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Anon is disillusioned about Starfield
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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Lost interest in a few hours I was sad.
Great potential, horrible interface, wonky mechanics
Same. The interface looks kinda cool, but the UX is awful, and the story is boring. The biggest reason it doesn’t capture you IMO is you just jump around from place to place instantaneously right from the start and there’s no obvious reason to just go exploring somewhere. In Skyrim you’re literally on foot and the world slowly expands around you and you become interested in it.
Yeah, and exploration wisey I prefer Oblivion even more. Skyrim feels smaller and less varied, and horses and other fast-travel options are cheaper and easier available.
I got to hear a talk from a level designer who worked on Skyrim at Bethesda who had since left the company, and we needled them with some questions about Starfield and it was interesting at the time but even more interesting in the hindsight of now playing the game.
We kind of intuited through some of their answers that it sounded like they felt that with Skyrim, individual level designers and programmers and people had way more freedom to put stuff into the game; many of the more memorable side quests and interactions were never remotely planned to be in there but were just threwn together by a couple people who stayed overnight recording voices and programming in these quests and interactions and stuff, and it sounded like they did not think that was was the case with Starfield and it was a much more rigid and controlled dev environment, which would explain why so much of the stuff feels like it's randomly generated stuff you've already seen instead of coming across these weird handcrafted things.
They also talked a lot about open world level design in general and talked about how good open world level design is often inspired by Disney world, where they pay super close attention to sightlines where ever you are to make sure there's always (ideally multiple) interesting things to see and explore. You shouldn't need a waypoint or hud marker ideally, you should just walk out of one thing, look around and go "hey that looks neat let me go see what's over there", discover something magical, walk out and repeat. That kind of feeling made sense and resonated with me at the time and made me think of the new Zelda games and some of the better open world games I've played, but now in the context of Starfield, it feels like the loading screens between planets pretty fundamentally broke that cycle, and disrupted that feeling of exploration that Skyrim gave you.
I was at a talk by Bruce Nesmith for a game development club I was in in college shortly after FO4 released (and also shortly after they filed the trademark for Starfield but before we knew anything).
One thing I remember well is him saying how they messed up with the FO4 dialogue options. Every one was "yes, no (for now), sarcastic yes, and more information." I had a reasonable amount of faith at least that would be fixed in Starfield. It isn't, though it's like they thought it being presented on a wheel was the part people were upset with, not the complete lack of choice. In Starfield the choices are identical but they're now presented in the classic box at the bottom of the screen.
The "Disney effect" is exactly what's missing from Starfield that makes it so boring. Because of the format of the planets and star systems, you can't just see something to go to. Discovery is done through a menu, which is incredibly boring.
And on top of that, when you do land on a planet, there's literally nothing to do and see. It feels like there are no more than 10 unique buildings that get swapped in and out... once you've seen them, there's nothing left to discover.
It would have been infinitely better had it been 1 star system with like 4 planets and 20 moons. Each one with multiple locations on the surface. Instead of this thousands of planets but basically all randomly generated none of them really interesting.
They kept saying that's realistic because most plants are boring but it's a RPG not a SIM so that logic doesn't track.
The best space game is still The Outer Wilds and that game has only about 5 planets with the largest one only been about half a mile across. Scale isn't everything.
Same. After visiting 3 random planets and entering the exact same bases with the exact same enemies... Except they were like random level from 3-48. Not that it weirdly mattered much. Already felt godlike.
AAA gets worse every year, and I'm gamer for over 4 decades... I was so glad I didn't bought the crapfest
Maybe don't just go to random bases? Follow a quest and you will encounter incredible environments/dungeons.
Those random bases are for end-game stuff when you have literally nothing else to do but you still want to play your save file.
I did in the beginning. Then got bored by the loading-screens. Besides it only worked at all with a mod that enabled file-caching. Otherwise I had horribly unsynched audio, ending with completely stopping sound. It was a joke. And no, it wasn't my system, which is decently beefy to play every other AAA-title on FHD@maximum/ultra.
I excepted nothing, and so I wasn't overly dissapointed (especially coz I didn't buy it). I'll do the wise thing and just wait 1-2 years. The bugs are maybe mostly squished out by then and the community will have made it a loooot better.
I really wanted to like it btw, it's not that I was just glad to jump on the hype- or hate-train. I don't care for those. I just played enough games to see the many many many flaws. I didn't even care how dated the graphics were :)
Also btw, the argument is pretty weird considering it's an OPEN-WORLD game. In Skyrim&Co I also often wandered the world for many many hours before even starting any quests.
As an old-schooler, I think this is all funny. A lot of the Daggerfall fans were disappointed in Morrowind because it moved away from procedurally generated "everything else". The world felt so tiny.
Starfield adds some procedural outside of its core paths to give us that unlimited replayability, and people just complain about it.
Can we organize and create an AAA game on Lemmy that is worth playing?
I would start with one A first
I'll make the logo
I actually am more hyped/enthusiastic about simple indie-games nowadays. Even if they often fail at simple manpower or financial issues. The rare exceptions where AAA still delivers is countable with one hand. I even have to think hard to name 5 from the last 10yrs that kinda lived up to the hype.
A joint-effort AAA by us gamers? Nah. Who pays the AAA in AAA? 😁 Times are over where a game like pacman could be done by the intern on a free evening. Including GFX and SFX..
I’ve played TES games since Daggerfall came out. That was my first giant open world game, and despite all of the horrible game breaking bugs I played it so much I risked my college degree.
Based on all of the descriptions and the fact that I’m right now only playing games that run well on the steam deck, I’m skipping this one for now. I couldn’t imagine the thousands of hours I’ve spent playing and replaying TES and Fallout games. But every release gets more dumbed down, it seems.
Honestly, the only thing keeping me from even checking it out is that it sounds boring. I’m still totally overplaying BG3, I love playing Stray, and Depth is great when I have limited time or attention. If everyone was raving about it, I might check it out, but as it is, I can wait.
I've thoroughly enjoyed Starfield so far, put about 80 hours in and haven't finished any of the questlines yet (largely intentionally, partially because I'll get sucked into another questline and get distracted). I like the outpost building, the ground combat is fun, the space combat is ok, not on the level of Elite or Star Citizen, but still entertaining.
Solid game to me. Maybe it didn't live up to people's wildest expectations, but I went in expecting an enjoyable experience and got it. I don't really get the hate for it.
Make your own opinion, don't base expectations off of the unwashed masses. Or do, or don't play it. You do you
I went in with fairly low expectations. I've seen Bethesda's trajectory so mostly knew what to expect. It thoroughly dissapointed me still.
How did you deal with the outpost building? There's no way to sort items coming into an outpost so eventually the links all get clogged. For me I built a massive stack of containers that it all flows into, but I still have to go through and pull out junk that's being used less. It sucks to use. I was really looking forward to that part of the game and it's like they didn't even consider the user experience with it. That's not even mentioning decorations not snapping.
From another of my comments:
The lack of sorting is really my only gripe with outposts. Right now, I have everything funneling into one main outpost and accumulating in a massive wall of containers, haven't really jumped into automated crafting yet. Building aspects have always appealed to me in games, so I've enjoyed just optimizing resource collection and setting up a supply chain.
I'm not installing any mods until I finish my first playthrough, but a sorting mod will be my first download.
I didn't play much Fallout outside of a scratched copy of FO3, so can't speak to any issues with the dialogue from that perspective. I don't have any major issues with it
That’s fair. I’ve been initially disappointed on a lot of their games due to the slide from doing basically anything in Daggerfall (but you might get stuck in a wall if you turn a corner too close) to Skyrim’s as-linear-as-open-world-gets approach. And I had about 4-5 false starts in FO4 despite playing all the other releases to the ending. Maybe it’s something that will click.
I do have to say that I am finding the Deck implementation of Cyberpunk unplayable without an external monitor and keyboard, so that sets an additional bar.
I'm pretty sure you won't like it, at least not until lots of mods fix things. I haven't gotten around to Daggerfall yet (but with Daggerfall Unity I want to eventually), but I have played everything since Morrowind. I had the same experience as you with FO4, despite actually enjoying the world and game at large. I still haven't finished the main quest. Starfield is so dumbed down and streamlined. You have almost no agency in the stories. Every single thing is told directly to you even when you're "uncovering a mystery" and it's super boring.
Not since Daggerfall, but been a big TES fan since falling in love with Morrowind. Each subsequent entry to the series has been more disappointing then the last, but Skyrim was decent enough that I still put a good chunk of hours into it. Now though, TES is basically a dead series to me. I'm not remotely interested in seeing where the series goes in modern Bethesda's hands. It will take overwhelming evidence that Bethesda has somehow changed for me to pick up TES 6.
Largely the same story from me. One of the things I always pointed to for TES is just the movement. Morrowind, everything is open you can levitate, acrobatics significantly alters how you get around, mark+recall, teleport spells to the shrines, several in-universe fast travel systems, and don't get me started on the scrolls of icarian flight. Oblivion comes around and you see more instanced cities, less verticality in your movement, to my recollection no teleport spells, fast travel is a menu. I don't even think there was a system like skyrims wagons that kiiiiinda function like the silt striders. Not to say Skyrim is any better. In fact,it's even worse! You're pretty much able to move like a normal person. Mountains? Actually kinda a problem, I'll get over it (literally) but gone are the days of chugging a levitate potion, or fortifying my acrobatics and GETTING OVER IT.
I'm in the same historical boat as you. Arena was one of my first games on my 486. Here's my take.
Starfield is Skyrim in Space with Daggerfall's procedural generation. It may not be the perfect game (or for some people, even a good game), but it is the close-to-ideal Elder Scrolls experience in space.
I tried a Daggerfall playthrough where I went town to town looking for loot and doing nothing else. It got boring because the towns all started to look alike. So I stopped and just played it how it was meant to be played.
There's no "boring" take if you ignore the procedural filler content and outpost system (which Bored me in my last FO4 playthrough) and focus on the storyline and main areas. The other stuff is all there for those of us who enjoy mission-fun. I LIKE pirating ships again and again, but maybe you don't. Literally the boring complaints come from the fact that they gave us Daggerfall-level places to explore, with Daggerfall-level repetition.
That’s a great description! Thanks!
This is the first one that’s made me want to check out the game. I actually weirdly enjoyed the randomly generated dungeons that were basically all the same, probably because I had never played such a completely open world game before. At least some of it had to be the novelty compared to games like Ultima or the D&D games out at the time.
I’ve always played a lot of the RP part in my head - like in Morrowind I’d usually play as an escaped Argonian slave who became a thief-assassin after winning his freedom with a hatred for the Dunmer.
I’d this one is leaning back in that direction, I’ll check it out sooner rather than later.
The thing I like most is that the procedural stuff is never forced on you. Go pirating a bunch of random ships with random people. Or stick around to the Mars colony. Go exploring random military and science bases, or only go to the ones that were handcrafted. It's really not hard to avoid the procedural content that bores you if any does. Nothing has bored me so far.
I learn the games I like from "what's wrong with it". Here's what's "wrong" with Starfield
...all of the above, of course, sums up to "Skyrim in Space".
That all sounds reasonable. I mean, Skyrim has the classic feature where you stealth shoot an arrow into somebody and they say “Who’s there?” followed by “I guess it was just the wind.” or whatever - with an arrow sticking out of their chest. At some point it just becomes a classic Bethesda aspect of the game. The base building was my least favorite part - but that was more about having to run back to defend stuff rather than just pushing through on side quests.
You nailed it.
My funniest moment is realizing that grenades are better stealth weapons than a pistol. Someone sees you shoot a silenced pistol, you're screwed. If someone watches you throw a grenade, but you get into hiding fast enough, they don't put 2 and 2 together between the thing you threw and that random explosion.
I was in a certain important location and accidentally hit the grenade button... So without thinking I ran. Everyone but one died, and nobody was mad at me. So I looted all the corpses, and walked on whistling.
God that reminds me of almost EVERY bad day I had in Fallout games.
What a grand and intoxicating innocence. How amusing. The Nerevar; an Argonian. The gods must be spiting me.
I'm gonna keep playing it, I just have better things to do at the moment. I have about 35 hours sunk into it. It will get better in time with updates and mods.
Same, I actually refunded it after 2 hours because I was already bored.
And I like space games.