Starfield [XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[Silent_Buddha]

Final Fantasy is both Sci-Fi and Fantasy, arbitrarily calling it fantasy is erroneous. We should be talking about 3 relatively broad genres if we want to do this. Fantasy, Science Fantasy and Science Fiction. In that sense modern Star Trek (older Star Trek is closer to Science Fiction with a stronger basis on Science and theoretical hypothesized future science with a reasonable basis in scientific principles), Fallout, Warhammer 40k, Star Control II, Starcraft, The Last of Us and Final Fantasy would be Science Fantasy. Science Fiction would be something like Star Field, Star Citizen, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Horizon games this with a harder basis in actual science and hypothetical future science based on scientific principles.

That said, an argument could be made that Fallout and TLOU could be Sci-Fi rather than Science Fantasy as they do have some theoritical basis in scientific pricinciples ... IE - the Zombies in Fallout aren't actually zombies but mutated humans which are now zombie-like while zombies in TLOU are based off of the zombified ants that have had their brains invaded by a fungal infection.

In literature, there isn't generally a Science Fantasy category although some book stores have them. Mostly it's either Fantasy or Science Fiction. Which one a book is categorized into is almost purely based on it's setting and not on the races or how closely one sticks to scientific principles. In that case Warhammer 40k is usually categorized as Sci-Fi because it has a Sci-Fi setting. Of course things get more complicated than that with book store categories as stores like to keep an authors books together. So authors that write both Fantasy and Sci-Fi (like Piers Anthony or David Drake) will often have all of their books regardless of setting put into either Fantasy or Sci-Fi. I always hated that both when shopping for books and when working at a book store when I was a teenager.

Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Witcher? For sure Fantasy is more popular overall.

In gaming:

Final Fantasy, Zelda, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Quest .... all of which are ahead of the biggest selling SF franchise of all time - Halo at 81 million sold. It's not even close really.

I mean you might as well throw in Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers, Guardians of the Galaxy, West World, Robocop, etc.

Regards,
SB

 

[Albuquerque]

Are we really going to dissect the language in this thread, to determine what subordinate genres of fiction we want to bicker about? Can we just go back to why everyone loves or hates the game in the thread topic?

I did the whole NG+ thing about a week ago, and this time I'm just rampaging around the galaxy being an asshole. In the process, I've been more observant for the ship icons in solar systems, and have uncovered a lot of the derilect ships and a few of them have been really good at lore building. Found one derilect ship that was utterly sad:

Spoiler

the one with the two dead NPCs, one in a bed and one on the floor next to the bed, which ended up being parents. The female dead NPC in the bed was holding a card written and signed by her child, and apparently the kid died and the mom committed suicide. The kid's belongings are found in the bunk above the mom, and the male NPC on the floor next to the bed was adjacent to a tablet saying how he had no idea how to continue. Damn, BSG.

Lots of really good stuff crammed into the nooks and crannies of this game.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I mean you might as well throw in Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers, Guardians of the Galaxy, West World, Robocop, etc.

Regards,
SB

Yeah, but they aren't strong gaming franchises. That's the point. The fantasy games in my list before Halo at 80 million have sold an average of 150 million each. By the numbers, Fantasy is just bigger.

In the zeitgeist, for the most part, if it's not Star Wars sci fi most people don't care. You can't say the same about fantasy with Lord of the Rings, Hatty Potter, Game of Thrones and The Witcher.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Final Fantasy is both Sci-Fi and Fantasy, arbitrarily calling it fantasy is erroneous.

That's why I referred to classic medieval-type fantasy, because I think it was a Skyrim vs Starfield comparison. Like you said, there is a lot in-between and a lot of overlap between what is broadly considered fantasy and what is broadly-considered sci-fi.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yeah, but they aren't strong gaming franchises. That's the point. The fantasy games in my list before Halo at 80 million have sold an average of 150 million each. By the numbers, Fantasy is just bigger.

In the zeitgeist, for the most part, if it's not Star Wars sci fi most people don't care. You can't say the same about fantasy with Lord of the Rings, Hatty Potter, Game of Thrones and The Witcher.

150 million each? Witcher 3 sold ~50 million. Terraria a Sci-Fi game sold ~48 million. Overwatch another Sci-Fi game sold over 50 million. No single Final Fantasy game has sold more than 25 million.

If you want to talk Franchises, the Witcher series doesn't even break 80 million, your arbitrary cut-off point. And Star Wars doesn't sell games? The franchise is at 124+ million on the Wikipedia page. Harry Potter doesn't even break your 80 million barrier nor does The Lord of the Rings. The Gears series has the same sales total as the Harry Potter games. And Destiny and Bioshock are above both of those.

I mean this is getting a bit pointless. It's easy enough to look and see that both Sci-Fi settings and Fantasy settings sell equally well and that franchises with more games (FF has 20+ games? None of which are challenging the best games sold) will probably sell more total copies.

Regards,
SB

 

[Johnny Awesome]

You're not reading my post properly. I didn't list the Witcher franchise before Halo. My numbers are franchise numbers. I think you're cherry picking. It's silly. You're desperately trying to argue that Sci Fi = Fantasy, but it's just not true. Fantasy has always been more popular gaming-wise.

I think the reason is that we mostly agree as geeks/gamers what fantasy is - Tolkien-esque, but we don't all agree what SF is. Big difference between Cyberpunk, Star Wars, Dune and Starfield etc... So you can take two guys who both like Tolkien-esque fantasy and one of them won't like Cyberpunk and the other won't like Star Wars. Also, the only reason Star Wars is big is because it has fantasy stuff in it like swords (light sabers) and magic (the force).

 

[Albuquerque]

Hey so anyway, since nobody is talking about the game again...

I loaded my (now pretty damned old) gaming laptop with Starfield so I could play a bit while visiting my brother this week for the US Turkey Day. Running a mobile i7-8750H (6c / 12t 2.2GHz base clock tuned up with ThrottleStop), 32GB of DDR3-2400 and an NV 1070MaxQ (custom undervolt/OC curve with RivaTuner.) I can play Starfield at all medium and one or two high settings at native 1080p rez pretty decently, no motion blur and no film grain. There's a few places where it isn't 60Hz, but all in all it's a good enough experience with the most recent patch installed.

I honestly didn't expect the 1070MQ to do as well as it seems to, given other reviews I've seen online. I played a bit with FSR2 and its OK I suppose, however not really necessary for my own personal enjoyment.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Hey so anyway, since nobody is talking about the game again...

I'll come back to Starfield in a few months when official mods or the Shattered Space DLC is available.

I've just restarted an another play through of Fallout 4 with the Sim Settlements 2 mod (available on PC and Xbox, via Nexus and Bethesda mods and it's really, really, really, good. It's kind of nutty how a mod can make fundamental game mechanics so much better and I'm really looking forward to see what modders do with Starfield once Bethesda have finished tinkering with the CreationKIt APIs. From comments on Nexus, it's all a bit in flux at the moment.

 

[Albuquerque]

I should go restart FO4 again. I finally stopped another ~250hr playthru of FO3+FO3:NV with the Tale of Two Wastelands mod that conjoins them. I never got into settlement building in FO4, any more than was essentially required for the base storyline.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I never got into settlement building in FO4, any more than was essentially required for the base storyline.

Sim Settlements 2 gives you an actual reason to care about settlements whilst simultaneously providing options to remove the micro-building and micro-management of it to the mod. The devs have rolled out a massive story campaign across three chapters, which weaves really well with the main Fallout 4 campaign and introduces new cool mechanics. The voice work of the mod is great and rivals the base game. And.. it's free.

At risk of being slightly off-topic.

 

[Malo]

For anyone playing Starfield on PC with HDR, you must use this mod:

Luma - Native HDR and more​

It adds true HDR by rewriting the engine shaders instead of all other methods using SDR to HDR conversion (like AutoHDR). Updated to W11 last night for better HDR support and tried the mod out on my C2 OLED. I then spent hours going to all these different locations and doing various missions, and I was just blown away by what was achieved. Once I tuned it to my TV and found the right LUT balance I liked, it's like a whole new experience now. Walking through Neon you experience these amazing bright glowing colors far more vibrant than before, but without having the entire screen also washed out by lack of color gamut and BSG "creative choices."

The excellent materials in Starfield really come out now as well, from starship interiors, to high quality NPC clothing, to the spectacle of light across different planetary terrain and TODs. In many instances it rivaled, and sometimes exceeded, the best Cyberpunk HDR experiences.

It's a real shame Bethesda didn't invest more time and resources into a proper HDR integration.

 

[Bludd]

finally got my new computer up and running, 13900k, 4090, 64 gb ddr5 6000mt ram
at the moment im a 1440p gamer, so i turned on everything in starfield to ultra and frame generation and dlss ultra dlaa and reflex and it seems to live at 166 fps with occasional dips into the 138 fps, with 118 fps in 3rd person idle mode in new atlantis

looks like im not sensitive to any artifacts from frame gen because i think it looks great

pro tip, for non-laggy alt-tabbing i had to add the following to avoid the incredibly bad performance i experienced without it

 [General]

bAlwaysActive=1

to starfieldcustom.ini which i had to create in documents\my games\starfield

 

[Bludd]

the interface for the outposts is kinda clunky, but the way you can link outposts is downright weird.

i built 3 outposts on a moon, lets call them 1, 2 and 3.
1: mine iron
2: mine beryllium and aluminium
3: mine he3 and europium (for the lulz i dont think i need it at the moment)

in 1 i put a cargo link that goes to a cargo link in 3 that i will call 3-1
in 2 i put a cargo link that goes to a cargo link in 3 that i will call 3-2

so in 3 i put an inter-system cargo link that is connected to another inter-system cargo link on "another planet"
3-1 and 3-2 dump stuff in a container in 3 and that outputs to the outgoing slot on the inter-system cargo link


these inter-system cargo links eat he3 to work but the way they eat the he3 and the way its produced is weird and i dont really understand it so to just brute-force it, i put extra he3 extractors in outpost 3 (commercial ones) and i put lin there who has outpost management skill so i can boost output

in theory this should provide enough he3 to power this stuff and pour the resources into the containers and stuff i have on the "another planet" where i foolishly put down my "main" base before i understood the cargo link stuff

so its not simple at all and sometimes it seems items get stuck somewhere and i dont understand where (cargo ships maybe?)

after this i think i will go back to adventuring!

 

[Albuquerque]

@Bludd nice stats on the new rig! Do any overclocking and/or undervolting on that gear?

And what's the ALT-TAB lagginess you were experiencing? I'm pretty sure I haven't experienced any such issues, and it's certainly not because I haven't ever ALT-TABbed out of Starfield a few dozen times.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

the interface for the outposts is kinda clunky, but the way you can link outposts is downright weird.

This is the most baffling thing with a host of Starfield's mechanics and UI. Outposts and weapons crafting / mods are clearly variations of what existed in Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 but they are worse. Just how..

Bethesda have committed to six-weekly patches throughout 2024 [bethesda.net] so hopefully they will rethink some of this - or modders will once the game's Creation Kit is released.

 

[Bludd]

@Bludd nice stats on the new rig! Do any overclocking and/or undervolting on that gear?

And what's the ALT-TAB lagginess you were experiencing? I'm pretty sure I haven't experienced any such issues, and it's certainly not because I haven't ever ALT-TABbed out of Starfield a few dozen times.

if i didnt add that line i mentioned in the config, moving the mouse etc was very slow in windows when i alt-tabbed. its like the game limited how fast the os was able to render or something

i havent overclocked or undervolted (yet?) but i am running it with no power limit

 

[Albuquerque]

if i didnt add that line i mentioned in the config, moving the mouse etc was very slow in windows when i alt-tabbed. its like the game limited how fast the os was able to render or something

i havent overclocked or undervolted (yet?) but i am running it with no power limit

Huh, interesting about the mouse DPI / speed. I haven't encountered that behavior in my setup, not sure why. But cool that you got it sorted.

Your 4090 would probably love some undervolting action, if for literally no other reason than simply keeping your power bill just a tiny bit less It's amazing how much more stable your GPU boost clocks become with undervolting.

 

[Bludd]

Huh, interesting about the mouse DPI / speed. I haven't encountered that behavior in my setup, not sure why. But cool that you got it sorted.

Your 4090 would probably love some undervolting action, if for literally no other reason than simply keeping your power bill just a tiny bit less It's amazing how much more stable your GPU boost clocks become with undervolting.

i will probably do some of that stuff during the summer, maybe even try limiting the 13900k, but for now its fine i think even though this game can push the temps.

i have found that i hate ramping fans so i instead set them to a constant rpm on the 420mm aio when i game (1330 rpm at the moment), constant noise seems better than fans going up and down and i game with headphones

re: the lag in alt-tab i dont think its mouse dpi, i think its the p/e-cores
since the games should live on p-cores i think going alt-tab somehow switches critical stuff to e-cores and doing the alwaysenable = 1 tweak keeps certain things on a p-core

 

[Johnny Awesome]

This was my most played game at 40 hours in 2023, just narrowly beating out Vampire Survivors and Tunic at 37 hours. I plan to get back to it, but I'm not in a hurry with so many games to play and it never hurts to wait for patches these days in almost any game.

 

[Davros]

i instead set them to a constant rpm on the 420mm aio

F*** me how big is your case
ps: dont power your pump from a header that has a fan profile applied to it, for longevity pumps should always be run at 100% (found out the hard way)