this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it's been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a "try to debate Starfield to popularity" approach with the game's skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it's a winning strategy, personally.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago (3 children)

CMV: if No Man's Sky's gameplay was identical to Starfield in 2016, people would have been even more disappointed than they were. The only reason people gave Starfield a pass in 2023 is because we're so conditioned to being disappointed by Bethesda that fanboys shrugged it off, and everyone else just looked at them weird. I legitimately believe NMS when it first released was a better game than Starfield.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In principle, I agree, but I feel like part of that is just AAA vs. indie.

AAA games need to provide lots of lukewarm content, because many more casual players will buy them and expect much bang for their buck + haven't seen this lukewarm content a million times already.

On the other hand, indies will basically only be bought by people more enthusiastic about the hobby. As such, they have to pick out one or two aspects and excel at them, so that it's something new for that crowd.

Hello Games was indie and unknown at the time, so likely only attracted that gaming enthusiast crowd, which would have been more easily bored by the extremely lukewarm content in Starfield.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I don't know how accurate this data is, but it would seem NMS and Starfield had a similar number of players in their first month:

And I expect they were a very similar audience. So I don't think the bar for what to expect was very different. If anything, the bar should have been much higher for the AAA game.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Lol people gave Starfield a pass? My feeds were (and still are, see this thread) overwhelming hatred towards it.

The so-called "supporters" aren't even arguing that it's a great game. Their argument is "it's not that bad".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Imo launch day nms is more varied (in generated content, at least) with less loading screens (so you get to do the fun action of atmospheric flight -> space flight yourself) - starfield is better in other ways but the end result is I find nms more fun (even on the day 1 version)