Its mentioned in the article, but it bears repeating.
They force give you the first quest of a questline for free, and then charge you seven bucks for the second 15 minute quest.
Its also not complete, its an early access paid mod where they clearly cut content out of the game just to give you the first hit of a faction questline, end that first quest on a cliff hanger, and then charge 7 bucks per quest. And before this, the faction was just a series of kiosks giving radiant quests.
Fuck that’s bad. Though I’m not playing starfield I’m certainly paying attention to shit like this. Before 76 I would have been a fully committed fanboy pre-ordering most, if not all, Bethesda games. Between 76 and other shenanigans they had dropped sharply out of favor. I wasn’t going to buy a game brand new until reviews came out (hence why I still haven’t played starfield). They gained some favor back with the TV series as it seemed well done for just my kind of interest level. Now they’re losing it again.
Idk why the tv show would have gotten them any grace? As far as I know, all they did was let the property be bought and used by Amazon. Todd Howard executive produced, but that’s not saying much. The show has nothing to do with them as a studio. They just lucked into a team who had something interesting planned with the IP.
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.
Unions don’t stop lay-offs, but this is still a strong move and probably the most likely to succeed. CDPR needs to find new income now that they don’t have a game on the horizon, so they need devs to produce.
Literally, the power is in the devs’ hands here. CDPR’s only option is to either work with the union or lay them all off and then not release any new products and go bankrupt.
Hopefully, it spreads to more European countries and becomes normal business for games to be made with unions in Europe
keep in mind, CDPR isn’t just a game studio, they own GOG, so not releasing a game doesn’t necessarily get then at 0 income. Although not as big as valve of course, thats like saying valve would be broke if it didn’t release games (and it rarely releases games nowadays)
eh no. it’s not like saying that at all, as you point out yourself, they are very different in terms of scale.
However we do have actual data here, because CDPR is publicly traded and produces financial reports. according to their Q1 financial report, gog had a net profit of around 56k euros. this is after it’s big comeback from being “unprofitable” in 2021, where they basically moved everyone out of gog and onto other projects or laid them off.
So we are talking about a situation where CDPR would have to lay off everyone aside from the few gog employees that are left, and exist as a shell company that just pays the hosting bills.
this is not “like saying valve would be broke if it didn’t release games” as valves primary source of income, is not making and selling games, it’s getting 30% of 99% of game sales on the pc platform via steam.
Their games often don’t work as well in multiplayer, at least not with steam users where the majority of my friends have their games. Along with this, it’s a pain getting steam workshop mods working
Their bundles kinda suck without sites like Fanatical or Humble offering gog codes
That said, I do buy from them when it’s an older game like heroes of might and magic (goes back to the site’s roots as Good Old Games I guess). Or when it’s a single player experience without a lot of mod support, like Jrpgs
GOG is barely profitable, though, and that was back when CDPR was the golden child of the games industry. I don’t think it counts as much of a revenue stream for the company.
One issue is that unions have failed to globalize while industries have. CDPR could simply chose to bypass the union by opening a dev studio in a country with no or less union presence.
Given the recent wave of layoffs in the game industry, they’ll have no shortage finding capable people.
i don’t buy into this defeatist attitude at all I’m sorry.
to do that without working with the unions in good faith, they would have to lay everyone off then meander for a few years rebuilding somewhere else. it’s not a quick process. and then probably release something of even lower quality than their recent releases.
the only way to do what you are saying is to work with the unions for the current projects and work to build non union studios for future projects. which unions would probably fight.
It is worth understanding that, at least historically, CDP is a lot closer to “Polish Electronic Arts” than a dev studio. Not sure how that has shifted over the past decade or so and the new approach to localization and distribution.
I doubt they are going to shut the doors and move. But it is a possibility. Just cite that the CP expansion hasn’t sold well enough and they were still recovering from the initial bomb of CP and that they were counting on that Witcher 1 remake and it is a hard time financially and they would be operating at a much smaller capacity while they reorg. Do layoffs that are legally legit, and then reopen elsewhere citing concerns over geopolitics.
But yeah. My money is more on satellite studios that eventually become the primary. Takes a few years longer but drastically reduces union power and gives a warning to the industry as a whole. And is generally the solution in these situations.
I’m not trying to be defeatist. I’m just advocating for unions to stop focusing on the local aspect. Transnational cooperation is what is needed in unions today.
Something which larger unions, such as the steel and car industry unions in Europe have been trying (and mostly failing) to do for almost two decades.
Companies, by and large, have used the globalized economy to sidestep local action for almost 30 years now.
Ignoring this is simply a recepy for repeating the mistakes of the past. Especially in software, where there is no physical production equipment at all, and in games, where talent and labour is plentiful.
Unless you have an organization that reaches as far as the companies you’re trying to bring to the table, you will simply be outmanœuvred.
You also overestimate the level of union participation if you think they would need to lay off everyone to break a union strike.
Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, but I’ve been through the proces twice, both involving union action, both in the software industry. Once as part of the workers delegation to the negotiating table. Dismiss a company’s ruthlessness or resourcefulness at your own peril.
Local unions can only hope to hold off the axe until current projects where the required know how can not be rebuilt or transfered in time are done.
Devs are not as easy to replace as factory workers, EU and US/CA software talent is top tier. I’d imagine even factory workers aren’t so easy to replace these days.
I haven’t played the game, only been watching a streamer play it, but I think arguments like “it’s boring on purpose” are dumb.
Trying to convey the vastness of space and how small you are seems also somewhat undermined, if you’re just constantly fast traveling everywhere, and it seems like you’re made out to be the most important person in the universe, since everyone is screwed without you, but that’s just most games.
It’s dumb because that’s a fringe argument that I hear people reference as absurd more than I’ve ever encountered it. In fact, I have yet to see one person make that justification. I’m just assuming that argument exist somewhere because so many people have complained about it.
Starfield is yet another example of gamers getting outraged over a perceived reception, no matter how large or small that group actually is. I’m sure there are people out there making really bad defenses of the game, but the people who are angry at those people are much louder and far more numerous. 
Most people who are playing and enjoying the game are probably perfectly capable of seeing and articulating some of the issues, but just because a game has issues doesn’t mean it’s “literally unplayable“ or whatever people like to say now. 
I don’t know I just find these back-and-forth so repetitive. Every single game release you see this. The answer is Starfield is a perfectly fine, flawed game, that different people will react to differently. Just like any piece of media.
I spent all morning dunking on the game’s issues and Bethesda’s design philosophy with some friends… But ultimately I’m having a ton of fun with the game, glad I broke my rules and purchased it early, and finding it basically fulfills the things I wish both outer worlds and no man’s sky had delivered on. It’s a good game, and it is exactly what it says it is (as far as I know. I haven’t paid a lick of attention to the ad hype): a Bethesda style open world rpg.
I don’t really want to like it over the small studio titles that it clearly builds on, but them’s the breaks. If you’re looking for a Bethesda style open world RPG set in a sci fi world, then this game will probably be fun for you, and if you think all Bethesda style games are garbage and can’t get past their very odd design choices, then why are you ranting about starfield since obviously it’s going to be that.
Lotta people just love to hate Bethesda. Including me really… but this ain’t it.
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.
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.
This is exactly the sort of thing Beth has been moving towards ever since their first ham-handed attempt to monetize mods deservedly blew up in their faces.
They didn’t give up on the idea - they just shifted to a strategy of doing it incrementally.
And this is just the latest step in that ongoing process.
Think about how bad it’s (very deliberately) going to be by the time TES 6 finally comes out…
Now that the fallout show was a success, they’ll probably just put starfield on the backburner and wait till the heat dies down, then make a tv show about it. I’m willing to bet money on this.
I’ll admit I’ve been in that crowd that believed they saw early efforts like horse armor and Bioware’s infamous pay-to-continue Dragon Age quests, and backed off - resolving they need to shift monetization elsewhere like skins. Seems I was wrong.
You could argue given Starfield’s overall failures, it’s still in the sector of terribly-designed monetization that just gets forgotten by history, much like most mobile games. But, we’re still in the process of writing that history.
It’s sad that this is necessary. And given that it took less than a week for modders to get actual performance gains means that bethesda could’ve easily done it themselves.
I mean theres certainly a game there, but its very much a game pass filler or a sale game. Its definitely not worth the asking price.
Its like Fallout 4 but with less going on all around you. The dialogue is improved I can give them that, but all around the game is pretty uninspired and bland, its very much a console game. Theres a lot better out there.
The Series S is still current Gen tech running at a lower power profile. A lower end PC may be using a previous gen CPU or GPU making it harder to optimise.
Don’t think Bethesda is focused on making their gaming look specifically bad just to make it run on older hardware. Similar to all other companies there is a minimum spec. I do think that having such great mod support allows for this to happen which is great.
They are sabotaging their own sales by not doing it. Starfield is such a hyped game that many people who don’t usually game much will want to play it and those people tend to not have the most up-to-date hardware. The PC I built in 2018 for about 1100€ is pretty much exactly the minimum spec for starfield. And given that minimum specs usually target 30fps for some reason, I’d need this mod if I wanted to play it at a reasonable framerate.
It’s a first party title used to drive Gamepass subs now, they have different metrics for success. Not to mention you can play it streaming on multiple services too and on console. They’ll be fine not appealing to people stuck a decade back tech wise.
From a money perspective, probably. But there’s also the PR perspective to consider, and they threw away an easy win there. Starfield can run decently on the steam deck and if they cared to optimize it for that, it would have been a big win.
People were going to shit on it no matter what, literally the only game in recent memory that the Internet didn’t shit on was Baldurs Gate 3, and that’s probably mostly because it’s a much smaller company.
This seems like pure speculation. The relative number of people below this spec is probably not worth it for them to focus on this. Besides their explicit support for modding allows them to improved sales value. Consider for example Skyrim. It was re-released so many times and people kept buying it and mods allowed it to look great even years after its release. I think by narrowing their scope they can focus on development of a good core and by leveraging their mod community it can run on older or higher hardware. Win win in my opinion.
The Bethesda of old is long dead. After the disappointment that was Starfield, it will take multiple rave reviews and watching a few streamers playing on Twitch for me to even consider giving them any money. And I sure as hell will not be paying for goddamned mods, not now and not ever. Eff that and eff the greedy assholes that now run Bethesda.
The Bethesda of old who invented MTX with their $5-dollar horse armour?
Or the Bethesda of old who made millions by re-releasing the same game for 10+ years but refused to spend a dime to fix its bugs or give the players a functioning UI?
I don’t see any problem with modders charging for their mods. They are doing work, and deserve to be compensated.
If they’re creating additional deep content, I can see that being worth paying. If it’s just some skins or configuration edits like wonky gravity, that would not be worth money to me. But I think it’s a good thing to be able to add micro transactions for.
Take the original DOTA for example. A warcraft 3 custom map. It eventually dominated the custom game lobby, at least 3:1. I would have no problem with the creator(s) making money off their creation that contributed a ton of replayability the game.
When it comes down to it, it should be the modder’s choice on if they want to charge for their work, and the consumers choice if they want to pay for it.
Also why I didn’t have problems with microtransactions for skins, particularly when it was community driven like DOTA 2. Artists can make money creating non-game altering content, and fans get to personalize their characters.
I never considered Blue Dragon as a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger. Blue Dragon is just a complete different game, with some of the same developers.
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.
Oh wow, I had no interest at all in trying these previously. Reducing the quality of the games by adding ads and in app purchases is exactly the thing that will push me to give it a try.
128GB micro SD cards are like $12. 512GB is maybe 40$. Can get a 1TB SD card for $100 but I think the 512 is a good middle ground between price and storage.
Yeah, 256 is around $20 last I looked, too. Not bad. Been considering getting one, probably not for anything with an install this large, but it’s nice to know I’d have the option.
Yes, a 256GB+ SD Card. Be sure to enable slow HDD mode in BG3 settings if you’re installing to an SD Card. (It will help loading screen times at the cost of using more RAM.)
Not currently, no. They burned enough dev cycles trying to get split screen co-op on the S that now BOTH the S and X versions are delayed, which I guess is better than “not happening at all.”
The S has every right to exist, but as soon as it starts interfering with Series X development (which has been for a while now), it’s time for it to go.
Microsoft needs to cut it loose like the boat anchor it is and just release a discless Series X and call it good.
All sorts of “impossible” poets were being made to switch a few years ago. Witcher 3, Doom, Wolfenstein 2, etc. The games have moved on to the point it’s not feasible anymore, but they would put them on there if they could.
It’s one game. By and large developers have managed to get games running pretty well and feature complete ok the S. Some really impressive attempts like the Cyberpunk version. Everyone is thowing the baby out with the bathwater over one game.
We’ve got games coming out at the moment that use Unreal 5 and it’s next gen features that are still coming out on the S like Immortals or Remnant 2. They have reduced fidelity on the S as expected but they still run fine there. BG3 is literally held up over one issue, the split-screen, that they’re apparently still working on to see if they can patch it back in post launch, MS clearly just let them launch without it to take a win back from Sony.
It’s literally 1/3rd more expensive and thats not an insignificant amount. If your rent increased by 1/3rd tomorrow you’d probably be pissed and if you had a 33.33 percent chance of getting struck by lightning by stepping outside tomorrow you’d probably stay indoors that day.
$100, plus the cost of the mandatory microSD or SSD you’ll need to add to even install the game on Deck, plus the $50 discount for the Series S if you have a modicum of patience. The difference is more like $175-200, and last year the Series S was $100 off for Black Friday. Assuming the game is targeting holiday 2023 for Xbox, you could potentially grab the Series S + BG3 for under $300.
I’ve played this on my deck, and it is playable, but the frame rate was not stable unless it capped it 30 and the graphics had to be dialed back a bit. If the S can hit 60 then it’s already a better version.
I play at 900p60. Turn literally everything to low or off except textures at medium. Enable the AMD upscaling to the highest quality setting (forget what it’s called). Be sure to turn off Antialiasing (don’t really need it at high resolutions) and God rays. Turn off all optional things but those two are the most important. Also, if BG3 is installed to an SD card, then enable slow HDD mode.
It still stutters a little when transitioning to cut scenes, but I believe that exists in all PC versions.
Edit: And I have made it (what I think is) mostly through Act 2. I’ve also hosted an online session with my friend (who also plays on Steam Deck using my settings) and my husband (gaming laptop) with no issues.
It’s only able to hold a relatively stable 30fps in act 1. As soon as you hit act 2 it struggles to escape the teens, even on low settings. It was so bad that I had to abandon playing on Deck and move to my PC.
Am I misreading your comment? You’re saying Series S is not the cheapest because Steam Deck is more expensive? Did you have a typo? Am I suffering CO poisoning?
Has this writer never used Steam or is he just unaware how many people buy games they don’t actually play
Firstly: If you had ever used Steam, you’d know that Steam differentiates between “have game in the library” and “have previously played a game”. A bought game that was never launched, doesn’t show up in these stats.
Secondly: It’s clear you did not bother to read the article. “The numbers take into account players on Xbox, as well as those playing the Game Pass/Windows Store version of the game on PC.” The 25% number isn’t even from Steam.
Reminder that whales in Korea had soo much power, they had a round table meeting to force Nexon of Korea to bend to their demands due to Nexon lieong about the “randomness” of line stat generation in maplestory, cauaing them to essentially refund 2 years worth in materials.
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