I love NMS but I’m so afraid to log in. I’ve had a huge underground base (max terrain manipulation) for like 5 years even though people say never to dig out a base because eventually it will get filled in. So I feel like I’m rolling the dice every time I load in. I have hours of videos of me just running around my base across the different patches, where the flora/fauna in the connected cave system changed each time.
I posted a shorter version of this elsewhere in here but I’ve thought more and want to expand.
Disclaimer: I really like both no man’s sky and starfield. Gonna be down on both of them but I’ve got hundreds of hours in NMS and I expect to have hundreds more in SF, they are both good games, I have no regrets about buying either of them.
That said, I’ve realized that starfield is actually making me low-key kind of angry at NMS, for all the potential it wasted. It’s showing just how little extra depth NMS could have used (could still use) to be great. There are really only a couple fairly minor ways that starfield is better, and yet for me and I think a lot of people they spell the difference between “fun sandbox” and “awesome game”. Starfield is so shallow on all of these that despite being the first game to really deliver on the promise of an open world space RPG sandbox, it’s like a wish-dot-com version of what nms could be.
First, combat. Nms has all right space combat, nothing great but acceptable, but there’s no excusing its ground combat. There’s effectively one enemy, they’re not really designed to be fought most of the time, and they’re almost never involved in battles of any meaning. The combat overhaul added some mechanics but didn’t solve the problem… in a way it’s worse now because fighting seems like it could be interesting. How come when I find a trading post it’s never a ruin overrun by pirates, with scattered notes from the lost inhabitants, written in their native language so that if I can speak it I can read their sad story? Why don’t I ever find a detail of gek security bots defending the inner chambers of a crashed frigate? Why can’t I have a shootout with the crew of a frigate on board its procedurally generated interior?
That leads into the issue that there’s no story at all. People complain about the main quest of SF, but nms has one of the flimsiest, poorest written central plots of any game I’ve ever seen. That would be okay, but there are also no side quests. You can’t stumble upon an abandoned mine, or have a spacer randomly ask you to help break a blockade of their home system. There are a tiny number of very shallow fetch quests, but nothing with even a hint of effort in the writing.
I get a bit annoyed at starfield for systems not interacting. Like, i have a house, but I can’t build outpost buildings around it, eg. However, NMS takes that to extremes with how outpost building, village building, and frigate building all seem like they’re actively hostile to each other, as if coming from different games. IIRC even some of the outpost components won’t properly snap together if they’re from different ‘styles’ of outpost, although I may be misremembering.
Add to that that there’s also not a lot of gear collecting mechanics, minimal ways to display loot, minimal character customisation, and so on, and it’s just… sigh. Everything nms does feels like it falls just short of being amazing, but they get bored right before completing the last step to bring it all home and then they go work on another system that they’ll get 3/4 through and then abandon. I wish it had mods.
Meanwhile, starfield doesn’t do any individually thing particularly well either, but unlike NMS, it feels like I can do stuff with what I make. I can build a ship… and then take it smuggling! Or fight pirates! I can have NPCs on board and they’ll chat with each other while I’m flying around, and help run the ship! They’re not all well written, but they’re actually written, and do more than just stand around saying one line back at me. It’s frustrating, because honestly, taken on its own, starfield isn’t particularly remarkable (see how bland space travel is eg) but there’s nothing out there that’s actually gone the very obvious extra mile of “okay we have beautiful worlds to explore, what if now we put some things to do on them”
Really wants to play Starfield but probably won’t have the necessary hardware for at least a year.
Is an old Bethsoft fan, having played, and thoroughly enjoyed, every TES game from Daggerfall to Online, excepting only Battlespire and the phone games.
Has been jonesing for some space sandbox for probably a decade at least.
I’m not sure. It’s a good game, but the fun you can have in it is more Minecraft style than Bethesda style. If you want that, then it’s probably worth a try
Not space, but it actually just makes me want to play Fallout instead. I love Bethesda games, but it just isn’t grabbing me in the way some of their other games did.
I’ve put in around 12 hours and I’m kind of done. Maybe it’s also because my CPU is limiting me to around ~45 FPS (or lower) in most areas regardless of settings, which isn’t unplayable, but it is distracting a lot of the time because it’s more “choppy” than just like a stable, if lower, frame rate.
I’ll probably wait to play it again until some more performance mods come out like they did with Skyrim.
There’s a solid complaint IGN made that I think is completely true, that starfield has too many of its most fun systems that don’t unlock until you unlock the appropriate skill, and nothing in the game even tells you to do that. Disabling and boarding starships is a big one, or using boost packs; modifying weapons and armour too. Depending on how you ran your 12 hours you might be missing some of those.
Performance is a big one too. There are already some good looking performance mods on nexus iirc
I think, yeah, that’s another issue. It’s got a very disparate kind of approach with a bunch of mechanics that aren’t all related. I mean, that’s not unusual for Bethesda, but I think I also forgot how much I prioritize in their other games and was kind of overwhelmed here and didn’t really prioritize stuff like I do with Skyrim or Fallout.
And yeah, going to your example, boost packs was initially confusing to me. I get one from Constellation, telling me that now I should be able to get some height but then I realized I can’t actually use it until I unlock the skill.
As for how I spent my 12 hours, I absolutely missed out on a lot. The game is massive, but the performance issues kind of prevented me from really getting into it gameplay-wise. Also fucked myself with some of the traits I picked, which I know you can get removed in-game pretty easily, but since you can’t replace them, it feels like I might as well have not used any.
When it comes to mods, yeah. Problem is right now I’m on the Game Pass version, so Nexus has some but not a fortune of compatible stuff. I’ll buy it probably winter sale on Steam, which will have much better support for mods. Hopefully Creation Kit comes out early next year as well. When that happens, the quality and scope of mods is going to explode.
I mean, I might give it another chance before then, but I’m content to wait a while. I’m pretty patient with all games and usually only play them a year or so after release. Only reason I played this on release is because of my Game Pass subscription. If I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t have bought it until like next year. Might still do that, buy it during the spring sale, rather than winter. No rush.
Starfield has the problem that horizontal progression games like horizontal progression mmos have, which is they have a LOT of things you can do unlocked after a certain point (getting to constellation for the first time) but doesnt handhold you to any of the other features.
People who get sidetracked easily dont have that problem because they like picking and choosing what they want to do. People who need guidance gets lost in the options.
imo the main problem isn’t that there are a lot of things, it’s a major lack of information about game systems really. The game gives you a boostpack and tells you it’ll help, but doesn’t bother to pop up and tell you you’ll need a point in boosters if you want to use it. It shows you how to target enemy engines but doesn’t tell you you’ll need a point in targeting if you want to do it yourself. It’s an obvious, silly miss. I don’t mind that these things need points, but it’s annoying that it doesn’t tell you, especially when they have a place in the game where they easily could.
Lots of places really. Outside the tutorial sections of the main quest, why not have my boost packs say like “basic boost pack - function locked unless you have Boosters 1”
They tutorial the basics of how to fly a ship and loot space items, without informing you that some of its features are locked behind skills (target mode, thrusters for strafing)
Not to mention you have twice as much work to unlock upgrades. You not only need the skill point, you need to research it. Then, and only then, can you actually build it. I don’t know why they needed to lock them behind both the skill and wasting the same resources used to build a thing so you can basically open a second lock on it. It would have been fine with one option or the other; it’s kinda stupid to have both.
I don’t mind the mechanic of the double unlock. I do think a lot of the unlocks themselves are phoned in. Was just ranting about how bad the “install 15 unique ship parts” one is with a friend, like why not something kind of interesting instead of such a grindy one? “Make a ship with only one engine and a top speed of 150” eg.
Still working on preparing for the “final push” in TotK, didn’t play a whole lot again this week. When you only have around 25 shrines to go, finding them on a map that big without a guide can get really tedious, especially when most of the ones I’m finding now are in caves. They really like putting them in caves in this game, I’m noticing.
I may also start up one of the strategy RPGs I bought in Steam’s little strategy game sale the other week. I bought a bundle that includes Symphony of War, Dark Deity and Tyrant’s Blessing. Not sure which to try first, though. I had Symphony of War and Dark Deity on my wishlist already, but Tyrant’s Blessing also seems interesting.
ya this happened to me too. starfield was supposed to he thr star citizen killer, but it looks terrible. star citizen is miles ahead of this fallout reskin
I’m currently away from home and I’ve downloaded Resident Evil 2 (remake) onto my Steam Deck. I’m an hour or so in loving it so far! I’ve only ever played RE4 (the original version) before and it feels quite different - less incentive to shoot enemies.
I have played most of the originals, but haven’t played any of the remake yet. I have heard great things about the remakes though, so may go through all of them sometime.
Do share you opinions once you have finished the game.
So I finished Leon’s ‘half’ of the story yesterday. It was great! Loved all the puzzles (which had a classic videogame feel to them) as well as the various settings. It’s a beautiful looking game and the gunplay is very satisfying.
I was a bit disappointed to learn that playing as Claire is just the same thing again, although it does have a few different story beats. I don’t mind too much though as it seems like a fun game to play through multiple times.
This seems like a great way to remake an old game. Reminds me of FF7 remake in some respects.
I'm hoping for a Steam controller 2. I've been using a PS4 and PS5 controller ever since they discontinued the original Steam controller. The gyro on the PlayStation controllers works great, but the touchpad isn't useable (or even reachable) like the Steam controller's trackpads were.
I've been thinking that would be their next product ever since they released an official dock. Seems like the two make sense together.
edit: OK I just read the article and it's probably not a controller. :( It's something with a 5Ghz radio in it, meaning it connects to wifi. A controller with a wireless dongle would only be using 2.4Ghz.
Ik you edited your comment but I also really want a steam controller 2 The first controller is great although running into modern problems like micro usb being trash and rechargeable AA batteries get stuck in the battery compartment. But a new controller with dual thumb sticks would be fantastic! Even if it would make the controller a slight bit more bulky
I’ve got both a DualSense and a Steam Controller – they’re useful for different things. AAA titles with console ports are great with the DualSense (e.g. I’m also using it for Starfield). But the Steam Controller is the one you want for strategy games or anything that doesn’t support controllers at all.
It’s also surprisingly good for flight simming, so long as you can spend the time with customizing the scheme.
That's what I've been doing as well, only using the Steam Controller for strategy games. That means I don't use it much these days (which is too bad, since it's a great controller), but I since it can't be replaced now I figure I'll only use it for the games it really needs.
I keep forgetting I have X4. Loved X3. Hated Rebirth. Got X4 after joining a thread about it and thinking they were talking about Rebirth, and then proceeded to never actually play it lol
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