Silent_Buddha
Legend
The best thing about this is that a simulation with a game wrapped around it is selling this well.
Also, while open world games aren't my thing, it's good to see that gameplay still sells games better than graphics does.
Regards,
SB
Simulation? Not really sure I'd call it a simulator in any way. It's an open world RPG.The best thing about this is that a simulation with a game wrapped around it is selling this well.
Also, while open world games aren't my thing, it's good to see that gameplay still sells games better than graphics does.
Regards,
SB
I think many parts of Starfield have really nice graphics, especially in the model and textures. Their PBR is one of the best I've seen and the textures are mostly very highly detailed, better than probably anything I've played. Star Citizen is comparable.
The lighting and volumetric effects can be a mixed bag. Sometimes it's fantastic, very moody and immersive. It really falls flat in other places, especially well lit indoor areas. Depending on the planet, ToD and the volumetrics, planets can be gorgeous.
Planet terrain can also be really well done. Far higher quality textures and models than NMS.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
I'm about 15 hours into Starfield (9th level) on Hard difficulty and I've mostly stuck to the main story and joined the Rangers faction. I'm a bald, fat, industrialist (just like in real life, lol). I've concentrated on scanning and mining and I've begun a small outpost on Earth. I own a beautiful, large, yet spartan home that has a mortgage due soon.
This game is flawed, but amazing. My main issues:
1) New Atlantis needs a facelift, or at least a new horticulture program. The rest of the game looks mostly fantastic on my XSX, though I wish 60 fps were possible.
2) The AI is spotty. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a seasoned FPS. Other times I think the AI is so dumb it hurts. My experience is that it's dumber in close quarters; like the enemy pathfinding/target identifying is wonky.
3) UI can be frustrating sometimes, but I'm getting used to it.
4) Lack of ground vehicles. Good idea for DLC.
I think this game is better than Skyrim. It's open-world, but not aimlessly so. I realize that you can't see a far off star and fly there and merely just "jump" there, but that's a feature, not a bug as far as I'm concerned.
The game meets you on your own terms: If you want to get into the 6 or so different kinds of crafting, go for it. If you want to spend 100 hours building the ultimate ship, have at it. If you want to build a city-sized outpost, get cracking. If you want to just engage with the main story and have fun fps battles, you can do that too. Stealth, persuasion, hacking, etc... There's so much to do. It's awesome. The future mods and DLC will make it even better.
This is a game that takes at least 10 hours to really get a feel for it, but if you put in the time I feel it's a pretty rewarding game. 8.8/10 so far from me.
This game is flawed, but amazing. My main issues:
1) New Atlantis needs a facelift, or at least a new horticulture program. The rest of the game looks mostly fantastic on my XSX, though I wish 60 fps were possible.
2) The AI is spotty. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a seasoned FPS. Other times I think the AI is so dumb it hurts. My experience is that it's dumber in close quarters; like the enemy pathfinding/target identifying is wonky.
3) UI can be frustrating sometimes, but I'm getting used to it.
4) Lack of ground vehicles. Good idea for DLC.
I think this game is better than Skyrim. It's open-world, but not aimlessly so. I realize that you can't see a far off star and fly there and merely just "jump" there, but that's a feature, not a bug as far as I'm concerned.
The game meets you on your own terms: If you want to get into the 6 or so different kinds of crafting, go for it. If you want to spend 100 hours building the ultimate ship, have at it. If you want to build a city-sized outpost, get cracking. If you want to just engage with the main story and have fun fps battles, you can do that too. Stealth, persuasion, hacking, etc... There's so much to do. It's awesome. The future mods and DLC will make it even better.
This is a game that takes at least 10 hours to really get a feel for it, but if you put in the time I feel it's a pretty rewarding game. 8.8/10 so far from me.
Yeah, the immersive-sim element definitely comes up short in too many places, maybe all places. Food crafting in a game without hunger, sleep without tiredness, transportation without flying your space ship, space ship fuel that doesn't fuel your space ship, trading without an economy. The NPCs that are interactive are generally unkillable and unsatisfyingly plastic -- nothing you say or do can't be unsaid or undone, and none of it really changes the gameplay. You can tell an NPC you love them, then immediately end it, then love them again, and they react with the same prompts over and over, and they offer no sign of having a preference one way or the other. I expected to get rebuffed, friend-zoned, or have them be dissatisfied with mere friendship. And those are the hero NPCs you'd expect to have a lot of articulation work put into them; the rest of the NPCs are nameless that are spawned and despawned to be fodder to shoot at or look at.
For a game with so much work going into it there's a surprising lack of 'giving a shit' polish. Like... if you're writing a quest line where you happen upon a ship of refugee colonists that have been marooned for generations, maybe you shouldn't have a rainbow of ethnicities and random regional accents to represent the crew? It's not like they had to meet some Hollywood diversity quota for the character models? Why go to the trouble of producing that quest line if your execution of it makes it a joke and undercuts the verisimilitude?
Lol, that’s pretty funny.
cheapchips
Veteran
Given how few people are on that ship, I don't really want a realistic portrayal of what the crew's like after 200 years of inbreeding.
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ZebMacahan
Regular
I have played for about 5-6 hours. Ive done the first mission after joining constellation plus a couple of sidemissions. Does it get any better? Id want to like it. I like the sci fi setting, but this far it has mostly been a chore. I think the gamedesign in many ways is flawed.
I decided to land on the mining outpost on the same planet the first city is in. There were alot of creatures fighting, so we killed those. Basicly point the gun and shoot, no tactics or depth what so ever. I had to walk several minutes over some procedurally generated looking landscape to get to the mining station. Its apparantly good to scan stuff, so I had my scanner activated basicly the whole time, looking for blue glowing things so I could click the a-button to scan them. Having that thing activated breaks the immersion, but clicking the a button when you see something blue is apparently gameplay so... I also used my laser cutter on some led stuff, and I looted the plants and animals I came across. I also came across these argon geisers that I didnt understand how to loot. But apparently you cant have your scanner activated when you loot those, but you can have your scanner activated when looting animals and plants. Freaking amazing game and UI design right there. I also came across larger chunks of land which were argon. I couldnt loot them, I couldnt scan them, I couldnt use my laser cutter on them. But for some reason they are there. Who knows what they are for, not like the game tells you.
After some incredible tedious minutes of walking and pressing the a button I came to the mining outpust. I looted some more argon geisers before talking to the people there I got a lung affliction, and the game told me to look in the inventory under the aids category, but I had nothing which would help. I was wearing my space suit and space helmet so I thought that would protect me againt poison gas but apparently not. So I decided to head back to the ship. Since I was overemcumbered I could fast travel so I had to do the tedious walk again, at least there was less blue things to click a on. I didnt have any aids on the ship, but I dropped my resourses so I wouldnt be overencumbered. I thought I might be able to fast travel back to the mining outpost since I already visited it. Nope, seems rather arbitray, but I had to do some more walking over procedurally samey looking landscapes some more. Got there, a miner was missing. Oh, he´s 700 m away. More walking and clicking A over blue stuff I havent clicked on enough yet, and after even more tedius walking and clicking I got to a cave. The miner was inside, I gave him a health pack and then we were supposed to walk all the way back again. Maybe something intressesting will happen along the way? I manage to turn some more blue things green on the way back by clicking on the a button some more. We got to the camp, they thanked me for rescuing him, gave me some credits and thats it.
Is the rest of the game like this? Because this has to be some of the most tedious badly designed thing I have played in a long time.
I decided to land on the mining outpost on the same planet the first city is in. There were alot of creatures fighting, so we killed those. Basicly point the gun and shoot, no tactics or depth what so ever. I had to walk several minutes over some procedurally generated looking landscape to get to the mining station. Its apparantly good to scan stuff, so I had my scanner activated basicly the whole time, looking for blue glowing things so I could click the a-button to scan them. Having that thing activated breaks the immersion, but clicking the a button when you see something blue is apparently gameplay so... I also used my laser cutter on some led stuff, and I looted the plants and animals I came across. I also came across these argon geisers that I didnt understand how to loot. But apparently you cant have your scanner activated when you loot those, but you can have your scanner activated when looting animals and plants. Freaking amazing game and UI design right there. I also came across larger chunks of land which were argon. I couldnt loot them, I couldnt scan them, I couldnt use my laser cutter on them. But for some reason they are there. Who knows what they are for, not like the game tells you.
After some incredible tedious minutes of walking and pressing the a button I came to the mining outpust. I looted some more argon geisers before talking to the people there I got a lung affliction, and the game told me to look in the inventory under the aids category, but I had nothing which would help. I was wearing my space suit and space helmet so I thought that would protect me againt poison gas but apparently not. So I decided to head back to the ship. Since I was overemcumbered I could fast travel so I had to do the tedious walk again, at least there was less blue things to click a on. I didnt have any aids on the ship, but I dropped my resourses so I wouldnt be overencumbered. I thought I might be able to fast travel back to the mining outpost since I already visited it. Nope, seems rather arbitray, but I had to do some more walking over procedurally samey looking landscapes some more. Got there, a miner was missing. Oh, he´s 700 m away. More walking and clicking A over blue stuff I havent clicked on enough yet, and after even more tedius walking and clicking I got to a cave. The miner was inside, I gave him a health pack and then we were supposed to walk all the way back again. Maybe something intressesting will happen along the way? I manage to turn some more blue things green on the way back by clicking on the a button some more. We got to the camp, they thanked me for rescuing him, gave me some credits and thats it.
Is the rest of the game like this? Because this has to be some of the most tedious badly designed thing I have played in a long time.
Yes, but whats your character like ?
The one thing that I find most disappointing about Sarfield is the exploration part. It doesn't exist, only the illusion of it. Once you've visited one planet you've visitied them all. Same with all the bases, abandoned stations etc. They are just cut n paste identical copies of each other where even the enemies spawn in exactly the same places everytime. And beyond that it's just a time consuming chore to even get anywhere, some vehicles would nice. Even a space horse, with space horse armour. I can't see much replayability in this compared to FO4 and Skyrim. Given the standard of other games in the open world RPG genre this feels really dated and a step back in many ways.
There's a lot of various systems in play. Mining with your laser is fairly pointless, you have to build outposts to do mining for you. My general suggestion is to break the law, and begin the pirate storyline. Then just do pirate things and go from there. Any major faction has a major storyline and is much more engaging than the main plot. I love starships, so to me that's my exploration, how I get into bigger and better ones, seeing the various ones out there, fighting them, boarding them etc.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Also, while open world games aren't my thing, it's good to see that gameplay still sells games better than graphics does.
I finished Starfield at level 43 clocking in at 139 hours. As for how much of an open world game Starfield is, that's an interesting one. For me, Starfield feels vastly different from Bethesda's open worlds in Elder Scrolls and Fallout. The environments in those games were rich in detail, purpose and meticulously well curated. There was also good variety in dungeons and mini-dungeons.
There were necessary and compelling reasons to travel and explore those world, but there isn't an equivalent need travel/explore in Starfield. For a start, everything in space and on planets is sign-posted on the scanner. You won't climb over a mountain and see a cool building you didn't expect because the building will be visible on your compass long before you start climbing your space mountain. Likewise in space, it's small zones of space strung together by loading zones, or just skipped over entirely. Ergo, it feels massively different to Bethesda's earlier games. The distance between a planet and its moon is no different to two planets on opposing edges of space so there is no sense is being far away from your home planet.
When you get past Starfield's main quests - which I really enjoyed - what you have an is an interesting blend of very cool procedurally generated worlds limited by a depressingly small umber of unique POIs (points of interest). I.e. once you seen one cave, you've seen them all. Ditto the abandoned research stations, the abandoned listening posts, fracking stations, abandoning mining posts and so on. For each POI there is one layout, with the exterior and interior being identical down to what clutter can be found on tables, the location of corpses, terminals, crates and safes and so on.
Starfield actually feels a lot like the original Mass Effect except with some of the shallow aspects of No Man's Sky, adding in some limited space flight and combat. It's easy enough to ignore the shallow aspects and stick to the quality main quests and I reckon you'd really enjoy the game if you did this.
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D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
As somebody who has invested an order of magnitude more hours that you have, I agree with everthing in your post. It feels like we liked and disliked the same things in Starfield and my enjoyment of the game was highs and lows over that time.
Ignoring the side/filler content definitely feels the way to go because it's just not interesting, but perhaps exists for those who feel the need to grind but the game's main quests seem to accommodate whatever level you happen to be. I also started off with the Rangers faction quest first, then did UC Vanguard then the Crimson Fleet.
I'm leaving Ryujin Industries quest line for a second play, along with a bunch of quests in Neon. I didn't feel like they fit my first character. I actually tried to RPG this one.
I think Bethesda can make Starfield ever better over time. Adding an actual purpose to some of the game mechanics and perhaps refining others. I'm baffled that they developed fantastic procedural generation technology to make some of the best looking planets and moons I've seen in any game, but didn't procedurally regenerate random base designs so when you go into a new building, you don't know exactly where everything is.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yeah, that one is surprising to me considering that randomly generated dungeons has been part of TES since the first game. It's not like they don't have experience doing randomly generated layouts.
Regards,
SB
The ship building is basically that already -- it automatically builds a graph of traversable routes from all the connected pieces. Even if they didn't procedurally generate bases at runtime maybe they could have done so during production to provide more variety to the layouts. As it is there can't be more than a dozen or so base designs across the entire game. There's also a lack of willingness to let some planets simply be barren. The sunny side of Mercury maybe shouldn't be populated with the same types and frequency of bases that every other planet has.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Yeah, it was weird that no matter where you land, it's cluttered with POIs. Even on barren moons with no resources at the edge of the Settles Systems.
Shipbuilding is equally a highlight and frustration. I sunk more than a dozen hours into three start-over ship designs. By start over, I mean capture a pirate/spacer vessel, register it for around 8k credits, pull it apart, junk the parts I don't want but largely create a new build. I realy like that habs and structural components are fairly inexpensive I enjoyed experimenting with different layouts to create a compact ship with good balance of cargo, mobility, weapons and shields, then adding cowling so it doesn't look like a flying brick.
The ship design I ended my play through with at level 43 was one I created around level 20 with some minor redesign tweaks along the way and primary system upgrades as these unlock depending on your level. I did get a bunch of quest reward ships but they often had internal layouts I didn't like.
The lack of visibility of what your ship will look like on the inside when you are creating it in the ship builder is annoying, and something I hope they address with updates down the line because it's so close to being one of my favourite things about the game and is super flexible. I've see (on r/starfieldships) great recreations of the Normandy (Mass Effect), Millennium Falcon (Star Wars), Razor Crest (Star Wars) and Serenity (Firefly), as well as many other cool ship designs.
Yeah, internal ship layouts seems to be something you have to coax and cross your fingers over to not have silly ladders popping up in places that would be a safety hazard. I'd gladly trade some flexibility for deterministic placement of entrances. I don't think the graph building allows for cyclical/loops, so you run into situations where the bigger your ship is, the more unnaturally maze-like it feels because there's only ever 1 route to get from point A to point B. A side effect of this is that the bigger 2x2, 2x3, 3x2 habs tend not to have enough exits and don't integrate very easily in a hub-like manner.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I resorted to hab layouts that left the game only one choice for connecting points, but this limits you in terms of verticality. Equally, placing some things near habs forces connecting points to move. Understand the logic of why the game puts connections in places would be a start, but actually being able to designate vertical and horizon connect points between habs would be ideal. If there are no valid connections, the game can just flag it as one of the many errors it uses to prevent you from completing a ship design.
I've not done a ton of googling or testing on this, but I *think* the connection points may be determined at the time of placement in the editor, so you can actually get different layouts depending on the order in which you attach the habs. But yeah, my current ship is probably twice the volume that it needs to be because there's so many voids inside to prevent goofy connections. Very limited vertical stacking. You can utilize some of the empty space for cargo units, but that eats a lot of your mass budget. Think I'm around 14k cargo atm. Despite all the constraints in the editor I still get situations where some of the companionway habs will place a table and chairs right in front of the door and I have to wiggle-jump my way past it.
They could have just had a structural element akin to the porthole windows and utility plates that allow you to designate the attach point as a door or a wall. Then have an 'auto-connect' option at the flight check for any habs that aren't already connected.
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