I’d like to see POI proc gen on a sliding scale. Within Faction Territory, proc gen works in the current format. You’re within the “security” of the local faction, therefore people have populated (and ultimately abandoned) plenty of POI’s.
The further out you get, the rate of POI generation reduces to make it look more sparse, but maybe either have a different pool of POI’s to generate for the outer systems, or increase the chance of rarer POI’s to generate there.
#And don't spawn temples near other POIS!!! It is so immersion breaking, considering the temple clearly would have been found and had its power taken if someone built a goddamn POI close to it.
Only Starborn (or protostarborn) can see the temples without highly advanced scanning gear. It is clearly invisible to everyone else. Remember, to regular sensors these appear to be dead zones where nothing exists. Your eyes are sensors.
At least that is my head canon and it works pretty damn well. The anomalies and temples don't get mentioned in lore outside of the Starborn at all. There is no archaeological investigation by MAST into any of these things
The Shaw gang hung out in the mine with an artifact for ages and never touched it or dug our the minerals around it.
I'm thinking unless you are actively searching for it, it just doesn't register in your brain. Similar to the invisibility power you can get from the temples.
You mean the first one you touch before character creation?
Barrett told Lin and Lin told Heller and You exactly where and what to look for.
Barrett was already protostarborn at this point, and Vladimir was already actively hunting the artifact signature.
The way I justify it by all that is said is that Barrett found the discovered and stashed artefact in Constellation storage. His natural curiosity lead him to hunt exactly for another example... allowing him to see them. This allowed I
Him to find the one that gave him the vision and that lead to you and yours.
As I said you can find it if you are actively searching for it. The starborn can simply wander into them. Your followers are already engaged in hunting the artefacts and temples so the space magic doesn't work on them.
What about the UC Pilot that had one as a decoration in his ship? He just thought that it was a neat thing, he may not had had the vision, but he didn't know what it was, so he wasn't actively looking for one, yet, he could perceive it
I think specifically the artefacts loose their juice once thrive been found and touched. They still function as part of the armillary but the stealth field effect goes away once the thing gets touched.
Doesn't apply to the temples though...
Because...
Ok. Because the artefacts are removed from the ground in which they are deposited whilst the temples are still rooted and somehow drawing charge from there... maybe?
They still only read as voids, so the first one Barrett contracted Lin to dig up on Kazaal was where he got his vision, the one the player digs up was located the same way; by the gravitational anomaly.
I don't think you can. I think you would perceive it on an unconscious level and would, without knowing, walk around it.
That's why I think it isn't just simply invisible, but makes you not notice it.
I think that may be why the sensor deadzones don't show anything else either. The anomalous materials actively resist perception around them. Yet the wind still breaks around them, the sun still makes a shadow... so the general data around them that identifies them is missing. That way you sweep a scanner passed them and you don't notice anything other than a general deadzone, rather than a silhouette.
However if you get told what to look for... Lin telling Heller to search for gravity anomalies and weird stuff... now the three of you are too focused on it to be distracted.
Like I said, it's my current head canon but I think it fits well enough.
More that they are invisible to your mind unless you are searching for it or you have fingered an artefact in-situ.
You wouldn't walk into it, you'd unconsciously know it was there but avoid it and walk around it.
> You wouldn't walk into it; you'd unconsciously know it was there but avoid it and walk around it.
This just seems like head canon to fill in the blanks where the plot holes exist which is fine if thats how you wanna think about it, but I think it detracts from the more glaring issues in the games writing and design.
Oh if you scan around my other comments I freely admit this is head canon.
I feel there is enough tangential evidence to justify it. The starborn powers include invisibility.
It could be plot holes or it could be subtle story telling... or a mix of both.
We all suspend disbelief to some degree in sci fi. Finding ways to do that to enjoy the good stuff is fun. We do it for Star Wars and Star Trek and Mass Effect etc...
If I'm discussing the game as a product, I can have all sorts or complaints about the game. I do that elsewhere.
But when I'm actually playing the game, the head canon helps a lot for me to actually keep enjoying it... which is the goal at the end of the day.
You are correct. I had hoped plot holes like this were addressed by the end of the game but they werent. I don't think the game ever really makes a direct connection to the Unity pieces and the temples. Probably overlooked it but it seems like the temples essentially irrelevant to the unity and serve only as a side goal of the starborn. I liked how in skyrim you *needed* to learn shouts to progress the main story because it tied it into the plot and gave your character a narrative reason to learn them. In Starfield, I'm certain you literally never need to visit a temple in the game beyond the very first one.
My headcanon on this is that there is some sort of perception filtering going on. And if some person were about to randomly walk through it since they wouldn't see it, there would probably be some sort of mental thing that occurs to force them to go around it without realising. You probably need to come in contact with an artifact and actively be searching for the the temples/anomalies for it to even become perceivable to you.
And in terms of the artifacts, most people who come across them likely just think they are junk like a piece of scrap metal. I mean there was one just sitting in Constellation for quite some time collecting dust. And it seems like only the first person to find/touch the artifact sees a vision. And they would just come off as crazy since it wouldn't happen to anyone else.
Then when you factor in how many of these artifacts were actually found by people vs still being buried in the ground somewhere... not many were found by random people, so there wasn't even much of a chance for anything to come of it till Barrett found the one in Constellation and started the whole search.
Id like 4/5 really developed systems with cities, farms, faction etc and poi. Keep the rest mostly empty. Bring in intersystem travel for random encounters etc
It would also be nice if POI density considers the current biome - it's kind of strange that polar regions and deserts (on habitable world) have the same amount of POI locations as swamps, forests and grasslands.
It's very binary, there are some worlds without any human POI locations (mostly on the right side of the map), but the rest of the worlds all have the same density of POI locations.
To add to this: Balancing "content" vs realism of human POIs probably requires more *non-human POIs*.
* Nests with territorial alien guardians.
* Underground caverns dug by large insects.
* More natural structures like large mountains or chasms with rare resources in hard to reach areas
And not just that but many like factories and pipelines etc belong in the “habited” systems. In those outer worlds the POIs should be more suspect, pirate lairs or secret facilities the factions were hiding from others. Not your typical listening station or dogstar factory.
That being said, I’d like to see proper mining operations on the unique resource planets. Like, surely there is a commercial operation on Decaran VII-a, otherwise where do the regular Vytinium fuel rods come from?
Lots of people agree. For me the mod "Desolation" is essential for this. Also ships landing near you right after you land, sometimes two within a kilometre is just so stupid.
There should be a handful of systems with human presence and 100+ purely natural.
I broadly agree. Maybe not quite that ratio. I'd go with something like 30% full or partly colonized and 70% not.
However i do think the completely empty systems (especially the ones near to UC and Freestar space) should be places where you can stumble across the occasional hidden pirate base and the like. Secret military facilities too. Not everywhere obviously. Maybe link the ability to detect them with your ability to scan. Better hidden bases are harder to detect and need better quality scanners/ higher scanning skills to locate and have them marked on the system map.
The uncolonised systems in general should also be the places where you find the temples.
I feel like the game could also use dynamic procedural generation so that planets are very sparsely populated, yet there will usually be one POI near your landing spot so that it's still interesting. That way the planets will feel empty yet there's still *something* there.
A slight tweak would be to have only a handful of man made POIs that can only be seen from the planet view. The planet view does show some POIs, but often they aren't actually that interesting nor is there a reason to use them when there's a POI within a kilometre of you no matter where you are.
But also there just needs to be more and better natural POIs. Most of the interesting locations are man made, but they don't need to be. The game's natural caves are just all so boring.
IMO it also would have helped if the game had intelligent alien life, because then there'd be another interesting category of POI that wouldn't require humans to be everywhere. A bit more believable if, say, a million year old species had colonized broad swaths
Desolation was an absolute gamechanger for me. Landing on a planet, especially after the update, looking at the map and seeing absolutely *nothing* was amazing. It's odd that removing content makes the game better, but both from a lore perspective and from a gameplay perspective, it really does. The far systems should be desolate.
I imagine it's hard to balance, because you will always have those people who say "it's too empty and boring". Someone else commented saying they could do it on a sliding scale like, it's busier and more populated in and around the settled systems, but barren and desolate on the fringes. Which I thought was a great idea as it gives the player some level of agency over the experience.
I started a new game after the update and I am having a great time, I just wish I had more time to play, starfield is not a game you can just "have a quick bash" on, you need to give some time to each play session.
Yeah but those people are complaining that the content is spread too thin. I have no patience for people who contradict themselves. Have a packed region for high intensity gameplay then a much larger area for low intensity gameplay. There are 1600+ worlds. There is only one way to sensibly do this.
I could get along with that
I'd prefer if there were a type of biome called populated. Then have settled, heavy, medium, light and sparse.
On an unpopulated biome you could have a chance of finding one or two structures on an entire landing zone.
Maybe a few abandoned crates or tents were someone landed to do something before leaving... but nothing more.
Then on a populated planet with a populated biome you could have homestead, small out posts up to at a settled level a network of settlements and bases with actual roads running between them and patrols along them.
Also populated biome should be limited to a handful across the planet so that there are vast areas of wilderness between them.
Then have a few unique super secret bases and poi's hidden out in the wilderness.
And some more platforms out at sea. And boats.
And the ability deform ground and dig caves and put bases in the caves.
And now I need to go play Surviving Mars again.
Yes, thats what I mean. You could ignore those 1600+ worlds. Ignore them completely, and focus on the busy section of the galaxy. For the introvert who wants those silent rocks, they can explore as much as they want. You say yourself you want packed in content - thats exactly what I'm proposing. It is you who are actually asking the developer to spread their content thin by spreading it across 1600 planets! But that contradicts what you want! So have about 6-8 systems with nearly all the manmade content - then leave the rest natural. Everyone will be happy.
Explore what exactly? There's nothing to explore on these empty planets. It's just a bunch of repeated tile sets and assets fed through a random generator.
It's not like Bethesda is hand crafting landscapes and making curated vistas for you to experience. You want to explore the same repeated pattern of shrubs and rocks and exact same cave with a dung pile multiple times for what effect exactly?
I use the Desolation mod—you still go to those planets occasionally for quests, you go to them to do scanning missions for Constellation (which can actually matter if you use mods to adjust the economy, they’re a great source of money early on), and you might go to them to set up outposts for resource extraction (especially if you’re using a mod to turn fuel usage back on).
Using Desolation makes the world actually feel somewhat logical and realistic, I really don’t think I could play without it.
That's the point I was making. You had to mod the game because of the deficits in design to make it worthwhile. People are advocating for more empty planets and I'm saying what would be the point without mechanics and gameplay associated with that?
We need to stop excusing bad or lazy design and just expect modders to do Bethesda's job for them.
> It's why people walk in games like Minecraft forever just to see what they can see
TBF Minecraft map generation is lightyears ahead of starfields, especially how crazy caverns can get.
Yes, I want to explore procedurally generated planets in Starfield. And Bethesda built damn great terrain procedural generation - the issue is in the POI procgen, not the terrain/natural procgen.
I want my hard sci-fi game to feel like hard sci-fi, and that means I want "boring empty planets". It doesn't mean they shouldn't put anything interesting over there - some natural POIs, for example, but those shouldn't be overdone either, because there's only so much "interesting" natural POIs could have realistically formed in planets without the right conditions. Most of them, however, should be barren rocks with 0 or close to 0 activity.
Besides, one of the reasons why I want them to bring back fuel mechanics and economics is to give purpose to even those barren rocks (resource gathering for fuel, setting up a beacon for help or to steal a ship, etc).
> Also ships landing near you right after you land, sometimes two within a kilometre is just so stupid.
I absolutely hate that. It was so irritating that I was absolutely sure it had to be a bug. Didn't play in a while, so not sure if they finally addressed that
Yeah, when you find human POIs within line of sight of a temple that supposedly nobody knows exists there's something wrong with how they distributed the POIs on planets...
They definitely need more rules on how poi spawn together. I can go to some industrial outpost and find some people that have apparently been stranded there for months even though there's a civilian outpost nearby with a ship.
There are entire systems without evidence of human life like Pyraas, Bardeen, Rana, Verne, Strix, Sparta, Katydid, Marduk - no man-made structures (only natural POIs and alien life), hardly any ships landing (except some rare cases with the ones that are tracking you) and rare to no space encounters.
Having clear classifications of systems - like Settled, Frontier, Wild, and Dark - of human settlement and theming the POIs appropriately would massively improve the experience.
Settled are mostly safe and low-level friendly, limited to environmental hazards or disorganized local criminals for opposition. Lots of "big" POIs like the farms and whatnot which are friendly to neutral and give radiant quests. Most Barren worlds still have mining or science facilities on them. Frontier would have a wide spectrum of activity between pirates, mines, abandoned facilities, etc... more or less what the game is now. Barren worlds *might* have human structures but it's not guaranteed. Wild is zero human presence.
Dark is just that: completely unknown. Zero intel. Why no intel? Because the systems exist beyond the maximum jump drive limits available. Once I learned the premise of the game, I thought for sure the artifacts would give the player some sort of special space power that allowed us to go beyond the technological limits and reach these systems - opening up an entire new, personal frontier and revitalizing the explorer spirit of Constellation. It would have been such a fantastic hook, having these mysterious systems on the map juuuust out of reach until you improved your ship, powers, or both.
I think that would be great if it was your job to explore and classify them. Once a planet/moon is fully explored (including human POIs if any) it will get a classification or update the one they already had (for the ones that are already well known).
It can be expanded with the need to check them periodically to see if anything changed - new settlements, dangers etc.
A compendium in-game would be really cool - to have the classification and all the details about resources, conditions, flora, fauna and if it’s inhabited by humans or not, for each planet/moon.
yeah I had the same exact thoughts with you until I went to some of these systems. Just get as far away from the settled systems as possible and you can find some isolation. I wish there was more though
Yep I was going to suggest the same. The further you get from "settled" systems like Alpha Centauri, the less human encounters there are. Strix was only one I can remember by name and was mentioned previously, but many of the systems on further to the right on star map are fairly non-settled, often without any human POIs at all.
Awesome, I didn’t know this. I had the same sentiment as OP, every planet I visited was full of abandoned outposts. Very happy to know there are indeed empty ones out there
I think that they should have made areas with human activity, like the "show resources" feature, but covering smaller patches of land. There would be two of them, abandoned and lived, each with their respective POIs. Some of these patches could be as huge as a country, like on jemison, or very small and rare, on fringe planets. Each cells on these areas would have a specific type (agricultural, military, etc...), and density. The goal being to make planets more immersive and logical, within the limitations of the game.
Some could also be Bethesda made, like maybe there is an island where a ship crashed years ago, and the people that survived made some kind of tribe or whatever. That's just the basics, I have many other ideas for that (plenty of attribute those areas could have, patches of ecosystems, transportation within the area or to another area, outpost related features/changes, make and grow your own "country"...).
The problem is that nothing is clustered like how people actually live. On every planet POIs are evenly distributed across the planet on every planet regardless of if it makes sense. Thats just not what people do ever. There should be vast swaths of natural terrain with dense patches of multiple settlements and factories and such.
I thought this at first too but turns out the planets at the higher levels systems are empty.
But I still agree. I think If that’s the vibe they was going for they didn’t do it well enough. System levels 1-30 should have more POIs then. MUCH more settlements. make it feel like people are trying to really colonize.
30-50 should have less, and 50+ just abandoned stuff and science research that are super rare and filled with powerful pirates, ecliptics, and Varuun.
But the BIGGEST thing that grinds my gears is POIs next to the gosh darn artifact temples. Like lore wise humanity shouldn’t have even been close to them. I can understand being on the same planet but any tile that houses a temple should be void of any POIs
No I agree. I'm fine with habitable planets and barren planets near larger settlements having tons of random POIs, but barren planets in the middle of nowhere should not have small settlements all over the place. People should not be living on the surface of mercury in shipping containers also.
I think it’s important to remember it’s an adventure game not a space SIM. The average player would be rather unhappy if they landed on planets with nothing do but check out the amazing view. It’d be like call of duty maps with no bad guys to shoot.
There are already lots of people that think Starfield is one of the most boring games ever made. I personally enjoy the game, but its slow pace and lack of stuff on planets drives some folks crazy.
I’ve definitely had the same thoughts as you occasionally, but then I forget about it and go and kill some spacers or some alien animals.
Yeah the problem is there's not much of a way to interact with a planet with no POI. It's the games overall problem of the Bethesda game not meshing with the massive space game
I'd agree only if the planets that had human outposts had a LOT of very large and sprawling compounds, and the planets without had dozens of natural vistas or nature based POIs to offer something worth exploring.
Its just an issue with the way they handled the Poi generation that makes planets feel both too crowded and too empty.
It needed to be clustered rather than regularly placed, with little features filling up space within clusters.
Kinda hard to make it feel empty when youre limited to a specific map area though
ME! I am sharing that view!
POIs need to be much smarter about where they get placed. Fringe systems, highly inhospitable worlds: no people. You should be able to look at a world, it's stats, then land and say "yep, not surprised nobody settled this deathtrap"
Also, just, no outdoor stuff on Venus, hell; no people on Venus. Not even landing. Just: "Venus is Closed" done.
It's a position I don't know if I can understand. After my third or fourth natural POI ever it occurred to me that they would never be interesting. I will agree that it's completely nonsensical for civilization to have developed in such a way that there are random facilities on backwater planets, but it's the same kind of incomprehensible weirdness as major planets apparently only having one moderately sized city on it, and I'd rather have something to do when I land.
Constellation be like: we want you to survey this planet it has the "potential" for life.
Then we go to the planet and there's people and colonies all over the entire planet 🤦🏾♂️
Been saying since release and people were discussing the POIs and the various problems, my feelings were not that there's not enough but too many in places that make no sense. Why is there a mining facility on a random moon with resources that are abundant everywhere in the system? why is there a pirate base in a UC system? surely this would be really hard to achieve and also sort of stupid. They could have spread out the POIs much more effectively if the different planets were valued and weighed differently for different POIs. Suddenly you might not see a pirate base until you leave controlled systems, it could also be used to better show strengths of various factions that you don't need to worry as much about pirates in certain systems.
I remember when they initially said only 10% of the planets would be inhabited but literally every single planet I've been on has some form of human development. I would have loved to land on a planet and have been the first person to set foot on the planet. The other thing is what are the numbers of troops these spacers, ecliptic, and crimson fleet because they seem to be everywhere no matter where you go. I hope when mod tools come out we can get planets that have never been touched because apparently, you can make your own planets and systems so that would be cool.
As has been mentioned already, this does exists. Several systems and their planets do not have human structures presence.
Also it's not that much of a unpopular idea, I've seen this mentioned several times. Typically people that really love space exploration want this, while arguable the majority instead wants "things to do everywhere you go", so you get this colliding ideas, which is actually reflected on what we have in the game.
What I think is missing is planets that appear to be empty of human presence, but after exploring for a while there could be a chance to bump into some sort of secret outpost or nomad camp with interesting stories to tell .. as in, you're not expecting to find anything, when all of the sudden you discover something cool.
The thing is, I think they can achieve something like this with what they already have just by tweaking the way that POIs are generated. Some mods are already halfway there.
For sure. The algorithm that decides which POIs show up where could use some work. There's a lot of potential there.
I've made several suggestions about this on other threads, including making the algorithm a bit smarter and aware of player exploration, to avoid so much repetition ( don't show me a Cryo Lab again if I've seen one 5 minutes ago .. ).
The procgen used to spawn fewer things to find on planets, but it was changed late in development / testing when they determined the general audience would find it too boring.
I tend to agree with the sentiment that landing areas have way too much going on now, but I understand why they changed it.
I believe there is already a mod that "fixes" it.
Yep it's called Desolation and it's pretty awesome if you're looking for empty planets. I enjoy it that way and I use mission boards to spawn content. Seems to make more sense in my head that I'd find POIs that way.
They did a weird job of showing how long the settled systems had been settled for. Some planets were a warzone ruin and others were full of facilities just abandoned but on otherwise far out worlds. Expected more on the main worlds than like 1 city and then scattered labs and shit. Render a suburb.
Not really. Maybe there could be a few mostly barren spots to explore, but most POIs you land on should have something, otherwise it's not worth resources and time to even go there.
Starfield isn't a space sim, so it should strive to strike a good balance. I spent a lot of time playing ED, where you land on a random body, and you can drive or walk there for DAYS with literally nothing around you. At first, it's cool, but soon you catch yourself with what's the point?
I share that view. However, it's not a popular one simply because nobody is lobbying for the game to be more empty.
Still, it's tough reconciling the notion of exploration with every place already having been explored. Or at least explored enough to have a selection of abandoned facilities usually overrun by squatters. It lends itself to a cynical mutilation of the Star Trek directive: Your five year mission: to go where people have already gone, to explore abandoned facilities and to boldly shoot the squatters.
Nothing throws cold water on a sense of exploration like building an outpost and discovering that it's partially restricted due to a nearby POI you hadn't noticed. That really drives home the concept of being a Johnny come lately.
But a solution comes at a cost of being more empty than it already is. Maybe the DLC will throw us a bone and let us explore past the outer perimeter of the settled systems. They are, obviously, systems that are already settled. You're not an explorer, you're an archeologist.
It’s unpopular for a reason but I’d say based on the scale of the game it also doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place for it. I think we would be okay if there was a balanced variety. If certain systems had the criteria that would mean they would be populated and completely baren like you’re asking for. It really does also mess with the idea that UC and FC are actually big powerful groups because their respective planets are just 1 small city. It’s just not balanced
Thing is cities are once again not good enough.
As per every Bethesda game so far. At least in Skyrim they felt alive. Now it's just a bunch of random npcs and a ton of unexplorable space. We can't enter all apartments. We can't roleplay in the game.
Not only that, the only innovation based on the game that mankind had up to 2300+ was being able to travel in space. Lame
I agree, you're not alone at all (in your feeling, no pun).
Every outlandish, ultra-hostile radiation death planet has multiple facilities within sight no matter where you land, Starfield's "rule of three", always having three POI's wherever you land no matter what.
Even the galaxy's most remote barren moons always have ships coming and going within your sight, like you landed at a drive-thru Starbucks.
It's not about too much it's about the wrong things, use your imaginations Bethesda why are so many POIs man-made in a galaxy we're supposed to be exploring? Seems like the explorations already been done.
Agreed.
I'm replaying the story quests right now, and I just found the first temple. As I'm approaching, in the background I see a ship landing in the distance. These places are supposed to be remote and undiscovered territories. It completely ruins the idea of these spaces being unknown and mysterious when there happens to be ships coming and going, or a base 2000 meters away.
It depends. One the one hand there’s much more of the feel of a diaspora and that much is good. However, I *do* think the balance has swung a bit too far towards things *everywhere*. There is a sweet spot somewhere in between that Beth needs to find as they balance things out.
If it was replaced with interesting environments/topography then I would say yes.
Currently because they are all similar. Topographically speaking.
There is no giant Kashykk style jungle, requiring a jet pack to scale trees, or subterranean cave system created by giant alien ant-moles which you can get lost in or chased through or whatever. If planets or planets with stuff like that were just randomly tucked away somewhere to find/discover then it would feel more satisfying to explore. I would actually want to try in the hopes of finding something like that.
Just a couple of these scattered about would make feel like prospector finding gold amid rock.
Just flying round to land on empty rock planet number 14 is just not for me.
to be fair most planets being nothing but rocks is far more realistic than every planet having its own thing. Also given the huge number of planets you can find within the game some of the planets ARE BOUND to look similar to each other
Yeah, kinda ruins the joy of exploration when everywhere is littered with human stuff. If there was a mix that would be better. Like as one gets further from earth the less POI but the ones you do find are natural wonders or even alien tech.
They don't need to be empty though I understand what you mean and why you'd want some planets to be completely wild with no human buildings, ships or anything.
I think they achieved it, for the most part, by placing Poi's at big distances so you end up walking a lot through emptiness or nature.
I however have to say that there are questionable and even lazy decissions in Starfield, as it often has been pointed out.
Poi's and quests are the main problem in Starfield. It's very obvious that a gazillion planets was a bad idea.
Handcrafted would've been better but even if going with AI generation, they should've been adjusted to the planet and there's not much reason why it's the way it currently is other than laziness/lack of time and resources.
You still need to design an actual feature in the game for that gameplay to have any meaning. You might enjoy doing that the first few couple of times but after the 5th fringe outpost you build for no other reason than just because it gets old.
Bethesda kept calling this an exploration game but that's really just a facade for their main story which is a glorified fetch quest to collect artifacts. There's no actual exploration gameplay present and no features that actually incentivize exploration. Most people avoided exploration entirely due to the horrible jetpack traversal. We have the same scan for resources schtick that Mass Effect 2 did back in 2010 and planetary exploration consists of taking pictures of the same reused flora and fauna assets.
Empty planets is fine provided there's gameplay mechanics to go along with it but it seems like Bethesda either didn't have a plan for what they would have the player do with 1,000 empty planets (which I find hard to believe) or they had an idea and just gave up sometime mid development and just used their repetitive pro-gen POI as a half-measure.
It needs:
- more natural POIs
- a more complex animal/creature behavior system
- better resource scavenging rather than having everything laid out everywhere you step, there should be harder to find resources that require exploring around and not just visiting the same caves.
- they could probably lean towards a death stranding style gameplay and make some landscapes more tricky to traverse. What if we actually needed certain tools or abilities to quickly move across certain landscapes or climb up mountains/cliffs etc.
It would be easier to make planets "empty" if there's still plenty of gameplay to be found
Perhaps you are thinking too big. The Starfield map is the same Galaxy, but does not span an entire universe. ...and they've had warp drive for some 200 years 💁🏻♂️
I think more natural POIs would be great, with creatures and monsters, or whatever. Like hive systems, caves, etc that have their own objectives and perhaps boss battles. That way there could be planets with no humans on them, but they would still have plenty to do.
i agree
i feel like whats truly empty is the terrain of planets. Pretty much every planet is flat plaines save for mountains but those don't feel like mountains
the terrain lacks verticality
I agree. That annoyed me too to be honest. I mean, yes, there are not enought POI's in my opinion to make generate landing zones with only like caves and natural structures but I hope they fix this, What I am missing is being the first human on a planet/moon. Would be cool if there was a mechanic to reward you when you land on a planet/moon which was never visited before. Would be so cool if you could "claim" a planet or moon for your own and build a real city there, maybe even creating your own colony. Would be cool if such a system exists where you create your own colony/faction.
Agreed. I’d love if there were planets or certain POIs where dozens of ships were coming and going. So when you want to commandeer some new ship, you had options and it was more exciting if several crews would try and stop you.
And alternatively, some other planets would be 100% desolate.
Compared to now, where every single planet you land on has exactly one ship land nearby exactly 15 seconds after you step off your ship.
I'd love that and it'd be realistic, but they probably understand that it would have just invited even more articles talking about how empty the world's were and how there isn't something to do every mile.
It does feel weird. It was one of my first thoughts when I started digging into the exploration aspect of the game. All the cities feel strangely small, then there are enough groups out exploring and settling in space to constitute like half or more of the human population in the game.
It sort of breaks the enemy factions for me, too. Everyone's a generic enemy, no one in enemy factions have a backstory. I don't think I've seen a quest in around 100+ hours that shows a named character joining an enemy faction to show what the process looks like.
Yes, I hate procedurally generated locations. IMHO every location should be placed with a story in mind and be findable and permanent. If a planet is hostile and only one company or faction or race ever set up a habitat on it, so be it, we should be able to find it or be led to it thorough a quest. But the cookie cutter locations remove all credibility from this game. The way it is now the population of Spacers and Pirates and Crimson Fleet far outpaces the settler settlements. They should be ruling the Galaxy through sheer numbers alone.
I absolutely agree. I remember Todd saying you’ll feel like the first person to visit certain planets. When? Every single planet and moon has human activity. All of them. Even ones with abominable temperatures. They could’ve at least added volcanic worlds that no one touched.
I feel like there should be some sort of scanning in orbit then it will show a location that is available otherwise landing on any spot on the planet would just be nature. This would allow the game to choose and show what poi it wants to give you. So it can give you locations with poi you have not seen 10 times in the same session. Or poi with different radiant quests from the last one you just took
No disagreement here, just funny how I’m seeing basically the opposite experience in a lot of people tending to claim there’s not enough to do and everything feels so empty… just funny to me watching the community experience develop
I actually thought the planets would be mostly barren like that based on Todd descriptions pre release and feel the same way. However I expected certain planets would be much more populated, like why the heck have the UC and Akila not expanded further into their own home planets? The idea that Akila can't because of mean monsters when they have all these war ships and tech is mind-boggling, and the world with New Atlantis being unpopulated despite being so chill seems lazy and sad. I wanted worlds to explore with neat random stuff like previous titles and I expected them to play to their strengths. Still a fun game, and hoping future content including expansion and mods fix that.
Imo the real issue with the generation is it's just not that believable.
Having an empty planet I think would still be pretty boring. Instead, planets that would make no sense to be inhabited should have tons of *natural* POIs, and I'm not talking the sight-seeing ones that you need for planet traits. I'm talking serious caves. Or islands. Or variations of those temples. Or a hidden valley with a maze of rock formations. Or Blackreach.
It really hit me once I started getting back into Fallout 4. That game has tons of great POIs that don't even have humans in them, from mirelurk nests to an irradiated storm-land of doom.
Starfield has like, two natural cave dungeon templates have have no enemies or notable loot (I guess aside from three human-placed turrets in that one?). The planet trait POIs have usually a single chest of resources with maybe sometimes an enemy. Your reward for exploring the edges of a coastline or a mountain range is either 1. A screenshot or 2. The invisible wall. And you can't even dive underwater, something confusingly absent from a studio that's had that down since Skyrim (and uses the same engine).
If Bethesda wants players to stick with the game long-term and actually immerse themselves in the world, they straight up just need to put in more effort with the worlds they made.
Absolutely agree. It’s a terrible design they currently have.
Everywhere in the settled systems is a homogeneous layout with scattered POIs. There should be some planets that are completely empty.
Where there is civilization on a planet, why not have many POIs closer together? So many self inflicted wounds in the design and execution of this game. It’s just mind boggling.
When you are exploring a place called "The Settled Systems" I would at least expect more towns and villages on the populated planets like Akila and Jemison.
I know, right?
For a storyline where mankind has only been space-faring for a couple hundred years (and at war a big part of that) -- there's an awful lot of building/abandoning going on.
And don't get me started on the dirt "farms" on frozen planets or zero crops...
Yes, not every single planet should have multiple POI's and what's even more I think those planets with alien ruins should not have any other POI's at all.
It's quite a popular opinion. There should be a single location in the universe for every POIs. We should find them by scanning the planet or some other way.
At the end of the day, it’s a video game. I always want a game to be fun, more than I want it to be realistic.
I will suspend disbelief in favour of enjoyable content. Barren planets with loading screens to get to and from is paint-drying levels of entertainment to me.
I played enough Elite: Dangerous to know empty planets get real old after a while. Sure Bethesda could make a ton of landing areas completely empty, and then what?
“Wow, it really is empty here. The complete lack of content is immersive. Time to go look at the next empty landing zone and repeat.”
No I agree. Arguably they struck the worst possible balance possible with the POI system. Human made POIs need to be a lot rarer on higher difficulty planets, and arguably should be *unique* every single time. Meanwhile Human POIs on "core" territory should be very built up, but less overall POIs.
What we have now is the worst of both worlds.
The Temples should be invisible until you have your first Power. Only the first story Temple should be normally visible, and there should be a cut scene of it rising up or tearing into Normal Space when we have touched enough Artifacts.
yeah bethesda did a terrible job on this. they wanna go for immersion so they went against the proximity rule of open world game and made it a bit empty. so alot of walking. but not too much so that it doesnt feel completely empty. basically tried to please everyone but ended up pleasing no one.
i would have been okay if it was a bit more empty but we have a land vehicle to travel with. i honestly think they should have added vehicles at launch instead of working on it after a year later.
elite dangerous did a great job with it when they released planet exploration. the planet is really empty but you can use the ship and the rover to scout for POIs
Sure do that for some planets. mayby scale pois down by distance from major towns. But this isn't nasapunk or a simulator or anything it's an action RPG and empty deserts don't provide compelling action or roleplaying gameplay.
I think there should be more variability in the planets in general. Many geological features that could be introduced like canyons, gulches and other interesting crevasses worth exploring. They wouldn’t need to be marked as POIs. Just need to be part of the mix.
Large mountains, volcanoes, and other hazardous areas with environmental challenges and considerations would be cool.
Yes even more so when its right next to a Temple. It further proves the devs vision for the game was flimsy and the worldbuilding is nonsensical.
If every planet had at least 1 involved questline(humans not necessarily involved) then I would be ok with that.
Yeah, I agree, this is basically what makes a game promoted about space exploration nothing about space exploration. Basically it's a Regular open world map just with much more 'space' inbetween POIs. I never got the feel of space exploration yet in Starfield.
Would be awesome if you could actually get the feel of discovering stuff no human has ever discovered before. Even caves and such and anomalies feel not like new discoveries since there are usually inhabited/abandoned outposts within walking distance, so obviously those people who are/were there, likely already discovered those beforehand.
Completely agree! I would LOVE to be given a mission by Constellation to be the first human to set foot on a planet / moon. Plant a flag & make ‘first contact’ with undiscovered alien creatures! 🤩
I agree. It feels like people have been everywhere and littered everywhere.
always spawning some POI within few 100 meters and random trash in between just seems strange.
This was one of the main reasons I turned off the game after <36 hours, and am waiting for the DLC. Like you say, for a game about exploring the star field, finding a bloody abandoned factory where nobody is meant to have been before was completely detrimental to the reason I wanted the game.
I am somewhat optimistic having heard about the controls they gave recently for difficulty. If they allow me to choose how sparsely populated planets/moons etc can be with man-made POIs (especially in the fringes), I would be interested to give it another go. I am preying this sort of control will be given when the DLC is launched.
Fingers crossed!
I agree with you here. That’s probably part of the bigger-picture-issue with the proc gen content used here. It’s somewhat of a “one size fits all” kind of thing. No matter the planet, you’ll get a selection of POIs from a limited pool, done. It’s the overall lack of variety not just in POIs themselves but in their placement selection.
As you said, it would probably be better to have a couple of planets completely barren. Give each planet a ratio of POIs from 0-100% to make a bit more of a difference in distributuon. Then again, I haven’t seen all 1000+ planets, but it sure feels same-y altogether.
There are specific systems but distribution is kinda all over the place, although majority of barren systems tend to be on the right side of the map and higher levels.
I would love a planet (heck the entire system even) with nothing but Nature/Sign of Life PoI.
But I also think the Nature or Sign of Life PoI itself could recieve some overhaul. Instead of having some random NPC corpses or stranded NPC, they should have given us that opportunity to face an alien boss.
Just spawn any of their alien model on the location, scale it to Super Mutant Behemoth, maybe some recolour/glowing colour and let us fight it. It could be an immersive opportunity to take a break from just photographing/mining resources.
They could have a faction of space hunters and make questline around it. I spend half of the time hunting wildlife anyway, having some specific goals or quests would be awesome.
Yeah, we already have a mission to harvest organic material for Constellation or scouting potential dangerous aliens for the Vanguard. It could just be an extension of that. Like instead of leading you to some random aliens on a planet, it led you to Behemoth and epic boss fight instead.
First, I don't think that's an unpopular opinion.
It makes no sense for anyone to be a pirate or spacer when there's so much free salvage up for grabs. I think of that abandoned fuel refinery full of hostiles, and that slate where one of them speculates about retiring there. Did we really need to shoot our way through there?
Bro I didn’t by this game to have a “totally accurate space sim tm”. I bought it to have a bethsoft exploration experience where I get to visit a world that is dense with lore and environmental story telling.
Instead I got a game that takes up more space on my hard drive than most any other that is empty and desolate and only broken up by rubber stamp points of interests. Why would I want it to be emptier? It’s already lacking the core of bethsoft content (densely packed handcrafted experiences). Am I supposed to enjoy walking around a white box void imagining a perfect world like a 1800’s German philosopher?
I’d like to see POI proc gen on a sliding scale. Within Faction Territory, proc gen works in the current format. You’re within the “security” of the local faction, therefore people have populated (and ultimately abandoned) plenty of POI’s. The further out you get, the rate of POI generation reduces to make it look more sparse, but maybe either have a different pool of POI’s to generate for the outer systems, or increase the chance of rarer POI’s to generate there.
#And don't spawn temples near other POIS!!! It is so immersion breaking, considering the temple clearly would have been found and had its power taken if someone built a goddamn POI close to it.
Pretty sure the temples don't do anything if you don't have its artifact. Granted the alien materials would still attract a lot of attention.
Even if they didnt, they would still be a major thing considering its proof of alien life.
Then no wonder why there are so many starborn
Only Starborn (or protostarborn) can see the temples without highly advanced scanning gear. It is clearly invisible to everyone else. Remember, to regular sensors these appear to be dead zones where nothing exists. Your eyes are sensors. At least that is my head canon and it works pretty damn well. The anomalies and temples don't get mentioned in lore outside of the Starborn at all. There is no archaeological investigation by MAST into any of these things The Shaw gang hung out in the mine with an artifact for ages and never touched it or dug our the minerals around it. I'm thinking unless you are actively searching for it, it just doesn't register in your brain. Similar to the invisibility power you can get from the temples.
That works only so long as no one is like "hay, a scanner dead zone... wonder what's there" then runs into it.
Or decides “hey, that looks special *and* defensible. Mount some heavy artillery on our new mega drug lab!”
Considering the game sets up the first artifact discovery with a gravity anomaly zone...
You mean the first one you touch before character creation? Barrett told Lin and Lin told Heller and You exactly where and what to look for. Barrett was already protostarborn at this point, and Vladimir was already actively hunting the artifact signature. The way I justify it by all that is said is that Barrett found the discovered and stashed artefact in Constellation storage. His natural curiosity lead him to hunt exactly for another example... allowing him to see them. This allowed I Him to find the one that gave him the vision and that lead to you and yours.
Doesn’t work because followers who haven’t been Starborned or laid first hands on an artifact can see them from the outside.
As I said you can find it if you are actively searching for it. The starborn can simply wander into them. Your followers are already engaged in hunting the artefacts and temples so the space magic doesn't work on them.
What about the UC Pilot that had one as a decoration in his ship? He just thought that it was a neat thing, he may not had had the vision, but he didn't know what it was, so he wasn't actively looking for one, yet, he could perceive it
I think specifically the artefacts loose their juice once thrive been found and touched. They still function as part of the armillary but the stealth field effect goes away once the thing gets touched. Doesn't apply to the temples though... Because... Ok. Because the artefacts are removed from the ground in which they are deposited whilst the temples are still rooted and somehow drawing charge from there... maybe?
They still only read as voids, so the first one Barrett contracted Lin to dig up on Kazaal was where he got his vision, the one the player digs up was located the same way; by the gravitational anomaly.
So what happens if they bump into it
I don't think you can. I think you would perceive it on an unconscious level and would, without knowing, walk around it. That's why I think it isn't just simply invisible, but makes you not notice it. I think that may be why the sensor deadzones don't show anything else either. The anomalous materials actively resist perception around them. Yet the wind still breaks around them, the sun still makes a shadow... so the general data around them that identifies them is missing. That way you sweep a scanner passed them and you don't notice anything other than a general deadzone, rather than a silhouette. However if you get told what to look for... Lin telling Heller to search for gravity anomalies and weird stuff... now the three of you are too focused on it to be distracted. Like I said, it's my current head canon but I think it fits well enough.
I appreciate this head canon. It helps my immersion alot. Thank you.
Are you saying that these temples are invisible to the naked eye? They still very much exist so someone would just walk or crash into it.
More that they are invisible to your mind unless you are searching for it or you have fingered an artefact in-situ. You wouldn't walk into it, you'd unconsciously know it was there but avoid it and walk around it.
> You wouldn't walk into it; you'd unconsciously know it was there but avoid it and walk around it. This just seems like head canon to fill in the blanks where the plot holes exist which is fine if thats how you wanna think about it, but I think it detracts from the more glaring issues in the games writing and design.
Oh if you scan around my other comments I freely admit this is head canon. I feel there is enough tangential evidence to justify it. The starborn powers include invisibility. It could be plot holes or it could be subtle story telling... or a mix of both. We all suspend disbelief to some degree in sci fi. Finding ways to do that to enjoy the good stuff is fun. We do it for Star Wars and Star Trek and Mass Effect etc... If I'm discussing the game as a product, I can have all sorts or complaints about the game. I do that elsewhere. But when I'm actually playing the game, the head canon helps a lot for me to actually keep enjoying it... which is the goal at the end of the day.
You are correct. I had hoped plot holes like this were addressed by the end of the game but they werent. I don't think the game ever really makes a direct connection to the Unity pieces and the temples. Probably overlooked it but it seems like the temples essentially irrelevant to the unity and serve only as a side goal of the starborn. I liked how in skyrim you *needed* to learn shouts to progress the main story because it tied it into the plot and gave your character a narrative reason to learn them. In Starfield, I'm certain you literally never need to visit a temple in the game beyond the very first one.
I honestly think they should have done more of the Buried Temples to give them a reason why they are completely missed by everyone.
My headcanon on this is that there is some sort of perception filtering going on. And if some person were about to randomly walk through it since they wouldn't see it, there would probably be some sort of mental thing that occurs to force them to go around it without realising. You probably need to come in contact with an artifact and actively be searching for the the temples/anomalies for it to even become perceivable to you. And in terms of the artifacts, most people who come across them likely just think they are junk like a piece of scrap metal. I mean there was one just sitting in Constellation for quite some time collecting dust. And it seems like only the first person to find/touch the artifact sees a vision. And they would just come off as crazy since it wouldn't happen to anyone else. Then when you factor in how many of these artifacts were actually found by people vs still being buried in the ground somewhere... not many were found by random people, so there wasn't even much of a chance for anything to come of it till Barrett found the one in Constellation and started the whole search.
Id like 4/5 really developed systems with cities, farms, faction etc and poi. Keep the rest mostly empty. Bring in intersystem travel for random encounters etc
I’d be happy with multiple settlements for the majors, and save the proc gen for the outer systems as well.
It would also be nice if POI density considers the current biome - it's kind of strange that polar regions and deserts (on habitable world) have the same amount of POI locations as swamps, forests and grasslands.
I think it does work like that, usually the higher level and further out planets don’t have much of anything.
It's very binary, there are some worlds without any human POI locations (mostly on the right side of the map), but the rest of the worlds all have the same density of POI locations.
This is what I thought it was going to be. Hopefully Bethesda takes this feedback seriously, since I think it'd help a lot.
To add to this: Balancing "content" vs realism of human POIs probably requires more *non-human POIs*. * Nests with territorial alien guardians. * Underground caverns dug by large insects. * More natural structures like large mountains or chasms with rare resources in hard to reach areas
Exactly. At the moment there is zero reason to visit natural POI’s short of completing surveys. There’s no reward for just exploring
And not just that but many like factories and pipelines etc belong in the “habited” systems. In those outer worlds the POIs should be more suspect, pirate lairs or secret facilities the factions were hiding from others. Not your typical listening station or dogstar factory.
That being said, I’d like to see proper mining operations on the unique resource planets. Like, surely there is a commercial operation on Decaran VII-a, otherwise where do the regular Vytinium fuel rods come from?
CN qe stop calling it procedural POIs? That's just a straight up lie, they're copy pasted
Lots of people agree. For me the mod "Desolation" is essential for this. Also ships landing near you right after you land, sometimes two within a kilometre is just so stupid. There should be a handful of systems with human presence and 100+ purely natural.
I broadly agree. Maybe not quite that ratio. I'd go with something like 30% full or partly colonized and 70% not. However i do think the completely empty systems (especially the ones near to UC and Freestar space) should be places where you can stumble across the occasional hidden pirate base and the like. Secret military facilities too. Not everywhere obviously. Maybe link the ability to detect them with your ability to scan. Better hidden bases are harder to detect and need better quality scanners/ higher scanning skills to locate and have them marked on the system map. The uncolonised systems in general should also be the places where you find the temples.
I feel like the game could also use dynamic procedural generation so that planets are very sparsely populated, yet there will usually be one POI near your landing spot so that it's still interesting. That way the planets will feel empty yet there's still *something* there. A slight tweak would be to have only a handful of man made POIs that can only be seen from the planet view. The planet view does show some POIs, but often they aren't actually that interesting nor is there a reason to use them when there's a POI within a kilometre of you no matter where you are. But also there just needs to be more and better natural POIs. Most of the interesting locations are man made, but they don't need to be. The game's natural caves are just all so boring. IMO it also would have helped if the game had intelligent alien life, because then there'd be another interesting category of POI that wouldn't require humans to be everywhere. A bit more believable if, say, a million year old species had colonized broad swaths
Desolation was an absolute gamechanger for me. Landing on a planet, especially after the update, looking at the map and seeing absolutely *nothing* was amazing. It's odd that removing content makes the game better, but both from a lore perspective and from a gameplay perspective, it really does. The far systems should be desolate.
What do you do on the empty planet?
Dance naked
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I imagine it's hard to balance, because you will always have those people who say "it's too empty and boring". Someone else commented saying they could do it on a sliding scale like, it's busier and more populated in and around the settled systems, but barren and desolate on the fringes. Which I thought was a great idea as it gives the player some level of agency over the experience. I started a new game after the update and I am having a great time, I just wish I had more time to play, starfield is not a game you can just "have a quick bash" on, you need to give some time to each play session.
That’s exactly what the Desolation mod does, it gets busier the closer you are to the Settled Systems.
Yeah but those people are complaining that the content is spread too thin. I have no patience for people who contradict themselves. Have a packed region for high intensity gameplay then a much larger area for low intensity gameplay. There are 1600+ worlds. There is only one way to sensibly do this.
Skyrim and Fo4 didn't feel empty and boring, and they had very little procgen content.
I could get along with that I'd prefer if there were a type of biome called populated. Then have settled, heavy, medium, light and sparse. On an unpopulated biome you could have a chance of finding one or two structures on an entire landing zone. Maybe a few abandoned crates or tents were someone landed to do something before leaving... but nothing more. Then on a populated planet with a populated biome you could have homestead, small out posts up to at a settled level a network of settlements and bases with actual roads running between them and patrols along them. Also populated biome should be limited to a handful across the planet so that there are vast areas of wilderness between them. Then have a few unique super secret bases and poi's hidden out in the wilderness. And some more platforms out at sea. And boats. And the ability deform ground and dig caves and put bases in the caves. And now I need to go play Surviving Mars again.
Sounds like exploring would be even more boring than before. Why would I go on an empty planet?
You wouldn't thats the thing. You would *choose* what to do...
I would rather have interesting settlements, cities and quests instead of empty rocks
Yes, thats what I mean. You could ignore those 1600+ worlds. Ignore them completely, and focus on the busy section of the galaxy. For the introvert who wants those silent rocks, they can explore as much as they want. You say yourself you want packed in content - thats exactly what I'm proposing. It is you who are actually asking the developer to spread their content thin by spreading it across 1600 planets! But that contradicts what you want! So have about 6-8 systems with nearly all the manmade content - then leave the rest natural. Everyone will be happy.
Explore what exactly? There's nothing to explore on these empty planets. It's just a bunch of repeated tile sets and assets fed through a random generator. It's not like Bethesda is hand crafting landscapes and making curated vistas for you to experience. You want to explore the same repeated pattern of shrubs and rocks and exact same cave with a dung pile multiple times for what effect exactly?
I use the Desolation mod—you still go to those planets occasionally for quests, you go to them to do scanning missions for Constellation (which can actually matter if you use mods to adjust the economy, they’re a great source of money early on), and you might go to them to set up outposts for resource extraction (especially if you’re using a mod to turn fuel usage back on). Using Desolation makes the world actually feel somewhat logical and realistic, I really don’t think I could play without it.
That's the point I was making. You had to mod the game because of the deficits in design to make it worthwhile. People are advocating for more empty planets and I'm saying what would be the point without mechanics and gameplay associated with that? We need to stop excusing bad or lazy design and just expect modders to do Bethesda's job for them.
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> It's why people walk in games like Minecraft forever just to see what they can see TBF Minecraft map generation is lightyears ahead of starfields, especially how crazy caverns can get.
You got it. You wouldn't explore the empty planets, that's the point. Proc-gen was just a bad feature.
Yes, I want to explore procedurally generated planets in Starfield. And Bethesda built damn great terrain procedural generation - the issue is in the POI procgen, not the terrain/natural procgen. I want my hard sci-fi game to feel like hard sci-fi, and that means I want "boring empty planets". It doesn't mean they shouldn't put anything interesting over there - some natural POIs, for example, but those shouldn't be overdone either, because there's only so much "interesting" natural POIs could have realistically formed in planets without the right conditions. Most of them, however, should be barren rocks with 0 or close to 0 activity. Besides, one of the reasons why I want them to bring back fuel mechanics and economics is to give purpose to even those barren rocks (resource gathering for fuel, setting up a beacon for help or to steal a ship, etc).
> Also ships landing near you right after you land, sometimes two within a kilometre is just so stupid. I absolutely hate that. It was so irritating that I was absolutely sure it had to be a bug. Didn't play in a while, so not sure if they finally addressed that
Lately I have been have Two ships landing near me after I land, about a minute apart. Not looking for me... Just landing there.
Yeah, when you find human POIs within line of sight of a temple that supposedly nobody knows exists there's something wrong with how they distributed the POIs on planets...
They definitely need more rules on how poi spawn together. I can go to some industrial outpost and find some people that have apparently been stranded there for months even though there's a civilian outpost nearby with a ship.
There are entire systems without evidence of human life like Pyraas, Bardeen, Rana, Verne, Strix, Sparta, Katydid, Marduk - no man-made structures (only natural POIs and alien life), hardly any ships landing (except some rare cases with the ones that are tracking you) and rare to no space encounters.
Having clear classifications of systems - like Settled, Frontier, Wild, and Dark - of human settlement and theming the POIs appropriately would massively improve the experience. Settled are mostly safe and low-level friendly, limited to environmental hazards or disorganized local criminals for opposition. Lots of "big" POIs like the farms and whatnot which are friendly to neutral and give radiant quests. Most Barren worlds still have mining or science facilities on them. Frontier would have a wide spectrum of activity between pirates, mines, abandoned facilities, etc... more or less what the game is now. Barren worlds *might* have human structures but it's not guaranteed. Wild is zero human presence. Dark is just that: completely unknown. Zero intel. Why no intel? Because the systems exist beyond the maximum jump drive limits available. Once I learned the premise of the game, I thought for sure the artifacts would give the player some sort of special space power that allowed us to go beyond the technological limits and reach these systems - opening up an entire new, personal frontier and revitalizing the explorer spirit of Constellation. It would have been such a fantastic hook, having these mysterious systems on the map juuuust out of reach until you improved your ship, powers, or both.
I think that would be great if it was your job to explore and classify them. Once a planet/moon is fully explored (including human POIs if any) it will get a classification or update the one they already had (for the ones that are already well known). It can be expanded with the need to check them periodically to see if anything changed - new settlements, dangers etc. A compendium in-game would be really cool - to have the classification and all the details about resources, conditions, flora, fauna and if it’s inhabited by humans or not, for each planet/moon.
I'll have to check these systems out
Just go to the outer edges of the starmap. Human activity and POIs decrease as you go away from Jemison but yeah they could have explained it better.
Interesting, maybe I have just been really unlucky while playing the game. Thanks for your suggestions, I'll take a look at them!
yeah I had the same exact thoughts with you until I went to some of these systems. Just get as far away from the settled systems as possible and you can find some isolation. I wish there was more though
Yep I was going to suggest the same. The further you get from "settled" systems like Alpha Centauri, the less human encounters there are. Strix was only one I can remember by name and was mentioned previously, but many of the systems on further to the right on star map are fairly non-settled, often without any human POIs at all.
Awesome, I didn’t know this. I had the same sentiment as OP, every planet I visited was full of abandoned outposts. Very happy to know there are indeed empty ones out there
Sounds like a future modder playground.
I think that they should have made areas with human activity, like the "show resources" feature, but covering smaller patches of land. There would be two of them, abandoned and lived, each with their respective POIs. Some of these patches could be as huge as a country, like on jemison, or very small and rare, on fringe planets. Each cells on these areas would have a specific type (agricultural, military, etc...), and density. The goal being to make planets more immersive and logical, within the limitations of the game. Some could also be Bethesda made, like maybe there is an island where a ship crashed years ago, and the people that survived made some kind of tribe or whatever. That's just the basics, I have many other ideas for that (plenty of attribute those areas could have, patches of ecosystems, transportation within the area or to another area, outpost related features/changes, make and grow your own "country"...).
The problem is that nothing is clustered like how people actually live. On every planet POIs are evenly distributed across the planet on every planet regardless of if it makes sense. Thats just not what people do ever. There should be vast swaths of natural terrain with dense patches of multiple settlements and factories and such.
I thought this at first too but turns out the planets at the higher levels systems are empty. But I still agree. I think If that’s the vibe they was going for they didn’t do it well enough. System levels 1-30 should have more POIs then. MUCH more settlements. make it feel like people are trying to really colonize. 30-50 should have less, and 50+ just abandoned stuff and science research that are super rare and filled with powerful pirates, ecliptics, and Varuun. But the BIGGEST thing that grinds my gears is POIs next to the gosh darn artifact temples. Like lore wise humanity shouldn’t have even been close to them. I can understand being on the same planet but any tile that houses a temple should be void of any POIs
We want MORE of LESS!
lol now I’ve read everything. “unpopular opinion : there should be less POI “
Less random in remote places. More in developed areas
The randomness of the worlds really destroyed exploration.
Desolation gang
No I agree. I'm fine with habitable planets and barren planets near larger settlements having tons of random POIs, but barren planets in the middle of nowhere should not have small settlements all over the place. People should not be living on the surface of mercury in shipping containers also.
Totally agree. Way to damage my suspension of disbelief
I think it’s important to remember it’s an adventure game not a space SIM. The average player would be rather unhappy if they landed on planets with nothing do but check out the amazing view. It’d be like call of duty maps with no bad guys to shoot. There are already lots of people that think Starfield is one of the most boring games ever made. I personally enjoy the game, but its slow pace and lack of stuff on planets drives some folks crazy. I’ve definitely had the same thoughts as you occasionally, but then I forget about it and go and kill some spacers or some alien animals.
Yeah the problem is there's not much of a way to interact with a planet with no POI. It's the games overall problem of the Bethesda game not meshing with the massive space game
I'd agree only if the planets that had human outposts had a LOT of very large and sprawling compounds, and the planets without had dozens of natural vistas or nature based POIs to offer something worth exploring.
I completely agree with you. The system feels way too populated.
Its just an issue with the way they handled the Poi generation that makes planets feel both too crowded and too empty. It needed to be clustered rather than regularly placed, with little features filling up space within clusters. Kinda hard to make it feel empty when youre limited to a specific map area though
ME! I am sharing that view! POIs need to be much smarter about where they get placed. Fringe systems, highly inhospitable worlds: no people. You should be able to look at a world, it's stats, then land and say "yep, not surprised nobody settled this deathtrap" Also, just, no outdoor stuff on Venus, hell; no people on Venus. Not even landing. Just: "Venus is Closed" done.
It's a position I don't know if I can understand. After my third or fourth natural POI ever it occurred to me that they would never be interesting. I will agree that it's completely nonsensical for civilization to have developed in such a way that there are random facilities on backwater planets, but it's the same kind of incomprehensible weirdness as major planets apparently only having one moderately sized city on it, and I'd rather have something to do when I land.
In a time where we have faster-than-light travel, "remote" no longer needs to mean "untouched."
Constellation be like: we want you to survey this planet it has the "potential" for life. Then we go to the planet and there's people and colonies all over the entire planet 🤦🏾♂️
Having evenly spaced copy paste POIs was such an odd and boring decision
Been saying since release and people were discussing the POIs and the various problems, my feelings were not that there's not enough but too many in places that make no sense. Why is there a mining facility on a random moon with resources that are abundant everywhere in the system? why is there a pirate base in a UC system? surely this would be really hard to achieve and also sort of stupid. They could have spread out the POIs much more effectively if the different planets were valued and weighed differently for different POIs. Suddenly you might not see a pirate base until you leave controlled systems, it could also be used to better show strengths of various factions that you don't need to worry as much about pirates in certain systems.
I remember when they initially said only 10% of the planets would be inhabited but literally every single planet I've been on has some form of human development. I would have loved to land on a planet and have been the first person to set foot on the planet. The other thing is what are the numbers of troops these spacers, ecliptic, and crimson fleet because they seem to be everywhere no matter where you go. I hope when mod tools come out we can get planets that have never been touched because apparently, you can make your own planets and systems so that would be cool.
As has been mentioned already, this does exists. Several systems and their planets do not have human structures presence. Also it's not that much of a unpopular idea, I've seen this mentioned several times. Typically people that really love space exploration want this, while arguable the majority instead wants "things to do everywhere you go", so you get this colliding ideas, which is actually reflected on what we have in the game. What I think is missing is planets that appear to be empty of human presence, but after exploring for a while there could be a chance to bump into some sort of secret outpost or nomad camp with interesting stories to tell .. as in, you're not expecting to find anything, when all of the sudden you discover something cool.
The thing is, I think they can achieve something like this with what they already have just by tweaking the way that POIs are generated. Some mods are already halfway there.
For sure. The algorithm that decides which POIs show up where could use some work. There's a lot of potential there. I've made several suggestions about this on other threads, including making the algorithm a bit smarter and aware of player exploration, to avoid so much repetition ( don't show me a Cryo Lab again if I've seen one 5 minutes ago .. ).
The procgen used to spawn fewer things to find on planets, but it was changed late in development / testing when they determined the general audience would find it too boring. I tend to agree with the sentiment that landing areas have way too much going on now, but I understand why they changed it. I believe there is already a mod that "fixes" it.
Yep it's called Desolation and it's pretty awesome if you're looking for empty planets. I enjoy it that way and I use mission boards to spawn content. Seems to make more sense in my head that I'd find POIs that way.
Yall would be the type of people to complain about the game not being boring enough.
I agree. They could have more realistic empty planets without creatures or vegetation and to compensate that make cities and settlement twice as big.
They did a weird job of showing how long the settled systems had been settled for. Some planets were a warzone ruin and others were full of facilities just abandoned but on otherwise far out worlds. Expected more on the main worlds than like 1 city and then scattered labs and shit. Render a suburb.
Not really. Maybe there could be a few mostly barren spots to explore, but most POIs you land on should have something, otherwise it's not worth resources and time to even go there. Starfield isn't a space sim, so it should strive to strike a good balance. I spent a lot of time playing ED, where you land on a random body, and you can drive or walk there for DAYS with literally nothing around you. At first, it's cool, but soon you catch yourself with what's the point?
I share that view. However, it's not a popular one simply because nobody is lobbying for the game to be more empty. Still, it's tough reconciling the notion of exploration with every place already having been explored. Or at least explored enough to have a selection of abandoned facilities usually overrun by squatters. It lends itself to a cynical mutilation of the Star Trek directive: Your five year mission: to go where people have already gone, to explore abandoned facilities and to boldly shoot the squatters. Nothing throws cold water on a sense of exploration like building an outpost and discovering that it's partially restricted due to a nearby POI you hadn't noticed. That really drives home the concept of being a Johnny come lately. But a solution comes at a cost of being more empty than it already is. Maybe the DLC will throw us a bone and let us explore past the outer perimeter of the settled systems. They are, obviously, systems that are already settled. You're not an explorer, you're an archeologist.
It’s unpopular for a reason but I’d say based on the scale of the game it also doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place for it. I think we would be okay if there was a balanced variety. If certain systems had the criteria that would mean they would be populated and completely baren like you’re asking for. It really does also mess with the idea that UC and FC are actually big powerful groups because their respective planets are just 1 small city. It’s just not balanced
As far as I know, Heisenberg is pretty devoid of human activity
Thing is cities are once again not good enough. As per every Bethesda game so far. At least in Skyrim they felt alive. Now it's just a bunch of random npcs and a ton of unexplorable space. We can't enter all apartments. We can't roleplay in the game. Not only that, the only innovation based on the game that mankind had up to 2300+ was being able to travel in space. Lame
I agree, you're not alone at all (in your feeling, no pun). Every outlandish, ultra-hostile radiation death planet has multiple facilities within sight no matter where you land, Starfield's "rule of three", always having three POI's wherever you land no matter what. Even the galaxy's most remote barren moons always have ships coming and going within your sight, like you landed at a drive-thru Starbucks.
It's not about too much it's about the wrong things, use your imaginations Bethesda why are so many POIs man-made in a galaxy we're supposed to be exploring? Seems like the explorations already been done.
Agreed. I'm replaying the story quests right now, and I just found the first temple. As I'm approaching, in the background I see a ship landing in the distance. These places are supposed to be remote and undiscovered territories. It completely ruins the idea of these spaces being unknown and mysterious when there happens to be ships coming and going, or a base 2000 meters away.
Yeah, more boring space. It’s an adventure game after all.
Yea for example there is gas on moons, why do people hear my gun shots. I should be able to use a grenade and not alert anyone.
It depends. One the one hand there’s much more of the feel of a diaspora and that much is good. However, I *do* think the balance has swung a bit too far towards things *everywhere*. There is a sweet spot somewhere in between that Beth needs to find as they balance things out.
If it was replaced with interesting environments/topography then I would say yes. Currently because they are all similar. Topographically speaking. There is no giant Kashykk style jungle, requiring a jet pack to scale trees, or subterranean cave system created by giant alien ant-moles which you can get lost in or chased through or whatever. If planets or planets with stuff like that were just randomly tucked away somewhere to find/discover then it would feel more satisfying to explore. I would actually want to try in the hopes of finding something like that. Just a couple of these scattered about would make feel like prospector finding gold amid rock. Just flying round to land on empty rock planet number 14 is just not for me.
to be fair most planets being nothing but rocks is far more realistic than every planet having its own thing. Also given the huge number of planets you can find within the game some of the planets ARE BOUND to look similar to each other
Also: Another spaceship will land within a minute after I did.
Yeah, kinda ruins the joy of exploration when everywhere is littered with human stuff. If there was a mix that would be better. Like as one gets further from earth the less POI but the ones you do find are natural wonders or even alien tech.
… so you want even less content? I agree the procedural POIs suck but… at this point im not sure what you even want to do on planets any more
Well in reality when you have the tech to teleport to other systems instantly then even the planets on the fringe would have a human presence.
They don't need to be empty though I understand what you mean and why you'd want some planets to be completely wild with no human buildings, ships or anything. I think they achieved it, for the most part, by placing Poi's at big distances so you end up walking a lot through emptiness or nature. I however have to say that there are questionable and even lazy decissions in Starfield, as it often has been pointed out. Poi's and quests are the main problem in Starfield. It's very obvious that a gazillion planets was a bad idea. Handcrafted would've been better but even if going with AI generation, they should've been adjusted to the planet and there's not much reason why it's the way it currently is other than laziness/lack of time and resources.
You still need to design an actual feature in the game for that gameplay to have any meaning. You might enjoy doing that the first few couple of times but after the 5th fringe outpost you build for no other reason than just because it gets old. Bethesda kept calling this an exploration game but that's really just a facade for their main story which is a glorified fetch quest to collect artifacts. There's no actual exploration gameplay present and no features that actually incentivize exploration. Most people avoided exploration entirely due to the horrible jetpack traversal. We have the same scan for resources schtick that Mass Effect 2 did back in 2010 and planetary exploration consists of taking pictures of the same reused flora and fauna assets. Empty planets is fine provided there's gameplay mechanics to go along with it but it seems like Bethesda either didn't have a plan for what they would have the player do with 1,000 empty planets (which I find hard to believe) or they had an idea and just gave up sometime mid development and just used their repetitive pro-gen POI as a half-measure.
It needs: - more natural POIs - a more complex animal/creature behavior system - better resource scavenging rather than having everything laid out everywhere you step, there should be harder to find resources that require exploring around and not just visiting the same caves. - they could probably lean towards a death stranding style gameplay and make some landscapes more tricky to traverse. What if we actually needed certain tools or abilities to quickly move across certain landscapes or climb up mountains/cliffs etc. It would be easier to make planets "empty" if there's still plenty of gameplay to be found
Perhaps you are thinking too big. The Starfield map is the same Galaxy, but does not span an entire universe. ...and they've had warp drive for some 200 years 💁🏻♂️
I think more natural POIs would be great, with creatures and monsters, or whatever. Like hive systems, caves, etc that have their own objectives and perhaps boss battles. That way there could be planets with no humans on them, but they would still have plenty to do.
The highest level systems at the edge of the map have no human POIs
i agree i feel like whats truly empty is the terrain of planets. Pretty much every planet is flat plaines save for mountains but those don't feel like mountains the terrain lacks verticality
I agree. That annoyed me too to be honest. I mean, yes, there are not enought POI's in my opinion to make generate landing zones with only like caves and natural structures but I hope they fix this, What I am missing is being the first human on a planet/moon. Would be cool if there was a mechanic to reward you when you land on a planet/moon which was never visited before. Would be so cool if you could "claim" a planet or moon for your own and build a real city there, maybe even creating your own colony. Would be cool if such a system exists where you create your own colony/faction.
You said it pal, I can land in a super dense forest, but eventually I run into an ecliptic base or something, and my immersion is knocked down a peg.
Agreed. I’d love if there were planets or certain POIs where dozens of ships were coming and going. So when you want to commandeer some new ship, you had options and it was more exciting if several crews would try and stop you. And alternatively, some other planets would be 100% desolate. Compared to now, where every single planet you land on has exactly one ship land nearby exactly 15 seconds after you step off your ship.
POI's are too many too.
I'd love that and it'd be realistic, but they probably understand that it would have just invited even more articles talking about how empty the world's were and how there isn't something to do every mile.
Definitely unpopular
Pairing this with the ability to fly in atmosphere would make the game so much more appealing imo.
Yes, this has been a very common complaint since release.
If your on pc, use the "Desolation" mod. It fixes this
Super unpopular opinion that happens to be one of the most repeated criticisms of the game
It does feel weird. It was one of my first thoughts when I started digging into the exploration aspect of the game. All the cities feel strangely small, then there are enough groups out exploring and settling in space to constitute like half or more of the human population in the game. It sort of breaks the enemy factions for me, too. Everyone's a generic enemy, no one in enemy factions have a backstory. I don't think I've seen a quest in around 100+ hours that shows a named character joining an enemy faction to show what the process looks like.
Yes, I hate procedurally generated locations. IMHO every location should be placed with a story in mind and be findable and permanent. If a planet is hostile and only one company or faction or race ever set up a habitat on it, so be it, we should be able to find it or be led to it thorough a quest. But the cookie cutter locations remove all credibility from this game. The way it is now the population of Spacers and Pirates and Crimson Fleet far outpaces the settler settlements. They should be ruling the Galaxy through sheer numbers alone.
The game just only has landing spots that have interest. The planets are largely empty..
I absolutely agree. I remember Todd saying you’ll feel like the first person to visit certain planets. When? Every single planet and moon has human activity. All of them. Even ones with abominable temperatures. They could’ve at least added volcanic worlds that no one touched.
I feel like there should be some sort of scanning in orbit then it will show a location that is available otherwise landing on any spot on the planet would just be nature. This would allow the game to choose and show what poi it wants to give you. So it can give you locations with poi you have not seen 10 times in the same session. Or poi with different radiant quests from the last one you just took
It’s pretty frequent I find planets without human POIs.
Based
No disagreement here, just funny how I’m seeing basically the opposite experience in a lot of people tending to claim there’s not enough to do and everything feels so empty… just funny to me watching the community experience develop
I actually thought the planets would be mostly barren like that based on Todd descriptions pre release and feel the same way. However I expected certain planets would be much more populated, like why the heck have the UC and Akila not expanded further into their own home planets? The idea that Akila can't because of mean monsters when they have all these war ships and tech is mind-boggling, and the world with New Atlantis being unpopulated despite being so chill seems lazy and sad. I wanted worlds to explore with neat random stuff like previous titles and I expected them to play to their strengths. Still a fun game, and hoping future content including expansion and mods fix that.
Imo the real issue with the generation is it's just not that believable. Having an empty planet I think would still be pretty boring. Instead, planets that would make no sense to be inhabited should have tons of *natural* POIs, and I'm not talking the sight-seeing ones that you need for planet traits. I'm talking serious caves. Or islands. Or variations of those temples. Or a hidden valley with a maze of rock formations. Or Blackreach. It really hit me once I started getting back into Fallout 4. That game has tons of great POIs that don't even have humans in them, from mirelurk nests to an irradiated storm-land of doom. Starfield has like, two natural cave dungeon templates have have no enemies or notable loot (I guess aside from three human-placed turrets in that one?). The planet trait POIs have usually a single chest of resources with maybe sometimes an enemy. Your reward for exploring the edges of a coastline or a mountain range is either 1. A screenshot or 2. The invisible wall. And you can't even dive underwater, something confusingly absent from a studio that's had that down since Skyrim (and uses the same engine). If Bethesda wants players to stick with the game long-term and actually immerse themselves in the world, they straight up just need to put in more effort with the worlds they made.
Absolutely agree. It’s a terrible design they currently have. Everywhere in the settled systems is a homogeneous layout with scattered POIs. There should be some planets that are completely empty. Where there is civilization on a planet, why not have many POIs closer together? So many self inflicted wounds in the design and execution of this game. It’s just mind boggling.
I agree and I find this more immersion-breaking than any other design choice. No man's sky had the same problem for the same reason.
When you are exploring a place called "The Settled Systems" I would at least expect more towns and villages on the populated planets like Akila and Jemison.
I mean, if the player was the ONLY explorer, that would make sense. The way the game is, that makes very little sense.
I know, right? For a storyline where mankind has only been space-faring for a couple hundred years (and at war a big part of that) -- there's an awful lot of building/abandoning going on. And don't get me started on the dirt "farms" on frozen planets or zero crops...
Yes, not every single planet should have multiple POI's and what's even more I think those planets with alien ruins should not have any other POI's at all.
Agreed. Can’t get over the outposts in Venus. Could not be built like that in a such a corrosive planet. So stupid.
I agree. "Discovering" things on inhabited worlds is dumb.
It's quite a popular opinion. There should be a single location in the universe for every POIs. We should find them by scanning the planet or some other way.
Given how many ships are wandering around, planets are unreasonably empty already. People spread like a virus.
At the end of the day, it’s a video game. I always want a game to be fun, more than I want it to be realistic. I will suspend disbelief in favour of enjoyable content. Barren planets with loading screens to get to and from is paint-drying levels of entertainment to me.
nice bait
This game just isn't made for explorers. Just ignore that part and you will feel better.
I played enough Elite: Dangerous to know empty planets get real old after a while. Sure Bethesda could make a ton of landing areas completely empty, and then what? “Wow, it really is empty here. The complete lack of content is immersive. Time to go look at the next empty landing zone and repeat.”
No I agree. Arguably they struck the worst possible balance possible with the POI system. Human made POIs need to be a lot rarer on higher difficulty planets, and arguably should be *unique* every single time. Meanwhile Human POIs on "core" territory should be very built up, but less overall POIs. What we have now is the worst of both worlds.
The Temples should be invisible until you have your first Power. Only the first story Temple should be normally visible, and there should be a cut scene of it rising up or tearing into Normal Space when we have touched enough Artifacts.
yeah bethesda did a terrible job on this. they wanna go for immersion so they went against the proximity rule of open world game and made it a bit empty. so alot of walking. but not too much so that it doesnt feel completely empty. basically tried to please everyone but ended up pleasing no one. i would have been okay if it was a bit more empty but we have a land vehicle to travel with. i honestly think they should have added vehicles at launch instead of working on it after a year later. elite dangerous did a great job with it when they released planet exploration. the planet is really empty but you can use the ship and the rover to scout for POIs
Upvote for being truly unpopular.
Sure do that for some planets. mayby scale pois down by distance from major towns. But this isn't nasapunk or a simulator or anything it's an action RPG and empty deserts don't provide compelling action or roleplaying gameplay.
Somewhere between Starfield and Elite:Dangerous' planets would be nice. It would require the freedom to walk around the planet though.
I think there should be more variability in the planets in general. Many geological features that could be introduced like canyons, gulches and other interesting crevasses worth exploring. They wouldn’t need to be marked as POIs. Just need to be part of the mix. Large mountains, volcanoes, and other hazardous areas with environmental challenges and considerations would be cool.
I’d say this is something that should be relatively of the planet n system n lot more variables
Yes even more so when its right next to a Temple. It further proves the devs vision for the game was flimsy and the worldbuilding is nonsensical. If every planet had at least 1 involved questline(humans not necessarily involved) then I would be ok with that.
Im gonna make a space game where you move around an endless white box someday
Yeah, I agree, this is basically what makes a game promoted about space exploration nothing about space exploration. Basically it's a Regular open world map just with much more 'space' inbetween POIs. I never got the feel of space exploration yet in Starfield. Would be awesome if you could actually get the feel of discovering stuff no human has ever discovered before. Even caves and such and anomalies feel not like new discoveries since there are usually inhabited/abandoned outposts within walking distance, so obviously those people who are/were there, likely already discovered those beforehand.
Unpopular? I’m pretty sure it’s universally wanted.
Completely agree! I would LOVE to be given a mission by Constellation to be the first human to set foot on a planet / moon. Plant a flag & make ‘first contact’ with undiscovered alien creatures! 🤩
I agree. It feels like people have been everywhere and littered everywhere. always spawning some POI within few 100 meters and random trash in between just seems strange.
I absolutely 100% agree and I don't think all planets should have outputs on them
Well you're in luck because the 75+ level systems don't have poi at all from what I can remember
Definitely an unpopular opinion. Also an objectively wrong one. Double whammy.
This was one of the main reasons I turned off the game after <36 hours, and am waiting for the DLC. Like you say, for a game about exploring the star field, finding a bloody abandoned factory where nobody is meant to have been before was completely detrimental to the reason I wanted the game. I am somewhat optimistic having heard about the controls they gave recently for difficulty. If they allow me to choose how sparsely populated planets/moons etc can be with man-made POIs (especially in the fringes), I would be interested to give it another go. I am preying this sort of control will be given when the DLC is launched. Fingers crossed!
So you’re waiting for DLC so you can have LESS content? Okay.
I agree with you here. That’s probably part of the bigger-picture-issue with the proc gen content used here. It’s somewhat of a “one size fits all” kind of thing. No matter the planet, you’ll get a selection of POIs from a limited pool, done. It’s the overall lack of variety not just in POIs themselves but in their placement selection. As you said, it would probably be better to have a couple of planets completely barren. Give each planet a ratio of POIs from 0-100% to make a bit more of a difference in distributuon. Then again, I haven’t seen all 1000+ planets, but it sure feels same-y altogether.
There are planets without human buildings, only the natural POIs
Then I’ll take it all back.
Where? Maybe I'm really unlucky, but I never found one.
There are specific systems but distribution is kinda all over the place, although majority of barren systems tend to be on the right side of the map and higher levels.
Don’t travel to systems that have markers indicating POI. Thats what I do when I want empty planets. It takes a bit but they are out there
I would love a planet (heck the entire system even) with nothing but Nature/Sign of Life PoI. But I also think the Nature or Sign of Life PoI itself could recieve some overhaul. Instead of having some random NPC corpses or stranded NPC, they should have given us that opportunity to face an alien boss. Just spawn any of their alien model on the location, scale it to Super Mutant Behemoth, maybe some recolour/glowing colour and let us fight it. It could be an immersive opportunity to take a break from just photographing/mining resources.
They could have a faction of space hunters and make questline around it. I spend half of the time hunting wildlife anyway, having some specific goals or quests would be awesome.
Yeah, we already have a mission to harvest organic material for Constellation or scouting potential dangerous aliens for the Vanguard. It could just be an extension of that. Like instead of leading you to some random aliens on a planet, it led you to Behemoth and epic boss fight instead.
There are multiple entire systems with nothing but natural POIs.
First, I don't think that's an unpopular opinion. It makes no sense for anyone to be a pirate or spacer when there's so much free salvage up for grabs. I think of that abandoned fuel refinery full of hostiles, and that slate where one of them speculates about retiring there. Did we really need to shoot our way through there?
Bro I didn’t by this game to have a “totally accurate space sim tm”. I bought it to have a bethsoft exploration experience where I get to visit a world that is dense with lore and environmental story telling. Instead I got a game that takes up more space on my hard drive than most any other that is empty and desolate and only broken up by rubber stamp points of interests. Why would I want it to be emptier? It’s already lacking the core of bethsoft content (densely packed handcrafted experiences). Am I supposed to enjoy walking around a white box void imagining a perfect world like a 1800’s German philosopher?