load time when you warp. You’re not looking at a 5 second animation followed by a black loading screen for another 5 seconds just to travel from a planet to its moon. You also have to fly to those jump points, so you get to actually fly your ship. In Starfield, you just point at a blue dot and then load. Arrive in your system, get scanned, load some more. Etc.
Interesting. I don’t actually think of Starfield as a space flight game since that’s such a minor part of the game and you don’t actually fly much, you mostly load screen between areas. I think of Starfield as an RPG with some space flavor, which is why I compared it to two other RPG’s. You’re mostly quick traveling between locations and then talking/role playing. The space flight is a (sadly) minor part of the game.
In fact, I think Elite is a terrible comparison. But I get that the niche seems to be your jam so I get why you’d want to compare and contrast the two.
Sure, it is RPG first and foremost, space flight distant second. But it's certainly not your typical swords-and-spells fantasy world RPG. Mass Effect would be the closest, but has even less space ship stuff. In fact, I don't think there has recently been another thematically similar game.
Star Citizen and Elite are IMO thematically much closer to Starfield than BG3, especially when we consider the core game mechanics (turn based party RPG vs. realtime first-person gunplay). The former two and Starfield boil down to your character using a spaceship to travel between planets and space POI-s, dogfighting in space and gunfights on foot with exploration, salvaging/scavenging, trading, bounty hunting and other activities to fill your time with.
Turns out that people really like to complain.
“Not recommended. This game is so boring. 150 hours played”
You can’t fault them for not giving it a fair chance.
I played for about 25 hours before I gave up.
Those 25 hours were mostly me waiting for the moment when it would finally get better. The moment never arrived.
It’s just a number. Play the games you like and don’t care what others think.
Exactly review scores are meaningless, early reviews even less so.
Ratings are so hard to trust these days. Some people never play the game they are reviewing, others use it as an opportunity to enact some vendetta based on prior games, and some are worth reading. 77 is fair enough at this stage, but the only way to know for real is how the game feels for you.
You have to own the game to review it on Steam… so how is your Scenario possible?
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You are kinda toxic, but I will answer anyways: Why do you think people are that stupid to buy a game for a premium price at launch and then not play it? Or is this something you do on a regular basis?
Buy it, play 0.5 hours, review, refund.
Except the amount of hours played is shown on each review. So we can see if a review is bs.
Did they add a “disregard all reviews.under X hours option, yet?”
I guess I’m a dipshit and didn’t follow the link and assumed this was a metacritic score (which is actually 87, with a 5.6 user score).
My biggest complaint is still an RPG being consolified, meaning its menu's are all shit because of controllers.
Interactions in this game would me so much better if it were designed from the ground up for mouse, point and click, drag, etc.
My only other complaint is I wish I could fly and land the craft myself similar to No Man's Sky. You can land on planet, shit is still random gen, but there's some hardpoint spots where your ship can land in a city or outpost.
The positive sides that surprised me is the ship building is great. Always wanted a game that allowed this kind of ship building.
Space Engineers or similar are great, but can be too much detail. This snap together modular blocks is nice middle ground.
I'm also impressed the engine is able to handle so many micro collisions of items on the ground.
I don’t think the engine allows for such an open world. The engine is built around cells, and BGS shot itself in the foot by making a game in a setting that requires open-ness using an engine that only works with enclosed spaces.
Implementing dynamic asset streaming would've been a massive hurdle that would've likely broken so many other things and delayed the entire release by a year or two. I can understand why they didn't go that route, especially during the pandemic. For what its worth, the terrain gen and all is still pretty impressive, even if you cannot seamlessly travel around.
I agree that they could've hidden some parts better though, like why can't I select an existing landing spot from within the ships cockpit instead of having to use the map? They already show you the markers when you're in the scanning mode anyway so that could've been a pretty quick thing to do. After all it works with other targets already too.
A lot of the negativity seems to stem more from the fake outrage though.
That’s weird because I’m playing on console and the menus and UI are shit with a controller too.
Luckily mods have already addressed the menu problems for PC. StarUI and Undelayed Menus.
Shouldn’t even remotely be necessary for a studio this size. But whatever.
The only other actual negative I feel for the game at this point (20ish hours) is the skill points/system feeling like 5% good choices and 95% pointless garbage.
Ship building is fun, but man they are lacking in detail.
What is the difference between these two cockpits? Idk, build it twice and find out. Oh, they’re identical, then why even have a second one?
Oh, this giant 3x3 module must have a ton of stuff in it! Nope, the 2x1 is actually better. But which one? Dunno, try them all and reload.
You’re ship is too big in either length, width, or height. Which one is it? Dunno, I just figured I’d throw all the errors together into one warning and let you figure it out.
Modders sure have their work cut out for them…
I haven’t played a new Bethesda game since Skyrim came out in 2011. So I went into starfield expecting Skyrim in space. I knew it would rely on more radiant randomly generated systems. I knew it wasn’t going to have entire planets. Based off my expectations, I believe they have all been met. I’ll probably log a ton of hours into the game. Was it overpriced? Maybe. But I don’t really buy new games all that often, so it’s hard for me to say.
When you do the math on pennies per hour, it’s hard to argue that it’s overpriced.
I’m still sad that stellar overload failed. I easily put more hours in that and it never made it out of early access.
Honestly I haven’t been looking at the public reception at all because I’ve been playing it since it released. I didn’t even know people weren’t loving it, it’s exactly what I want from a Bethesda game and more (136 hours so far)
Already 136 hours? Do not forget to get some sleep :)
Haha don’t worry I can take care of myself. The game has launched while I’m in a gap between finishing an industrial work placement and beginning my final year at uni so I’ve been making the most of it. Thank you for your concern!
Okay enjoy then
Honestly I assumed that the critical reception would be middling, the zeitgeist is done with this studio and it’s games. Which is completely fair they are janky and weird and frankly often break in un-fun ways.
It’s a BGS game warts and all and I had a great time with it. I love these big, ambitious, broken games and this is a better than average one of them.
Harsh. I avoided most marketing for this game and honestly it’s a great game. Alternating between PC and Steamdeck works great. I haven’t had any tech issues or crashes.
The largest single issue with the game is the atrocious menus. I get that the radial design benefits controllers, but even with gamepad layouts it’s ass. Editing ships is ass, selecting destinations is ass, God forbid you try to find out which mission is closest to you without memorizing which systems are connected to where.
The user interface at nearly every turn is bafflingly obtuse. On top of cool features like the option to go to your cockpit or board a ship, you get insanely weird decisions like no waypoint system? There is technically a waypoint option but it’s definitely not a usable system.
Also what’s with the galaxy map? Fuckin mass effect had this shit figured out 15 years ago. With a banging soundtrack for the menu lol
Also why the hell is there no tutorials for these crazy indepth systems and menus… like if they need to suck tell me how to bear it
If you care so much about what others think you probably aren’t enjoying it as much as you think.
I know, gameplay is more important than tech, but for an AAA game it’s kinda disappointing techwise. No 32:9 support, HDR is mediocre, no FOV settings, language cannot be properly changed,…
Hey look, elden ring doesn’t have even 21:9 support, hdr was broken for a while at launch, and no fov setting
From software has always been pretty crappy from a technical standpoint.
I didn’t see the Internet awash with complaints about it strangely.
Because their history is being so bad technically that elden ring was an improvement to what people were expecting.
And Bethesda isn’t known for their buggy games lmao?
I mean… have you played dark souls 1 without the community patch with k&m? Not only the controls, performance is… uf.
I never did play the PTD, I have heard it was very rough though.
First time a really playing Dark Souls was when the remaster came to PC, then binged 2 and 3 and played through all endings on ER when it came out and put 300 hours in, waiting on the DLC eagerly.
I also did mod elden ring quite a bit, including dlss+fg from the much hated PureDark, and the excellent seamless coop mod along with a 32:9 support mod.
Ultimately my point is people are nitpicking Starfield lmao
PTD was with the dlc man, the original DS was almost unplayable on release, some random internet person released a mod called DSFix like 30 minutes after it released on pc that unlocked the fps to 60 and improved performance in some places. Multiplayer was also pretty fucking bad, so bad that yet another mod released that exposed how the networking p2p graph worked internally where you could bypass the normal network to connect directly to your friends to be able to see their signals.
My point is that the reason why people weren’t so critical of ER is because compared to other FROM games, it was quite the improvement. People expected much, much worse.
Maybe since it’s been so long since Bethesda released Skyrim, people just don’t remember the pure vanilla experience which is why they are being harsher with Starfield. That, and that Bethesda has way more funding for their games.
That’s what happens when you’ve been using the same engine since 1997, and just slap a fresh coat of paint on it every few years instead of actually improving it like Unreal.
Is there HDR? Because I’m certain there’s no option for it on PC.
There are no ingame settings, which is bad. But when you activate HDR in your Windows settings the game seems to use HDR. It just looks rather bad imho (black levels too high).
Most common bug for me so far is the invis cloak glitching and becoming visually permanent (but not the effect on stealth. Boo)
Honestly not even a tiny problem for a Bethesda vet.
7/10 basically space skyrim
I keep seeing this “Skyrim in space” moniker from the people who are lukewarm yet still positive about the game. I’d argue you can’t even say that. From what I’ve seen, the game is a regression in a lot of ways. Skyrim and other earlier BGS titles are superior products.
Person who hasn’t played the game weighs in
Yep. Saw what I would be buying and didn’t waste money. Funny how that makes me the dumb one in your eyes?
Gotta have that credit card number locked in by the E3 launch apparently.
You can’t really form an opinion of a game you’ve never played aside from surface level or opinions from others.
Yes I can. Just did. There isn’t some magic epiphany when you get your greasy nubs on the keyboard and the software is running locally on your machine. I see everything there is to see and know everything there is to know about it because I looked extensively. Not buying it.
Like you have any power to invalidate my opinion because you gave some dumbass corp money. I’m not the idiot who bought dogshit and try to convince everyone else it’s not just to make myself feel better.
Sure you “can” but it’s not actually an informed opinion until you see or experience it yourself, no need to be a pedantic ass.
Have you actually played the game? No you didn’t
It literally has the same mechanics and systems simply shuffled around, rebalanced and presented differently.
So much of the game is simply infuriating, and I’m not all that far in yet.
The menus are attrocious. It feels like wading through mud every time you try to get to menu. Half of them are locked to what feels like 10fps. You go into the map and it’s 37 presses of the tab key to get out, or else use the awkward as fuck hold tab to exit. The inventory menus are a fucking joke. It took two weeks for modders to fix all of Bethesda’s UI garbage that they have to fix every time a new game comes out. How is there not an option to sort by value/weight yet?
There’s a lot of time wasting crap too. If you want to go to a different planet you have to walk to your ship, go up the ladder and go to the cockpit, watch an animation to sit down in the cockpit, watch a cutscene to take off, open the map, find your planet, set course, watch a cutscene as you jump to the planet, open the map again, find where you want to land, watch a cutscene as you land, get out of your ship. That’s a lot of steps. Unskippable cutscenes every time you go somewhere sucks.
There is a big issue with tedious repeating animations. Like standing up from the cockpit. Or docking a station. The hand made content is still there it’s just placed into the world procedurealy.
I just don’t understand why some key binds are random. Why am I using b to add favorites? Why not f. Or x to exit the ship. Why not q? It just seems like the binds are just chosen at random when there are available keys where my hands are already resting.
I love that 0 is to heal but O is to repair my ship. I’m constantly just mashing both because I can’t remember which is which when my shields are down and I’m trying to dodge a missile.
Until this very second I thought my game was bugged because 0 (zero) wasn’t repairing my ship. I was literally going into the menus to repair my ship mid battle.