pcgamer.com

zalgotext, do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'

Exploring is supposed to be a reward in itself

Oh yes, exploring 6 levels of nested menus is incredibly rewarding

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Pro tip: if you just fast travel between Far Harbour and Nukaworld over and over you get the same experience as Starfield for free

stevedidWHAT,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Bahahaha

Heard if you 3D print a copy of no man’s sky you actually just get starfield

infamous_trade, do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'

nice argument lol

stevedidWHAT,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Who needs logic and rhetoric when you have 💰

Lord knows there’s enough content creators now to self sustain shit games and businesses for all of time regardless of what genpop is interested in

hal_5700X, do games w Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC'
@hal_5700X@lemmy.world avatar

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCGD9dT12C0

Get a new game engine, Todd. Bethesda owns id Software. id Tech is right where.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Exactly this. It was only two generations ago when idTech was an open world engine, id can and have made it to do whatever they want and to suggest that despite Bethesda money (let alone MICROSOFT money) id couldn’t make a better engine with similar development workflows as Creation is just dishonest to suggest.

Dark_Arc,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

It’s a shame idTech is no longer released publicly. It would’ve been amazing to see what people could do with the beast of an engine that powered DOOM Eternal, especially modders.

NuPNuA,

I assume you’re talking about Rage, which had an open world map, but no where near the level of simulation systems as a Bethesda game. In fact I remember back at the time most of us saying the map was pointless as it was just a way to travel between levels with nothing to do in it.

peppersky,

There are no “levels of simulation systems” in Starfield. NPCs don’t even have schedules in this game, they literally just stand around in the same spot 24/7.

NuPNuA,

It’s still keeping track of lots of variables across a big play space at any time regardless of NPC schedules.

They tried that once with Oblivion and clearly it didn’t add enough to the game and players experience to return to.

peppersky,

“keeping track of lots of variables” doesn’t cost CPU time though, since nothing that isn’t on the same map as you is ever relevant for anything. Their engine just fucking sucks.

rambaroo, (edited )

Keeping track of variables doesn’t use CPU time? Ok man. I’m all for hating on Bethesda’s shitty engine but that’s just not true. At the very least it does track what NPCs are doing off screen which is how they end up at your ship when you tell them to go there. They will actually walk to your ship if you don’t get there first.

On the other hand it’s basically guaranteed that Bethesda spent zero effort optimizing that. I bet it’s the same code they ran for Skyrim.

Cypher,

They tried that once with Oblivion

They advertised that with Oblivion’s AI but never delivered on half the claims.

Go look at the pre-release claims of the Radiant AI and what was actually delivered.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Starfield has less simulation than Fallout 4, it just has more (mostly empty) maps.

deranger,

You are completely talking out of your ass.

whats_a_refoogee,

ID tech is nowhere near flexible enough for something like Starfield or even Skyrim. It’s partially the reason why it’s so efficient. It simply isn’t fit for the task.

And the Bethesda developers are intimately familiar with Creation Engine, achieving the same level of productivity with something new will take a long time. Switching the engine is not an easy thing.

Not to say that Creation Engine isn’t a cumbersome mess. It has pretty awful performance, stability and is full of bugs, but on the other hand it’s extremely flexible which has allowed its games to have massive mod communities.

rambaroo,

If Bethesda can’t take the time to do it then who can? People act like they’re some small time developer but they’re not. They simply refuse to expand their dev team to do things like a redesign.

Creation engine is not going to hold up well for another 6 years, there’s no way their cell loading system will be considered acceptable by the time ES6 comes out. The amount of loading screens in Starfield is insane for a modern game. This company needs new talent badly.

NuPNuA,

You realise custom engines are built for specific game types right? iD Tech is great for creating high fedelity FPS games with linear levels and little environment interactivity. That’s not what Bethesda make though.

Kolanaki, (edited )
!deleted6508 avatar

They could do everything they usually do but better if they used Unreal. They don’t need a custom engine. They just need an engine that isn’t over 2 decades old with a bunch of shit taped to it to make it look modern. Not to mention, ID already did make a custom built engine that handles much of what Bethesda RPGs do when they made RAGE. They could have used that, with the only issue being learning it. Not sure what their turnover rate is like… maybe they’re just too used to GameBryo/Creation to be able to switch now. It might take too long to learn anything new. Plus it would have to be able to have a toolset. If they didn’t release those easy to use modding tools, there could be rioting in the streets.

NuPNuA,

As far as I know, Bethesda are unusual in modern Devs in that they have a small team for the size of game they make, but they have strong retention of staff so have huge amounts of institutional knowledge about how they do things. Shifting to a new engine would basically mean starting from scratch on a company level. Unlike Ubisoft or Activison, they can’t just throw several thousend Devs at a game to brute force the development either.

rambaroo, (edited )

But that’s their biggest problem. There’s no reason for them to have a small unchanging team. It’s very very obvious that they never get an influx of new ideas. Starfield feels like it was made in 2016 and the optimization effort is comically bad. The writing is still mostly boring, campy and naive like it was written by a 15 year old Mormon. The facial animations are incrementally better than fallout but still noticeably worse than much older games like Witcher 3. I could go on.

It’s not a bad game at all but it could’ve been so much better if Bethesda execs weren’t greedy cheapasses and the dev team was open to changing their process.

This why Bethesda needs to be criticized instead of constantly getting fellated by fanboys. ES6 will be an outdated mess because Bethesda never sees any feedback except over the top praise for half-assing their games.

Saltblue, (edited )

Fanboys downvote you but you are right, even if I love the fallout franchise, the same gameplay loop, the same engines, potato faces in 2023, outdated animations… etc, right now I would prefer Microsoft to force obsidian to take care of the next fallout, and ban Todd Howard for ever putting one foot in the dev took, even in the building. He can go fuck himself and his shit engine.

vagrantprodigy,

I know they don’t want to switch, but it would be worth it to make the swap to something like unreal, even if it takes a few years of customization to get the open world stuff right. Creation Engine just feels so old.

AdmiralShat, (edited ) do games w [Rumor] Nintendo Switch 2 reportedly uses Nvidia's DLSS to boost frame rates

While there’s a current DLSS thread, am I the only one who actually likes the aesthetics of DLSS, regardless of FPS? It adds a softness to the whole image that reduces eye strain for me and make the game more cinematic almost.

RonSwanson,

From what I understand, DLSS is also the best anti aliaser there is. No jaggies makes everything easier on the eyes

Send_me_nude_girls,
@Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de avatar

The recent versions are much better. But it also depends on the engine. I haven’t played Cyberpunk2077 since release, but there the trailing shadows of moving people and cars were very visible. Hopefully these issues are a thing of the past.

AdmiralShat,

I remember the Witcher 3 had some pretty shitty interactions with DLSS, too

Amir,
@Amir@lemmy.ml avatar

There’s “DLAA” which has the DLSS softness without the upscaling part. Some games support it, would recommend checking it out.

AdmiralShat,

Noted, thank you

And009,

I’ll check it out when I can afford a gaming pc again

MuhammadJesusGaySex, do games w Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC'

I have a 3080 ti, and a 12700k, and 32 gigs of ddr5, and a 2 terabyte ssd. It runs great for me. I don’t understand the problem. /s

MxM111,

So, this system runs it fine? Good to know. I was worried that my computer would not be able to run it smoothly, but now no worries at all.

DontMakeMoreBabies,

I've got that but with a 4080 - no issues.

I admittedly feel like I went full retard on my build and seriously hope these specs aren't what's necessary...

RogueBanana,

Hey at least you don’t have to upgrade for a while, could probably run it for another yr if todd is generous

Krotiuz,

I've got an 8086K and 3080, running on a 4K screen - with Ultra settings and FSR of 80% I'm getting 35-40fps, which honestly doesn't feel too bad. It's noticable sometimes but it's a lot smoother than the numbers suggest.

Because my CPU is a little long in the tooth, I've gone probably a bit hard on the visuals, but my framerate didn't improve much by lowering it. The engine itself has never really liked going past 60fps, so I don't know why people expected to be able to run 100+ frames at 4k or something.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Sorry mate but 35fps on a 3080 with FSR is just objectively bad performance.

Starfield is not doing anything in terms of graphics or gameplay that other games that run 3-4 times as well aren’t doing.

deranger,

That’s because they’re CPU limited, mate.

Easy 1440p60 on ultra everything with no scaling on my 3090. Frequently up in the 80-90 FPS range. This game runs fine. It’s not a “teetering mess” as you say.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

What exactly is it doing that an 8086k is CPU limited to 35fps?

Krotiuz,

Completed some testing on my end, using intels PresentMon and sitting at 35fps average in New Atlantis my GPU busy is pegged at about 99% of the frame time, so nothing really.

I do get a bit of a CPU limitation when it's raining, but nothing significant, dropped to about 30fps.

Trying at 1440p with the same settings as the 3090 above got me around 50fps, 1440p is almost half the pixels of 80% of 4k as well, so that's not helping my GPU much!

deranger,

I’d really not expect the performance difference between a 3090 and a 3080 to be that large, and the only difference I can think of in our systems is the CPU. (5800X3D vs 8086k)

New Atlantis is a smooth 60+ fps with every setting maxed out at 1440p.

deranger, (edited )

Considering that CPU is less powerful than what’s in the Xbox Series S, which does 1080p30, I’m not at all surprised they’re getting a similar frame rate.

If this was a “teetering mess” you would have heard it in the Gamers Nexus benchmarks. Steve says nothing to this end, and the game benches predictably across the spectrum of hardware tested.

avater, (edited )
@avater@lemmy.world avatar

for me the game runs pretty well with ~90+ fps on high and activated fsr2.

5800x 3D, 64 gigs of ram and a 6900XT I shot cheap during the great gpu collapse. And by the looks of the game this seems pretty reasonable to me.

rambaroo,

AMD users are having a better time with it, unsurprisingly. I wish I hadn’t gone for Nvidia but too late for that.

avater, (edited )
@avater@lemmy.world avatar

I think there wil be patches and some updates to NVIDIAs shitty driver that will fix things in the future :) Otherweise yeah maybe get an AMD GPU next time, don’t fall for the NVIDIA Marketing. Using Radeons since the 9800 pro Bundle with Half Life 2 and never had any issues with them or their drivers.

rambaroo, (edited )

Hopefully. I’ve always been more of an AMD/ATI fan, but for this laptop the deal worked out to be better with an Nvidia card. But next time I’m not settling for it. AMD CPU and GPU is the way to go. Especially because I’m trying to daily on Linux now and the driver side is much much nicer with AMD.

Piecemakers3Dprints, (edited )
@Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

You had me in the first sentence, and then I realized it was sarcasm. 🤪 I’m running a similar rig, but it’s primarily for rendering work, etc., so for juuust a second there, I wondered if it was falling behind. 😅🤓

balderdash9, do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose

I’m getting no mans sky release flashbacks. Hopefully they keep working on it like the no mans sky team did

Faydaikin, (edited )
@Faydaikin@beehaw.org avatar

I guess that depends on the amount of copies sold and the ‘refund ratio’.

If both are within acceptable parameters, they won’t do anything. Just leave it to the modding community to fix whatever needs fixing. They already have your money, don’t they…

It’s the Bethesda way.

supercriticalcheese,

I really don’t think it’s anything like that.

It’s a design decision, in the sense a bit like elite dangerous where the planet generation is realistic, as far as we know, even at the expense of being boring.

lustyargonian, (edited ) do games w Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC'

Damn this is a pathetic response. He could’ve said “We’ve tried our best to make it as polished as possible before launch, and are working towards further optimising it to give you the best experience, wherever you play”. Even if they did jackshit, it would not come out as condescending and snarky. Maybe he wasn’t prepared for a tough question on the spot right at the beginning of the interview, but it does show how he thinks about his games. In his mind, the game running at all on PC is optimised enough.

I am not saying he’s bad for not making Creation Engine super optimised engine on this planet, I’m saying he’s bad for not acknowledging it is currently most demanding engine despite looking merely half as good as Cyberpunk 2077 or idk Arkham Knight.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

It’s not even about graphics alone.

They’re clearly building their games in an extremely inefficient way. Starfield does not have anything going on in it that other games with much lower requirements also have done.

You see evidence of this in their previous games. One of the major performance issues with Fallout 4 for example, was that instead of building their cities in performant ways, they literally plonked every building as an individual asset into the world which thrashed the CPU for no reason. Modders just had to merge them all into one model to significantly improve performance. Their games are full of things like this and Starfield will be no different.

Chailles,
@Chailles@lemmy.world avatar

Unless I’m completely mistaken here, modders didn’t combine the buildings together, that’s how they are by default. Mods, however, sometimes needed to break said system which resulted in massively degraded performance.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Nah the Boston performance was terrible in vanilla. The precombination fixes made huge performance improvements. There were issues with mods breaking precombined meshes but that was a separate issue.

Silverseren,

Why would he? Todd hates everyone who plays his games and cares only about separating money from pockets. Fallout 76 made that quite clear to everyone.

MonkeyKhan,

If he gave a standard appeasing PR statement without following it up at all, that would somehow be preferable? This may be snarky, but at least you know what to expect.

lustyargonian,

I mean, yeah I guess this does help temper expectations that they are done optimising, so maybe you’re right, being blunt is probably for the best.

reddig33, do games w Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC'

If there’s an Xbox One version, then there’s really no excuse for it not to load on a PC with similar or better cpu/memory/graphics specs.

lustyargonian,

There isn’t.

reddig33,

Looks like you’re right. You have to scroll to the bottom of the Xbox page to see Xbox X and S as system requirement.

www.xbox.com/en-US/games/starfield

lustyargonian,

I think it was known since 2 years now, so maybe they didn’t bother publicizing it on the page. In fact, MSFT said they won’t be putting any games on Xbox One anymore.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Did you mean Series S?

NuPNuA,

There isn’t, MS stopped supporting the One last year.

Son_of_dad, do games w Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC'

That’s why I will never PC game. You spend thousands on your gaming PC and it can’t play a game that will come out in a year

NinjaJoey209,

I’m sure a $1k+ PC can run pretty much any game, but not at the same graphics quality as a $4k HPC that helped create it.

jinarched,
@jinarched@lemm.ee avatar

Wait, what? I have to buy a PC about every 10 to 15 years and it does’t cost me “thousands”. Last year, I bought one for about $700 and I can run every game at maximum settings with no issues.

Just wait for components to be on sale (it happens often) and you’ll have a good pc for a very good price.

phillaholic,

What did you buy for $700 that can play every game at max?

SatansMaggotyCumFart,

It’s a quantum computer, I got it from Canada.

The exchange rate is good right now.

Naatan,

To be fair people who pay thousands are probably perfectly fine with Starfield, although they may have to be satisfied with 120fps instead of 240fps.

The ones mainly hurting are the ones with similar budgets as console gamers. And console gamers are hardly unfamiliar with performance issues.

Being a pc gamer has much more to do with what ecosystem you get to tap into, rather than how much you’re spending.

Hoomod,

The game averages 75fps with a 4090 or 7900xtx at 4k high settings

szczuroarturo,

Actually its quite the opposite usualy and games on conosles run well while on pc they can be a buggy mess. Granted on pc they will/can look better but the optimization is mostly done for console players.

RandomStickman,
@RandomStickman@kbin.social avatar

Just stop chasing trends and play everything on a 5-10 year delay. Or better yet, just play indie. I save so much
money and my backlog is so long I don't even have time to play all of it.

Anduin1357,
@Anduin1357@lemmy.world avatar

Any recommendations?

RandomStickman,
@RandomStickman@kbin.social avatar

I've just installed STALKER: Anomaly, a total conversion mod for STALKER: Call of Chernobyl. If you've never played the STALKER series before it is one of my favourite games of all time.

Operation Harsh Doorstop and Ravenfield are fun fps to casually dick around. I like them for their growing Steamworkshop mod scene, especially with Ravenfield.

Return of the Obra Dinn and Disco Elysium are two games on my backlog that saddens me every time I see it because I'd love to finish them but I just couldn't find the time.

Project Zomboid and Deep Rock Galayctic are fun times with people.

I was gifted Frostpunk and Outer Wilds. I haven't got around to playing it yet but my brother loved it.

tiredofsametab,

I spend something equivalent to around $2k in USD every 5-7 years and I'm fine.

rambaroo,

To be fair that’s a lot more money than a console.

zikk_transport2,

You realize that game developers no longer optimise their games, they lie and simply do a money grab?

Anyway, Steam Deck sounds like a solid choice for you. ~500 bucks and you can play almost everything.

Son_of_dad,

I much prefer that, like a console I just want to be able to pop something in and have it run.

Anduin1357,
@Anduin1357@lemmy.world avatar

It’s funny, Steam Deck is so much weaker than the typical gaming PC and will definitely not outperform an ~RX 6700XT at the same quality level but Steam Deck resolution vs at 1440p. Worse, Steam Deck shares 16 GB of RAM between CPU and GPU, so this guy is gonna have an even smaller list of games they can play on a docked Steam Deck vs a PC.

Also, Steam Deck can’t be (read: processing power) upgraded, and doesn’t have 3D-VCache, that’s not good for CPU bound games. And then you might also be defaulting to Steam OS, which doesn’t have full compatibility with Windows games, and have a complicated compatability file structure, which could complicate modding and 3rd party utilities.

So yeah, Steam Deck as a complete desktop replacement has more issues than you might expect. And the worst part is, absent docking portable HDDs, everything is an SSD, so welcome to the SSD $/GB world. TF cards have even worse $/GB.

zikk_transport2, (edited )

There are certain benefits of having Steam Deck:

  1. It’s comfortable - play on your couch, bed sofa or wherever.
  2. Portable - battery-powered handheld gaming device. Play anywhere.
  3. Powerful - it’s not Android-based device, it’s fully featured computer that is capable of running even the latest games at 30fps (but as you said - it’s not always the case).
  4. It’s cheap - you can have a gaming “PC” for 500$/€
  5. Linux feature - instant sleep & resume mid-game. Perfect if “free time” isn’t your second name.
  6. Device feature - no closed OS. Which means mods and no jailbreaking or any other unnecesarry workarounds required to fully use the hardware.

As someone who has gaming PC (nvidia 2080Ti, ryzen 9 3900x, 32gb ram, FHD 280Hz monitor) as well as gaming laptop (nvidia 3080m, intel i7 something, 32gb of ram, 2K 240Hz display) and Xbox series X with LG C1 TV - I am still spending most of my time on Steam Deck. Why? Convenience.

Anduin1357,
@Anduin1357@lemmy.world avatar

#1 you’re also restricted to whatever plays nice with the steam input system, and custom inputs are generally more tedious to use than a mouse and keyboard.

#2 that’s the entire point of the Steam Deck.

#3 isn’t the hallmarks of something “powerful”, I’m surprised that you would consider 30 fps acceptable given that you know what 240 fps is like.

#4 it’s not cheap. It’s just at the right proce for the hardware. The only reason why it doesn’t feel worse is because it’s running at 1280x800p. The display is literally from the discard pile with its terrible colours.

#5 Windows could do the same if Valve tried hard enough. Suspend/Resume isn’t that special and I’ve manually invoked it on desktop for all kinds of things before. >Task Manager.

#6 that’s because Steam is doing the legwork to make things work for you. See what they did with Elden Ring’s stuttering problem. I challenge you otherwise to access the game directories of any game running through proton. There’s a whole emulated filestructure that you have to understand before modding the game on Steam Deck.

Power user stuff is outside the scope of gaming for most people.

scrubbles, do games w Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC'
!deleted6348 avatar

Runs great on my 5000 series AMD CPU and 3000 series Nvidia GPU, those came out 2 years ago now, and that’s averaging about 50fps on a 4k monitor.

If that isn’t optimized, idk what is. Yes, I had high end stuff from 2 years ago, but now it’s solid middle range.

People are so damn entitled. There used to be a time in PC gaming where if you were more than a year out of date you’d have to scale it down to windows 640x480. If you want “ultra” settings you need an “ultra” PC, which means flipping out parts every few years. Otherwise be content with High settings at 1080p, a very valid option

ocassionallyaduck,

I mean, this was also before video cards cost as much as some used cars or more than a month’s rent for some people.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

I’m not saying it’s not an expensive hobby, it is. PC gaming on ultra is an incredibly expensive hobby. But that’s the price of the hobby. Saying that a game isn’t optimized because it doesn’t run ultra settings on hardware that came out 4+ years ago is nothing new, and to me it’s a weird thing to demand. If you want ultra, you pay for ultra prices. If you don’t want to/can’t, that’s 100% acceptable, but then just be content to play on High settings, maybe 1080p.

If PC gaming is too expensive in general that’s why consoles exist. You get a pretty great experience on a piece of hardware that’s only a few hundred dollars.

ocassionallyaduck,

PC gaming didn’t used to be THIS expensive.

You could build an entire machine for the cost of a 4090.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

4090 is definitely nuts, but with inflation the 4080 is right about on par. As usual team red very close in comparison for a much lower cost. You don’t have to constantly run the highest of the high level to get those sweet graphics, but it’s about personal taste. Personally it’s not for me paying the 40% more for a 10% jump in graphics, but every 2-3 generations is when I usually step back and reanalyze. Tbh usually it’s a game like starfield that makes me think if I should get a new one. Runs great for now though, probably have at least 1 hopefully 2 more generations before I upgrade again

ono, (edited )

4090 is definitely nuts, but with inflation the 4080 is right about on par.

On par with the competing product? Sure. On par with inflation? Not by a long shot. GPU prices tripled a couple years back. Inflation accounted for only a small fraction of that. They have come down somewhat since then, but nowhere close to where they should be even with inflation.

As usual team red very close in comparison

Indeed. Both brands being overpriced doesn’t make them any less overpriced. Cryptocurrency and scalping may be mostly gone now, but corporate greed persists.

That’s not Todd Howard’s fault, but when he makes a snarky comment expecting everyone to cough up that kind of money to play his game, it’s more than a little tone deaf.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

I’ll admit didn’t know the 4000 was that high, but yeah 1200 for the midrange card is too much. If it stays like this I may switch back to team Red. I do believe costs are probably higher, (I remember buying my first board with an AGP slot), the ones now are… a bit more complicated and complex to make, but the jump from 800 in 2020 to 1200 in 2023 is too much.

nunchuk,
@nunchuk@lemmy.bigsecretwebsite.net avatar

the 4080 is right about on par

Adjusted for inflation in the US, the 1080 ti cost only $876 in today’s money when it came out. The 4080 launched at $1231 in today’s money. You are simply incorrect

Hoomod,

The dude digs a hole and then grabs a bigger shovel

Some people just really love a company and will do anything to excuse their shortcomings

Starfield is poorly optimized and that’s really all there is to it. I’m sure in a few weeks modders will (once again) fix some obvious issues. Bethesda has no incentive to do the work themselves when the community will do it for free

scrubbles, (edited )
!deleted6348 avatar

Okay I’ll admit I didn’t know that’s how much the 4080 was, last time I checked was the 3000 series and yeah, that’s a lot. (I thought it started around 8-900) I stick to my points though, if you want ultra gaming, it’s going to cost an arm and a leg. My main point is still shouldn’t expect older hardware to get ultra settings, and that’s okay. You can play a game on medium settings and still have a blast.

NuPNuA,

I don’t know if you noticed, but everything became more expensive in the last year. Food, housing, etc, it’s called inflation and PC parts aren’t immune.

phillaholic,

yea idk if used cars or rent are good comparisons.

gamermanh,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

4090 MSRP: $1,599

Rent for a 3 bedroom in a nearby town: $1,495/month

JJROKCZ,

For only 300 more I have a mortgage on a 2000sq foot home in a large American city….

I have a 6900xt because I got a promotion recently and wanted to treat myself to get off the r9-300 series finally but it wasn’t 1600, I think I paid 1100

phillaholic, (edited )

1,500 gets you a closet with a window around me. Prices are fucked.

gamermanh,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Funny enough I picked one hell of a deal to be close-ish

It’s averaging 1.9 to 2k round here for a 1bdrm

dsstant,

I’m running it on a Ryzen 1600 AF and a 1070. NOT Ti. 1440 at 66% resolution. Mix of mostly low some medium. 100% GPU and 45% CPU usage. 30 fps solid in cities. I won’t complain at all. I’m just happy it runs at all solidly under minimum spec.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

This is a great way to view it, and I think you’re getting excellent specs for that card. Kudos to you for getting it running !

bfg9k,

I have an AMD 3800X and an RTX2070 and I am barely seeing 30fps on the lowest settings at 1080p and 1440p.

DOOM Eternal runs just fine at 144fps on High and looks miles better.

It’s just not optimised.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

Doom eternal also came out 3.5 years ago now, and your card is nearly 5 years old. That’s the performance I would expect from a card that is that old playing a brand new game that was meant to be a stretch.

I’m sorry, but this is how PC gaming works. Brand new cards are really only awesome for about a year, then good for a few years after that, then you start getting some new releases that make you think it’s about time. I’ve had the 3000 series, the 1000 series, before that I was an ATI guy with some sapphire, and before that the ATI 5000 series. It’s just how it goes in PC gaming, this is nothing new

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

Curious if you can name one thing Starfield is doing that wasn’t possible in a game from 2017.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

I mean, there isn’t one thing you can point to and say “ah ha that’s causing all teh lag”, things just take up more space, more compute power, more memory as it grows. As hardware capabilities grow software will find a way to utilize it. But if you want a few things

  • Textures are larger, where 4k was just getting rolling in 2017 (pre RDR2 after all), to accomodate 4K textures had to be scaled up (and remember width and height, so that’s 4x the memory and 4x the space on drive)
  • Engines have generally grown to be more high fidelity including more particles, more fog, (not in Starfield but Raytracing, which is younger than 2017), etc. All of these higher fidelity items require more computer power. Things like anti-aliasing for example, they’re always something like 8x, but that’s 8x the resolution, which the resolutions have only gone up, again rising with time.

I don’t know what do you want? Like a list of everything that’s happened from then? Entire engines have come and gone in that time. Engines we used back then we’re on at least a new version compared to then, Starfield included. I mean I don’t understand what you’re asking, because to me it comes off as “Yeah well Unreal 5 has the same settings as 4 to me, so it’s basically the same”

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow, (edited )

Textures are larger, where 4k was just getting rolling in 2017 (pre RDR2 after all), to accomodate 4K textures had to be scaled up (and remember width and height, so that’s 4x the memory and 4x the space on drive)

Texture resolution has not considerably effected performance since the 90s.

Changing graphics settings in this game barely effects performance anyway.

Things like anti-aliasing for example, they’re always something like 8x, but that’s 8x the resolution, which the resolutions have only gone up, again rising with time.

Wtf are you talking about, nobody uses SSAA these days. TAA has basically no performance penalty and FSR has a performance improvement when used.

If you’re going to try and argue this point at least understand what’s going on.

The game is not doing anything that other games haven’t achieved in a more performant way. They have created a teetering mess of a game that barely runs.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

Texture resolution has not considerably effected performance since the 90s.

If this were true there wouldn’t be low resolution textures at lower settings, high resolutions take up exponentially more space, memory, and time to compute. I’m definitely not going to be re-learning what I know about games from Edgelord here.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

You’re being disingenuous mate. On a machine with adequate VRAM there is zero performance difference.

avater, (edited )
@avater@lemmy.world avatar

ohhhh so IT DOES affect performance at all 😱

regbin_, (edited )

Only if you run out of VRAM. If there’s sufficient VRAM the frame rate barely changes between Lowest and Highest texture quality.

avater,
@avater@lemmy.world avatar

Texture resolution has not considerably effected performance since the 90s.

lol. try to play a game with 4K textures in 4K on a NVIDIA graphics card with not enough vram and you see how it will affect your performance 😅

I wouldn’t say that Starfield is optimized as hell, but I think it runs reasonably and many people will fall flat on their asses in the next months because they will realize that their beloved “high end rig” is mostly dated as fuck.

To run games on newer engines (like UE5) with acceptable framerates and details you need a combination of modern components and not just a “beefy” gpu…

So yeah get used to low framerates if you still have components from like 4 years ago

Changing graphics settings in this game barely effects performance anyway.

That’s sound like you are cpu bound…

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow,

If a 5950 is CPU bound then the game is badly optimised.

avater,
@avater@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t know and I don’t care what is wrong with your system but the amd driver tells me I’m averaging at 87fps with high details on a 5800X and a radeon 6900, a system that is now two years old and I think this is just fine for 1440p.

So yeah the game is not unoptimized, sure could use a few patches and performance will get better (remember it’s a fucking bethesda game for christ’s sake…) but for many people the truth will be to upgrade their rig or play on xbox

regbin_,

The game might be much more CPU bound on Nvidia cards. Probably due to shitty Nvidia drivers.

I have a 5800X paired with a 3080 Ti and I can’t get my frame rate to go any higher than 60s in cities.

avater,
@avater@lemmy.world avatar

sorry to hear that, no problems here with AMD card but I’ve been team AMD all my life so I have no expierence in NVIDIA Cards and their drivers

MooseLad,

People are entitled because they don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on components only for them to be outdated within a fraction of the lifecycle of a console?

How about all the people that have the minimum or recommended specs and still can’t run the game without constant stuttering? I meet the recommended specs and I’m playing on low everything with upscaling turned on and my game turns into a laggy mess and runs at 15fps if I have the gall to use the pause menu in a populated area. I shouldn’t have to save and reload the game just to get it to run smoothly.

Bethesda either lied about the minimum/recommended requirements or they lied about optimization. Let’s not forget about their history of janky PC releases, dating back to Oblivion, which was 6 games and 17 versions of Skyrim ago.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

and no one is saying they have to, that’s my point that keeps getting overlooked. If someone wants to play sick 4k 120fps that’s awesome, but you’re going to pay a premium for that. If people are upset because they can’t play ultra settings on hardware that came out 5 years ago, to me that’s snobby behavior. The choice is either pay up for top of the line hardware, or be happy with medium settings and maybe you go back in a few years and play it on ultra.

If the game doesn’t play at all on lower hardware (like Cyberpunk did on release), then that is not fair and needs to be addressed. The game plain did not work for lower end hardware, and that’s not fair at all, it wasn’t about how well it played, it’s that it didn’t play.

Hoomod, (edited )

4k 120fps would be great

But the 4090 only averages 75fps at 4k high preset. 7900xtx averages 74fps

You can go skim the Gamers Nexus review of the 7700xt, it has a portion dedicated to Starfield in it.

You need a 6700xt or 4060ti to get 60fps on high at 1080p

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

Idk what to tell you mate, I’m on a 3080, 1440p, and I’m getting average 60fps on 1440p My settings are all ultra except for a couple, FSR on at 75% resolution scale. To me, that’s optimized, I don’t even expect 60fps on an RPG. Cyberpunk I’ve never had higher than 50.

Hoomod,

Why don’t you set it to ultra “except for a couple” until you get 60+ in cyberpunk

NuPNuA,

Consoles don’t even last their whole life time anymore, both machines required pro models to keep up with performance last gen and rumours have it Sony are gearing up for one this gen too.

_Decoy_,

You’re missing the point.

There are a lot of games that look much better AND run much better.

It’s not about how often you upgrade.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

I mean, yeah but also by what metric. There’s a thousand things that can affect performance and not just what we see. We know Starfield has a massive drive footprint, so most everything is probably high end textures, shaders, etc. Then the world sizes themselves are large. I don’t know, how do you directly compare two games that look alike? Red Dead 2 still looks amazing, but at 5 years old it’s already starting to show it’s age, but it also had a fixed map size, but it got away with a few things, etc etc etc every game is going to have differences.

My ultimate point is that you can’t expect to get ultra settings on a brand new game unless you’re actively keeping up on hardware. There’s no rules saying that you have to play on 4K ultra settings, and people getting upset about that are nuts to me. It’s a brand new game, my original comment was me saying that I’m surprised it runs as good as it does on the last generation hardware.

I played Borderlands 1 on my old ATI card back in 2009 in windowed mode, at 800x600, on Low settings. My card was a few years old and that’s the best I could do, but I loved it. The expectation that a brand new game has to work flawlessly on older hardware is a new phenomenon to me, it’s definitely not how we got started in PC gaming.

jjjalljs,

I’m happy with my games at 1080 and I’m going to be sad when they start requiring higher resolutions.

Unaware7013,

I'm running it on a Ryzen 5 2600 and an RX 570, and it seems to run relatively well other than CTD every hour or so.

regbin_, (edited )

I have a PC with 5800X, 3080 Ti, and 64 GB DDR4-3600. I play at 1440p with 80% render scale, Medium-High settings (mostly Medium) and it’s barely above 60 FPS outdoors. It runs like shit.

Luckily it can go 140+ FPS indoors.

scrubbles, (edited )
!deleted6348 avatar

I’m curious, I have a 3080 as well and I’m getting ultra across the board and I average 60fps, maybe a setting or two is at high, also 1440p. Installed on an SSD, right? Render scale for me is 75%, only other thing I can think of is I overclocked my ram? But I don’t think that’d account for that huge of a jump

regbin_,

Exactly my point. I want 90 FPS at least and lowering the settings didn’t help at all.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

Oh, well then I’d readjust expectations. Doom and fast paced shooters usually go up that high because they have quick fast-paced combat, but RPGs focus on fidelity over framerate. Hell, Skyrim at launch only offered 30fps, Cyberpunk I mentioned I never got above 45. 60 in an RPG is really a good time, don’t let the number on the screen dictate your experience. Comparing a fast shooter and an RPG like this is apples and oranges

I’m honestly shocked a game like this can run at 60fps. <45 and I start to get annoyed in RPGs. I’d expect if you wanted framerates that high you may be needing to window it at 1080 and lowering the settings further.

regbin_,

Nah 60 is not good enough for me. I’m fine if it’s a mobile game or handheld. I have no problems getting 90 FPS minimum in A Plague Tale: Requiem and Cyberpunk 2077.

In Starfield, not even 720p with lowest settings will help because the game is very heavily dependent on CPU. Looking at HW Unboxed benchmarks, the 5800X only managed to do 57 FPS average. You need a 7800X3D or a 13600K to get 90 FPS average.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

As long as you know you’re definitely not in the key demographic then, for RPGs 60fps is pretty much the standard. Fine if you want more, but the game was not built as an FPS, it was built as an RPG. Those are the people I’m annoyed with, the ones who are complaining at Bethesda for not building an RPG to run like how you describe on hardware that’s several years out of date already, that’s just not possible

regbin_,

Bullshit, there’s no “standard” FPS for a certain genre. Also the 3080 Ti is a $1200 last gen GPU and the 5800X is a $450 last gen CPU. It’s ridiculous that they can’t even push 100+ FPS at the lowest settings. The CPU overhead in this game is insane. I used to target 120 FPS minimum for all games I play, hence the high-end build, but now even 90 FPS is too much? lmao

How about people with a Ryzen 5 5600 and RTX 3060 that wants to play at 60 FPS? Keep in mind that we’re not talking about 120 FPS, just measly 60 FPS and those parts are barely 2 years old.

NuPNuA,

Why does it need to go above 60fps? It’s not a twitch FPS where every bit of latency counts. It’s an RPG and 60 is perfectly smooth.

regbin_,

60 FPS is quite smooth and playable but far from perfectly smooth. There’s still noticeable juddering on continuous camera motion.

NightOwl,

Why do people use entitled like it is a bad thing? Why wouldn’t consumers be entitled as opposed to spending money as though it is an act of charity? Pretty weird how mindset of gamers over the years has shifted in a way where the fact that they are consumers has been forgotten.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

I say entitled because gamers should just be happy, be happy with the hardware you have even if it can’t put out 4k, turn off the FPS counter, play the game. If you’re enjoying it, who cares if it occasionally dips down to 55? The entitlement comes from expecting game makers to produce games that run flawlessly at ultra settings on hardware that’s several years old. If you want that luxury, you have to spend a shitload of money on the top of the line gear, otherwise just be happy with your rig.

NightOwl, (edited )

Products are just products designed to get money out of people. I don’t have an appreciation like its some sports team for them. It comes down to simply if it is worth spending money on or not. Being entitled is a good thing, since it encourages less consumerist behavior with how lot of people can use less frivolous spending in their lives.

You can try to spin it as a negative, but I find this hail corporation approach to consumerism very odd. Wanting more value for the money is a good standard to have.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

I’m actually agreeing with you, people should be happy to play the games on their older hardware even if it can’t pull down the ultra specs. We don’t need to always be buying the latest generation of GPUs, it’s okay to play on medium specs. We don’t have to have the top of the line latest card/processor/drive, we can enjoy ours for years, even if it means newer games don’t play on ultra. If you have the funds to buy new ones every generation, more power to you, but I buy my cards to last 8-10 years. The flipside is just expect that the games won’t run on ultra.

NightOwl,

People should expect more optimization for the games they look into and better price for performance offerings for hardware. Approach of just pushing what is acceptable further into the category of the premium tier leads to worse consumer offerings over the long run. What is considered acceptable hardware has gotten more and more out of reach each generation while disposable income has not kept up.

Complacency and constantly falling scale of what is acceptable is what leads to worse standards. Bad prices and optimization should not get passes. PR management of be happy with hardware or performance is not the job of consumers aside from those who are being paid to run those type of campaigns.

szczuroarturo,

Hmm .i dont know if you ever noticed but there usualy is a very little diffrence between ultra and high/very high but a lot of diffrence in performance. Ultra settings were always designed to sweat the pc and i assume its similar with starfield . And there is also advent of the 4k which put this ridicolous standard even higer( which especialy on pc makes very little sense unless you play on it like on a console from your couch ). In fact the fact that old graphics card are still faring so well is an anomaly rather than the standard.

deranger, (edited )

That’s the thing - I’d say this game is pretty well optimized. People have unrealistic expectations of what their hardware can do. That’s a better way of putting it than “entitled”.

None of the 3D Bethesda games played this well at release. I speak from first hand experience building PCs since 1999 and playing Oblivion, FO3, NV, Skyrim, and FO4 at release. Playing those games on years old hardware required lower than native resolutions and medium settings - exactly what you see in Starfield currently.

NuPNuA,

PC gamers enjoyed a bit of a respite from constantly needing to upgrade during the PS4/Xbone era. Those machines were fairly low end even at launch and with them being the primary development formats for most games, it was easy to optimize PC ports even on old hardware.

Then the new consoles came out that were a genuine jump in tech again as consoles used to be, and now PCs need to be upgraded to keep up and people that got used to the last decade on PC are upset they can’t rock hardware for multiple years anymore.

nekusoul,
@nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de avatar

Runs great on my 5000 series AMD CPU and 3000 series Nvidia GPU

Just specifying the series doesn’t really say much. Based on that and the release year you could be running a 5600X and RTX3060 or you could be running a 5950X and RTX3090. There’s something like a ~2.5x performance gap between those.

mp3, do games w Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC'
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

The missing part is that the user with a 4090 complaining had a CPU from 2017 🥴 https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/b8c595d0-663f-45d4-b60e-e8738b8945b7.png

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

What’s a CPU bottleneck? I have the magic gpu

capt_wolf,
@capt_wolf@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I’m not buying that either. I’m on a 2014 i7 and a 3060 playing on ultra. My sole issue was not running on an SSD which I resolved yesterday. That kid is clearly playing on a potato and lying.

NewNewAccount,

At what framerate?

Piecemakers3Dprints,
@Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

Lying at any framerate is still lying.

NuPNuA,

I’m shocked at home many PC users are still running HDDs given that SSDs have been standard ok consoles for three years now.

Viking_Hippie,

They’ve pretty much been standard for gaming and containing the os on PC for 5 if not more. HDDs are still good for storage, but only luddites and people trying to save money in the stupidest way would have their games on them.

rambaroo, (edited )

Playing on ultra on a 3060 ? So you’re getting 20-30 fps? Because that’s what it gets on mine with a much newer CPU. I had to turn it down to med-high to average 45 fps

Annoyed_Crabby,

Lol, dude used up all the money to get a GPU.

Vordus,

Considering that this thing runs great on a Series S (which is CPU-heavy, but with a weak graphics card) that makes so much more sense.

rambaroo,

Gotta love the Bethesda fanboys upvoting this one cherry picked comment. They’re are like 70 comments in there with all different combos of system specs complaining about performance.

Zacryon, do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'

Disclaimer: My comment is a reaction to the stuff Todd and his minions said in the article, not necessarily about the game itself. I haven’t played Starfield yet. I just find the statements really weak and want to express why I see it that way.

Yeaaahh that’s nice for maybe a couple of hours, but then it starts to get boring. That’s not how you keep players engaged, although there are of course those who don’t find that boring at all.

We’re not astronauts, we’re not there. Astronauts had the thrill of the voyage through space, stepping on the moon and feeling with ones own body how it is to walk on the moon’s dust in low gravity. Also astronauts had and have a shitload of scientific equipment and experiments to carry out, i.e., a purpose beyond the mere jolly walking.

If they were just there for walking and that for days, weeks, months, they would get bored pretty fast as well.

Take a look at No Man’s Sky. Similar problem. The procedural generation algorithm made planets look familiar after you’ve seen a couple. There is nothing new. Exploration became unrewarded. But Hello Games has massively improved on that over the years and produced a game where you can sink dozens of hours without getting bored so easily.

Chailles,
@Chailles@lemmy.world avatar

No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.

No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets. At least in Starfield, there’s some magic in seeing actual fauna. You don’t get that feeling in No Man’s Sky because you’ve seen fauna and flora on the last 30 planets you’ve been to. You need those empty planets to make the planets with life actually feel special.

Zacryon,

No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.

Regarding the variety and interesting features of the bare planets, I tend to agree. My point was rather that there is more to do now and the fun with - even familiar planets - lasts longer.

No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets.

This is not correct. The amount of more dead planets immensely depends on - spoiler alert -

spoilerthe galaxy you’re in. NMS has different galaxies with different distributions for lush or dead planets. This also has some effects on the difficulty.

Chailles,
@Chailles@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t want to have to beat the game in order to finally enjoy it.

Zacryon,

You don’t need to. There are different possibilities for switching galaxies. The simplest ones would be to use portals which is accessible very early in the game.

Chailles,
@Chailles@lemmy.world avatar

Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.

For someone whose put in a few hours into the game multiple times as the game has been steadily updated, I didn’t know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. So telling me I’m incorrect because it’s NG+ COULD have fixed it for me is pretty disingenuous. How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?

Zacryon,

Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.

As soon as you can use the space anomaly (which happens very early) you already have a possibility. But apart from that, sure, it still takes a bit of effort and is not an option available when starting the game. The latter would be a nice idea though.

I didn’t know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. […] How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?

By using an internet search engine of your choice.

nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Galaxy_Centre#Travellin…

But I get what you mean as this is not clearly communicated right from the beginning in the game and something to be discovered. So your best chance to know this, besides doing the story missions, is to talk to other players or by curiously clicking on some suitable links in the NMS wiki.

Cethin, (edited )

I have played Starfield.

The planets being mostly empty is fine. In fact, I think they’re too full if anything. You’re not meant to travel on the planet’s surface for long. You explore a bit if you think you want to build an outpost there, but otherwise you just move on. Most of the “content” is in pre-built areas. Enemy encounters almost always take place in hand crafted facilities, and usually it’ll be for some kind of quest so you land right near it.

The outpost system is where the procedural planets come in. You need to explore some to find the right spot to build with the resources you want. The content there is the building, not the planet. The landscape will effect it some, but mostly it’s whatever you make of it.

That said, the outpost system fucking sucks right now. You have to send resources between outposts with “links”, which take goods into a container and store them in linked containers. All solid goods go in one type, and the same for liquid, gas, and manufactured. I have all of my resources trickling into a main base, so I have all resources available there. This has caused my storage to back up and there’s no way to filter out items you don’t want. Then no resources can come in so you have to go to your storage and clear whatever is clogging it. There’s also no way to delete items as far as I’m aware, so you just dump the excess resources on the ground where they’ll remain forever. It’s really stupid. This is my storage solution for now.

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/67d79ce2-bace-4c8c-9784-33f9640de440.webp

All the crates flow into the next one, so it’s functionally one massive storage container, but with 15 seperate inventories I have to go through to get anything out. There’s also no stairs object you can build, or anything like it, so I stacked cabinets into a sort of access staircase. It’s really bad, but it’s what works for now.

Just a tip if you start playing and build a main base, build it on a low gravity planet so you don’t have as much of a problem if you stack stuff like this.

packersinthefarm,

How the fuck did Beth have stairs in FO4/76 but forgot to add them in a game set hundreds of years in the future? What the seventy-dollar fuck?

another_lemming,

That’s the future Telvanni want!

Cethin,

At least if the Telvanni got their way I’d be able to levitate up to my crates! (I just realized, I may TCL to use the crates because there isn’t a good alternative built into the game systems.)

Cethin,

Yeah, outposts seemed to me to be the thing that Starfield was designed and marketed around, but it’s so jank. So many basic things missing and so many quality of life failures. It’s like they didn’t even test it themselves first.

Quentinp,
@Quentinp@lemmy.ca avatar

Does it eventually give you a purpose or guide you to making an outpost, I haven’t felt much of a need yet.

PolandIsAStateOfMind,
@PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml avatar

I hope not, i came for the RPG, if i wanted to play worse version of minecraft i would just go play minecraft.

Cethin,

There’s one part in the story that you need to build a thing in a shop or an outpost, but it doesn’t require you to really build an outpost. I did it so I can have any supplies for upgrading things without too much effort. I think that was a mistake, but now I’m too invested. Lol.

reverendsteveii,

I gotta be honest this looks like Minecraft construction but even in Minecraft there are ways to sort out and destroy unwanted items

thanks_shakey_snake,

[accidentally attracting Satisfactory fans intensifies]

Cethin,

That reminds me of how annoyed I get with Satisfactory as well…

As a Factorio player, this could all be handled so much better in both games, but Starfield is particularly bad. It’s like they never even tried building outposts before launch. So many basic functions are missing.

PersnickityPenguin,

This sounds like factorio without the biters

Cethin,

Yeah, and without any way to actually manage the resources. I want to like it, but I see so many issues that should be easy to solve that they just didn’t. Sure, it’ll be fixed with mods and maybe DLC, but that shouldn’t be required for basic UX.

Another one of my big gripes with outposts is that there is no way to view your existing outposts. There’s not a list, and definitely no way to view what an outpost is producing. Hell, you can’t even view what an outpost is producing when you’re there. It’ll tell you the total quantity produced of everything combined, but not of what. It’s bad.

sentient_loom,

I’ve played Starfield and it’s fantastic. There’s so much story. The world-bulding is different because there’s literally 1000+ worlds and they’re mostly uninhabited. I’m not sure what else you would expect. There are some huge, in-depth cities and some beautiful landscapes. But there’s also empty deserts and plains, just like we see everywhere in space.

Destraight,

I expected to be able to fly my ship considering I am able to customize it

c0mbatbag3l,
@c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, the first thing I did when getting to the core was to generate an ancestral galaxy so that there would be more dead worlds. Didn’t like having every place overrun with life.

sturmblast,

tell this to elite dangerous players

PersnickityPenguin,

If you want the astronaut experience, play Kerbal Space Program 🚀

totallymojo, do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because 'when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there' but 'they certainly weren't bored'
@totallymojo@ttrpg.network avatar

Yeah. I failed math on purpose too.

Crotaro, do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose

I haven’t played Starfield yet. That being said, I think I will enjoy most planets being rather dull (as long as you still occasionally have reason to go there). I very much love the stance of “When everything/everyone is remarkable, nothing/noone is.” One of the bigger reasons (aside the gameplay usually not being quite to my liking) why I don’t play MMOs anymore is, because about every MMO culminates in 80% of the people wearing “the armor of fabled legends” and being “Slayer of Demonlord and Demigod Sckholzhlak”.

NattyNatty2x4,

I very much love the stance of “When everything/everyone is remarkable, nothing/noone is.”

Counterpoint: it doesn’t make everything/everyone unremarkable, it just raises the standard and the bar for what remarkable is. Imagine using that argument for modern graphics, game design, etc, and that you want things to be lackluster because it really highlights the occasional times that they aren’t.

Erk,

I kind of think it does apply to modern graphics and game design in the same way. A fast paced action shooter still needs moments where you catch your breath, it’s never just an endless constant flood of enemies. A visually beautiful game still has bits that aren’t particularly interesting or you’d get an overdose of visual information and wouldn’t be able to identify what was important.

Similarly, starfield has a lot of small barren moons that don’t have a lot of resources. They are boring compared to the green worlds (there are tons of these too though, which every repeat of this thread has glossed over), but they still have stuff going for them. I spent my evening last night exploring a smuggler base that I randomly fell into while looking for a place to put an aluminum mine on a barren moon. The night before it was a (very cool) mission on an abandoned mining platform.

However, in the process of going to and from these sites, I definitely felt like I was travelling across a barren, dusty moon. That helped the feel. Both those quests had storylines that were inherently tied to the fact that the setting was a barren, dusty moon, rather than a teeming, thriving planet.

Bottom line, I think this one over-shared article says nothing of importance. If you go to one of these ‘boring’ moons there’s lots to do, just not ‘explore and identify the planetary life’ kind of stuff. you can tell at a glance which planets are more likely to have settlements and things from space, and there’s more of them than any one person can explore, so it really doesn’t matter that there are also a bunch that aren’t like that.

Crotaro, (edited )

Fair point. I would agree to say there should be a healthy middle ground. I think coming across theme park-like spectacle around every corner would remove a lot of immersion and most authenticity (specifically trying not to default to “realism” because then we’d specifically want 99,999% of areas to be lifeless rock) not only from Starfield but many many games. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Red Dead Redemption and the Metal Gear series would be incredibly different games, if it was just from one action sequence to another and then a beautiful story cutscene immediately and with only loading screens separating them from each other.

I guess I’m trying to say that immersion into and attachment to a game is increased if you give opportunity for (or sometimes force) the player to calm down. Red Dead 2, for example, does this masterfully by its generally slow and deliberate pace for most actions (cooking steak by actually making you hold the meat over fire for a couple seconds, making you walk/ride for long passages to get somewhere even during missions, etc.) and by sprinkling in quite a number of relaxing quests, like watching a movie with your girlfriend, in a game that’s mainly known for shooty tooty cowboy action.

To wrap up that wall of text, I guess I’ll see if the ratio of interesting tidbit for every dull landscape is too low for me in Starfield once I get my hands on it c:

Update: Game’s good, if your expectation was “Space game made by Bethesda”. I like it and am very happy with the amount of barren planets for every lush world. Sure, they lack the “discover flora and fauna” activities but there’s still plenty fun stuff to do.

BigBananaDealer,
@BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

there are definitely dull planets, but there are also planets i have explored just for the hell of it and found a lot of cool stuff, like a facility run entirely by robots and the robots tell me not to interfere with their work or i will die

Crotaro,

Mhmm, I played a couple dozen hours now and I like the game a lot!

Landrin201, (edited ) do gaming w Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose
@Landrin201@lemmy.ml avatar

OK, then why fucking make them? Aren’t games supposed to be fun?

This whole genre really bugs me, and I’m someone who LOVES space games. The best game in the genre IMO is elite dangerous, because their ship to ship combat is so damn fun to play that I can hop in for a bit and have a blast without having to engage with the other systems that are often painfully boring.

The problem here is that people what the feeling of being explorers and finding new things, but video games inherently can’t provide that. There aren’t computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for. “Exploration” in current space Sims is basically “stick your name on something someone else hasn’t already stuck their name on, maybe grab some resources from it, and leave.” That gets dull very fast.

Developers COULD choose instead to make a couple of good, big planets that are interesting and full of actually good content. They could give you a reason to explore beyond “look other planets cool.”

If you made 1000 planets and only 10 of them are at all interesting, and your game is centered on exploring other planets and not really focussed on much else, you’ve made a boring game.

Dr_Cog,
@Dr_Cog@mander.xyz avatar

The game isn’t centered on exploring other planets, though. Have you played the game?

EvaUnit02,
@EvaUnit02@kbin.social avatar

The article quotes Todd Howard as saying a design goal was providing the player with a feeling of being an explorer.

Scary_le_Poo,
@Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org avatar

Elite dangerous space combat is literally the most lackluster and boring space combat I have ever engaged in. It’s such a slog.

I find combat where you have less control (weak strafing) and more maneuvering to be more interesting. That said, I think Microsoft allegiance probably did 6dof in space combat the best.

/Sidenote

amzd,

There aren’t computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for.

I don't think there is an infinite amount of "genuinely interesting features" so it's hard to imagine we'll ever get a game with this.

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