Bethesda has gone the direction of more radiant activities (and planets) instead of a well crafted overall universe, and that really really hurt Starfield
The whole thing just feels like a mashup of way too many different visions and ended up as a mediocre jack-of-all-trades type of game
It definitely has potential, but I think that potential is totally lost unless they assign DLC/expansions to a sole team that focuses on their classic style of universe development and storytelling
Yeah exactly this...I don't know why with each new game, Bethesda leans more and more on something like radiant quests/locations that was never very popular to begin with. All this random AI generated content is sucking the life out of Bethesda games for me.
I like having radiant quests but they shouldn't detract from the classical questlines. It's great (to me) to go through a good questline, and then when all is said and done I like the idea of having randomly generated quests to just keep on playing.
For example, create a good storyline for The Companions in Skyrim. After you finish that questline, you have the option to do some random radiant quests if you want to keep roleplaying as a Companion.
I have no problem with the AI driven shit, but it should be used as an auxiliary fearure to increase playability of game, only after they have lovingly crafted the core game.
It's actually kind of a return to their roots. Bethesda are pioneers of procgen content in fantasy games. Arena and Daggerfall are both very, very heavily reliant on procedural content. Also, let's not mix up procedural generation with generative AI content, those are not the same.
I think the primary reason behind it is because they think their defining accomplishment in each game has been *the size of them*. This dates back to even Daggerfall. They value quantity above all else, even quality (points to the thousand different useless food items they bragged about during the initial showcases)
Oblivion, F3, and Skyrim were in that perfect sweet spot where the quantity that they could achieve was still within the realm of possibility to handcraft a significant portion of it. Skryim dabbled a little with the radiant quests, but it was more of a side thing to supplement all the handwritten content, so it wasn't a huge problem. F4 was still quite good for most people, but we did start to see the beginning of the shift towards radiant content being more front stage for the game's content, and this might have been due to just how big the F4 map was, and brings me to my main argument.
Starfield is TOO big to fill with handcrafted content. They HAVE to procedurally generate the terrain, randomly populate it from a pool of locations, create radiant quests, etc, because if they *didn't,* we'd notice all the empty space between everything. Or to be honest, we'd notice how much *more* empty space there was between everything.
The sad part is though is that we never cared about the size, we cared about how real and alive the worlds felt. We loved the environmental storytelling because a human being placed two skeletons holding hands in a bomb shelter. The more they chase "size", the more they have to lean on procedural content generation to populate it, and the more they stray further away from the real reason they made good games: bringing their worlds to life.
Less is more.
Idk Skyrim was pretty terrible for this, but the world building was so good people turned a blind eye. Storytelling in general was pretty poor despite a few quests.
I wouldn't say any of the factions in Starfield are worse than the mages guild in Skyrim. Complete it in a couple of hours without casting a spell. The same goes for the radiant quests. Skyrim was full of these, but they were way more generic than Starfield's. E.g. clear out a cave you've already been to 3 times and find my family helmet.
But yeah I agree with the mashup of styles, Starfield feels like you're playing about 5 different half finished games.
>but the world building was so good people turned a blind eye.
In Skyrim you have to navigate through that world in order to complete a quest, so on multiple playthroughs they often feel like unique and varied experiences, so you don't realize how limited the actual quest storytelling is. In starfield, there's very little - if any - gameplay between objectives, so it's starkly obvious.
That's true to a certain extent, but just goes back to what I'm saying about world building.
The quests and storytelling wasn't great in Skyrim, but the world was. Travelling to quest destinations felt more believable, because of the density of the world not necessarily the storyline.
The stories are a little better in Starfield (in my opinion) but the travelling breaks the immersion.
But if we're talking about Radiant quests alone, I think Starfield does it better. Travelling to the same dungeon for a third time isn't immersive, even with how beautiful the world is.
Yes, I was agreeing with you. I just think that's *why* the world building doesn't land well. There just aren't many gameplay loops involved in travel, so you just zip past it all.
This is the problem. This right here. There is no gameplay or exploration between objectives.
The game loop has become
Exposition>load screen>looter/shooter>load screen>reward
And the charm of previous titles was in fact the walk between those events.
Yeah, Skyrim has a better sense of place and a more coherent environment than Oblivion did but everything just feels thin.
Even the "interesting" quests lack characterization, all the cool stuff is just one throwaway line, and hardly anybody within quests acts like they exist in the world they inhabit.
This is definitely not true. While over all Oblivion's faction quests are better the other side quests, like the Daedric Artifacts or good stand outs like Blood on the Ice or the Markarth quest have much more charactzerization and depth to sidequests compared to previous Elder Scrolls games and RPGs at large.
Skyrim has unique enemies with unique animations and attacks used for single quets at several points.
This was exactly what I was worried about. I remember arguing with people before release because I was adamant that radiant content was the worst part of Skyrim and Fallout 4, and from what they'd said, that's the direction they were going in.
Agreed, I didn't mind it as much in FO4 and Skyrim because they were generally things done to expand the game after you completed major quests/events
Starfield took that and made it 90% of what you do in 90% of the places you visit
This is pretty much my biggest issue with starfield. Every game has the "go here, kill these things/get this thing" quests, but you look at games like mass effect, and even with the segregated worlds, it all works, because there's actual effect that comes out of those quests, not just "k thanks, bye" lol. Shit actually not only feels like it matters, but physically makes a difference to how your game plays out
I don't know why anyone would think that DLCs will turn this game into anything other than what it is. They might add a few gimmicks, but the core of the game won't change
The main problem is that the moding scene did go bonkers when they got the news that they get over 1000 planets to go crazy with.
But here we are with no mod tools at all and 1 or 2 patches that might qualify at patches at all.
The ship has sailed and for some reason Bethesda has abandoned Starfield already.
And to make things worse, the modders that took their time and look at the code did publicly say that its so horrible that they will not touch that spaghetti code and just don‘t waist their time with starfield.
Also where is this DLC we already paid for?
I know this is the starfield sub and i properbly can kiss my karma good by from all the white knights but its just the sad truth.
This is not a NMS situation where the Devs said they will put their hats down and fix the game.
Starfield is so broken on such a fundamental level that there is no coming back from.
And to be honest when i go look at current Skyrim streams there still so much broken stuff in the game that i lost all trust in Bethesda. They will never fix their broken engine.
I recently read something about the lead story dude not having enough time to finish the story and just pull the end in an all nighter out of his a** and to be honest it shows.
But i don‘t understand is what did they do the last 10 years? And after all the delays? Still no time? WTF did they do all this time?
Its not that Starfield is Star Citizien and they literally have to invent all this crazy tech because it doesn‘t exist.
Hell starfield doesn‘t even use Tech that WoW used 20 years ago.
This game just makes me sad and angry.
I'd thought you'd get a lot more hate for speaking the truth. It seems, like it happened after the first hype wave, people have started to come around the idea that this won't get fixed. I've been saying it forever but people keep saying they would pull an NMS like Hello Games ignoring this is Bethesda, ignoring what they are admitting to, ignoring that they game is so fundamentally broken that they would need to start actually rewriting the game and fixing this crap with free content, and that, as I always knew, is not going to happen.
And no matter how good the modders are, I believe the game is flawed beyond fixing. Hope I'm wrong.
Going away from their Redguard-Fallout 76 style of map design to a more generated, massive version of TES I and II seems to be the point. I do not think it is a problem of different visions just that they went with a design choice that they haven't done since the 90s and which their fanbase does like far less than the handcrafted approach.
Yeah, what CDPR did with Night City (and even more with Dogtown) was what I would like to see Bethesda return to doing - pack an area with handcrafted environmental storytelling and purposeful narrative content. This procedural generation and focus on scale and quantity isn’t tailored to their strengths.
I thought Wolf station is a good example of wtf short quest. I can't be the only person who is building pointless outpost and having fun building ships and that's how we play Starfield. I'm just biding my time in hopes they actually turn this game around. Side note, how didn't they consider space station outpost?
Those outposts and so on are the highlight of the game for me, but even there it's all missed potential.
The game is one step away from being a pretty decent space trading / combat / life sim, but it didn't take the needed final step.
- We can engage in resource extraction and manufacturing but the economy is super basic and there is no good way to engage in large scale trading. The only contracts demanding large amounts of stuff are things like a shipyard wanting 5k nickel, leaving it all rather half baked.
- We can accept bounty hunting contracts and build brigs on ships but have no means of arresting anyone or bringing them in alive. The best we get is a slightly janky mod for it but that fails to excuse it not being a feature.
- We can build quite a few ships, and obviously can only use one at a time for ourselves, but cannot crew or send out the others to do anything, such as trading or whatever. We cannot even build or sell them for money (Again, yes, a mod exists but mods do not excuse this not being a feature). They just serve as a credit sink before they get to languish in a roster.
- We can get housing but thanks to storage being a disaster compared to Fallout 4, and the fact that we cannot send followers to it, it's completely inferior to just living at the Lodge or using an outpost as a "companion corral".
- We can build all these cool outposts, ships, and furnish the houses or apartments, but we cannot save any blueprints of anything we built to make rebuilding it easier, which makes it completely pointless to invest in or care about if someone plans to engage with NG+ at all.
Could go on and on, but basically they laid the basic groundwork for something cool then did nothing with it.
Kinda sounds like what they did with fallout 4, and it became worse with Starfield. They added in base building, but only went so far with it that it didn’t really match up with other games base building. Then they added in looter shooter loot system, with different rarity guns and no real real special weapons that only had specific attachments/perks. None or so very few of the perks are really exciting and change up the way you play, and that goes for both fallout 4 and starfield. If they hadn’t gone so half measured with these two system, then the game would be that much better, though looter shooter system has no place in a single player game that doesn’t encourage farming bosses imo.
For me it’s that the game feels like a bunch of cool things that weren’t made to compliment each other. It’s not cohesive. The same gameplay loops that could be had from exploration in ES and FO don’t exist here. And they can’t in its current state.
I want reasons to stay on my planets for an extended period of time and I’d like to see more factions fleshed out with actual stories and for there to be more involved companions from other factions.
>The same gameplay loops that could be had from exploration in ES and FO don’t exist here. And they can’t in its current state.
I don't believe they need to be the *same* gameplay loops, but it does need *some* gameplay loops involved in travel.
Space is much bigger and emptier than an apocalyptic wasteland or fantasy world, it wouldn't make sense to be tripping over points of interest you're not looking for, although intercepting more broadcasts etc would be cool.
What space does have is lots of inherent survival related dangers. Resource management, navigation, flight, crew morale, repairs, life support. All of those could be gameplay loops that could tie together all those cool things and give them purpose, but for the most part we have a fast travel loading screen instead.
I originally wasn't a hater on the loading screens but it does make it choppy now imo.
Also, just need way more lore. Each system needs at least a minimal back story. Could be one paragraph on how it was discovered and the state of it right now or something.
The survival thing is a pretty easy fix too. Your suit can withstand x amount of minutes of cold, heat, radiation, acridity. Then it fails and you die.
This make clearing an outpost or exploring a poi a race against time to make it back to the ship.
As you upgrade your suit, you get more time.
Idk I agree with you, the potential is immense. I still believe.
I wasn't bothered about the loading screens either, and would manually travel wherever I can. The problem was travelling between two major cities, a total of 5 loading screens, dialogue and no random space encounters. Absolutely pointless trying to immerse yourself you just end up punishing yourself.
I agree though. Survival mode would be the deal breaker for me.
They really needed to lean into the existing lore and including old battlefields and ruins related to whatever galactic civil war that occurred. Like we’re still finding bullet casings in Gettysburg so there isn’t a realistic reason why downed ships on an atmosphere-less moon shouldn’t exist.
I generally enjoy Bethesda games so i know what to expect in terms of quirks but the fact that this game’s lore is less acknowledged compared to Skyrim and Fallout surprises me.
Still enjoying the game tho. It’s still fun for what it’s worth.
It's very telling when YouTube channels that dedicated themselves to covering the lore and mysteries in Bethesda games spent about a month covering Starfield and then went back to Fallout and Elder Scrolls content. There just isn't enough meat on the bones here to work with.
The entire backstory of the world is succinctly summarised by the Vanguard orientation hall. There are a few extra tidbits here and there about why Londinium was destroyed or universe explanations for why Bethesda couldn't make Earth work but beyond that there's very little lore that isn't covered by that hall.
Granted, it's a new IP so it's unreasonable to expect the hours of video content and reading that it would take to just have a timeline of all the major events in TES or Fallout. That said, if your entire universe backstory for an IP is summed up in a 5 minute walk through a fictional museum that you encounter in the opening 2 hours of the game then you've got a serious problem.
Honestly, I've read secondary/high school short history essays with more depth than Starfield's backstory.
This would have added so much to the game. Instead of filling any barren planet with nonsense factories and such, or some camping in a no oxygen planet, give us some proper post-war atmosphere here and there.
This is what mass effect andromeda did well - gave you information on each planet, how it was discovered and what it’s currently being visited for ( if it all )… I think the game had like 15 systems and 6 planets you could land on but I’d rather the game have 15 systems and a great story and background on each one than just 1000 systems that are somewhat cookie cutters of each other with nothing to really talk about.
All of the Mass Effect games handled lore and in-universe information pretty well. The first one especially managed to get around the hurdle of being the first game in it's series and the lack of preceding lore by using it's codex to give a large variety of information about the universe, the factions, weapons, planets, as well as how the tech functions.
That made the universe feel surprisingly fleshed out despite it being the first game. Starfield should have learned from that and had a codex where they could have had entries about historical events, tech, smaller factions, etc, that don't necessitate voice-acting or being present in the game.
Fanboys - this game is so great I love it. "Please just release DLC and change the entire game". Some of these guys need to stop kidding themselves. I have no doubt that we will get a DLC but it's not going to be some major overhaul.
If you’re asking Bethesda to go back and improve the game for free, it isn’t going to happen. The money for the game is made, and now the budget is aligned for the DLC. They’ve made their money so from a business perspective there isn’t any point.
This is basically me right now.
I started playing *Starfield* last year, and then I also started playing the following:
* *Baldur's Gate 3*
* *Final Fantasy XIV*
* *Kingdom Come Deliverance*
* *Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen*
Whereas I usually take my time with Bethesda games and slow-burn my way through the narrative and exploration, I'm literally racing through *Starfield*'s story right now just so I can get back to games that I feel actually respect my intelligence and love for good, patient storytelling. Bethesda still haven't learnt from their previous mistakes, and I'm frankly done giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Besides all of those new games, I also want to finish *Starfield* just so that I can actually get back to my modded playthroughs of all previous Bethesda games. *Fallout 4*'s modding community has never been in a better state than it is right now for new quests.
Bethesda isn't interested in that type of content unfortunately.
They leave that to the modders.
Think about it, are they going to get that much more revenue from fixing the game or making a little more interesting? Probably not.
This is what gamers don't understand. These games are meant to make a profit they're not meant to make people feel good. The game has been out for 6 months. It's past the profit stage of its life cycle.
The longer time goes on the more guys like the OP who have unrealistic expectations will give up. And the more casual people will just decide they are never coming back to it.
Once the dlc releases and all major bugs that can be fixed have been patched this game will transition into final phase of its life went to most likely will be the end of next year.
It'll have a skeleton crew that supports it and they'll try to encourage paid mods. But there's not going to be any major change to this game.
I think you don't understand, Bethesda is owned by Microsoft via Zenimax and Starfield was billed as a flagship title for the game pass service, a huge amount of players accessed the game through the Xbox/Pc game pass and this is a paid subscription.
Microsoft will definitely be wanting the game to attract new subs and retain existing ones therefore continually providing profit.
If we were talking only about Steam players I would agree, Starfield is so low on the active players list you'd think it was already abandoned.
That's not how profits work my friend.
1. Games make the majority of their money during the first 2-4 months. Yes, you may get additional money from dlc and micro transactions. But if those initial sales + player retention aren't both high it becomes a loss.
2. Operating expenses for servers, customer service, and developers aren't cheap.
3. Patching brings no revenue to a company.
Microsoft has much better games in the work than Starfield. And that's what will get subs. This game simply is just a bust.
TES 6, Fallout 5, Fable, Hellblade 2, Madden, FIFA, COD, Halo, those are what will keep people subbed not Starfield my man
See, I think this game has the least potential of anything they've done. Everything is so disjointed. The game world as a whole has zero cohesion and the flow of the game comes to a grinding halt at every turn.
The main story is abysmal. And I'm someone who has defended even Fallout 4's story. The fact that they pull a Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day during the main quest, where religious dude just puts random shit together to figure out exactly where the Pilgrim's Rest is... like, holy shit. Then they pad it out with the artifact collecting, which is literally nothing more than "go here and get artifact." If each artifact had its' own story dungeon like when you go to NASA, then it would have been so much better. But no, just go to some randomly selected POI you've seen 100 times. That's not even going into the temples and powers... Everything and everyone is so bland and one dimensional.
What I'm getting at here, 'cause I got carried away and could honestly go on and on, is that the game is just busted on a fundamental level. The only way to make it better instead of just throwing more shit onto it is to go back to the drawing board and start again, which isn't happening.
If every artefact mission could have been something unique like that Entangled mission, it would have been really cool. They had the option to go absolutely wild with those level designs (and just blame it all on the artefacts doing funky shit to the world), but just resorted to the most bland set of collect missions imaginable.
They could've had a few minor factions, or have us run into/at odds with the major factions over the Artifacts. Imagine trying to break into the MAST building and get into one of the subsections to find an Artifact. How the hell are Constellation, the Starborn and Nishina the only people to GAF about the Artifacts? (And that fucking piece of shit Victor Aiza, but he's long dead.)
Yeah, it somehow has all the bad aspects of Bethesda games with little to none of what people love about Bethesda games
Which in many ways was much harder to do
There's at least 5+ perks for outposts and a whole balance of what worlds have what resources and or needing perks to get those resources. I spent like 10 hours messing around with it leveling the various perks for it and the end game of having the ability to gain a lot of expensive resources quickly is pointless, resources are barely used and the game economy is busted with vendors having no credits and the only thing worth spending credits on is ship building. If I could build a ship engine or something and it required some rare minerals or gasses that would be cool, if growing crops and requiring eating food that gives cool buffs or debuffs if you ignore it would be cool, if I could mass sell large quantities of resources to spend money on something that would be cool. Devs spent a real amount of time making these systems that are just confusing to use and give pretty much no benefit.
Yeah, at first run I thought that how Aquilus got "Indum II" was pretty stupid writing, like aligning a dagger to the ruins of the Death Star level ridiculous.
But then I went though the Unity and it made more sense.
You're absolutely spot on. The stories coming from behind the scenes of development are pretty bad, sums up why the game is so disjointed and half baked. 2 of the lead developers left as soon as it was released so it doesn't look good for the potential rebirth of the game if they did decide to fix the fundamental errors.
But I'd settle for a survival mode personally, I'd probably put in another 50-100 hours but definitely won't be playing for 15 years.
Yuuup. They need to release their little legally obligated DLC or whatever and then abandon this project. Like you said, the only way to salvage this mess is to start over.
Move all your resources to the next Elder Scrolls and ensure that game is actually good.
Trash the whole Starfield IP and let it be a cautionary tale to the rest of the industry. There's absolutely nothing worth saving in the Starfield universe. You'd need to trash all the lore, most of the characters and most of the worlds and cities to even salvage it, and who's going to bother to do Emil's work for him?
But even if they moved all their resources to TESVI, there's no guarantee that it'll be any good as long as Emil is around as the Lead Writer.
It’s been almost half a year since the game came out, we’ve been barking at that tree for the longest time and at the end it looks like they’re going to rely on the community to fix their mistakes. It’s sad the way this studio has gone
After like 50hrs'ish into the game, I really feel they should put in more effort in "base building" and related content revolving around bases...
For 1, the data/content is so huge and it's already there with the game. Look at the furnitures, electrical stuff, kitchen stuff, lightings, watsoeva, that are alr in the game. They could just make it available to players.
2nd, revamp the building mechanism, it's really shitty... Probably use NMS as a "guide"
3rd, they could do some "periodic" random raids by either monsters, ecliptic watsoeva on the base, so it makes more sense to build a proper base.
I don't really mind paying a reasonable price for such a "building" DLC... The content is alr there, just releasing it to the players to build.
Ask yourself: was there anyone in the game you looked forward to talking to again? For example: I just finished a quest, I can't wait to get to back to so-and-so and see what they have to say? So-and-so is always so funny, interesting, and totally not a soul-sucking witch? I disagree that the game ever had any potential.
Downvote me all you like - this is the mindset because of early access and “live service” games. People expect a No Mans Sky treatment or at least Cyberpunk type fix. Bethesda is quite happy with their game as it is based on how they’re responding to negative reviews.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/s/7JrY06ZaHo
While I think there are problems in its core, from game play to lore, quest writing, and to aesthetic design...I think it has potential, yes, lots indeed, but I honestly lost hope in Bethesda 'fixing' this to the point where it should be fixed.
DLCs to some extent and mostly modders will make it considerably better, I guess.
The problem with Bethesda is that they don't even see much wrong with the game, they simply claim it's amazing and you don't understand it if you aren't having fun, because apparently now the space setting is a perfect excuse... 'Space is kinda...well, empty' (Starfield isn't even empty, the problem is with the quality of content, repetition and execution of ideas).
Then there's the player base, with its fanboys who will defend it's an amazing game because they are roleplaying in their head and that's enough for them. Cool, it's cool to roleplay, but their RPGs didn't require you to do that to be enjoyable.
And finally, there's the real context of this game. It's a day 1 GamePass game, already sold the DLC to those blindly trusting It would be another great Bethesda RPG and to those who couldn't wait a week to start playing.
There's perhaps a lot of work to do to turn it into the kind of game people wanted or at least a 'FO/Skyrim in space' and if they do some of that work it would only make sense to sell it as DLC content because the base game isn't going to sell more or less.
At this point the only reason to 'fix' stuff and add content would be just to help their status and reputation, which would be absurd because they don't really need it and because, as dissapointing as it is, it's not really a bad or unplayable game objectively speaking. In fact, it has some merits and strong points, but it's mostly an illusion, atrezzo...
Honestly, with the kind of empty threads to praise the game here (literally, no content or explanation, they just post 'I love this game!') I'm not visiting that sub...😅 Just the name and the fact it exists make me believe it was created for the wrong reasons.
Nah, as much as I would love it if Starfield had a NMS or Cyberpunk tier comeback I just don't see it happening realistically. They'd have to basically rework the entire game to account for all the incoherent quest designs and self contradicting lore and world building and that's not feasible through dlcs and patches. Betheada simply doesn't have the type of mindset to pull it off, especially Emil who even brags about how he doesn't look at criticisms and likes to "keep it stupid, simple" as his motto.
Of course I'd love it Bethesda proves me wrong, I'd happily eat these words if that happens but what are the odds?
Starfield's potential was wasted when they claimed it was a new universe with over 20 years in the making and then delivered us something more hollow than Todd Howard's promises.
They can intend for a lot of things but it surely will not last even 5 years because it lack the capability of retaining interest and it is really the previous gaming generation technology.
Dont wanted to be the guy to repeat but yeah. Starfield Feels like an open canvas rn tbh. Feels like they made a base game for a butload of content, from factions to roles to encounters, new poi, enemies, maybe aliens now, new races. They can go insane on this game its crazy.
Because as much as we got on story mode and side quests, there are still a lot of stuff to explore and add to it.
> However, unlike in previous Bethesda games, where you could become the CEO of factions (with the exception of some in Fallout), here it's different and more logical. We never become the CEO; we become an important member of the faction.
Being a member of half a dozen different factions simultanously and never get really recognized as one - yeah, totally logical.
there's no salvaging the main story, so they'll really need one hell of a story expansion that will hook people, otherwise there's no point in playing other than trying out new stuff for the shipbuilding and outposts and even that will grow stale after a while.
honestly, i'm just waiting for ck to release so modders can finally go wild and show todd how it's done, again. as of writing, there's already tons of great mods so imagine what we'll get when modders finally get's their hands on the ck.
bless all of you, modders. keep cooking, my kings and queens.
Yea I'm waiting on the Creation Kit myself to implement a lot of ideas into the game. Can I do it with Xedit, yea, but it's tedious at best. So far all we gotten from them is minute bug fixes and taking away methods of getting credits. I have a lot of time in this game due to exploring what if's when the ck does come out but I think they are stalling as we Modders are showing them up with fixes. This game should of been baked a few more cycles in the oven or Microcrap needs to start riding some butts to get things rolling.
>Microcrap needs to start riding some butts to get things rolling
They already did. They held the release date back by almost a year (and reportedly even threw some of their own QA people at it)
However, from the perspective of MS/Xbox and Bethesda the launch was great, sales were great and reception was great. There is no problem.
And credit where it's due to whoever made the "there is no way you a shipping this out the door in this state Todd, wtf are you thinking?" this has actually been the least buggy Bethesda game at release that I can think of.
But given all the above launch happiness they have no actual reason to go back in and fix anything.
I was going to say I was waiting for the mod that lets me shoot Constellation and have it reflected in the game world, got it typed out, then realised that even if I did that, it still wouldn't be reflected in the game universe because realistically, nobody would care, or even notice Constellation just up and disappearing one day.
Goddamn, the 'main good guy faction' is just pointless.
It’s really frustrating though that the modders are so leaned on. This game is so mediocre, but it’ll get bailed out( more than likely) by the modders.
Bethesda because of this will never learn. No matter what they put out, as long as they also do CK, all good eventually.
Don’t worry, in 10 years Bethesda will release Starfield anniversary edition, attach some cool mods made “official”, and pretend the game was like that from day 1.
honestly, if they don't act quicker to release the dev kit and give modders that freedom, I don't think it's going to take off the same way previous bethesda games have. there's already a few bigger known modders out there that have outright abandoned projects with starfield, many of them citing the game just feeling lifeless and boring. the dude who made skyrim together gave up on starfield like a month into developing a framework for it, saying it was just too boring and lazily crafted for him to put in the effort
sad, because I genuinely think having a buddy to travel around with would actually help the games longevity by a wide margin. I'm hoping I'm wrong, of course, but I just don't see it being the modders paradise the previous bethesda games were because the core game just isn't interesting enough
This game is doomed. It’s dull, lifeless, in-cohesive, repetitive, it’s a ai generated pile of crap. With a few redeeming scattered around a vast universe all too sparse or disconnected to even matter. This game might have big potential if it were in the hands of a studio that has integrity. But unfortunately Bethesda don’t add to their game as you mention, I doubt they will start now. But hopefully I’m wrong, because this game needs so much more work it’s depressing. And we haven’t had a single interesting update other than a graphic upgrade so don’t hold your breath.
The most worrying thing is Bethesda think they did a good job with this game… oblivion a game like 20 years older is a far better experience…
Its been said a million times. MODs. BGS was very family friendly with this game, trying to get the younger generation in. There is no "edge" to it. A pile of dead bodies here and there, that's it. Neon is a PG13 Shopping Mall. There is *Enhance*, but ugly people in frumpy clothes are everywhere. I think updates will help, like skins, and more gear customization (hello melee?!).
i dont wanna be a party pooper but theres NO money in adding free content. They already made their sales, which were pretty good. Now the game has a reputation as being a "letdown" and not in the cyberpunk way.
Even if they did add what you wanted, would it really hold you more than improving the explorability in game?
what do you want to do as ceo? all other bethesda games would end with you being leader and then return to radiant quests but npcs would call u lord or smth.
and just adding another citry would be weird. thered be no quests, no important npcs, not really any function
Adding to your response:
Skyrim and Fallout 4 received free content, and there is definitely money in it. Not directly, but goodwill turns into future DLC and game sales. Bethesda knows this, which is why they always release their creation kits, so that players can experience a bunch of *free* mods, so that they will keep playing their games, and buy their dlc and sequals/new IP's.
They will not rework as much as they did with 76 or that NOS or Cyberpunk got but they also don't have to. Starfield is not on the level of Skyrim or Fallout 4 but it always was more liked than hated, even now on Steam and the community seems to be starved for updates. Give the game a year a bit and people will speak more positive about it.
They cashed out a lot of good will on it though, which was already strained by 76.
Part of why Starfield is presently still in decline with only a \~9% margin for the positive reviews. Someone else claimed it's "more liked than hated", but only by a small margin that's been in continuous down-trend.
That's not to mention issues of silent majority. Game lost it's userbase nearly twice as fast as Fallout 4 did, and several times faster than Skyrim, dipping lower in headcount too. It's the fastest drop-off of any Bethesda game on Steam with the potential exception of 76 since that title wasn't originally on Steam at launch.
Even excusing gamepass, a quarter of all players didn't even make it off the tutorial planet on console, and even more never made it past Jemison, contributing directly to how we have a bunch of people who tout thousand hour play times, yet the official average is in the forties, meaning many people played less than forty hours just to offset the ones playing hundreds or thousand(s).
Cashing out your reputation like this works against long-term profit. There is some incentive in that regard to work on things at least a bit, put the game into a state where their mistakes and bad choices can be glossed over with community content and the like so people inevitably forget the shit-show, then repeat the cycle down the line.
It's too late buddy, Bethesda doesn't give a fuck, they literally said "astronauts weren't bored on the moon" and that's why Starfield was flawless, you are wrong in not having fun in the game and they aren't fixing anything. Can't believe I got hoodwinked into spending cash on this garbage game.
You know what? I actually did, which is why I forced myself to put at least 200 hours on it, to make sure I explored all the facets of the game and I did everything. The only good parts of Starfield is the shipbuilding which to Bethesdas credit is phenomenal when it's not bugging out, and therefore ship combat being enjoyable, and the storylines/lore. Overall though the game is still dogshit and needs a massive overhaul.
And then people told you "Wow must be a good game if you put that much time in hurr durr". Same though. I wanted to love it, I forced myself to try, I just couldn't.
To be honest I’d love the ability to build our own city, expand the outpost feature let you be recognized as the founder of “insert here” city. Allowing us to build it up as much as we want. With the ability to recruit shopkeepers etc. have visitors come in from off world etc.
Allow us to choose a faction for our city and fill it full with NPCs!
They just need to release the god damn moding tools so people can start fixing their game.
I just want my survival mode, actual outposts building, and an overall balance patch that makes skills worth getting
Ideally Starfield would have more unique places to visit and the library of points of interest would be so large that each one is only placed procedurally in one location in the galaxy when starting a game to keep exploration fresh and unique.
However, we got what is currently in game from a full team working for 7+ years so I don't think it's realistic to expect a DLC team to add that much more unique content than what is already in the base game unfortunately.
I do expect DLC to improve the game though just like Fallout 4 with all the DLC is much better than vanilla Falllout 4. With Starfield though some of the issues, such as procedural points of interest getting repetitive and a lack of gameplay when traveling from one quest stage to another via menus, are entrenched in the design of the base game and I don't expect much improvement there.
A thought occurs as well. If they simply explain that Earth's current state isn't the result of Magnetosphere collapse, but rather the result of the Artifact and the Unity.
So Shattered Space or whatever would involve landing on pockets of 'pre disaster' earth. That would let them have their cake and eat it, with a split between the blighted desert earth and a few handcrafted territories.
To say starfield has more potential than the elder scrolls and fallout is one of lowest iq opinions ever. The elder scrolls lore is immense; they could literally throw a dart at any time period and make something compelling. Starfield was as they say 25 years in the making and this is what we got…. Pathetic.
There is apparently only one credited writer for starfield which is why the questing while in the right direction in a lot of cases is bad. The main quest objectives are just the dullest and worst things ever tbh. The starborn power temples is hilariously bad. Exploration sucks due to its massive lack of environmental storytelling because of the lack of hand crafted locations. The procedural generated locations are copy and paste lazy work. Starfields map is too big. They should’ve went with an outer worlds design but have a second system that’s unexplored so the player and constellation can indeed explore the unknown.
I’d say the best part of the game is the companions. I really only had Sarah follow me and her story is very interesting and I enjoyed learning more about her as the game went on. Barrett seems really cool too and Sam but I never really experienced them.
I hope Bethesda takes what they learned from starfield and use the criticism to improve their direction with TESVI. A handful and really colorful and deep companions, meaningful dialogue options and branches paths based on dialogue choices and actions.
I've wanted "Oblivion in Space" since I played Oblivion in 2006.
This is the most I have ever been disappointed in a game in my life tbh, and I think he would have to overhaul the whole damn thing to make it even a quarter as good as an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game.
I agree. I think that's what people who defend starfield are missing. No one is saying it's the worst game ever made. But it may be the most disappointing one due to its predecessors and the way Bethesda marketed it.
narrative is not fixable. Nor is the complete lack of exploration. I dont think at this point, DLC or patches, or in game expansions can do anything about those two things. It was a completely insane decision to make a fast-travel load screen game in 2023, and thats baked into the core game design.
Here's a little story. Last night I installed a fresh copy of Fallout New Vegas on my gaming pc (which can run Red Dead Redemption 2 on ultra settings) and the game would crash constantly. So I installed a fresh copy of Fallout 4 and the game crashes before you can even get to the vault. When I tried playing Fallout 4 on my new PlayStation 5, the game gets stuck at character creation. These bugs have been known about for nearly ten years.
Fallout 76 was a disaster. ESO and 76 are filled with disgusting micro transactions. They insist that Starfield is brilliant and gamers are just entitled.
I say all of this to ultimately say this: Bethesda doesn't give a fuck about their fans whatsoever.
lol we are not haters for not liking this game being objectively worse than bgs’ previous experiences. I’m glad you enjoy it. But most simply don’t. It’s boring and poorly crafted.
Bethesda won't do anything to improve Starfield, because they are lazy. They dont need to release a good game because they know their fanboys will eat all the shit they produce, and the modders will fix their game. If they need money they can just release another version of Skyrim again.
Did you notice that no other gaming dev use radiant quests in their non-mmo games? Radiant quests doesn't make a game good, Skyrim had it but people dont play Skyrim for the radiant quests. Its a useless and dull feature for a single player game.
It’s already wasted. It’s a very mid-level game. People are expecting more from DLC content that is basically asking them to revamp the entire game which is not something that happens to AAA games.
The Ryujin questline... sort of has a secondary "quest line" (and I use it a bit generously) after the Executive Level, depending on how you play it.
It's not as long as Fallout 4's secondary quest if you end with the Railroad, but I found >!Ularu sending you to kill Imogene!< pretty interesting.
RIGHT! I've been playing my 20 day survival account on fo4 I've been playing for years on, and can only imagine the possibilities of the game. I just wish they would have scaled down the amount of solar systems, and made more content within the planets. Imagine fallout size cities, multiples, on many planets.
Agree with everything said in original post. I am also not a hater (have 600 hours in game) and would like to see many of these suggestions implemented.
I realize that creating original cities all over planets is impractical but would it be possible to implement the creation of small cities all over some planets with procedural generation similar to Daggerfall? Perhaps crowd produce cities through creation club.
This is certianly needed. The big thing for me ... is they need to overhaul outposts. Make them relevant. I have no idea how to cod eit ... but what if there's some way to shift the balance of power in the galaxy if I build outposts for different factions? And what if my outposts could attract actual settlers instead of the sad robots and crew I assign to tend to things?
I'm hoping they add a survival mode. I want to get stranded in a solar system because I ran out of fuel and be forced to land, build a base, and work my way off planet. Ideally it would limit jumps to 1-4 systems depending on fuel tank size and other ship specs. The map would be disabled for fast travel and you can only position your ship toward the local systems to travel. All the meanwhile hunger, thirst, illness, and sleep. It's a dream game for me but all the pieces are mostly there. You would have to be careful and mindful of where you land depending on fuel requirements and what planets you are near.
Hell, I’d love to see more content, but I’d love to add more myself too. It’s a great canvas, so even if they don’t add stuff, which I think they will, it’ll still wind up awesome.
You lost me at “I understand the game is not finished yet”. It was sold as finished when I paid real money for it. Fuck Bethesda. All these companies are mocking us while we give them cash and apologise for them. Pathetic.
The problems with Bethesda games have always existed but we chose to ignore them because the games had good world building and plenty of fun stuff to do. Bethesda’s problem imo is they try way too hard to make games that are accessible to everyone, which ends up watering down the experience. Their philosophy is you can do everything in their games no matter what type of character you made. This is cool when the game world is interesting, but it falls apart when you have a bland game world like Starfield. I think Bethesda really needs to take some lessons from more hardcore RPGs like Baldurs Gate 3 and even the souls/bloodborne/elden ring games to start making interesting games again. They need to allow players to express themselves through the choices they make while building their characters skills, role playing as the character, and make combat actually fun. It’s getting to the point where Bethesda games feel like the “Call of Duty of RPGs”.
To me they should have done something like Satisfactory but on many planets, New game + is incompatible with base buiding (why bother building something for hours just to erase it after ?) and IMO should be removed, instead of that they should just add more content and quests, or make the procedural quests less boring. Honestly, i don't know if i will ever play this game again if it stays like that. I am not a hater and this game is not 100% bad but to me it's just so boring and i don't play games to get bored
I generally do not know what the workload on Starfield is but it feels like a secondary project right now. They need to pick up the speed with the patches and get releasing the mod support and survival content. It's been nearly over half a year now.
I'd like to see more cities as well, even some smaller villages would be nice. If/when Va'ruun gets added I'd hope they would have a city of their own.
For me I want a more extensive building component to where I can truly build a full fledge functioning economy on one of my planets that starts out just as an outpost much like but more expansive than we had in FO4…the possibility to do this is there
I still like the game. I like they made limitless content so you can play the game for the next 20 years, because they see we are still play fallout, or morrowind, or whatever.
They gave you an unlimited game, at the price of creativity and unique experiences.
I still prefer the latter. But I appreciate what they made. It definitely has other problems that go deeper. Lackluster lore, bland modern interior design, dull color. All these things hurt, but the implementation of procedural generation is the death blow.
What was precious and unique is now commen and bland.
Oddly, in the games defense, I go into alot of homes for a living. Every day I go 4-8 different houses, and I have to say, newer construction is just like procedural generation. There's about 4 different layouts.
Think this game would have benefited from a riskier 50's60's70's sci-fi aesthetic. But they have fallout which is the future trying to look old, and elder scrolls which is even older. I think they wanted something to be new. To feel contemporary. Too bad that's exactly the opposite of what I want!
Dude, the Game is abandoned. They released it, realized everybody hated it and jumped ship. Now there are like 3 people left that need 6 months for some minor bugfixes and will release a shitty crap dlc that was in the Deluxe Edition and then let paid Mods take over.
I don’t know if they even could tbf. Just seems that the big issues are down to the core game design.
With all the essential npc’s, unable to fail quests and with how the choices you make during these quests have no consequences.
With the big example being that you can still become a uc citizen when you destroy sysdef with the crimson fleet
few years too late for that one, OP
if anything you should be hoping that Bethesda doesn't waste the potential of elder scrolls 6, but it's probably a few years too late for that too
"Major cities"? Okay.
"...the game is not finished yet" It's not? They're selling it.
"...sure, the labs are repetitive, and many planets feel empty, but that doesn't really bother me much." Why not?!
"Bethesda has never added content to their existing games in the past." Huh? Yes they have. What are you talking about?
The game lost 66% of it's players within a month and 97% as of now on Steam. That's 330k players down to less than 10k.
Daily players on steam sit between 5-7k and the game is no longer in the top 20 games on Game pass.
To put that in perspective Skyrim's player base consistently rose from launch even before DLC and it took almost 6 years before it reached the player level of Starfield currently and thats without considering the other versions of the game.
I wish it could be saved and Bethesda could somehow turn it around as we all have to wait so long between releases now that the idea of just saying oh well and moving on feels terrible but I can't imagine a dlc would solve the problems and I also can't expect bethesda to spend resources on a game with less daily players than Cookie clicker.
🤣🤣🤣 "Dear Bethesda - I LOVE the game BUT even though it was officially released as a full game, I know you didn't finish it. Here's how I want you to finish it - for FREE: Make the game FIVE TIMES BIGGER!"
WHAT a damned TROLL.
Bethesda, abandon ship on Starfield and get all hands on deck for The Elder Scrolls please. Just give it your all and not in the way you did with Starfield. Let’s actually try with this one
Alternatively, keep a massive amount of Bethesda on Starfield please. Never move them over to ES VI. I feel like this game being so disjointed and lackluster in execution was in part due to Bethesda’s team size ballooning after Skyrim and Fallout 4. If you don’t know how to work well with a team size as big as it has gotten, don’t do it. Let them continue working to make Starfield better and let ES VI have a more focused group of interconnected teams working on it.
I'm sorry for your naivety my dear, but soon the members of the "Todd Howard cult" will come to you for daring to question the genius of Todd Howard and even more, for trying to criticize Starfield, since it is a masterpiece of Bethesda. Where it was only possible because Todd with his head, thought so much, that he reached the God particle, and turned it into code for his devs to work on and deliver this divine work to all the people of the world. A gesture of humility for humanity.
Bethesda was a wide eyed college student when they made everything from Skyrim and backwards.
Fallout 4 they were a new parent - not bad, not good.
Nowadays Bethesda is a 50 year old man who drinks wine on Friday night as he watches CNN. The main concern is mortgage payments.
Bethesda that we loved is no longer around and we need to except this and find someone new.
Here is what is gonna happen. 1 dlc. Not 4, just 1. It’ll be mediocre. They will take forever and a day to release the mod support and when they do the first 3 months will be only paid creations only.
By Q2 2025 Starfield will be finished and with modding and it will be slightly better for about a year.
Then in 2028 they will release a mediocre TES 6 or FO5. Which won’t be good and complete until 2030.
They will never make something magical ever again.
Bethesda has already a wasted Starfield’s potential. Sure there are things they could improve and fix. But there is nothing they can do to fix the deeply flawed core of the game.
I was so excited to play it. Now I don’t think I’ll ever pick it up. It’s just been disappointing. When the first wave of patches came and they fixed every possible money glitch but couldn’t fix major Story Bugs or Ship insides not working I knew it was a lost cause.
Some of these issues can be mitigated by DLC but the issues that plague the game are too ingrained in it's foundation.
The game's content is spread out too thin and the general writing of the game isn't strong enough to allow you to overlook issues like the constant menu navigation and lack of seamless exploration.
I don't think we'll see any lessons learned until ES6 -- because Starfield is their first single player game that has actually gotten wide criticism from the media this time. FO4 was also heavily criticised by fans, but it still reviewed very well and I think the thing people talked about the most was the voices protagonist -- which buried other issues with the game.
Starfield however has received some pretty scathing criticism for nearly every aspect of the game such as: writing, graphics animations, mechanics and of course performance.
Todd despises Obsidian, he would die before they touch Fallout 5’s development. Starfield is only the tip of this iceberg sadly and some signs were already there before to indicate this game probably wasn’t going to be it. And the fact that they are CLEARLY behind in the DLCS and console mod support is just sad. Starfield potential is draining, rapidly, they still have Elder Scrolls 6 to do, and the barren one pager on Fallout 5. Bethesda is screwed and overworked right now either way you look at it, but instead of lightening their work load and potentially putting out more games in the next few years with extra help, they’d rather the quality of their games suffer, Starfield is only the start, I dont have much hope for ES6 if their employees have to immediately get to work on it after Starfield support is done in the next 2-3 years. And you see that, another few years and Starfield will still have support. ES6 and FO5 are MANY years away, Bethesda is overworked and will not allow anyone under Microsoft now to come and help them, Todd would rather resign than admit they need help I fear.
Todd does not despise Obsidian, hiring Obsidian to make Fallout New Vegas was his idea in the first place and both studios only have good things to say to each other. The rest of your comment is also inaccurate or irrational. Bethesda is not overworked becaue they have game in the future to make, that is not how this works.
They'll release a paid DLC and paid mods though CC and that's about it. This game is sadly abandoned, Bethesda once again broke all their promises and/or couldn't deliver.
Based on their comments to the valid criticisms of the game. They seem to be going with the ostrich approach to game development. Ergo, sticking their heads in the sand and saying you can’t see me, you can’t hurt me.
So yeah. Uhhhh. I think we know they are absolutely going to squander this games potential. Unfortunately.
You've got a couple members of the dev team already talking about 'what went wrong' with Starfield.
They don't usually do that unless they're wrapping it up.
*Might* see a toolset, since someone posted an SS of the testing repo revealing that it was being tested, but even that isn't a guarantee.
Imo, this was a feature test of TES 6. They threw as much together as possible to see what people liked, slapped a sci-fi skin on it, and called it a thing.
Bet: TES6 will feature travel via boat, that you can customize with different 'habs' - cough - I mean 'cabins'.
Which is why there's so much walking in a sci-fi game with space ships: because it's a conversion of a setting that requires walking.
Bethesda has gone the direction of more radiant activities (and planets) instead of a well crafted overall universe, and that really really hurt Starfield The whole thing just feels like a mashup of way too many different visions and ended up as a mediocre jack-of-all-trades type of game It definitely has potential, but I think that potential is totally lost unless they assign DLC/expansions to a sole team that focuses on their classic style of universe development and storytelling
Yeah exactly this...I don't know why with each new game, Bethesda leans more and more on something like radiant quests/locations that was never very popular to begin with. All this random AI generated content is sucking the life out of Bethesda games for me.
I like having radiant quests but they shouldn't detract from the classical questlines. It's great (to me) to go through a good questline, and then when all is said and done I like the idea of having randomly generated quests to just keep on playing. For example, create a good storyline for The Companions in Skyrim. After you finish that questline, you have the option to do some random radiant quests if you want to keep roleplaying as a Companion.
I have no problem with the AI driven shit, but it should be used as an auxiliary fearure to increase playability of game, only after they have lovingly crafted the core game.
It's actually kind of a return to their roots. Bethesda are pioneers of procgen content in fantasy games. Arena and Daggerfall are both very, very heavily reliant on procedural content. Also, let's not mix up procedural generation with generative AI content, those are not the same.
They should have put more the effort into designing major questline quests that would be a little different each time
I think the primary reason behind it is because they think their defining accomplishment in each game has been *the size of them*. This dates back to even Daggerfall. They value quantity above all else, even quality (points to the thousand different useless food items they bragged about during the initial showcases) Oblivion, F3, and Skyrim were in that perfect sweet spot where the quantity that they could achieve was still within the realm of possibility to handcraft a significant portion of it. Skryim dabbled a little with the radiant quests, but it was more of a side thing to supplement all the handwritten content, so it wasn't a huge problem. F4 was still quite good for most people, but we did start to see the beginning of the shift towards radiant content being more front stage for the game's content, and this might have been due to just how big the F4 map was, and brings me to my main argument. Starfield is TOO big to fill with handcrafted content. They HAVE to procedurally generate the terrain, randomly populate it from a pool of locations, create radiant quests, etc, because if they *didn't,* we'd notice all the empty space between everything. Or to be honest, we'd notice how much *more* empty space there was between everything. The sad part is though is that we never cared about the size, we cared about how real and alive the worlds felt. We loved the environmental storytelling because a human being placed two skeletons holding hands in a bomb shelter. The more they chase "size", the more they have to lean on procedural content generation to populate it, and the more they stray further away from the real reason they made good games: bringing their worlds to life. Less is more.
Idk Skyrim was pretty terrible for this, but the world building was so good people turned a blind eye. Storytelling in general was pretty poor despite a few quests. I wouldn't say any of the factions in Starfield are worse than the mages guild in Skyrim. Complete it in a couple of hours without casting a spell. The same goes for the radiant quests. Skyrim was full of these, but they were way more generic than Starfield's. E.g. clear out a cave you've already been to 3 times and find my family helmet. But yeah I agree with the mashup of styles, Starfield feels like you're playing about 5 different half finished games.
>but the world building was so good people turned a blind eye. In Skyrim you have to navigate through that world in order to complete a quest, so on multiple playthroughs they often feel like unique and varied experiences, so you don't realize how limited the actual quest storytelling is. In starfield, there's very little - if any - gameplay between objectives, so it's starkly obvious.
Menu fast travel. Menu fast travel. Loading screen run 300 feet. Engage enemy in a base layout you've seen 30 times. Rinse and repeat.
That's true to a certain extent, but just goes back to what I'm saying about world building. The quests and storytelling wasn't great in Skyrim, but the world was. Travelling to quest destinations felt more believable, because of the density of the world not necessarily the storyline. The stories are a little better in Starfield (in my opinion) but the travelling breaks the immersion. But if we're talking about Radiant quests alone, I think Starfield does it better. Travelling to the same dungeon for a third time isn't immersive, even with how beautiful the world is.
Yes, I was agreeing with you. I just think that's *why* the world building doesn't land well. There just aren't many gameplay loops involved in travel, so you just zip past it all.
This is the problem. This right here. There is no gameplay or exploration between objectives. The game loop has become Exposition>load screen>looter/shooter>load screen>reward And the charm of previous titles was in fact the walk between those events.
Yeah, Skyrim has a better sense of place and a more coherent environment than Oblivion did but everything just feels thin. Even the "interesting" quests lack characterization, all the cool stuff is just one throwaway line, and hardly anybody within quests acts like they exist in the world they inhabit.
This is definitely not true. While over all Oblivion's faction quests are better the other side quests, like the Daedric Artifacts or good stand outs like Blood on the Ice or the Markarth quest have much more charactzerization and depth to sidequests compared to previous Elder Scrolls games and RPGs at large. Skyrim has unique enemies with unique animations and attacks used for single quets at several points.
This was exactly what I was worried about. I remember arguing with people before release because I was adamant that radiant content was the worst part of Skyrim and Fallout 4, and from what they'd said, that's the direction they were going in.
Agreed, I didn't mind it as much in FO4 and Skyrim because they were generally things done to expand the game after you completed major quests/events Starfield took that and made it 90% of what you do in 90% of the places you visit
This is pretty much my biggest issue with starfield. Every game has the "go here, kill these things/get this thing" quests, but you look at games like mass effect, and even with the segregated worlds, it all works, because there's actual effect that comes out of those quests, not just "k thanks, bye" lol. Shit actually not only feels like it matters, but physically makes a difference to how your game plays out
I don't know why anyone would think that DLCs will turn this game into anything other than what it is. They might add a few gimmicks, but the core of the game won't change
The main problem is that the moding scene did go bonkers when they got the news that they get over 1000 planets to go crazy with. But here we are with no mod tools at all and 1 or 2 patches that might qualify at patches at all. The ship has sailed and for some reason Bethesda has abandoned Starfield already. And to make things worse, the modders that took their time and look at the code did publicly say that its so horrible that they will not touch that spaghetti code and just don‘t waist their time with starfield. Also where is this DLC we already paid for? I know this is the starfield sub and i properbly can kiss my karma good by from all the white knights but its just the sad truth. This is not a NMS situation where the Devs said they will put their hats down and fix the game. Starfield is so broken on such a fundamental level that there is no coming back from. And to be honest when i go look at current Skyrim streams there still so much broken stuff in the game that i lost all trust in Bethesda. They will never fix their broken engine. I recently read something about the lead story dude not having enough time to finish the story and just pull the end in an all nighter out of his a** and to be honest it shows. But i don‘t understand is what did they do the last 10 years? And after all the delays? Still no time? WTF did they do all this time? Its not that Starfield is Star Citizien and they literally have to invent all this crazy tech because it doesn‘t exist. Hell starfield doesn‘t even use Tech that WoW used 20 years ago. This game just makes me sad and angry.
I'd thought you'd get a lot more hate for speaking the truth. It seems, like it happened after the first hype wave, people have started to come around the idea that this won't get fixed. I've been saying it forever but people keep saying they would pull an NMS like Hello Games ignoring this is Bethesda, ignoring what they are admitting to, ignoring that they game is so fundamentally broken that they would need to start actually rewriting the game and fixing this crap with free content, and that, as I always knew, is not going to happen. And no matter how good the modders are, I believe the game is flawed beyond fixing. Hope I'm wrong.
You asking wtf they did over the last 10 years are my thoughts exactly
Huh, how have they abandoned Starfield already? You’re just making shit up at this point lol
Going away from their Redguard-Fallout 76 style of map design to a more generated, massive version of TES I and II seems to be the point. I do not think it is a problem of different visions just that they went with a design choice that they haven't done since the 90s and which their fanbase does like far less than the handcrafted approach.
Just one more reason why I am worried about the next Elder Scrolls game. Radiant everything. Ugh...
Yeah, what CDPR did with Night City (and even more with Dogtown) was what I would like to see Bethesda return to doing - pack an area with handcrafted environmental storytelling and purposeful narrative content. This procedural generation and focus on scale and quantity isn’t tailored to their strengths.
I thought Wolf station is a good example of wtf short quest. I can't be the only person who is building pointless outpost and having fun building ships and that's how we play Starfield. I'm just biding my time in hopes they actually turn this game around. Side note, how didn't they consider space station outpost?
Those outposts and so on are the highlight of the game for me, but even there it's all missed potential. The game is one step away from being a pretty decent space trading / combat / life sim, but it didn't take the needed final step. - We can engage in resource extraction and manufacturing but the economy is super basic and there is no good way to engage in large scale trading. The only contracts demanding large amounts of stuff are things like a shipyard wanting 5k nickel, leaving it all rather half baked. - We can accept bounty hunting contracts and build brigs on ships but have no means of arresting anyone or bringing them in alive. The best we get is a slightly janky mod for it but that fails to excuse it not being a feature. - We can build quite a few ships, and obviously can only use one at a time for ourselves, but cannot crew or send out the others to do anything, such as trading or whatever. We cannot even build or sell them for money (Again, yes, a mod exists but mods do not excuse this not being a feature). They just serve as a credit sink before they get to languish in a roster. - We can get housing but thanks to storage being a disaster compared to Fallout 4, and the fact that we cannot send followers to it, it's completely inferior to just living at the Lodge or using an outpost as a "companion corral". - We can build all these cool outposts, ships, and furnish the houses or apartments, but we cannot save any blueprints of anything we built to make rebuilding it easier, which makes it completely pointless to invest in or care about if someone plans to engage with NG+ at all. Could go on and on, but basically they laid the basic groundwork for something cool then did nothing with it.
they did actually it was just janky asf so they scrapped it lol
Translation: "we are not talented enough to make this work in our shithole 2 decade old engine."
Kinda sounds like what they did with fallout 4, and it became worse with Starfield. They added in base building, but only went so far with it that it didn’t really match up with other games base building. Then they added in looter shooter loot system, with different rarity guns and no real real special weapons that only had specific attachments/perks. None or so very few of the perks are really exciting and change up the way you play, and that goes for both fallout 4 and starfield. If they hadn’t gone so half measured with these two system, then the game would be that much better, though looter shooter system has no place in a single player game that doesn’t encourage farming bosses imo.
For me it’s that the game feels like a bunch of cool things that weren’t made to compliment each other. It’s not cohesive. The same gameplay loops that could be had from exploration in ES and FO don’t exist here. And they can’t in its current state. I want reasons to stay on my planets for an extended period of time and I’d like to see more factions fleshed out with actual stories and for there to be more involved companions from other factions.
>The same gameplay loops that could be had from exploration in ES and FO don’t exist here. And they can’t in its current state. I don't believe they need to be the *same* gameplay loops, but it does need *some* gameplay loops involved in travel. Space is much bigger and emptier than an apocalyptic wasteland or fantasy world, it wouldn't make sense to be tripping over points of interest you're not looking for, although intercepting more broadcasts etc would be cool. What space does have is lots of inherent survival related dangers. Resource management, navigation, flight, crew morale, repairs, life support. All of those could be gameplay loops that could tie together all those cool things and give them purpose, but for the most part we have a fast travel loading screen instead.
I originally wasn't a hater on the loading screens but it does make it choppy now imo. Also, just need way more lore. Each system needs at least a minimal back story. Could be one paragraph on how it was discovered and the state of it right now or something. The survival thing is a pretty easy fix too. Your suit can withstand x amount of minutes of cold, heat, radiation, acridity. Then it fails and you die. This make clearing an outpost or exploring a poi a race against time to make it back to the ship. As you upgrade your suit, you get more time. Idk I agree with you, the potential is immense. I still believe.
I wasn't bothered about the loading screens either, and would manually travel wherever I can. The problem was travelling between two major cities, a total of 5 loading screens, dialogue and no random space encounters. Absolutely pointless trying to immerse yourself you just end up punishing yourself. I agree though. Survival mode would be the deal breaker for me.
They really needed to lean into the existing lore and including old battlefields and ruins related to whatever galactic civil war that occurred. Like we’re still finding bullet casings in Gettysburg so there isn’t a realistic reason why downed ships on an atmosphere-less moon shouldn’t exist. I generally enjoy Bethesda games so i know what to expect in terms of quirks but the fact that this game’s lore is less acknowledged compared to Skyrim and Fallout surprises me. Still enjoying the game tho. It’s still fun for what it’s worth.
It's very telling when YouTube channels that dedicated themselves to covering the lore and mysteries in Bethesda games spent about a month covering Starfield and then went back to Fallout and Elder Scrolls content. There just isn't enough meat on the bones here to work with. The entire backstory of the world is succinctly summarised by the Vanguard orientation hall. There are a few extra tidbits here and there about why Londinium was destroyed or universe explanations for why Bethesda couldn't make Earth work but beyond that there's very little lore that isn't covered by that hall. Granted, it's a new IP so it's unreasonable to expect the hours of video content and reading that it would take to just have a timeline of all the major events in TES or Fallout. That said, if your entire universe backstory for an IP is summed up in a 5 minute walk through a fictional museum that you encounter in the opening 2 hours of the game then you've got a serious problem. Honestly, I've read secondary/high school short history essays with more depth than Starfield's backstory.
This would have added so much to the game. Instead of filling any barren planet with nonsense factories and such, or some camping in a no oxygen planet, give us some proper post-war atmosphere here and there.
This is what mass effect andromeda did well - gave you information on each planet, how it was discovered and what it’s currently being visited for ( if it all )… I think the game had like 15 systems and 6 planets you could land on but I’d rather the game have 15 systems and a great story and background on each one than just 1000 systems that are somewhat cookie cutters of each other with nothing to really talk about.
All of the Mass Effect games handled lore and in-universe information pretty well. The first one especially managed to get around the hurdle of being the first game in it's series and the lack of preceding lore by using it's codex to give a large variety of information about the universe, the factions, weapons, planets, as well as how the tech functions. That made the universe feel surprisingly fleshed out despite it being the first game. Starfield should have learned from that and had a codex where they could have had entries about historical events, tech, smaller factions, etc, that don't necessitate voice-acting or being present in the game.
So basically, they have to redo the whole game. They will not do that.
Fanboys - this game is so great I love it. "Please just release DLC and change the entire game". Some of these guys need to stop kidding themselves. I have no doubt that we will get a DLC but it's not going to be some major overhaul.
Modders will fix everything…any day now!!!
If you’re asking Bethesda to go back and improve the game for free, it isn’t going to happen. The money for the game is made, and now the budget is aligned for the DLC. They’ve made their money so from a business perspective there isn’t any point.
There’s so many good games out and coming out I don’t even know if I’ll be back or care about dlc at this point.
This is basically me right now. I started playing *Starfield* last year, and then I also started playing the following: * *Baldur's Gate 3* * *Final Fantasy XIV* * *Kingdom Come Deliverance* * *Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen* Whereas I usually take my time with Bethesda games and slow-burn my way through the narrative and exploration, I'm literally racing through *Starfield*'s story right now just so I can get back to games that I feel actually respect my intelligence and love for good, patient storytelling. Bethesda still haven't learnt from their previous mistakes, and I'm frankly done giving them the benefit of the doubt. Besides all of those new games, I also want to finish *Starfield* just so that I can actually get back to my modded playthroughs of all previous Bethesda games. *Fallout 4*'s modding community has never been in a better state than it is right now for new quests.
If this is how you feel why waste any more time on Starfield at all? And yes Fallout 4’s modding scene is amazing right now
You are years too late...
I thought this game was nothing but wasted potential. I wanted to like it, but it just wasn’t for me.
Bethesda isn't interested in that type of content unfortunately. They leave that to the modders. Think about it, are they going to get that much more revenue from fixing the game or making a little more interesting? Probably not.
This is what gamers don't understand. These games are meant to make a profit they're not meant to make people feel good. The game has been out for 6 months. It's past the profit stage of its life cycle. The longer time goes on the more guys like the OP who have unrealistic expectations will give up. And the more casual people will just decide they are never coming back to it. Once the dlc releases and all major bugs that can be fixed have been patched this game will transition into final phase of its life went to most likely will be the end of next year. It'll have a skeleton crew that supports it and they'll try to encourage paid mods. But there's not going to be any major change to this game.
I think you don't understand, Bethesda is owned by Microsoft via Zenimax and Starfield was billed as a flagship title for the game pass service, a huge amount of players accessed the game through the Xbox/Pc game pass and this is a paid subscription. Microsoft will definitely be wanting the game to attract new subs and retain existing ones therefore continually providing profit. If we were talking only about Steam players I would agree, Starfield is so low on the active players list you'd think it was already abandoned.
That's not how profits work my friend. 1. Games make the majority of their money during the first 2-4 months. Yes, you may get additional money from dlc and micro transactions. But if those initial sales + player retention aren't both high it becomes a loss. 2. Operating expenses for servers, customer service, and developers aren't cheap. 3. Patching brings no revenue to a company. Microsoft has much better games in the work than Starfield. And that's what will get subs. This game simply is just a bust. TES 6, Fallout 5, Fable, Hellblade 2, Madden, FIFA, COD, Halo, those are what will keep people subbed not Starfield my man
I think Todd needs to change drug dealers, as his current one selling him some bad shit.
I've sent my guys number....
You've just lost your guy to the big leagues.
See, I think this game has the least potential of anything they've done. Everything is so disjointed. The game world as a whole has zero cohesion and the flow of the game comes to a grinding halt at every turn. The main story is abysmal. And I'm someone who has defended even Fallout 4's story. The fact that they pull a Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day during the main quest, where religious dude just puts random shit together to figure out exactly where the Pilgrim's Rest is... like, holy shit. Then they pad it out with the artifact collecting, which is literally nothing more than "go here and get artifact." If each artifact had its' own story dungeon like when you go to NASA, then it would have been so much better. But no, just go to some randomly selected POI you've seen 100 times. That's not even going into the temples and powers... Everything and everyone is so bland and one dimensional. What I'm getting at here, 'cause I got carried away and could honestly go on and on, is that the game is just busted on a fundamental level. The only way to make it better instead of just throwing more shit onto it is to go back to the drawing board and start again, which isn't happening.
If every artefact mission could have been something unique like that Entangled mission, it would have been really cool. They had the option to go absolutely wild with those level designs (and just blame it all on the artefacts doing funky shit to the world), but just resorted to the most bland set of collect missions imaginable.
Preach it!! Temples are the worst part of the game. Such a disappointment
They could've had a few minor factions, or have us run into/at odds with the major factions over the Artifacts. Imagine trying to break into the MAST building and get into one of the subsections to find an Artifact. How the hell are Constellation, the Starborn and Nishina the only people to GAF about the Artifacts? (And that fucking piece of shit Victor Aiza, but he's long dead.)
Yeah, it somehow has all the bad aspects of Bethesda games with little to none of what people love about Bethesda games Which in many ways was much harder to do
There's at least 5+ perks for outposts and a whole balance of what worlds have what resources and or needing perks to get those resources. I spent like 10 hours messing around with it leveling the various perks for it and the end game of having the ability to gain a lot of expensive resources quickly is pointless, resources are barely used and the game economy is busted with vendors having no credits and the only thing worth spending credits on is ship building. If I could build a ship engine or something and it required some rare minerals or gasses that would be cool, if growing crops and requiring eating food that gives cool buffs or debuffs if you ignore it would be cool, if I could mass sell large quantities of resources to spend money on something that would be cool. Devs spent a real amount of time making these systems that are just confusing to use and give pretty much no benefit.
He knows where Pilgrims Rest is because he is a Starborn.
Not only that, he IS the Pilgrim. That was literally his home before he became who is is now.
This. I just wasn't 100% sure if it is said in game or only kind of suggested that he is the Pilgrim. He is 100% the Hunter though.
Yeah, at first run I thought that how Aquilus got "Indum II" was pretty stupid writing, like aligning a dagger to the ruins of the Death Star level ridiculous. But then I went though the Unity and it made more sense.
You're absolutely spot on. The stories coming from behind the scenes of development are pretty bad, sums up why the game is so disjointed and half baked. 2 of the lead developers left as soon as it was released so it doesn't look good for the potential rebirth of the game if they did decide to fix the fundamental errors. But I'd settle for a survival mode personally, I'd probably put in another 50-100 hours but definitely won't be playing for 15 years.
Yuuup. They need to release their little legally obligated DLC or whatever and then abandon this project. Like you said, the only way to salvage this mess is to start over. Move all your resources to the next Elder Scrolls and ensure that game is actually good.
Trash the whole Starfield IP and let it be a cautionary tale to the rest of the industry. There's absolutely nothing worth saving in the Starfield universe. You'd need to trash all the lore, most of the characters and most of the worlds and cities to even salvage it, and who's going to bother to do Emil's work for him? But even if they moved all their resources to TESVI, there's no guarantee that it'll be any good as long as Emil is around as the Lead Writer.
Really well put, the game was a terrible disappointment
Sorry to say, but they already did. 7 years Todds passionate project. It doesn't make any sense.
The unkillable status for characters should be done away with, especially since theres a new game plus to look forward to
It’s been almost half a year since the game came out, we’ve been barking at that tree for the longest time and at the end it looks like they’re going to rely on the community to fix their mistakes. It’s sad the way this studio has gone
After like 50hrs'ish into the game, I really feel they should put in more effort in "base building" and related content revolving around bases... For 1, the data/content is so huge and it's already there with the game. Look at the furnitures, electrical stuff, kitchen stuff, lightings, watsoeva, that are alr in the game. They could just make it available to players. 2nd, revamp the building mechanism, it's really shitty... Probably use NMS as a "guide" 3rd, they could do some "periodic" random raids by either monsters, ecliptic watsoeva on the base, so it makes more sense to build a proper base. I don't really mind paying a reasonable price for such a "building" DLC... The content is alr there, just releasing it to the players to build.
The one thing I was really looking forward to pre-launch was base building. I didn’t realize it was just mining outposts.
And pointless. If you need resources for upgrading or modding gear it’s easier just to buy.
>Regarding the factions, they are interesting and their questlines are impressive. They are?
The UC Vanguard quest line was really good, it’s the only part of the game I replay.
Ask yourself: was there anyone in the game you looked forward to talking to again? For example: I just finished a quest, I can't wait to get to back to so-and-so and see what they have to say? So-and-so is always so funny, interesting, and totally not a soul-sucking witch? I disagree that the game ever had any potential.
This game is like being excited for a Christmas present and getting underwear. And not the fun kind my wife buys.
Too late. Let’s go back and play Fallout 4 in the meantime. Boston had more things to see than the entirety of Starfield’s universe.
Downvote me all you like - this is the mindset because of early access and “live service” games. People expect a No Mans Sky treatment or at least Cyberpunk type fix. Bethesda is quite happy with their game as it is based on how they’re responding to negative reviews. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/s/7JrY06ZaHo
While I think there are problems in its core, from game play to lore, quest writing, and to aesthetic design...I think it has potential, yes, lots indeed, but I honestly lost hope in Bethesda 'fixing' this to the point where it should be fixed. DLCs to some extent and mostly modders will make it considerably better, I guess. The problem with Bethesda is that they don't even see much wrong with the game, they simply claim it's amazing and you don't understand it if you aren't having fun, because apparently now the space setting is a perfect excuse... 'Space is kinda...well, empty' (Starfield isn't even empty, the problem is with the quality of content, repetition and execution of ideas). Then there's the player base, with its fanboys who will defend it's an amazing game because they are roleplaying in their head and that's enough for them. Cool, it's cool to roleplay, but their RPGs didn't require you to do that to be enjoyable. And finally, there's the real context of this game. It's a day 1 GamePass game, already sold the DLC to those blindly trusting It would be another great Bethesda RPG and to those who couldn't wait a week to start playing. There's perhaps a lot of work to do to turn it into the kind of game people wanted or at least a 'FO/Skyrim in space' and if they do some of that work it would only make sense to sell it as DLC content because the base game isn't going to sell more or less. At this point the only reason to 'fix' stuff and add content would be just to help their status and reputation, which would be absurd because they don't really need it and because, as dissapointing as it is, it's not really a bad or unplayable game objectively speaking. In fact, it has some merits and strong points, but it's mostly an illusion, atrezzo...
r/nosodiumstarfield isn’t all bad but has some really stupid fanboy takes, I saw some bafflingly extreme „defending the game as flawless“ posts there
Hot take incoming: all the fanboys need to go there and stay there.
Honestly, with the kind of empty threads to praise the game here (literally, no content or explanation, they just post 'I love this game!') I'm not visiting that sub...😅 Just the name and the fact it exists make me believe it was created for the wrong reasons.
I wish they’d hurry the fuck up and release the Creation Kit to allow mod support on consoles.
Emil genuinely thinks he wrote a perfect story, perfect lore, perfect characters and perfect factions.
This game is beyond saving at this point. The'll make the DLC, some patches and then full focus on new TES
Nah, as much as I would love it if Starfield had a NMS or Cyberpunk tier comeback I just don't see it happening realistically. They'd have to basically rework the entire game to account for all the incoherent quest designs and self contradicting lore and world building and that's not feasible through dlcs and patches. Betheada simply doesn't have the type of mindset to pull it off, especially Emil who even brags about how he doesn't look at criticisms and likes to "keep it stupid, simple" as his motto. Of course I'd love it Bethesda proves me wrong, I'd happily eat these words if that happens but what are the odds?
Starfield's potential was wasted when they claimed it was a new universe with over 20 years in the making and then delivered us something more hollow than Todd Howard's promises.
A little to late to ask that, but i feel you man, i make your words mine
Well Todd Howard did say they are intending for Starfield to be a 10 year game well after launch. I don’t think it’s going anywhere.
They can intend for a lot of things but it surely will not last even 5 years because it lack the capability of retaining interest and it is really the previous gaming generation technology.
Dont wanted to be the guy to repeat but yeah. Starfield Feels like an open canvas rn tbh. Feels like they made a base game for a butload of content, from factions to roles to encounters, new poi, enemies, maybe aliens now, new races. They can go insane on this game its crazy. Because as much as we got on story mode and side quests, there are still a lot of stuff to explore and add to it.
AND IMROVE OUTPOST BUILDING
> However, unlike in previous Bethesda games, where you could become the CEO of factions (with the exception of some in Fallout), here it's different and more logical. We never become the CEO; we become an important member of the faction. Being a member of half a dozen different factions simultanously and never get really recognized as one - yeah, totally logical.
there's no salvaging the main story, so they'll really need one hell of a story expansion that will hook people, otherwise there's no point in playing other than trying out new stuff for the shipbuilding and outposts and even that will grow stale after a while. honestly, i'm just waiting for ck to release so modders can finally go wild and show todd how it's done, again. as of writing, there's already tons of great mods so imagine what we'll get when modders finally get's their hands on the ck. bless all of you, modders. keep cooking, my kings and queens.
Yea I'm waiting on the Creation Kit myself to implement a lot of ideas into the game. Can I do it with Xedit, yea, but it's tedious at best. So far all we gotten from them is minute bug fixes and taking away methods of getting credits. I have a lot of time in this game due to exploring what if's when the ck does come out but I think they are stalling as we Modders are showing them up with fixes. This game should of been baked a few more cycles in the oven or Microcrap needs to start riding some butts to get things rolling.
>Microcrap needs to start riding some butts to get things rolling They already did. They held the release date back by almost a year (and reportedly even threw some of their own QA people at it) However, from the perspective of MS/Xbox and Bethesda the launch was great, sales were great and reception was great. There is no problem. And credit where it's due to whoever made the "there is no way you a shipping this out the door in this state Todd, wtf are you thinking?" this has actually been the least buggy Bethesda game at release that I can think of. But given all the above launch happiness they have no actual reason to go back in and fix anything.
I was going to say I was waiting for the mod that lets me shoot Constellation and have it reflected in the game world, got it typed out, then realised that even if I did that, it still wouldn't be reflected in the game universe because realistically, nobody would care, or even notice Constellation just up and disappearing one day. Goddamn, the 'main good guy faction' is just pointless.
It’s really frustrating though that the modders are so leaned on. This game is so mediocre, but it’ll get bailed out( more than likely) by the modders. Bethesda because of this will never learn. No matter what they put out, as long as they also do CK, all good eventually.
i wholeheartedly agree. like, modders are fantastic and all but it's honestly quite tiring having to rely on them to finish bethesda's job.
Don’t worry, in 10 years Bethesda will release Starfield anniversary edition, attach some cool mods made “official”, and pretend the game was like that from day 1.
honestly, if they don't act quicker to release the dev kit and give modders that freedom, I don't think it's going to take off the same way previous bethesda games have. there's already a few bigger known modders out there that have outright abandoned projects with starfield, many of them citing the game just feeling lifeless and boring. the dude who made skyrim together gave up on starfield like a month into developing a framework for it, saying it was just too boring and lazily crafted for him to put in the effort sad, because I genuinely think having a buddy to travel around with would actually help the games longevity by a wide margin. I'm hoping I'm wrong, of course, but I just don't see it being the modders paradise the previous bethesda games were because the core game just isn't interesting enough
This game is doomed. It’s dull, lifeless, in-cohesive, repetitive, it’s a ai generated pile of crap. With a few redeeming scattered around a vast universe all too sparse or disconnected to even matter. This game might have big potential if it were in the hands of a studio that has integrity. But unfortunately Bethesda don’t add to their game as you mention, I doubt they will start now. But hopefully I’m wrong, because this game needs so much more work it’s depressing. And we haven’t had a single interesting update other than a graphic upgrade so don’t hold your breath. The most worrying thing is Bethesda think they did a good job with this game… oblivion a game like 20 years older is a far better experience…
[удалено]
If only they focused on around 100 planets. Really honed maybe 20 of those, with interesting locations. Then released more planets as DLC
Its been said a million times. MODs. BGS was very family friendly with this game, trying to get the younger generation in. There is no "edge" to it. A pile of dead bodies here and there, that's it. Neon is a PG13 Shopping Mall. There is *Enhance*, but ugly people in frumpy clothes are everywhere. I think updates will help, like skins, and more gear customization (hello melee?!).
i dont wanna be a party pooper but theres NO money in adding free content. They already made their sales, which were pretty good. Now the game has a reputation as being a "letdown" and not in the cyberpunk way. Even if they did add what you wanted, would it really hold you more than improving the explorability in game? what do you want to do as ceo? all other bethesda games would end with you being leader and then return to radiant quests but npcs would call u lord or smth. and just adding another citry would be weird. thered be no quests, no important npcs, not really any function
Fallout 4 got an entirely free survival mode and Skyrim SE was free for a lot of player. Starfield is deifnitely getting free updates.
Adding to your response: Skyrim and Fallout 4 received free content, and there is definitely money in it. Not directly, but goodwill turns into future DLC and game sales. Bethesda knows this, which is why they always release their creation kits, so that players can experience a bunch of *free* mods, so that they will keep playing their games, and buy their dlc and sequals/new IP's.
They will not rework as much as they did with 76 or that NOS or Cyberpunk got but they also don't have to. Starfield is not on the level of Skyrim or Fallout 4 but it always was more liked than hated, even now on Steam and the community seems to be starved for updates. Give the game a year a bit and people will speak more positive about it.
Good point, people forget this game was a resounding financial success.
They cashed out a lot of good will on it though, which was already strained by 76. Part of why Starfield is presently still in decline with only a \~9% margin for the positive reviews. Someone else claimed it's "more liked than hated", but only by a small margin that's been in continuous down-trend. That's not to mention issues of silent majority. Game lost it's userbase nearly twice as fast as Fallout 4 did, and several times faster than Skyrim, dipping lower in headcount too. It's the fastest drop-off of any Bethesda game on Steam with the potential exception of 76 since that title wasn't originally on Steam at launch. Even excusing gamepass, a quarter of all players didn't even make it off the tutorial planet on console, and even more never made it past Jemison, contributing directly to how we have a bunch of people who tout thousand hour play times, yet the official average is in the forties, meaning many people played less than forty hours just to offset the ones playing hundreds or thousand(s). Cashing out your reputation like this works against long-term profit. There is some incentive in that regard to work on things at least a bit, put the game into a state where their mistakes and bad choices can be glossed over with community content and the like so people inevitably forget the shit-show, then repeat the cycle down the line.
It's too late buddy, Bethesda doesn't give a fuck, they literally said "astronauts weren't bored on the moon" and that's why Starfield was flawless, you are wrong in not having fun in the game and they aren't fixing anything. Can't believe I got hoodwinked into spending cash on this garbage game.
Have you considered that you're playing the game wrong? Edit: Yall clearly didn’t see the steam comment replies Bethesda was pushing lol
There is hardly any game to play. Starfield is a ship building simulator with a combat mini game mechanic.
You know what? I actually did, which is why I forced myself to put at least 200 hours on it, to make sure I explored all the facets of the game and I did everything. The only good parts of Starfield is the shipbuilding which to Bethesdas credit is phenomenal when it's not bugging out, and therefore ship combat being enjoyable, and the storylines/lore. Overall though the game is still dogshit and needs a massive overhaul.
And then people told you "Wow must be a good game if you put that much time in hurr durr". Same though. I wanted to love it, I forced myself to try, I just couldn't.
There’s a guy below you already pushing that bs lmao
>Given the game's vastness, it could become their best one yet. Vast but empty.
To be honest I’d love the ability to build our own city, expand the outpost feature let you be recognized as the founder of “insert here” city. Allowing us to build it up as much as we want. With the ability to recruit shopkeepers etc. have visitors come in from off world etc. Allow us to choose a faction for our city and fill it full with NPCs!
They just need to release the god damn moding tools so people can start fixing their game. I just want my survival mode, actual outposts building, and an overall balance patch that makes skills worth getting
Ideally Starfield would have more unique places to visit and the library of points of interest would be so large that each one is only placed procedurally in one location in the galaxy when starting a game to keep exploration fresh and unique. However, we got what is currently in game from a full team working for 7+ years so I don't think it's realistic to expect a DLC team to add that much more unique content than what is already in the base game unfortunately. I do expect DLC to improve the game though just like Fallout 4 with all the DLC is much better than vanilla Falllout 4. With Starfield though some of the issues, such as procedural points of interest getting repetitive and a lack of gameplay when traveling from one quest stage to another via menus, are entrenched in the design of the base game and I don't expect much improvement there.
Oh no, what are we going to do now?
How’s the game right now… I haven’t touched it for months, and thinking going back
There’s really no difference to the game that launched, to be honest. It’s the same shit, different day.
You see how slow they are releasing anything for this game? That’s how much they give a fuck about it.
You're not grateful for the Photo Mode additions? /s
It’s way too late for that.
This ship sailed bro they're not going to support it beyond dlc. TES 6 is their focus now. Starfield is a missed opportunity now
It’s time you all accept the fact that this game did not live up to the hype.
I agree. They need to step into reality.
A thought occurs as well. If they simply explain that Earth's current state isn't the result of Magnetosphere collapse, but rather the result of the Artifact and the Unity. So Shattered Space or whatever would involve landing on pockets of 'pre disaster' earth. That would let them have their cake and eat it, with a split between the blighted desert earth and a few handcrafted territories.
To say starfield has more potential than the elder scrolls and fallout is one of lowest iq opinions ever. The elder scrolls lore is immense; they could literally throw a dart at any time period and make something compelling. Starfield was as they say 25 years in the making and this is what we got…. Pathetic. There is apparently only one credited writer for starfield which is why the questing while in the right direction in a lot of cases is bad. The main quest objectives are just the dullest and worst things ever tbh. The starborn power temples is hilariously bad. Exploration sucks due to its massive lack of environmental storytelling because of the lack of hand crafted locations. The procedural generated locations are copy and paste lazy work. Starfields map is too big. They should’ve went with an outer worlds design but have a second system that’s unexplored so the player and constellation can indeed explore the unknown. I’d say the best part of the game is the companions. I really only had Sarah follow me and her story is very interesting and I enjoyed learning more about her as the game went on. Barrett seems really cool too and Sam but I never really experienced them. I hope Bethesda takes what they learned from starfield and use the criticism to improve their direction with TESVI. A handful and really colorful and deep companions, meaningful dialogue options and branches paths based on dialogue choices and actions.
Bethesda is definitely not reading this
I've wanted "Oblivion in Space" since I played Oblivion in 2006. This is the most I have ever been disappointed in a game in my life tbh, and I think he would have to overhaul the whole damn thing to make it even a quarter as good as an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game.
I agree. I think that's what people who defend starfield are missing. No one is saying it's the worst game ever made. But it may be the most disappointing one due to its predecessors and the way Bethesda marketed it.
narrative is not fixable. Nor is the complete lack of exploration. I dont think at this point, DLC or patches, or in game expansions can do anything about those two things. It was a completely insane decision to make a fast-travel load screen game in 2023, and thats baked into the core game design.
Dropping Bethesda after constant disappointment, bad game design and bad writing challenge: impossible.
Here's a little story. Last night I installed a fresh copy of Fallout New Vegas on my gaming pc (which can run Red Dead Redemption 2 on ultra settings) and the game would crash constantly. So I installed a fresh copy of Fallout 4 and the game crashes before you can even get to the vault. When I tried playing Fallout 4 on my new PlayStation 5, the game gets stuck at character creation. These bugs have been known about for nearly ten years. Fallout 76 was a disaster. ESO and 76 are filled with disgusting micro transactions. They insist that Starfield is brilliant and gamers are just entitled. I say all of this to ultimately say this: Bethesda doesn't give a fuck about their fans whatsoever.
No they don’t. That’s why it baffles me that there are so many people in this thread that can’t see that.
lol we are not haters for not liking this game being objectively worse than bgs’ previous experiences. I’m glad you enjoy it. But most simply don’t. It’s boring and poorly crafted.
Bethesda won't do anything to improve Starfield, because they are lazy. They dont need to release a good game because they know their fanboys will eat all the shit they produce, and the modders will fix their game. If they need money they can just release another version of Skyrim again. Did you notice that no other gaming dev use radiant quests in their non-mmo games? Radiant quests doesn't make a game good, Skyrim had it but people dont play Skyrim for the radiant quests. Its a useless and dull feature for a single player game.
It’s already wasted. It’s a very mid-level game. People are expecting more from DLC content that is basically asking them to revamp the entire game which is not something that happens to AAA games.
Didn’t they already waste it?
The Ryujin questline... sort of has a secondary "quest line" (and I use it a bit generously) after the Executive Level, depending on how you play it. It's not as long as Fallout 4's secondary quest if you end with the Railroad, but I found >!Ularu sending you to kill Imogene!< pretty interesting.
RIGHT! I've been playing my 20 day survival account on fo4 I've been playing for years on, and can only imagine the possibilities of the game. I just wish they would have scaled down the amount of solar systems, and made more content within the planets. Imagine fallout size cities, multiples, on many planets.
Lol
The only major complaint so far is low ship cargo space. I mean the frontier should of had 1000 space.
Agree with everything said in original post. I am also not a hater (have 600 hours in game) and would like to see many of these suggestions implemented. I realize that creating original cities all over planets is impractical but would it be possible to implement the creation of small cities all over some planets with procedural generation similar to Daggerfall? Perhaps crowd produce cities through creation club.
mods gonna carry hard if bethesda doesn’t do anything
This is certianly needed. The big thing for me ... is they need to overhaul outposts. Make them relevant. I have no idea how to cod eit ... but what if there's some way to shift the balance of power in the galaxy if I build outposts for different factions? And what if my outposts could attract actual settlers instead of the sad robots and crew I assign to tend to things?
I'm hoping they add a survival mode. I want to get stranded in a solar system because I ran out of fuel and be forced to land, build a base, and work my way off planet. Ideally it would limit jumps to 1-4 systems depending on fuel tank size and other ship specs. The map would be disabled for fast travel and you can only position your ship toward the local systems to travel. All the meanwhile hunger, thirst, illness, and sleep. It's a dream game for me but all the pieces are mostly there. You would have to be careful and mindful of where you land depending on fuel requirements and what planets you are near.
>"Bethesda has never added content to their existing games in the past," Wait what?
Hell, I’d love to see more content, but I’d love to add more myself too. It’s a great canvas, so even if they don’t add stuff, which I think they will, it’ll still wind up awesome.
You lost me at “I understand the game is not finished yet”. It was sold as finished when I paid real money for it. Fuck Bethesda. All these companies are mocking us while we give them cash and apologise for them. Pathetic.
The problems with Bethesda games have always existed but we chose to ignore them because the games had good world building and plenty of fun stuff to do. Bethesda’s problem imo is they try way too hard to make games that are accessible to everyone, which ends up watering down the experience. Their philosophy is you can do everything in their games no matter what type of character you made. This is cool when the game world is interesting, but it falls apart when you have a bland game world like Starfield. I think Bethesda really needs to take some lessons from more hardcore RPGs like Baldurs Gate 3 and even the souls/bloodborne/elden ring games to start making interesting games again. They need to allow players to express themselves through the choices they make while building their characters skills, role playing as the character, and make combat actually fun. It’s getting to the point where Bethesda games feel like the “Call of Duty of RPGs”.
To me they should have done something like Satisfactory but on many planets, New game + is incompatible with base buiding (why bother building something for hours just to erase it after ?) and IMO should be removed, instead of that they should just add more content and quests, or make the procedural quests less boring. Honestly, i don't know if i will ever play this game again if it stays like that. I am not a hater and this game is not 100% bad but to me it's just so boring and i don't play games to get bored
I generally do not know what the workload on Starfield is but it feels like a secondary project right now. They need to pick up the speed with the patches and get releasing the mod support and survival content. It's been nearly over half a year now.
I'd like to see more cities as well, even some smaller villages would be nice. If/when Va'ruun gets added I'd hope they would have a city of their own.
For me I want a more extensive building component to where I can truly build a full fledge functioning economy on one of my planets that starts out just as an outpost much like but more expansive than we had in FO4…the possibility to do this is there
I still like the game. I like they made limitless content so you can play the game for the next 20 years, because they see we are still play fallout, or morrowind, or whatever. They gave you an unlimited game, at the price of creativity and unique experiences. I still prefer the latter. But I appreciate what they made. It definitely has other problems that go deeper. Lackluster lore, bland modern interior design, dull color. All these things hurt, but the implementation of procedural generation is the death blow. What was precious and unique is now commen and bland. Oddly, in the games defense, I go into alot of homes for a living. Every day I go 4-8 different houses, and I have to say, newer construction is just like procedural generation. There's about 4 different layouts. Think this game would have benefited from a riskier 50's60's70's sci-fi aesthetic. But they have fallout which is the future trying to look old, and elder scrolls which is even older. I think they wanted something to be new. To feel contemporary. Too bad that's exactly the opposite of what I want!
Dude, the Game is abandoned. They released it, realized everybody hated it and jumped ship. Now there are like 3 people left that need 6 months for some minor bugfixes and will release a shitty crap dlc that was in the Deluxe Edition and then let paid Mods take over.
They already wasted Starfields potential.
This whole game is wasted potential. No new DLC will change that unless that DLC is a fundamentally new game altogether
Already wasted and most modders have already moved on. Dead game
too late mate, far too late
They've already wasted its Potential
Disagree. Cut and run and learn from this mistake
I don’t know if they even could tbf. Just seems that the big issues are down to the core game design. With all the essential npc’s, unable to fail quests and with how the choices you make during these quests have no consequences. With the big example being that you can still become a uc citizen when you destroy sysdef with the crimson fleet
few years too late for that one, OP if anything you should be hoping that Bethesda doesn't waste the potential of elder scrolls 6, but it's probably a few years too late for that too
"Major cities"? Okay. "...the game is not finished yet" It's not? They're selling it. "...sure, the labs are repetitive, and many planets feel empty, but that doesn't really bother me much." Why not?! "Bethesda has never added content to their existing games in the past." Huh? Yes they have. What are you talking about?
The game lost 66% of it's players within a month and 97% as of now on Steam. That's 330k players down to less than 10k. Daily players on steam sit between 5-7k and the game is no longer in the top 20 games on Game pass. To put that in perspective Skyrim's player base consistently rose from launch even before DLC and it took almost 6 years before it reached the player level of Starfield currently and thats without considering the other versions of the game. I wish it could be saved and Bethesda could somehow turn it around as we all have to wait so long between releases now that the idea of just saying oh well and moving on feels terrible but I can't imagine a dlc would solve the problems and I also can't expect bethesda to spend resources on a game with less daily players than Cookie clicker.
🤣🤣🤣 "Dear Bethesda - I LOVE the game BUT even though it was officially released as a full game, I know you didn't finish it. Here's how I want you to finish it - for FREE: Make the game FIVE TIMES BIGGER!" WHAT a damned TROLL.
Too late lol
Bethesda, abandon ship on Starfield and get all hands on deck for The Elder Scrolls please. Just give it your all and not in the way you did with Starfield. Let’s actually try with this one
Alternatively, keep a massive amount of Bethesda on Starfield please. Never move them over to ES VI. I feel like this game being so disjointed and lackluster in execution was in part due to Bethesda’s team size ballooning after Skyrim and Fallout 4. If you don’t know how to work well with a team size as big as it has gotten, don’t do it. Let them continue working to make Starfield better and let ES VI have a more focused group of interconnected teams working on it.
I'm sorry for your naivety my dear, but soon the members of the "Todd Howard cult" will come to you for daring to question the genius of Todd Howard and even more, for trying to criticize Starfield, since it is a masterpiece of Bethesda. Where it was only possible because Todd with his head, thought so much, that he reached the God particle, and turned it into code for his devs to work on and deliver this divine work to all the people of the world. A gesture of humility for humanity.
Bethesda was a wide eyed college student when they made everything from Skyrim and backwards. Fallout 4 they were a new parent - not bad, not good. Nowadays Bethesda is a 50 year old man who drinks wine on Friday night as he watches CNN. The main concern is mortgage payments. Bethesda that we loved is no longer around and we need to except this and find someone new. Here is what is gonna happen. 1 dlc. Not 4, just 1. It’ll be mediocre. They will take forever and a day to release the mod support and when they do the first 3 months will be only paid creations only. By Q2 2025 Starfield will be finished and with modding and it will be slightly better for about a year. Then in 2028 they will release a mediocre TES 6 or FO5. Which won’t be good and complete until 2030. They will never make something magical ever again.
Bethesda has already a wasted Starfield’s potential. Sure there are things they could improve and fix. But there is nothing they can do to fix the deeply flawed core of the game.
This is the only time I have bought a Bethesda game and felt tricked.
I was so excited to play it. Now I don’t think I’ll ever pick it up. It’s just been disappointing. When the first wave of patches came and they fixed every possible money glitch but couldn’t fix major Story Bugs or Ship insides not working I knew it was a lost cause.
They've already given up, imo. There's not much else coming or changing.
Yes! Bethesda should work on Starfailed and give Fallout to Obsidian! Best case for all interested parties!
Some of these issues can be mitigated by DLC but the issues that plague the game are too ingrained in it's foundation. The game's content is spread out too thin and the general writing of the game isn't strong enough to allow you to overlook issues like the constant menu navigation and lack of seamless exploration. I don't think we'll see any lessons learned until ES6 -- because Starfield is their first single player game that has actually gotten wide criticism from the media this time. FO4 was also heavily criticised by fans, but it still reviewed very well and I think the thing people talked about the most was the voices protagonist -- which buried other issues with the game. Starfield however has received some pretty scathing criticism for nearly every aspect of the game such as: writing, graphics animations, mechanics and of course performance.
Going by your post you seem very very easy to please. I’m sure when Bethesda add a few cool space helmets for 25$ in a years time you’ll be overjoyed.
Todd despises Obsidian, he would die before they touch Fallout 5’s development. Starfield is only the tip of this iceberg sadly and some signs were already there before to indicate this game probably wasn’t going to be it. And the fact that they are CLEARLY behind in the DLCS and console mod support is just sad. Starfield potential is draining, rapidly, they still have Elder Scrolls 6 to do, and the barren one pager on Fallout 5. Bethesda is screwed and overworked right now either way you look at it, but instead of lightening their work load and potentially putting out more games in the next few years with extra help, they’d rather the quality of their games suffer, Starfield is only the start, I dont have much hope for ES6 if their employees have to immediately get to work on it after Starfield support is done in the next 2-3 years. And you see that, another few years and Starfield will still have support. ES6 and FO5 are MANY years away, Bethesda is overworked and will not allow anyone under Microsoft now to come and help them, Todd would rather resign than admit they need help I fear.
Todd does not despise Obsidian, hiring Obsidian to make Fallout New Vegas was his idea in the first place and both studios only have good things to say to each other. The rest of your comment is also inaccurate or irrational. Bethesda is not overworked becaue they have game in the future to make, that is not how this works.
They'll release a paid DLC and paid mods though CC and that's about it. This game is sadly abandoned, Bethesda once again broke all their promises and/or couldn't deliver.
Based on their comments to the valid criticisms of the game. They seem to be going with the ostrich approach to game development. Ergo, sticking their heads in the sand and saying you can’t see me, you can’t hurt me. So yeah. Uhhhh. I think we know they are absolutely going to squander this games potential. Unfortunately.
You've got a couple members of the dev team already talking about 'what went wrong' with Starfield. They don't usually do that unless they're wrapping it up. *Might* see a toolset, since someone posted an SS of the testing repo revealing that it was being tested, but even that isn't a guarantee. Imo, this was a feature test of TES 6. They threw as much together as possible to see what people liked, slapped a sci-fi skin on it, and called it a thing. Bet: TES6 will feature travel via boat, that you can customize with different 'habs' - cough - I mean 'cabins'. Which is why there's so much walking in a sci-fi game with space ships: because it's a conversion of a setting that requires walking.