I feel like the core complaint that every person has regardless of liking the game or not is that the travel system is just absurd and inconsistent. It is so weird how I go to my ship, pull up to orbit a planet, can see the planet from my ship but I cannot select it. Sometimes, you can! But most of the time, you cannot. This means the player then has to pull up the map and land on the planet from there, even though a simple interact to land would be much more seamless and immersive.
The map issue goes deeper, literally. Opening the map on a planet brings you to the ground-view of it, so you have to pull up one or two sub-menu levels to go from ground-view to planet view to solar system to galaxy. Literally, consistently navigating through menus - heaven forbid you pull up one menu too far because you’ll have to start over.
It shouldn’t feel quite so bad, but each interaction of these takes like 5-7 seconds. Doing that over, and over, and over again? That’s a symptom of the game as well, have you ever been in a space fight and held down E? Then you have experienced the pain of leaving the cockpit for that insanely long animation, only to have immediately sit through the insanely long sit back down animation while your ship is being shot up.
The game is full of little hold ups like this that compound into something that just feels awful to navigate.
Don’t get me wrong; I liked my first playthrough of Starfield. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, despite these issues. But I was working through these issues. And then NG+ came around and stole everything from me (understandably with the lore). I just couldn’t bring myself to do it again. Philosophy wise, the game has some great decisions that are impactful and raise. Gameplay wise these are pretty terrible decisions.
I did everything my first playthrough, I checked out every planet every quest every follower (not the dialogue for those quests, obviously). For the most part I liked my time but the base building and the homestead quests since those seem mostly broken (gas vents were never discoverable for me). A number of hours in on NG+ for the main quests having to recollect everything… What was the point?
No, I didn’t get lucky with a crazy NG+. I shouldn’t have to replay a game 12 times to “get to the fun stuff”
It had some pretty good aspects to it, but their reasoning behind cancelling (would need to “shift to a live service model”) it is pretty unfortunate and telling of the industry.
The game solely exists as a multiplayer team death match with the gameplay mechanics of The Last of Us. It was like Max Payne 3 meets Gears of War.
It was fun for PS3, I could see it faring well enough today but if their plan was to monetize it then it’s better off dead. Especially considering the state of the PC release, it just wasn’t the type of game to feasibly monetize. What can you do, skins? So any fun free unlocks are now paid or locked behind a battle pass, nice. What else is there, game enhancements? There were consumables so, we could have been paying for packs of those! Truly, we’re missing out.
I was going to contest, but I actually emulated the game and didn’t have the framerate issues. Everything else held up for me though. In terms of the civiskyzation, it has been thousands of years. They all dead. I don’t disagree with the underground being empty, but it is an unknown underground. It made sense for the POI’s to mostly match up with the overworld elements.
I think these are fair lore reasons when it’s like this because of the hardware the game runs on. Maybe there could have been more underground but it affected the performance.
Disagree on the DLC though. It was a pretty fully fledged game. I also agree that it shouldn’t have been $70, though lol.
I enjoyed the first playthrough too but I just got so tired of everything the second go around. Not much had changed so I was just redoing quests I’d done but now I “knew” things and made it go by faster. Yay?
It’s so dull, I did everything the first time around so now I just get to watch it again, but it’s “fun” cause there’s one changed dialogue option? Meh. The game has an incredible philosophy, a terrible philosophy for its relationship to the gameplay.
In regards to gameplay, it was fine. I liked the flying, ship building was fun, gunplay felt okay. Walking around areas is mostly pretty. But like everyone else my issue was all the menu diving, and I found a few ways to mitigate how often I used it but man was it frustrating to have to menu dive so much, sometimes in situations where it doesn’t even make sense, like arriving and landing on a planet.
And then again, to lose everything about your character that makes the game interesting (built ship, weapons, etc) during NG+ is just disheartening. I understand why, that doesn’t make it easier lol.
I’ve still been on my Monster Hunter kick as well, playing through Rise’s endgame with my friend. And Lethal Company with my friend group, we got a modded lobby for 6 or so players. It’s been fun being scared together! However my interim games have been lots of indie games I’d be unlikely to play on PC, where the format fits better for the steam deck! I’ve been going through unsupported games since most tend to work.
Revita has been the core one, it’s a nice rogue like with a blend of Hollow Knight style play and The Binding of Isaac rng runs with a killer soundtrack. Highly recommended!
Other than that…
Dark Futures, a part real time part strategy game that revolves in an apocalyptic Twisted Metal style setting. You are a car/caravan taking on missions, it’s very unique and feels pretty 90’s through and through.
The Ascent, which isn’t really my kind of game but it’s a topdown isometric 2.5d (I can never remember the right term for this one) in a cyberpunk setting. It was interesting, I didn’t play much but I may go back to it which is more than I can say for most of that style.
And a small bout with the runner survive style games, Fotonica and Barrier X.
I also got my switch set back up so I briefly was playing Super Mario Maker 2 and F-Zero 99. The story mode for SMM2 was actually a pretty cool concept, and F-Zero 99 was alright. I also checked in on my villagers in Animal Crossing after over a year, they missed me and I had bedhead.
Alrighty it’s been some years since I’ve played but a lot of the answers here don’t get the full picture.
Everyone talking about toxicity isn’t wrong, but that’s more often at the high level/ranked levels of play. It can happen in random lobbies of course, but it’s far less frequent. What I suggest here is cautiously eyeing the mute all chat. Sometimes it can be helpful to type messages, sometimes people say awful, awful things. From the former, sometimes you can learn. From the latter, it’s pointless to even bother to try.
I would suggest keeping in game chat turned off.
Use online build guides - the meta of the game changes pretty consistently based on updates and nerfs to the characters. Your best bet for consistency is picking one character to learn - I suggest going by what feels most fun abilities wise.
Another thing here to keep in mind is there are roles in this game, top is often tanky, mid is often AP heavy, and bottom is often ADC and healer. (may have changed since I played).
Until about level 10 - tanks will be on their own a lot at the beginning, mostly just trying to survive being team-attacked (a gank) and planning with the team when to come in to help.
Mid keeps an eye on top and bottom lane, mostly keeping the other mid-laner occupied. Once in a while you go up top to 2v1 or down bottom to 3v1. Sometimes people come to you, but I wouldn’t expect it.
Bottom has to be watchful for ganks, and you need to work with your healer to make sure you get minion kills. You two are pretty much on your own as the only paired teammates, however occasionally a teammate will come down to help push.
During all of this, the first 9 levels or so (may be less, again it’s been a while) you will be placing vision items on the ground to avoid being ganked and setting up the items for your late game build. During this You’ll want to avoid being killed and major risks. You’ll just be following what the build guides say, but it can be helpful to learn what aspects of what you are affecting. In brief, there is magic damage (AP) and physical damage (AD). The ADC class mostly uses AD, but there are characters who can use either/both. The other surrounding stats matter in other ways, but those two are the main focus.
So for example, your ADC character picks items that increase their speed, attack speed, and damage. But now the enemy has an item that mitigates physical attack damage, so you can decide to buy an item that ignores a % of armor.
These items eventually are bought into bigger versions of it, so the item you start with sets you down a path, the other items you choose supplementing what you’re missing.
Around level 10 the individual dynamic begins to fade and you begin to group together as a team. During team fights you’ll want to stay together with your team, really the best thing overall is to be there when it happens. Around the next 5 levels and depending on the circumstances, your team may go find the monsters who give buffs - there’s the dragon which gives the whole team money, and the baron which gives the whole team a buff. These you have to go a little out of the way for, but they can be very strong strategic choices. You can also witness the enemy team fighting these, and attempt to steal the kill for it, giving your team the benefits instead.
Finally, I would say get comfortable with one character of each role. You can’t always be _____, sometimes people just pick first. Other than that, just do your best to have fun with your son. Don’t worry about min/maxing if it isn’t fun, don’t worry about other teammates complaining if you are legitimately trying, and for the love of all things don’t spend money on this game - it will only unlock characters you can unlock for free or give you visual aesthetic skins that don’t actually affect anything. They don’t need your support and you don’t need their offerings.
I remember going to EA games on a field trip for school and even back then the corporate feeling was strong. I remember this panel about developer freedom and not a single student was interested. Granted, nobody from my school was on track to do any kind of game development