Gaming

There are nine reviews on metacritic from various outlets that score the game 100/100. I would love for every single one of those reviewers to look me in the eye and with a straight face, repeat the claim that Starfield is perfect and there is absolutely nothing in the game that could possibly be improved on. If you want to know who's not conversing honestly, that'd be a good kicking-off point.

Is it possible to block a domain without blocking the OP? I'm sure they're a nice person, but they post the dumbest rage bait articles, and I'm sick of seeing them in my feed.

I am so incredibly sick of posts about starfield.

I like the game. it's easy to spend hours in it if you just take it for what it is without thinking what you wanted it to be

is it impossible to have a balanced conversation about starfield in particular, or does the internet ad economy tend to exclude the middle of every conversation in favor of loud antagonism and engagement bait?

I feel ya, OP. I bought Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, played the hell out of it and loved every second of it. Then I tried to find honest discussion about it and it was threads full of nonstop bitching or substance-free fluff from the low sodium crowd. There wasn't a place to find balanced talk where people could share their experiences about the game while also being civil and open minded about things.

If you are just looking to create discussion, I guess this thread has been successful as it's gotten a lot of replies already.

The inventory system was acceptable 20 years ago when 1024x768 was a good resolution. Today it’s bad, and I don’t understand why some people can’t just admit that. It’s kinda telling that after an hour or so of play I started to look for mods to fix my pain points. Nearly 400k people are using the mod StarUI Inventory. I have an ultra wide monitor, and I have to configure my FoV in an ini file. It’s also an HDR monitor... I have to disable HDR on because it’s basically unplayable right now. Flashlight reflections on anything close to shiny are blinding.

The procedural generation doesn’t deserve the praise it’s getting. It’s no where near as complicated as people think. It’s not generating the terrain, it’s just picking from a set of giant pre-made tiles and dropping some rocks and trees on them. It’s not generating the buildings, just picking from a set of pre-made buildings. It’s not even filling the buildings procedurally… I had 2 quests in a row that used the same building. Identical building map, same robot you could reprogram near the front door. Same barricades, same small safe on a desk with the same 2 digikeys on a table just around the corner… There’s only so many cave maps too, but it does look like they block off some of the tunnels with rubble so it feels like more. I explored 2 caves in a row that had the same map, with the same safe up on a cliff you have to jump to.

It’s not ‘bad’, but it’s not as good as it should be. Once you start seeing it, you can’t un-see it and the vast amount of content shrinks. It makes me a little sad knowing how many people worked on this, and how long they worked on it, that we didn’t get more out of it.

Its a great game, if it was released in 2013. Now its just average. They have doubled and tripled down on the formula, chucked a coat of paint on the engine and called it a day. Whats astonishing is that they spent so long doing it. I've done the MSQ, one faction questline and half of another and I'd say thats at least 1/3, probably closer to 1/2 of the curated storyline content of the game. All of it was ok I guess, but nothing in it jumped out as particularly well written, let along consequential and meaningful. I'm struggling to see how it ate so many dev hours.

I think these days we have a much more mature gamer audience, and Starfield seems squarely targeted at teens. There just isn't the depth of more modern game storytelling. Some I blame on the engine (well alot tbh) but some is squarely on Bethesda for playing it so safe. Does not bode well for ESVI.

"An honest conversation about Starfield needs to come from judging the game for what it is. And the game itself is … fine, I guess? A recent Kotaku article articulates in more detail how Starfield isn’t “humanity’s greatest achievement,” but it’s an enjoyable game and that’s fine. The menu system is extremely clunky and the aforementioned encumbrance issue is still there—all systems that haven’t changed in decades. Whether it’s deliveries or the fate of the galaxy, nobody else seems to do anything but you, the player. Just because these are hallmarks of past Bethesda games doesn’t mean that they get a free pass.

And herein lies the problem. Because Starfield is so similar to Bethesda’s previous offerings (for better or worse), Bethesda “fans” are pushing back against critiques of the game as a critique of all Bethesda properties. Looking at Sterling’s video about encumbrance again, the online defense of the game’s issues boils down to fans saying, “I can’t tell you why. I just do.” This is indicative of the lack of thought that Bethesda actively encourages in their games."

Yeah, that article does a good job at summing up the issues here. It really shows that maybe we need to have a broader conversation about how most past Bethesda games are worse in retrospect, actually. Starfield is helping to exemplify and point out that.

On Steam I have 150+ hours and in my achievements I see that only 0.7% of players have touched 100 planets.

So I don’t think that people are being honest and/or don’t really understand how big the game is.

This game is huge. I spent apx 40 hours just surveying systems. And I can for sure say that the prog gen is very well done. Very well especially when comparing to other space games and when specifically talking about POI integration. Every POI looks like it was built there, with minor glitches and imperfections people with less hours would not even notice. The POIs feel balanced especially when the environment is taken into account.

At 100 planets you really begin to understand the breadth of it. The planets I have been on have anywhere from 3-10+ POIs and you can “push” the invisible wall to prog gen more POIs which I understand breaks some immersion but I am fine with it. Some moons are devoid of anything, some have life, some have POIs, and some don’t. The planets typically have at least 3-5 resources and 3-5 flora and fauna. 6+ is common enough as well. While patterns may emerge between systems, it still feels pretty random and balanced.

And again, this game is massive. I haven’t even seen nearly all of the systems which I imagine will hold some easter eggs.

Lastly, this game is meant to be played slow. It’s an explorer game. You can’t rush or speed run this one. Sure some of the stories suck, yet plenty are good. Just like real life.

I can’t wait to see if someone does an “all systems surveyed” video. Because even if you have your surveyed maxxed you have to scan at the surface too. Unless it’s a gas/ice giant.

I like it so far, planetary exploration and the ship are the biggest letdowns.

I get the feeling that it would be a much better game if they just focused on what they are known for being good at, interesting maps and immersive worlds.

I feel that the problem right now is that Starfield can be both considered a Game of the Year contender as well as an absolute waste of money and time for different people, and they can both be completely correct based on their personal preferences.

Personally, I've already played all the Starfield (~45h) I'm likely to play for a long while. It turns out that the majority of the gameplay - random exploration, radiant questing, etc - are things that absolutely bore me, and the crafting/construction/research systems are far too rudimentary, pointless / siloed from the rest of the game, and clunky to keep me particularly interested either. So for me it's a very mid game, something I'd at best recommend picking up at a significantly discounted sale a few years from now - when there's enough mods to actually make it interesting.
On the other hand, some people I've spoken to turn out to absolutely love the radiant questing and proc-gen worlds, a few of them now having more than twice as much time as me in the game - and still loving every second they can spend in it.