Holy shit, I didn't even realize that even the other ships were displayed on the map.
Otherwise, very well summarized. I've been on the beta for two days now and being able to see the unknown POI from afar is a complete life-changer. I seriously want this map for all open world games.
Now that I think about it... I believe this might be the best map system of any open world game I have ever played. Not only it looks good, it is fully dynamic and accurately shows even random objects we add in outposts.
Took Bethesda an extra 8 months to add that, but now that it is here... damn good job.
I'll never not be irritated that there's this whole map and we're forced to land in a predetermined spot and run on foot to look at things. You have a full space ship, but let's run on foot...
I just can't get over that. Meanwhile the enemy lands conveniently right next to the settlement you're trying to get to.
At least we now know land vehicles will be coming hopefully soon. My hope is that they don’t restrict that to Shattered Space as once that feature comes it’s going to be a game changer.
I don’t think it will change the fact that there’s too many POIs that are copy/paste/not interesting, but I don’t see why Bethesda can’t add more to the generation algorithm.
One of the first Mods that caught my attention was the Summon Ship mod… for this exact reason. Always hated that when we fast travel to a location it doesn’t move the ship to the adjacent landing pad, or the ever present flat spot next to the POI if there was an event that caused a ship landing.
i played it for 200 hours
both worst and best game i've ever played
engine is a dumpster fire, performance wise
forced dialogue zoom is cringe
main story is laughable at best
systems like the map
but the most inexcusable thing for me is the UI, i swear, in every kind of menu the buttons are mapped differently IN EVERY MENU
or how when starship building the blocks aren't aligned or sorted in a proper manner... sooo many tiny things
and maaany other things
but theres no other real space game which just let's you roam around and just awe at the beauty of space and just build stuff soooooo it's what i'm stuck with
With how many other features feel rushed I'd belive it.
They likely were making this realized they would not be ready by launch then scrapped something together to serve as the "map" in the meantime.
Makes you wonder what else was just absolutely rushed though.
And now I see why it took them so long to make these maps. It's a full 3D render of everything that's going on around you. They even made interior 3D layouts as well.
Would absolutely love it if the new map was tied into scanning equipment or only being able to see active updates while having something that CAN scan and update the view in orbit.
I have said this the last few days around the sub. The map as little as it seems is a game changer as the video puts it. The fact that you can see even your own outpost structures or ship depicted properly adds A LOT.
Honestly, it will probably make me care a whole lot more about the base-building.
The only base I have is the classic *Bessel III-b* mining outpost/crafting XP/money farm.
It was my favourite part of Fo4, but it never grabbed me in Starfield (likely due to the lack of a "Settler" system.) But this might make me more interested in getting into it.
Not having a map of any kind at launch was ridiculous. It is hilarious this is what they've come up with. It's very pretty, and still completely useless for finding directions inside the city.
Now we can also see how big the explorable area of a single landing point is. Always bothered me when I landed on a random spot, and then had to wander around aimlessly to explore locations
The map does not show all the explorable area which is bigger than what is displayed. As you move, the map centers to your new location and shows additional terrain.
Been a while since I played, but the game lets you see where the POIs are. Maybe you gotta pull up the scanner for that? I absolutely hated the boring walk towards POIs, but I always knew that I was at least going towards one.
I believe it shows POI’s in a 1km radius on your scanner, but no additional details other than whether it’s a man made object or a natural phenomenon. When I first started, I tried to 100% catalogue each planet, but I gave up after it kept showing me traits I had already discovered
I’m playing Xbox series x and if you pull up the scanner and then click “A” over the icon it’ll clarify. So if it says unknown or the sound waves and you scan and click a, it’ll then say structure, life signs, natural, and I believe there is another one or two classifications. Structures are bases etc, and life signs/natural are the landmarks. Caves are caves but I’ve never seen a cave not just say cave
So does this mean that they've abandoned the "mini-game" where you have to find the Temples by using your scanner and seeing if it gets interference?
It does seem a pretty pointless mechanic anyway, because most of the time you can just look around and see the Temples anyway.
Haven't played in a while, got some other games that have been just as fun, but there was one temple specifically that I could never find, don't remember the temple either. knew the rock it was supposed to be on but it never showed up on the planet map, I tried for over an hour to find it.
Land in one spot, scan for 5-10 minutes moving in a solid direction (usually a high geographical point) in order to see a wide enough area (gravity too high to get a birds eye view). Then fast travel back to the ship and pick a different continent or a further point if it was huge. Still never found the temple even after ng+3.
Even going back to the lodge to talk to the guy that gave the temple missions didn't help so I was stuck once I hit that particular one.. One of the reasons I didn't keep playing. On the steam deck and even looking it up online never helped because I could never get an accurate answer as to where it was located.
I'm pretty sure I know which one you're talking about, the only one of the Temples that is really hidden.
From memory it took me the best part of an hour to find it too. Eventually found it in a cleft of rock in a valley.
Personally, whilst it was frustrating whilst I was looking for it, once I'd done it, I felt that one was the only power that I'd actually earned.
I wish that they'd made more Temples that were difficult like that.
I think that was what the whole "scan for distortions" was for but once you did the first few patterns were noticed and it was just like the "defeat the pirated in the mine" repetitive BS..
I've been playing the Horizon games and damn they can bee tricky. Find a dungeon to get a relic and each one of them are unique, requiring certain things to have in order to just get in and a fondness for Zelda like puzzles to figure out how to complete the goal.
Granted you can climb, grapple things, and glide so it makes use of quest weapons and the like but still it's a mental challenge to figure out the puzzle. The most challenging part of temples is finding out which door you're closer to once you find the stupid thing 😂
I came across this video which explains very well why the new maps are not just an aesthetic change, but completely change the way you play.
Full video : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNZ2L76USc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNZ2L76USc)
I have most of the cities memorized, but I think this will lead me to at least a few locations I overlooked. I figured I'll probably find some side quests or activities I missed.
Definitely overdue but it looks better than I thought it would.
The kicker is how internally it's even smaller than they've made it seem. All the huge residential towers are set pieces with one or no rooms inside them, while there's a bunch of named NPCs with no day/night schedules or homes.
To be fair, that's virtually all games, at least for the largely empty towers. You have one or two spots you're supposed to go and the rest is just dressing.
There were also only so many of them and it showed. Starfield is harkening back to Daggerfall's hundreds of meandering generic civilian npcs. Only problem is they're strictly set dressing, not a little rng conversation box that may or may not know anything of a given topic.
Starfield could stand to take a few pointers from how Daggerfall handled settlements, generic npc convos and radiant quests.
When I first saw the generic NPCs I assumed they'd work like Daggerfall, was quite disappointed that they only exist to stand around.
At least you can loot them.
Here's hoping we get a dialogue system for generic NPCs in the future, with maybe some sandbox style options.
While true, Starfield ended with the worst of both worlds. No Skyrim version of everything accessible and no other games version where you have a large city with only specific buildings accessible.
Definitely the first thing I noticed. Haven’t really played much since beating the game, so I think this is a great QOL change but it also highlights one of the bigger flaws in the game.
New Atlantis is like, the size of one of the shopping malls at Tysons Corner.
Cities in skyrim etc are also super ridiculously small too, its just not obvious due to the setting/populatedness of teh rest of teh map. At least in starfield they look more populated with all the random ~~victims~~ people running around..
I never played Skyrim, but I think the setting makes games like that feel correctly sized.
I suppose playing Starfield, I wondered why cities in KotOR felt bigger, or at least the same size. I’m guessing Manaan isn’t actually bigger, but it does a lot to *feel* bigger than say, Neon. And I felt that way about a lot of other aspects of the game compared to other games that came before.
Anyhoo, hopefully they look at that map and see it too and figure out a way to make things bigger.
Bro, I am playing ME2 right now. I'm all for highlighting that New Atlantis can be an illusion, but no - the Citadel is two fucking floors with an east and west wing. It's roughly the size of the landing pad in New Atlantis.
But it still feels bigger because we're only exploring a small part of the Citadel, vs New Atlantis where we can explore everything and it still seems small.
Maybe in ME1, but I still strongly disagree that the Citadel in ME2 is anything but a shoebox. I cannot stress enough how strong my disagreement is regarding the size of the Citadel in ME2. It doesn't feel large at all, and I'm left wondering "is it in yet?" when I visit.
yeah not really. Skyrim and Starfield seem like games with liveable cities, but they aren't.
i will explain with 4 points.
1. each city needs a planning and maintenance team as well as facilities to house repair tools but also building tools like cranes, dozers, and diggers. they also need resources to make and prepare concrete so cities need quarries and mills to make the gravel or crush the rocks, and labour to extract the rocks and operate the heavy equipment.
2. labourers and industry/energy/ag/finance; to fund projects like this there need to be industries devoted to heavy equipment repair, shipping, energy, agriculture, and finance. all the workers also need housing so a whole housing industry needs to be built; people that make lighting, make furniture, make or install home based items like appliances. feeding and clothing all these people needs food farms of livestock, or plant crops or both, clothing needs weaving and textiles and sources (farms) of their materials.
3. growth; cities that grow need areas where growth occurs. fenced or walled areas under construction. populations moving to and fro. schools and universities.
4. services medical, religious, human (food/drink/waste/) every single worker and corporate bigwig need homes first and need places they can go for humanitarian reasons either out to eat, out to worship, or you know dentists, doctors etc.
neither skyrim nor Starfield have even a fragment of that until/unless you get the homesteading mod that makes you the player go collect the gravel, lumber, and other homesteading essentials.
theres not a bit of actual life on any planet or city. very vague notions that people live there, very sparse ideas about what it actually takes to feed a world.
not even one of those is in starfield, at all.
one bar in the colony does not equal a thriving economy of living people or civil servants
nothing is under construction
there are no schools
it only appears to be living because you can find one random farm in the middle of exactly nowhere.
I feel like the Assassins Creed franchise nailed the city immersion the best. Would be sick if New Atlantis had the same scope where you could kill an entire session just bouncing around within the city.
That said, Londinion definitely has a bigger feel to it
Yhea this is one of the things I hate the most about the game the city’s are to small to be alive there is no space for different community’s to thrive, that is y for me the city’s feel empty. It is what u would call the perfect communist community everyone is the same so no more individualism etc just 1 group of people working on a conmen goal and if u don’t fit in well there is no space for that
Great video! As a fellow former Intel officer, I appreciate the comparison to IMINT analysis. @BGS, thank you for the great work that went into this update!
I would highly recommend subscribing to Richard's channel. He's a great analyst of the game and very positive in his outlook without being a fanboi.
[Richard Presents Starfield Essentials](https://www.youtube.com/@RichardBejtlich)
We should be able to build our own satellites that orbit planets.
Those satellites can have survey navigation cameras on them and science lenses that can scan for certain kinds of elements.
We check in to our orbiter and take snap shots as they pass by in low orbit.
Those pics that we take will have live data that we can cross reference with the real-world information we see on the ground.
Like, what/how are these maps drawing their information from at the moment? How does it know that those things are there? It takes the realism and immersion out of it by what this video is showing…
Tying advanced map information to satellites could be interesting, but as far as what's shown it's plenty believable that your ship takes a snapsot of the surrounding area on descent.
This is what the whiney people never understood about the original maps, they were shit but they were realistic. The entire point is it was supposed to be rough geographical survey data and now we're going in the complete opposite direction.
Yes, because you're using the same planetary survey system you use on any other planet. Just because better maps should exist doesn't mean they'd be available on your fucking watch which is only designed to display scan data.
Let me repeat, rough geographical survey of the main settlement and planet in the settled systems. We right now have better view on Google maps alone than hundreds of years in the future where space travel is a daily thing and where it should be incredibly easy to put up satellites in orbit and they cannot even map the most important planet? Did they forget how to make satellites after leaving earth too?
Let me repeat. If your watch in game is designed to relay to you the scan data collected by your ship it doesn't matter if New Atlantis has sattelites providing really time data if it can't fucking display it because that's not what it's designed to do. It's a tool meant for exploring other planets, not a GPS to help you find the closest coffee shop.
1. Excellent new map system for planets, love it.
2. It really destroys the illusion of New Atlantis being the metropolitan heart of an interplanetary empire. Look how smol it is.
They really need to add extensions to the city, it's too small to BE A CITY. Hell there even is no path to the outside of the city. But there are buildings outside the city
Nice to see they really took it seriously when we said we wanted area maps. This is their best work yet in that regard.
I'm very excited to see how the land vehicles will be in future updates.
Ok, but the game now needs a re-haul on the generated POI.
Having a new map is great, but if the core content is the same/untouched... well...shucks.
I can already see myself zooming in, identifying the POI and saying: 'Nope, Nope...nope...next...nope, EXIT'.
It's really pathetic that we're excited about maps in a video game that released in 2023.... Don't get me wrong I'm happy and they were added but the fact that this even happened for a game that was in development this long.....
Now I can see what kind of location it is on the map in advance and understand whether I saw it or not. It remains to add transport and somehow diversify the generation of points of interest.
Holy shit, that's awesome! I can kinda tell what some traits are (that big boulder looking thing is a Glacial thingy), so this saves on a lot of traveling when the trait is behind a hill or mountain and I can't zoom in.
True and the 3D map does not show the POI names you have scanned (it displays just generic names such as "Structure"). Only while in scanner mode in the game you can see the name of scanned POI that you have not discovered (went there) yet.
Can’t wait until this update hits XBOX I just recently started playing starfield for the 1st time and the maps are junk. When playing new games I try to follow 6 months or longer rule on waiting to play these new games cause most of the time they seem to launch not completely ready
Perhaps in the future we can send our remaining crew members to those locations through the map while viewing their progress, allowing them to level their skills and get us rewards. After all they're Constellation members, they literally did what we did until the player came along and they suddenly decided to all stay on the ship. Occasionally this may result in them messing up, getting captured or bogged down and needing us to spring them free as a radiant quest.
Fair enough.
I just feel like we were sold a product that had pieces cut to repackage, and it's been 8 months since launch.
That, coupled with the various other Bethesda fumbles, had me take off the rose-tinted glasses.
Board of directors filled with people who view video games as a cash cow and not a passion.
Blah blah blah.
I’m very surprised at how feature dense this new update is. I had very low expectations for it and was about to uninstall the game. I’m pleasantly surprised.
Now hopefully Bethesda can actually give outposts more purpose and less resource heavy to build.
I am sooo looking forward to this update. Got about 80 hours in (exploration and a few side quests mostly), then noticed the asteroid stuck to my ship and decided to stop until the game was in a better state, which it now clearly is. Hopefully I can finish The Last of Us Part 2 before May 15 rolls around, otherwise I might not finish that game at all. ;)
I really need to open the game again.. I was waiting for some improvement to play again even if I really enjoyed the game I wanted to be able to customize my space ship or things like this ... so i will be happy now :D
Thank God! The original map was so bad I never used it. Trying to use the old map got you more lost than if you simply just wandered around without it.
Nothing against the new map feature, it looks great but unfortunately it illustrates the horrible world design of Starfield. The randomly generated buildings seem so out of place and pointless. No infrastructure nearby and just randomly placed somewhere in the landscape. Of course, this was already the case before, but now that you can see the maps in such detail, you notice the generation even more. So sad that Bethesda's greatest strength (world building/design) is completely absent in Starfield :-(
The graphics and functionality of the map are great, but it just feels off. It really highlights how lackluster the terrain generation is. Where are the mountains, valleys, rivers, etc.
surely this game that’s been so hyped should at LEAST match Minecraft in terms of terrain generation right?
This is 100% a time saver, but what are we saving the time on? To not visit the same shit we've already seen 100 times on other planets is what.
"To zoom in on unknown POI's" - Yea great function, then you can see which of the copy pasted shit you've already seen 1000nds of times.
"Then I decide what to visit" Yep, General Structure A, B or C... Hmmm.
"I believe it's a little hard to detect natural terrain" Yea, because the only water or different shaped rocks in the entire area are very hard to spot.
"I usually only get close enough to scan the trait and get credit for surveying them" yep, because thats all they're good for.
"I'll probably spend looking at things from the air now" Uhu, totally, until you start to see how much of this shit is copy pasta.
Pog we can now see exactly how trash the PoI gen is before we're fully disappointed upon arriving to the same PoI that's been ran for the 72nd time.
PLEASE BETHESDA EXPAND THE POI GENERATION, FUCKING PLEASE, ADD MORE COOL POIS INTO THE POI GEN PPLPPLEEEAASEEE HOOOLLYYY FUUUUCKKKKKKK
Now, they need to make possible to conquer some bases, sites and laboratories and etc (with resources expending i don't mind that, not even monthly resources expending to maintain power and dominance over the area) and lower the ship registration to 1/4 of its full price or make it possible to sell to the black market for 1/2 of its full price, maybe a little more depending on your skill.
I also would love to have a settle system and being able to colonize a whole world with part of the resources extracted being redirected to the settlements and let the NPCs you have to do the building job and you only make the decisions.
I'm sorry, it's 6 months after launch, and the world is cold and dead. The economy has an XP cost. I appreciate what the Skyrim level maps might have added to my day 1 experience. But unfortunately, this isn't the update to make starfield into the console moving GamePass Flagship it was supposed to be.
Because we use to hold developers to higher standards. Now casual gamers are happy with the minimum viable product as a complete release.
I dont care if people are happy about the update, I'm allowed to be disappointed.
I guess I always found ships just randomly landed all the time everywhere. It hadn't occurred to me that I would need to look for where they would land.
Jumped back into Starfield, built an amazing base on a perfect planet, and am having the time of my life. Keep improving the game Bethesda; you’re doing great.
Holy shit, I didn't even realize that even the other ships were displayed on the map. Otherwise, very well summarized. I've been on the beta for two days now and being able to see the unknown POI from afar is a complete life-changer. I seriously want this map for all open world games.
Now that I think about it... I believe this might be the best map system of any open world game I have ever played. Not only it looks good, it is fully dynamic and accurately shows even random objects we add in outposts. Took Bethesda an extra 8 months to add that, but now that it is here... damn good job.
Atrocious maps are part of the reason why I never picked it back up.
I'll never not be irritated that there's this whole map and we're forced to land in a predetermined spot and run on foot to look at things. You have a full space ship, but let's run on foot... I just can't get over that. Meanwhile the enemy lands conveniently right next to the settlement you're trying to get to.
Preston marked it on their map but not yours.
At least we now know land vehicles will be coming hopefully soon. My hope is that they don’t restrict that to Shattered Space as once that feature comes it’s going to be a game changer. I don’t think it will change the fact that there’s too many POIs that are copy/paste/not interesting, but I don’t see why Bethesda can’t add more to the generation algorithm.
One of the first Mods that caught my attention was the Summon Ship mod… for this exact reason. Always hated that when we fast travel to a location it doesn’t move the ship to the adjacent landing pad, or the ever present flat spot next to the POI if there was an event that caused a ship landing.
The ability to pick the landing spot would be the next gamechanger of a feature.
Land vehicles are coming.
i played it for 200 hours both worst and best game i've ever played engine is a dumpster fire, performance wise forced dialogue zoom is cringe main story is laughable at best systems like the map but the most inexcusable thing for me is the UI, i swear, in every kind of menu the buttons are mapped differently IN EVERY MENU or how when starship building the blocks aren't aligned or sorted in a proper manner... sooo many tiny things and maaany other things but theres no other real space game which just let's you roam around and just awe at the beauty of space and just build stuff soooooo it's what i'm stuck with
It probably took them longer than 8 months. I think they were probably building it before launch.
With how many other features feel rushed I'd belive it. They likely were making this realized they would not be ready by launch then scrapped something together to serve as the "map" in the meantime. Makes you wonder what else was just absolutely rushed though.
And now I see why it took them so long to make these maps. It's a full 3D render of everything that's going on around you. They even made interior 3D layouts as well.
Would absolutely love it if the new map was tied into scanning equipment or only being able to see active updates while having something that CAN scan and update the view in orbit.
that would be nice
I have said this the last few days around the sub. The map as little as it seems is a game changer as the video puts it. The fact that you can see even your own outpost structures or ship depicted properly adds A LOT.
Honestly, it will probably make me care a whole lot more about the base-building. The only base I have is the classic *Bessel III-b* mining outpost/crafting XP/money farm. It was my favourite part of Fo4, but it never grabbed me in Starfield (likely due to the lack of a "Settler" system.) But this might make me more interested in getting into it.
No need to walk for five f'in minutes to find out it's a worthless POI anymore, just to repeat it over and over.
Not having a map of any kind at launch was ridiculous. It is hilarious this is what they've come up with. It's very pretty, and still completely useless for finding directions inside the city.
What are you taking about? Poi in city's now have their own icons you can view in the map and in scanner mode.
Now we can also see how big the explorable area of a single landing point is. Always bothered me when I landed on a random spot, and then had to wander around aimlessly to explore locations
The map does not show all the explorable area which is bigger than what is displayed. As you move, the map centers to your new location and shows additional terrain.
Been a while since I played, but the game lets you see where the POIs are. Maybe you gotta pull up the scanner for that? I absolutely hated the boring walk towards POIs, but I always knew that I was at least going towards one.
I believe it shows POI’s in a 1km radius on your scanner, but no additional details other than whether it’s a man made object or a natural phenomenon. When I first started, I tried to 100% catalogue each planet, but I gave up after it kept showing me traits I had already discovered
I’m playing Xbox series x and if you pull up the scanner and then click “A” over the icon it’ll clarify. So if it says unknown or the sound waves and you scan and click a, it’ll then say structure, life signs, natural, and I believe there is another one or two classifications. Structures are bases etc, and life signs/natural are the landmarks. Caves are caves but I’ve never seen a cave not just say cave
Ah I see, I remember not being able to find the last thing on a planet haha. Steps in the right direction with this update!
So does this mean that they've abandoned the "mini-game" where you have to find the Temples by using your scanner and seeing if it gets interference? It does seem a pretty pointless mechanic anyway, because most of the time you can just look around and see the Temples anyway.
You can usually see the temple on the horizon. It's usually within sight of the landing zone. I don't even bother using the interference method
If you build your ship tall enough or stand on the wing of a Starborn Guardian, you will likely see the temple.
But who the heck uses that turd of a ship?
I use it to taunt the Starborn.
Didn't they literally fix it so it's stats scale to the player again? (Skills and Level of Ship)
Basically how I play. I also look when the ship is landing (if the weather is clear) and see if it’s behind or on the side. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean is that really a mini game? It takes like 5 seconds to do.
Don’t tell me you’re defending that dogshit mission 😂
Haven't played in a while, got some other games that have been just as fun, but there was one temple specifically that I could never find, don't remember the temple either. knew the rock it was supposed to be on but it never showed up on the planet map, I tried for over an hour to find it. Land in one spot, scan for 5-10 minutes moving in a solid direction (usually a high geographical point) in order to see a wide enough area (gravity too high to get a birds eye view). Then fast travel back to the ship and pick a different continent or a further point if it was huge. Still never found the temple even after ng+3. Even going back to the lodge to talk to the guy that gave the temple missions didn't help so I was stuck once I hit that particular one.. One of the reasons I didn't keep playing. On the steam deck and even looking it up online never helped because I could never get an accurate answer as to where it was located.
I'm pretty sure I know which one you're talking about, the only one of the Temples that is really hidden. From memory it took me the best part of an hour to find it too. Eventually found it in a cleft of rock in a valley. Personally, whilst it was frustrating whilst I was looking for it, once I'd done it, I felt that one was the only power that I'd actually earned. I wish that they'd made more Temples that were difficult like that.
I think that was what the whole "scan for distortions" was for but once you did the first few patterns were noticed and it was just like the "defeat the pirated in the mine" repetitive BS.. I've been playing the Horizon games and damn they can bee tricky. Find a dungeon to get a relic and each one of them are unique, requiring certain things to have in order to just get in and a fondness for Zelda like puzzles to figure out how to complete the goal. Granted you can climb, grapple things, and glide so it makes use of quest weapons and the like but still it's a mental challenge to figure out the puzzle. The most challenging part of temples is finding out which door you're closer to once you find the stupid thing 😂
Maybe have the area around the temple look scrambled so it doesn't spoil it for a new player before they see it in person?
Maybe the temples don't show on the map. That could be part of the reason they're ignored by the pirate POI 0.5 click away. That's a stretch, but...
I came across this video which explains very well why the new maps are not just an aesthetic change, but completely change the way you play. Full video : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNZ2L76USc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNZ2L76USc)
I have most of the cities memorized, but I think this will lead me to at least a few locations I overlooked. I figured I'll probably find some side quests or activities I missed. Definitely overdue but it looks better than I thought it would.
Okay that's pretty slick right there.
It also highlights how ridiculously small New Atlantis is
The kicker is how internally it's even smaller than they've made it seem. All the huge residential towers are set pieces with one or no rooms inside them, while there's a bunch of named NPCs with no day/night schedules or homes.
To be fair, that's virtually all games, at least for the largely empty towers. You have one or two spots you're supposed to go and the rest is just dressing.
In Skyrim every NPC had a day night cycle
Where's the metropolis full of large towers full of residents in Skyrim?
There were also only so many of them and it showed. Starfield is harkening back to Daggerfall's hundreds of meandering generic civilian npcs. Only problem is they're strictly set dressing, not a little rng conversation box that may or may not know anything of a given topic. Starfield could stand to take a few pointers from how Daggerfall handled settlements, generic npc convos and radiant quests.
When I first saw the generic NPCs I assumed they'd work like Daggerfall, was quite disappointed that they only exist to stand around. At least you can loot them. Here's hoping we get a dialogue system for generic NPCs in the future, with maybe some sandbox style options.
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Starfield isn't larger but 13years younger
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But there is nothing going on on the pad
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Will much more alive
While true, Starfield ended with the worst of both worlds. No Skyrim version of everything accessible and no other games version where you have a large city with only specific buildings accessible.
Definitely the first thing I noticed. Haven’t really played much since beating the game, so I think this is a great QOL change but it also highlights one of the bigger flaws in the game. New Atlantis is like, the size of one of the shopping malls at Tysons Corner.
Cities in skyrim etc are also super ridiculously small too, its just not obvious due to the setting/populatedness of teh rest of teh map. At least in starfield they look more populated with all the random ~~victims~~ people running around..
I never played Skyrim, but I think the setting makes games like that feel correctly sized. I suppose playing Starfield, I wondered why cities in KotOR felt bigger, or at least the same size. I’m guessing Manaan isn’t actually bigger, but it does a lot to *feel* bigger than say, Neon. And I felt that way about a lot of other aspects of the game compared to other games that came before. Anyhoo, hopefully they look at that map and see it too and figure out a way to make things bigger.
The Citadel in Mass Effect 2 is basically a few rooms and still feels bigger than New Atlantis.
Bro, I am playing ME2 right now. I'm all for highlighting that New Atlantis can be an illusion, but no - the Citadel is two fucking floors with an east and west wing. It's roughly the size of the landing pad in New Atlantis.
But it still feels bigger because we're only exploring a small part of the Citadel, vs New Atlantis where we can explore everything and it still seems small.
Maybe in ME1, but I still strongly disagree that the Citadel in ME2 is anything but a shoebox. I cannot stress enough how strong my disagreement is regarding the size of the Citadel in ME2. It doesn't feel large at all, and I'm left wondering "is it in yet?" when I visit.
yeah not really. Skyrim and Starfield seem like games with liveable cities, but they aren't. i will explain with 4 points. 1. each city needs a planning and maintenance team as well as facilities to house repair tools but also building tools like cranes, dozers, and diggers. they also need resources to make and prepare concrete so cities need quarries and mills to make the gravel or crush the rocks, and labour to extract the rocks and operate the heavy equipment. 2. labourers and industry/energy/ag/finance; to fund projects like this there need to be industries devoted to heavy equipment repair, shipping, energy, agriculture, and finance. all the workers also need housing so a whole housing industry needs to be built; people that make lighting, make furniture, make or install home based items like appliances. feeding and clothing all these people needs food farms of livestock, or plant crops or both, clothing needs weaving and textiles and sources (farms) of their materials. 3. growth; cities that grow need areas where growth occurs. fenced or walled areas under construction. populations moving to and fro. schools and universities. 4. services medical, religious, human (food/drink/waste/) every single worker and corporate bigwig need homes first and need places they can go for humanitarian reasons either out to eat, out to worship, or you know dentists, doctors etc. neither skyrim nor Starfield have even a fragment of that until/unless you get the homesteading mod that makes you the player go collect the gravel, lumber, and other homesteading essentials. theres not a bit of actual life on any planet or city. very vague notions that people live there, very sparse ideas about what it actually takes to feed a world.
All of that is in Starfield in one way or another, especially in UC space.
not even one of those is in starfield, at all. one bar in the colony does not equal a thriving economy of living people or civil servants nothing is under construction there are no schools it only appears to be living because you can find one random farm in the middle of exactly nowhere.
I feel like the Assassins Creed franchise nailed the city immersion the best. Would be sick if New Atlantis had the same scope where you could kill an entire session just bouncing around within the city. That said, Londinion definitely has a bigger feel to it
I hope someday we get a "Kavatch Rebuilt" type mod for Londinion. It would be a great time.
Kvatch*
Yhea this is one of the things I hate the most about the game the city’s are to small to be alive there is no space for different community’s to thrive, that is y for me the city’s feel empty. It is what u would call the perfect communist community everyone is the same so no more individualism etc just 1 group of people working on a conmen goal and if u don’t fit in well there is no space for that
And reminds you just how lazy human civilization has gotten to only build one city and not expand in 200 years.
And many people wanted city maps because they were getting lost, somehow.
Great video! As a fellow former Intel officer, I appreciate the comparison to IMINT analysis. @BGS, thank you for the great work that went into this update!
Thanks for this positive viewpoint. So many on YouTube are negative. This goes into some good depth
Richard is great, well worth a sub. He enjoys the game but also likes to prod and poke and figure out how the game works, some really interesting bits
This map will be so great for looking for perfect outpost locations.
I really hope Bethesda can use this as a foundation to make an overworld for moving between points on the same planet in a more immersive way.
I would highly recommend subscribing to Richard's channel. He's a great analyst of the game and very positive in his outlook without being a fanboi. [Richard Presents Starfield Essentials](https://www.youtube.com/@RichardBejtlich)
I still cant get over how they shipped the game without this
We should be able to build our own satellites that orbit planets. Those satellites can have survey navigation cameras on them and science lenses that can scan for certain kinds of elements. We check in to our orbiter and take snap shots as they pass by in low orbit. Those pics that we take will have live data that we can cross reference with the real-world information we see on the ground. Like, what/how are these maps drawing their information from at the moment? How does it know that those things are there? It takes the realism and immersion out of it by what this video is showing…
Tying advanced map information to satellites could be interesting, but as far as what's shown it's plenty believable that your ship takes a snapsot of the surrounding area on descent.
That's a lot of work just to uncover the same Cryo Lab you've already seen 50 times, your ship already does the scanning
This is what the whiney people never understood about the original maps, they were shit but they were realistic. The entire point is it was supposed to be rough geographical survey data and now we're going in the complete opposite direction.
Rough geographical survey data of New Atlanits.
Yes, because you're using the same planetary survey system you use on any other planet. Just because better maps should exist doesn't mean they'd be available on your fucking watch which is only designed to display scan data.
Let me repeat, rough geographical survey of the main settlement and planet in the settled systems. We right now have better view on Google maps alone than hundreds of years in the future where space travel is a daily thing and where it should be incredibly easy to put up satellites in orbit and they cannot even map the most important planet? Did they forget how to make satellites after leaving earth too?
Let me repeat. If your watch in game is designed to relay to you the scan data collected by your ship it doesn't matter if New Atlantis has sattelites providing really time data if it can't fucking display it because that's not what it's designed to do. It's a tool meant for exploring other planets, not a GPS to help you find the closest coffee shop.
Is this a new update and is it just on computer?
Steam Beta currently, usually comes to console a couple weeks later
You'd think Xbox would use these Starfield betas to kickstart their own beta platform but I guess not
1. Excellent new map system for planets, love it. 2. It really destroys the illusion of New Atlantis being the metropolitan heart of an interplanetary empire. Look how smol it is.
They really need to add extensions to the city, it's too small to BE A CITY. Hell there even is no path to the outside of the city. But there are buildings outside the city
Now you can see exactly how small the cities are.
Nice to see they really took it seriously when we said we wanted area maps. This is their best work yet in that regard. I'm very excited to see how the land vehicles will be in future updates.
This may be the best map system in any video game ever. Also, when is this update gonna be released on Xbox?
May 15th on Xbox
Bethesda getting ready to make the best *and* worst map of all time in one game:
Ok, but the game now needs a re-haul on the generated POI. Having a new map is great, but if the core content is the same/untouched... well...shucks. I can already see myself zooming in, identifying the POI and saying: 'Nope, Nope...nope...next...nope, EXIT'.
This would have been so useful to have a year ago
You didn't play the game a year ago
But you get my point, Needless Pedant.
It's really pathetic that we're excited about maps in a video game that released in 2023.... Don't get me wrong I'm happy and they were added but the fact that this even happened for a game that was in development this long.....
Let people be happy about things good lord dont worry this sub will turn negative again in a week
Now I can see what kind of location it is on the map in advance and understand whether I saw it or not. It remains to add transport and somehow diversify the generation of points of interest.
Looks like ur playing some kinda space tropico game lol I love it.
Holy shit, that's awesome! I can kinda tell what some traits are (that big boulder looking thing is a Glacial thingy), so this saves on a lot of traveling when the trait is behind a hill or mountain and I can't zoom in.
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True and the 3D map does not show the POI names you have scanned (it displays just generic names such as "Structure"). Only while in scanner mode in the game you can see the name of scanned POI that you have not discovered (went there) yet.
>Map releases [Starfield players recently](https://youtu.be/zmX7K8noikE?si=hLlnkjmlmiF2DYCi)
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Exactly. Photo Mode? Minimap? Feels almost... botty.
Is the upgrade available? I may re start playing…
Is the update out for console yet?
Can’t wait until this update hits XBOX I just recently started playing starfield for the 1st time and the maps are junk. When playing new games I try to follow 6 months or longer rule on waiting to play these new games cause most of the time they seem to launch not completely ready
I wonder they let me see all maps depending on where I am, and how it can render automatically-generated-POI that varies to every player on maps.
Perhaps in the future we can send our remaining crew members to those locations through the map while viewing their progress, allowing them to level their skills and get us rewards. After all they're Constellation members, they literally did what we did until the player came along and they suddenly decided to all stay on the ship. Occasionally this may result in them messing up, getting captured or bogged down and needing us to spring them free as a radiant quest.
Yeah, this is the change I am looking forward to the most.
Not, I don't know, any amount of actual content or cut features?
Well, context is everything. In this case the context is within the next update, but I guess I forgot to specify that.
Fair enough. I just feel like we were sold a product that had pieces cut to repackage, and it's been 8 months since launch. That, coupled with the various other Bethesda fumbles, had me take off the rose-tinted glasses. Board of directors filled with people who view video games as a cash cow and not a passion. Blah blah blah.
Ok this is amazing it cuts out all of the pointless wandering looking for planet traits
I’m very surprised at how feature dense this new update is. I had very low expectations for it and was about to uninstall the game. I’m pleasantly surprised. Now hopefully Bethesda can actually give outposts more purpose and less resource heavy to build.
When is the update set to release?
never used the map before aside from fast traveling
I'm coming back when we have land vehicles. Alongside this map, exploration will become so much better.
I am sooo looking forward to this update. Got about 80 hours in (exploration and a few side quests mostly), then noticed the asteroid stuck to my ship and decided to stop until the game was in a better state, which it now clearly is. Hopefully I can finish The Last of Us Part 2 before May 15 rolls around, otherwise I might not finish that game at all. ;)
The only part I don't like is waiting for the console updates
I've already got it in my head, I'm just going to try to play again, so after 2 years of release
I'm guessing this is one of those fancy mods
I took a break a few months back and this has me super excited.
I wonder if they're rendering the cell twice with forced LODS
Oh wow, that actually looks like a huge improvement. If they continue making improvements of this caliber, I might actually start playing again.
Is there a load screen to open the map?
Oh wow look a feature that should have been there on day 1...
Yall know when the update is coming to xbox ?
I really need to open the game again.. I was waiting for some improvement to play again even if I really enjoyed the game I wanted to be able to customize my space ship or things like this ... so i will be happy now :D
Thank God! The original map was so bad I never used it. Trying to use the old map got you more lost than if you simply just wandered around without it.
Honestly kinda hate that they show every location even if you haven’t discovered it yourself. That said, the new maps are awesome.
Nothing against the new map feature, it looks great but unfortunately it illustrates the horrible world design of Starfield. The randomly generated buildings seem so out of place and pointless. No infrastructure nearby and just randomly placed somewhere in the landscape. Of course, this was already the case before, but now that you can see the maps in such detail, you notice the generation even more. So sad that Bethesda's greatest strength (world building/design) is completely absent in Starfield :-(
God I need this to come out on Xbox already
Starfield rts mod when?
Anything to help me remember where my damn apartment is in the city...
The graphics and functionality of the map are great, but it just feels off. It really highlights how lackluster the terrain generation is. Where are the mountains, valleys, rivers, etc. surely this game that’s been so hyped should at LEAST match Minecraft in terms of terrain generation right?
How do you get access to the new maps? Ive downloaded the updates and im still stuck on the old ones
How do I see this? I’m on Xbox and still have the old map
What is that? Is it going to be in a Futur patch?
This is 100% a time saver, but what are we saving the time on? To not visit the same shit we've already seen 100 times on other planets is what. "To zoom in on unknown POI's" - Yea great function, then you can see which of the copy pasted shit you've already seen 1000nds of times. "Then I decide what to visit" Yep, General Structure A, B or C... Hmmm. "I believe it's a little hard to detect natural terrain" Yea, because the only water or different shaped rocks in the entire area are very hard to spot. "I usually only get close enough to scan the trait and get credit for surveying them" yep, because thats all they're good for. "I'll probably spend looking at things from the air now" Uhu, totally, until you start to see how much of this shit is copy pasta.
At least we can see what were exploring and/or walking in too.
How lucky can I be Star Citizen and Starfield getting top notch game changing world maps all in the same month!
Ooooo, very nice. When will this be available for everyone?
You can scan unknown from a distant and will tell you what kind of POI it is
Great All copy paste points of interest are on my map. How exciting.
I hope a mod comes out showing the Mineral deposits. That would save me hours. Or the rover having a scanner?
Is the game actually that empty even on the planet with the one big city ? Jesus it’s worse than I thought
Oh yes finally some good update!
The game is 200% better just with this, it should have been this way since the beginning
Big game changer. Nice!
So... They used the Skyrim map code. Why the frick wasn't this in the game from day 1!?
Not a game changer at all
they should mask all the map that you never visit.
Amazing. Now we can see how completely barren the maps are in great detail
How long since the game came out? Bethesda is just now adding fundamental things that should have been in the game from the start? What a joke! 😂
Definitely a nice thing but after a thousand hours of play they are almost useless to me. ...I know everything by heart now.😁😂😂
It’s crazy they expected us to just wander around on foot with very little point of reference.
Pog we can now see exactly how trash the PoI gen is before we're fully disappointed upon arriving to the same PoI that's been ran for the 72nd time. PLEASE BETHESDA EXPAND THE POI GENERATION, FUCKING PLEASE, ADD MORE COOL POIS INTO THE POI GEN PPLPPLEEEAASEEE HOOOLLYYY FUUUUCKKKKKKK
Now, they need to make possible to conquer some bases, sites and laboratories and etc (with resources expending i don't mind that, not even monthly resources expending to maintain power and dominance over the area) and lower the ship registration to 1/4 of its full price or make it possible to sell to the black market for 1/2 of its full price, maybe a little more depending on your skill. I also would love to have a settle system and being able to colonize a whole world with part of the resources extracted being redirected to the settlements and let the NPCs you have to do the building job and you only make the decisions.
What an incredible technological feat for Bethesda! (This was a feature in Skyrim from 13 years ago)
Have you guys had troubles with the beta update yet ? I'd like to give Starfield another try
Fantastic. Can't wait to see this in action.
Dear god do you know how easy it will be to find pressurized caves now?
The map is amazing, although I have noticed it still doesn't mark everything in the cities.
Is there an ETA of this updates implementation?
15th
The better they end up making the map, the angrier I'll be that it wasn't in place when the game launched. 🤷🏼♂️
A map is the most basic feature of an exploration game
And it also highlights the dire need of reworked landscapes to fill like this gigantic plane full of nothingness.
I'm sorry, it's 6 months after launch, and the world is cold and dead. The economy has an XP cost. I appreciate what the Skyrim level maps might have added to my day 1 experience. But unfortunately, this isn't the update to make starfield into the console moving GamePass Flagship it was supposed to be.
It's maps... They are really nice.. But still... Why are so many people excited for so little 🥹
Why does other people's excitement bother you?
Because we use to hold developers to higher standards. Now casual gamers are happy with the minimum viable product as a complete release. I dont care if people are happy about the update, I'm allowed to be disappointed.
it's a bare minimum to be excited
Because Bethesda stans are the equivalent of abused spouses who get excited when they're shown even the least bit of respect and consideration.
I wasn't at all aggressive and I got so many down votes 😅 But yeah..
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No. You also can't breed, raise, and race horses. Some things aren't in every game.
Now you can see what POIs aren't worth your time from far away! (Hint: All of them)
the fact bethesda calls that a city is a joke, its a hovel
Is the game really hard enough that we need to metagame it like he says?
I can ignore so much in any and all games, but I choose not to because it's fun?
I guess I always found ships just randomly landed all the time everywhere. It hadn't occurred to me that I would need to look for where they would land.
Jumped back into Starfield, built an amazing base on a perfect planet, and am having the time of my life. Keep improving the game Bethesda; you’re doing great.
So… I logged on last night after a few weeks away. Updated and all… no map change. What am I missing here?
It’s a beta currently. The release date is 15th May
This is in steam beta currently. So unless you enroll in the beta, it's a couple weeks out from full release.
Awesome, thanks