This article has a pretty negative slant, but is anyone actually sad they’re going? I’ve been playing on and off since 2014, and I never have enough shards. My friends that have played almost nonstop since launch constantly have more than they could ever spend, even if they masterworked every piece of gear in their collection. Seems like a good change, honestly.
It’s definitely a good change. I have so many legendary shards that the currency might as well not exist, but my newer friends are constantly running out. It’s a good change for everyone.
I have over 50k shards that I will never use so it’ll be sad to see the high number go away but other than that, I couldn’t imagine a soul being bothered by the legendary shard change. It’s honestly a great thing to help simplify parts of the games economy for new and returning players
I have way more than I could possibly need, and really don’t mind their idea to remove them. What I am a bit “salty” over is the lack of currency exchange for their removal.
I would love to trade in a bunch to get prisms, ascendant alloys or the one to get the enhanced perks (I forget the name). But Bungie still has their arbitrary limits in place. Again, I support the removal, but I did still grind to accumulate them, so not being able to turn them into something useful feels like a waste.
It’s like Cyberpunk again, people gave themselves grand ideas about what a game would be regardless of what the Devs were saying, then got upset it isn’t the game they imagined but the one they were told they were getting.
I get what you’re saying, this happens with almost every major release but cyberpunk promised far for than it delivered. The version 2.0 that released soon should have been what we got in the initial release. We were promised multiplayer, that got cancelled. We were promised multiple dlc, phantom liberty is the only dlc they’re going to release. I’m still excited nonetheless.
They would be very similar. if Bethesda was competent both games have lots of similar elements from, yes having ships to scanning resources on a planet to having a jetpack. So it is fair and understandtable to compare these games pretty much the biggest difference is that Bethesda not having seamless apace travel and I ain’t letting them off the hook for “well they are just different games 🤓” bullshit.
Depends, of you’re jumping to a system you have enough range/fuel for it is, it don’t need to be scanned to enter the sector, sometimes your forced to go though other places you may want to avoid.
I don’t think it’s unfair to point out that many of the people who were interested in Starfield leading up to launch thought they were getting more of a space sim than they did, proceeded to look for alternatives, and NMS was there being pretty good at what it does now. The OP article demonstrates this and is not a comparison between the games. In my case, Starfield just reminded me that NMS exists and I decided I’d rather be playing it. Fundamentally comparing the games is ridiculous, but it’s no surprise that NMS ended up in the conversation.
I recently started playing NMS again right before Echoes, although I didn’t know Echoes was coming up. While I never made a conscious link between seeing all of the news about Starfield and me choosing that game when I was last looking through the plethora for something to inspire me, I think it may have had a subconscious effect on my choice.
Maybe they should have paid attention to what was actually being said by the Devs then. They clarified that it wasn’t going to be like NMS/Elite/etc at least a year out from release.
NMS at least has planets without buildings or signs of life, but they're certain types of planets (eg. lifeless/airless) There are definitely some that have far fewer ships going around too.
NMS is more expansive in some ways, but also fairly shallow in terms of some of the core mechanics. There's a lot of things to do like having a settlement or building a fleet and sending the fleet on missions, but again, it's a bit shallow. At the beginning you're largely focused on resource collecting to build a base, and unlock upgrades. Over time you can automate a lot of this and focus on other things. However, if you don't like the resource collecting to unlock things, you're probably not going to enjoy it.
I think the space flight and combat in NMS feels better. For whatever reason, in Starfield space flight and combat feels very slow to me. It doesn't help that the UI in the starship does this weird laggy update. The seamlessness of flying into a planet can be fun in space combat and the ships will follow you.
NMS has way more copy-paste assets. Starfield at least has grand cities and some unique set pieces or a few different options ,but every crashed freighter in NMS is identical. The buildings in NMS have a tiny bit of variance but they're all like 1-2 room buildings. All space stations and space ports are identical (just the core race changes). There are pirate space stations, but they're the same basic one but darker and they've moved the vendors inward a bit into tents instead of stalls. A little bit of this is baked into the story of NMS to some extent, but that doesn't exactly help it.
My only quibble with this response is that in my mind ground combat is unbelievably orders of magnitude better in Starfield (you actually have access to different guns and enemy types!), and while I can understand preferring the speed of NMS space combat, I ultimately find the mechanics of it pretty shallow and enjoy the system shuffelling of Starfield, I feel like an ideal system would combine them both.
Great points! Yeah there's definitely a lot more variety and skill involved in Starfield. Most of the NMS ground combat is in the open and is easy to cheese, but it is satisfying to hop in your ship and start shooting things (though now they have it trigger incoming aircraft).
I enjoyed the planetary exploration in No Man’s Sky. Some planets have an outpost, but most don’t. In No Man’s Sky there are several alien races and artifacts they left behind you can learn their language from.
There are a huge number of planets, and some have strange reality altering properties. They have different weather and conditions. There is a ginormous amount of alien life that you can catalogue and interact with and even tame. The planets themselves show a huge variety of differences. There is even underground and underwater environments with unique life suited to those environments.
The base building is fun. You can do a lot and you can even travel to galactic hubs and worlds that other players have worked on.
Even travelling through space is more fun. You are able to fly to planets and land on them seamlessly. You can own several different space ships and even giant freighters that can contain your ships and frigates you can send to other star systems.
I do enjoy the zen of NMS (nothing like piloting alone on the surface of a planet with the sound of the rain falling on the cockpit), but even after all those years and cool upgrades, it still feels so empty… If you enjoy tabletop RPGs and have an opportunity to play one with like-minded friends, I recommend you try Traveller. It’s all those things you mentioned, in a way, way bigger and denser scope. :) Also with actual civilizations, empires, politics, commerce, wars, fleets, etc.
Lol tell this to people who are upset that every planet doesn't have a thriving colony in it. The "empty planets" are frustrating to them.
Not that you or they are wrong, it just highlights that matters of opinion on things like this are a spectrum, and sometimes you end up on the far end. I like that I can land on a planet and have something besides just rocks, but also that's it's procedurally generated so that it isn't the same every time. It's false replayability, sure, but if I like playing the game, it doesn't matter to me that the layouts are the same.
I thought this way back when i first played it. But I’ve been spending the lasts days playing and it got so much better.
The environments are no longer the same everywhere, sure you will find matching planets but they don’t all look like asteroids with hair anymore. Minerals dont stick out of the ground anymore. And underground caves exists.
The multiplayer aspect got better too (or so i hear, didn’t get to try it yet).
The stories are more engaging with specific npc’s interacting with you.
Never thought space combat sucked? It’s not to the level of Elite Dangerous, but it’s somewhat entertaining, and accomplishes what need to be done imo.
It’s an MMORPG so of course you have grinding, and for my current playthrough it isn’t boring yet. I’ve got a minecraft vibe, where you upgrade gear and ammass items for future uses.
love that you can get pets now and use them for more than simply have around, I got some kind of panther yesterday, was able to mount some guns to it and now it helps me in combat (kinda tedious to use idk if i fully figured it out yet, but sometimes the companion won’t attack).
All that and i only started playing, there’s the whole frigate thing, and also settlements to protect. I’m told you can have some kind of fleet to send on missions, and i’m certain there’s other huge content i’m missing that i dont know of yet.
I played it like 3 months ago before the Echoes update, so this isn’t based on the launch version or anything.
The environments are no longer the same everywhere, sure you will find matching planets but they don’t all look like asteroids with hair anymore. Minerals dont stick out of the ground anymore. And underground caves exists.
I mean yeah, but they don’t look any better or more varied than Starfield’s planets, that’s for sure. It’s neat that they added caves but the caves are also pretty boring. There’s not much in them beyond some more resources. You don’t have the expansiveness or endlessness of minecraft caves nor the buried mines and mob spawners and lava and more interesting underground stuff.
Never thought space combat sucked? It’s not to the level of Elite Dangerous, but it’s somewhat entertaining, and accomplishes what need to be done imo.
It’s serviceable, but I wouldn’t describe it as fun, as in I don’t actively enjoy the space combat. I find Starfield’s juggling of systems and targeting on top of standard dog fighting maneuvering at least a little more engaging, but a serviceable system that’s not that much fun kind of describes most of No Man’s Sky to me.
It’s an MMORPG so of course you have grinding, and for my current playthrough it isn’t boring yet. I’ve got a minecraft vibe, where you upgrade gear and ammass items for future uses.
I find it’s crafting to be far less satisfying than Minecraft’s or say Subnautica’s, and a lot more grindy, but that could just be me.
Again, I know they have all these different systems, but it really feels like each system is just barely enough of a system to entertain you for a couple hours, but doesn’t have the depth / polish / interweaving complexity to truly hold you.
I played it not that long ago. The comment above is still pretty much spot on. There’s base building now I guess. There’s still nothing to keep it interesting.
I literally played it like 3 months ago, before the most echoes update, but from the looks of the update notes I think my description still likely stands.
Really? You can’t fathom how someone would consider NMS a better game? Both games are barely comparable other than using space as a backdrop. Judging by the reaction online, it seems like many people were lead to believe that Starfield would be a space sim and came up wanting when it was more of a sci-fi Fallout, with mostly optional engagement with the space elements. For those people, I can see merit in recommending they check out No Man’s Sky, which has a shallow, bit widely-spread space simulation to engage with.
I don’t think it’s useful to try and argue which game is better, but I would much rather play No Man’s Sky any day of the week. Bethesda RPGs have long lost their luster for me since the Oblivion days, and now just stand as a testament of disappointing writing, stagnant technology and under-baked systems. Starfield does not show any meaningful signs of breaking the norm.
Really? You can’t fathom how someone would consider NMS a better game?
Correct.
Both games are barely comparable other than using space as a backdrop.
People who say X things aren’t comparable usually seem to grossly misunderstand how comparisons work. They’re very similar games and even if they weren’t they would still be comparable, the end result of the comparison is just that they would be different.
I don’t think it’s useful to try and argue which game is better, but I would much rather play No Man’s Sky any day of the week.
That’s fine but I still can’t fathom why. The only part of it that’s better than Starfield is flying to and from space.
Why do we need to keep pitting these games against each other, aside from being set in space they’re not even remotely similar gameplay wise. One is a survival game framework, the other is a RPG/Lifesim. There’s plenty of room for both in the market.
Title is a bit click-baity, but the core message is the game has seen a boost in users since it's recent update that was just before the starfield launch.
I don’t think it’s surprising that a sci fi game with exploration elements from a major AAA studio renewed interest in a sci fi survival/exploration game from a smaller studio. If you want more of the exploration part of Starfield, No Man’s Sky is the natural option.
Starfield held my interest for a week. It’s okay, but it’s my least favorite polygon-based Bethesda game besides F76. The aging engine just wasn’t made for a game of this scope. I tried No Man’s Sky and didn’t like it, just not my thing.
I’ve played to 150 on fo76, the funniest thing to me is that npcs were an after thought for 76 and still feel more real than starfields citizens… So odd
They’re defintely way different games. NMS is more sandbox and procedural focused, whereas Starfield is a story focused game. Both are buggy space games lol.
I played Starfield on the Game Pass and was bored to tears after four hours. It made me want to explore space, but everything is so half-baked in Starfield that it drove me to reinstall and start playing more No Man’s Sky.
I’m wondering if this would help get a solid 60 outside of interiors/around loads of NPCs. Only my GPU doesn’t meet requirements, and it’s still playable. But is mostly 30-40’s unless I’m in a small interior or an interior with not many NPCs. The NPCs are more bound to CPU so I’m not sure if having lower res/filesize textures would help. I don’t think the VRAM is the problem.
It’s a little better. I’m pretty sure it’s gotta be the NPCs now. Video card is handling it all quite nicely, despite not having RTX or even DLSS support, but everywhere there are crowds it slows down by 20 fps. Currently just standing in the main road of Neon and it’s around 40-45, dropoing to 35 when I run, but get a solid 60 when no NPCs are visible by looking up at an animated billboard or something.
The fact you need a 4090 to touch 120fps on 1080p in 2023 is disgusting. That should be the minimum target fps for mid range hardware at the least.
Meh, game is bland anyway.
Ok sure, 1080p low settings, I can get away with a 4080 if I have an i9 13900K. 1080p high? Yeah, not even a 4090 with a 13900K will get you near 120fps.
It's shitty code bound. Sometimes no matter how powerful your hardware is, software will perform poorly because it just doesn't scale. Writing complex software like game so that it can fully utilize current hardware AND actually run faster with better CPU/GPU can become very difficult once a certain complexity threshold is reached. It's easy enough to do for a small linear game even if it has exceptional graphics, but an open world sandbox game like ones that Bethesda makes is a completely different story.
That doesn't mean that it's impossible of course - Bethesda absolutely should have made a better job, but it's by no means an easy task.
I was able to get a consistent 70+ fps with most things set to medium, 1440p with a 3900x and a rtx 2080 with dlss2 and a mod that helps performance without any noticable dregredarion I can tell.
Potatoes? You mean PCs with < $1000 GPUs?
I'm not touching Starfield until I can play it at 1440p 60 fps with decent graphics (yes, actual 1440p, not "720p upscaled to 1440p" bullshit. Neither that nor 30 fps are acceptable to me).
If Bethesda can't be bothered to fix performance and I will need to wait years until I decide to upgrade so be it - I have plenty of great games in my "to play" list. By that time the will also be lots of mods to choose from to make Starfield worth it.
It's crazy to me that they make the same game for almost 20 years but still can't make it work. The ai seems to get worse every game, computers get better and better but it still runs the same.
Just from a a couple of nights playing Starfield. The combat ai does seem more interesting then with enemies jumping off ledges to get to you etc but not but a whole heck of a lot. L
That's the plan. I haven't actually properly played F4 yet either lol (tried years ago but dropped due to performance issues). Probably will do it soon after spending a month modding it.
Don't know how much free time you have, but I couldn't be bothered anymore for FO4 on nexus. I just downloaded one of the bigger/better collections and ignored/deactivated the creepier/boobier mods.
Already more than enough of a hassle to get that working, with vortex sometimes not installing stuff properly, pre-cleaning files, etc.
I just enjoy that stuff lol. I only stopped my last Skyrim playthrough because I kept updating my mods and adding new ones and at the one point it just broke all of my saves. I took it as a sign to move on to other games.
Same, but realistically once you start heading towards the 500 mods range, it's almost impossible to get it working reliably.
At one point I had 200+ mods on skyrim, and the mod cycles and before/after conflicts on vortex looked like mandelas. I did enjoy 'completing' the vortex mod manager game. That's when it's 3AM, you're fed up, you give up trying to figure what's wrong, and just click randomly and uninstall/reinstall mods until vortex shuts up, and it somehow just works. Bit like winning the lottery.
Sad that the article focused on this particular mod. It’s aimed at textures for low-end systems, yes, but there are 2-3 others that are aimed at systems across the board and use stock textures with simple config file changes. They’re all tweaks with options that are in the game but unavailable on the menu, and they do vastly improve performance without a drop in quality.
A better headline could have been “Modders fix in days what Bethesda didn’t do with years”.
It’s game of the century in my book. These complaints are shallow. I spent 20 hours exploring and these complaints hold no weight. There is plenty, go find stuff. I have 2 huge ship’s just from exploring planets. I have full legendary gear. All from planet hopping.
Exploring planets is cool as fuck especially when you go across environments.
Moons are especially fun and hold all sorts of secrets.
If you find a note about a secret base, pursue it.
Bethesda did a good job. I have played SC and SB2 and while I like how they do space travel, the rest of their game sucks by comparison. Bethesda really knocked it out of the park.
Bethesda did a good job. I have played SC and SB2 and while I like how they do space travel, the rest of their game sucks by comparison. Bethesda really knocked it out of the park.
This. Just exploring the first POI after leaving the tutorial I thought to myself, “This is how SC, NMS, and ED should have done their ground FPS exploration and combat.” The FPS gameplay is much better than Fallout 4/76, Bethesda improved that aspect a good amount. And with any Fallout/Scoll game, I love the clutter loot. I’m now 42 hours into the game, lots of new Bethesda style detailed POIs to discover and explore. People complaining about empty moons/planets are ignoring the hand crafted content and focusing on the unpainted mod canvas… or to give them a bit of a pass they have never played ED, NMS, or SC as those have lots of empty moons as well.
Did they pay you to write this?
Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much?
Or am I insane?
I feel like im in Truman Show, noticing the facade crumble and all the streamers and reviewers acts like the game is fine.
I see streamers encounter serveral game breaking bugs and then instantly praise the game again.
The game is basically Bethesda trying to mask the limitations of their game engine.
I mean good for you that you like it but I spent 10hrs and then refunded (Thank god for Steam). Im not paying 100 bucks for Fallout 4 with space skin. I can not fathom how people accept this quality in 2023.
And for that price.
If someone is interested in my “shallow complaints”:
It’s not as open and “huge scale” as people seem to think it is. It’s kind of “fake open” if that makes sense. You cannot get into your ship and fly 800m east to your mission. If you do that, a new instance is loaded and your mission is not there. You have to run those 800m.
The ships are cool but you don’t need it. You just fast travel with a loadingscreen everywhere anyway. I saw the inside of my ship twice in 10hrs (not counting the cockpit view).
Navigating the menus are a nightmare. Inventory management is difficult.
Laziest intro I’ve ever seen. “Hello stranger, take my ship. No reason. Ok cool. Bye.”
Very little improvement graphics-wise. The explosions are 2D sprites lmao. In 2023. For real. New Atlantis looks horrible.
Performance is shit. I get 40fps in towns with a “UFO rated” computer on userbenchmark. Nvidia card.
NPC’s teleporting around, getting stuck everywhere halfway through floor, corpses flopping around, ships clipping through stations.
IMO that really does not effect the scale of the game, it’s not limiting the amount of places you can go at all, just hop somewhere else on the planet and you’re gonna find similar things. You arent really meant to use the ship for such a small distance aswell, and the instanced wall to wall distance is really quite far for being on foot.
Eh, it was your choice to fast travel. They included a ton of fast travel options cause not everyone either has the time for the game otherwise or they just does not care about the flying around in space part as much. But the option to not fast travel, and to instead use your ship is there 100% of the time so I don’t understand complaining about it, it’s just a matter of choice.
I personally found the menus really easy to use and get used to, but I was on controller and not kbm, cant speak to how kbm feels.
What you are describing as a lazy intro is the exact intro that bethesda fans want in these games, quick and over with so you are quickly released into the world to figure things out on your own, it’s what bethesda does every time.
But yeah agreed on the technical aspects, except for new atlantis looking horrible. If anything looks borderline horrible for me, it’s the borderline uncanny valley faces everyone has.
Gotta love how anyone who has a good time with a game is either a shill or has stockholm.
I pirated the game and won’t have the funds to buy it any time remotely soon. I 100% agree with the commenter you responded to. It’s a fun game, there’s a lot to do and I’ve often been feeling like this game has the guts that 2077 was missing (and I had a mostly bug-free 100% playthrough before a lot of major patches. For me, patches have just been mod-breakers lol). I only bring up 2077 because of just how often over the last few days I’ve thought “they’re accidentally delivering the promises 2077’s marketing made”. I remember when Night City was promised to have fully scheduled NPC routines (which doesn’t really exist) but it’s actually somewhat present and there’s a quest that introduces it as a “necessary” mechanic.
I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with the faction and trait interactions. I classed as a space scoundrel who is wanted and I have parents - my parents show up in random pleasant places like the zoo, my space scoundrel or wanted trait I believe got me captured and now I’m undercover working to infiltrate and take down a space pirate faction. In my own time I became a space ranger who started working for a corp in Neon doing espionage. Oh and like the previous commenter said, I’d followed a secret moon base and became a notorious pirate hunter which I’ve decided to take up the mantle of, so I’m technically double undercover lol.
Last little thing on interactions, it’s been cool that the news has minor reportings on the important things you do. After I found said legend and lived up to it I’ve been hearing about attacks on space pirates that I’ve done. Smaller questlines have meaningful NPC changes.
I have some counter-points to yours, but I do have gripes of my own with the game I’ll list after.
“not open”
What you’re trying to say is there’s no sub-orbit flight. You only fly your ship in orbit or in deep space. As a byproduct there is no way to manually fly your ship 800m. What you can do for 90% of quests is go to the planet map, click a new landing zone and land closer, skipping any exploration the game is trying to encourage. (The 10% of quests I’ve encountered are gas-detection on colonies. Rescue quests I can fast travel, unsure about flight). They didn’t really market that you could, and frankly while the idea of flying my ship above colonist settlements and open firing on them sounds awesome I see why it’s not possible. They took Elite Dangerous and dropped the interactive transitions for docking and landing. We’ve been aware of this since it was announced so I don’t really see the issue here.
Also there may be a lore reason they came up with, as there have been mentions of ships larger than certain sizes straight up just can’t land on planets at all.
“ship aren’t needed”
I’m going to say no, subjectively. You can fly quite a bit if you want to, it’s just faster to plot courses and for less populated galaxies there’s not much reason to stick around. For actual gameplay, ships to make a difference though. The default ship is a good start and moderately upgradeable, but it’s nothing compared to fighting in a dogfighting ship. Dogfighting ships are quite useless for cargo transport though, so if you are trying to ship people you’d be hard pressed doing it with the default ship. In a galaxy you can travel to any waypoint you see, bypassing the map menu. There is a lot of menu-diving, and I’ll list some issues I have with that in a bit.
“lazy intro”
I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the intro. To be honest, I don’t agree. So you’re a miner that finds a mystical space rock that makes you feel things, then some people happen to show up looking for a large dozen of them to unlock the secrets of the universe. Cheesy? I guess. I appreciated that it was much faster getting started and out into the open world than their other games (still a little on rails slow). If anything, I’d argue that it gives much more player freedom for imagination. In Fallout you’re searching for a person and you have a dedicated goal. In Skyrim it’s the same as the chosen one.
In Starfield you’re vision from the magic rock could be entirely meaningless if you wanted it to be and never deal with it again. The fact that you were just a space miner with no background fits perfectly with the RPG genre and solves the issue that people have been complaining about for Bethesda for years (that they’re not “true” RPG’s). Meanwhile we get an actual blank slate with a decent story premise and it gets called lazy and boring. Fuck that man, the concept was fine and you can be whatever you want to be for once.
“graphics/performance”
Seems kinda odd complaining about graphics? Unless I’m tweaking for gains I don’t FPS meter, just visual smoothness as a reference. 5800x3D and a 10gb 3080 on ultra save motion blur with RT, on medium. No DLSS mod or FSR. I haven’t felt the need, as performance has been solid and stable - at least it’s consistently the same in the same areas. It’s a pretty game, but I wouldn’t say crisp. Better than RDR2’s TAA but worse than 2077’s current state. Some spots have some fuzzing/film grain of some kind, might be an atmosphere effect since it doesn’t seem present on all planets. Some areas are definitely lower FPS but on a variable refresh rate monitor it’s not been noticeable in any negative extents. Low FPS has only ever been on planets/settlements, space and dogfights have been pristine. Performance hasn’t ever gotten worse than 2077, which for me was ~25fps prepatches (sub the x3D back then). Neon and New Atlantis are generally lower fps than an indoor smaller map but no poor frametimes, no chugging or stuttering. It’s just the difference between 165hz and 60hz. The only actual “lag” I have seen is NPC scripts, which sometimes after longer play sessions hang and can get a few seconds of desync. For one line, then it’s fine again.
That said, I shouldn’t have to need high end hardware to have a good experience with the game. I feel like that’s a separate issue, though. The game has been stable, completely crash free, and performance is consistent across how it performs - small maps are consistently smooth and heavier areas are noticeably lower FPS but not in a bad way. I did mention this is a pirated copy, right? I’d expect to have an abysmal experience with performance and yet…
“clipping”
One barista started levitating up to the ceiling when I was ordering a coffee, stopped at the ceiling. Once or twice an NPC has been facing a different direction during conversation. Once in a while an NPC will be walking into a wall, when I’ve wanted to steal I’ve “pushed” NPC’s and they just repath themselves and its fixed - though rescue missions do suffer from this a bit. With some 30+ hours of playtime (on save at least), I’ve not seen any ship clipping or hitting stations. I’ve been to some heavy fleet areas like UCS and pirate bases and they are all just normal?
Like overall, I have some issues in similar ways but I have been enjoying my time with the game a lot. Pleasantly surprised compared to what I had been reading online.
Menu diving is definitely a pain, mostly the map. There’s ways to mitigate it, but it’s a small convergence of minor issues that make it feel like one larger one. So, the scope of the game is so large and missions are not categorized by planet. Transitioning between missions to check the map is long and the alternative is menu diving. Sometimes you go to a planet just to land, talk to someone, and leave. Now, that is on me if I choose not to stick around but I’m also so full of quests that I’m worried adding any more will leave me with more planets with objectives I can’t find. (I do like the abundance of quests, I really wish they had given a planet or at least galaxy category for missions).
Also regarding menus, I just wish the hotkeys were consistent. Have the scanner out? No hotkeys will work. Hotkeyed into a menu? Have to press tab to back out and select a different one, can’t press a different hotkey. Minor timewaste but it adds up and gets annoying.
Quest streamlining - only ran into it once but in short, I was captured at a low level and followed its questline and got stuck in an auto-save encounter where I had a -10 advantage in the dogfight. I tried about 30 times, gave up went back a save before that grav-jump and went on elsewhere. It would have been nice to have been given some more information along the way, say the rough estimate of the level I should be for the quest. However, that has actually only happened one time and every other quest has been fine in this regard, so I think I may have just been low level in a high level unavoidable encounter. Ah, this quest also put me into an NPC bug “The people of New Homestead need these supplies!” for a little while. Resolved upon completion, though. || Quickly while on the topic of quests, the colonists “place gas sensors” quest is semi-bugged as no waypoint appears. Lots of gas spews, no interactions (unless maybe I’m missing a perk point for it!) People did say that if you find the right gas spot an icon will appear, so MMV for this one.
A minor gripe, it’s not really so much an issue as it seems to be an oversight. As I’ve mentioned, there’s multiple ways to travel. You can fly, select a waypoint and travel to it. Small cutscene and you’re there, no map. You can go into your map, select a plant and set a course - you will be orbiting the planet. Or you can select the planet and view it and select a settlement to land at - you will be outside your ship. However, you cannot fly to the planet, select the planet, then land. Selecting the planet has you bring up the planetary map, where you then select a settlement… This is the course of action that results in your first bullet-point of no sub-orbit flight. Because we cannot select a planet to land on directly, we must use the map to travel. Also because of that streamer we saw that you also can’t fly to pluto to land on it because we can’t do that with any planet.
I personally don’t have an issue with that aspect of it, my gripe comes down to the flow of gameplay. Like the menu diving, inconsistent hotkeys, I’m just not sure why they added some time buffers and menu-reliant methods when they also have existing ways to do the same thing. It’s one of those things where it seems like by trying to accommodate doing something any possible way they ended up nerfing each way of doing it? That said, my friend made a good point - would you rather spend time at the destination or getting there? Currently, the game is maybe 30% (quest dependent) getting there and 70% being there. Sometimes you go to a location via grav jump, hail and dock, do a couple things and leave. Sometimes you grav jump talk to someone and leave. No matter what, you are going somewhere, doing something, and then leaving. So are you going to be happier spending your time doing frivolous things to get there, or would you showing up and spending your time in the area?
So far, my complaints have all been related to the flow of the game. Most of my time is really spent engaging in the world, talking, collecting, it’s genuinely fun. Then I get a quest and it asks me to go to some far away planet… well, do I have anything else left to do here? Do I leave and come back? If I leave I’m going to find something else and then I won’t come back for some time. Then I start trying to reference the missions and the map and that is where
So far honestly my biggest actual bothers me issue has been the egregiously long animations for getting into and leaving the cockpit. Hold E during a dogfight? You’re fucked. Accidentally forget to add something to cargo? Go make some tea, it’ll be a while. I’m being a little facetious but seriously, a 5-7 second long stand/sit animation is just too much for something I’m doing constantly, especially if it’s prone to happening on accident.
My second biggest issue that I think most people have been talking about is rooted in that quests don’t have a view all on map/make all active/most sensibly, categorize quests by planet (or galaxy). Goddamn, I have spent a lot of time in Neon trying to figure out which quests if any are still available there, or searching for another quest that is somewhat nearby another. I’m trying to follow sensible trade routes and plan accordingly, but there’s just so many to sift through and cross referencing them is a pain. That said, it seems like they have combated this by trying to push that that does not matter. If you are in the Sol system and need to go to Neon or further right, just plot a course or go directly to the planet and land on the waypoint. If you have no contraband, you land in the settlement outside your ship/in the city. There’s no need to stay within Sol/near Alpha Centauri because as long as you’re ship is within range, grav-jumping is as instantaneous as a loading screen.
That’s about it, honestly. Carrying capacity has been generous, 140kg per follower and 2 being pushed on you right away. Ships with 1,000kg can be had easily. Storage is pretty freely given, 300kg at the lodge (which has all the crafting right there), default ship has ~600kg (450 cargo + 150 captain + ~150 random storage?). I’ve been trying to take it easy and not grab all the junk to exist but only from looting bodies and actual usable materials. I’ve got 4 ships and 100k credits and still more to sell. The game is genuinely lots of fun, very detailed with lots of interactions, it really does feel alive especially compared to 2077 which I enjoyed but saw it’s shortcoming for.
That’s how I feel for Starfield. I see some shortcomings (frankly, that will be fixed with mods probably. I forsee a lot of animation skip mods.) being an otherwise extensively large, and so far well crafted game with meaningful decisions for your character. Actions I’ve made have actually made a difference and affected me later. And while bugs are gonna vary for everyone, my experience so far has had very few bugs that actually matter. To be honest, even if every 2nd body was flopping around after death I wouldn’t care? It literally does not matter? I really don’t care that once in a while an NPC is facing a different direction while they talk to me. Intended? Probably not. People in the real world also don’t always face you or even look at you while they talk, so I don’t see the issue.
So, there you go. Now either I’m a shill whose been paid by Bethesda (I could really use it right about now), or a pirate whose been blinded by the shiny new so I must be missing all the terrible qualities of the game.
Or, could it just be that it happens to be a slightly more fleshed out Bethesda game. It has some fairly minor shortcomings, performance aside, but it’s also a fun light RPG. (I really have to stress, I see lots of complaints about performance online but ultra+RT medium on my hardware has been stable and fine, and I love high refresh rates. I have 165hz for a reason.)
Anyway, sorry not sorry for the length. I’m just tired of seeing people enjoy things and getting called a shill for it. It’s disingenuous considering there are actual issues with the game to complain about.
all the streamers and reviewers acts like the game is fine. I see streamers encounter serveral game breaking bugs and then instantly praise the game again.
Could it be that, like myself, these streamers have found that in their playtime these bugs are pretty minor compared to the rest of the game that’s been fun and engaging? Two things can be true, you know. I can enjoy the game and say that it’s strong and well developed while simultaneously saying that it has shortcomings regarding how they relied on the map for travel. But just because they relied on the map for galactic travel doesn’t mean that my excursions on planets are any less fun, it just means that it’s a little less fun to get there than it is to be there.
What you can do for 90% of quests is go to the planet map, click a new landing zone and land closer, skipping any exploration the game is trying to encourage.
This didn’t work for me. If you do this, a new instance is loaded and my mission does not show up.
It’s kind of difficult to explain this without telling you the whole thing.
Here goes…
Build outpost randomly.
Meet Bounty Hunter in close-by container.
Bounty Hunter asks for help with bandits, and to meet 1km east.
I get a marker on my map and on HUD.
I think “fuck, im not running 1km.”
I go back to my ship and open map.
I put my landing marker close to mission marker.
Click to fast travel.
Loading Screen.
Ship lands.
Get out of ship.
Look around. It’s a whole different map.
No marker on HUD.
Think “wtf”.
Fast travel back to my outpost.
My mission is there again.
Ah I see, I understand! Yeah that’s essentially a version of the colonist bug I encountered. It seems certain parts of the game want you to play through it. Mine “works” a little more than yours though, since I was rescuing someone fast traveling would defeat the point. But showing up somewhere is definitely something you’d expect to work for a bounty.
For what it’s worth I often find myself feeling like I don’t want to run 1km, but it’s only 5 minutes and I get there before I know it. The distances of the POI’s feel so far, but most are around 400m and it seems to go by in about 2 minutes. For moons it’s full cause you can complete the surveys quickly, but for planets it’s a good opportunity to finish them up without feeling like I’m wasting time I could be spending on quests.
Anyway, sorry you had to question your sanity and thank you for indulging my curiosity!
Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much? Or am I insane?
No need to go for insults just because you disagree with someone. I love this game so far, it’s been a great deal of joy. For full disclosure: I paid for the $30 USD upgrade package from the gamepass version of the game to get the early access and have not paid full price yet. If script extender mods don’t work on the gamepass version of the game, I expect to purchase he game on Steam for whatever price it is at that time.
I don’t disagree with you on several points, but that doesn’t mean a it’s bad game. As I already stated, I recommend the game and I feel it’s a good game.
Here are some of my thoughts:
The ships are cool but you don’t need it. You just fast travel with a loadingscreen everywhere anyway. I saw the inside of my ship twice in 10hrs (not counting the cockpit view).
One of the things they said repeatedly during pre-release media is that the game has so many aspects to it that you can ignore entire parts of the game by design.
Don’t care about ship combat? Then don’t take ship combat missions, that’s OK.
Don’t care about outpost management? Then don’t make outposts, that’s OK.
Not having to use your ship very often is a feature, not a bad thing. I’ve taken several combat missions and transport missions. I’ve messed around with smuggling a bit. I’ve explored around in my ship and gotten several random encounters. It’s a fun part of the game, but anyone who doesn’t enjoy it isn’t forced to go through it.
Navigating the menus are a nightmare. Inventory management is difficult.
This is probably my 2nd biggest complaint about the game. The UI design is, in my opinion, just not great to use on PC. It seems everything I want quick access to is about 2 menu levels deeper in than it should be…
Laziest intro I’ve ever seen. “Hello stranger, take my ship. No reason. Ok cool. Bye.”
Yeah, but this doesn’t represent the entirety of the game. Many of the quest lines have me very interested in them.
Performance is shit. I get 40fps in towns with a “UFO rated” computer on userbenchmark. Nvidia card.
This is probably my biggest complaint about the game. That said: I agree that the graphics/performance is not great, but please do not ever use nor support UserBenchmark. They are a joke, and cannot be trusted to actually review anything.
NPC’s teleporting around, getting stuck everywhere halfway through floor, corpses flopping around, ships clipping through stations.
I expect many people will tell you “It’s a Bethesda game and it’s to be expected,” and they’ll be right. But you’re also in the right to keep calling Bethesda out on it. Giving massive companies a free pass on these things isn’t ok.
That said, none of these glitches have broken the game for me. I’ve yet to had any game experience ruined by it. Most of them I chuckle at and then move on. If anything, I think it adds charm to the game. One of my favorite things to do in Skyrim was put pots on people’s heads and watch them walk around, or to shout at them and watch their plates get stuck in a chair and vibrate around. (I’ll refrain from commenting about certain Starfield-related shenanigans for spoiler reasons.)
Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much?
Or am I insane?
Please for the love of god can we not turn beehaw (and lemmy as a whole) into YET ANOTHER space where people enjoying a game to whatever degree they please is somehow truly impossible to believe that you question your sanity??? Just learn how to have a conversation for crying out loud!
Naw man you’re being needlessly abrasive and theyre right to call you out on it. No need to take people in bad faith and call them shills or act like someone having a different opinion than you is CRAZY!
People aren’t annoyed at you for asking if you’re insane, they’re annoyed at you because you apparently don’t know that it’s possible to do that without insulting everyone who disagrees with you.
Protip, if you ask someone a question, and then follow that up with “Or am I insane?”. You’re heavily implying that they in fact are the ones who are insane.
Maybe you legitimately didn’t know that. In case you didn’t, now you know.
Seriously? On the very slim chance you’re actually just this clueless about polite communication,
Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much? Or am I insane?
It’s not the third line of that that people object to, it’s what is implied by the entire statement. We assume you don’t consider yourself insane, because that’s obviously hyperbole, which means you do seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you is either a shill or stuck in a sunk cost fallacy.
Consider the alternate phrasing of that entire statement, eg. “I’m just not seeing it. Am I insane or something?” And then the rest of your post. Nobody would be nearly so irritated with you in that context.
Alright. In text maybe you are right.
Im a firm believer that if we like, sat in a bar discussing over a beer, and you could hear the tone of my voice and read my face, no-one would be offended.
“in my book” is a valuable phrase there. I also wouldn’t call it anything that extreme (and I like it) but it’s a good game, it’s not a stretch that someone might absolutely adore it.
vg247.com
Aktywne