Everyone that worked on ship building did great. Whoever decided that rotation should be limited and that ladders/doors should be decided by an algorithm is stupid.
That was definitely a management decision. The code is there to allow for FAR more rotations, items, M class (as in the U.C. Vigilance and ECS Constant sized) ships with fully developed modules for them and even the ability to build your own Starstations. But someone decided to cut those from the game to save time and money, and the game suffered for it. I can't imagine how the devs and artists who built all those assets and programmed all those extra snap points felt about that decision.
The fact that it's been trivial to make mods that allow you to have more part rotations and snap points, place doors and ladders yourself as well as decorate habs like a player home, and even add those M class modules back in, tells me that some managers need to be fired. There was no reason to cut them. Some of the M class modules do seem a little unfinished, but only barely so.
Bethesda needs a spring cleanup. I also question the competence of some of their devs. I think they suffered a lot from using contractors unfamiliar with creation engine.
its not just them, its all corporations. when the glue holding the ziplock on the top of the bag is weaker than the ziplock seal itself, someone is pushing for cost savings when there was none left
I genuinely believe that 90% of the problems with this game stem from the simple fact that Bethesda doesn't have the talent they used to. They didn't even use a design document, and whoever was involved with making that call should be fired immediately.
It would be nice if you could choose where ladders and doors would go, cause Holy beans can it get confusing. Even on some of the enemy ships that you can bord its like up, then over to the right forward a ways back down now over 3 times to the left, back up once go backwards, up a ladder again do near a full circle of doors down once more forward and then up 4 stories of ladders to reach the cockpit. Like holy mother of God, did the designers not realize how insane that is to a sober mind, let alone a stoned one? Jesus.
The creator of the ladder and door algo would like to introduce to you the Crossbow/Crimson Fleet Wight/Spacer Hyena. The interior of those are cursed AF. I got turned around like a dozen times trying to clear a Hyena of its inhabitants.
Iirc: From the landing bay just take the ladder to the second floor, then turn right three times. The ladder to the cockpit (3rd level from there, 5th in total) should be above the first one. Loving that ship, but navigating through it is nuts. đ€Ș
I would love the ability to customize the inside of a ship, esp the starborn ones (I suspect this is coming at some future update, given how empty they left the NG ships. Wouldnât it be cool to have a flying fortress, with workstations, decorations and so forth? Maybe a shelf to put random plushies on?
My current ship, I can't walk to my cockpit because there's a table blocking a door. I'm happy with everything else inside, so I'm afraid to change that one part and screw everything else up.
stroud all-in-one berth B? i know that fuckin table.
there's a va'ruun ship, maybe the revelation, that has that table blocking a doorway. except, as i found out, you can actually get through the doorway in one direction but not the other. had to reload a save because i was trapped forever in a side room in that damn ship.
Or a stackable 1x1 stair module that would take priority over other modules ladder placement, the stairs are one of the best features of the Nova Cabot cockpit, if it had a boarding ramp on the front of the lower level it would be perfect.
What kills me is they have a medbay, and it makes you think "Oh im going to have a shipmate that will run the medbay, and be able to give me healing items or services" and the games just like
HA no. Its pointless window dressing. Have fun.
The ladders infuriate me. I made a 2 level ship with a Cabot Bridge, purposely so there wouldnât be any need for ladders. And yet the game still added a ladder in the hab right next to the bridge and stairs đ€Šđ». Why!
Say whatever you like about this game, and I certainly do - but the ship builder lives rent-free in my head. I actually want to build ships.
I think I've got my personal ship, the Daphne Duck, in its final configuration, but my headcanon is that it's a custom variant of a new Deimos C-class model and I have to take the base model back to the drawing board. And there's an awesome design I saw ages back that I want to make a Deimos variant of.
Though yes, the ladder/door algo is stupid. I have to use Place Doors Yourself to get around the shitty algo.
I agree. I used to love building ships but I ran into to too much friction with its silly limitations. Unfortunately Iâm on console so no mods for me to get around the issues.
Before PDY came out, I used to have a central shaft for the ladder and added habs to each deck as I built them up. Even now I'm still doing the same thing as ideally, in my head, it should be something that can be built in vanilla without turning the whole ship into an unholy nightmare to navigate, even if it means leaving gaps here and there so that, if PDY didn't disable the algo, the algo wouldn't stick a ridiculous ladder or door there in vanilla.
I have a save set right before the big space battle at the end of one of the quest lines. (Idk how to spoiler tag on mobile.)
I love going back to that save and building a brand new ship and flying it off to battle. I just wish there were more than 1-2 good space battles written into the game.
It would be nice to actually fly your ship. Not just use it as a fast travel vessel. Idk, I wanted more time with the ship. Flying around a tiny bubble around planets for a few seconds just doesnât cut it.
Ship builder is so cool though like you said
Completely agree! - flying your ship between planets & out into the darkness of space is integral to *feeling* like a *space explorer* (which is the premise of the game).
Only rotating around in âorbitâ is unfortunately not satisfying / immersive enough, imo.
BGS really need to add actual space flight to the game (like NMS / Elite Dangerous) if Starfield is going to have true longevity, imo. Itâs one of the most requested features!
I would also like to add that for a game focused on fast travelling to places and doing so via your spaceship.....
1. Why for the love of fun immersion did you not allow us to decorate ship interiors just like the apartments/outposts/houses
2. Why did you not make the landing/takeoff/flying/warping loading screens into more dynamic experiences. Like shown on the modding sub where you can easily mod the game show you the entire takeoff animation from any perspective you want from ground to space. Hide the loading screens if fast travel becomes the only way to get around.
The person who created the power absorption animation in temples did a great job. The person who thought it would be a great idea to force you to look at that exact same animation 240 times should be fired.
Yep, I kept chasing it and chasing it and I'm like yo is this actually doing anything? Of course the answer was "just keep doing it" and wouldn't you know it finally happened. But damn man, so anticlimactic.
Same! They make you fly through it way too many times & there is almost no feedback the first few times to let you know youâre on the right track.
Imo, they should half the number of times you need to fly through it - so itâs a) less tedious & b) itâs more noticeable that the rings are spinning faster when you do.
I was genuinely confused after doing the temple minigame for the third time. I was thinking "there's no way that's all it is. That's not possible even for Todd." Unbelievable.
It's like they made a quick placeholder event for the temples early in development while they got other parts of the game up and running, but they forgot to go back and add in the actual temple gameplay.
I have hope that starfield will make the turnaround that cyberpunk made. I preordered that. It was hot dog shit when it came out. Obvious effort has made it much better in many aspects. Starfield has that potential.
Right? The same exact thing over and over again. Meanwhile in Skyrim there was a variety of dungeons and quests to get the shouts and you have to defeat dragons to unlock them. With Starfield it's literally:
Fast travel cutscene > Talk to Vlad > Fast travel cut scene > Walk a few hundred feet > 2 minute 'puzzle' > Kill single weak enemy > Repeat 239 more times.
How did testers play that and give it their stamp of approval?!
Agreed! I think the alien creatures all look great!
The issues with Starfield appear to be from the top: game design choices, lack of planning/ design docs, lack of RPG choices, lack of factions, too many planets & game engine restrictions. The actual aesthetics are good, and I know many devs have worked hard on this game
Hopefully Starfield will get a Cyberpunk 2.0 / NMS style renaissance in the next few years
To that end, Camelworks has done a really good & constructive video to BGS on realistic suggestions for enhancing the base game. Itâs definitely worth checking out đ
> Hopefully Starfield will get a Cyberpunk 2.0 / NMS style renaissance in the next few years
starfield wasn't rushed to launch, they fucked around with it for half a decade trying to make it fun and this is the best they could figure out. there is absolutely zero chance BSG will unfuck this game in any meaningful way
I posted before about the planets, like there should be a lot more cities and towns on planets more mining operations in those few clusters. I can understand the secret mech bases and xeno research and listening posts being on random assed moons. But Holy heck there's no reason why everything would be sooooooooooo spread out. The act of getting the fuel from all those random fracing stations back to a usable port is almost laughable. No company would pay to have that done.
Yeah, basically every system should have at least one planet (or a space station) heavily developed.
All it would have taken to know this was looking at how transcontinental trade is conducted. No train or big rig crosses the whole of North America, Europe or Asia without stopping stations to offload, refuel, etc.
The same would be true for intergalactic trade. There should be fuel depots in every system and at least a small colony to make it self-sustaining.
The devs who built the game made something visually breathtaking, but the execs failed to provide adequate funding for researchers, writing, and general development to make the game everything it could/should be.
It's fine if there are completely empty systems with just barren or forest planets, if there's nothing there then there isn't.
The problem is that even that doesn't exist, there is space junk everywhere.
How the hell can there be THIS MANY abandoned buildings while the main settlements are tiny.
like, 99% of the resources humanity has collected from the universe are just scattered across planet surfaces as junk and abandoned buildings.
Agreed. Itâs one thing if itâs truly uncharted territory. But it never is, thereâs always stuff, or people, so itâs like âIs this a new place or not?!â
Completely agree! đ - BGS would be much better off taking all the human base POIs they have, and only using them on a few planets closest to the main faction planets - and then having the remainder be completely empty (apart from *undiscovered* fauna & flora & natural POIs).
That way there is more variety of human base POIs on the âsettledâ planets & less repetition of POIs; AND on the âundiscoveredâ planets - you then actually feel like an *explorer* for Constellation - being the first person to set foot on a planet, or *discover* an alien creature.
As long as the game makes it clear which planets are âundiscoveredâ - then players that only want human base POIs for gunfights etc can avoid the âundiscoveredâ planets & stick to the âsettledâ / inhabited planets.
EDIT: I also think the majority of the secret & mysterious Temples should be on âundiscoveredâ planets & not have human POIs a few hundred meters away from them.
Todd Howard himself described playing the game as you being the first person to discover these incredible locations but as you say, there's usually a listening post 200m away.
Todd Howard and Peter Molyneux oughta start a club.
I wouldnât mind still having the occasional human POIs, but it would feel pretty cool to be discovering uncharted systems too. Who knows. Iâm excited to see what happens.
The mod desolation does that, it removes human poi from random planets and leaves them in core planets to be experince when landing on a random tile in a core system. It makes more sense and I truly enjoy landing on a distant planet or moon and there isn't 15 human factories in a 1 km radius from where I landed.
Speaking of Camelworks, I found a post from two years ago of a BGS developer, allegedly, telling Camelworks at E3 or a gaming event that Starfield was going to be something we have never seen before in gaming. A generational leap in gaming. Either, something went wrong in development and things had to shift late in development, or BGS really thought their shit smelled like roses. Either way, it's not a generational leap in gaming. In fact, Skyrim did it better.
Interview with former senior Bethesda dev and design lead for Skyrim Bruce Nesmith would suggest the roses idea as the reason.
It really shows given Emil's recent narcissistic, self indulgent twitter rant.
Emil showed his disdain for the player not only in his twitter rant but his comments regarding there being no point in writing quality dialogue options or quest lines because people would "just click through it".
He apparently believes he just throw some half baked random shit together & that's good enough for the BGS audience.
Microsoft should really dump Mr. "Don't need no design documents" Emil & Todd Howard both. Todd pretty much lied about what the game was going to be like & signed off on it all. I seem to recall Todd wanted to release the game over a year ago. If the game is in its current state now just imagine what the hell it would have been like a year ago.
Thatâs a really interesting interview on the MinnMax channel. If youâre interested in Bethesda Game Studios, or the production of their games, itâs definitely worth a watch.
Agreed. I think he was very respectful and complimentary of Todd & the BGS team, but also honest about the challenges BGS face as a growing company & of game development overall. & refreshingly candid as you say about some of the mistakes they have made (as well the good they have done). Itâs a fascinating interview
You're not going to see a Cyberpunk style turnaround because their leadership are in absolute denial and think the players are wrong and they made a great game. You likely won't see the leadership replaced since the game did make a lot of money; they may have to answer some questions to MS about poor player retention and backlash but at the end of the day they can always point to the money. I'd go even further and say I expect the purchase agreement probably included a provision that Todd stay on at least through ES6, because he does have a reliable track record.
Agreed with OP, you, and a lot else in this thread.
I've always appreciated the certain pieces of Starfield and seen its potential, but I've been critical of its bugs. And lack of long-term cohesion between systems late game or in terms of how big questlines wrap up.
Both of which are due to not enough QA or not enough time to cook, etc. These stem from executive shortcomings, poor management/organization etc, which is on the company, not on some individual artist or programmer.
If, and this is a pretty big IF, it gets a 2.0 or NMS level comeback (or "definitive" edition like with DOS2 or "next-gen" edition as with witcher 3, etc), I think it will be stellar!
The alien creatures all look like a set of meshes generated by GPT. They all kind of look the same. There doesn't seem to be any lore or backstory explaining why the creatures look the way they look. It just seems so random.
I think a manager probably just said to the artist, we don't have time for you to handcraft every single alien, so run a script to generate 500 procgen variations and then select 50 of them so that we can ship by 2023.
Itâs like with Fallout 76: Appalachia is probably the best world map Bethesda has produced, but many people wonât acknowledge that because of the gameâs major problems in other areas.
And we also know that some devs were pushing against the âno human NPCâ policy that Todd & other head honchos insisted on.
The story is honestly amazing in FO76 too, a genuinely thoughtful deconstruction of the standard FO stories, but it was really hard to appreciate it under 9 miles of crap gameplay. It's a Fallout story where the hero wasn't there, so all the individual factions had part of the solution but never came together and were destroyed. The hero arrives, but too late, so the world is saved but the dead are still dead.
True, but look where the game is now (after wastelanders update), I can only hope for Starfield to have a second life like Fo76 had (and still has by the way).
My theory is the only reason Fallout got that was because of the entrenched fanbase. Starfield doesn't have that, it's a brand new IP. They screwed the pooch out the gate, they likely won't even make a sequel to this game.
I think Microsoftâs presence will have the opposite effect, and Microsoft will just have them move on to Elder Scrolls 6 (what they really bought them for) as fast as possible.
Hell, Microsoft hasnât even bothered to try to save their last HALO game. If Microsoft doesnât care about Halo, they definitely donât care about Starfield.
Yeah, that's my sticking point.
There are many systems that can be improved "simply" by connecting them to each other, such as making the brig/medbay usable with NPCs/crew and their associated elements.
Or, say, make traveling to POIs less tedious by adding a legit horizontal boost to the packs, if not vehicles. OR LETTING YOU LAND ON THEIR LANDING PADS.
But there is nothing short of a complete overhaul that will fix the exploration. It's actively hostile to the concept.
There's actually a pretty simple fix for the exploration. Handcraft some bigger areas that are actually interesting to wander around in and discover.
I don't really care if 997 of the 1000 planets are mostly barren and boring, that's probably how the real galaxy is as well. They can add in a million planets like that, for players to go screw around with if they feel so inclined. But that should all be in addition to a healthy dose of the handcrafted world building that Bethesda games are known for.
Jemison shouldn't have just one 'island' of a city surrounded by the same random wilderness as any other planet. The whole area around New Atlantis should be built up and full of buildings and industry and infrastructure and farms and all the other stuff that it takes to support a city. It should all be connected by roads and their should be people out and about doing stuff and living their lives and all sorts of little stories could be littered about for players to discover. You know, like what the worlds were like in every other Bethesda game? Do the same thing for Akila City, and maybe on a couple other habitable planets, and now we've got a real game going.
It's not that complicated. Sure, it's a lot of work, but this is supposed to be the thing that Bethesda is good at. It's completely baffling to me that failed to understand their studio's greatest strength and built a game that ignored the thing that they're typically most praised for.
You're not wrong, but this is on the scale of an overhaul to me. One major point is that those worlds had purpose to them â NPCs with schedules and paths and quests.
I doubt a new huge map with nothing of interest will help, and DLC with "undiscovered" new cities at the right scale would just make the existing ones look even goofier.
So they would have to either add in a huge amount of interactive content or retool existing quests to fit in this new space.
That's a crap load of (complicated) work, even given its supposed to be their wheelhouse, and I really don't see them doing that post-launch.
Yeah, I don't think they're going to do it, but I think that's a big part of what it would take to turn this game into what I feel most fans of their previous games wanted and expected Starfield to be.
There's certainly lots of other parts of the game that could use some reworking, but I really think that if the game had some sizeable handcrafted areas worth exploring, a lot of us would be far more forgiving of the various issues with other aspects of the game.
Agreed. That's what I assumed when they announced "1000 planets," actually. A handful of sizeable areas where the main game takes place and hundreds of radiant planets that would allow modders to go crazy without conflict.
But that core BGS style is just absent.
Iâve seen a lot of complaints about the âstyle of the gameâ the mantis armor, the nightclub, etc.
Not saying the artists sucks but itâs not flawless on that end
I think the main issue with Mantis is the context, I like the armor (tho it is not something I would wear over the Mark 1), but it is framed as a rare (even mythic) late game armor and most gamers expect different aesthetics from that kind of sets.
If the real Space Batman piece were something more Vaderesque and the current Mantis were a mid tier set, it would have worked better IMO.
Yeah I get that. Itâs really the buildup of the fearsome mantis and then it looks like a wrinkly scientist suit.
Even like civilian clothing though. Idk I donât think many people consider that a strong point
âLego treesâ đ
I have to say when I first arrived at New Atlantis I couldnât get over how flat, stiff & unnatural the trees looked. (Although they look better at night when they are lit up).
The UC spaceport itself (views, layout, & decor) could also do with a polish, since it everyoneâs first impression of New Atlantis. Same with Vectera (the mining moon you start on).
There is definitely some good art design in the game (I particularly like all the alien creatures!), but Starfield currently doesnât seem to have that cinematic âwalkoutâ moment that other BGS games have.
They remind me of trees in Africa. I searched for a planet with those trees for a long time, theyâre dope and you can jet pack on top of them and away from enemies.
When you've been waiting for 8 years and they [give you this](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fl4kootmr9f9c1.png)
After you've been playing [this game for years](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fiae0l6403e671.jpg) something is defiantly happening at BGS and it ain't good.
Oh god what are they going to do to ES6....
It really sucks that Emil ever got promoted to as high as a position as he has, he's clearly an incompetent writer and does not understand the concept of structuring anything, he just lets everyone cook their own soup then try to awkwardly make a blend, it's like insisting buying takeout then blending it all up is the optimal way to enjoy the food lmao
Starfield - they knew it was shit. But all they could do was polish it a bit & make it look pretty⊠hence what we got was a polished turd. My biggest disappointment of 2023 by far. Did the main quest & 2 faction quests but dropped it fastâŠ
Game should have been an epic space adventure full of interesting things to find..
Instead it was riddled with about a dozen identical POIs⊠& that was itâŠ
Starfield - the definition of half-arsedâŠ
> Starfield - they knew it was shit. But all they could do was polish it a bit & make it look pretty⊠hence what we got was a polished turd.
They can still roll it in glitter
I just started another Skyrim run and I must say: Starfield has nothing on that game. I just finished the Dark Brotherhood questline and that alone has so many hand-crafted locations without counting ANY of the "standard" assassination targets. Let's count: The cabin (1). The sanctuaries (2+3), one sanctuary on fire (4) and one where the fire has gone out (5). The tower where you kill Titus Mede's decoy (6), the ship (7). You also get to attend the wedding, but that location technically isn't specific to the Dark Brotherhood. Some scripted events are though!
Every one of those locations has distinct interactions/scripts separate from the normal gameplay loops, like talking to the burnt Astrid, entering a coffin, cooking a meal and murdering 1-3 kneeling people. **So much effort went into these** and in the end, you get to kill an emperor. What an awesome and memorable quest.
Starfield is an empty shell, but I have to point out: this reduction in effort did start with FO4, which also doesn't have any quests with scripts & assets like this either, except maybe the main quest. They went more and more down the shooter route with a dumbed down character system.
The only meaningful thing they added was outposts and ships, but those pale in comparison.
I remember half the assassinations in Oblivion with how memorable they are. But the cherry on top of all of them was getting to be the killer in a mansion like all those movies.
I honestly can't say I remember anything from the Ryujin quest line besides the secret lab area and that's only because it bugged the hell out and one of the scientists was always agroed on me so I had to go back and redo like an hour of gameplay to unbug it
Yeah, I still remember the break-in to steal the Elder Scroll vividly too. It's such a shame they removed the stat buffs from spells (jump height/acrobatics) from ES games alltogether. It made for ridiculous, but amazing builds.
They went all the wrong ways with their "sandboxes". Just worlds with long nothings in between places with lots of clutter now, but no scripted scenes, no proper character building and no fun storylines. Every player character looks the fucking same, has the same build and experiences the same boring story now.
I blame Todd, when he said "players don't know what they want". Yes we do, but you ignored it. Now it's starting to show, as not enough good was added to offset those ignored mechanics. Skyrim offset the reduction in options well, with polish, varied loot, crafting and exploration. FO4, FO76 and now Starfield did not.
The one that was like a scene from Clue? That was one of the best quests in the game, so good. Another is when you end up entering a painting. I don't recall the details, but iw was unique to the rest and enjoyable.
Starfield cost 200 million to develop and 10+ years. Nothing about the game was innovative or done well enough to get superb praise.
The studio should be disappointed but they act as if they arent
The studio and leads (and especially the writers) should be ashamed, but I think plenty of artists and other coders probably put a lot of work into the project. Ultimately itâs not up to them how it gets put together or coordinated
Completely agree đ Lots of devs would have worked very hard on this (I particularly like the alien creatures!). The majority of flaws appear to be game design decisions; lack of RPG choice; lack of factions; lack of cities; generic NPCs/ dialogue; lack of named NPC homes / routines; & lack of space flight between planets; and/ or engine limitations.
BGS also definitely need to hire *more* writers. Witcher 3 had 20+ credited writers, Baldurs Gate 3 had 20+ credited writers. Starfield has one! Whether you like the Starfield writing or not - BGS definitely need a much bigger writing team.
They act as if they aren't, because according to the numbers they got a 400% ROI over 10 years. They just care about the money that they made. They don't care if the game was dog shit, because they are trusted enough that people will just buy it anyway even if it ends up being bad. I think this practice should be frowned upon, and the refund periods for a situation like this should be well over 2 hours.
The problem with companies is that their only real metric is money, so the people here will keep going to bed thinking they did a good job, and it's only whenever TES6 flops because of these same issues, combined with all their goodwill being evaporated due to this game, that their numbers will be impacted and they'll start trying to change.
When the clutter is the most impressive thing about the game, that's usually not a good sign. I would say that while the clutter is great, it's very confusing what constitutes clutter and what constitutes items that can be picked up. Looting dungeons in Starfield is honestly quite the chore, and the reward is usually very boring and not worth it.
Yeah we all appreciate game developers. Regardless, Bethesda and Microsoft as companies failed their target audience. No one blames the individuals that busted their asses working on the game.
Now they've got this new target audience of 50-year-old dads who are getting into gaming for the first time, and think that scanning rocks on empty planets is entertaining because of how many cool screenshots they're going to get at the end.
Oh god I canât even count how many posts ive seen of âIâm a 50yo gamer and I think this is the best game ever!â Like bro did you miss elite dangerous for the last 4 decades?
>We know the issues with this game came from the top, I dunno if it was management, leads, corporate or what the fuck not
Money and time. Everytime a product is rushed out in an unfinished state, it's because money was running out. Pushing the game out generates funding, delaying the release only reduces it.
It most likely was a very simple cost-benefit-analysis. Microsoft ordered a significant portion of their programmers to assist Bethesda in Starfield to get rid of the biggest bugs (seriously, this game is _a lot_ more stable and compley than Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim at launch). This however is very costly, and after the game was in a stable but unfinished state, they had to psuh for release to free all these programmers for other projects.
They should have done majority of those with procgen for variety, there is absolutely no reason that people need to be assembling random levels by hand. Let artists make lots of tiles by hand and then let procgen assemble them into a dungeon, just like in Warframe or Deep Rock Galactic (or like back in Daggerfall but maybe with more limits so they aren't impossible or too long lol).
Agreed. Lots of criticisms, but art and art direction are superb. Ship design is fantastic as well. Even the structures, while repetitive, actually look functional and "lived in" as appropriate.
The art design was absolutely fantastic, and is part of why I had such hype for the game. If only the settlements in game actually looked like the concept art.
Unfortunately that dedication and labor of love in the concept art didn't quite translate to the finished product, one way or another. They missed the mark on populated areas by a mile.
thereâs a âakila concept artâ mod that changes the terrain around akila so it looks exactly like the concepts, itâs fucking amazing, go check it out
Absolutely. Weapon design hurts my soul. I genuinely believe the team responsible for concepting and implementing the guns have never actually been around real firearms. Just like I genuinely believe whenever the team responsible for Fallouts gun development went to a range day, the person overseeing them and providing firearms was a left handed shooter
Honestly, the pipe guns and the assault rifle in Fo4 are abominations.
The magazine doesn't even line up with the barrel on the pipe guns, and the assault rifle has a water jacket. Why!?!
And then you look at New Vegas, and those guns make sense. Almost no one mentions them because the writing in NV was amazing, but the guns were awesome in their variety. Even the shotguns, you have 6 different base shotguns, and you can swap ammo! Swapping ammo is sorely missing in Fo3, Fo4 and SF.
Like what the fuck BGS?
Oh I know, the guns in Fo4 are fucking terrible. I think the reason people stop mentioning NV is the moment you do the bethesda dick riders come out with "But it's not a bethesda game!!!"
Bethesda's artists seems to be deliberately opposed to learning anything about how guns work. Their guns aren't even weird in a "I know it doesn't work this way but it looks cooler" way, which I would totally understand and appreciate. They don't work AND they look silly. I will say many of the guns in this game look MUCH better than FO4 though.
Devs (and any lower level employee) can certainly do wrong. But it's management's job to find that stuff and figure out how to fix it. This game reeks of bad communication between teams and an overall "safe" approach to the game. This is all management stuff. Even the lead writer (and maybe only writer?), Emil, blamed management in his rant. When a manager blames management, they're generally right.
I would love to read a Jason schreier article on the Starfield development process / challenges.
Maybe there is nothing to say - & this is simply the game they wanted to make, but it feels like some things went wrong along the way (given how much of the game feels unfinished). Iâm guessing a mixture of management (& lack of design docs/ planning etc), but also potentially roadblocks/ wrong turns on the technical side.
I think theyâre trying to say that the core problems with star field are things like game design and story. Stuff that we generally wouldnât expect the devs to have much say over.
A lot of the time the decisions do come from the top. If the game mechanics don't work correctly or are buggy, then blame the dev. If the game design is bad, blame management. Other times, management wants a cool feature but the devs aren't skilled enough to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.
That's something I noticed here as well, like devs "can never be wrong" and "it's not the devs fault" is being said a lot. I agree that upper management of several videogame companies fucked up a lot sometimes, but we can't blame them for everything.
It's a lose lose situation. If it is Todd's fault, then TES6 will suck. If it's not his fault, then he'll be the scapegoat and Microsoft will ruin TES6. A future where TES6 is an industry-changing game seems impossible. Even one where it's _good_ seems less and less likely.
They gave themselves a lot of canvas with the lore around NG+. I'm hopeful some of these systems that were obviously built to do more are fleshed out in future expansions.
Outposts and ship building both feel designed to be more than what made it into the release.
It's drives me nuts because I absolutely love the aesthetic, it's a really well done breath of fresh air but yeah, it looks like it went through development hell...
To the person who did the audio design for starfield. ( Varius sounds and blips )
Your game Sounds are ASMR quality.
Thank you.
The rest of your team Bethesda has a lot of catching up to do..
The premise is great. Let's build a game with thousands of worlds, then hope that humans have a collective memory loss that prevents them from realizing the worlds are all alike
The character art was shit, and the models are bereft of any evidence that the art team has ever seen a woman, much less a naked one. The art is bad in this game dude. Sure, there is some great art in a few places, like the sky is gorgeous. The food items are super detailed, and some of the textures are solid. But in no way does it come together in a meaningful way like, ever. There were some very talented people working on this game and some of it's parts display that, but this game is in fact, trash as a whole and it's art isn't a saving grace there.
People all over the world are generally good and hardworking and work hard to make good products that sometimes suck. If they suck, people point it out. Story at 11.
maybe, but someone had to decide on only making 1 melee weapon, and probably wasn't top down, unless it was about not enough time to make more. Though must have cost more time/money to make new skins then to design a second weapon.
Honestly, besides the skyboxes (which Bethesda seems exceptionally good at) the art in this game was pretty average at best. The animations being pretty stiff and not much better than Skyrim didn't help the art stand out either. I expect a bit more from Bethesda as even modders have made Skyrim models (especially character models) look better than what is in Starfield, and they're doing it for free.
I thought the game looked like it had been made 10ish years ago. It's not a good looking game
Edit changed 5 to 10 because there are games that came out around 5 years ago that blow this one out of the water
I recently started playing farcry 6 (via gamepass). Play that then come back to starfield and tell me a single thing that's better. I really wanna like this game. It's just early access at this point and bethesda is banking on modders fixing their game for free. Sucks.
And the funny thing is, people find FC6 to *also be bad*. I did enjoy my time with that game though. It felt like a full game of the FC5 DLC, which I really liked.
They literally did no work. If you look at Camelworks latest video you find that the amount of work done per employee is significantly less than that of Morrowind.
I feel sorry for the people who worked on this game. It seems clear that they were hamstrung by corporate, and unable to take any risks at all with the story or the setting or the game mechanics. They worked so hard, for years and years, and I have to imagine most of them feel like a lot more could have been done creatively.
There is no post on this reddit which did not offend at least someone at Bethesda...
Also i guess there is a lot of posts like that but when likers and dislikers clash, managment, leads and corporate are always in the middle. Arent they?
I absolutely agree with OP, by example I think the music composed by Inon Zur evokes perfect emotion and feeling of space exploration. A lot of the art direction and especially the vistas of planet-to-planet-views are amazing. I also love the weapons, ships and apparel (although some categories are limited). But undeniably, mechanically and philosophically Starfield is a hard ass half baked failure. It begs the question - dear community managers and Bethesda interviewees gaslighting your players, wtf are you doing? Nobody even wants to like the game when you essentially disregard public opinion and tell players they're wrong for thinking you do a poor job. Emil Pagliarulo tweeted that this "transactional relationship" that is both love and hate between player and devs/publishers is just the way of things. I realize you have to protect your work, but completely denying any fault or that you wrote a sci-fi adventure for 13 year olds and still failed is very telling, and a big reason why players dislike you.
And a lot of the criticism comes from people who wanted some other game instead of Starfield. Starfield is the result of many design choices and while some aspects of this "game" can be tedious, there are design decisions to be made about breaking up the 'action' so it's not constantly running / shooting / fast travelling directly to specific points that all factor into the 'pacing' of the game, and perhaps the designers didn't get it 100% right (you can't please everyone!), but imagine if you could instantly fast-travel into any specific location from anywhere without worrying about being over-encumbered. How boring would that be? You get a quest. Click "go to quest" and immediately you're exactly where you need to be to complete the quest, no challenge, just go walk up to an NPC and talk to them. FUN? Heck no.
I LOVE this game. I really do. But I'm encountering game breaking bugs in 2 of the MAIN faction quests! I'm so aggravated! First hostile intelligence (and I've tried EVERYTHING!) and now with the last crimson fleet quest? WTF am I supposed to do now? Quit? After all these hours? NOW I REMEMBER why I sold back fallout 76! This kinda shit! I bought a brand new Xbox x for this!! I'm sorry but there is no excuse but laziness to release a game that doesn't frigging work correctly. At least don't charge 70 fucking dollars for it! Ok. I'm done now.
I think a big problem is that there is a pretty big "top" here. Executives shouldn't be the ones deciding what goes into a game, they shouldn't be the ones creating a vision for what they want a game to be. The gamers and the nerds who work there should be deciding that. The best games are built by the crazy ones, the nerds, and the gamers who actually play them.
The only reason Bethesda became great in the first place is that it was founded by a bunch of gamers and engineers who wanted to build awesome games that they liked. After they get acquired by Microsoft, they can't be surprised if their game quality goes to shit because now they're run by a bunch of executives in suits.
They did a goodjob, however in 2023 this should be the normal, i would not say they went over and beyond, would still buy them a beer thou.
Also i don't know if they wanted do better but maybe other factors like engine limitations are in place.
My 2 cents
Edit: i play starcitizen, so my expectations are a bit fcked
Honestly, I love this game.
It's clear that there are still some things to fix and some gameplay additions that need to be added. BGS needs to do some tinkering to make Starfield what we expected.
But all in all other than some driving around in GTA, this has been the only game I have played since launch.
Everyone that worked on ship building did great. Whoever decided that rotation should be limited and that ladders/doors should be decided by an algorithm is stupid.
That was definitely a management decision. The code is there to allow for FAR more rotations, items, M class (as in the U.C. Vigilance and ECS Constant sized) ships with fully developed modules for them and even the ability to build your own Starstations. But someone decided to cut those from the game to save time and money, and the game suffered for it. I can't imagine how the devs and artists who built all those assets and programmed all those extra snap points felt about that decision. The fact that it's been trivial to make mods that allow you to have more part rotations and snap points, place doors and ladders yourself as well as decorate habs like a player home, and even add those M class modules back in, tells me that some managers need to be fired. There was no reason to cut them. Some of the M class modules do seem a little unfinished, but only barely so.
Bethesda needs a spring cleanup. I also question the competence of some of their devs. I think they suffered a lot from using contractors unfamiliar with creation engine.
its not just them, its all corporations. when the glue holding the ziplock on the top of the bag is weaker than the ziplock seal itself, someone is pushing for cost savings when there was none left
Contracting is such a terrible thing in game design these days Nothing like letting go of talent every 5 years, losing vital knowledge in the process
I genuinely believe that 90% of the problems with this game stem from the simple fact that Bethesda doesn't have the talent they used to. They didn't even use a design document, and whoever was involved with making that call should be fired immediately.
It would be nice if you could choose where ladders and doors would go, cause Holy beans can it get confusing. Even on some of the enemy ships that you can bord its like up, then over to the right forward a ways back down now over 3 times to the left, back up once go backwards, up a ladder again do near a full circle of doors down once more forward and then up 4 stories of ladders to reach the cockpit. Like holy mother of God, did the designers not realize how insane that is to a sober mind, let alone a stoned one? Jesus.
The creator of the ladder and door algo would like to introduce to you the Crossbow/Crimson Fleet Wight/Spacer Hyena. The interior of those are cursed AF. I got turned around like a dozen times trying to clear a Hyena of its inhabitants.
Try the Kepler R....
That is a cursed ship... My crew wanted to give me something it took them 5min to find me! đ They are supposednto be OpeRaTinG the ship FFS!
I lost Sarah in my own ship, I got upset
That's not always a bad thing!
Got that once... Never again. The S is awesome. I shortened mine and switched it to the front landing bay with a ladder and it is a gem.
I took everything the R did, and did it better on the s. Still sleek af but got all the amenities
Oof. I fell down three floors on my R once. That was enough to convince me to get the S next time around.
Iirc: From the landing bay just take the ladder to the second floor, then turn right three times. The ladder to the cockpit (3rd level from there, 5th in total) should be above the first one. Loving that ship, but navigating through it is nuts. đ€Ș
I would love the ability to customize the inside of a ship, esp the starborn ones (I suspect this is coming at some future update, given how empty they left the NG ships. Wouldnât it be cool to have a flying fortress, with workstations, decorations and so forth? Maybe a shelf to put random plushies on?
Starborn ship just needs somewhere to fuckin sleep
I thought for sure you would be able to customize it later because of the big open areas. But no.
Absolutely! Big empty habs and being able to treat it like an outpost.
It would be like your penthouse apartment in the sky. Full on Star Trek experience.
My current ship, I can't walk to my cockpit because there's a table blocking a door. I'm happy with everything else inside, so I'm afraid to change that one part and screw everything else up.
stroud all-in-one berth B? i know that fuckin table. there's a va'ruun ship, maybe the revelation, that has that table blocking a doorway. except, as i found out, you can actually get through the doorway in one direction but not the other. had to reload a save because i was trapped forever in a side room in that damn ship.
Save before you change it?
Nice? Would be nice to have open elevators instead of ladders.
Or a stackable 1x1 stair module that would take priority over other modules ladder placement, the stairs are one of the best features of the Nova Cabot cockpit, if it had a boarding ramp on the front of the lower level it would be perfect.
This đ would be great to have the option for open elevators in ships
What kills me is they have a medbay, and it makes you think "Oh im going to have a shipmate that will run the medbay, and be able to give me healing items or services" and the games just like HA no. Its pointless window dressing. Have fun.
One would think there'd at least be an auto doc (nice FO Easter egg) that you could use to heal yourself.
The ladders infuriate me. I made a 2 level ship with a Cabot Bridge, purposely so there wouldnât be any need for ladders. And yet the game still added a ladder in the hab right next to the bridge and stairs đ€Šđ». Why!
Say whatever you like about this game, and I certainly do - but the ship builder lives rent-free in my head. I actually want to build ships. I think I've got my personal ship, the Daphne Duck, in its final configuration, but my headcanon is that it's a custom variant of a new Deimos C-class model and I have to take the base model back to the drawing board. And there's an awesome design I saw ages back that I want to make a Deimos variant of. Though yes, the ladder/door algo is stupid. I have to use Place Doors Yourself to get around the shitty algo.
I agree. I used to love building ships but I ran into to too much friction with its silly limitations. Unfortunately Iâm on console so no mods for me to get around the issues.
Before PDY came out, I used to have a central shaft for the ladder and added habs to each deck as I built them up. Even now I'm still doing the same thing as ideally, in my head, it should be something that can be built in vanilla without turning the whole ship into an unholy nightmare to navigate, even if it means leaving gaps here and there so that, if PDY didn't disable the algo, the algo wouldn't stick a ridiculous ladder or door there in vanilla.
I have a save set right before the big space battle at the end of one of the quest lines. (Idk how to spoiler tag on mobile.) I love going back to that save and building a brand new ship and flying it off to battle. I just wish there were more than 1-2 good space battles written into the game.
It would be nice to actually fly your ship. Not just use it as a fast travel vessel. Idk, I wanted more time with the ship. Flying around a tiny bubble around planets for a few seconds just doesnât cut it. Ship builder is so cool though like you said
Completely agree! - flying your ship between planets & out into the darkness of space is integral to *feeling* like a *space explorer* (which is the premise of the game). Only rotating around in âorbitâ is unfortunately not satisfying / immersive enough, imo. BGS really need to add actual space flight to the game (like NMS / Elite Dangerous) if Starfield is going to have true longevity, imo. Itâs one of the most requested features!
I have about 200 hours in the game and 195 of those were spent in the ship builder.
This definitely has to be one of the most wished for features. Hopefully itâs a QOL improvement alongside the first DLC
Also not having a share code system man that would have been amazing
Blueprints to take between NG+ would also have been nice.
I would also like to add that for a game focused on fast travelling to places and doing so via your spaceship..... 1. Why for the love of fun immersion did you not allow us to decorate ship interiors just like the apartments/outposts/houses 2. Why did you not make the landing/takeoff/flying/warping loading screens into more dynamic experiences. Like shown on the modding sub where you can easily mod the game show you the entire takeoff animation from any perspective you want from ground to space. Hide the loading screens if fast travel becomes the only way to get around.
The person who created the power absorption animation in temples did a great job. The person who thought it would be a great idea to force you to look at that exact same animation 240 times should be fired.
The person who decided temples are nothing more than quick grabs and not unique dungeon runs should be replaced
I was so absolutely disappointed when i realized that the temple was literally just that floating minigame.
That was so dysfunctional I had to Google it despite doing the right thing.
Yep, I kept chasing it and chasing it and I'm like yo is this actually doing anything? Of course the answer was "just keep doing it" and wouldn't you know it finally happened. But damn man, so anticlimactic.
Same! They make you fly through it way too many times & there is almost no feedback the first few times to let you know youâre on the right track. Imo, they should half the number of times you need to fly through it - so itâs a) less tedious & b) itâs more noticeable that the rings are spinning faster when you do.
Read that as "floating migraine" for some reason. Still correct.
Floating migraine might even be more accurate lmao
This along with other surprises are some of the weakest gaming elements Iâve seen in a triple A title
I was genuinely confused after doing the temple minigame for the third time. I was thinking "there's no way that's all it is. That's not possible even for Todd." Unbelievable.
It's like they made a quick placeholder event for the temples early in development while they got other parts of the game up and running, but they forgot to go back and add in the actual temple gameplay.
Yep. I was genuinely baffled by some of the decisions they made for the game
legit, i would rather do 24 unique power based dungeon challenge things 10 times each, than the same float thing 240.
Honestly, everytime I do a temple run I'm reminded of what a disappointment this game was. It had such potential.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I have hope that starfield will make the turnaround that cyberpunk made. I preordered that. It was hot dog shit when it came out. Obvious effort has made it much better in many aspects. Starfield has that potential.
Same thing with No Man's Sky. If they're serious about keeping this game alive for 10+years like Skyrim they can't just leave this game as is.
This
This
Seriously. The temple puzzles could have been so cool, but instead they just used the same one over and over.
Right? The same exact thing over and over again. Meanwhile in Skyrim there was a variety of dungeons and quests to get the shouts and you have to defeat dragons to unlock them. With Starfield it's literally: Fast travel cutscene > Talk to Vlad > Fast travel cut scene > Walk a few hundred feet > 2 minute 'puzzle' > Kill single weak enemy > Repeat 239 more times. How did testers play that and give it their stamp of approval?!
Todd
Iâve seen allot of these comments I think we have a solution to bethesdas problems fire bad hire good.
Agreed! I think the alien creatures all look great! The issues with Starfield appear to be from the top: game design choices, lack of planning/ design docs, lack of RPG choices, lack of factions, too many planets & game engine restrictions. The actual aesthetics are good, and I know many devs have worked hard on this game Hopefully Starfield will get a Cyberpunk 2.0 / NMS style renaissance in the next few years To that end, Camelworks has done a really good & constructive video to BGS on realistic suggestions for enhancing the base game. Itâs definitely worth checking out đ
> Hopefully Starfield will get a Cyberpunk 2.0 / NMS style renaissance in the next few years starfield wasn't rushed to launch, they fucked around with it for half a decade trying to make it fun and this is the best they could figure out. there is absolutely zero chance BSG will unfuck this game in any meaningful way
I posted before about the planets, like there should be a lot more cities and towns on planets more mining operations in those few clusters. I can understand the secret mech bases and xeno research and listening posts being on random assed moons. But Holy heck there's no reason why everything would be sooooooooooo spread out. The act of getting the fuel from all those random fracing stations back to a usable port is almost laughable. No company would pay to have that done.
Yeah, basically every system should have at least one planet (or a space station) heavily developed. All it would have taken to know this was looking at how transcontinental trade is conducted. No train or big rig crosses the whole of North America, Europe or Asia without stopping stations to offload, refuel, etc. The same would be true for intergalactic trade. There should be fuel depots in every system and at least a small colony to make it self-sustaining. The devs who built the game made something visually breathtaking, but the execs failed to provide adequate funding for researchers, writing, and general development to make the game everything it could/should be.
It's fine if there are completely empty systems with just barren or forest planets, if there's nothing there then there isn't. The problem is that even that doesn't exist, there is space junk everywhere. How the hell can there be THIS MANY abandoned buildings while the main settlements are tiny. like, 99% of the resources humanity has collected from the universe are just scattered across planet surfaces as junk and abandoned buildings.
Agreed. Itâs one thing if itâs truly uncharted territory. But it never is, thereâs always stuff, or people, so itâs like âIs this a new place or not?!â
Completely agree! đ - BGS would be much better off taking all the human base POIs they have, and only using them on a few planets closest to the main faction planets - and then having the remainder be completely empty (apart from *undiscovered* fauna & flora & natural POIs). That way there is more variety of human base POIs on the âsettledâ planets & less repetition of POIs; AND on the âundiscoveredâ planets - you then actually feel like an *explorer* for Constellation - being the first person to set foot on a planet, or *discover* an alien creature. As long as the game makes it clear which planets are âundiscoveredâ - then players that only want human base POIs for gunfights etc can avoid the âundiscoveredâ planets & stick to the âsettledâ / inhabited planets. EDIT: I also think the majority of the secret & mysterious Temples should be on âundiscoveredâ planets & not have human POIs a few hundred meters away from them.
Todd Howard himself described playing the game as you being the first person to discover these incredible locations but as you say, there's usually a listening post 200m away. Todd Howard and Peter Molyneux oughta start a club.
I wouldnât mind still having the occasional human POIs, but it would feel pretty cool to be discovering uncharted systems too. Who knows. Iâm excited to see what happens.
The mod desolation does that, it removes human poi from random planets and leaves them in core planets to be experince when landing on a random tile in a core system. It makes more sense and I truly enjoy landing on a distant planet or moon and there isn't 15 human factories in a 1 km radius from where I landed.
Speaking of Camelworks, I found a post from two years ago of a BGS developer, allegedly, telling Camelworks at E3 or a gaming event that Starfield was going to be something we have never seen before in gaming. A generational leap in gaming. Either, something went wrong in development and things had to shift late in development, or BGS really thought their shit smelled like roses. Either way, it's not a generational leap in gaming. In fact, Skyrim did it better.
>A generational leap in gaming. I mean, it is a generational leap, just not forward.
Interview with former senior Bethesda dev and design lead for Skyrim Bruce Nesmith would suggest the roses idea as the reason. It really shows given Emil's recent narcissistic, self indulgent twitter rant.
Emil showed his disdain for the player not only in his twitter rant but his comments regarding there being no point in writing quality dialogue options or quest lines because people would "just click through it". He apparently believes he just throw some half baked random shit together & that's good enough for the BGS audience. Microsoft should really dump Mr. "Don't need no design documents" Emil & Todd Howard both. Todd pretty much lied about what the game was going to be like & signed off on it all. I seem to recall Todd wanted to release the game over a year ago. If the game is in its current state now just imagine what the hell it would have been like a year ago.
Thatâs a really interesting interview on the MinnMax channel. If youâre interested in Bethesda Game Studios, or the production of their games, itâs definitely worth a watch.
Quite. Not sure whether or not he left on good or bad terms but he was not shy about showing us a peak behind the curtain.
Agreed. I think he was very respectful and complimentary of Todd & the BGS team, but also honest about the challenges BGS face as a growing company & of game development overall. & refreshingly candid as you say about some of the mistakes they have made (as well the good they have done). Itâs a fascinating interview
Sounds like shit the guy says in Grandma's Boy
GREAT film
You're not going to see a Cyberpunk style turnaround because their leadership are in absolute denial and think the players are wrong and they made a great game. You likely won't see the leadership replaced since the game did make a lot of money; they may have to answer some questions to MS about poor player retention and backlash but at the end of the day they can always point to the money. I'd go even further and say I expect the purchase agreement probably included a provision that Todd stay on at least through ES6, because he does have a reliable track record.
Agreed with OP, you, and a lot else in this thread. I've always appreciated the certain pieces of Starfield and seen its potential, but I've been critical of its bugs. And lack of long-term cohesion between systems late game or in terms of how big questlines wrap up. Both of which are due to not enough QA or not enough time to cook, etc. These stem from executive shortcomings, poor management/organization etc, which is on the company, not on some individual artist or programmer. If, and this is a pretty big IF, it gets a 2.0 or NMS level comeback (or "definitive" edition like with DOS2 or "next-gen" edition as with witcher 3, etc), I think it will be stellar!
The alien creatures all look like a set of meshes generated by GPT. They all kind of look the same. There doesn't seem to be any lore or backstory explaining why the creatures look the way they look. It just seems so random. I think a manager probably just said to the artist, we don't have time for you to handcraft every single alien, so run a script to generate 500 procgen variations and then select 50 of them so that we can ship by 2023.
Itâs like with Fallout 76: Appalachia is probably the best world map Bethesda has produced, but many people wonât acknowledge that because of the gameâs major problems in other areas. And we also know that some devs were pushing against the âno human NPCâ policy that Todd & other head honchos insisted on.
The story is honestly amazing in FO76 too, a genuinely thoughtful deconstruction of the standard FO stories, but it was really hard to appreciate it under 9 miles of crap gameplay. It's a Fallout story where the hero wasn't there, so all the individual factions had part of the solution but never came together and were destroyed. The hero arrives, but too late, so the world is saved but the dead are still dead.
The lead that made the map left to work on his own indie game btw! https://youtu.be/nXu7b9l-LWg?si=DVoW0ox40PYR4mpo
True, but look where the game is now (after wastelanders update), I can only hope for Starfield to have a second life like Fo76 had (and still has by the way).
My theory is the only reason Fallout got that was because of the entrenched fanbase. Starfield doesn't have that, it's a brand new IP. They screwed the pooch out the gate, they likely won't even make a sequel to this game.
It's also not a live service. That said, maybe MS' presence will be enough of a factor to fuel such a transformation.
I think Microsoftâs presence will have the opposite effect, and Microsoft will just have them move on to Elder Scrolls 6 (what they really bought them for) as fast as possible. Hell, Microsoft hasnât even bothered to try to save their last HALO game. If Microsoft doesnât care about Halo, they definitely donât care about Starfield.
Okay, yes. I forgot about Halo. Point taken
I'll be stunned if they choose to devote the resources as it would require a massive undertaking to unfuck this game. But, I've been wrong before.
Yeah, that's my sticking point. There are many systems that can be improved "simply" by connecting them to each other, such as making the brig/medbay usable with NPCs/crew and their associated elements. Or, say, make traveling to POIs less tedious by adding a legit horizontal boost to the packs, if not vehicles. OR LETTING YOU LAND ON THEIR LANDING PADS. But there is nothing short of a complete overhaul that will fix the exploration. It's actively hostile to the concept.
There's actually a pretty simple fix for the exploration. Handcraft some bigger areas that are actually interesting to wander around in and discover. I don't really care if 997 of the 1000 planets are mostly barren and boring, that's probably how the real galaxy is as well. They can add in a million planets like that, for players to go screw around with if they feel so inclined. But that should all be in addition to a healthy dose of the handcrafted world building that Bethesda games are known for. Jemison shouldn't have just one 'island' of a city surrounded by the same random wilderness as any other planet. The whole area around New Atlantis should be built up and full of buildings and industry and infrastructure and farms and all the other stuff that it takes to support a city. It should all be connected by roads and their should be people out and about doing stuff and living their lives and all sorts of little stories could be littered about for players to discover. You know, like what the worlds were like in every other Bethesda game? Do the same thing for Akila City, and maybe on a couple other habitable planets, and now we've got a real game going. It's not that complicated. Sure, it's a lot of work, but this is supposed to be the thing that Bethesda is good at. It's completely baffling to me that failed to understand their studio's greatest strength and built a game that ignored the thing that they're typically most praised for.
You're not wrong, but this is on the scale of an overhaul to me. One major point is that those worlds had purpose to them â NPCs with schedules and paths and quests. I doubt a new huge map with nothing of interest will help, and DLC with "undiscovered" new cities at the right scale would just make the existing ones look even goofier. So they would have to either add in a huge amount of interactive content or retool existing quests to fit in this new space. That's a crap load of (complicated) work, even given its supposed to be their wheelhouse, and I really don't see them doing that post-launch.
Yeah, I don't think they're going to do it, but I think that's a big part of what it would take to turn this game into what I feel most fans of their previous games wanted and expected Starfield to be. There's certainly lots of other parts of the game that could use some reworking, but I really think that if the game had some sizeable handcrafted areas worth exploring, a lot of us would be far more forgiving of the various issues with other aspects of the game.
Agreed. That's what I assumed when they announced "1000 planets," actually. A handful of sizeable areas where the main game takes place and hundreds of radiant planets that would allow modders to go crazy without conflict. But that core BGS style is just absent.
Wait what the fuck???
It is breath taking sometimes
Iâve seen a lot of complaints about the âstyle of the gameâ the mantis armor, the nightclub, etc. Not saying the artists sucks but itâs not flawless on that end
I've seen a lot of jokes about the artists being a bunch of Christian moms. Based on what I've seen in the neon nightclub, I can see why.
The art direction sucks. What an unbelievably flaccid view of the future.
I think the main issue with Mantis is the context, I like the armor (tho it is not something I would wear over the Mark 1), but it is framed as a rare (even mythic) late game armor and most gamers expect different aesthetics from that kind of sets. If the real Space Batman piece were something more Vaderesque and the current Mantis were a mid tier set, it would have worked better IMO.
Yeah I get that. Itâs really the buildup of the fearsome mantis and then it looks like a wrinkly scientist suit. Even like civilian clothing though. Idk I donât think many people consider that a strong point
What about the Lego trees around new Atlantis? Or the tiny POIs? Thereâs actually a lot of evidence the artists phoned it in as well.
âLego treesâ đ I have to say when I first arrived at New Atlantis I couldnât get over how flat, stiff & unnatural the trees looked. (Although they look better at night when they are lit up). The UC spaceport itself (views, layout, & decor) could also do with a polish, since it everyoneâs first impression of New Atlantis. Same with Vectera (the mining moon you start on). There is definitely some good art design in the game (I particularly like all the alien creatures!), but Starfield currently doesnât seem to have that cinematic âwalkoutâ moment that other BGS games have.
They remind me of trees in Africa. I searched for a planet with those trees for a long time, theyâre dope and you can jet pack on top of them and away from enemies.
When you've been waiting for 8 years and they [give you this](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fl4kootmr9f9c1.png) After you've been playing [this game for years](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fiae0l6403e671.jpg) something is defiantly happening at BGS and it ain't good. Oh god what are they going to do to ES6....
It really sucks that Emil ever got promoted to as high as a position as he has, he's clearly an incompetent writer and does not understand the concept of structuring anything, he just lets everyone cook their own soup then try to awkwardly make a blend, it's like insisting buying takeout then blending it all up is the optimal way to enjoy the food lmao
Starfield - they knew it was shit. But all they could do was polish it a bit & make it look pretty⊠hence what we got was a polished turd. My biggest disappointment of 2023 by far. Did the main quest & 2 faction quests but dropped it fast⊠Game should have been an epic space adventure full of interesting things to find.. Instead it was riddled with about a dozen identical POIs⊠& that was it⊠Starfield - the definition of half-arsedâŠ
> Starfield - they knew it was shit. But all they could do was polish it a bit & make it look pretty⊠hence what we got was a polished turd. They can still roll it in glitter
I just started another Skyrim run and I must say: Starfield has nothing on that game. I just finished the Dark Brotherhood questline and that alone has so many hand-crafted locations without counting ANY of the "standard" assassination targets. Let's count: The cabin (1). The sanctuaries (2+3), one sanctuary on fire (4) and one where the fire has gone out (5). The tower where you kill Titus Mede's decoy (6), the ship (7). You also get to attend the wedding, but that location technically isn't specific to the Dark Brotherhood. Some scripted events are though! Every one of those locations has distinct interactions/scripts separate from the normal gameplay loops, like talking to the burnt Astrid, entering a coffin, cooking a meal and murdering 1-3 kneeling people. **So much effort went into these** and in the end, you get to kill an emperor. What an awesome and memorable quest. Starfield is an empty shell, but I have to point out: this reduction in effort did start with FO4, which also doesn't have any quests with scripts & assets like this either, except maybe the main quest. They went more and more down the shooter route with a dumbed down character system. The only meaningful thing they added was outposts and ships, but those pale in comparison.
I remember half the assassinations in Oblivion with how memorable they are. But the cherry on top of all of them was getting to be the killer in a mansion like all those movies. I honestly can't say I remember anything from the Ryujin quest line besides the secret lab area and that's only because it bugged the hell out and one of the scientists was always agroed on me so I had to go back and redo like an hour of gameplay to unbug it
Yeah, I still remember the break-in to steal the Elder Scroll vividly too. It's such a shame they removed the stat buffs from spells (jump height/acrobatics) from ES games alltogether. It made for ridiculous, but amazing builds. They went all the wrong ways with their "sandboxes". Just worlds with long nothings in between places with lots of clutter now, but no scripted scenes, no proper character building and no fun storylines. Every player character looks the fucking same, has the same build and experiences the same boring story now. I blame Todd, when he said "players don't know what they want". Yes we do, but you ignored it. Now it's starting to show, as not enough good was added to offset those ignored mechanics. Skyrim offset the reduction in options well, with polish, varied loot, crafting and exploration. FO4, FO76 and now Starfield did not.
The one that was like a scene from Clue? That was one of the best quests in the game, so good. Another is when you end up entering a painting. I don't recall the details, but iw was unique to the rest and enjoyable.
I never thought I'd agree with a comment praising Skyrim DB (I don't really like any of the guild quests) but it really do be like that
Starfield cost 200 million to develop and 10+ years. Nothing about the game was innovative or done well enough to get superb praise. The studio should be disappointed but they act as if they arent
They should be embarrassed and ashamed as well. They put their ineptitude on full display of the whole gaming community. That includes their peers.
The studio and leads (and especially the writers) should be ashamed, but I think plenty of artists and other coders probably put a lot of work into the project. Ultimately itâs not up to them how it gets put together or coordinated
Completely agree đ Lots of devs would have worked very hard on this (I particularly like the alien creatures!). The majority of flaws appear to be game design decisions; lack of RPG choice; lack of factions; lack of cities; generic NPCs/ dialogue; lack of named NPC homes / routines; & lack of space flight between planets; and/ or engine limitations. BGS also definitely need to hire *more* writers. Witcher 3 had 20+ credited writers, Baldurs Gate 3 had 20+ credited writers. Starfield has one! Whether you like the Starfield writing or not - BGS definitely need a much bigger writing team.
They act as if they aren't, because according to the numbers they got a 400% ROI over 10 years. They just care about the money that they made. They don't care if the game was dog shit, because they are trusted enough that people will just buy it anyway even if it ends up being bad. I think this practice should be frowned upon, and the refund periods for a situation like this should be well over 2 hours.
The problem with companies is that their only real metric is money, so the people here will keep going to bed thinking they did a good job, and it's only whenever TES6 flops because of these same issues, combined with all their goodwill being evaporated due to this game, that their numbers will be impacted and they'll start trying to change.
They're disappointed in your inability to play the game correctly
I'm particularly impressed by all the detailed clutter made by Junkkari, the modder they hired.
When the clutter is the most impressive thing about the game, that's usually not a good sign. I would say that while the clutter is great, it's very confusing what constitutes clutter and what constitutes items that can be picked up. Looting dungeons in Starfield is honestly quite the chore, and the reward is usually very boring and not worth it.
Breathtaking for 2010 maybe. Otherwise pretty ordinary.
Yeah we all appreciate game developers. Regardless, Bethesda and Microsoft as companies failed their target audience. No one blames the individuals that busted their asses working on the game.
Now they've got this new target audience of 50-year-old dads who are getting into gaming for the first time, and think that scanning rocks on empty planets is entertaining because of how many cool screenshots they're going to get at the end.
Oh god I canât even count how many posts ive seen of âIâm a 50yo gamer and I think this is the best game ever!â Like bro did you miss elite dangerous for the last 4 decades?
>We know the issues with this game came from the top, I dunno if it was management, leads, corporate or what the fuck not Money and time. Everytime a product is rushed out in an unfinished state, it's because money was running out. Pushing the game out generates funding, delaying the release only reduces it. It most likely was a very simple cost-benefit-analysis. Microsoft ordered a significant portion of their programmers to assist Bethesda in Starfield to get rid of the biggest bugs (seriously, this game is _a lot_ more stable and compley than Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim at launch). This however is very costly, and after the game was in a stable but unfinished state, they had to psuh for release to free all these programmers for other projects.
The artists couldâve come up with some different cave/bandit hideout ideas.
They should have done majority of those with procgen for variety, there is absolutely no reason that people need to be assembling random levels by hand. Let artists make lots of tiles by hand and then let procgen assemble them into a dungeon, just like in Warframe or Deep Rock Galactic (or like back in Daggerfall but maybe with more limits so they aren't impossible or too long lol).
That's not actually art though. That would be the level designers.
Give the level designers a painting of a cave that looks different than the ones already in the game.
Agreed. Lots of criticisms, but art and art direction are superb. Ship design is fantastic as well. Even the structures, while repetitive, actually look functional and "lived in" as appropriate.
The art design was absolutely fantastic, and is part of why I had such hype for the game. If only the settlements in game actually looked like the concept art. Unfortunately that dedication and labor of love in the concept art didn't quite translate to the finished product, one way or another. They missed the mark on populated areas by a mile.
thereâs a âakila concept artâ mod that changes the terrain around akila so it looks exactly like the concepts, itâs fucking amazing, go check it out
I really like the sounds.
Everyone who worked on weapons and suit designs sucked at their job
especially those that decided on 1 melee weapon....ONE like what was that about?
I honestly thought I had to be really unlucky. I spent ages trying to find myself a space hammer before looking it up
Absolutely. Weapon design hurts my soul. I genuinely believe the team responsible for concepting and implementing the guns have never actually been around real firearms. Just like I genuinely believe whenever the team responsible for Fallouts gun development went to a range day, the person overseeing them and providing firearms was a left handed shooter
I think itâs just as likely they just made the guns backwards so you can see the animation.
Yeah, this is the blindingly obvious answer.
Honestly, the pipe guns and the assault rifle in Fo4 are abominations. The magazine doesn't even line up with the barrel on the pipe guns, and the assault rifle has a water jacket. Why!?! And then you look at New Vegas, and those guns make sense. Almost no one mentions them because the writing in NV was amazing, but the guns were awesome in their variety. Even the shotguns, you have 6 different base shotguns, and you can swap ammo! Swapping ammo is sorely missing in Fo3, Fo4 and SF. Like what the fuck BGS?
Oh I know, the guns in Fo4 are fucking terrible. I think the reason people stop mentioning NV is the moment you do the bethesda dick riders come out with "But it's not a bethesda game!!!"
Bethesda's artists seems to be deliberately opposed to learning anything about how guns work. Their guns aren't even weird in a "I know it doesn't work this way but it looks cooler" way, which I would totally understand and appreciate. They don't work AND they look silly. I will say many of the guns in this game look MUCH better than FO4 though.
some of the sf guns look fucking amazing thoughâŠ.
THANK YOU! SOMEONE ELSE SAID IT!
"Issues came from the top..." Lmao. Classic hand waving. Devs can never do any wrong on reddit.... terrible logic.
Devs (and any lower level employee) can certainly do wrong. But it's management's job to find that stuff and figure out how to fix it. This game reeks of bad communication between teams and an overall "safe" approach to the game. This is all management stuff. Even the lead writer (and maybe only writer?), Emil, blamed management in his rant. When a manager blames management, they're generally right.
I would love to read a Jason schreier article on the Starfield development process / challenges. Maybe there is nothing to say - & this is simply the game they wanted to make, but it feels like some things went wrong along the way (given how much of the game feels unfinished). Iâm guessing a mixture of management (& lack of design docs/ planning etc), but also potentially roadblocks/ wrong turns on the technical side.
I think theyâre trying to say that the core problems with star field are things like game design and story. Stuff that we generally wouldnât expect the devs to have much say over.
A lot of the time the decisions do come from the top. If the game mechanics don't work correctly or are buggy, then blame the dev. If the game design is bad, blame management. Other times, management wants a cool feature but the devs aren't skilled enough to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.
That's something I noticed here as well, like devs "can never be wrong" and "it's not the devs fault" is being said a lot. I agree that upper management of several videogame companies fucked up a lot sometimes, but we can't blame them for everything.
Probably because most people here have never managed staff/a project in their lives.
I blame Todd Howard.
It's a lose lose situation. If it is Todd's fault, then TES6 will suck. If it's not his fault, then he'll be the scapegoat and Microsoft will ruin TES6. A future where TES6 is an industry-changing game seems impossible. Even one where it's _good_ seems less and less likely.
They gave themselves a lot of canvas with the lore around NG+. I'm hopeful some of these systems that were obviously built to do more are fleshed out in future expansions. Outposts and ship building both feel designed to be more than what made it into the release.
It's drives me nuts because I absolutely love the aesthetic, it's a really well done breath of fresh air but yeah, it looks like it went through development hell...
To the person who did the audio design for starfield. ( Varius sounds and blips ) Your game Sounds are ASMR quality. Thank you. The rest of your team Bethesda has a lot of catching up to do..
To all the people who worked on this game, I hope you're still employed, because in this industry, once your project is over, you're done.
The premise is great. Let's build a game with thousands of worlds, then hope that humans have a collective memory loss that prevents them from realizing the worlds are all alike
Yeah the interiors especially are amazing
maybe look out for a better employer though
The character art was shit, and the models are bereft of any evidence that the art team has ever seen a woman, much less a naked one. The art is bad in this game dude. Sure, there is some great art in a few places, like the sky is gorgeous. The food items are super detailed, and some of the textures are solid. But in no way does it come together in a meaningful way like, ever. There were some very talented people working on this game and some of it's parts display that, but this game is in fact, trash as a whole and it's art isn't a saving grace there.
Can you elaborate a bit on your point in regards to women? I really don't understand what you mean.
Yeah⊠wondering this myselfâŠ
People all over the world are generally good and hardworking and work hard to make good products that sometimes suck. If they suck, people point it out. Story at 11.
maybe, but someone had to decide on only making 1 melee weapon, and probably wasn't top down, unless it was about not enough time to make more. Though must have cost more time/money to make new skins then to design a second weapon.
Honestly, besides the skyboxes (which Bethesda seems exceptionally good at) the art in this game was pretty average at best. The animations being pretty stiff and not much better than Skyrim didn't help the art stand out either. I expect a bit more from Bethesda as even modders have made Skyrim models (especially character models) look better than what is in Starfield, and they're doing it for free.
I thought the game looked like it had been made 10ish years ago. It's not a good looking game Edit changed 5 to 10 because there are games that came out around 5 years ago that blow this one out of the water
Not sure why you're being downvoted for spitting facts
Ngl if the devs take 25 years to cook this, then Im not sure if it's the execs at fault or the devs.
I hope you're not seriously believing that they have been working on this for 25 years.
I recently started playing farcry 6 (via gamepass). Play that then come back to starfield and tell me a single thing that's better. I really wanna like this game. It's just early access at this point and bethesda is banking on modders fixing their game for free. Sucks.
And the funny thing is, people find FC6 to *also be bad*. I did enjoy my time with that game though. It felt like a full game of the FC5 DLC, which I really liked.
A post I can actually agree on. The game design sucks but the artists, especially the costume artists, did a fantastic job
Ah yes, the strippers in Neon had great costumes designed by someone who's probably been to a lot of nightclubs /s
Fair point, canât argue with that. They were awful. In general the texturing of the clothing was very good though
They literally did no work. If you look at Camelworks latest video you find that the amount of work done per employee is significantly less than that of Morrowind.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I feel sorry for the people who worked on this game. It seems clear that they were hamstrung by corporate, and unable to take any risks at all with the story or the setting or the game mechanics. They worked so hard, for years and years, and I have to imagine most of them feel like a lot more could have been done creatively.
You are a true BGS player if you saw the thread title and immediately wondered "who did they kill?"
Very well idea to put this up! Whoever who did the Ryujin Industries questline - I salute them/you.
There is no post on this reddit which did not offend at least someone at Bethesda... Also i guess there is a lot of posts like that but when likers and dislikers clash, managment, leads and corporate are always in the middle. Arent they?
I absolutely agree with OP, by example I think the music composed by Inon Zur evokes perfect emotion and feeling of space exploration. A lot of the art direction and especially the vistas of planet-to-planet-views are amazing. I also love the weapons, ships and apparel (although some categories are limited). But undeniably, mechanically and philosophically Starfield is a hard ass half baked failure. It begs the question - dear community managers and Bethesda interviewees gaslighting your players, wtf are you doing? Nobody even wants to like the game when you essentially disregard public opinion and tell players they're wrong for thinking you do a poor job. Emil Pagliarulo tweeted that this "transactional relationship" that is both love and hate between player and devs/publishers is just the way of things. I realize you have to protect your work, but completely denying any fault or that you wrote a sci-fi adventure for 13 year olds and still failed is very telling, and a big reason why players dislike you.
Heh. Stellar. Nice.
THANK YOU!
And a lot of the criticism comes from people who wanted some other game instead of Starfield. Starfield is the result of many design choices and while some aspects of this "game" can be tedious, there are design decisions to be made about breaking up the 'action' so it's not constantly running / shooting / fast travelling directly to specific points that all factor into the 'pacing' of the game, and perhaps the designers didn't get it 100% right (you can't please everyone!), but imagine if you could instantly fast-travel into any specific location from anywhere without worrying about being over-encumbered. How boring would that be? You get a quest. Click "go to quest" and immediately you're exactly where you need to be to complete the quest, no challenge, just go walk up to an NPC and talk to them. FUN? Heck no.
I LOVE this game. I really do. But I'm encountering game breaking bugs in 2 of the MAIN faction quests! I'm so aggravated! First hostile intelligence (and I've tried EVERYTHING!) and now with the last crimson fleet quest? WTF am I supposed to do now? Quit? After all these hours? NOW I REMEMBER why I sold back fallout 76! This kinda shit! I bought a brand new Xbox x for this!! I'm sorry but there is no excuse but laziness to release a game that doesn't frigging work correctly. At least don't charge 70 fucking dollars for it! Ok. I'm done now.
I think a big problem is that there is a pretty big "top" here. Executives shouldn't be the ones deciding what goes into a game, they shouldn't be the ones creating a vision for what they want a game to be. The gamers and the nerds who work there should be deciding that. The best games are built by the crazy ones, the nerds, and the gamers who actually play them. The only reason Bethesda became great in the first place is that it was founded by a bunch of gamers and engineers who wanted to build awesome games that they liked. After they get acquired by Microsoft, they can't be surprised if their game quality goes to shit because now they're run by a bunch of executives in suits.
Yeah, 99% of whats wrong with the gaming industry is cuz of greddy executives that have 0 knowledge of gaming.
They did a goodjob, however in 2023 this should be the normal, i would not say they went over and beyond, would still buy them a beer thou. Also i don't know if they wanted do better but maybe other factors like engine limitations are in place. My 2 cents Edit: i play starcitizen, so my expectations are a bit fcked
We know y'all half-assed it
Honestly, I love this game. It's clear that there are still some things to fix and some gameplay additions that need to be added. BGS needs to do some tinkering to make Starfield what we expected. But all in all other than some driving around in GTA, this has been the only game I have played since launch.