This again is why modern gamers are just fucking impossible to please. Bethesda gives you BOTH options. If you need to get to a planet from one solar system to another, you CAN just press a button and be on that other planet, or in its orbit if you haven’t been on it yet.
But that’s just it, you CAN instead pull up your starmap once that mission is active, see the star you’re at, and all the little dots youll follow to get where you’re going. You can then jump to each dot on the way, look around, scan planets, get hailed by ships, visit places your scans found, etc on your way to your mission. Doing this, you’ll often get sidetracked with another mission, the choice is yours. They dumbed down interstellar travel as hard as they could without it no longer resembling what interstellar travel would be like.
I’m of the opinion thats what Bethesda wants you to do, and the fast travel is just for people who want to level/“beat” the game quickly as its own end instead of taking it all in, possibly and understandably due to player time constraints.
Fast travel is a convenience feature. People would be bitching if it wasn’t in there. Sometimes you just want to zip back to Whiterun Diamond City New Atlantis to sell some crap.
I think (for me atleast) the larger issue is the fact that I have to engage a cut-scene to land on a planet. I don’t have an issue with a loading screen in order to get into the system, or even just outside of the planets atmosphere, but it’s kinda weak that I also have a loading screen when landing.
It’s not really “both” from a space simulator perspective. There’s no option to fly down to a planet and skim the surface, there’s no option to fly from planet to planet without a loading screen (or even just to a moon), etc.
Starfield is a good RPG set in space and I’m enjoying it, but I think it’s fair to criticize that it was marketed like it was going to be a space sim by Bethesda and that’s not really what we got. If you were excited about the simulator part you are going to be disappointed.
I really have no idea where anyone got the idea it was a space sim from. They showed a good bit of gameplay that made it very clear that it was a traditional Bethesda game, with much more modern mechanics, set in space.
The issue would be believing anything not explicitly said or shown in a pre release showcase. You don't expect anything not extremely, extremely obvious or you just let yourself down and then blame the studio for underdelivering.
A bunch of that is of course the fault of marketing itself, but this goes for almost anything marketed ever, beyond video games.
I got a slightly better (though slightly harder to run on steam deck) version of what I expected after watching the direct. It's exactly what I wanted it to be.
It's just silly how people turn unsubstantiated wild speculation into some kind of unmet feature set.
I mean, there are parts of the game's major criticisms that are understandable and do impact the game experience in a way. The worst one for me is the lack of a local map. I've gotten lost in cities or complexly laid out buildings a number of times already, which is, suffice to say, not enjoyable and nigh on unforgivably clumsy to experience repeatedly.
I'll forgive, or even enjoy, say, Dark Souls for the same thing because it's not as complicatedly laid out and the world is smaller and much more visually distinct in its areas to make it up on the back end, along with the entire design ethos being very hands off in terms of delivering info to the player, which sets a standard compared to Starfield's polished to a sheen experience, which suddenly becomes less so in other spots, creating a negative contrast.
Others, like the lack of seamless planet to space transitions were never advertised, and though having them certainly increases immersion, visual spectacle, and thus perceived enjoyment and value of a game, is not really important in the grand scheme unless you wrongly expected it. I don't have enough time to worry about a planet transition, I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do there and what I'm gonna do next within the gameplay itself. With this sort of criticism, the game would be undoubtedly better with such a feature if it wouldn't have delayed development too significantly to implement, which no one can really say for sure.
Then there are criticisms like the fact that planets are limited in scale and you can't fly your ship close to the ground on the surface, which is just wildly beyond the scope of what Bethesda would be able to deliver and still say it's the same game. That would've been so complex it would've sacrificed other features undoubtedly, and shows more about a given player's desire for "Starfield 2: We Added all That Space Sim Stuff People Wanted that we couldn't before because we'd end up like Star Citizen" than it really does about Starfield's successes or failures in the features it explicitly attempted to deliver.
Back to the reviewers primary issue that in a traditional Bethesda game you experience the journey of going from one place to another, at least for the first time. Starfield has none of that. You never experience the journey of traveling to a new location, you just teleport. So effectively you are constantly disoriented, with no Tru sense of scale or journey.
It’s not a space sim and was never intended to be one. They made it clear almost a year ago that it didn’t have stuff like surface flying or atmo to space transitions. If you were still thinking it had this stuff at launch your weren’t paying attention.
The actual act of doing it gets old, but I do like the fact that you can't fast travel out of a situation in ED, it means if you go on a deep space expedition to make discovery money you are gonna be in DEEP SPACE, and you better be fucking prepared with a ship spec'd specifically for it because you do not want to turn around and give up because you couldn't fuel scoop or make a jump.
You definitely get a feeling of being a very small person in the galaxy with lots of things going on far away that you'll never see, and having limited fuel and constant frameshift jumps allows for more mechanics and complexity like fuel scooping or being interdicted.
Starfield lets you go wherever at a moment's notice which makes the galaxy feel very small comparatively and lacks stakes for exploration and jump range (along with the infinite fuel), reducing the need to have specialized ships. It also allows you to miss out on some random events that only happen when a ship in orbit with you hails you on comms. You miss those experiences if you fast travel past them all, which is echoed in other Bethesda titles with their own random encounters during travel that can be missed due to fast travel.
That being said, it's a Bethesda fantasy version of space, you want to do fun space opera things and having hardcore travel might clash with that, I can understand why it wasn't implemented that way. For example, no one mentions this, but I fucking LOVE bethesda's save system of saving the exact state of everything in the universe in that exact moment. Im a filthy save scummer and I love it. I like being able to save scum difficult space battles, and I don't think you can do that in most other hardcore space games, but I'm so grateful that I can here.
Maybe it’s because I’ve only just made it to Mars, but I didn’t know there was any other way to travel except for clicking and fast traveling. Click load click load click load planet. The tutorial tells you to do just that… is there something later on that says differently?
Hard disagree. For no other reason that it’s impossibly difficult to find/sort missions by proximity. You got one blue blip on the map or hud, maybe a white blip if it’s not active, but no options to make it active or to even find the mission in your mission list.
Not to mention, all travel is menu based. In space when you target a planet as your next destination, all it does is bring up the menu to fast travel to a location on that planet instead of… giving you the option to fly there yourself at warp speed.
Sure, you could do it one planet at a time instead of skipping systems… but it’s all the same experience You never truly experience the part of exploration involved in experiencing the space between origin and destination. So it might as well all just be exploration by menu, even if you pretend you aren’t.
I can agree that you absolutely can navigate without fast travel, but the whole design seems to be guiding you towards just fast traveling. From the menus always offering a “show on map” option, which then pulls up the prominent “land” prompt, to the fact that even fast traveling you’re apt to hit 4 loading screens completely killing any sense of continuity, and that only gets worse if you try to actually navigate.
It feels like a big series of set pieces broken up by a ton of liminal either loading screens or menus, depending on your preference of poison. I’ve never felt like I was discovering cool things, just going to the next set piece.
I don’t think fast travel is the problem. The problem is that there is an actual “exploration” part of the game, where you wander around planets scanning things and looking for points of interest, but it is by far the most boring part and I have not had much fun when interacting with it. There is nothing exciting to find, and it primarily rewards materials that I mostly haven’t had a lot of use for, because when I need something specific for research or crafting I can buy it at the store, because materials are nearly worthless in terms of credits.
The mini-dungeons and other points of interest you can find need to be way cooler for the wandering-around-on-planets to be worthwhile, and the actual exploration gameplay needs something more than walking across plains and hills in order to be interesting.
The best parts of the game are when you pretend it’s Fallout In Space and hang out in cities doing quests for randoms.
I mostly agree and have been defending it from haters recently myself. But there is one thing in the way of “You can then jump to each dot on the way, look around, scan planets, get hailed by ships, visit places your scans found, etc on your way to your mission… I’m of the opinion thats what Bethesda wants you to do.”
Starfield is a “looter shooter RPG” like other Bethesda games. And like other Bethesda games, your time off-leash is limited by your inventory size, with valuable items dropping that take up to 10% of that or more a piece. Awkwardly, ship storage is just not that incredible, until/unless you either go all-in on outposts or all-in on megaships. Which means you do end up having to stop and go to a city often, probably the one with your next mission goal.
It’s not a huge gripe, but I think Bethesda has always used inventory to drive people back to populated centers to pick up quests.
Basically your choices with travel are “how many load screens do I want to see between here and my destination.” And that’s not really what anyone wants. It is not the same as being able to walk from Solitude to Dawnguard. Not even remotely close. You can’t even walk from settlement to settlement on a planet because they only ever have the one settlement.
I haven’t played The Sims since the first installment. But having heard the nightmare stories… sure, the game might be free… but everything, 99% of the game content, will be locked behind a paywall.
You want wallpaper? $2 for colors, $5 for designs, $10 for this holiday pack.
That doesn’t match with what I know; they make lots of individual expansion bundles, each with a fair amount of content.
The metric of “How to buy EVERY scrap of content for the game” is generally disingenuous, since most of its expansions are best enjoyed on their own, and you’d likely get tired of them after a few unless you really enjoy The Sims.
I wish my 90h save wasn't borked. I don't feel like playing through the whole game again right now or any time soon. This has happened twice to me now.
I really enjoyed it when I played it for the first time in its 1.5(ish) state late last year. I’ve been really looking forward to the expansion and continuing the story. I’m actually somewhat apprehensive about the vehicle combat and police because the game was enjoyable without it - even though I massively missed them at first.
Been playing Starfield and not loving it but enjoying it. Yet I keep coming back to it every free moment I have. Been years since a game’s done that to me.
I think this is probably the moment. I honestly enjoyed the game even at launch but I just laughed through all the jank. The story and world were good enough for me, I’m sure with all the fixes in place it’ll be a much more engaging package.
FF7R was full game length but ended when the party left Midgar; in the original game that is a bit before the end of Disc 1.
Granted, the Midgar section was greatly expanded for the remake and it’s pretty clear that we’re not necessarily doing a 1:1 equivalence with the original game…
I think it will released into 3 parts: Remake, Rebirth and the third volume which I don’t think has been titled yet. What makes it even more confusing is that there was an “enhanced” version of FFVII Remake, released on PC and PS5, called Remake Intergrade.
I loathe seeing ads in any medium whatsoever, especially a medium I use for escaping this ad-filled apocalypse of a world we all live in. Why on Earth would I willingly force ads onto people who have generously supported me doing the thing I love most?
Disclaimer: I haven’t made any games yet, but someday “soon”…
It’ll be interesting to see how many games are made in unity. I suspect quite a lot will be actually because developers haven’t had time to learn anything new yet it’s been about 5 minutes. No doing that may screw them over long term so maybe they won’t.
But MONEY! Don’t you want to make loads of MONEY? Here, watch this Unity developer video about how to squeeze MONEY out of those generous chumps who supported you! It’s the Unity way!
Can Godot compare to unity in terms of features? I admit the last time I looked at it was probably over 2 years ago but it was very bare bones and could only do 2D graphics. Since the project I was developing at the time was a 3D game I kind of ignored it after that.
The 3D demos are impressive, and the most recent release added a lot of features for 3D development, such as a Vulkan renderer and a bunch of lighting effects.
I’m no 3D game dev, but from what I’ve seen, it’s ready for smallish 3D games. I don’t think the performance is anywhere near Unreal, but it seems to be capable enough for most indie 3D titles.
What the other folks said. To add, there are several games made with Godot that look like they match Unity in terms of graphical fidelity. And if you’re a boomer like me who doesn’t care about graphics, there are cool games like Ex Zodiac
Godot 4 drastically improved the capabilities of godot, especially in the 3d realm. It isn’t perfect, but I would say it is about on par with unity in terms of features. Note that some of the more advanced stuff are in modules that you need go download within the editor. This was done to keep the core light while not sacrificing features.
Last night I uninstalled Un*ty and replaced it with Godot, so I’m very excited to start learning. It’s a little disappointing that it’s not as “capable” as other engines, but my conscience (and future expectations) will be clear. And besides, to me game dev is about expressing oneself artistically and not chasing numbers and metrics.
If there is something you want to do and it isn’t simple and you think it should be, there is a good chance that there is a module that adds that functionality. Good luck!
And screw anyone going ‘but then how money?!’ while it infects billion-dollar business models. There’s no amount of money you can pay, where greedy suits won’t imagine taking your money and selling your eyeballs.
There is an ethical advertising system that works well: opt-in catalogues. I love Costco’s monthly ads, IKEA’s catalogue, Amazon’s holiday shopping catalogue, etc. When I need something, I can browse and create a shopping list.
My problem with ads is that it tries to get me to buy stuff when I’m doing something where I don’t want to buy stuff, like watching TV, browsing the Internet, or playing a game.
A game engine isn’t the right place for ads. Leave that to storefronts and other areas where I’m already looking to spend money.
Oh good, now I can play a game I payed for and see some ads. Maybe they’ll add skins in games where some character will wear a Taco Bell shirt or change health potions to “Vitamin Water” bottles
On the bright side, a lot of the scene might come out of retirement to crack and clean up this shit or we’ll get new adblocking technology/ software. That said, fuck unity.
I don’t want ad blocking in my games, because I should never see ads in something I paid for. I hate that trend in streaming services, I hated it in mobile games, and I absolutely will not tolerate it in desktop/console gaming. I’d rather not play games than see ads there.
I wonder if it will be that integrated. perhaps if you’re a PC player you can solve all these issues for most non multiplayer games by simply cutting the internet out when you’re not using it to download updates from steam.
if it’s just like a taco bell skin dlc, I’m fine with just ignoring it. it’s the same thing as 47 having the clown costume in hitman. it’s an ignorable goof at worst and maybe at best creates an interesting choice for modders.
don’t get me wrong this is fucked, and John riccatello should really be dismissed after the wave of lawsuits overwhelm unity.
The article suggests it's strictly for smartphone apps. Could just be vague wording on the part of the article, but I struggle to understand how this would be as feasible for console or PC releases.
perhaps. I miss the days when you could airplane mode your way out of ads on your phone. the solution of course was to pay for premium games which are way better than a shitty skinnerbox anyway. but most casual gamers don’t want to
Apple engineer here, from what I understand most of Unity’s competitors in the we space are significantly better paying and performing. We keep hearing from developers that nobody wants to use Unity’s product because of that. AppLovin, the one named here, outperforms Unity Ads by as much as 800% in some titles, according to a contact of mine at a game studio. With a difference like that it’s hardly surprising nobody is choosing Unity Ads.
This reeks of desperation, but one wonders how effective it could be - because this demand to drop AppLovin is basically cutting off the revenue faucet for these same developers they’re now trying to extort. No Unity fees but no good income either…
There’s this one guy on youtube(www.youtube.com/), who said about business: [paraphrasing] “Sometimes things go well, and sometimes, you dry to get the change stuck between the couch cushions”. And you’re right, this pretty much does seem like a desperate move if you think about it.
Yeah, I love that analogy. When companies deviate from their core business model to try to increase revenue, it’s a symptom that the company is dying. If they’re having profit issues (which I doubt), a healthy company would innovate to attract customers, not to lock them in.
I’m blown away that they even think this is less controversial or a solution. Brain dead company should cease to exist. I’m totally fine with no new games made with unity.
Reminder that the unity ceo once suggested they (apparently he was at ea at the time) could start charging players money for reloading guns hours into a game once the player gets invested enough.
These guys are cartoonishly evil. But also completely lacking in any actual common sense.
They literally never seem to think more than one step ahead, it’s pathetic. Sure they might gain some money by screwing everybody over short-term, but long-term they’re going to lose millions when everyone abandons their game/platform for something else. Look at Blizzard, classic example, they’ve screwed themselves over by trying to screw the customer over, they would have made more money if they just kept Overwatch one going.
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