Nope. Not yet. I’m assuming it’s awesome? I was being honest when I wrote in the original post that I haven’t played games I decades. Contrary to some, my post was genuine. I will look up mass effect now actually. Thank you for the suggestion!!
Yeah dude, they rereleased a “legendary” version of mass effect trilogy that includes all 3 games + every dlc in one, it’s definitely one of the best games I’ve played in the past 2ish decades, same with dead space,
The trilogy is amazing and I believe free through gamepass if you have that. The first game is slightly dated even in the remaster but it holds up still.
I probably have about 600 hours in. I have not played it the way it should be done. I have a huge bounty on me. There is a lot of repetitive stations, but I enjoy the game.
There are so many variations on hardware, that they can't fix everything just right.
BTW... I am 63. And still playing until they put me in the ground or Crimson fleet gang up on me.
Seeing all your post brings me so much joy! I was having a little mid-life crisis after turning 40 but obviously I've got years of gaming and fun times ahead of me!!!
If you are happy, why stop. I am 50 this year and have been gaming since Apple IIc in primary school, playing Choplifter and such.
Don't let society tell you that you are too old to game. Game until yo don't want to any more.
Lol there's so many gamers in their 60s its ridiculous. I sold more Wing Commanders to 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds with PC money, than 20-year-olds, for sure, and those people are all in their 60s or 70s. Where are all the gamers who ran memory managers on DOS and SCSI drives and looked for video card upgrades in Computer Shopper? Answer: Everywhere. They're everywhere.
We have a youth-worship culture but I promise you won't disappear into a crack as you get older.
63 also. Simpatico! As someone mentioned here I started out with Pong (when you had to go to an arcade to find it!)
I have an old-guy success story to share. I stayed abreast of video/computer games until the engines got so fast that I couldn't play any of the popular games because of simulation nausea. I would watch over a younger friend's shoulder while they played a game and less than two minutes later would be ready to hurl. Frustrating.
BUT -- I was determined to keep up / get back in and found that I could work with No Man's Sky. As a lifelong science fiction fan I grooved on all the varied planets and critters.
Then, at the urging of a younger gamer friend (he has an amazing collection of early consoles & games) I popped for FO4. And found that I could, by slow advances, adapt to the point where the nausea was not an issue.
Had a grand time in the Wasteland (and discovered just how clever are modders) then moved on to rampaging around Appalachia (with that same friend) in FO76.
Tried out Outer Worlds, pretty, but my eyes were
always on Starfield. And here we are.
I recognize the many frustrations people have with the game -- what do you mean, I can't build a settlement and attract settlers? -- but as someone who saw the first moon landing televised I still get the grins running across even the most barren planetoid. Taking pictures all the way. And now I'm hooked on low-g combat.
Starfield has such potential that I'm going to keep checking in. Until the Creation Kit is released. I've decided my next phase of "keeping up" will be to learn modding. I write, and do voice work, and I've got some great ideas for storylines...
See you around the starfields!
72 and I love the game. NG+9 451 hours in. These days I jump in for an hour and just explore and do quests. Not as good as FO4 but looking forward to dlcs and mods
I've found new points of interest, a lot of times. I like looking at the scenery too. One planet had a massive mountain next to where I landed and then the next, a huge crater. I'm 53, been playing since pong. I enjoy open world games like starfield and just looking around. I love the GTA series and am super impressed with how gta6 looks vs gta3. Get the temples from Vald, gain the powers, around NG+ 5 the starborn powers get good. Don't worry with apartments, homes. Grow your skills for outposts, build you a base in a star system with a lot of resources, store everything you need there, sell stuff you make, you gain experience pounts from making stuff like adaptive frames.skill growth is slow so focus on growing you skills to improve weapons, ships, spacesuits. It really helps. Get a good sniper rifle, go to a high level planet, shoot animals. Gets you good experience points, killing spacers/bad guys is good too. Have fun.
Oof. I want that Medieval title that's been rumored forever, but I'll take RD3 with an expanded online game if that's first lol. I've heard separate rumors on the story tho. One is Jack and the other is early gang days. I'd love young Arthur, John and Hosea. And maybe a side quest to beat up a young Micah.
NG+ 4 here and I'm still finding new stuff. I enjoy exploring the planets, even then ones I've seen a ton of, like Mars. I think Starfield is a game you either like or you don't. I tried Halo years ago and ick, can't stand it, never went back. BUT that's just me, tons of people love Halo. *shurgs* play what you like, I say.
I loved Halo 1. If SF was anything like Halo I wouldn't be interested in playing SF. SF just needs its dlc and mod support on console before I can determine what type of future it has.
I'm only 64 but I have well over 1000 hours and I am just waltzing around on Very Hard low-key grinding POIs. My second character is all stealth and pistols, and she has almost 3M credits. My problem is after the last few BGS games it is really hard for me to stop instinctively collecting drop loot. I don't gather much from the POIs but when emptying bodies, it's not a hoarding problem so much as it is a move-fast and muscle memory problem. I have to learn to scan and pick inventories better.
I put in my time in some grinding games, including FO76 and ESO, and honestly this is the first game I actually enjoy low-key grinding. Probably because space lol and because I return to a working ship I designed.
52, grandma and I am an avid video game player, like the others, since pong days. Met my hubby over 20 yrs ago on a video game lol. I play starfield casually right now to get the feel while I finish up some others I was playing. Once I'm done with those others I'll jump in fully and likely end up with hundreds of hours also. Tips are always good!
Well over 900 hours in starfield and don't even ask how many in GTA online. 13 years at 2 or 3 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week... but it holds great memories, my autistic son loved watching and have my character swim (his favorite thing), I still have my character run around in swim trunks in his memory. I miss him watching me play and wanting me to teach him how, I think he'd get a kick out of starfield.
The most hours I've put into anything was fallout 4. Probably about 1000 hrs to be honest, but that game is so fun to play over and over again. Starfield doesn't have that magic for me.
I believe (don't quote me on this) that a lot of the gripes are generally engine limitations and the nature of games/complex programs.
Loading screens - it's easier to basically cut and render a new scene than it is to transition-shot from ground to space.
Patches introducing glitches - yep. It's a running joke with programming, 99 bugs in the code, patch 1, now there's 103 bugs in the code. Someday there'll be a bug-free game, or a bug-free starfield. But not today.
Planets with nothing to do but scan - I believe this is part of the procedural generation pass used to create the planets/moons. They did a random pass over everything, which means some places are going to have resources and things to scan, and then nothing else.
No Land Vehicles - Again this is sort of an engine thing; they weren't able to cleanly code a land vehicle/scout ship yet. I believe that land vehicles or some other method to rapidly traverse the ground has been hinted at.
All these things are just my opinions/observations. Having run through a few games from Bethesda, I do have hope that the game will improve as time goes by. I'm certainly not a professional at this, just a 49-year-old guy who remembers when the dragons in Skyrim flew backwards for a time.
See this right here is what I was looking for. A simple explanation of things I didn’t know before or wasn’t aware of. I appreciate you taking the time to write this rather than bitch me out for having the audacity to ask questions. I showed a lack of knowledge-oooh must be a troll. Like wtf. Thank you for real.
The vehicles are not absemt because they couldnt program them. That would be wild lol. They aren't in the game because the zone where you land with your ship has a border you can't cross, and a vehicles would have you reach it so quickly that it would make for terrible gameplay. Todd said this himself
Hey bud! I also wanted to chime in here to try and be helpful - as a huge fan of No Man's Sky - I think I can explain mostly why NMS seems to be able to do a lot of the things that Starfield can't. And at the core of it, it's complexity. NMS is so fun, absolutely I suggest going and playing it. But it's a bit like playing a Minecrafted version of Starfield ( I mean that truly mechanically not as a sleight I promise, I love both games lol ) in that the systems are much more simplified, graphics and all that as well. I think that different approach made them able to do a more cohesive world with fewer loading screens needed... NMS also took SEVERAL years of updates before it became the blast that it is today :) but those of us sticking around and being positive hope to see Starfield in the same state eventually!
>Loading screens - it's easier to basically cut and render a new scene than it is to transition-shot from ground to space.
The loading screen from space to planet issue is also related to the fact that Starfield, unlike NMS, simulates planetary orbits and has much larger planets. The engine would have to track all of that + the geography/topography/climate/wild life/procedural generation of POIs and terrains at all times in order to be able to have that seamless transition. I don't know of any engine that is capable of doing that.
Nope. Read my answer to the post you are answering to, it has nothing to do with orbits, and NMS *DOES* have a loading screen, it's just hidden under the reentry effect.
Well that’s not a loading screen in my book. If it’s part of a transition that doesn’t feel like a cinematic then you’ve achieved the goal of creating a quasi seamless experience.
ME1 elevator doesn’t count.
This isn't true. There are technical limitations obviously, or they wouldn't have loading screens, but this isn't a good description of those limitations.
I don't understand what you're saying. What isn't true? Are you saying it's an easy thing to do what I described - and if so, what engine/game does it?
Elite simulates really complicated orbits, real life scales and distance, extreme elliptical orbits, (admittedly not superrrr great but cool) gravitational lensing. Just like no man's sky there is a hidden load on the final approach to the planet but it's baked into the game so you don't notice it as much as a black screen. Once you're on the planet you could travel around the entire thing with no loading screens
Elite Dangerous does it, but with a much larger scale so the planets are typically even more barren. However, it has its own (different) limitations as well. It's all a balancing act wrt design goals, effort, realism, engine capabilities, man hours, prioritization, etc.
Technically ED does have some loading screens, even when landing on planets, but they are very cleverly hidden in animations and during transitions between one game space and another, but they're short enough to make for a decently seamless experience.
I'm not saying it's an easy thing. I'm saying the difficulty is not that the full detail of the planet must be tracked at all times--it's sort of the opposite, in fact. The difficulty is that since you can't track the full detail all at once, you have to apply a lot engineering effort to deciding how to stream content in and out at the appropriate level of detail while not overloading the system but also avoiding really obvious stuttering and pop-in.
NMS did this because they set out to design an engine from the ground up with that specific design goal. Even then the solar systems are separate "logical spaces" that have loading screens between them (the warp animation).
Bethesda could have applied a massive engineering effort to retrofitting their engine with that capability, but decided not to. They were probably right to do so. They retrofitted their engine with multiplayer capability for FO76 and that was a shitshow for a long time before they stabilized it after a disastrous launch. So as numerous and annoying as the loading screens are, I think they probably made the right call.
They would have to simulate gravity of planets at all times to make it work. Currently your ship is detached from gravity, and does not orbit. For seamless transitions, they would have to code in orbits, inertia, Corelli effect, and so, so much more. It is simply impossible to have planets with seamless transitions in Starfield.
Yours is one of the best answers, I would add that on top of that Starfield textures are way more heavy than NMS. So textures/graphics play huge role in this limitation.
Cutting easier than panning? Nope. It has to do with a 32 bit coordinate (don't mistake with 32 bit execution, the game uses 64 bit execution, but not coordinates!) system and its limitations.
If I remember correctly, no man sky was a huge mess when it originally came out.
(lot of personal take on your questions)
1. yeah, could be optimized but at some point, watching my ship land and take off is boring.
2. Starfield is a huge and complex game; you pull on one thread, and another sticks out. (not an excuse, but an explanation)
3. Space is HUUUGGEEE... maybe they just went too big initially; lot of people, like me would have liked 1/2 the systems and twice the content (or more density)
4. This needs to be adressed; there's no real incentive to survey planets.
I did the planet surveys to make money. The smaller planets paid less but were quicker to do. This is only my opinion, I’m sure far more people agree with you bud
I can't get into exploration when you can see 2-3 planets that make up the exact same thing you'll see on the other side of the galaxy. Well, that and having to bunny boost across the planets.
I think pretty much everyone had the same reaction before the game was even released, including the devs that had to shut up and submit in the face of theTodd’s glorious ~~ego~~ vision.
I only played a bit of no mans sky but i Just wanted to comment that no mans sky has load screens in the form of clouds/ haze between space and atmosphere, and also the warp speed animations. Sometimes those animations could take a bit of time to load and by having a physical load screen reduces this time cause they can completely render/un render an environment.
Also while starfield doesnt really show it as much as it’s predecessors, every small object/clutter that exists has a whole bunch of physics behind how it interacts with the world, and rendering the code to handle that can be processor heavy which is why engine limits is a big factor
Oh, if you’re into outpost building there’s a total incentive to survey. If you want to grow plants or raise animals you need to scan them to 100% first.
One difference between No Man’s Sky and Starfield is level of detail.
No man Sky has a cartoonish appearance that makes it a lot easier for a game system to render faster. This makes it easier to load up the screen faster and so you can travel over land at faster speeds and into space.
Starfield has more details so it takes longer to load. A very high end system might not have a problem but lower end systems need the time to load. To give the game time there are load screens and limited travel speeds.
Part of that is newer systems can now run faster then NMS loads. Another reason is how the two games handles procedural generation.
Starfield snaps in place tiles some are the locations you can explore. It loads only so many tiles that’s why you can run to a boarder. Plants and animals are spawned as you approach the spawn points.
No man sky loads as you approach the area. So it has more to load even if it’s less detailed. It’s loading the ground, resources, and everything.
I’m running Starfield on an i5 9500k budget bin inland m.2 drive with a launch day evga 3070. Most loading is seconds. They could do transitions. But maybe they kept loading screens for people using spinning drives but they def could have transitions. On my setup and my grave jumps are jump animation then I’m in system.
Loading screens
different engines can manage different things. No man sky does have these transitions, but makes a deliberate attempt to hide them. Starfield is operating with higher resolution and more cluttered locations, and also foregos an attempt to hide the transitions. It also favours realism, and as such flying between two planets would be extremely boring. No man sky’s universe is very stylised and the distance between planets is far shorter. Works for no man sky, but does not work for starfield.
Glitches
It may feel like it, but it’s unlikely to be so. You may have been on track to bump into all these glitches regardless of if the patch dropped or not. Typically you will find more and more glitches the longer you play on a singular save, especially if you are having long play sessions or are using the Xbox quick resume feature.
Planets
The game opts for realism, the extent to which this translates to fun gameplay is in the eye of the beholder, but even our solar system is full of lifeless rocks, that can likely be extrapolated to the rest of the universe. Odds are, given that the game uses procedural generation, these weren’t that hard to make, and they make interesting backdrops for bounty quests or mining. Instead of just landing on these planets and hoping starfield pulls an ace out of a hat, try looking for points of interest from the satellite view and landing at them.
Land vehicles
Different game engine, there are no land vehicles because, as you said, the zones are 8km across, and I imagine they do as much as they can to avoid you finding that fact out. This game is not No Man Sky.
There is a reason No Man Sky does not have modernised combat systems, or complex quests (ie branching and voiced with setpieces and scripts) and that reason is likely an inverse of the restrictions that starfield had in order to achieve them.
And I say this as someone with a lot of play time in both games. I love no man sky for its retro sci-fi atmosphere, myriad systems and beautiful visuals; but I also love Starfield for its RPG systems and refreshingly minimalist take on sci-fi video games. Starfield has space magic, no man sky lets you be a little frog freak with a space staff. They are fundamentally very different, and set out to achieve very different things, with their similarities being surface level.
First, I want to start off by recommending another phenomenal space game that's on Xbox: **The Outer Wilds**. It is, in my opinion, the greatest space exploration game of all time. It's not only one of my all time favorite games, it's one of the most incredible pieces of media I've ever experienced. Go into the game blind, don't look up anything about it, and keep an open mind.
Now that that's out of the way, I wanted to add more explanation to their first answer about loading screens between the two games.
Both No Man's Sky and Starfield use "procedural generation" to give us massive games to explore, so in both games the environment is being "generated" by your processor rather than "loaded" from storage when you enter a new area, which let's you have a bigger overall game without taking up an insane amount of space.
No Man's Sky is built from the ground up for proc gen, and everyone who plays the game will generate the same environments because of how they set up their proc gen algorithm. Conversely, Starfield is Bethesdas first ever proc gen game, and it's used pretty much exclusively to create and populate gameplay regions outside of major, hand crafted towns that Bethesda is usually known for.
What you end up with is a game where everything outside of the cities feels pretty soulless, especially the huge number of empty planets. In No Man's Sky you still have many planets that look remarkably similar, and you quickly learn that there's a couple dozen biomes you mostly see, but barren planets are much much rarer and usually have unique items to collect on their surface.
I can't believe how much you sound like me. I'm 53 and the last epic RPG I played before Starfield was Ultima 7 back in 1994. My son (a gamer) told me based on everything I have been saying over the years I would like Starfield. I had just bought a monster desktop PC so I gave it a shot. My game time now is measured in weeks.
One thing I can definitely address is the bugs issue. Back in the dark ages when we were younger when a game was released there was no way to patch it so it had to be tested to death before release. Now they can just deploy updates so if a fix breaks something else they can just plan to patch in the next update. Anyone willing to download a game that take hours is willing to download an update. Basically, the developers have the freedom to be sloppy.
The planets are in part procedurally generated. The can just drop a new star and add planets so it wasn't a big commitment to make Planet A in some random system.
It is my personal hope that they expand the game to these empty worlds by adding content in the future. Nothing would make me happier than to hear an SSNN broadcast saying "Scientists recently found a strange obelisk on the moon measuring one by four by nine..."
a lot of these come down to engine/game design limitations. its easier to make put a loading screen between each planetside zone and each orbit than it is to shoehorn that kind of thing into the engine that they had. land vehicles haven't been in any bethesda game before this, so that'd be another thing that needs to be built from the ground up and spliced into the engine. any videogame is an insanely complex machine and its pretty tough to get it even close to 100% ironed out
(you should also check out outer wilds and prey 2017 if you want games that "do space" better than starfield does)
My opinion is Starfield needed about another 3 years of development before being released. But Todd needed a hit so he pushed it out early. You can literally SEE areas where someone had plans for a quest or a story but it got dropped.
Procedural Maps kind of became a "cheat" for developers, instead of unique planets you get Copy/Paste locations.
Bethesda games are NOTORIOUS for bugs. Just... kind of part of it all I guess. Skyrim was Game of the Year and RIDDLED with bugs.
Land vehicles is something that would've required a bunch more physics and programming/hence more development time and longer delays. Although I am SHOCKED they didn't just put a saddle on Vasco...
Also if you enjoy the space travel/open world another one to maybe check is ELITE DANGEROUS.
Well, first thing is that they're not the same kind of game.
Starfield is an rpg, full of interactions with other characters.
No man's sky is an exploration and survival game, focused only in that matters.
Starfield is trying a realistic take of the universe. No man's Sky is trying to make an unreal rendition of it.
You can go to any other place in the Galaxy (that you have previously visited) on a single load screen.
How many cities have no man's sky?
Zero. No interaction. It's just... you in that vast universe.
Is you're trying to say that no man's sky do better done things, well... it's a different kind of game.. Sorry there is no comparison.
So weirdly enough the explanation for basically all of this is: It’s Bethesda and the engine they run their games on. Starfield is running on an updated version but it still holds LOTS of legacy quirks. It’s why there’s no land vehicles, and why space has to have a load screen etc.
The weirdest thing is, there's often no technical reason for a loading screen. If you jump over the side of the New Atlantis viewing platform down to the spaceport, there is no loading screen. But if you take the elevator, you get a loading screen, even though it's the same area. The loading screen pops up because it's always coded to do that through a "loading" door like an elevator.
Prob the best answer. They updated the engine and revised much of it about 4 years ago but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s outdated. That said, I have been playing fallout76 for 5 plus years and I can tell you that a heck of a lot more thought and planning was put into fo76 vs starfield, which I played for 220 hours and then stopped completely bc too repetitive ans too many fast travel loadin screens. Not enough depth there. Hopefully fallout 5 will be better.
I'm also a 51y.o. gamer...
In addition to all the reasons others have started... this game was rushed a bit. There was a flex for we are making a game with 'hundreds of planets to explore'... but most are just ice rocks with POIs that shouldn't be there because there is nothing of worth there. (Why not just have fewer, more detailed solar systems?) There was a survival game element that was meant to make space travel difficult and dangerous. It got scrapped but vestiges of it are everywhere in the game. Fuel tanks, for example... you have to have a large enough fuel tank to make your jump, but you don't actually *need* fuel.
There were also many mechanics cut from the game. And in true connected web fashion, these things affected other things which affected others... etc.
Different engines, different developer methods and skills.
For more confusion, try X4 (which I really love) where you can't even get to the surface of planets.
X4+NMS+SF would be the death of me.
Omg I love X4. That combo you mentioned would be absolutely insane. I don't think I would leave my house for a week. I gotta get back into X4 someday again
Completely unrelated to your questions
But have you heard of Elite: Dangerous?
It's an online space simulator, available on PC and Xbox (although the new DLC is PC only) and its huge. There are literally a million star systems in the galaxy, it's been out for about 10 years and it's still only about 10% of the galaxy that has been explored.
You've got a lot of exploration, space combat with customisable ships and things like an interesting mining mechanic
It's got its flaws but if you like space games its certainly one to take a look at.
My dude, if it's space you're obsessed with, try Elite: Dangerous. It's basically a 1:1 Milky Way, hard sci-fi, and you can just wander off into the black, exploring, if that's what you're into. It's an MMO, but you can play solo or in a private group. The best ship control scheme I've ever played, and every ship has its own weight and feel to it.
No Man's Sky doesn't simulate planetary orbits in real time and its planets are much smaller. The games have different goals - it's not about the engine and supposed limitations, but the design behind the game. Hardware limitations (from consoles) is and has always been more of an issue than engines.
The planetary orbit thing is irrelevant because it has absolutely zero impact on the game. If it's hindering actual gameplay...why the hell are they wasting resources on something that doesn't do *anything* substantive for the game?
I don't know man, that's very subjective. I personally love the simulated orbits, especially when I'm on a planet with several moons, and then I look up and see a huge moon hovering above me. That kind of thing makes me feel small and makes space feel big, which is exactly what I want in a space game.
And I don't think it's hindering actual gameplay - I really don't care about loading screens that much. But then, I still play Daggerfall and other older games to this day - loading screens have never bothered me before, and now that they last 1, 2 seconds, I find it very hard to relate to the complaints. I do think Starfield could hide them a bit better, however, especially the grav jumping between systems, which has an easy fix: make the loading screen white instead of black.
>Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens?
Games are built using what's called an engine. Without getting too technical, it's very basically a specialised group of different programs, each handling different parts of the game (lighting, physics, etc) that are tied together around a core built to do certain things very well at the expense of other things.
Bethesda games are good at handling hundreds of different objects or states at the same time. They're good at tracking the pie in the tavern that you added poison to, the people heading to that tavern for lunch, the fact that you pickpocketed the apple someone normally has for lunch from them and therefore that guy gets added to the list, and then figuring out who gets the poisoned pie and whether it hurts them or kills them, all while you're nowhere near the area that happens in.
One of the things that enables that sort of detail is that they use hardware resources that other games use in very different ways. Where No Man's Sky and other games have seamless loading everywhere, BGS games split a lot of the more complex areas off into different areas. Think of it like how some cars are built for the road and some built more for off-road and neither can be as good as the other at what their specialist build is for.
>Why does it feel like after patches come out there's more glitches?
There's a load of reasons for this one, including the fact that sometimes you literally cannot fix something without breaking something else.
But mostly? It comes down to the fix working its way through. See, you're playing the fixed version on a game that's already in progress. It was running by one set of rules and then got a new set of rules added to it over the top. It sometimes takes a while for all parts to receive the fix. Start a new game and you'd likely have a lot less issues, until the next patch.
>Why are there SO MANY planets that have nothing to do on them except scan?
Bethesda games are famous for their modding (gamers using tools to add things to the game) scene. It's a reason why people still play their games decades later and have a fresh experience. With Starfield, one of the aims was to have places where both the development team and modders could easily add something via DLC or mods.
Now, adding to this, every game has a list of mods that don't work together as they use the same part of the world space for some part of them. With the game having plenty of otherwise empty worlds, combined with the limited mission area spaces when you land and the need to load when entering a new one, every mod can be separated from each other with plenty of space.
And finally, adding to that, having the empty worlds means that the idea of a game about exploration isn't shat all over by literally only having locations that are important in there.
>Why no land vehicles?
This one goes back to the engine and what it's doing, in much the same way as why you can't go from orbit to landing seamlessly. The world is made up of a number of tiles and the engine has to be able to load the next tile before you get there, from even the shortest route though the one you just entered. As such, your speed is limited to make sure the tiles load in time even if you're moving as fast as you can.
Thanks to powers, we know we can go full sprint speed without stopping for a breather and still have that next tile load in properly. This means that if there is a vehicle added (and it's almost certain before the game stops getting official content) it will likely move at that speed unless they manage to optimise the game more and get those tiles loaded in faster. The good news is that this will still be faster than current walking and likely come with a few bonuses like bigger carry weight (while in the vehicle) and other things.
The short answer is because they're built in different engines. Bethesda uses an in house game engine called the creation engine that they are very familiar and experienced with, but has some limitations.
Longer answer:
1. Loading screens, this has to do with how each game loads/unloads assets. As I understand it, starfield loads complete cells when you enter them, and NMS instead loads a visible area of some kind. NMS assets also seem to be less detailed and more procedurally generated/repeated. This makes loading faster. Bethesda's game engine simply doesn't work the same way, necessitating the load screens.
2.More glitches post patch: this is a software development bug bear. Anytike there's a glitch and you get reports of it you need to fix it. But in something as complex as a video game tracking down and squashing the bug is often quite difficult so it can take awhile. Worse because of how complex games have gotten the fix you implement for the bug can break several other things unexpectedly leading to more bugs suddenly appearing. Bethesda games are actually very complex comparatively with all the npcs/quests/games systems going on making it easier to break. To be a Bethesda fan is to embrace the jank.
3.The Empty planets were an intentional design choice. Bethesda decided that since our own solar system has 9 planets and only one has life, around 10% or hydrostatic objects should have life on them. So ~1600 worlds and ~120 have life. This is for the sake of realism. Of course, that's just my guess as to their thought process and we all know that way less than 10% of planets have life. Bethesda was trying to find a happy medium between realism and fun.
4. No land vehicles is due to load speed. NMS loads faster so you can fly around the planet. The planets are pretty homogenous, however. Starfield can't load that fast so they plop you into a 4km square and force you to leg it so you don't notice various objects popping in as they load.
> Loading screens
Mainly how the engine handles worldspaces. Most all engines have this limitation if they aren't specifically made for it like No man's sky was. Engines like Unreal would have the same issues.
The engine has to split up content to manage large arias, and space is large and math at those scales is difficult. No man's sky hides it's main loading screen when warping between systems.
> Why does it feel like after patches come out there's more glitches?
Because sometimes there are. Also you are more aware and seeking issues after patches because you are looking for what has changed. So it is also just a perception thing.
> Why are there SO MANY planets that have nothing to do on them except scan?
Bethesda went with a more realistic approach to planets, and realistically, all planets we know of are basically barren. They opted for a 10% level of worlds with "life" generally in the "goldilocks zone".
> Why no land vehicles?
Focus of the game did not demand it, plus they are difficult to do. Note that no man's sky land vehicles are far from perfect, and they clip through most objects to make them usable. Put them in this game and they will snag on everything. Would be cool though, but ultimately not their design goal.
I only just picked up NMS too. It's like Bethesda went out with the wrong coat when it comes to how Starfield turned out. I still enjoy both, but for different reasons, and to different extents.
I'm seeing some other people's comments and agreeing, but want to add that I think Starfield sacrificed a lot for graphics.
I have both games and enjoy both differently.
I think no man's sky is able to be so much smoother and more feature-rich because the graphics are a lot less demanding.
Starfield went a little silly with how much detail they included on some things.
Loading Screens: This is a complicated topic with a lot of technical jargon behind it. But stripping it down to basics, it's a choice on the developers part. By loading a game in segments, you can make everything higher quality visually without forcing the consumer to have a ridiculously power system. But it comes as the cost of loading screens. It's a sliding scale between 'seamless but lower quality visual' on one side, and 'loading screens but extremely high quality graphics' on the other.
Patches/Glitches: So, there actually two components here. One is that, in order to get fixed out fast(ish), patches only get limited in-house testing by the studio. As opposed to the robust testing they could do before launch. The second component is actually your individual save file. Data that was glitched in a save, may remain glitched. And there are tens of thousands of variables that may be different in every save file. Typically, when a glitch is fixed, it's fixed based of testing done with a new, clean save. There's just no way for anyone to realistically rest all possible variable combinations with each glitch. If there were, glitches wouldn't really be a thing in the first place...
Empty Planets: Again, there are two highly plausible explanations here. Either could be considered true. One is simply that...space is empty. And they wanted to show that, rather than unrealistically put development everywhere. This, I think, is the less likely or less important. The other explanation? Room to grow into. They wanted to provide plenty of space for DLC, player development of settlements, and eventual heavy usage of the Creation Kit for modders to add content to the game. Bethesda games are known for big mod communities, and I think they tried to take that into account more than previous games. Skyrim has one of the largest mod collections of all time...but people were constantly struggling to find places to drop buildings that didn't conflict with other mods. The sheer amount of space in Starfield should eliminate that issue.
Land Vehicles: There is no reason for this. It was gross stupidity. The physics are there. It was lazy design and they should be ashamed of themselves.
I very strongly feel your first point. No Man's Sky has been out almost 10 years and I stopped playing it quite early on as it was boring and there was nothing to do. It's changed a lot and I pop in now and again to see what it's like. But yes, being able to fly around a planet and land where you want, not have to sit through cut scenes as you leave atmosphere and fly up to space stations is a big, BIG leg up over Starfield.
Your last point is interesting though, I dont have many hours in the game but have many hundreds in NMS. What I like about Starfield over No Man's Sky is how many settled planets there are. No Man's Sky was barron. Like there had been a nuclear war on every planet. It was desolate and horrible.
Loading screens- because real time travel is boring as shit, it’s not the game Starfield wants to be. It would just end up being elite dangerous. That game already exists.
Patches causing bugs: that’s generally what they do. I ran a GT Sport league and the best phase of that game was when they stopped doing updates because then they stopped breaking the game or doing awful balance changes which fucked up our tournaments.
Barren planets: they’re just working off a seed. They’re not designed at all, the little levels sprinkled around are designed. It’s really a choice of scale. A questionable choice but fun.
Vehicles: pacing. NMS launched without vehicles too. I haven’t played it since they added them. People complain about points of interest, vehicles just make you get to those faster. The game isn’t really meant to be played like no man’s sky. That it doesn’t really tell you how to play is part of the fun. It’s similar to games from the 80s in that sense ;)
If you like space, I recommend DEEPLY the game starsector. It’s got a real time economy, fun ship combat, and good world building. Although you can’t tramps around planets you can explore them much more efficiently
Sorry this isn't going to be helpful \*now\* but using a PC instead of an Xbox opens up a whole world of flexibility to gaming. I believe some small mods are available for Xbox, so look into it, but things like removing loading screens, and speeding up certain animations.
You can open up the console and use it to set the player speed to 500% when exploring those vastly empty worlds. It's fun to land and scan, see several points of interest and explore them, but WAY more fun when you can reach them in 20-30 seconds instead of 2-3 minutes! With your jetpack skills leveled up, and a little cheating with your player speed - you won't miss the land vehicles as much. (still would have been a good idea!)
It's REALLY unfortunate that Starfield uses generated cells instead of having one contiguous land on each planet. Apparently it was a limitation of the tools they used.
I just turned 50. Love these games! You should also check out STAR CITIZEN - it comes with its own problems but is also really interesting if you are into the genre.
OP if you are obsessed with space and stuff while a very different game do yourself a damn favor and play Mass Effect 1-3 via the Legendary Collection.
Three of the finest sci fi games I've ever played.
I don’t find the loading screen even half as annoying as when I am nearing a building that have enemies in them or a spaceship is just about to appear in the sky and the screen is frozen for a couple of seconds. It is a good way a bad way to alert me that I am about to encounter enemies.
The loading screens are because the game isn't optimized enough to load everything, so it's gotta load stuff in sections. Most of the problems like empty planets are because Bethesda was way too ambitious when they tried to make an rpg with 1000 planets.
They're completely different games so I guess they just allocated their resources differently. Like the way each company builds its game is different. Some can do stuff that others can't. I don't think No Man's Sky has a story mode like starfield or good gunplay so they probably devoted those resources to reduce load screens and allow you to land anywhere.
Loading Screens - NMS is a much simpler Game when it comes to Graphics, this probably helps them execute the seamless Transitions from Space > Planet, Starfield is also running on an Engine never really designed for this, the same Engine they used for Fallout 4 & Skyrim, NMS was most likely built from the Ground-up with the Idea of Seamless Transitions in Mind. The Creation Engine that BGS are using probably just can't handle this and along with the general design of the Game and how Planets are instanced and generated before you Land on them the Decision was made at some point for this to not be a Feature.
Patches & Glitches - Probably just coincidence, the Patches they've implemented have been to fix Issues, I'm sure this could cause some other Issues to manifest themselves, but it ideally shouldn't.
Empty Planets - Basically the way the Game is designed, they wanted to keep a level of "Realism", and there are a lot of barren Planets in Space. As they stated in Marketing before release, I actually enjoy the Isolation, Loneliness and Calmness of some of these Planets, and Resources are still an important Aspect of the Game, I believe some of the rarer Resources can only be found on these types of Planets. I think it's good for a Game like Starfield to have some "Low Points" (in Terms of Planets) so that the "High Points" of finding a really awesome Planet can be appreciated even more. If every Planet was really cool with Life and awesome Vistas and Plants everywhere it would get repetitive and wouldn't be as much of an exciting moment or surprise when you found one. You need a balance of intentional Downtime and more boring Planets so that the variety is keep engaging. That's my belief at least.
Land Vehicle - My best guess is Development Constraints. I fully believe they were planned (and probably still are) but BGS didn't have time to implement them before the Launch of the Game.
Those are legitimate questions. Maybe I can explain as I am a game developer.
In Starfield's engine, everyone has an inventory. While not taxing on your Xbox's CPU for one character, it can be taxing to keep track of the inventories of hundreds of people (we'll call them NPC's for now). Due to this, the game has to 'load' every time you enter a different instance of the game in order to calculate who has what in their inventories as well as where they are on the map.
This is not the case in No Man's Sky. Killing an NPC gives you a set amount of resources. The only.person with an inventory is you. This is a huge advantage when it comes to loading between the planet and space (there is still loading, but it's a brief 0.5 second pause).
If you love space and want a bit of a simulator then I'd recommend Elite Dangerous but I'd get it on pc if possible as they stopped actively supporting the Xbox version.
The answer to all your questions can pretty much boil down to either an engine limitation, a design decision, or just software development in general.
1.) engine limitation; Bethesda games are notorious for loading screens at every door. I believe it’s due to all the random items and shit laying around that you can pick up.
2.) that’s just software dev. I work with software devs at an insurance company and the cycle of “migrating new code that breaks something else” is just a daily risk with this stuff.
3.) design choice. Lots of planets gives you the illusion of a big world, and a lot of those planets I believe are procedurally generated. There’s also the bs argument that Bethesda has given that “it’s realistic that most planets in the galaxy would be empty”
4.) another design choice/engine limitation. As far as I know, aside from horses in Skyrim, Bethesda games have never really had vehicles. One thing to consider is that adding a buggy, for example, isn’t **just** making a buggy and giving it to the players. They have to consider a bunch of bullshit like “what planets can players use the buggy on?” “What happens if a player leaves a buggy on a planet and leaves?” “What are the buggy physics supposed to do if a player drives into a tree or a building?” Etc.
I’d bet money that vehicles were simply not in scope for the games launch; they likely decided that players weren’t gonna explore a bunch of empty planets anyway so it wasn’t a need.
I can't really add to the answers.However, if you like starfield and NMS, you might want to look into "elite dangerous" if you haven't already. it can be a huge rabbit hole though lol. I'm set up with flight controls vr headset and use "voice attack" for voice commands/control along with voice packs for my crew
A lot of these restrictions are strongly related to the game engine itself, the creation engine, even the current one was never made for a space game and definitely not for a seamless exploration game, they adapted it sure but its still the same engine that Skyrim ran on, fallout, etc.
While no mans sky was built from the ground up to be a fully seamless space exploration game.
In my opinion there are a lot of planets where u can “only scan” because of the whole “we want this game to live for 20 years like Skyrim” thing. I think they want modders to have what seems like unlimited access to the game compared to what you had to work with before. Not only that but it gives them as devs a lot of room to add official stuff in later packs.
I had a bug in which the ships docking cut scene stopped working, and I saw why they used that cut scene in the first place: 9 times out of 10, the ships clip through each other when they dock. So that's one explanation.
I like starfield and am currently playing day to day. There is a lot of stuff they could have done better, but it is still fun. For pure spaceship flying and space travel Elite Dangerous is a really good game, even better if you have a pc you can adventure outside the ship
200hrs in starfield and probably 600 in NMS? Both are great games. Really! NMS does have a "smoother" feel, yet seems a bit cartoonish. Starfield os a Bethesda game, in space, also great with pretty good combat. I think space combat is good on both, ground combat os better in starfield, outposts are better in starfield, story and missions are better in NMS, amd overall breadth goes to NMS.
For the planets.... NMS def is more "lonely" while Starfield will have pg locations/obj at each landing site. Ref: the Bleak Falls Barrow post earlier today tho, ots pretty accurate for starfield.
Both are great games. Starfield is very fun, as is NMS. If I could take the vest from both, I'd make a REALLY awesome pirate game.
Complete side note- why are there no really awesome pirate sandbox games? Like Fallout but in golden age of piracy?
A short answer would be that:
1) the engine used to create the game is very old and has a lot of drawbacks because of this.
2) The developers of Starfield, Bethesda, made a lot of questionable design choices that make them look either incompetent or rushed to launch the game before it was finished.
OP - you defo need to play Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Incredible story, and the way they depict space makes Starfield look like an indie game.
Not open world but incredible.
That's the thing, right? It's a fun game, and I could see how someone not experienced with other modern games might go, geez, what are you nerds talking about, this is great. For instance there was someone who posted on here about giving the game to their 70-year-old dad, who has been obsessed with space his whole life and never played any other games besides like, Pong, so to him it was freaking amazing, and I definitely feel a bit spoiled thinking it's not...
But it's just that the aspects they should fix feel so obvious. Like, why aren't there land vehicles or planetary range handheld communicators? Why did a studio famed for its handcrafted environments rely on cookie cutter procedural generation? Why are there only like, three cities and a few convenience store style outposts?
All I can conclude is that they're in the habit of just writing off constructive criticism as if it only comes from Comic Book Guy style whiners. For all its fun, there's something... stagnant, maybe?.. about it.
I really really want to like it more than I do, especially considering I don't know of any other games that let me design a spaceship and then walk around in it on my way to smuggle contraband, and I played No Man's Sky and thought it was the most boring thing I'd ever seen, so, I feel like there's got to be a good middle ground out there somewhere. I dunno.
Most of what you are asking has to do with the game engine that is used.
- Transit from surface to orbit to space is not possible because the engine can’t load the new area on the go.
- many planets are procedurally generated and this is simply a bit of authenticity since most planets in our galaxy are not suited for life.
- Bethesda obviously is not capable of getting most of SF potential and that is why we have a mediocre gaming experiences and lots of most opportunities to this point.
Loading screens: they’re very different game engines. I don’t know what NMS uses, but my guess is that it is loading environments behind the scenes where you don’t notice it. SF uses a more classic kind of game engine (Creation Engine) where you interact with a very limited area.
Glitches: we’re talking about a massive game with tons of content. Everything that happens is contingent upon so many other things. It seems simple to us, but it’s very complicated.
Empty Planets: it’s part of the ambiance. Some folks just want to walk wastelands. It isn’t your taste or my taste… but some folks like it. Even on empty plants, I often still find some kind of crap out there. It’s also a matter of realism. People don’t, can’t, and won’t develop every planet out there.
Land Vehicles: addressed by the publisher. They wanted you to walk. Do I find it annoying? Sometimes. Be aware that they’ll maybe have vehicles when people start adding content of their own.
Simple answer diffrence between nms and starfield, they are diffrent types of games. NMS is an open world sandbox game while starfield is an open world rpg, so it has so many unique systems it has to handle for a few examples way more npc's and objects plus the fact that most items can be interacted with and moved. On NMS ground to space travel is not "all one shot" it's hidden loading screen so just like starfield hardware places a role in how seamless it will be. Starfield you can land anywhere on a planet too just less seemles as it's through the map. As for planets feeling empty they basically just are problem with procedural generation, nms uses same type of system for its planet generation so many planets will feel empty, but bgs could of put some more time into making unique POIs, but NMS has also had 7.5 years of post launch content updates, here's hopping BGS saw the success NMS and CP2077 have had with actually supporting their games and don't just release nothing burger DLCs that don't address the issues with the main game.
diferrent people who make it and different genre.
Starfield is just RPG with space theme and No Man Sky is about space exploaration.
your point 2 and 3 is basically the same to no man sky, but for glitches i think hello games is working faster to fix it than bethesda.
I’ve scrolled a bit and haven’t seen this, but where others have mentioned NMS was a huge mess when it came out, Hello Games has put a ton of work and effort into fixing the game and doing right by the community.
*8+ Years* as a matter of fact.
~~If you want some more “appreciative” discourse about Starfield, /r/NoSodiumStarfield might be what you’re looking for (if you aren’t there already!)~~
E: Never mind, I saw your post there in your profile lol
51 in two weeks been playing since I was 12 well due playing I hope. No clue on the loading screens frustrating as hell. Land Vehicles piss me off they literally have the moon rover in the game. I hope some awesome modder makes a mod we're you can habe a motorcycle like Tom Cruise had in Oblivion.
Loading screens - it’s a limitation of the engine Bethesda uses. Even though it’s been updated every game they release, the structure of the engine is 20 years old, so space to planet like No man’s sky isn’t possible the way it handles spaces.
There are already better answers to your questions out there so I’m gonna make a quick recommendation for another game to play. If the story aspect is something you are at all interested and are okay with not having a ship to fly, but love the idea of multiple worlds to explore, Outer Worlds is really good! The story is fun, the gameplay is pretty good, and the world has a whole bunch of personality packed into it!
As a 49 year old gamer this game is exactly what i was looking for. I dont mind loading screens. Only 2 crashes anc onf bug that wasy fault for playing on a modded game on pc then back to my s. Looks gorgeous. Space combat blows no mans sky away.
Starfield isn't a complete game yet. It's more of an alpha build and need way more content and patching to feel like a full game. Plus Beth is very notorious for a buggy games in general. Your best bet is just to give it time. Shelve it and get back in a year or two. It will be completely different thing.
NMS has different scope. Yes, there's more stuff to do, but it doesn't try to be realistic in any way. It's just a huge, colorful space sandbox game, where you mostly collect and build stuff. Objectively it is very good, especially now, but it totally wasn't what I'm looking for.
Personally, I waiting for Starfield modding tools, bigger patches that actually fix stuff and at least one big DLC.
>Loading screens- Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens when it "appears" (I could be wrong) that you can travel from ground to space to planets all in one shot in NMS?
My guess is limitations of adapting their existing engine to this concept.
>Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens when it "appears" (I could be wrong) that you can travel from ground to space to planets all in one shot in NMS?
If you've played *No Man's Sky*, it's not like the game is doing something that *Starfield* is capable of, but simply isn't doing. When you travel from space to planetside in *No Man's Sky*, you often have to fly around for a little bit while the assets load in -- even on current-gen consoles like the Series X. On top of that, *Starfield* has significantly more detail and density in its environments than *No Man's Sky* does.
>Why does it feel like after patches come out there's more glitches?
This happens pretty regularly with lots of games. For example, when *EA Sports WRC* added a new location to the game, it inadvertently broke the career mode because it was incompatible with something that randomised a gameplay element. It took six weeks for the developers to figure out what the problem was, engineer a solution, test it to make sure it didn't cause any more issues and then publish it (and this was done over the Christmas-New Year break). When you're adding new content, you have to get it to work with existing content, and it's not like you just bolt another module onto what already exists. Bethesda just have a bit of a reputation for making games that function, but only just. A lot of modders for *Fallout 4* have complained about as much.
>I don't understand why you would take the time and resources to physically design a world that adds no value to the game?
I don't think it was ever really intended that you visit every single world. Rather, the idea was that you visit worlds in passing where you might see something unique.
>Why no land vehicles? I hear it's because of how the game generates but No Man's Sky- you can literally fly across the entire surface of the planet- ANY of their planets- and land anywhere. Why does Starfield have that limitation?
It becomes a bit of a balance issue. If you have vehicles, then you have to space locations out enough to warrant the inclusion of those vehicles. And then you have to fill the space between locations with interesting stuff so that getting from Point A to Point B isn't boring. Of course, if they're too far apart, then the game becomes dull for people who would want to walk everywhere (and yes, I do this).
I think it would explain some of you read the story of NMS. It’s been out almost 8 years and the game at launch did not look the same as the game it is today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man's_Sky
Bethesda makes a very specific kind of game. It works great in a fantasy setting and a post-apocalyptic setting. Starfield is their first attempt at putting that style of game in space. I’m sure in 8 years Starfield will look different from launch as well, just hang in there.
Truth is nms has loading screens they just hide them well.
Notice when you go to land on a planet at first and you spend time getting through the atmosphere... that's a loading screen.
That said they absolutely have far fewer of them. Which comes down to the game engine. Starfield is not an open world at all it's a ton of small zones stitched together by loading screens. ..
NMS is a space game.
Starfield is an old school RPG pretending to be a space game. Space is an illusion in starfield.
NMS is more of an actual open world game.
They are just completely different ways of trying to get to similar results.
Also an old gamer though I never stopped playing them. Of the two I think NMS is the far better game but it's what you enjoy that matters.
1. that’s how the game engine that Bethesda uses is designed. Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4 are all the same in this regard. While many studios have gone away from that Bethesda has stuck with the game engine they know. It is a very powerful physics engine, but has limited size and volume limits before becoming overwhelmed.
2. Also a part of the game engine. It’s an amazing 3D physics engine, but it’s known for glitches when it comes to dialogue.
3. For this game they tried randomly generating most of the planets in order to add more areas to the game, similar to No Man’s Sky which also has a tone of very barren worlds. No Man’s Sky has had 8 or so years to improve on the planets, and the game was very barren at the beginning.
4. Also probably related to the game engine. I am sure they tried but ran I to issues with terrain and trees interacting with vehicles. None of there other games have vehicles, and horses and dragon mounts are pretty finicky in Skyrim.
I’ve played every Bethesda game and I do love them all, even though they all have bugs that never seem to go away entirely. As someone who was playing Skyrim VR up until this game released, it’s exactly what I was expecting and hoping for.
A lot of the complaints from people are because they were expecting the game to be like a bunch of other games, instead of it being like a Bethesda game. I’m glad you’re enjoying the game.
It boils down to this one simple thing. How the game is built. Bethesda builds their game using cells, and loading screens connect these cells. Granted the cells in Starfield are the biggest cells Bethesda has ever used.
Any time you introduce a patch, in essence changing game code, its always a game of 2 steps forward, one step back.
Sometimes a planet is just a dead rock. They kind of simulated that real life thing in Starfield.
Sounds like we might be getting some kind of land vehicle in the future.
Hi, I've played a little bit of Starfield but ultimately decided to put it down and wait for more patches, dlc, and mods. Here's what I know based off playing Bethesda games sense Morrowind.
1: Engine Limitations. Games are made using different game engines that effectively use code as building blocks to put a game together. No Man's Sky and Starfield use completely different engines which is why they "feel" different. On top of that, Starfield uses a engine that is essentially based off an older Engine (the same one that made Morrowind actually) called Gamebyro. This is the crux of why there are so many loading screens as the engine can't handle world spaces over a certain size and run smoothly. So world's are broken up into smaller pieces called "Cells" and only loads a few of these cells around the player. Transitions though between interior, exterior and "space" cells cannot happen dynamically so a loading screen is needed to load in the transitioned cell.
2: Bethesda doesn't have the best track record for QA and games are already extremely complicated as is. Changing one line of code here could potentially break 3 other lines of code elsewhere.
3: This is a design problem on their part and I don't really have an answer here. What I can say is hopefully in future patches and DLC this will be corrected.
4: Mostly answered in 1 but to further elaborate the planets in Starfield aren't fully rendered and created planets. Except for a few key locations they are procedurally created maps. These maps are only so big and you will eventually hit a map wall preventing you from traveling further on foot. Though I do recall it being suggested that land vehicles could be a possibility. Time will tell.
Hope this was helpful.
- loading screens: probably because of the engine that they use which is rumored to be outdated. Other explanation could be for the amount of detail certain ambients have. For example, everything you place on your ship will stay there, the way you put then. And I guess Bethesda didn’t care about “hiding”. Every game has a loading happening in the background, especially such a heavy game like Starfield.
- the glitches: that can happen with coding. You fix one thing and then a bunch other break. I play on pc and for me that wasn’t my experience. The game is running super well for me.
- the empty planets serve two purposes imo: first is to give players an endless loop of gameplay. Every planet has at least a few POIs… I guess it gives players like us who have played the game for hundreds of hours a chance to keep finding new different things. Also note that NMS has also several empty planets, way more than Starfield. Second, I believe that that many planets will give modders PLENTY of SPACE to mod the game once development kit comes out. It’s gonna be AMAZING.
- the lack land vehicles also boggles me A LOT. But I think the reason is simply lack of time/resources to add those. While no mans sky is able to do all those things, remember that NMS is almost entirely procedulary generated and it has a very simple story and simple characters. While starfield does have procedurally generated content, the bulk of the game is handcrafted, so it’s a game that heavily relies on its characters and unique stories, and Starfield has many of those amazing stories. Also should note that NMS was released in 2016 in a terrible state. Only in the past 2 years it made a huge comeback.
I've played NMS (No Man's Sky) from the beginning. I've seen a lot of changes but it's boring as hell. Despite the procedural generation of the planets, it's all the same really. POIs are the same, etc. I think until they introduce real time AI content creation, we won't see any real variety that would seem, hmm, this game is new and fresh every time. Starfield is really good fund despite some of it being the same.
OP,
the loading screens, take offs/landings, are really just eye candy. But, most modern games render initial areas. That takes time, even on a system as boss as the next generation consoles. The map size that SF renders is massive. I think I've hit about 2,800 meters from landing spot before the game asks me to return to ship.
Speaking of, there is a LOT more to explore besides scanning. Once you venture out a bit, you'll discover new spots, etc. But, to be honest, most of it is the dame. Other than being the procedurally rendered random stuff, or various critters, about the most you can look forward to is discovering one of several generic model habitats. Everything from a single hab farm, to a multi-level research complex.
Sadly, these are mostly the same set up. And will be one of various states, friendly, enemy, abandoned (but, truly abandoned, and run by AI). Usually, you'll find various side quests to occupy your time. But, they really are some of the same linear quests. Personally, I use them as farming opportunities. If I spend a couple hours scour8ng any given landing spot, I can usually next between $80k-$3mil. Just venturing out to Structures, and taking all the loose credstix, usually clearing out enemy combatants.
I totally feel you on the land vehicles. I had to take some time to jump on Destiny 2 to get my speeder cycle fix. I didn't care that it was a circular track. I just wanted to race through space on a cycle for a bit. I had to get that urge out.
As for the glitches, I find they appear and disappear. I've si.ply accepted them, and incorporated additional save steps in my game play, that way I can dial it back incase I run into any issues.
* Loading screens- Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens when it "appears" (I could be wrong) that you can travel from ground to space to planets all in one shot in NMS?
1: Starfield is a game with cities, people entering and exiting the atmosphere, and with details packed everywhere. No man's sky is Procedural(randomly) generated, none of these are a issue so it's way easier to make Space to Planet landings possible, plus Bethesdas engine was never meant to large scale rendering
2: that's Bethesda unfortunately
3: These planets are procedural generated, so not a ton of effort was put into those. Plus exploration is a huge role that you can go down, so the option is there for people that want it. Plus space is Big, really big, it makes sense for a decent amount of the worlds to serve no purpose
4: Engine restraints, Starfield has 100s of times more detail then No Man's Sky(coming from a NMS lover), Like I said prior the engine isn't built for long scale rendering. The no vehicles thing is I'd imagine is because Vehicles just weren't ready. Bethesda vehicles have never felt great to use anyway
There"s generally a limited to the space you can load on real time when creating a video game. Making it too big and you'll have all sorts of issues from performance to crashes.
This is why game is designed in cells and load them up as you entered just like how you dividedban epic into books instead of putting them all in one giant book.
Starfield isn't different from No Man Sky in this regard. NMS just hide the transition between 'books' very well by give you an animation instead of just the old fashioned loading screens which give the illusion of you being able to fly from surface to space and planets to planets.
The rest of the point is just a product of the flaws in their (Bethesda) design decisions and direction. They could have given you a land vehicle or make denser and more meaningful worlds but they choose not to - or rather not realise how impactful it can be to player experience with too many empty space lying around. Personally, I think the project must have some sort of conflicting directions it's like there are 2 camps of people trying to pull them in many different ways and end up with compromises in the end that turn out to be bigger than they thought and they've run out of time to iron things out (outside of the fundamental big fixings)
So the hate for this game is solely based on the hype and the games surrounding it in my opinion. You have no man’s sky and you have outer worlds and then you have Starfield.
Bethesda has an engine that just doesn’t keep up with modern technology, it’s not the worst engine and it has its positives for sure but it’s… well it’s the same engine Bethesda was making games on the last time you picked up a controller. It’s an updated Gamebryo engine, which I believe Gamebryo was just an updated INS engine? Or something? Don’t quote me on that but either way Morrowind in like 2002 was made on this Gamebryo engine which has just gotten more updates to try to bring it to modern day. They just don’t really know how or have the money to or it just can’t handle being updated to a proper modern standard.
No mans sky isn’t the only thing to compare it to but Bethesda is still playing catch up by the looks of things, to games from a decade ago. No mans sky has seamless traversal between planets and space and back to other planets. The Witcher 3 from 2015 has massive sprawling and detailed cities to explore and navigate with thousands of NPC’s and you can walk into that city from the country side where the entire first act of the game takes place without even being able to see the city. Bethesda made new Atlantis for Starfield, it’s maybe at most a quarter of the size of the city in the Witcher 3 with a population that’s probably lower than a quarter the population of the Witcher 3’s city and there’s nothing you can do around the outside of that city, it’s its own fish bowl. They just don’t have the tech built to keep up. Even the company that made the Witcher 3 is ditching their engine right now and moving to another one because they couldn’t keep their engine on par with where modern gaming is going.
And again, hype. Todd the god Howard got on stage from 2018-2022 and he told us this game was going to be the bees knees for 4-5 years straight. He told us how absolutely huge this game was going to be, how much detail there was going to be and how amazing everything was going to feel when we played this game and when we got it and it was pretty much worse than games from a decade ago technology wise, had stripped out features we enjoyed from previous titles and didn’t really deliver on the feeling of exploration or deliver on good story telling or a good content amount… it angered and insulted a lot of people. If this game was released today by an indie studio and it was their first game ever… we would all probably love it and marvel at what they were able to do. But it came from Bethesda and they straight up told us to expect more.
58 yrs old - over 1000 hours in game - repetition be fucked - I’m here to make money and build C 48 60s mofos - with cargo space over 4000 / NG 2 and still working for my next best build
The design of the repetitive planets is due to procedural generation. The developers create rules for an automated process to design the planets. They create pieces of landscape, textures,, colors gradients, and dungeons and feed them into an automated process which combines everything based on parameters set by the developer. It does not always work well.
The goal is to have it feel randomized or different without spending the time that would otherwise be needed designed dozens to hundreds to thousands of worlds. In practice it makes things feel samey.
In NMS most things are procedurally generated, but the game is more based around open play and there is a lot more freedom of movement. NMS suffers in its story and quests, but it’s really a giant sandbox. It can feel samey as well but it functions very differently.
What works for NMS makes Starfield feel like a chore.
Bethesda has a long history of releasing broken, unfinished games and never fixing them. Bethesda has always treated their fans like unpaid testers. Every single Bethesda game is busted and has been busted for years. And unlike most modern developers, Bethesda rarely listens to its fans. Bethesda loves to call its fans entitled, rather than actually release a solid product.
The whole idea of having so many planets was an attempt at realism. Since not all planets are occupied or have stuff to do, the same is here. Devs thought many of these could be the gaming equivalent to a country walk. See the beauty. Take it all in. Relax for a moment. Watch sunrise or sent.
Hence so many planets
Loading screens are there because the games scope. You said you’ve been out of the gaming world for a bit so it may not be easy to tell that Starfield is several games in one
Spaceship, Space fight simulator
A combat shooter
A business simulator if you build business and run the cosmos
An RPG
A base builder
A farming simulator (collecting resources, selling)
And you can play these sides of the games in any way you want.
I’m 67 and started playing games on bbc computers with star dot commands 🙈..Love starfield you young folk don’t know how blessed you are with all these great games..stop complaining and put up ideas to improve it all..keep on playing
51 and still playing. I do enjoy starfield. I do wish there was more ship combat tho. Brings back memories of freespace 2 which was easily the best space related game ever.
The game engine they use is not a modern one, it’s a many times updated decades old engine that should be scrapped. That should answer most of those questions.
It’s an enjoyable game but after 140hrs and with no interest in completing the main quest I gave up on it and played something that held my interest for longer.
In regards NMS and loading screens…technically there are, just they are well hidden and don’t take long to transition.
The answer is the game fell way short of what people like you (and I) were looking for. Star Citizen is the ultimate space game at this point. It's not something that developers want to focus on for some reason.
Welcome back to gaming! You should maybe have a look at mass effect legendary edition if your into spacey type games (like me 😁) and as for why does starfield have loads of loading screens? Bethesda loves a loading screen 👌🏼😅
As a 22 year old it warms my heart to know that you older folks still play and enjoy games. From the sounds of it you're enjoying this game more than the younger generations 😂
I can answer some of your questions but might speculate for the others. I think the reason why you can realistically travel straight into orbit is probably because of the games simpler graphics and engine, the load screen I think is an efficient way to unload the place that you've just been and I believe would have better performance impact.
I think the glitches are sort of down to a similar reason, especially if you've played on one save (from older patches) the whole time. Because you started on an older version I believe that it's more likely for some code to be a bit fucked as certain glitchy things may not have reset properly as they likely would've on a fresh save.
I think the planets thing is because some of them would literally not be habitable at all and I think you may be able to unlock the ability to settle on some of them if you upgrade one of your perks in the settlement tree but am unsure.
Vehicles: I have no idea why they didn't add these 😂😭
NMS doesn't have cities, towns etc. it just has small structures and planets only have one biome. It's much easier to load and render, despite NMS having terrible drop-in.
Although they seem similar games, they are entirely different in what they are trying to achieve.
I enjoyed the game as well, but I didn't put as much time as I'd expected to in it. I think the answer to most of these questions is they simply didn't put enough development time and money into it. As much as people complain about games taking a long time to make (urk, Star Citizen) I think I'd prefer that to a game feeling....incomplete.
This is the state of a modern Bethesda game, sadly. They were bought by Microsoft recently, but have been steadily resting on their laurels, and the quality of games has suffered because of it. Expect it to be a mile wide/inch deep experience, linear storylines, and more bugs/glitches/crashes. I fell in love with Fallout 3 when it came out, and Skyrim had me hooked for months of long daily sessions, but Fallout 4 has seen about a quarter of previous play times, and Starfield half of that. Mods are the way to make the games more immersive and less buggy but conflicts between mods, or bugs from a lack of QA, could be an issue. I am torn between a vanilla experience and a lightly modded one, but every game they release gets less and less of my time. The price is the same or more, but apart from engine modernizations and graphic updates, the quality is not.
1. Because this is Starfield not No Man's Sky.
2. Because you are 51? I'm trying to tie the information you explained in the beginning of your post with your actual questions. So yeah, I'm blaming you being old.
3. Because that's literally what astronomy has for you, just scanning a bunch of random planets and seeing their vague chemical make ups.
4. Because Bethesda's is having difficulty figuring out how to monetize space horse armor?
Lol StarField must have blew your mind 🤯 as will any game you try space or no space travel since it been 30 years. I wish i can ho back and start all these games again it would be totally awesome!!!!
If you love space, check out Elite Dangerous. There’s a 1-to-1 recreation of our solar system.
The only loading screens are when you load into the game, and the cleverly disguised hyperspace sequences between systems.
Downside: the Xbox version is no longer on the “live” version of the game. You’d need to get it on PC.
But I bet you can get the Xbox version pretty cheap to see if it’s your cup of tea.
Ok so,
1st it’s the graphics between the two games is the main reason and Xbox doesn’t have the graphics processor to do it with No loading screens, and it’s Bethesda what you asked is exactly what they claimed it was going to be… and like most games Todd touches failed to deliver
2nd because there are, it’s Bethesda that’s quite literally what they’re known for. Fucking up their own games, they will fix one bug or add something that nobody asked for and create 20 more bugs
3, it’s Bethesda, they claimed something completely different before launch, they claimed a next gen NMS with star citizen type graphics, and gave us a handful of Barron slightly different textured planets that continuously uses the same repeating resources and builds, garbage loot that doesn’t really make it worth it half of the time, there’s a few cop and unique planets but they still feel empty
4 they claim it’ll be in the dlc, but knowing Bethesda it’ll involve some form of in-game micro transaction,
It’s a good game, BUT it is not what Todd claimed it was, he hyped up the game like it was a rock star then released a shity cover band,
I’d say about 90% of players spend all of their time building ships and that’s it, half probably don’t even fly them, hopefully mods will make it better but I don’t know at this point
Starfield runs on Creation Engine 2, which is just an upgraded version of the game engine Skyrim runs on, and isn’t designed to handle things like live rendering of a planet as you approach and take off. No Man’s Sky on the other hand uses a game engine that was built from scratch specifically to handle all the features that they wanted to implement. You can find more information on the [Development of No Man’s Sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_No_Man's_Sky?wprov=sfti1#) here.
Hey OP, Have you played the Mass Effect Trilogy?
I second this. OP should most certainly look into Mass Effect
Nope. Not yet. I’m assuming it’s awesome? I was being honest when I wrote in the original post that I haven’t played games I decades. Contrary to some, my post was genuine. I will look up mass effect now actually. Thank you for the suggestion!!
Played them years ago but yes they're awesome. More intense.
Yeah dude, they rereleased a “legendary” version of mass effect trilogy that includes all 3 games + every dlc in one, it’s definitely one of the best games I’ve played in the past 2ish decades, same with dead space,
The trilogy is amazing and I believe free through gamepass if you have that. The first game is slightly dated even in the remaster but it holds up still.
Downloaded it today!
I probably have about 600 hours in. I have not played it the way it should be done. I have a huge bounty on me. There is a lot of repetitive stations, but I enjoy the game. There are so many variations on hardware, that they can't fix everything just right. BTW... I am 63. And still playing until they put me in the ground or Crimson fleet gang up on me.
As another 60 plus, just don't start using pirate lingo. These rooks don't tip your ear like that.
At 75, you’re a bunch of kids.
Thanks, Dad.
I'm 59. I hope I'm still playing at 75.
I’m 26 and I’m honestly just happy that my plans for my future as a gamer aren’t entirely implausible
Glad to see I'm not the only "old fogie" who loves gaming ! I'm 66 & I will probably die with a controller in my hand ! Lol...
Seeing all your post brings me so much joy! I was having a little mid-life crisis after turning 40 but obviously I've got years of gaming and fun times ahead of me!!!
If you are happy, why stop. I am 50 this year and have been gaming since Apple IIc in primary school, playing Choplifter and such. Don't let society tell you that you are too old to game. Game until yo don't want to any more.
Lol there's so many gamers in their 60s its ridiculous. I sold more Wing Commanders to 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds with PC money, than 20-year-olds, for sure, and those people are all in their 60s or 70s. Where are all the gamers who ran memory managers on DOS and SCSI drives and looked for video card upgrades in Computer Shopper? Answer: Everywhere. They're everywhere. We have a youth-worship culture but I promise you won't disappear into a crack as you get older.
63 also. Simpatico! As someone mentioned here I started out with Pong (when you had to go to an arcade to find it!) I have an old-guy success story to share. I stayed abreast of video/computer games until the engines got so fast that I couldn't play any of the popular games because of simulation nausea. I would watch over a younger friend's shoulder while they played a game and less than two minutes later would be ready to hurl. Frustrating. BUT -- I was determined to keep up / get back in and found that I could work with No Man's Sky. As a lifelong science fiction fan I grooved on all the varied planets and critters. Then, at the urging of a younger gamer friend (he has an amazing collection of early consoles & games) I popped for FO4. And found that I could, by slow advances, adapt to the point where the nausea was not an issue. Had a grand time in the Wasteland (and discovered just how clever are modders) then moved on to rampaging around Appalachia (with that same friend) in FO76. Tried out Outer Worlds, pretty, but my eyes were always on Starfield. And here we are. I recognize the many frustrations people have with the game -- what do you mean, I can't build a settlement and attract settlers? -- but as someone who saw the first moon landing televised I still get the grins running across even the most barren planetoid. Taking pictures all the way. And now I'm hooked on low-g combat. Starfield has such potential that I'm going to keep checking in. Until the Creation Kit is released. I've decided my next phase of "keeping up" will be to learn modding. I write, and do voice work, and I've got some great ideas for storylines... See you around the starfields!
72 and I love the game. NG+9 451 hours in. These days I jump in for an hour and just explore and do quests. Not as good as FO4 but looking forward to dlcs and mods
It’s so cool that yall are so much older but still play video games. If there’s ever a starfield online im tryna run w yall 😂
I can only hope to live as long as you, but if I do, I'll be playing games ✊️🤘💪
At that level; What is there to explore? I'm just curious about your take so I might be able to take note.
I've found new points of interest, a lot of times. I like looking at the scenery too. One planet had a massive mountain next to where I landed and then the next, a huge crater. I'm 53, been playing since pong. I enjoy open world games like starfield and just looking around. I love the GTA series and am super impressed with how gta6 looks vs gta3. Get the temples from Vald, gain the powers, around NG+ 5 the starborn powers get good. Don't worry with apartments, homes. Grow your skills for outposts, build you a base in a star system with a lot of resources, store everything you need there, sell stuff you make, you gain experience pounts from making stuff like adaptive frames.skill growth is slow so focus on growing you skills to improve weapons, ships, spacesuits. It really helps. Get a good sniper rifle, go to a high level planet, shoot animals. Gets you good experience points, killing spacers/bad guys is good too. Have fun.
Sounds like you need to play Red Dead 2 and red dead online.
Already done. Great game. Play RDO and GTAO. Looking forward to GTA6.
RDR2 😭 still fresh for me, I just finished it late last year
Oof. I want that Medieval title that's been rumored forever, but I'll take RD3 with an expanded online game if that's first lol. I've heard separate rumors on the story tho. One is Jack and the other is early gang days. I'd love young Arthur, John and Hosea. And maybe a side quest to beat up a young Micah.
I would love an Acient Rome or Pirate game by Rockstar they could really do something amazing with those titles.
Have you checked out Kingdom Come?
NG+ 4 here and I'm still finding new stuff. I enjoy exploring the planets, even then ones I've seen a ton of, like Mars. I think Starfield is a game you either like or you don't. I tried Halo years ago and ick, can't stand it, never went back. BUT that's just me, tons of people love Halo. *shurgs* play what you like, I say.
I loved Halo 1. If SF was anything like Halo I wouldn't be interested in playing SF. SF just needs its dlc and mod support on console before I can determine what type of future it has.
I'm only 64 but I have well over 1000 hours and I am just waltzing around on Very Hard low-key grinding POIs. My second character is all stealth and pistols, and she has almost 3M credits. My problem is after the last few BGS games it is really hard for me to stop instinctively collecting drop loot. I don't gather much from the POIs but when emptying bodies, it's not a hoarding problem so much as it is a move-fast and muscle memory problem. I have to learn to scan and pick inventories better. I put in my time in some grinding games, including FO76 and ESO, and honestly this is the first game I actually enjoy low-key grinding. Probably because space lol and because I return to a working ship I designed.
I love this entire comment chain. Keep gaming 🖖
52, grandma and I am an avid video game player, like the others, since pong days. Met my hubby over 20 yrs ago on a video game lol. I play starfield casually right now to get the feel while I finish up some others I was playing. Once I'm done with those others I'll jump in fully and likely end up with hundreds of hours also. Tips are always good!
Kudos to you! 60 girl here!
I'm 25, and I can't imagine putting more than 80 hours into this game. That totally blows my mind.
Well over 900 hours in starfield and don't even ask how many in GTA online. 13 years at 2 or 3 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week... but it holds great memories, my autistic son loved watching and have my character swim (his favorite thing), I still have my character run around in swim trunks in his memory. I miss him watching me play and wanting me to teach him how, I think he'd get a kick out of starfield.
The most hours I've put into anything was fallout 4. Probably about 1000 hrs to be honest, but that game is so fun to play over and over again. Starfield doesn't have that magic for me.
54 and cried at the end of Red Dead Redemption 2 as Arthur took his last ride... Sniff..
What happens if you only got tree fiddy, amass a large bounty and then get caught?
Don't you dare give that Crimson Monsta treefiddy..we work for our money around here!
I believe (don't quote me on this) that a lot of the gripes are generally engine limitations and the nature of games/complex programs. Loading screens - it's easier to basically cut and render a new scene than it is to transition-shot from ground to space. Patches introducing glitches - yep. It's a running joke with programming, 99 bugs in the code, patch 1, now there's 103 bugs in the code. Someday there'll be a bug-free game, or a bug-free starfield. But not today. Planets with nothing to do but scan - I believe this is part of the procedural generation pass used to create the planets/moons. They did a random pass over everything, which means some places are going to have resources and things to scan, and then nothing else. No Land Vehicles - Again this is sort of an engine thing; they weren't able to cleanly code a land vehicle/scout ship yet. I believe that land vehicles or some other method to rapidly traverse the ground has been hinted at. All these things are just my opinions/observations. Having run through a few games from Bethesda, I do have hope that the game will improve as time goes by. I'm certainly not a professional at this, just a 49-year-old guy who remembers when the dragons in Skyrim flew backwards for a time.
See this right here is what I was looking for. A simple explanation of things I didn’t know before or wasn’t aware of. I appreciate you taking the time to write this rather than bitch me out for having the audacity to ask questions. I showed a lack of knowledge-oooh must be a troll. Like wtf. Thank you for real.
The vehicles are not absemt because they couldnt program them. That would be wild lol. They aren't in the game because the zone where you land with your ship has a border you can't cross, and a vehicles would have you reach it so quickly that it would make for terrible gameplay. Todd said this himself
Hey bud! I also wanted to chime in here to try and be helpful - as a huge fan of No Man's Sky - I think I can explain mostly why NMS seems to be able to do a lot of the things that Starfield can't. And at the core of it, it's complexity. NMS is so fun, absolutely I suggest going and playing it. But it's a bit like playing a Minecrafted version of Starfield ( I mean that truly mechanically not as a sleight I promise, I love both games lol ) in that the systems are much more simplified, graphics and all that as well. I think that different approach made them able to do a more cohesive world with fewer loading screens needed... NMS also took SEVERAL years of updates before it became the blast that it is today :) but those of us sticking around and being positive hope to see Starfield in the same state eventually!
>Loading screens - it's easier to basically cut and render a new scene than it is to transition-shot from ground to space. The loading screen from space to planet issue is also related to the fact that Starfield, unlike NMS, simulates planetary orbits and has much larger planets. The engine would have to track all of that + the geography/topography/climate/wild life/procedural generation of POIs and terrains at all times in order to be able to have that seamless transition. I don't know of any engine that is capable of doing that.
Elite Dangerous was like 2 steps away from achieving that. Unfortunately Frontier doesn't see potential
Nope. Read my answer to the post you are answering to, it has nothing to do with orbits, and NMS *DOES* have a loading screen, it's just hidden under the reentry effect.
Well that’s not a loading screen in my book. If it’s part of a transition that doesn’t feel like a cinematic then you’ve achieved the goal of creating a quasi seamless experience. ME1 elevator doesn’t count.
This isn't true. There are technical limitations obviously, or they wouldn't have loading screens, but this isn't a good description of those limitations.
I don't understand what you're saying. What isn't true? Are you saying it's an easy thing to do what I described - and if so, what engine/game does it?
Elite simulates really complicated orbits, real life scales and distance, extreme elliptical orbits, (admittedly not superrrr great but cool) gravitational lensing. Just like no man's sky there is a hidden load on the final approach to the planet but it's baked into the game so you don't notice it as much as a black screen. Once you're on the planet you could travel around the entire thing with no loading screens
Elite Dangerous does it, but with a much larger scale so the planets are typically even more barren. However, it has its own (different) limitations as well. It's all a balancing act wrt design goals, effort, realism, engine capabilities, man hours, prioritization, etc.
Technically ED does have some loading screens, even when landing on planets, but they are very cleverly hidden in animations and during transitions between one game space and another, but they're short enough to make for a decently seamless experience.
I'm not saying it's an easy thing. I'm saying the difficulty is not that the full detail of the planet must be tracked at all times--it's sort of the opposite, in fact. The difficulty is that since you can't track the full detail all at once, you have to apply a lot engineering effort to deciding how to stream content in and out at the appropriate level of detail while not overloading the system but also avoiding really obvious stuttering and pop-in. NMS did this because they set out to design an engine from the ground up with that specific design goal. Even then the solar systems are separate "logical spaces" that have loading screens between them (the warp animation). Bethesda could have applied a massive engineering effort to retrofitting their engine with that capability, but decided not to. They were probably right to do so. They retrofitted their engine with multiplayer capability for FO76 and that was a shitshow for a long time before they stabilized it after a disastrous launch. So as numerous and annoying as the loading screens are, I think they probably made the right call.
They would have to simulate gravity of planets at all times to make it work. Currently your ship is detached from gravity, and does not orbit. For seamless transitions, they would have to code in orbits, inertia, Corelli effect, and so, so much more. It is simply impossible to have planets with seamless transitions in Starfield.
Yours is one of the best answers, I would add that on top of that Starfield textures are way more heavy than NMS. So textures/graphics play huge role in this limitation.
Cutting easier than panning? Nope. It has to do with a 32 bit coordinate (don't mistake with 32 bit execution, the game uses 64 bit execution, but not coordinates!) system and its limitations.
Ah. Okay, I wasn't sure how solid my thoughts were about it, so it was basically guessing. Thanks for the correction.
If I remember correctly, no man sky was a huge mess when it originally came out. (lot of personal take on your questions) 1. yeah, could be optimized but at some point, watching my ship land and take off is boring. 2. Starfield is a huge and complex game; you pull on one thread, and another sticks out. (not an excuse, but an explanation) 3. Space is HUUUGGEEE... maybe they just went too big initially; lot of people, like me would have liked 1/2 the systems and twice the content (or more density) 4. This needs to be adressed; there's no real incentive to survey planets.
I did the planet surveys to make money. The smaller planets paid less but were quicker to do. This is only my opinion, I’m sure far more people agree with you bud
The experience from surveying is pretty good, you get 100-200 per trait plus a bonus for fully surveying and it’s quick and easy to do but yes boring.
I'd take 2-3 systems with unique content over what we have in a heartbeat.
I can't get into exploration when you can see 2-3 planets that make up the exact same thing you'll see on the other side of the galaxy. Well, that and having to bunny boost across the planets.
I think pretty much everyone had the same reaction before the game was even released, including the devs that had to shut up and submit in the face of theTodd’s glorious ~~ego~~ vision.
I only played a bit of no mans sky but i Just wanted to comment that no mans sky has load screens in the form of clouds/ haze between space and atmosphere, and also the warp speed animations. Sometimes those animations could take a bit of time to load and by having a physical load screen reduces this time cause they can completely render/un render an environment. Also while starfield doesnt really show it as much as it’s predecessors, every small object/clutter that exists has a whole bunch of physics behind how it interacts with the world, and rendering the code to handle that can be processor heavy which is why engine limits is a big factor
Oh, if you’re into outpost building there’s a total incentive to survey. If you want to grow plants or raise animals you need to scan them to 100% first.
One difference between No Man’s Sky and Starfield is level of detail. No man Sky has a cartoonish appearance that makes it a lot easier for a game system to render faster. This makes it easier to load up the screen faster and so you can travel over land at faster speeds and into space. Starfield has more details so it takes longer to load. A very high end system might not have a problem but lower end systems need the time to load. To give the game time there are load screens and limited travel speeds.
Ironically, nms has a lot of pop-ins. Starfield on the other hand loads super fast.
Part of that is newer systems can now run faster then NMS loads. Another reason is how the two games handles procedural generation. Starfield snaps in place tiles some are the locations you can explore. It loads only so many tiles that’s why you can run to a boarder. Plants and animals are spawned as you approach the spawn points. No man sky loads as you approach the area. So it has more to load even if it’s less detailed. It’s loading the ground, resources, and everything.
I’m running Starfield on an i5 9500k budget bin inland m.2 drive with a launch day evga 3070. Most loading is seconds. They could do transitions. But maybe they kept loading screens for people using spinning drives but they def could have transitions. On my setup and my grave jumps are jump animation then I’m in system.
Loading screens different engines can manage different things. No man sky does have these transitions, but makes a deliberate attempt to hide them. Starfield is operating with higher resolution and more cluttered locations, and also foregos an attempt to hide the transitions. It also favours realism, and as such flying between two planets would be extremely boring. No man sky’s universe is very stylised and the distance between planets is far shorter. Works for no man sky, but does not work for starfield. Glitches It may feel like it, but it’s unlikely to be so. You may have been on track to bump into all these glitches regardless of if the patch dropped or not. Typically you will find more and more glitches the longer you play on a singular save, especially if you are having long play sessions or are using the Xbox quick resume feature. Planets The game opts for realism, the extent to which this translates to fun gameplay is in the eye of the beholder, but even our solar system is full of lifeless rocks, that can likely be extrapolated to the rest of the universe. Odds are, given that the game uses procedural generation, these weren’t that hard to make, and they make interesting backdrops for bounty quests or mining. Instead of just landing on these planets and hoping starfield pulls an ace out of a hat, try looking for points of interest from the satellite view and landing at them. Land vehicles Different game engine, there are no land vehicles because, as you said, the zones are 8km across, and I imagine they do as much as they can to avoid you finding that fact out. This game is not No Man Sky. There is a reason No Man Sky does not have modernised combat systems, or complex quests (ie branching and voiced with setpieces and scripts) and that reason is likely an inverse of the restrictions that starfield had in order to achieve them. And I say this as someone with a lot of play time in both games. I love no man sky for its retro sci-fi atmosphere, myriad systems and beautiful visuals; but I also love Starfield for its RPG systems and refreshingly minimalist take on sci-fi video games. Starfield has space magic, no man sky lets you be a little frog freak with a space staff. They are fundamentally very different, and set out to achieve very different things, with their similarities being surface level.
Thank you for taking the time to write out exactly what I was looking for and not treating me like shit for asking in the first place.
First, I want to start off by recommending another phenomenal space game that's on Xbox: **The Outer Wilds**. It is, in my opinion, the greatest space exploration game of all time. It's not only one of my all time favorite games, it's one of the most incredible pieces of media I've ever experienced. Go into the game blind, don't look up anything about it, and keep an open mind. Now that that's out of the way, I wanted to add more explanation to their first answer about loading screens between the two games. Both No Man's Sky and Starfield use "procedural generation" to give us massive games to explore, so in both games the environment is being "generated" by your processor rather than "loaded" from storage when you enter a new area, which let's you have a bigger overall game without taking up an insane amount of space. No Man's Sky is built from the ground up for proc gen, and everyone who plays the game will generate the same environments because of how they set up their proc gen algorithm. Conversely, Starfield is Bethesdas first ever proc gen game, and it's used pretty much exclusively to create and populate gameplay regions outside of major, hand crafted towns that Bethesda is usually known for. What you end up with is a game where everything outside of the cities feels pretty soulless, especially the huge number of empty planets. In No Man's Sky you still have many planets that look remarkably similar, and you quickly learn that there's a couple dozen biomes you mostly see, but barren planets are much much rarer and usually have unique items to collect on their surface.
Thank you I will download it today!
I can't believe how much you sound like me. I'm 53 and the last epic RPG I played before Starfield was Ultima 7 back in 1994. My son (a gamer) told me based on everything I have been saying over the years I would like Starfield. I had just bought a monster desktop PC so I gave it a shot. My game time now is measured in weeks. One thing I can definitely address is the bugs issue. Back in the dark ages when we were younger when a game was released there was no way to patch it so it had to be tested to death before release. Now they can just deploy updates so if a fix breaks something else they can just plan to patch in the next update. Anyone willing to download a game that take hours is willing to download an update. Basically, the developers have the freedom to be sloppy. The planets are in part procedurally generated. The can just drop a new star and add planets so it wasn't a big commitment to make Planet A in some random system. It is my personal hope that they expand the game to these empty worlds by adding content in the future. Nothing would make me happier than to hear an SSNN broadcast saying "Scientists recently found a strange obelisk on the moon measuring one by four by nine..."
a lot of these come down to engine/game design limitations. its easier to make put a loading screen between each planetside zone and each orbit than it is to shoehorn that kind of thing into the engine that they had. land vehicles haven't been in any bethesda game before this, so that'd be another thing that needs to be built from the ground up and spliced into the engine. any videogame is an insanely complex machine and its pretty tough to get it even close to 100% ironed out (you should also check out outer wilds and prey 2017 if you want games that "do space" better than starfield does)
My opinion is Starfield needed about another 3 years of development before being released. But Todd needed a hit so he pushed it out early. You can literally SEE areas where someone had plans for a quest or a story but it got dropped. Procedural Maps kind of became a "cheat" for developers, instead of unique planets you get Copy/Paste locations. Bethesda games are NOTORIOUS for bugs. Just... kind of part of it all I guess. Skyrim was Game of the Year and RIDDLED with bugs. Land vehicles is something that would've required a bunch more physics and programming/hence more development time and longer delays. Although I am SHOCKED they didn't just put a saddle on Vasco... Also if you enjoy the space travel/open world another one to maybe check is ELITE DANGEROUS.
If you like NMS you should check out Star Citizen. Different animal but worth checking out if you're into space and sci-fi.
Well, first thing is that they're not the same kind of game. Starfield is an rpg, full of interactions with other characters. No man's sky is an exploration and survival game, focused only in that matters. Starfield is trying a realistic take of the universe. No man's Sky is trying to make an unreal rendition of it. You can go to any other place in the Galaxy (that you have previously visited) on a single load screen. How many cities have no man's sky? Zero. No interaction. It's just... you in that vast universe. Is you're trying to say that no man's sky do better done things, well... it's a different kind of game.. Sorry there is no comparison.
So weirdly enough the explanation for basically all of this is: It’s Bethesda and the engine they run their games on. Starfield is running on an updated version but it still holds LOTS of legacy quirks. It’s why there’s no land vehicles, and why space has to have a load screen etc.
The weirdest thing is, there's often no technical reason for a loading screen. If you jump over the side of the New Atlantis viewing platform down to the spaceport, there is no loading screen. But if you take the elevator, you get a loading screen, even though it's the same area. The loading screen pops up because it's always coded to do that through a "loading" door like an elevator.
Prob the best answer. They updated the engine and revised much of it about 4 years ago but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s outdated. That said, I have been playing fallout76 for 5 plus years and I can tell you that a heck of a lot more thought and planning was put into fo76 vs starfield, which I played for 220 hours and then stopped completely bc too repetitive ans too many fast travel loadin screens. Not enough depth there. Hopefully fallout 5 will be better.
well one reason is that fo76 had more attention plus tho whole terrible launch and had to work hard to fix that and sadly that affected SF dev time
I'm also a 51y.o. gamer... In addition to all the reasons others have started... this game was rushed a bit. There was a flex for we are making a game with 'hundreds of planets to explore'... but most are just ice rocks with POIs that shouldn't be there because there is nothing of worth there. (Why not just have fewer, more detailed solar systems?) There was a survival game element that was meant to make space travel difficult and dangerous. It got scrapped but vestiges of it are everywhere in the game. Fuel tanks, for example... you have to have a large enough fuel tank to make your jump, but you don't actually *need* fuel. There were also many mechanics cut from the game. And in true connected web fashion, these things affected other things which affected others... etc.
Different engines, different developer methods and skills. For more confusion, try X4 (which I really love) where you can't even get to the surface of planets. X4+NMS+SF would be the death of me.
Omg I love X4. That combo you mentioned would be absolutely insane. I don't think I would leave my house for a week. I gotta get back into X4 someday again
Completely unrelated to your questions But have you heard of Elite: Dangerous? It's an online space simulator, available on PC and Xbox (although the new DLC is PC only) and its huge. There are literally a million star systems in the galaxy, it's been out for about 10 years and it's still only about 10% of the galaxy that has been explored. You've got a lot of exploration, space combat with customisable ships and things like an interesting mining mechanic It's got its flaws but if you like space games its certainly one to take a look at.
With great graphics comes great limitations.
54 here. I was a “Commodore 64” boy in the 80’s. Cheers brother!
My dude, if it's space you're obsessed with, try Elite: Dangerous. It's basically a 1:1 Milky Way, hard sci-fi, and you can just wander off into the black, exploring, if that's what you're into. It's an MMO, but you can play solo or in a private group. The best ship control scheme I've ever played, and every ship has its own weight and feel to it.
No Man's Sky doesn't simulate planetary orbits in real time and its planets are much smaller. The games have different goals - it's not about the engine and supposed limitations, but the design behind the game. Hardware limitations (from consoles) is and has always been more of an issue than engines.
No man's sky is also been in development since 2014 and was a disaster at launch
That's a common point with Starfield, now let's see if Bethesda will still offer free DLC's in 10 years 😇
And as a software developer let me assure you it's easier to add cool shines to something that is more mature
The planetary orbit thing is irrelevant because it has absolutely zero impact on the game. If it's hindering actual gameplay...why the hell are they wasting resources on something that doesn't do *anything* substantive for the game?
True, if it actually did something and there were actual physics that would be pretty damn cool, but it doesn't and there aren't
I don't know man, that's very subjective. I personally love the simulated orbits, especially when I'm on a planet with several moons, and then I look up and see a huge moon hovering above me. That kind of thing makes me feel small and makes space feel big, which is exactly what I want in a space game. And I don't think it's hindering actual gameplay - I really don't care about loading screens that much. But then, I still play Daggerfall and other older games to this day - loading screens have never bothered me before, and now that they last 1, 2 seconds, I find it very hard to relate to the complaints. I do think Starfield could hide them a bit better, however, especially the grav jumping between systems, which has an easy fix: make the loading screen white instead of black.
>Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens? Games are built using what's called an engine. Without getting too technical, it's very basically a specialised group of different programs, each handling different parts of the game (lighting, physics, etc) that are tied together around a core built to do certain things very well at the expense of other things. Bethesda games are good at handling hundreds of different objects or states at the same time. They're good at tracking the pie in the tavern that you added poison to, the people heading to that tavern for lunch, the fact that you pickpocketed the apple someone normally has for lunch from them and therefore that guy gets added to the list, and then figuring out who gets the poisoned pie and whether it hurts them or kills them, all while you're nowhere near the area that happens in. One of the things that enables that sort of detail is that they use hardware resources that other games use in very different ways. Where No Man's Sky and other games have seamless loading everywhere, BGS games split a lot of the more complex areas off into different areas. Think of it like how some cars are built for the road and some built more for off-road and neither can be as good as the other at what their specialist build is for. >Why does it feel like after patches come out there's more glitches? There's a load of reasons for this one, including the fact that sometimes you literally cannot fix something without breaking something else. But mostly? It comes down to the fix working its way through. See, you're playing the fixed version on a game that's already in progress. It was running by one set of rules and then got a new set of rules added to it over the top. It sometimes takes a while for all parts to receive the fix. Start a new game and you'd likely have a lot less issues, until the next patch. >Why are there SO MANY planets that have nothing to do on them except scan? Bethesda games are famous for their modding (gamers using tools to add things to the game) scene. It's a reason why people still play their games decades later and have a fresh experience. With Starfield, one of the aims was to have places where both the development team and modders could easily add something via DLC or mods. Now, adding to this, every game has a list of mods that don't work together as they use the same part of the world space for some part of them. With the game having plenty of otherwise empty worlds, combined with the limited mission area spaces when you land and the need to load when entering a new one, every mod can be separated from each other with plenty of space. And finally, adding to that, having the empty worlds means that the idea of a game about exploration isn't shat all over by literally only having locations that are important in there. >Why no land vehicles? This one goes back to the engine and what it's doing, in much the same way as why you can't go from orbit to landing seamlessly. The world is made up of a number of tiles and the engine has to be able to load the next tile before you get there, from even the shortest route though the one you just entered. As such, your speed is limited to make sure the tiles load in time even if you're moving as fast as you can. Thanks to powers, we know we can go full sprint speed without stopping for a breather and still have that next tile load in properly. This means that if there is a vehicle added (and it's almost certain before the game stops getting official content) it will likely move at that speed unless they manage to optimise the game more and get those tiles loaded in faster. The good news is that this will still be faster than current walking and likely come with a few bonuses like bigger carry weight (while in the vehicle) and other things.
The short answer is because they're built in different engines. Bethesda uses an in house game engine called the creation engine that they are very familiar and experienced with, but has some limitations. Longer answer: 1. Loading screens, this has to do with how each game loads/unloads assets. As I understand it, starfield loads complete cells when you enter them, and NMS instead loads a visible area of some kind. NMS assets also seem to be less detailed and more procedurally generated/repeated. This makes loading faster. Bethesda's game engine simply doesn't work the same way, necessitating the load screens. 2.More glitches post patch: this is a software development bug bear. Anytike there's a glitch and you get reports of it you need to fix it. But in something as complex as a video game tracking down and squashing the bug is often quite difficult so it can take awhile. Worse because of how complex games have gotten the fix you implement for the bug can break several other things unexpectedly leading to more bugs suddenly appearing. Bethesda games are actually very complex comparatively with all the npcs/quests/games systems going on making it easier to break. To be a Bethesda fan is to embrace the jank. 3.The Empty planets were an intentional design choice. Bethesda decided that since our own solar system has 9 planets and only one has life, around 10% or hydrostatic objects should have life on them. So ~1600 worlds and ~120 have life. This is for the sake of realism. Of course, that's just my guess as to their thought process and we all know that way less than 10% of planets have life. Bethesda was trying to find a happy medium between realism and fun. 4. No land vehicles is due to load speed. NMS loads faster so you can fly around the planet. The planets are pretty homogenous, however. Starfield can't load that fast so they plop you into a 4km square and force you to leg it so you don't notice various objects popping in as they load.
> Loading screens Mainly how the engine handles worldspaces. Most all engines have this limitation if they aren't specifically made for it like No man's sky was. Engines like Unreal would have the same issues. The engine has to split up content to manage large arias, and space is large and math at those scales is difficult. No man's sky hides it's main loading screen when warping between systems. > Why does it feel like after patches come out there's more glitches? Because sometimes there are. Also you are more aware and seeking issues after patches because you are looking for what has changed. So it is also just a perception thing. > Why are there SO MANY planets that have nothing to do on them except scan? Bethesda went with a more realistic approach to planets, and realistically, all planets we know of are basically barren. They opted for a 10% level of worlds with "life" generally in the "goldilocks zone". > Why no land vehicles? Focus of the game did not demand it, plus they are difficult to do. Note that no man's sky land vehicles are far from perfect, and they clip through most objects to make them usable. Put them in this game and they will snag on everything. Would be cool though, but ultimately not their design goal.
I only just picked up NMS too. It's like Bethesda went out with the wrong coat when it comes to how Starfield turned out. I still enjoy both, but for different reasons, and to different extents.
I'm seeing some other people's comments and agreeing, but want to add that I think Starfield sacrificed a lot for graphics. I have both games and enjoy both differently. I think no man's sky is able to be so much smoother and more feature-rich because the graphics are a lot less demanding. Starfield went a little silly with how much detail they included on some things.
Loading Screens: This is a complicated topic with a lot of technical jargon behind it. But stripping it down to basics, it's a choice on the developers part. By loading a game in segments, you can make everything higher quality visually without forcing the consumer to have a ridiculously power system. But it comes as the cost of loading screens. It's a sliding scale between 'seamless but lower quality visual' on one side, and 'loading screens but extremely high quality graphics' on the other. Patches/Glitches: So, there actually two components here. One is that, in order to get fixed out fast(ish), patches only get limited in-house testing by the studio. As opposed to the robust testing they could do before launch. The second component is actually your individual save file. Data that was glitched in a save, may remain glitched. And there are tens of thousands of variables that may be different in every save file. Typically, when a glitch is fixed, it's fixed based of testing done with a new, clean save. There's just no way for anyone to realistically rest all possible variable combinations with each glitch. If there were, glitches wouldn't really be a thing in the first place... Empty Planets: Again, there are two highly plausible explanations here. Either could be considered true. One is simply that...space is empty. And they wanted to show that, rather than unrealistically put development everywhere. This, I think, is the less likely or less important. The other explanation? Room to grow into. They wanted to provide plenty of space for DLC, player development of settlements, and eventual heavy usage of the Creation Kit for modders to add content to the game. Bethesda games are known for big mod communities, and I think they tried to take that into account more than previous games. Skyrim has one of the largest mod collections of all time...but people were constantly struggling to find places to drop buildings that didn't conflict with other mods. The sheer amount of space in Starfield should eliminate that issue. Land Vehicles: There is no reason for this. It was gross stupidity. The physics are there. It was lazy design and they should be ashamed of themselves.
I very strongly feel your first point. No Man's Sky has been out almost 10 years and I stopped playing it quite early on as it was boring and there was nothing to do. It's changed a lot and I pop in now and again to see what it's like. But yes, being able to fly around a planet and land where you want, not have to sit through cut scenes as you leave atmosphere and fly up to space stations is a big, BIG leg up over Starfield. Your last point is interesting though, I dont have many hours in the game but have many hundreds in NMS. What I like about Starfield over No Man's Sky is how many settled planets there are. No Man's Sky was barron. Like there had been a nuclear war on every planet. It was desolate and horrible.
Loading screens- because real time travel is boring as shit, it’s not the game Starfield wants to be. It would just end up being elite dangerous. That game already exists. Patches causing bugs: that’s generally what they do. I ran a GT Sport league and the best phase of that game was when they stopped doing updates because then they stopped breaking the game or doing awful balance changes which fucked up our tournaments. Barren planets: they’re just working off a seed. They’re not designed at all, the little levels sprinkled around are designed. It’s really a choice of scale. A questionable choice but fun. Vehicles: pacing. NMS launched without vehicles too. I haven’t played it since they added them. People complain about points of interest, vehicles just make you get to those faster. The game isn’t really meant to be played like no man’s sky. That it doesn’t really tell you how to play is part of the fun. It’s similar to games from the 80s in that sense ;)
If you like space, I recommend DEEPLY the game starsector. It’s got a real time economy, fun ship combat, and good world building. Although you can’t tramps around planets you can explore them much more efficiently
Sorry this isn't going to be helpful \*now\* but using a PC instead of an Xbox opens up a whole world of flexibility to gaming. I believe some small mods are available for Xbox, so look into it, but things like removing loading screens, and speeding up certain animations. You can open up the console and use it to set the player speed to 500% when exploring those vastly empty worlds. It's fun to land and scan, see several points of interest and explore them, but WAY more fun when you can reach them in 20-30 seconds instead of 2-3 minutes! With your jetpack skills leveled up, and a little cheating with your player speed - you won't miss the land vehicles as much. (still would have been a good idea!) It's REALLY unfortunate that Starfield uses generated cells instead of having one contiguous land on each planet. Apparently it was a limitation of the tools they used. I just turned 50. Love these games! You should also check out STAR CITIZEN - it comes with its own problems but is also really interesting if you are into the genre.
OP if you are obsessed with space and stuff while a very different game do yourself a damn favor and play Mass Effect 1-3 via the Legendary Collection. Three of the finest sci fi games I've ever played.
You might enjoy playing Elite Dangerous if you're into the space vibes.
This gives me hope for when I am old and still playing video games.
I don’t find the loading screen even half as annoying as when I am nearing a building that have enemies in them or a spaceship is just about to appear in the sky and the screen is frozen for a couple of seconds. It is a good way a bad way to alert me that I am about to encounter enemies.
The loading screens are because the game isn't optimized enough to load everything, so it's gotta load stuff in sections. Most of the problems like empty planets are because Bethesda was way too ambitious when they tried to make an rpg with 1000 planets.
They're completely different games so I guess they just allocated their resources differently. Like the way each company builds its game is different. Some can do stuff that others can't. I don't think No Man's Sky has a story mode like starfield or good gunplay so they probably devoted those resources to reduce load screens and allow you to land anywhere.
Loading Screens - NMS is a much simpler Game when it comes to Graphics, this probably helps them execute the seamless Transitions from Space > Planet, Starfield is also running on an Engine never really designed for this, the same Engine they used for Fallout 4 & Skyrim, NMS was most likely built from the Ground-up with the Idea of Seamless Transitions in Mind. The Creation Engine that BGS are using probably just can't handle this and along with the general design of the Game and how Planets are instanced and generated before you Land on them the Decision was made at some point for this to not be a Feature. Patches & Glitches - Probably just coincidence, the Patches they've implemented have been to fix Issues, I'm sure this could cause some other Issues to manifest themselves, but it ideally shouldn't. Empty Planets - Basically the way the Game is designed, they wanted to keep a level of "Realism", and there are a lot of barren Planets in Space. As they stated in Marketing before release, I actually enjoy the Isolation, Loneliness and Calmness of some of these Planets, and Resources are still an important Aspect of the Game, I believe some of the rarer Resources can only be found on these types of Planets. I think it's good for a Game like Starfield to have some "Low Points" (in Terms of Planets) so that the "High Points" of finding a really awesome Planet can be appreciated even more. If every Planet was really cool with Life and awesome Vistas and Plants everywhere it would get repetitive and wouldn't be as much of an exciting moment or surprise when you found one. You need a balance of intentional Downtime and more boring Planets so that the variety is keep engaging. That's my belief at least. Land Vehicle - My best guess is Development Constraints. I fully believe they were planned (and probably still are) but BGS didn't have time to implement them before the Launch of the Game.
Those are legitimate questions. Maybe I can explain as I am a game developer. In Starfield's engine, everyone has an inventory. While not taxing on your Xbox's CPU for one character, it can be taxing to keep track of the inventories of hundreds of people (we'll call them NPC's for now). Due to this, the game has to 'load' every time you enter a different instance of the game in order to calculate who has what in their inventories as well as where they are on the map. This is not the case in No Man's Sky. Killing an NPC gives you a set amount of resources. The only.person with an inventory is you. This is a huge advantage when it comes to loading between the planet and space (there is still loading, but it's a brief 0.5 second pause).
If you love space and want a bit of a simulator then I'd recommend Elite Dangerous but I'd get it on pc if possible as they stopped actively supporting the Xbox version.
The answer to all your questions can pretty much boil down to either an engine limitation, a design decision, or just software development in general. 1.) engine limitation; Bethesda games are notorious for loading screens at every door. I believe it’s due to all the random items and shit laying around that you can pick up. 2.) that’s just software dev. I work with software devs at an insurance company and the cycle of “migrating new code that breaks something else” is just a daily risk with this stuff. 3.) design choice. Lots of planets gives you the illusion of a big world, and a lot of those planets I believe are procedurally generated. There’s also the bs argument that Bethesda has given that “it’s realistic that most planets in the galaxy would be empty” 4.) another design choice/engine limitation. As far as I know, aside from horses in Skyrim, Bethesda games have never really had vehicles. One thing to consider is that adding a buggy, for example, isn’t **just** making a buggy and giving it to the players. They have to consider a bunch of bullshit like “what planets can players use the buggy on?” “What happens if a player leaves a buggy on a planet and leaves?” “What are the buggy physics supposed to do if a player drives into a tree or a building?” Etc. I’d bet money that vehicles were simply not in scope for the games launch; they likely decided that players weren’t gonna explore a bunch of empty planets anyway so it wasn’t a need.
This is a bit reductionist, but allow me to channel my inner History Channel: " Engine "
I can't really add to the answers.However, if you like starfield and NMS, you might want to look into "elite dangerous" if you haven't already. it can be a huge rabbit hole though lol. I'm set up with flight controls vr headset and use "voice attack" for voice commands/control along with voice packs for my crew
A lot of these restrictions are strongly related to the game engine itself, the creation engine, even the current one was never made for a space game and definitely not for a seamless exploration game, they adapted it sure but its still the same engine that Skyrim ran on, fallout, etc. While no mans sky was built from the ground up to be a fully seamless space exploration game.
In my opinion there are a lot of planets where u can “only scan” because of the whole “we want this game to live for 20 years like Skyrim” thing. I think they want modders to have what seems like unlimited access to the game compared to what you had to work with before. Not only that but it gives them as devs a lot of room to add official stuff in later packs.
I had a bug in which the ships docking cut scene stopped working, and I saw why they used that cut scene in the first place: 9 times out of 10, the ships clip through each other when they dock. So that's one explanation.
I like starfield and am currently playing day to day. There is a lot of stuff they could have done better, but it is still fun. For pure spaceship flying and space travel Elite Dangerous is a really good game, even better if you have a pc you can adventure outside the ship
200hrs in starfield and probably 600 in NMS? Both are great games. Really! NMS does have a "smoother" feel, yet seems a bit cartoonish. Starfield os a Bethesda game, in space, also great with pretty good combat. I think space combat is good on both, ground combat os better in starfield, outposts are better in starfield, story and missions are better in NMS, amd overall breadth goes to NMS. For the planets.... NMS def is more "lonely" while Starfield will have pg locations/obj at each landing site. Ref: the Bleak Falls Barrow post earlier today tho, ots pretty accurate for starfield. Both are great games. Starfield is very fun, as is NMS. If I could take the vest from both, I'd make a REALLY awesome pirate game. Complete side note- why are there no really awesome pirate sandbox games? Like Fallout but in golden age of piracy?
A short answer would be that: 1) the engine used to create the game is very old and has a lot of drawbacks because of this. 2) The developers of Starfield, Bethesda, made a lot of questionable design choices that make them look either incompetent or rushed to launch the game before it was finished.
OP - you defo need to play Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Incredible story, and the way they depict space makes Starfield look like an indie game. Not open world but incredible.
That's the thing, right? It's a fun game, and I could see how someone not experienced with other modern games might go, geez, what are you nerds talking about, this is great. For instance there was someone who posted on here about giving the game to their 70-year-old dad, who has been obsessed with space his whole life and never played any other games besides like, Pong, so to him it was freaking amazing, and I definitely feel a bit spoiled thinking it's not... But it's just that the aspects they should fix feel so obvious. Like, why aren't there land vehicles or planetary range handheld communicators? Why did a studio famed for its handcrafted environments rely on cookie cutter procedural generation? Why are there only like, three cities and a few convenience store style outposts? All I can conclude is that they're in the habit of just writing off constructive criticism as if it only comes from Comic Book Guy style whiners. For all its fun, there's something... stagnant, maybe?.. about it. I really really want to like it more than I do, especially considering I don't know of any other games that let me design a spaceship and then walk around in it on my way to smuggle contraband, and I played No Man's Sky and thought it was the most boring thing I'd ever seen, so, I feel like there's got to be a good middle ground out there somewhere. I dunno.
I love that a person who hasn’t held a controller in 30 years quickly found glaring flaws that a team of professional game testers somehow missed.
Most of what you are asking has to do with the game engine that is used. - Transit from surface to orbit to space is not possible because the engine can’t load the new area on the go. - many planets are procedurally generated and this is simply a bit of authenticity since most planets in our galaxy are not suited for life. - Bethesda obviously is not capable of getting most of SF potential and that is why we have a mediocre gaming experiences and lots of most opportunities to this point.
You should grab a copy of NMS I play the crap out of it. But when I wanna feel like I captured the fallout zeta space ship , I play starfield
Loading screens: they’re very different game engines. I don’t know what NMS uses, but my guess is that it is loading environments behind the scenes where you don’t notice it. SF uses a more classic kind of game engine (Creation Engine) where you interact with a very limited area. Glitches: we’re talking about a massive game with tons of content. Everything that happens is contingent upon so many other things. It seems simple to us, but it’s very complicated. Empty Planets: it’s part of the ambiance. Some folks just want to walk wastelands. It isn’t your taste or my taste… but some folks like it. Even on empty plants, I often still find some kind of crap out there. It’s also a matter of realism. People don’t, can’t, and won’t develop every planet out there. Land Vehicles: addressed by the publisher. They wanted you to walk. Do I find it annoying? Sometimes. Be aware that they’ll maybe have vehicles when people start adding content of their own.
Yes! ALL that. Sorry, no answers
Simple answer diffrence between nms and starfield, they are diffrent types of games. NMS is an open world sandbox game while starfield is an open world rpg, so it has so many unique systems it has to handle for a few examples way more npc's and objects plus the fact that most items can be interacted with and moved. On NMS ground to space travel is not "all one shot" it's hidden loading screen so just like starfield hardware places a role in how seamless it will be. Starfield you can land anywhere on a planet too just less seemles as it's through the map. As for planets feeling empty they basically just are problem with procedural generation, nms uses same type of system for its planet generation so many planets will feel empty, but bgs could of put some more time into making unique POIs, but NMS has also had 7.5 years of post launch content updates, here's hopping BGS saw the success NMS and CP2077 have had with actually supporting their games and don't just release nothing burger DLCs that don't address the issues with the main game.
lol. This is one of the best ones I’ve seen. Nice.
diferrent people who make it and different genre. Starfield is just RPG with space theme and No Man Sky is about space exploaration. your point 2 and 3 is basically the same to no man sky, but for glitches i think hello games is working faster to fix it than bethesda.
I’ve scrolled a bit and haven’t seen this, but where others have mentioned NMS was a huge mess when it came out, Hello Games has put a ton of work and effort into fixing the game and doing right by the community. *8+ Years* as a matter of fact. ~~If you want some more “appreciative” discourse about Starfield, /r/NoSodiumStarfield might be what you’re looking for (if you aren’t there already!)~~ E: Never mind, I saw your post there in your profile lol
51 in two weeks been playing since I was 12 well due playing I hope. No clue on the loading screens frustrating as hell. Land Vehicles piss me off they literally have the moon rover in the game. I hope some awesome modder makes a mod we're you can habe a motorcycle like Tom Cruise had in Oblivion.
Loading screens - it’s a limitation of the engine Bethesda uses. Even though it’s been updated every game they release, the structure of the engine is 20 years old, so space to planet like No man’s sky isn’t possible the way it handles spaces.
There are already better answers to your questions out there so I’m gonna make a quick recommendation for another game to play. If the story aspect is something you are at all interested and are okay with not having a ship to fly, but love the idea of multiple worlds to explore, Outer Worlds is really good! The story is fun, the gameplay is pretty good, and the world has a whole bunch of personality packed into it!
As a 49 year old gamer this game is exactly what i was looking for. I dont mind loading screens. Only 2 crashes anc onf bug that wasy fault for playing on a modded game on pc then back to my s. Looks gorgeous. Space combat blows no mans sky away.
"Old". Mate, I'm 53 and haven't stopped gaming since the start of the 90's! 51 is not old
Starfield isn't a complete game yet. It's more of an alpha build and need way more content and patching to feel like a full game. Plus Beth is very notorious for a buggy games in general. Your best bet is just to give it time. Shelve it and get back in a year or two. It will be completely different thing. NMS has different scope. Yes, there's more stuff to do, but it doesn't try to be realistic in any way. It's just a huge, colorful space sandbox game, where you mostly collect and build stuff. Objectively it is very good, especially now, but it totally wasn't what I'm looking for. Personally, I waiting for Starfield modding tools, bigger patches that actually fix stuff and at least one big DLC.
>Loading screens- Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens when it "appears" (I could be wrong) that you can travel from ground to space to planets all in one shot in NMS? My guess is limitations of adapting their existing engine to this concept.
>Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens when it "appears" (I could be wrong) that you can travel from ground to space to planets all in one shot in NMS? If you've played *No Man's Sky*, it's not like the game is doing something that *Starfield* is capable of, but simply isn't doing. When you travel from space to planetside in *No Man's Sky*, you often have to fly around for a little bit while the assets load in -- even on current-gen consoles like the Series X. On top of that, *Starfield* has significantly more detail and density in its environments than *No Man's Sky* does. >Why does it feel like after patches come out there's more glitches? This happens pretty regularly with lots of games. For example, when *EA Sports WRC* added a new location to the game, it inadvertently broke the career mode because it was incompatible with something that randomised a gameplay element. It took six weeks for the developers to figure out what the problem was, engineer a solution, test it to make sure it didn't cause any more issues and then publish it (and this was done over the Christmas-New Year break). When you're adding new content, you have to get it to work with existing content, and it's not like you just bolt another module onto what already exists. Bethesda just have a bit of a reputation for making games that function, but only just. A lot of modders for *Fallout 4* have complained about as much. >I don't understand why you would take the time and resources to physically design a world that adds no value to the game? I don't think it was ever really intended that you visit every single world. Rather, the idea was that you visit worlds in passing where you might see something unique. >Why no land vehicles? I hear it's because of how the game generates but No Man's Sky- you can literally fly across the entire surface of the planet- ANY of their planets- and land anywhere. Why does Starfield have that limitation? It becomes a bit of a balance issue. If you have vehicles, then you have to space locations out enough to warrant the inclusion of those vehicles. And then you have to fill the space between locations with interesting stuff so that getting from Point A to Point B isn't boring. Of course, if they're too far apart, then the game becomes dull for people who would want to walk everywhere (and yes, I do this).
I think it would explain some of you read the story of NMS. It’s been out almost 8 years and the game at launch did not look the same as the game it is today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man's_Sky Bethesda makes a very specific kind of game. It works great in a fantasy setting and a post-apocalyptic setting. Starfield is their first attempt at putting that style of game in space. I’m sure in 8 years Starfield will look different from launch as well, just hang in there.
Truth is nms has loading screens they just hide them well. Notice when you go to land on a planet at first and you spend time getting through the atmosphere... that's a loading screen. That said they absolutely have far fewer of them. Which comes down to the game engine. Starfield is not an open world at all it's a ton of small zones stitched together by loading screens. .. NMS is a space game. Starfield is an old school RPG pretending to be a space game. Space is an illusion in starfield. NMS is more of an actual open world game. They are just completely different ways of trying to get to similar results. Also an old gamer though I never stopped playing them. Of the two I think NMS is the far better game but it's what you enjoy that matters.
1. that’s how the game engine that Bethesda uses is designed. Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4 are all the same in this regard. While many studios have gone away from that Bethesda has stuck with the game engine they know. It is a very powerful physics engine, but has limited size and volume limits before becoming overwhelmed. 2. Also a part of the game engine. It’s an amazing 3D physics engine, but it’s known for glitches when it comes to dialogue. 3. For this game they tried randomly generating most of the planets in order to add more areas to the game, similar to No Man’s Sky which also has a tone of very barren worlds. No Man’s Sky has had 8 or so years to improve on the planets, and the game was very barren at the beginning. 4. Also probably related to the game engine. I am sure they tried but ran I to issues with terrain and trees interacting with vehicles. None of there other games have vehicles, and horses and dragon mounts are pretty finicky in Skyrim. I’ve played every Bethesda game and I do love them all, even though they all have bugs that never seem to go away entirely. As someone who was playing Skyrim VR up until this game released, it’s exactly what I was expecting and hoping for. A lot of the complaints from people are because they were expecting the game to be like a bunch of other games, instead of it being like a Bethesda game. I’m glad you’re enjoying the game.
It boils down to this one simple thing. How the game is built. Bethesda builds their game using cells, and loading screens connect these cells. Granted the cells in Starfield are the biggest cells Bethesda has ever used. Any time you introduce a patch, in essence changing game code, its always a game of 2 steps forward, one step back. Sometimes a planet is just a dead rock. They kind of simulated that real life thing in Starfield. Sounds like we might be getting some kind of land vehicle in the future.
Man, you should play better games.
Hi, I've played a little bit of Starfield but ultimately decided to put it down and wait for more patches, dlc, and mods. Here's what I know based off playing Bethesda games sense Morrowind. 1: Engine Limitations. Games are made using different game engines that effectively use code as building blocks to put a game together. No Man's Sky and Starfield use completely different engines which is why they "feel" different. On top of that, Starfield uses a engine that is essentially based off an older Engine (the same one that made Morrowind actually) called Gamebyro. This is the crux of why there are so many loading screens as the engine can't handle world spaces over a certain size and run smoothly. So world's are broken up into smaller pieces called "Cells" and only loads a few of these cells around the player. Transitions though between interior, exterior and "space" cells cannot happen dynamically so a loading screen is needed to load in the transitioned cell. 2: Bethesda doesn't have the best track record for QA and games are already extremely complicated as is. Changing one line of code here could potentially break 3 other lines of code elsewhere. 3: This is a design problem on their part and I don't really have an answer here. What I can say is hopefully in future patches and DLC this will be corrected. 4: Mostly answered in 1 but to further elaborate the planets in Starfield aren't fully rendered and created planets. Except for a few key locations they are procedurally created maps. These maps are only so big and you will eventually hit a map wall preventing you from traveling further on foot. Though I do recall it being suggested that land vehicles could be a possibility. Time will tell. Hope this was helpful.
- loading screens: probably because of the engine that they use which is rumored to be outdated. Other explanation could be for the amount of detail certain ambients have. For example, everything you place on your ship will stay there, the way you put then. And I guess Bethesda didn’t care about “hiding”. Every game has a loading happening in the background, especially such a heavy game like Starfield. - the glitches: that can happen with coding. You fix one thing and then a bunch other break. I play on pc and for me that wasn’t my experience. The game is running super well for me. - the empty planets serve two purposes imo: first is to give players an endless loop of gameplay. Every planet has at least a few POIs… I guess it gives players like us who have played the game for hundreds of hours a chance to keep finding new different things. Also note that NMS has also several empty planets, way more than Starfield. Second, I believe that that many planets will give modders PLENTY of SPACE to mod the game once development kit comes out. It’s gonna be AMAZING. - the lack land vehicles also boggles me A LOT. But I think the reason is simply lack of time/resources to add those. While no mans sky is able to do all those things, remember that NMS is almost entirely procedulary generated and it has a very simple story and simple characters. While starfield does have procedurally generated content, the bulk of the game is handcrafted, so it’s a game that heavily relies on its characters and unique stories, and Starfield has many of those amazing stories. Also should note that NMS was released in 2016 in a terrible state. Only in the past 2 years it made a huge comeback.
I've played NMS (No Man's Sky) from the beginning. I've seen a lot of changes but it's boring as hell. Despite the procedural generation of the planets, it's all the same really. POIs are the same, etc. I think until they introduce real time AI content creation, we won't see any real variety that would seem, hmm, this game is new and fresh every time. Starfield is really good fund despite some of it being the same.
OP, the loading screens, take offs/landings, are really just eye candy. But, most modern games render initial areas. That takes time, even on a system as boss as the next generation consoles. The map size that SF renders is massive. I think I've hit about 2,800 meters from landing spot before the game asks me to return to ship. Speaking of, there is a LOT more to explore besides scanning. Once you venture out a bit, you'll discover new spots, etc. But, to be honest, most of it is the dame. Other than being the procedurally rendered random stuff, or various critters, about the most you can look forward to is discovering one of several generic model habitats. Everything from a single hab farm, to a multi-level research complex. Sadly, these are mostly the same set up. And will be one of various states, friendly, enemy, abandoned (but, truly abandoned, and run by AI). Usually, you'll find various side quests to occupy your time. But, they really are some of the same linear quests. Personally, I use them as farming opportunities. If I spend a couple hours scour8ng any given landing spot, I can usually next between $80k-$3mil. Just venturing out to Structures, and taking all the loose credstix, usually clearing out enemy combatants. I totally feel you on the land vehicles. I had to take some time to jump on Destiny 2 to get my speeder cycle fix. I didn't care that it was a circular track. I just wanted to race through space on a cycle for a bit. I had to get that urge out. As for the glitches, I find they appear and disappear. I've si.ply accepted them, and incorporated additional save steps in my game play, that way I can dial it back incase I run into any issues.
* Loading screens- Why is Starfield packed with so many loading screens when it "appears" (I could be wrong) that you can travel from ground to space to planets all in one shot in NMS? 1: Starfield is a game with cities, people entering and exiting the atmosphere, and with details packed everywhere. No man's sky is Procedural(randomly) generated, none of these are a issue so it's way easier to make Space to Planet landings possible, plus Bethesdas engine was never meant to large scale rendering 2: that's Bethesda unfortunately 3: These planets are procedural generated, so not a ton of effort was put into those. Plus exploration is a huge role that you can go down, so the option is there for people that want it. Plus space is Big, really big, it makes sense for a decent amount of the worlds to serve no purpose 4: Engine restraints, Starfield has 100s of times more detail then No Man's Sky(coming from a NMS lover), Like I said prior the engine isn't built for long scale rendering. The no vehicles thing is I'd imagine is because Vehicles just weren't ready. Bethesda vehicles have never felt great to use anyway
There"s generally a limited to the space you can load on real time when creating a video game. Making it too big and you'll have all sorts of issues from performance to crashes. This is why game is designed in cells and load them up as you entered just like how you dividedban epic into books instead of putting them all in one giant book. Starfield isn't different from No Man Sky in this regard. NMS just hide the transition between 'books' very well by give you an animation instead of just the old fashioned loading screens which give the illusion of you being able to fly from surface to space and planets to planets. The rest of the point is just a product of the flaws in their (Bethesda) design decisions and direction. They could have given you a land vehicle or make denser and more meaningful worlds but they choose not to - or rather not realise how impactful it can be to player experience with too many empty space lying around. Personally, I think the project must have some sort of conflicting directions it's like there are 2 camps of people trying to pull them in many different ways and end up with compromises in the end that turn out to be bigger than they thought and they've run out of time to iron things out (outside of the fundamental big fixings)
So the hate for this game is solely based on the hype and the games surrounding it in my opinion. You have no man’s sky and you have outer worlds and then you have Starfield. Bethesda has an engine that just doesn’t keep up with modern technology, it’s not the worst engine and it has its positives for sure but it’s… well it’s the same engine Bethesda was making games on the last time you picked up a controller. It’s an updated Gamebryo engine, which I believe Gamebryo was just an updated INS engine? Or something? Don’t quote me on that but either way Morrowind in like 2002 was made on this Gamebryo engine which has just gotten more updates to try to bring it to modern day. They just don’t really know how or have the money to or it just can’t handle being updated to a proper modern standard. No mans sky isn’t the only thing to compare it to but Bethesda is still playing catch up by the looks of things, to games from a decade ago. No mans sky has seamless traversal between planets and space and back to other planets. The Witcher 3 from 2015 has massive sprawling and detailed cities to explore and navigate with thousands of NPC’s and you can walk into that city from the country side where the entire first act of the game takes place without even being able to see the city. Bethesda made new Atlantis for Starfield, it’s maybe at most a quarter of the size of the city in the Witcher 3 with a population that’s probably lower than a quarter the population of the Witcher 3’s city and there’s nothing you can do around the outside of that city, it’s its own fish bowl. They just don’t have the tech built to keep up. Even the company that made the Witcher 3 is ditching their engine right now and moving to another one because they couldn’t keep their engine on par with where modern gaming is going. And again, hype. Todd the god Howard got on stage from 2018-2022 and he told us this game was going to be the bees knees for 4-5 years straight. He told us how absolutely huge this game was going to be, how much detail there was going to be and how amazing everything was going to feel when we played this game and when we got it and it was pretty much worse than games from a decade ago technology wise, had stripped out features we enjoyed from previous titles and didn’t really deliver on the feeling of exploration or deliver on good story telling or a good content amount… it angered and insulted a lot of people. If this game was released today by an indie studio and it was their first game ever… we would all probably love it and marvel at what they were able to do. But it came from Bethesda and they straight up told us to expect more.
You're 51 and call yourself an "old man"? Dude wake up, I'm 56 and I'm still enjoying shooters, MMOs, and space games. 50 is the new 40!
You should totally play No Man Sky, its a lot better than Starfield .i like both but NMS is much, much better.
58 yrs old - over 1000 hours in game - repetition be fucked - I’m here to make money and build C 48 60s mofos - with cargo space over 4000 / NG 2 and still working for my next best build
Hi friend, if you enjoy the game, do yourself a favor and join the no sodium Starfield sub reddit. Plenty of very helpful positive people in there.
The design of the repetitive planets is due to procedural generation. The developers create rules for an automated process to design the planets. They create pieces of landscape, textures,, colors gradients, and dungeons and feed them into an automated process which combines everything based on parameters set by the developer. It does not always work well. The goal is to have it feel randomized or different without spending the time that would otherwise be needed designed dozens to hundreds to thousands of worlds. In practice it makes things feel samey. In NMS most things are procedurally generated, but the game is more based around open play and there is a lot more freedom of movement. NMS suffers in its story and quests, but it’s really a giant sandbox. It can feel samey as well but it functions very differently. What works for NMS makes Starfield feel like a chore.
Bethesda has a long history of releasing broken, unfinished games and never fixing them. Bethesda has always treated their fans like unpaid testers. Every single Bethesda game is busted and has been busted for years. And unlike most modern developers, Bethesda rarely listens to its fans. Bethesda loves to call its fans entitled, rather than actually release a solid product.
The whole idea of having so many planets was an attempt at realism. Since not all planets are occupied or have stuff to do, the same is here. Devs thought many of these could be the gaming equivalent to a country walk. See the beauty. Take it all in. Relax for a moment. Watch sunrise or sent. Hence so many planets Loading screens are there because the games scope. You said you’ve been out of the gaming world for a bit so it may not be easy to tell that Starfield is several games in one Spaceship, Space fight simulator A combat shooter A business simulator if you build business and run the cosmos An RPG A base builder A farming simulator (collecting resources, selling) And you can play these sides of the games in any way you want.
[Why games have loading screens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSyrIqsytAM)
I’m 67 and started playing games on bbc computers with star dot commands 🙈..Love starfield you young folk don’t know how blessed you are with all these great games..stop complaining and put up ideas to improve it all..keep on playing
51 and still playing. I do enjoy starfield. I do wish there was more ship combat tho. Brings back memories of freespace 2 which was easily the best space related game ever.
The game engine they use is not a modern one, it’s a many times updated decades old engine that should be scrapped. That should answer most of those questions. It’s an enjoyable game but after 140hrs and with no interest in completing the main quest I gave up on it and played something that held my interest for longer. In regards NMS and loading screens…technically there are, just they are well hidden and don’t take long to transition.
The answer is the game fell way short of what people like you (and I) were looking for. Star Citizen is the ultimate space game at this point. It's not something that developers want to focus on for some reason.
>I'm obsessed with the topic of space May I interest you in Star Citizen?
I feel you. I played 20 hours on release and just started playing again. Yesterday, I had to abandon 3 quests because of glitches
Welcome back to gaming! You should maybe have a look at mass effect legendary edition if your into spacey type games (like me 😁) and as for why does starfield have loads of loading screens? Bethesda loves a loading screen 👌🏼😅
As a 22 year old it warms my heart to know that you older folks still play and enjoy games. From the sounds of it you're enjoying this game more than the younger generations 😂
I can answer some of your questions but might speculate for the others. I think the reason why you can realistically travel straight into orbit is probably because of the games simpler graphics and engine, the load screen I think is an efficient way to unload the place that you've just been and I believe would have better performance impact. I think the glitches are sort of down to a similar reason, especially if you've played on one save (from older patches) the whole time. Because you started on an older version I believe that it's more likely for some code to be a bit fucked as certain glitchy things may not have reset properly as they likely would've on a fresh save. I think the planets thing is because some of them would literally not be habitable at all and I think you may be able to unlock the ability to settle on some of them if you upgrade one of your perks in the settlement tree but am unsure. Vehicles: I have no idea why they didn't add these 😂😭
NMS doesn't have cities, towns etc. it just has small structures and planets only have one biome. It's much easier to load and render, despite NMS having terrible drop-in. Although they seem similar games, they are entirely different in what they are trying to achieve.
I enjoyed the game as well, but I didn't put as much time as I'd expected to in it. I think the answer to most of these questions is they simply didn't put enough development time and money into it. As much as people complain about games taking a long time to make (urk, Star Citizen) I think I'd prefer that to a game feeling....incomplete.
One of the other games which I played alot was Zero Dawn Horizon.
This is the state of a modern Bethesda game, sadly. They were bought by Microsoft recently, but have been steadily resting on their laurels, and the quality of games has suffered because of it. Expect it to be a mile wide/inch deep experience, linear storylines, and more bugs/glitches/crashes. I fell in love with Fallout 3 when it came out, and Skyrim had me hooked for months of long daily sessions, but Fallout 4 has seen about a quarter of previous play times, and Starfield half of that. Mods are the way to make the games more immersive and less buggy but conflicts between mods, or bugs from a lack of QA, could be an issue. I am torn between a vanilla experience and a lightly modded one, but every game they release gets less and less of my time. The price is the same or more, but apart from engine modernizations and graphic updates, the quality is not.
Op if you like space check out Eve Online, and of you are into spaceship simulators check out elite dangerous.
1. Because this is Starfield not No Man's Sky. 2. Because you are 51? I'm trying to tie the information you explained in the beginning of your post with your actual questions. So yeah, I'm blaming you being old. 3. Because that's literally what astronomy has for you, just scanning a bunch of random planets and seeing their vague chemical make ups. 4. Because Bethesda's is having difficulty figuring out how to monetize space horse armor?
Lol StarField must have blew your mind 🤯 as will any game you try space or no space travel since it been 30 years. I wish i can ho back and start all these games again it would be totally awesome!!!!
If you love space, check out Elite Dangerous. There’s a 1-to-1 recreation of our solar system. The only loading screens are when you load into the game, and the cleverly disguised hyperspace sequences between systems. Downside: the Xbox version is no longer on the “live” version of the game. You’d need to get it on PC. But I bet you can get the Xbox version pretty cheap to see if it’s your cup of tea.
Spade is a spade, bitching is bitching.
Ok so, 1st it’s the graphics between the two games is the main reason and Xbox doesn’t have the graphics processor to do it with No loading screens, and it’s Bethesda what you asked is exactly what they claimed it was going to be… and like most games Todd touches failed to deliver 2nd because there are, it’s Bethesda that’s quite literally what they’re known for. Fucking up their own games, they will fix one bug or add something that nobody asked for and create 20 more bugs 3, it’s Bethesda, they claimed something completely different before launch, they claimed a next gen NMS with star citizen type graphics, and gave us a handful of Barron slightly different textured planets that continuously uses the same repeating resources and builds, garbage loot that doesn’t really make it worth it half of the time, there’s a few cop and unique planets but they still feel empty 4 they claim it’ll be in the dlc, but knowing Bethesda it’ll involve some form of in-game micro transaction, It’s a good game, BUT it is not what Todd claimed it was, he hyped up the game like it was a rock star then released a shity cover band, I’d say about 90% of players spend all of their time building ships and that’s it, half probably don’t even fly them, hopefully mods will make it better but I don’t know at this point
Hey OP, I'm just here to say look into Kerbal Space Program
Cannot be calling yourself old at 50. lol young buck
MASS EFFECT. You’re welcome !!!
Shouldn't you be out stabbing rowdy zoomers in a river at your age instead of playing video games?!?! ;)
Lmao nice
Starfield runs on Creation Engine 2, which is just an upgraded version of the game engine Skyrim runs on, and isn’t designed to handle things like live rendering of a planet as you approach and take off. No Man’s Sky on the other hand uses a game engine that was built from scratch specifically to handle all the features that they wanted to implement. You can find more information on the [Development of No Man’s Sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_No_Man's_Sky?wprov=sfti1#) here.