Achievement % stats are so comically skewed by various factors that they mean basically nothing. There’s an achievement in Minecraft for literally just opening your inventory for the first time but only 60% of Xbox players have it.
That achievement is likely to gather more accurate statistics due to the problems you mention. The Amid Evil devs can now confidently say that 12.7% of players who own the game have never started it. Meaning they can subtract that number from other achievement percentages to get a better idea of how many people are progressing certain ways.
The same is likely true for Minecraft’s inventory achievement, though that’s slightly less useful, as some players may make it a little further without opening the inventory and then stop forever.
Leaving the first planet in Stafield takes a little more effort, but not much. It’s safe to say that some of the 25% of players who haven’t done it haven’t ever opened the game. But that number will probably be close to 10%.
Steam does not count games that have never been launched. For 12.7% of the players the game probably quit under a bit different circumstances: game crashed or they lost internet connectivity.
Starfield has been out for long enough now that anyone interested in playing it likely already has.
Not even close, especially not in the year that also brought us Baldur’s Gate and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. How much free time does this writer think everyone has?
They were actually fairly accurate that it’s their least buggy title yet. That’s not to say there are none, but they are few and far between. The game just isn’t that fun for now. Animations take too long (currently already mods to fix most of them), traveling is boring, outposts suck, and just so much QoL changes are needed. Bug fixing isn’t really required from my experience. Plenty of other fixes are though.
Yup, definitely interested in Starfield. But at the moment still enjoying Act I of BG3, Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.0 and DLC are right around the corner and after I’ve finished those Cityies: Skylines 2 will be available. So I’ll probably have time for Starfield somewhere early 2024, depending on if my recurring Satisfactory itch hits before that. But by that time more official and unofficial bugfixes and QoL mods will be available, so I’m fine with waiting a bit longer to play. This year is just filled with too many goodies. 😁
I’ve played Starfield (did not purchase it on Steam…) and it’s alright. I haven’t finished it, and I won’t be for a while. It’s is missing so much QoL and so many thing will need the mod toolkit for modders to fix, which isn’t available yet. It should not be purchased by anyone at the moment. You’ll have a better time in several months, and it’ll quite possibly be cheaper.
There’s so much else to play. I’m wanting to get around to Armored Core 6 sometime, but Payday 3 is coming out, and Cities Skylines 2 and Counter Strike 2 (both CS2, and cities dropped it’s ‘:’ to add to the confusion) are coming soon. I may hop back into Cyberpunk if I get around to it, but it’s on the lower end of the list. There’s literally no reason for anyone to bother purchasing Starfield for a bit.
Yeah this one is most definitely back burnered cause it didn’t launch with DLSS and Bethesda always has a million bugs. I’ll wait for the mods to fix everything and play the polished games first.
People do play games offline. Personally, I don’t care about achievements. They mean nothing to me, except knowing that the game developer is tracking my play through, which I hate.
People play offline and they also mod games (especially Bethesda games and especially this one). In order to get achievements in Starfield you either need to play (mostly) vanilla or install an extra mod to re-enable them. This is a dumb article and should be downvoted. There are many reasons why the claim is likely wrong.
There will be outrage, they will go back on their cloud gaming decision but not on the disk drive. Orchestrated to screw over their users while making their fans think they are being listened to.
I think that 25% would be comprised of people that bought the game and haven’t had much time to play, or use console command right away and disable achievements. Speedrunners, modmakers, and general hackers would use console commands liberally as they should be the same as Fallout/Elder Scrolls games.
Yeah, for a Bethesda game, 25% of people using mods right out of the gate is frankly totally believable.
And while starfield isn’t perfect, people not finishing the first mission would hardly be an indictment against the game itself, who judges if a game is worth playing in the first mission? Usually - and especially in games like this - the first mission has practically nothing to do with the standard gameplay
I wouldn't be surprised if it's higher; there are people who mod who will also go out of their way to get achievements and people who don't care about achievements at all.
I personally love the game for what it is. There's no one else out there making anything all that similar to a Bethesda RPG. I do think that some portion saw the performance and set it aside for that reason, though. Especially gamepass people.
I definetely fall under that umbrella, I’ve got mods downloaded, but didn’t bother with the achievement mod. I downloaded my mods after the first mission though.
I’m enjoying starfield for sure, but I think it does have a fair few faults, though I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of them are subjective. For instance I can’t stand bullet sponge enemies and the bullet sponge is strong with starfield. Drives me crazy when I can literally empty an entire magazine of an auto shotgun pointblank into an enemies face, and have it only take them down to like 40% health lol. I grabbed a mod that helps with it, but its still pretty bad, even with that mod, and it breaks the balance a bit. Hoping that once proper mod support is in we get something better.
I also think the whole “spaceship” part of the game is pretty half-baked, I wasn’t expecting E:D levels of piloting immersion, but I’d have hoped for more than basically a series of menus and loading screens for interstellar travel. Additionally ship combat balancing is pretty rough, all the encounters I’ve done so far have felt comically easy, or ridiculously hard (The final mission of a certain UC Vanguard mission comes to mind…)
Overall though I’m definetely having a lot of fun though, and while there are bugs, it’s definetely one the least buggy Bethesda titles we’ve seen so far, and definetely less buggy (in my experience) than BG3
So the way I play, I bought a silenced rifle early and spent my perks on stealth and ballistics. Most humans a few levels above me are single headshots from stealth or 2-3 shots once they know where I am. To me, that TTK feels pretty good, and I tend to be able to use space to attack at range and the boost pack for position.
I could see other approaches feeling less good, but that specific style feels pretty comparable to the later Deus Ex games I liked or Cyberpunk, but with better mobility.
I don't love the spaceship combat, at least that I've played so far (though it's been kind of minimal through 20 hours), but I don't like many. The only exception I can think of that really clicked for me was star citizen with a full stick and throttle, and I don't love most others, so I can't really evaluate that super well. I definitely don't think it's the focus, but it's weird that people expected stuff that only a very small handful of pretty pure space sims do and they never promised (flying down to planets). I don't love the number of loading screens, but on steam deck the length isn't awful, so I live with them.
That would probably help, but I find stealth builds to be really dull in Bethesda games. I do agree though that the mobility is great, I just wish there was zero-g combat (if there is, and I haven’t gotten there yet, no spoilers plz)
And yeah star citizen has the best flight model and ship combat mechanics imo - it’s a shame about the rest of the game… And to be fair there, there’s only so much you can do that with a flight model when it’s primarily going to be played on KBM or a game pad, but some games manage to do pretty damn well (Everspace comes to mind as a game with really excellent gamepad controls for spaceflight)
to be fair regarding what was promised, the vast majority of gamers arent out here reading every interview about the game ahead of time, so you can’t blame them for seeing a game that takes place in space, with stuff like ship building being one of its big selling points, and then blame them for expecting it to have features on par with the other big name space games from the last decade. Just because it’s not promised, doesn’t mean it’s not missed 🤷🏼♂️ like I said though, it’s really not a deal breaker, it just would have been a big selling point for me personally.
There’s some zero G combat areas you can come across. Like other Bethesda games, the main quest isn’t where you have the best interactions.
Level up the ship building skills and turrets will kill in space battles sometimes too fast. I rarely get the chance to board and steal the ships unless I scale back and turn off weapons.
If you want to stay in the game, you can target planets and moons from the cockpit to travel without opening up the Star map. Only scanning has to bring up the map. Random space encounters can be more enjoyable than some of the Fallout 4 ones.
the main quest isn’t where you have the best interactions.
No worries there, I’ve been focusing on faction quests and stuff like that for the most part, only occasionally dipping into the main quest for a few missions. One thing I feel like Bethesda did well with the writing of Starfield is that they finally made the main quest not world-saving urgent (at least not from the get-go). In practically every other bethesda game I can think of, the player starts off pretty much right from the start with a “Hurry! We need to do [Quest] before [Bad Thing] happens!”, which inevitably kills the immersion a bit when you go fuck around for a solid month just exploring and doing side-quests. But in Starfield it makes perfect sense that you’re not necessarily out there every single day chasing down artifacts, at the beginning of the game, they’re just a curiosity
It's not something that's close to regular for space games, either. I can name one game off the top of my head that has it (No Man's Sky), and there's very little else going for it. That one feature combined with endless planets less interesting than Starfield's is close to the whole game.
I’m sure there are others, but it’s really not as uncommon as you’re making it sound, especially for AAA titles. I’d also argue it’s disingenuous to say that No Man’s Sky has “very little else going for it”. It was shit at launch, but they’ve built a really solid game now.
Again (and I feel like I need to keep re-iterating this, because people on this site are so sensitive about any criticism to their favorite games) Starfield is fun. That just doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been better, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing out the areas we feel it fell short. Really, I think what Yahtzee Croshaw said about Tears of the Kingdom applies here - “If the game had these things, you wouldn’t be saying they didn’t matter”
Given that they have you meet a cowboy at the end of that mission, it is kinda understandable. I wonder who thought that having a cowboy as a main character would be a good idea for people outside of the US.
Cowboys could easily appeal to people from Canada, Mexico, and Argentina as well. I’ve come across a disturbing number of British men who harbor secret fantasies of being wild west cowboys, so probably them too.
They were absolutely trying to appeal to Americans by making a cowboy character. Americans go nuts for cowboys. Everyone is downright obsessed with them. You can’t find a single home in the country without seeing cowboy memorabilia and they watch cowboy movies on the weekends, it’s crazy
I live in CA, literally entrenched in the history of “the old west” and I can honestly say not a single person I know has any cowboy memorabilia in their homes lol.
My dad had a little cast iron statue of a cowboy wrangling a bull on his desk at work growing up (a gift from a client) , but that is literally the only instance I can think of lol
And I also don’t know a single person who regularly watches cowboy movies, I can’t even remember the last time a cowboy movie was made in the US… I think that remake with Chris Pratt?
It’s a classic figure in western culture… and a fitting character given his story and the planet he’s from. We’ve had plenty cowboys in movies, comic strips and I’m from europe… Not my favourite setting but it works…
Whats wrong with a space cowboy? His faction is often referred to as lawless and wild. They believe in a wild sort of freedom. Astronauts are kinda space cowboys anyway. Also space cowboys are not a new concept in media. What about a cowboy would make people not get the tutorial?
It certainly put me off. Personally, I hate it when sci-fi writers use worn-out stereotypes in futuristic settings. Like the ‘Irish, but not Irish’ episode of StarTrek TNG.
I’d already seen a couple of streamers play random side quests, and this intro just made me definitively realise that this was not the game for me.
If I use a sample size of me and use my library of a measurement, it’s probably more than 25% of games I haven’t even launched let alone completing the first mission.
Dude, I put like 60 hours into Skyrim my first time before I thought “hey… where’s my shout powers and all the dragons?” Because as soon as Hadvar said “we should split up to avoid suspicion” I unchecked the active quest, said “adios!” And vanished into the trees. I had to come back at like level 30 or something to do the entire MQ from Riverwood to the end.
That’s just how a lot of people play these. I don’t wanna follow their story; I wanna make my own.
Edit: Oh and this is all besides the fact that not only do mods disable achievements, so now do console commands in Starfield. I’ve had to no clip a few times to get unstuck while jumping around with low gravity and ending up places I shouldn’t be, so there are probably some achievements I didn’t get simply because that command likely disabled them (it just gives a generic warning that some commands will disable them, but not which ones).
I don’t have this game yet but I know out of the box modding any of the Fallout or Elder Scrolls games disables achievements (but you can get around this with other mods), so I assume it’s the same here. Bethesda games being some of the most modded games of all time I wouldn’t be surprised if even a lot of first time players were using one or two mods and having their achievements disabled.
For what it’s worth, I am one of these people. I’d already watched a couple of streamers play random sidequests, but when I saw the early game I just couldn’t stomach playing any further.
I am confused by a lot of complaints about the game I’ve seen, namely “it feels barren”, “id rather have 3 good planets over the 1000 procedural generated ones”, and then theres the people with the same complaints they have every time bethesda releases something. I have seen only like 1 trailer for the game, kept away from all the press and whatnot and somehow I feel like I still had a better concept in my mind of what this game would be like than most others did? So many complaints I can just address as “it’s a bethesda space game, and this is what it’s supposed to be like”.
Many people don’t like fallout and elder scrolls, and that’s fine, but if you dislike those games why buy this one? Especially why in the hell would you PREORDER this one?
And secondly a lot of people ive seen talk about this have obviously never played a true space game before. I’ve played no mans sky, elite dangerous, empyrion, heck I’ve played most of them and they are all barren, that is the point. And if bethesda had hand crafted these planets we would have maybe idk, 5 planets id wager that we could actually explore, which is the total opposite for what bethesda wanted to do here.
So many complaints of this game I just feel are “well yeah, obviously” that I’m struggling to find the actual issues in the game. My only thing that bugs me so far is how I can’t fly around on the planets surface, and the lack of a dune buggy.
I spent five hours exploring Nesoi where my house is yesterday, largely so long because there were a few unique biomes to check out and then I happened on a random quest that had interesting stories and voiced lore snippets and things, and took me some time to complete. Also hooked into another off world quest that I’m not done yet but has been really fun.
I would put it on a very similar level to NMS, in that the world does get samey after a while… But there are biomes on the planet, so at least I can find mountains and deserts and things. Looking forward to whatever mods or dlc increase the baseline biodiversity on lush worlds but I think five hours contendedly exploring a single planet is a pretty good stat at launch to be honest. Plus the quests are actually fun and good and there’s combat with more than one kind of enemy.
My bar for their games is high and its been exceeded. I would be happier if it had every feature I can dream up but if I wanted a game that had an infinite scope and an endless development cycle I’d just pay $10k for a ship in star citizen and hope it releases before I die. Thankfully I’m able to enjoy a game made by one of the most lauded and successful video game developers in the world and not be a curmudgeon about it.
Not trying to be a dick, just seems like everyone else is. Don’t buy it if you need x feature and it isn’t there, maybe they will learn a lesson and make the game you wanted them to next time.
Feel like you’re misinterpreting what I’m saying, that statement is not to excuse bugs.
Demand better
Bro I am pleased with the game? I am having fun and I think it’s a good game, as the other guy who replied to you said my bar for this game has been either met or exceeded. I hold bethesda to the same bar as other devs, and people painting this to be as bad as the fo4 or f76 launches are just wrong from everything ive played and seen. Any bug I’ve had has been purely visual and did not hamper my gameplay, and in 20ish hours I’ve had one crash. And this is on linux even, which makes how stable the game has been even more impressive. Gameplaywise too I think it’s great fun.
you help make the entire video games industry worse.
For the record I would like more games like this one. I am the target audience for this game, I enjoy it, and if more devs made games like it I would be happy.
For the record I would like more games like this one. I am the target audience for this game, I enjoy it, and if more devs made games like it I would be happy.
That’s interesting. My personal impression was that, since the success of GTA3 and Skyrim, basically every AAA title has to be some kind of open world sandbox game with as many features as possible. Personally, I really dislike that; I want a tight narrative and strong core gameplay, and I couldn’t care less for stuff like crafting and base building. (I’m also a bit saddened by the way Bethesda took Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 in. I want to play RPGs, not looter shooters.)
Some studios, like Larian and Obsidian, are still making these games, so I’m happy with that. I really enjoyed Outer Worlds, even though people were criticizing it for being too confined (or maybe especially because it was confined). I’m hoping to get around to BG3 and DOS2 soon. But it feels like we’ve had a drought for more than a decade.
So anyway, I found it surprising to read that you feel there aren’t enough Bethesda-like games, because it feels to me like everyone is copying them. Of course, they are masters of their craft, so maybe the problem is that other studios just aren’t any good at it :P
My tastes have shifted a bit, kind of due to how bethesda has taken their games past few years. First rpg i fell in love with was new vegas, I adore that game and was really at first disappointed in how they handled fallout 4. But even though it wasn’t what I thought I wanted, fallout 4 does what it does better than any other similar game imo. That looter shooter gameplay loop with the settlements hooked me in after a little while, and now I’d rather have a game like that with complete freedom to do anything i want. It’s like comfort food for me that I can keep coming back to, don’t ask how many hours I have in fallout 4 lol.
Not to say I don’t enjoy those other games, I plan on getting baldurs gate 3 soon, my friend kind of sold me on it tonight, looks great. Outer Worlds man, I really want to enjoy but I’ve never gotten past 10 hours in save. As you said, it felt too confined for a game that gives you a freakin spaceship. You give me a spaceship, and I’m going to want to land anywhere and go anywhere, and that’s what Starfield does for me. I told a friend recently that Starfield is what I wanted Outer Worlds to be, but for the record i do fully intent to try and finish that game.
What were your favorite parts of outer worlds if i can ask?
So anyway, I found it surprising to read that you feel there aren’t enough Bethesda-like games, because it feels to me like everyone is copying them.
It’s funny you say that, cause I feel like no one else is doing what they do, atleast to the same caliber. We discussed outer worlds, other than that the only similar game I’ve really enjoyed was Kingdom Come Deliverance. That game is great, but it is pretty different, and doesn’t hold the same replay value.
What were your favorite parts of outer worlds if i can ask?
My usual way of playing RPGs is exploring the whole map, picking up every side quest I can find, and then doing them in an order that feels logical. Outer Worlds made that really rewarding: it’s actually possible to feel like you’ve covered the whole map and and all the content is interesting and fun.
Also, the story and the characters are great, and the game mechanics don’t get in the way (like how there are only three types of ammo and just no lockpicking minigame).
I think I liked the companion quests the most, because they really flesh out their characters.
The DLCs do turn into a bit of a slog near the end, when you’re just running through corridors shooting at stuff. But afterwards, your companions will want to talk about all the horrors they experienced, so at least you can share that feeling with them :P
It’s funny you say that, cause I feel like no one else is doing what they do, atleast to the same caliber. We discussed outer worlds, other than that the only similar game I’ve really enjoyed was Kingdom Come Deliverance. That game is great, but it is pretty different, and doesn’t hold the same replay value.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is still on my backlog :) I started a playthrough a few years back, but the cut scenes were so long that real life kept getting in the way :P I only got to the castle after you flee from your village. Does it open up a lot after that?
I was disappointed in the exploration in outer worlds if i recall right, it felt closer to a bioware game like kotor than it did a bethesda game. Which is not inherently a bad thing, I like bioware games, just not as much as bethesda. This conversation does make me want to replay & reexplore this game, i recall loving how it looked visually.
he game mechanics don’t get in the way (like how there are only three types of ammo and just no lockpicking minigame)
I totally get that being a strong point for some, i however appreciate the complexity from things like starfield now having like 3 separate kinds of shotgun shells, not including all the other ammo.
I totally recommend Kingdom Come deliverance, it’s one of my favorites. The map opens up a good bit after the intro, and given that fast travel is risky in the game it makes it feel even larger. Yeah, the cutscenes can get real long, but i was pleased with the story and the voice acting so i didnt mind too much, even if Henry can be a little dull at times.
Haha, I’m also not getting any notifications because my app doesn’t support them yet xD Better late than never!
it felt closer to a bioware game like kotor than it did a bethesda game.
Now that you mention it, it does! I really liked the KotOR games, so that’s probably why Outer Worlds clicked as much for me as it did. I did try replaying KotOR a while ago, but I was bothered by how old it felt. I’ve never finished Mass Effect though, so maybe I should. And Dragon Age: Origins is said to be the last “real” Bioware RPG, so that’s also interesting.
It’s just too bad those games are all so old. I’m currently playing Fallout: New Vegas because I’d never finished it and I’m trying to get into a habit of actually finishing games, but the transition back from OW to FNV was quite a shock. It’s not just graphics; older UIs can be really bad. I tried getting back into a game of Fallout 1, but it felt like just playing the game cost way too much effort.
I totally recommend Kingdom Come deliverance, it’s one of my favorites.
Thanks for the rec! I’ve put it a bit higher on my backlog, after Disco Elysium and BG3. Great stuff ahead :)
You’re misunderstanding. At this point “Bethesda game” is its own subgenre, and many complaints about this game are complaints about the subgenre itself. If you don’t like being the Big Special Hero, you won’t like this game. If you want the game to have rich, detailed combat that stays challenging throughout, it probably won’t be this one either
If you want a huge world with lots of curious little things to explore and more side quests than you can do in a lifetime, built on a backbone of a kind of flimsy story (imo not a terrible one this time) that you are mostly gonna skip out on to go do dungeon hops and loot accumulation, then you’re probably golden with this. And by now, most of us should know what we’re paying for, I think. As long as you expect and want what they consistently make, this game delivers very well
On top of that, the combat and general mechanics are just far better than the usual Bethesda offerings this time around. It’s fun to fight in zero g. It’s an absolute blast to disable an enemy ship and then board it. The side quests are legit quite fun and exciting, with NPCs I’ve found I really enjoy and want to see again.
As long as you expect a game that is like Bethesda makes, it’s a very nice and fun one that delivers more than I had expected from them by a long shot. If you expected a deep, hardcore indie gem, you’re going to be disappointed and also you’re maybe kind of a silly person. It’s a mass produced game for a large audience, that’s the stick by which to measure it.
They’re not saying a Bethesda game is supposed to be bad. They’re saying a Bethesda game is supposed to be… a first/third person western RPG with exploration and looter-sometimes-shooter elements and a heavy emphasis on skill checks. That’s been every one of their games since Morrowind besides FO76. Expecting different at this point would be asinine, especially considering Todd and Bethesda repeatedly said this was an RPG.
Yeah I think it’s less that people are setting unrealistic expectations for a Bethesda game, and more that people are getting fed up with being told they should be happy with all the faults “because it’s Bethesda”.
Bethesda gets a really weird pass in the gaming industry and when it comes to shallow content and bugs. I think a lot of that comes from the modability of their games, so that with mods and a few years of patches, the games often end up being a lot of fun - but the fact is that the games themselves, as released by Bethesda are usually hollow shells by comparison.
For instance it always irks me when people say Skyrim VR is the best VR game - you literally need a couple dozen mods just to make it function as an actual VR game (lack of 3d audio in a VR game is just unforgivable imo, let alone any actual physics interactions).
I think people are just starting to get fed up with Bethesda’s business model of building barebones games and counting on modders to make it fun. And then people get further fed up when they say so online and get told things like “but yeah it’s Bethesda, what did you expect?”
As you can see in the other replies, I don’t think that’s what people mean at all.
I haven’t had a single serious bug in thirty odd hours so far. I, and others here, aren’t saying it’s a good game “despite it all”, we’re saying it’s a good game on its own, but if you were looking for something that is in a different style than Bethesda makes, you’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s a simplistic mass appeal looter shooter rpg in space. It’s a good one of those. It’s also subject to all the expected limitations of a game like this, that’s all. It’s not going to be something it’s not. If you expected to pay for a good one of the kind of looter shooter RPGs we expect from this company, it is what you paid for.
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Aktywne