Dev behind massive Skyrim multiplayer mod turns their hands to Starfield, gives up because "this game is f***ing trash," uploads everything for someone else to finish : games

[-] Alivrah@lemmy.world 236 points 9 months ago

It wasn’t until they ported about 70% of Skyrim Together’s revered code to the Starfield project, though, that they bumped into a problem: “This game is fucking trash.”

“I didn't realize this until after I actually started playing the damn game a week after launch,” they say. “The game is boring, bland, and the main draw of Bethesda games, exploration in a lively and handcrafted world, was completely gone.

The modder started working on it before playing the game. It's kind of funny in a way, but also cool that they wanted to give people multiplayer ASAP.

[-] Bimbleby@lemmy.world 58 points 9 months ago

Thing is Skyrim wasn't particularly handcrafted or lively either, the models for things like dungeons were repeated all the time and the NPC liveliness was lacklustre compared to eurojank games like Gothic.

[-] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 26 points 9 months ago

After playing elden ring I'm done with Bethesda. Haven't even tried starfeelz

[-] Montagge@kbin.social 11 points 9 months ago

Eldenring was as bad if not worse with copy paste. The NPCs were certainly better in Skyrim.

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[-] aSingularFemboyHooter@sh.itjust.works 21 points 9 months ago

Not sure why this is downvoted, radiant quests were a big feature in Skyrim, and were technically kinda impressive, but still repetitive. Likewise, quests for the College of Bards were mostly just a dungeon fetch quests and things.

It's still a great game, but it was great for the bits that were handcrafted.

But give it 5-10 years and I'd be very interested to see another pass at procedural generation using machine learning, especially dialogue, could open the doors to more creativity than would be possible when doing it all by hand!

[-] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago

Nothing in any of these games has been particularly hand crafted. They were a big early user of procedural generation.

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[-] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 203 points 9 months ago

Just recently, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said he hopes Starfield will be a 12-year hit, just like Skyrim.

Yeah no fucking shit Phil, the fans would have loved a generation-defining megahit as well! Maybe you should have told Todd to try making the game good as well as marketable?

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 99 points 9 months ago

The tech debt is just glaring at this point. They need an actual new engine instead of yet another gamebryo rework.

[-] BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca 107 points 9 months ago

No, they need a competent dev team. To this day, Valve is using a game engine that is, at its core, the Quake engine from 1996. Goldsrc? Source? Source 2? All increasingly heavily reworked versions of the Quake engine. And they can use it for everything from Alyx to Dota 2! If Valve can do it, why can't Bethesda?

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 41 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Except that Quake is a good engine.

GameBryo is and has always been shit. There are other games from competent devs on that engine, and they also are full of problems.

Building a house with a solid foundation is still important. Quake is bedrock. GameBryo is sand.

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[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago

To this day, Valve is using a game engine that is, at its core, the Quake engine from 1996. Goldsrc? Source? Source 2? All increasingly heavily reworked versions of the Quake engine.

All Valve statements about the Source2 port of Counter-Strike say Source2 is a completely new engine.

[-] BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca 61 points 9 months ago

It's new in the sense they have rebuilt large enough parts of it to fully justify giving it a new name. Certainly it's very far removed from Quake. It's not like they've been sitting on their hands for almost 30 years. But it's not like they rebuilt it all from scratch, either; just the parts they needed to. Old code is still being used, and even new code still sometimes uses the old as a base. The most obvious visual example that comes to mind is the pattern they still use for flickering lights which has been around since the Quake days.

It's a bit of a Ship of Theseus situation, but I think my point still stands: Bethesda doesn't need an entirely new engine, they need devs who can (or more likely, need to give their devs time to) properly rebuild the parts that need it.

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

The most obvious visual example that comes to mind is the pattern they still use for flickering lights which has been around since the Quake days.

But you wrote "To this day, Valve is using a game engine that is, at its core, the Quake engine from 1996" and that's just untrue. Just because nobody ever saw the need to change the light flickering pattern for no reason other than to make it new, doesn't mean that Source2 is "at its core" still Quake1. Even the community-maintained wiki (not a officially sanctioned Valve document, btw) you've linked only speaks about "some residual Quake code".

[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 22 points 9 months ago

Semantics.

Another to look at it is that if Valve properly managed their VCS, you could do git ls-files HEAD^10000 and see Quake/goldsrc code building the foundation for everything that came after. Every subsequent rewrite and refactor was shaped and constrained by what came before and what hadn't been rewritten yet. If they had started with another engine, they wouldn't have ended up here.

Beyond semantics, Source 2's lineage is still very apparent. While the engine is very good at what it does, it's without question much better suited to a rather specific class of semi-realistic 3D games. It has a look, a feel, strengths and weaknesses. It can't be Unity or Unreal Engine, and it would have been a ridiculous mistake to use it as a base for Elite Dangerous or Assassin's Creed Valhalla or Terraria.

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[-] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 10 points 9 months ago

I mean a huge (really huge) number of game engines ultimately draw lineage from Quake. It's either Quake or Unreal.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

All statements Bethesda has made about Creation say the same thing. Doesn't mean it's true.

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[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 32 points 9 months ago

Maybe you should have told Todd to try making the game good as well as marketable?

But he "Plans to Release a 1st-Party Blockbuster or Highly Anticipated Title Every 3 Months"

There is no place for "when it's done" with this attitude.

[-] Computerchairgeneral@kbin.social 98 points 9 months ago

Well, that's not a good sign for Starfield's modding future. Honestly, it feels like post-Skyrim Bethesda just assumes their games will have a robust modding community. Except that for a game to garner that kind of community it has to be, you know, good. Maybe Bethesda hopes paid modding will be the carrot that brings modders to Starfield, but even if that becomes the standard I don't expect many people will want to make mods for a game they don't even enjoy playing.

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think somebody said something on those lines already but there's so much work to do to mod starfield into something good that the whole thing would be like 80% mods by the time you were finished. Unless there's an API it's just going to be mods interacting on top of other mods and the whole thing is going to be a nightmare.

I've looked into it and it's not exactly easy considering how clearly they need modding in order to make the game a success. You would think that it would be in their interest to make it simple but, nope.

They may just actually be that incompetent.

[-] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 16 points 9 months ago

well, starfield is good. i think the issue may be the toolkit has not been released yet

[-] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 27 points 9 months ago

I don't think it has to be good (to attract modders). I think it has to be inspiring. And that it most certainly isn't.

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[-] Rawdogg@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago

Starfield might have been interesting 15 years ago

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[-] Tischkante@discuss.tchncs.de 51 points 9 months ago

Back in 2012 I couldn't put Skyrim down for 2 or 3 playthroughs, even without mods. Of course I'm older now and got less spare time… but I didn't even get past the first few quests in Starfield. I don't know why it doesn't grab me the same way.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 51 points 9 months ago

Like the other comment says, it's empty, but I mean it in a different way. It has no soul. Skyrim you can feel the passion in the quests, the characters, and the world. Starfield is super bland, despite being a new IP they could have done anything with, and being sci-fi, which the purpose of sci-fi is to critique our current world. It's the most milque toast sci-fi I've seen. It doesn't question the current status-quo, despite corporations literally destroying Earth. You can rarely question authority. The characters all have identical views on everything, and that's the "good" view that doesn't really try to change anything for the better.

Also, the connecting fibers of the game just don't exist. No system really ties into another, besides making money but money is nearly worthless. Nothing seems to have been considered on how to make it function as a cohesive product.

Basically it fails emotionally and technically.

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[-] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 9 months ago

Because its empty. In skyrim you see NPCs having interesting interaction with each other and the PC. In starfield you just quick travel from empty city to empty planet

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[-] DoctorButts@kbin.melroy.org 41 points 9 months ago

this game is fucking trash

Sounds about right

[+] LordCirais@pawb.social 41 points 9 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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[-] PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee 48 points 9 months ago

I didn't watch any trailers, didn't read any of the hype, had low expectations, and didn't have to buy it...and Starfield still managed to disappoint me.

[-] MrGooglyPants@lemm.ee 10 points 9 months ago

Same I got it for free when I built my wife's computer. 😂 I would have refunded it. But it was free with her CPU (7800X3D)

[-] chitak166@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago

I've only seen people stream it and it looks... like a Bethesda game. Like, to a fault.

I'm reading that's what a lot of people expected, and I'm honestly surprised.

I thought Bethesda would put their jankiness aside and give us something that's wide, deep, and polished. But it really feels like Bethesda has been releasing the same game ever since Daggerfall, just with different skins.

I guess better the devil you know? I'll probably play it at some point when it's finished.

[-] Syndic@feddit.de 14 points 9 months ago

I’ve only seen people stream it and it looks… like a Bethesda game. Like, to a fault.

I’m reading that’s what a lot of people expected, and I’m honestly surprised.

With one massive, at least for me, flaw. Previous Bethesda games had handcrafted maps which invited you to explore every region. There was so much to find in the most unexpected places. Starfield doesn't have that. I mean sure, even on remote desolate planets you can find objects of interest, but in the end they do repeat very quickly. In Starfield the world is much bigger but ultimately less diverse and well built. And to me that's a less appealing game.

And another smaller problem is that they no longer seem to want to go into the darker stories. The game does have quite some potential of exploring darker themes like the despotic parts of the UC organisation for example. But it never does dive deeper but sticks to the surface. You can imagine that there's much more going on but you don't get to experience this.

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[-] SnotFlickerman 33 points 9 months ago

lmao

[-] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 24 points 9 months ago

Does Todd Howard know how reviled he is?

[-] SnotFlickerman 31 points 9 months ago

That part where he talks about being made fun of for being in chess club...

...it's like no... that's not why people made fun of you, Todd. They made fun of you because you were the twerp claiming your uncle at NASA could get you on a spaceflight and then kept making excuses as to why the final story was your uncle taking you on a regular ass flight. People don't like people who lie painfully obviously for attention and interest.

[-] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 14 points 9 months ago

🎶 Tell me lies. Tell me sweet little lies. 🎶

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[-] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 19 points 9 months ago

Hard agree. This game is ridiculously mediocre for a production of this caliber

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[-] mriormro@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago

I played a bit of this game because of game pass. The intro was so jarringly stupid I couldn't be compelled to continue playing.

[-] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

It doesn’t get better either. The entire main story is just so contrived and boring.

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[+] AMDIsOurLord@lemmy.ml 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[-] lastweakness@lemmy.world 24 points 9 months ago

Cyberpunk 2077 is an actually great game now. Always had the potential to be one, but the devs fucked it up. But at the core, it was still a good game. And then the devs dedicated the time needed to make it actually great. If Starfield becomes the same in a couple of years, what's wrong with picking it up then? Just don't pick it up right now.

[-] Killer@lemmy.world 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Devs didn't fuck it up management did. The devs knew the game wasn't done but management said release the fuckin game.

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[-] sprack@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago

I had zero problems with CP2077 on PC, even from launch. I think most of the fervor was about the poor state of the console versions.

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[-] Raab@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

Nah, it's not the same. CDPR got cyberpunk to the point where it's an amazing game, even on launch it was a good game. Bethesda will not put that work in, they will rely on modders, and oops, the modders cant be bothered with this hit trash. That means it'll forever be known as a terrible game.

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

And it's now an excellent RPG. What's your point?

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[-] jdrch@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

I've seen plenty of other mods and that's just 1 person's opinion.

I will say, though: Microsoft are not a content company and never have been. So gaming isn't their core strength.

BTW: I own both an XSX and a PS5, so I don't have an axe to grind.

[-] krush_groove@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

The headline made me think the dev gave up on his huge Skyrim mod set and said Skyrim is trash.

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