No, they're dull because no human team could make 1000 planets worth of interesting content in a single game development cycle.
Chris Roberts : Hold my beer, for another 50 years.
Yeah, it's already stale and expired by now
You know someone is gonna make a mod that generates random and unique bases from hab complex assets.
And thats exactly why Bethesda doesnt put the effort in. cause they make the game, then the modders make it good for free.. Or it used to be that, now they want to charge for mods and take a cut of the profits for shit they didnt make.
At a scale of 1k planets you're going to have to rely on reused assets and procedural generation. At which point people not into procedural generation say that it's "repetitive". Especially if you only gen once for everyone and not each run lol.
AI generation of assets and code will theoretically eventually resolve this, but that's quite a ways off. They're not even usable for such with human assistance yet. And if you have ai generating the content, it's not really a human team making that stuff lol.
I knew one of the planet designers. His favourite part was coastlines.
He was particularly fond of some fjords he made on the coast of Norway, I think he won an award for them.
Slartibartfast?
Gesundheit.
They could at least make the random PoI's interesting if there was some..randomness to them.
Like, I walk into a PoI, I already know where the chests are, the locked doors, are, where the stupid fucking corpse in the shower is, etc etc. cause I've ran through this PoI 20 times.
I dont know why at least the locations of chests and locked doors cant be randomized. Make things at least marginally interesting, instead of cookie cuttered to extreme.
While I agree, I've been saying that about NMS for years. Not that we want to be comparing Starfield to NMS, of course.
You can, but randomizing chests+locked doors is kinda complicated, and the more "interesting" your generations the harder it is to code and the more dev time it takes. And for a AAA game release you can't really do that.
Key+Lock randomization is something that has been solved, and has been used most notably in procedurally generated zeldalikes. But that's still niche indie territory, and not used for major game releases.
Hasn't this game been in development for like 5 years? And they built it on an existing engine that they have tons of experience with. You could have said "they were limited on how much they could randomize POIs because of the old engine" and I would have believed you because that sounds way more plausible than "it's hard to code, so AAA games can't do it". Like what?
The issue with procedural generation is the game has to be built for it from the ground up and in a modular way. AAAs try to make themselves appealing by using novel new high quality assets that aren't modular.
I haven't played starfield so idk what they ended up doing, but from the sound of it they have pre-made assets/areas that they then place onto pre-generated worlds in a randomized way.
To make one of these "areas" procedural in itself, they'd then have to code a whole system for that. With AAA/3D the hard part is making modular environments without it looking repetitive or ugly.
My point isn't so much that it can't be done in a AAA game. But rather that it's risky to do (not all players like it), and you have to structure your development around it. Lots can go wrong, there's stuff you gotta sacrifice to make it work, etc.
If starfield is on the old bethesda engine then that's even more of a reason. You can't just plug and play an entire procedural generation thing in there without some fairly large overhauls or just gluing on an unrelated system.
In practice, bethesda probably took the lazy route: using their existing engine without major changes, then just making new assets for it, throwing stuff about a bit randomly, and calling it a day.
That's the thing about procedural generation is: it's a lot of effort and sucks up a huge part of the game's development and comes at some pretty strict costs (repetitive looking environments/gameplay, reduced novelty, larger programming dev time to make it work). It can be done, but for a cost-cutting AAA studio they're not gonna bother.
They already have once though. Many of Morrowind's dungeons were procedurally generated in development then edited a bit after, that was the same engine. Same with Daggerfall altho that was a diff engine.
Very different game but Amnesia: the Bunker has plenty of procedural generation as well.
It's not at all impossible for one of the largest game development studios to have some procedurally generated, essentially dungeon content. Doing a bit more than the exact same place copied and pasted would be a huge undertaking yes, but if they wanted to they could have. There are plenty of 3D rogue-likes out now as well. Returnal is AAA and haa procedurally generated levels, far more complicated than neccesary for Bethesda to do in order to populate planets in their game about planet exploration.
I didn't say it's impossible. Just that it's harder, takes deliberate effort, etc. For AAA games they don't bother with that kind of thing because it's larger expense and larger risk.
Just to wheel things back onto the road.
I was never asking for fully procedurally generated dungeons.
I just said randomize chest locations and door locks. It cant be that hard for a company that has been using the same game engine for almost 22 years to implement a node system to roll a spawn chance for a chest, or a door to be locked or not (with a higher chance of node spawns behind locked doors).
Hell, they could have even gone the lazy way and just copy and pasted the PoI a few times and manually changed the cosmetics/appearances.
With space and prefab buildings, they have the ultimate excuse for why every dungeon is identical (at least until you get into the underground caves..), but not every one of them should have the same dead body inthe same location in the same shower, the same succulent on the same shelf. move the body to a different location! Have a chance for a cluster of books to spawn instead of the succulent! Its a prefabricated hab structure, but that doesnt mean they come with such strict instructions as "Only succulent A on this shelf"
Couldn't they just have copied the locations a few times and changed up the doors and chests by hand? Seems like an easy fix.
yes. I haven't played the game so idk the details of what's up. but at 1k+ planet-sized spaces it's hard to have a team go over that by hand. Planets are large. But I have no doubt that bethesda team was probably super lazy as well.
Most of the planets are dull on purpose because my graphics card catches fire if there's too much excitement on screen. Thanks for looking out for me, Todd!
Didn't know anyone was still using Fermis.
Ah yes “…Bethesda's managing director, and Todd Howard, who is Todd Howard.”
Thanks for clearing that up AI writer.
Also how is it thrilling to “blast off” and “set foot on a new planet” when the game is more clicking through menus and fast traveling.
In No man’s sky you actually land. In star field you fast travel.
It was not ai but a joke how he is famous to the wider audience.
In No Mans Sky, you've seen five planets, you've seen them all.
Not necessarily but yea it trades the bespoke environments for generated ones that aren’t so dissimilar.
I think it makes for interesting comparison. Both space traveling games, one comprised of specially designed levels navigated by menus, the other less variety but you actually journey to them and given the sheer number you can actually discover and name a planet no one’s ever been to.
Both valid but I think starfield shouldn’t really advertise in exploration. Unlike NMS it’s far more narrative based.
Both valid but I think starfield shouldn’t advertise really advertise in exploration. Unlike NMS it’s far more narrative based.
Yep. There are three space games on the market that are not too far apart: NMS, Elite: Dangerous, and Starfield. They have similarities, they have differences, and they have different target audiences.
They're up to ten or twenty now.
coming from elite dangerous, flying in NMS feels incredibly simplified. landing is literally "push a button to land". either way, they both beat starfield in that department
Totally it is but that’s the style. The game isn’t trying to simulate complexity, it’s more a kick back and relax game masquerading as a prog-rock album cover. Pressing X to let your ship land itself gives you just enough time to hit a joint and make a plan.
weird in starfield i also have to press x to land, so whats everybody's big deal?
Landing or taking off isn't interrupted with a loading screen in either game. You also have freedom of pointing ship to a direction and go there.
Those two things combine to make you feel like you are moving around the game world as opposed to game world moving around you.
that may be true, but starfield has some fun quests and interesting characters, which makes the world feel real and not like im the last human being in the universe
It's crazy impressive. Especially on a technical level. But it feels like a tech demo more than a game almost. It's still fun to idle time away in, but it's not engaging. At all. It's brain idle time. In a positive way, but also no more than that.
In this case I'd call that a positive statement. That's what I was looking for when I decided to get the game... I'm not going to shell out my dimes to Bethesda hoping for disco elysium, I basically want something that makes demands of my brain just a little more than solitaire or minesweeper.
I don't really agree with it not being 'engaging' though, I guess depending on what you mean. I'm not staying up at night wondering what's gonna happen next, but I'm staying up past my bedtime designing space ships and then running out of cash and going and doing a fun loot-and-shoot mission to get more money to build more space ships. That ain't bad.
I told my buddy the other day that it was Bethesda Menu Simulator 2023, and I wasn't wrong. I was working on my outpost, so I'd place some stuff, go to star map, select the planet with the material, pick a landing spot, land, get up, mine ore for 5 minutes, fast travel to ship, repeat 2-3 more planets, choose the outpost, land, place some more stuff. Then repeat.
You could skip fast traveling to your ship, or do any of the plethera of quests instead of what you're doing
Or, and I know this is a crazy idea, Bethesda could have made a game that has enough content to fill the space (pun intended) they created. Yes. I can run back to my ship through the mined out area I just cleared just to prove a point that the game is as flawless as you'd like to believe. Or, I can offer one fair critique of the game.
I'm looking forward to what modders do with the canvas Bethesda has provided.
Nah I mean you can just fast travel off the planet without first having to fast travel back to your ship, a few less loading screens and menu interactions right there.
Honestly, I didn't even think to just go to another planet without stopping by my ship first. That's somehow... worse? I thought it was super weird when I realized I could do it from the outpost without a ship nearby, but hadn't thought to just fast travel everywhere all the time.
Definitely saves some time and extra loading screens/menu navigation, sorry I wasn't clear with what I meant initially.
i find it less headache to just sit in UC distrobution and fast forward 24 hours to keep reseting inventory to get all the mats I need to build, at least my starter shit.
To give an impression of what it’s been like for me:
I had a quest where I needed Iron. I found a random planet that had it, and picked a spot in the middle of the scan readouts. Arrive, looks like a barren rock - but that’s fine because I only wanted rocks. However, I see something in the distance, and check it out. On the way, I find a wandering trader taking her alien dog for a walk, and sell some stuff weighing me down. I find a cave, where a colonist is hiding out with a respiratory infection - and am able to help them get out as a little mini-quest, though the infection spreads to me.
I come past a little mining installation, where I find a bounty hunter that tells me of a bounty nearby she’s offering to split with me. We do so, fighting a base full of raiders to get to their captain, and I finally decide to leave.
The key here is, I don’t think any of those quests are amazing - they’re likely very dynamically generated. But they’re also not fun to “seek them out” - just to come across them in some other mission, like trying to make an outpost or mining for stuff.
That sounds pretty fun, actually!
Sounds like work tbh
Yeah I literally do all of this stuff near daily in my 9-5 bounty hunting job.
Sounds like play lol I mean it's a game about exploring
If exploration isn't fun to you, that's ok. There's plenty of games out there that are more linear.
Yeah, but since it’s dynamically generated it’s likely the 10th time you see those quests.
I mean, I can't even argue against that. Some people find some forms of work fulfilling, and even switch to games because their own jobs don't actually give them that feeling of fulfillment.
Monster Hunter is a prime example of a game that sets such elongated goals that it's regarded as a "grind-heavy" game - but its players like the grind. Heck, the entire space simulator genre often involves quite a lot of "Space Truck Simulator" gameplay, where you're just engineering good ways to ferry cargo around.
Which is not to say that's what Starfield aims for. From what I've played, it's closer to Sea of Thieves, having adventurous interruptions - where you start a boring, routine mission to bring Sugar from one merchant post to another, but then get ambushed by a skeleton ship, then a giant shark, then find a map to a buried treasure nearby.
Half the reason I play Elite is space trucking. I'm only raising my empire rank to get the largest ship... in order to space truck better. The Fed Corvette I plan to make a combat vessel, but the Cutter will be my space truck.
I found that flow of the game works a little bit better if you just don't fast travel at all. I played a lot of Elite and it gave me a little bit of Elite vibes when I just walk to my ship, go thru inside it and sit down. Then I take off "manually" using the button and jump to the target system by manually targeting it and press the jump button.
What Bethesda can do better is to just mask the loading with a flight animation, for example when you're taking off from a planet the loading should be replaced by an animation where you're going out of the atmosphere. And when you're jumping between star systems, the loading should be replaced by something similar to Elite when we're jumping through the witch space.
All in all, my experience with Starfield has been fine. I loved the weird stuff happening when you're just fucking around. Although the main quest has taken a step back with their sense of urgency, compare it to previous Bethesda games, where there's a big stake going on that pushes you to at least complete the main quest once. In Starfield there's no such sense of urgency.
It seems like Bethesda is leaning heavy on their sandbox side, just letting people go around and do stuff.
With optimized settings from the HUB YouTube channel, my FPS never went below 60.
Exploring is supposed to be a reward in itself
Oh yes, exploring 6 levels of nested menus is incredibly rewarding
Pro tip: if you just fast travel between Far Harbour and Nukaworld over and over you get the same experience as Starfield for free
Bahahaha
Heard if you 3D print a copy of no man’s sky you actually just get starfield
Todd forgets this is a game and not real life where you have to train and study for 30 years to go to the moon. He forgot that the main intricacy is the stories you can make for the player.
Like assassins creed has big cities. Which feel dead, not enjoyable.
In RL most of the "excitement" in space comes from not wanting to fuck up and die. Games don't have that, Todd.
Some do, but they make it their main draw. The reason Kerbal Space Program is fun, is fun because you can fuck up and die in a million different ways, and not doing so is chalenging and succes is rewarding while failure is hilarious(ly frustrating).
Not fucking up and dying in Starfield means pressing the Use Healthpack frequently enough.
for now, the gameplay-enrichment mods are well on their way
Imagine a realistic KSP with AAA graphics, like replicating historic missions and planned ones, etc.
You just described the KSP RP-1 modpack with high graphics and volumetric clouds mod
Then you have games that do space travel so well that I'm beyond scared shitless in them, like Outer Wilds. So many games have already managed to convey some of these feelings.
Perfect example. Handful of planets, each rich with hand-crafted purpose, space travel is big enough to feel epic, but small enough to not want to skip.
It nails the feeling of exploring a vast area of space, not by being realistic (it is not, by a long shot), but by just making certain experiences feel right.
...yes, they do. Soooo many fucking games have that. There's a whole genre of games built around it. They're called survival games. A relevant example would be No Man's Sky.
I am kinda certain no game has dying. I haven't died in any yet. Although I remember a piece of The Onion of a suicide feature of a car seat. Maybe someone should build a gaming chair with this feature to improve the immersion.
...what? I can't tell if you're trolling. Death is basically the most common failure state of any game.
IRL the stakes are a little higher, don't you think?
Games aren't real life??!
No shit? That was the point
Astronauts aren't bored in space because they're busy trying not to die. games don't kill you when you fuck up or something goes wrong
Yes, they do, just not for real. Why would you expect it to kill you for real? What an absurd standard. You're supposed to be scared for your character's life, not your own. They're the one in space, not you...
Have you ever played games before?
You do know this threat is about some dev saying the first guys on the moon weren't bored although there's basically just sand and rocks to be found? And that because of this it's fine most planets in a game are baren and uninteresting?
The Bethesda guy compared the game to RL. I am just pointing out why this makes no sense.
And what you said was incorrect.
In RL most of the "excitement" in space comes from not wanting to fuck up and die. Games don't have that, Todd.
So many games are all about the struggle to not fuck up and die, and they are plenty tense even though they don't affect your real body. Ever played Subnautica? I'm not actually underwater but I'm scared of drowning.
I don't know why the fact that a game can't actually kill you doesn't mean it can't try to introduce tension.
Yeah, planets being barren is shit and realism is a shit excuse for it, but it's kinda irrelevant to your "games don't have dying" point, which would apply even if planets were designed better
Dude... You're even agreeing with me without realizing it. My point is, because a game can't create tension by threatening you with real death, it needs to be interesting in some way.
Yup, classic case of realism not always making the game better.
I went to earth to check it out, I know the lore of why it is a giant sand ball but that also disappoints me. I walked around the approximate area of where I am from and found a small cave. But there was nothing in the cave except some abandoned drugs. I couldn't interact with the glowing mushrooms, mine any minerals, etc. I was hoping for a sprawling cavern or something and just... nope. I might go back to earth to explore it some more but it's so bland.
What do you think is behind that rock?
Another rock.
I was hoping for at least some scattered ruins on earth. Like there are random generated gas tanks and buildings on most planets.
Just something a little unique.
Maybe I should try and learn to mod it and do that.
Disclaimer:
My comment is a reaction to the stuff Todd and his minions said in the article, not necessarily about the game itself. I haven't played Starfield yet. I just find the statements really weak and want to express why I see it that way.
Yeaaahh that's nice for maybe a couple of hours, but then it starts to get boring. That's not how you keep players engaged, although there are of course those who don't find that boring at all.
We're not astronauts, we're not there. Astronauts had the thrill of the voyage through space, stepping on the moon and feeling with ones own body how it is to walk on the moon's dust in low gravity. Also astronauts had and have a shitload of scientific equipment and experiments to carry out, i.e., a purpose beyond the mere jolly walking.
If they were just there for walking and that for days, weeks, months, they would get bored pretty fast as well.
Take a look at No Man's Sky. Similar problem. The procedural generation algorithm made planets look familiar after you've seen a couple. There is nothing new. Exploration became unrewarded. But Hello Games has massively improved on that over the years and produced a game where you can sink dozens of hours without getting bored so easily.
I have played Starfield.
The planets being mostly empty is fine. In fact, I think they're too full if anything. You're not meant to travel on the planet's surface for long. You explore a bit if you think you want to build an outpost there, but otherwise you just move on. Most of the "content" is in pre-built areas. Enemy encounters almost always take place in hand crafted facilities, and usually it'll be for some kind of quest so you land right near it.
The outpost system is where the procedural planets come in. You need to explore some to find the right spot to build with the resources you want. The content there is the building, not the planet. The landscape will effect it some, but mostly it's whatever you make of it.
That said, the outpost system fucking sucks right now. You have to send resources between outposts with "links", which take goods into a container and store them in linked containers. All solid goods go in one type, and the same for liquid, gas, and manufactured. I have all of my resources trickling into a main base, so I have all resources available there. This has caused my storage to back up and there's no way to filter out items you don't want. Then no resources can come in so you have to go to your storage and clear whatever is clogging it. There's also no way to delete items as far as I'm aware, so you just dump the excess resources on the ground where they'll remain forever. It's really stupid. This is my storage solution for now.
All the crates flow into the next one, so it's functionally one massive storage container, but with 15 seperate inventories I have to go through to get anything out. There's also no stairs object you can build, or anything like it, so I stacked cabinets into a sort of access staircase. It's really bad, but it's what works for now.
Just a tip if you start playing and build a main base, build it on a low gravity planet so you don't have as much of a problem if you stack stuff like this.
How the fuck did Beth have stairs in FO4/76 but forgot to add them in a game set hundreds of years in the future? What the seventy-dollar fuck?
That's the future Telvanni want!
At least if the Telvanni got their way I'd be able to levitate up to my crates! (I just realized, I may TCL to use the crates because there isn't a good alternative built into the game systems.)
Yeah, outposts seemed to me to be the thing that Starfield was designed and marketed around, but it's so jank. So many basic things missing and so many quality of life failures. It's like they didn't even test it themselves first.
Does it eventually give you a purpose or guide you to making an outpost, I haven't felt much of a need yet.
There's one part in the story that you need to build a thing in a shop or an outpost, but it doesn't require you to really build an outpost. I did it so I can have any supplies for upgrading things without too much effort. I think that was a mistake, but now I'm too invested. Lol.
I hope not, i came for the RPG, if i wanted to play worse version of minecraft i would just go play minecraft.
I gotta be honest this looks like Minecraft construction but even in Minecraft there are ways to sort out and destroy unwanted items
This sounds like factorio without the biters
Yeah, and without any way to actually manage the resources. I want to like it, but I see so many issues that should be easy to solve that they just didn't. Sure, it'll be fixed with mods and maybe DLC, but that shouldn't be required for basic UX.
Another one of my big gripes with outposts is that there is no way to view your existing outposts. There's not a list, and definitely no way to view what an outpost is producing. Hell, you can't even view what an outpost is producing when you're there. It'll tell you the total quantity produced of everything combined, but not of what. It's bad.
That reminds me of how annoyed I get with Satisfactory as well...
As a Factorio player, this could all be handled so much better in both games, but Starfield is particularly bad. It's like they never even tried building outposts before launch. So many basic functions are missing.
No Man's Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn't matter what planet it is, there's nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.
No Man's Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets. At least in Starfield, there's some magic in seeing actual fauna. You don't get that feeling in No Man's Sky because you've seen fauna and flora on the last 30 planets you've been to. You need those empty planets to make the planets with life actually feel special.
No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.
Regarding the variety and interesting features of the bare planets, I tend to agree. My point was rather that there is more to do now and the fun with - even familiar planets - lasts longer.
No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets.
This is not correct. The amount of more dead planets immensely depends on - spoiler alert -
::: spoiler spoiler
the galaxy you're in. NMS has different galaxies with different distributions for lush or dead planets. This also has some effects on the difficulty.
:::
I don't want to have to beat the game in order to finally enjoy it.
You don't need to. There are different possibilities for switching galaxies. The simplest ones would be to use portals which is accessible very early in the game.
Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.
For someone whose put in a few hours into the game multiple times as the game has been steadily updated, I didn't know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. So telling me I'm incorrect because it's NG+ COULD have fixed it for me is pretty disingenuous. How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?
Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.
As soon as you can use the space anomaly (which happens very early) you already have a possibility.
But apart from that, sure, it still takes a bit of effort and is not an option available when starting the game. The latter would be a nice idea though.
I didn't know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. [...] How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?
By using an internet search engine of your choice.
But I get what you mean as this is not clearly communicated right from the beginning in the game and something to be discovered. So your best chance to know this, besides doing the story missions, is to talk to other players or by curiously clicking on some suitable links in the NMS wiki.
I've played Starfield and it's fantastic. There's so much story. The world-bulding is different because there's literally 1000+ worlds and they're mostly uninhabited. I'm not sure what else you would expect. There are some huge, in-depth cities and some beautiful landscapes. But there's also empty deserts and plains, just like we see everywhere in space.
I expected to be able to fly my ship considering I am able to customize it
If you want the astronaut experience, play Kerbal Space Program 🚀
tell this to elite dangerous players
Yeah, the first thing I did when getting to the core was to generate an ancestral galaxy so that there would be more dead worlds. Didn't like having every place overrun with life.
Starfield sounds like an okay game but all the PR responding to complaints sounds like an absolute disaster. Stop letting Todd answer these things directly
I've flipped flopped my consensus about the game a couple times, but my conclusion is this...
Starfield is not going to be what you expected from Skyrim in space, at first. It will seem weird and claustrophobic and broken.
But if you give yourself a bit to acclimate to the world they've built, there is a surprisingly engaging game underneath.
I believe they've left most planets barren on purpose, so they can easily shove DLC wherever they want for the next 10 years.
"New facehugger planet, 20 hours of exciting quests and valuable loot! - $29.99"
That's 100% going to happen.
So far, Starfield is exactly like Skyrim in space to me. There's as many carefully crafted cities, and quite a few carefully crafted locales. There's just a lot more space in Starfield (estimated about 500x more. Skyrim is 15sq miles, and those 1000 planets are each a couple square miles ingame). Sounds like there may be less hand-crafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, but that's hard to tell.
I'm definitely not finding Starfield to be claustrophic. On the contrary, a bit agoraphobic.
I think there's definitely more handcrafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, there's also tons tons more dead space with nothing at all.
Some folks say there's only about 25 hours of handcrafted stuff. I'm not late enough in to know for sure.
Yeah no way. I've played longer than that and I haven't even done the main quest.
I'm approaching that, but I have to admit I take my time and revisit towns a lot.
I've only gone to a dozen dungeons so far that were hand-crafted. There were literally hundreds of them in Skyrim. I'd love to get real numbers.
So far, I am enjoying the hell out of the game, if my lack of twitch reflexes is hurting that a lot. I keep having to juggle between ship upgrades (my Mantis keeps dying to small fleets more than 10 levels lower than me) and face-to-face. Usually by now in other Bethesda games, dying is rare. I'm too stubborn to drop the difficulty, though, so I suppose that's on me.
There's a pirate fleet in orbit around the planet I want to build my first output. Last 5 times I tried to go there, fleet keeps showing up and killing me. That's somewhat annoying.
Save in space often. There's a semi common bug I've just run into that will cause your ship to vanish and it somehow retroactively removes it from all previous saves. No recreateable way to get it back. The only thing that saved me was a previous save where I was in orbit, still lost a few hours of progress.
Weird. I haven't heard of that one yet.
Are you certain that you know what Agoraphobia is? Tip: it is not the opposite of Claustrophobia.
I had agoraphobia growing up. I know exactly what it is. And I had moments of it exploring the planets. I found myself hugging to keep buildings in range and not wanting to stray out into the great wide open. For some odd reason, I got more of that in Starfield than in NMS.
I'm also still fairly early into the game, so perhaps I'll spend more time indoors than I have so far.
EDIT, also, it kinda is the opposite of claustrophobia in some ways. There are some overlaps and nuances (both fears sometimes include fear of crowds). I had a grandparent with really bad claustrophobia who never used an elevator in her life. Ironically, we could relate on a lot. But they were still opposite issues.
I don't know, been agoraphobic for quite some time. Never had problems in elevators (alone), but trains or tunnels are the worst. Guess that's why it's hard for me to imagine how a game could ever transport that.
How can one person have a consensus?
It's only a problem when they can't.
When they have dissociative personality disorder :D
I really don't understand all the negative comments. It feels like a very fun game and I can't wait to play it again.
If your enjoying it then don't worry about the negative comments.
Unlike some other space games you dont do much travel yourself, you fast travel everywhere which means seeing the same non-skippable cutscenes again and again, i fast travel to the system, then fast travel to the planet, then fast travel to the surface; then if i want to go elsewhere on the planet i have to fast travel back to orbit then back down to the planet. Its "fast travel:the video game"
Given that similar games have managed to let you fly your ship from space down and around the planet for years now I dont why you cant in this, im constantly pulled out of playing for a loading screen
Not arguing with the crux of your argument here, but most fast traveling I've done is way more direct than that. New planet, sure there's a few stages, but anywhere you've been before you can pretty much fast travel to directly from anywhere.
How often are you just hopping between places you've already been?
As to the people saying you can fast travel back to cities, last time (which was about 5 mins ago) i went to go back to New Atlantis i had to faat travel to the system first before i could even select the city, but other times ive been able to directly select the landing spot and fast travel there from another system so I dunno.
I just went and did stuff in Sol, i fast travelled to the system, fast travelled to the city, ran to the bar close to the landing pad, ran back to the ship, fast travelled to orbit, fast travelled to Venus, killed 3 ships, interacted with satellite, fast travelled to staryard, fought a decent amount of people which was good, fast travelled to Neptune, short fight, board, kill 3 or 4 peeps, fast travel to lodge.
Then fast travel to mining planet system, fast travel to planet, talk, fast travel to different system, fast travel to planet run to ship, no bad guys just a quick convo, then fast travel back to ship, fast travel to orbit, and now fast travel to different planet.
Also fuel auto refills after every jump just seems to mean more fast travelling if you need to go further
If your enjoying it then im happy for you not trying to detract, just sharing my experience, i just wish they pushed what could be done more
I think if there's a patrol scanning your cargo you have to hit the system before landing, otherwise you'd fast travel your way past contraband scans. I'm having a lot of fun in the game, I agree there's too much fast traveling though.
taking the other side of the argument, planetary landings in E:D are just loading screens at 10x the length. Travelling to a planet at .3 C is neat the first time but then you look at trade routes as “how long do I sit paying attention in case of an interdiction?” StarCitizen falls into the same trap. QD is neat but then it takes you 5 minutes and a fuel stop to go from one side of a system to another. Its mundane trudging for reality rather than getting the boring monotony out of the way of the player.
Just because the tech exists doesn’t mean it makes for compelling gameplay.
I can agree with this but I do wish it involved fewer loading screens and clicking through each time. If you're gonna skip the "realism" to make it more convenient then make it actually convenient.
With that said despite that and the fact I'd love to fly the ship over the planets manually, I'm really liking it so far (2h in).
Yeah I can't really disagree with people's assessment of how much travel-by-loading-screen there can be, but like... while it's there, I just mostly haven't noticed it. Thirty hours in now and I find I'm mixing up fast travelling wide distances with "manually" travelling by launching into orbit and jumping place to place fairly regularly, I don't think I'd even have thought to criticize it without coming here.
I like how immersive travel can be in a game like NMS, but it's not like it's all that exciting or fun to pull into the atmosphere for the 500th time and maneuver to your landing pad, or spend longer than a loading screen amount of time to boost out of atmosphere to hit the jump button. We're exchanging one form of slightly tedious load for a different one.
The best answer I have to minimizing the interaction is setting routes from your mission list. On PC this cuts down to L > click mission > R > hold X.
It is still 4 discrete inputs, which sucks, but it is substantially better than navigating by the star map which is how my brain defaulted to fast travel for most of my first play through.
There are all kinds of possibilities, and for one example of a video game system for travelling among the stars that gives you a sense of actually going somewhere without getting too dull I'd point to EVE. You can go anywhere, but there are distant and dangerous places that take actual effort to get to. It lets you get some kind of sense of the distances involved. Having made that comparison it's hard to avoid noticing that the space combat (even against NPCs) and ship outfitting are quite good too compared to how it looks in Starfield. Planetary interaction was pretty tedious when I played it, but EVE is mostly really good at the space stuff.
Another example would be good old Star Control II, another of my favourite space games. Another one that managed to make space feel big. You had to carefully manage fuel and resources, and if you wanted to go all the way across the map you'd have a long and interesting journey during which many things would happen. Combat and navigation were primitive compared to what people expect today, but still it made it feel like you were exploring a vast space, not just a big catalogue of planets.
As for Starfield, I don't know whether it does that or not since I haven't played it yet; I'd sort of like to find out before I spend $ on it.
you cant really compare gate-to-gate traversal to the other primary space games though. unless you are in a capital ship, generally you have a warp around 3-5 so even Niarja (minus dock workers) only takes a few seconds to cross. If we just focus on hub routes, I don’t recall the exact number, but Amarr to Jita/Dodi is between 25-60 jumps depending on your risk tolerance. That is 25 discrete load screens, with a Leopard and no 0 tick gate camps thats still around 10-20 minutes of just loading. EVE is an exceptionally bad example to pull and why I excluded it.
If you want something like Star Control then running the bubble in E:D is your best option, just never install a fuel scoop.
What I want is just something where travel takes enough time and effort that interesting problems can arise during the course of it that aren't just generic random encounters. Something where different parts of space have local character, something like geography rather than a flat isotropic void where distance is meaningless. In each case the technology used for moving about is entirely fictional, so I don't see a reason not to make it interesting. I was just pointing out examples of that being done, not advocating for either of them being the one true way to do it.
transit in EVE isn’t really anything to write home about though. Target, align, warp, jump, target, align, warp, jump.
Gate camps are player based RNG with a difficulty slider. Do you take the shorter run thru Niarja or do you add an extra 30 jumps for relative safety barring CODE affiliates.
if what you want is a completely bespoke experience where a system has only explicit experiences then you immediately lose out on the design intent behind Starfield and the storyline within is immediately hollowed out and meaningless.
besides, its a video game. everything is a generic random encounter rolled on a table hidden from the player. if you want a better experience, Starfinder is there.
I used to make a living hauling valuable stuff from the outer edge of low-sec in to Jita and such places. Sure it got to be pretty much routine after a while. Well, most of the time. But then it's always possible in that game to go off and do something else instead. The experience of exploring it all for the first time though, having not yet gathered the knowledge and resources to do it in anything like safety or comfort, was fantastic. If you could just teleport instantly from one place to anywhere without significant cost it wouldn't even be a game. I'm not saying that the mechanics of transportation should dominate every game like they do EVE, but having at least some of that sort of thing seems like a good idea in a game that's supposed to be about exploring a space of any kind. I disable fast travel in Skyrim too. It makes things too quick and convenient.
Well, guess what? You can walk to the starport, open the door to your ship, walk into the cockpit, sit down, launch into space, target your next system navpoint, power up your grav driv, and jump to the next system. You won’t be on a planet, you will be in space. Will you find a trader? System security fighting pirates? A bounty hunter wanting to cash in on you? An old lady that wants you to come over for tea? Dunno. But you aren’t fast traveling. Genuinely the crux of your complaint has been “i dont know how it works but its bad and I dont like it”
As for Starfield, I don’t know whether it does that or not since I haven’t played it yet; I’d sort of like to find out
Anyway, thanks, I guess that question is more or less answered.
You can actually fast travel directly to cities, even when you're in a different system.
Yes, you can. There are several levels of fast travel and you can use it how you prefer.
For me, the criticism is more directed toward the PR and hype. There's still lots to like about the game, it's just frustrating how they spin it.
I'm glad you're enjoying it!
I haven't had a chance to play it yet. Moving and still have to get through BG3. But I'm actually excited for it. Like I see posts over and over and over and over and over and over about the the fact that it's not NMS. Sure, kind of disappointing. And I will agree that if you keep running into the same exact structures over and over, maybe they could have done something different. Have some sort of procedurally generated structures.
But that seems to mostly be it. Every review I've watched talks pretty positively about the other aspects. It's got some bugs, which is to he expected, and apperantly the melee combat isn't clunky and awkward. But those seem to be the biggest complaints outside of not being able to land.
So I'm gonna do what I've seen a lot of people said to do. I'm gonna go into the Bethesda game and play it largely like it's a Bethesda game. Gonna go through the main story, the different factions, do some side quests, etc.
It's not No Man's Sky. Cool. Call of Duty isn't Escape From Tarkov. I have played both of those and loved them both for completely different reasons, and I don't expect them both to be the same. If anything I got bored of No Man's Sky after a bit. Partially because I'm just not into the base building, and itnfelt like that was the main thing to do outside of explore. Little to no stories. Last I heard we still don't have the faction system they talked about when the game was first launching. Starfield has things going for it over NMS.
I think people had their expectations too high. People are expecting it to be as good as skyrim was for 2011 but in 2023, but I went in expecting it to be as good as (vanilla) skyrim is now and so far that's what I feel like I got.
Yeah, I had no expectations and I like it. I always get disappointed when I have high expectations.
Tbh I'm mainly disappointed in the graphics of the surroundings.
I really like the game so far but it really needs some kind of vehicle for travelling around planets. Like the exocraft from No Man's Sky.
You can't even traverse the whole thing, right? Don't you hit a barrier and are forced to backtrack and take off/land somewhere else?
Yeah but it's a fairly huge area... something like 8km in any direction from the ship.
Could be covered pretty quickly in a land vehicle.
4km any direction if I'm not mistaken. Takes me around 30 minutes to each it.
It's very, very small actually.
Game engine limitations, apparently. Say a thread on exactly this earlier today.
Agree it is much poorer for lacking them. It's immersion breaking being in the far future, zipping around on an interstellar craft, yet being forced to explore slowly on foot. I really can't even use the ship? Cmon.
They thought they had a brilliant idea, but it's not. It's a classic. The space is beautiful, of course, but it's the interactions that make a game unique. No interaction, no party.
Bro I've spent at least ten hours just building cool space ships.
The ship builder is just tons of fun. I wish the controls were a little bit more obvious but once you get the hang of it, I think it's my favourite in genre. I love building something neat and then going to check out the interior walkthrough, particularly. I think I need a save where I just cheat in millions of credits so i can experiment for a while
What are you gonna do with it when you are done?
Photo mode in space?
Your ship is kinda like a player home you bring around with you. Having one that uniquely suits your needs and preferences is cool, and also I want a damn weapon workbench.
There is space combat
It's pretty garbage though :/
1v1 me in space punk
Is it? I find it pretty fun, sure games like everspace did it better, but that is literally a space dogfighting game lol.
NMS space combat is noticably worse in comparison, and some of the upgrade paths and the ability to adjust your reactor usage (very reminiscent of FTL) make it interesting enough for me.
nice argument lol
Who needs logic and rhetoric when you have 💰
Lord knows there’s enough content creators now to self sustain shit games and businesses for all of time regardless of what genpop is interested in
Why don't they just have Skyrim level of detail on all 1000 planets, smh!
Yeah. I failed math on purpose too.
If there's more going on outside my window than in the $90 game I just bought, there's a problem.
Long haul flight simmers must really confuse you
I have MSFS2020 and enjoy completing long haul flights. literally a whole workday spent where I see nothing but cockpit controls and the sky through the window, with no interaction needed due to autopilot. then I bring her in to land 10 hours later.
and that's fun.
fun is what you make it man
Very different games and very different expectations of effort spent. I've space trucked a lot in Elite, spending hours going back and fort. But it was never dull, more of a relaxing experience.
That comment stems from games failure to live up to its promises.
This game was marketed as an explorers game with 1000 planets to see, for example.
None of those planets have even the half of the content Skyrim/Fallout has. None of those planets are barren as Elite's planets, either. You can't traverse them more than 30 minutes, so it doesn't even scratch NMS itch. People that liked the exploration of any of those four games would dislike this games exploration very much.
The person above was probably expecting a more lively game, like any other Bethesda game and got whatever this is instead. It's completely justified to be disappointed.
I have no clue what people are talking about? I have beaten it twice and surveyed an entire solar system and there was plenty. You can fly around to any point in most planets and moons and have stuff generate at each landing, within hiking distance.
I feel like the game is so big and good, the haters are just hating and being stupidly immature about it.
I think here we are reacting to the colossally dumb reasoning in the quote from the article. Astronauts had a few things to be excited about that gamers... won't
Beaten it twice? like the main story? Honestly I forgot Skyrim had a story too. I always wandered for so long I forgot what I was doing.
Didn't this game come out like last week?
Everything in the game is "within hiking distance" because that's how the game generates planets. You don't just "land on a planet". You go through several hidden loading screens and arrive in a 1km x 1km square of planet.
Thats exactly what they were saying
Your point is?
*Fast travel around to any point.
Ng+2 ? Any more change at +2 over +1, apart from the item & ship? Does the suit even improve ? And the ship ?A good mantis still is better I found
I've been enjoying Starfield - but the empty planets suck, especially without vehicles. The scanning thing is boring and dumb, worse than trying to get 100% on a NMS world. It's a shame that fast travel disconnects you from the space feel of the game, but it makes the rest of the game playable. I like the game overall, but they have definitely dropped the ball on space travel. In theory it'd be cool to come across different "dungeons" etc, as in Skyrim when wandering around, but doesn't happen in Starfield because you're generally not going to happen upon them. It's not interesting to drop down to random planets.
I've found all kinds of shit on planets... spacer hideouts, caves, artifacts.... look harder
Yeah started finding some neat stuff as I go further out. It's not that it's not there, it's just that you don't tend to stumble upon it. Like I'll go to a planet do a mission open up and scan and see some POI like 1200m away. Now do I really want to tedious run over empty nothingness to see if it's like a space hut or another pirate base etc? I definitely check out nearby POI especially if they are on the way to where i need to go.
(Still having fun in the game though and I guess later having options to at least poke around in new places will be fun and i'm curious if the critters are fixed or procedural, like will there be variants all over or just the same few species)
I gave Starfield a fair chance, I played it for 20 hours, patiently waiting on why it deserved an "8.4" rating from critics. But it never delivered. The gameplay is a copy of Fallout 4, the user interface is a mess (they've gone backwards somehow) and the world is just so generic and uninspiring that I couldn't bear one more minute of it.
I can see why it's got a 5.5 from real players.
On a side note, the gaming reviews now mirror Rotten tomatoes. What the professional paid "critics" love, doesn't necessarily mean the players do, and vice versa. The real players always give a more fair rating.
Imagine it in five years when the modding scene has popped off though. It could truly be something spectacular. Which is frankly the only saving grace of Bethesda games. They're a solid sandbox/framework for others to fill in.
Bethesda, are you high?
Did this game focus on anything in particular and do that well? Exploring isn't it.
I'm tired of being negative gamer. This game looks fun even if it isn't mind blowing, but seeing as I've never played a Bethesda game I think I'm just as likely to play one of the older games because they look about as good.
There does seem to be some people out there who are just radiating negativity about this game even more so than most.
I played a good few hours last night and it's Skyrim in Space which is what I wanted.
I don't know if it's the Xbox console exclusivity that's bringing fanboys out the woodwork or just that people like to attack a big, hyped up release like they did with Cyberpunk, but it's brought out the worst in people.
Wasn't Cyberpunk actually catastrophically bad at release, and then got fixed later?
Depends on your platform, PC and Current Gen machines were pretty good from day one, bar a few little bugs.
Only the bugs are gone. Weird design decisions and some horrendous mechanics are still here. It's still isn't an incredible game, but not a bad game either.
Having tried a bit of it, this game is fun. It plays a bit like outer world but bigger and with a more mature tone.
But i am really glad that after getting hyped in spring i actually forgot it was coming out. My gpu was not prepared.
Personally it feels like a lot of the promise of Mass Effect: Andromeda was channeled into Starfield and they took the launch version of the story in No Man’s Sky and ran with it. It definitely stands on the shoulders of other games but it is a reasonably solid iteration.
The game is good, I have fun with it more than Oblivion and Skyrim, as well as Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.
People are just complaining to complain.
The only Bethesda game I like more than Starfield is Morrowind.
It's a pretty entertaining crafting-shooter, but it's not an AMAZING one.
counterpoint: there’s not a single “amazing” game of this genre. Elite Dangerous does the space sim perfectly, but it’s boring apart from that. No Man’s Sky has the wonder and exploration, but every planet is functionally the same. Starfield expands on No Man’s Sky with a comprehensible story and actual gameplay. Star Citizen will never come out. Did i miss anything?
That maybe so, but if Earth had 1000 moons, we'd have likely gone to one with something interesting on it.
Just wait then DLCs start to populate the void...
Apart from that, what I've seen on some YT videos is impressive - When they populate a planet, they really mean it.
I'm an Elite Dangerous veteran and
have no problem with that. I think it's more realistic.
I'm about 18 hours in and the illusion of variety hasn't worn off yet. Plenty of things to find, with some travel time though. Unlock/upgrade your backpack boosters and it's almost like Tribes though, as you go flying across the landscape in short bursts to keep moving forward in the air.
Shazbot!
New match starts and half the team instantly spams
"I've got the flag!"
"I've got the flag!"
"I've got the flag!"
"I've got the flag!"
"I am the greatest!"
"No."
"I am the greatest!"
"It's almost like Tribes" are the four magic words to get me interested in any game.
Oddly enough, it's misleading. Planets are covered with procedural generated POIs what he meant is that the environment of most planets is barren. I wish there were actually unexplored planets that weren't covered in POIs too.
This is a nice sentiment, but it falls apart when you realize that a lot of the exploration is procedurally generated POI that eventually copies not just assets, but layouts and granular details. That tends to detract from a sense of wonder and mystery.
Which is fine, if they would just embrace that instead of trying to change how people perceive their work.
It didn't take me long to find two resesrch facilities that were identical down to enemy and loot placements less than 1km from each other.
That's exactly it-- The game is what it is and will be alot of fun for many people. They'll have nailed some stuff and missed the mark elsewhere...
But all the spinning shortcomings as design decisions is off-putting. Like if a restaurant is taking a long time to make my food, just say "it'll be a few extra minutes..." Not "Actually the anticipation of waiting a little longer will enhance your enjoyment, so you're welcome."
I still haven't found a completely empty planet, there is always outposts, abandoned mines or caves with space pirates or other factions. Every time I walk to a point there is like 3 more points you can just explore endlessly
That's false as moving away from your ship a certain distance (I think 6 or 7 km), it'll literally tell you you've reached the boundary of the area and you need to land somewhere else to get a new stretch of land.
Yeah but that's a long walk, I usually do about three or four locations and I'm over encumbered, maybe once my ship is upgraded and can store more junk I can stay on planet longer
No! That's impossible! I was told by people who played less than an hour if at all that you simply can't walk or fly anywhere and MUST fast travel everywhere.
This particular point really annoys me, I'd love to have somewhere that actually feels remote, where I don't have four more copies of the same mining and science outposts in visual range. No matter how large humanity has become it just doesn't make any sense that you can't find a single ~15km square without anything man made on it.
The best remote places I've found so far has been in some quest-specific areas, but even then there's usually a facility somewhere within a kilometer of the quest location.
Yeah I had the same thought, the caves and stuff are cool but finding so many abandoned outposts full of people is kind of weird
Especially on planets supposedly never surveyed by anyone ever.
We came here and set up a secret medical research laboratory, and have since abandoned it, and not once did we have the area surveyed
I totally agree, I wish there were actually some barren planets without POIs.
Why are they selling it as a fantasy action adventure game when it was a moon simulator all along.
The moon is boring, so every planet in the universe must be boring. Earth is mostly capitalist right now, so every planet with humans must be one form or another of late capitalist dystopia. A whole galaxy made of inert rocks, fast travel, and people eager to exchange gunfire with you.
I haven't played it yet, but from what I've seen the setting looks even more bleak and depressing than Bethesda Fallout.
For all the problems the game has, the major thing they get right is the environment.
Almost every area looks more than great, some are industrial, luxurious, barren, creepy, outright hostile, or cozy, but they are usually always gorgeous.
The environments are what pushed me to keep giving the game a chance after the initial shock of not having a cohesive overworld.
The setting is actually really cool. New Atlantis is actually quite utopian looking. I haven't gotten too deep into the game yet, only about 3 hours so far.
New Atlantis does look pretty cool, but I worry that it seems a bit empty. From what info I can find it seems to have maybe half as many named NPCs as the average Skyrim city even if it is three times the size. But maybe there are many more and they just haven't all made it to the wiki yet? I don't know, it's little things that annoy me. Like it's the glorious spacefaring future and every city is still full of fast food franchises selling coffee in what look like exactly the same kind of disposable cups with plastic lids we use today? Maybe that's a failure of imagination too small to complain about in itself, but it seems representative of how everything is when you look closely. Is it meant to be allegorically examining the social problems of our current world rather than presenting future humanity as doing something genuinely new? If so what's it trying to say about that, exactly? Where's the deep lore? Where are the characters you'd actually care about as people rather than video game NPCs that help you advance a quest? I was hoping for Skyrim in space, but to me it looks more like Fallout 4 in space. Never mind the reviewers who compared it to Oblivion and got my hopes up. The only thing it has in common with Oblivion is the Annoying Fan who I must admit is genuinely annoying.
Eh well, it's a Bethesda game. I'll probably give in and play it eventually.
this game is a lot more like KOTOR than any of the bethesda games. if you loved KOTOR you will probably love starfield
and people will always bitch about the NPC amount, whiterun is too little (but everyone is unique). well okay, we'll add an actual city population but now everyone is just a random citizen (but it looks like a city size population)
How is this any different than No Man's Sky?
Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy fewer planets.
I think they meant in terms of disappointment
Hello Games put a lot of effort into giving NMS a plethora of free updates over the course of years to make good on their promises.
We all know damn well Bethesda isn't gonna do shit except a couple of over-priced half-baked DLCs.
HG just kept duct taping more crap to the game without adding any depth or integrating their crap together. It's still an incredibly shallow game where you've seen all that there's worth seeing on the first day of playing.
But that's real life, this is a video game. People will not share that same respect for it lol.
ROFL…
Straight out of "30 things I hate about your pitch", which is a great GDC talk. In that talk he has one thing that is "in the real world you can't double jump". Don't make a realistic setting that is realistic just because.
The thing about video games is that they're a multivariate equation. Fun is a variable, and so is realism. Depending on how much realism there already is, and the nature of it, adding more can also increase the fun but it can also take away from the fun. There's a reason that even the hardcore simmers who do things like drive pretend trucks across Europe in real time or run pretend air traffic control at pretend airports pay to pretend to do those things instead of getting paid to do them for real.
Yeah, fun should always come before realism. If you can do fun and realism then do both otherwise do fun. Unfortunately realismcucks are a very loud minority.
Looking at a boring planet on a screen and slgetting into a rocket and blast to a boring planet is obviously the same.
Crazy amount of spin
Can they let gamers or modders fill those? I'm sure many would love to claim a planet and get creative in it.
As per bethesda modding standards, the community has to go through 10 years of genitalia before any mods worth checking out start to pop up
Video games are supposed to be a fun escape of reality...
Glad I went with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk over this.
Cool, so you put in intricate research discoveries and generations of inventions and innovation and matched the sense of wonder being the handful of people that stepped foot on a non-teristrial surface?
"1000+ planets are dull on purpose"
No, they're dull because no human team could make 1000 planets worth of interesting content in a single game development cycle.
Chris Roberts : Hold my beer, for another 50 years.
Yeah, it's already stale and expired by now
You know someone is gonna make a mod that generates random and unique bases from hab complex assets.
And thats exactly why Bethesda doesnt put the effort in. cause they make the game, then the modders make it good for free.. Or it used to be that, now they want to charge for mods and take a cut of the profits for shit they didnt make.
At a scale of 1k planets you're going to have to rely on reused assets and procedural generation. At which point people not into procedural generation say that it's "repetitive". Especially if you only gen once for everyone and not each run lol.
AI generation of assets and code will theoretically eventually resolve this, but that's quite a ways off. They're not even usable for such with human assistance yet. And if you have ai generating the content, it's not really a human team making that stuff lol.
I knew one of the planet designers. His favourite part was coastlines.
He was particularly fond of some fjords he made on the coast of Norway, I think he won an award for them.
Slartibartfast?
Gesundheit.
They could at least make the random PoI's interesting if there was some..randomness to them.
Like, I walk into a PoI, I already know where the chests are, the locked doors, are, where the stupid fucking corpse in the shower is, etc etc. cause I've ran through this PoI 20 times.
I dont know why at least the locations of chests and locked doors cant be randomized. Make things at least marginally interesting, instead of cookie cuttered to extreme.
While I agree, I've been saying that about NMS for years. Not that we want to be comparing Starfield to NMS, of course.
You can, but randomizing chests+locked doors is kinda complicated, and the more "interesting" your generations the harder it is to code and the more dev time it takes. And for a AAA game release you can't really do that.
Key+Lock randomization is something that has been solved, and has been used most notably in procedurally generated zeldalikes. But that's still niche indie territory, and not used for major game releases.
Hasn't this game been in development for like 5 years? And they built it on an existing engine that they have tons of experience with. You could have said "they were limited on how much they could randomize POIs because of the old engine" and I would have believed you because that sounds way more plausible than "it's hard to code, so AAA games can't do it". Like what?
The issue with procedural generation is the game has to be built for it from the ground up and in a modular way. AAAs try to make themselves appealing by using novel new high quality assets that aren't modular.
I haven't played starfield so idk what they ended up doing, but from the sound of it they have pre-made assets/areas that they then place onto pre-generated worlds in a randomized way.
To make one of these "areas" procedural in itself, they'd then have to code a whole system for that. With AAA/3D the hard part is making modular environments without it looking repetitive or ugly.
My point isn't so much that it can't be done in a AAA game. But rather that it's risky to do (not all players like it), and you have to structure your development around it. Lots can go wrong, there's stuff you gotta sacrifice to make it work, etc.
If starfield is on the old bethesda engine then that's even more of a reason. You can't just plug and play an entire procedural generation thing in there without some fairly large overhauls or just gluing on an unrelated system.
In practice, bethesda probably took the lazy route: using their existing engine without major changes, then just making new assets for it, throwing stuff about a bit randomly, and calling it a day.
That's the thing about procedural generation is: it's a lot of effort and sucks up a huge part of the game's development and comes at some pretty strict costs (repetitive looking environments/gameplay, reduced novelty, larger programming dev time to make it work). It can be done, but for a cost-cutting AAA studio they're not gonna bother.
They already have once though. Many of Morrowind's dungeons were procedurally generated in development then edited a bit after, that was the same engine. Same with Daggerfall altho that was a diff engine.
Very different game but Amnesia: the Bunker has plenty of procedural generation as well.
It's not at all impossible for one of the largest game development studios to have some procedurally generated, essentially dungeon content. Doing a bit more than the exact same place copied and pasted would be a huge undertaking yes, but if they wanted to they could have. There are plenty of 3D rogue-likes out now as well. Returnal is AAA and haa procedurally generated levels, far more complicated than neccesary for Bethesda to do in order to populate planets in their game about planet exploration.
I didn't say it's impossible. Just that it's harder, takes deliberate effort, etc. For AAA games they don't bother with that kind of thing because it's larger expense and larger risk.
Just to wheel things back onto the road.
I was never asking for fully procedurally generated dungeons.
I just said randomize chest locations and door locks. It cant be that hard for a company that has been using the same game engine for almost 22 years to implement a node system to roll a spawn chance for a chest, or a door to be locked or not (with a higher chance of node spawns behind locked doors).
Hell, they could have even gone the lazy way and just copy and pasted the PoI a few times and manually changed the cosmetics/appearances.
With space and prefab buildings, they have the ultimate excuse for why every dungeon is identical (at least until you get into the underground caves..), but not every one of them should have the same dead body inthe same location in the same shower, the same succulent on the same shelf. move the body to a different location! Have a chance for a cluster of books to spawn instead of the succulent! Its a prefabricated hab structure, but that doesnt mean they come with such strict instructions as "Only succulent A on this shelf"
Couldn't they just have copied the locations a few times and changed up the doors and chests by hand? Seems like an easy fix.
yes. I haven't played the game so idk the details of what's up. but at 1k+ planet-sized spaces it's hard to have a team go over that by hand. Planets are large. But I have no doubt that bethesda team was probably super lazy as well.
Most of the planets are dull on purpose because my graphics card catches fire if there's too much excitement on screen. Thanks for looking out for me, Todd!
Didn't know anyone was still using Fermis.
Ah yes “…Bethesda's managing director, and Todd Howard, who is Todd Howard.”
Thanks for clearing that up AI writer.
Also how is it thrilling to “blast off” and “set foot on a new planet” when the game is more clicking through menus and fast traveling.
In No man’s sky you actually land. In star field you fast travel.
It was not ai but a joke how he is famous to the wider audience.
In No Mans Sky, you've seen five planets, you've seen them all.
Not necessarily but yea it trades the bespoke environments for generated ones that aren’t so dissimilar.
I think it makes for interesting comparison. Both space traveling games, one comprised of specially designed levels navigated by menus, the other less variety but you actually journey to them and given the sheer number you can actually discover and name a planet no one’s ever been to.
Both valid but I think starfield shouldn’t really advertise in exploration. Unlike NMS it’s far more narrative based.
Yep. There are three space games on the market that are not too far apart: NMS, Elite: Dangerous, and Starfield. They have similarities, they have differences, and they have different target audiences.
They're up to ten or twenty now.
coming from elite dangerous, flying in NMS feels incredibly simplified. landing is literally "push a button to land". either way, they both beat starfield in that department
Totally it is but that’s the style. The game isn’t trying to simulate complexity, it’s more a kick back and relax game masquerading as a prog-rock album cover. Pressing X to let your ship land itself gives you just enough time to hit a joint and make a plan.
weird in starfield i also have to press x to land, so whats everybody's big deal?
Landing or taking off isn't interrupted with a loading screen in either game. You also have freedom of pointing ship to a direction and go there.
Those two things combine to make you feel like you are moving around the game world as opposed to game world moving around you.
that may be true, but starfield has some fun quests and interesting characters, which makes the world feel real and not like im the last human being in the universe
“Press X to Pay Respects”
RockPaperShotgun's review is out now, and I could not agree more. The game is so meaningless.
It's crazy impressive. Especially on a technical level. But it feels like a tech demo more than a game almost. It's still fun to idle time away in, but it's not engaging. At all. It's brain idle time. In a positive way, but also no more than that.
In this case I'd call that a positive statement. That's what I was looking for when I decided to get the game... I'm not going to shell out my dimes to Bethesda hoping for disco elysium, I basically want something that makes demands of my brain just a little more than solitaire or minesweeper.
I don't really agree with it not being 'engaging' though, I guess depending on what you mean. I'm not staying up at night wondering what's gonna happen next, but I'm staying up past my bedtime designing space ships and then running out of cash and going and doing a fun loot-and-shoot mission to get more money to build more space ships. That ain't bad.
I told my buddy the other day that it was Bethesda Menu Simulator 2023, and I wasn't wrong. I was working on my outpost, so I'd place some stuff, go to star map, select the planet with the material, pick a landing spot, land, get up, mine ore for 5 minutes, fast travel to ship, repeat 2-3 more planets, choose the outpost, land, place some more stuff. Then repeat.
You could skip fast traveling to your ship, or do any of the plethera of quests instead of what you're doing
Or, and I know this is a crazy idea, Bethesda could have made a game that has enough content to fill the space (pun intended) they created. Yes. I can run back to my ship through the mined out area I just cleared just to prove a point that the game is as flawless as you'd like to believe. Or, I can offer one fair critique of the game.
I'm looking forward to what modders do with the canvas Bethesda has provided.
Nah I mean you can just fast travel off the planet without first having to fast travel back to your ship, a few less loading screens and menu interactions right there.
Honestly, I didn't even think to just go to another planet without stopping by my ship first. That's somehow... worse? I thought it was super weird when I realized I could do it from the outpost without a ship nearby, but hadn't thought to just fast travel everywhere all the time.
Definitely saves some time and extra loading screens/menu navigation, sorry I wasn't clear with what I meant initially.
i find it less headache to just sit in UC distrobution and fast forward 24 hours to keep reseting inventory to get all the mats I need to build, at least my starter shit.
To give an impression of what it’s been like for me:
I had a quest where I needed Iron. I found a random planet that had it, and picked a spot in the middle of the scan readouts. Arrive, looks like a barren rock - but that’s fine because I only wanted rocks. However, I see something in the distance, and check it out. On the way, I find a wandering trader taking her alien dog for a walk, and sell some stuff weighing me down. I find a cave, where a colonist is hiding out with a respiratory infection - and am able to help them get out as a little mini-quest, though the infection spreads to me.
I come past a little mining installation, where I find a bounty hunter that tells me of a bounty nearby she’s offering to split with me. We do so, fighting a base full of raiders to get to their captain, and I finally decide to leave.
The key here is, I don’t think any of those quests are amazing - they’re likely very dynamically generated. But they’re also not fun to “seek them out” - just to come across them in some other mission, like trying to make an outpost or mining for stuff.
That sounds pretty fun, actually!
Sounds like work tbh
Yeah I literally do all of this stuff near daily in my 9-5 bounty hunting job.
Sounds like play lol I mean it's a game about exploring
If exploration isn't fun to you, that's ok. There's plenty of games out there that are more linear.
Yeah, but since it’s dynamically generated it’s likely the 10th time you see those quests.
I mean, I can't even argue against that. Some people find some forms of work fulfilling, and even switch to games because their own jobs don't actually give them that feeling of fulfillment.
Monster Hunter is a prime example of a game that sets such elongated goals that it's regarded as a "grind-heavy" game - but its players like the grind. Heck, the entire space simulator genre often involves quite a lot of "Space Truck Simulator" gameplay, where you're just engineering good ways to ferry cargo around.
Which is not to say that's what Starfield aims for. From what I've played, it's closer to Sea of Thieves, having adventurous interruptions - where you start a boring, routine mission to bring Sugar from one merchant post to another, but then get ambushed by a skeleton ship, then a giant shark, then find a map to a buried treasure nearby.
Half the reason I play Elite is space trucking. I'm only raising my empire rank to get the largest ship... in order to space truck better. The Fed Corvette I plan to make a combat vessel, but the Cutter will be my space truck.
I found that flow of the game works a little bit better if you just don't fast travel at all. I played a lot of Elite and it gave me a little bit of Elite vibes when I just walk to my ship, go thru inside it and sit down. Then I take off "manually" using the button and jump to the target system by manually targeting it and press the jump button.
What Bethesda can do better is to just mask the loading with a flight animation, for example when you're taking off from a planet the loading should be replaced by an animation where you're going out of the atmosphere. And when you're jumping between star systems, the loading should be replaced by something similar to Elite when we're jumping through the witch space.
All in all, my experience with Starfield has been fine. I loved the weird stuff happening when you're just fucking around. Although the main quest has taken a step back with their sense of urgency, compare it to previous Bethesda games, where there's a big stake going on that pushes you to at least complete the main quest once. In Starfield there's no such sense of urgency.
It seems like Bethesda is leaning heavy on their sandbox side, just letting people go around and do stuff.
With optimized settings from the HUB YouTube channel, my FPS never went below 60.
Oh yes, exploring 6 levels of nested menus is incredibly rewarding
Pro tip: if you just fast travel between Far Harbour and Nukaworld over and over you get the same experience as Starfield for free
Bahahaha
Heard if you 3D print a copy of no man’s sky you actually just get starfield
Todd forgets this is a game and not real life where you have to train and study for 30 years to go to the moon. He forgot that the main intricacy is the stories you can make for the player.
Like assassins creed has big cities. Which feel dead, not enjoyable.
In RL most of the "excitement" in space comes from not wanting to fuck up and die. Games don't have that, Todd.
Some do, but they make it their main draw. The reason Kerbal Space Program is fun, is fun because you can fuck up and die in a million different ways, and not doing so is chalenging and succes is rewarding while failure is hilarious(ly frustrating).
Not fucking up and dying in Starfield means pressing the Use Healthpack frequently enough.
for now, the gameplay-enrichment mods are well on their way
Imagine a realistic KSP with AAA graphics, like replicating historic missions and planned ones, etc.
You just described the KSP RP-1 modpack with high graphics and volumetric clouds mod
Then you have games that do space travel so well that I'm beyond scared shitless in them, like Outer Wilds. So many games have already managed to convey some of these feelings.
Perfect example. Handful of planets, each rich with hand-crafted purpose, space travel is big enough to feel epic, but small enough to not want to skip.
It nails the feeling of exploring a vast area of space, not by being realistic (it is not, by a long shot), but by just making certain experiences feel right.
...yes, they do. Soooo many fucking games have that. There's a whole genre of games built around it. They're called survival games. A relevant example would be No Man's Sky.
I am kinda certain no game has dying. I haven't died in any yet. Although I remember a piece of The Onion of a suicide feature of a car seat. Maybe someone should build a gaming chair with this feature to improve the immersion.
...what? I can't tell if you're trolling. Death is basically the most common failure state of any game.
IRL the stakes are a little higher, don't you think?
Games aren't real life??!
No shit? That was the point
Astronauts aren't bored in space because they're busy trying not to die. games don't kill you when you fuck up or something goes wrong
Yes, they do, just not for real. Why would you expect it to kill you for real? What an absurd standard. You're supposed to be scared for your character's life, not your own. They're the one in space, not you...
Have you ever played games before?
You do know this threat is about some dev saying the first guys on the moon weren't bored although there's basically just sand and rocks to be found? And that because of this it's fine most planets in a game are baren and uninteresting?
The Bethesda guy compared the game to RL. I am just pointing out why this makes no sense.
And what you said was incorrect.
So many games are all about the struggle to not fuck up and die, and they are plenty tense even though they don't affect your real body. Ever played Subnautica? I'm not actually underwater but I'm scared of drowning.
I don't know why the fact that a game can't actually kill you doesn't mean it can't try to introduce tension.
Yeah, planets being barren is shit and realism is a shit excuse for it, but it's kinda irrelevant to your "games don't have dying" point, which would apply even if planets were designed better
Dude... You're even agreeing with me without realizing it. My point is, because a game can't create tension by threatening you with real death, it needs to be interesting in some way.
Yup, classic case of realism not always making the game better.
I went to earth to check it out, I know the lore of why it is a giant sand ball but that also disappoints me. I walked around the approximate area of where I am from and found a small cave. But there was nothing in the cave except some abandoned drugs. I couldn't interact with the glowing mushrooms, mine any minerals, etc. I was hoping for a sprawling cavern or something and just... nope. I might go back to earth to explore it some more but it's so bland.
What do you think is behind that rock?
Another rock.
I was hoping for at least some scattered ruins on earth. Like there are random generated gas tanks and buildings on most planets.
Just something a little unique.
Maybe I should try and learn to mod it and do that.
Disclaimer: My comment is a reaction to the stuff Todd and his minions said in the article, not necessarily about the game itself. I haven't played Starfield yet. I just find the statements really weak and want to express why I see it that way.
Yeaaahh that's nice for maybe a couple of hours, but then it starts to get boring. That's not how you keep players engaged, although there are of course those who don't find that boring at all.
We're not astronauts, we're not there. Astronauts had the thrill of the voyage through space, stepping on the moon and feeling with ones own body how it is to walk on the moon's dust in low gravity. Also astronauts had and have a shitload of scientific equipment and experiments to carry out, i.e., a purpose beyond the mere jolly walking.
If they were just there for walking and that for days, weeks, months, they would get bored pretty fast as well.
Take a look at No Man's Sky. Similar problem. The procedural generation algorithm made planets look familiar after you've seen a couple. There is nothing new. Exploration became unrewarded. But Hello Games has massively improved on that over the years and produced a game where you can sink dozens of hours without getting bored so easily.
I have played Starfield.
The planets being mostly empty is fine. In fact, I think they're too full if anything. You're not meant to travel on the planet's surface for long. You explore a bit if you think you want to build an outpost there, but otherwise you just move on. Most of the "content" is in pre-built areas. Enemy encounters almost always take place in hand crafted facilities, and usually it'll be for some kind of quest so you land right near it.
The outpost system is where the procedural planets come in. You need to explore some to find the right spot to build with the resources you want. The content there is the building, not the planet. The landscape will effect it some, but mostly it's whatever you make of it.
That said, the outpost system fucking sucks right now. You have to send resources between outposts with "links", which take goods into a container and store them in linked containers. All solid goods go in one type, and the same for liquid, gas, and manufactured. I have all of my resources trickling into a main base, so I have all resources available there. This has caused my storage to back up and there's no way to filter out items you don't want. Then no resources can come in so you have to go to your storage and clear whatever is clogging it. There's also no way to delete items as far as I'm aware, so you just dump the excess resources on the ground where they'll remain forever. It's really stupid. This is my storage solution for now.
All the crates flow into the next one, so it's functionally one massive storage container, but with 15 seperate inventories I have to go through to get anything out. There's also no stairs object you can build, or anything like it, so I stacked cabinets into a sort of access staircase. It's really bad, but it's what works for now.
Just a tip if you start playing and build a main base, build it on a low gravity planet so you don't have as much of a problem if you stack stuff like this.
How the fuck did Beth have stairs in FO4/76 but forgot to add them in a game set hundreds of years in the future? What the seventy-dollar fuck?
That's the future Telvanni want!
At least if the Telvanni got their way I'd be able to levitate up to my crates! (I just realized, I may TCL to use the crates because there isn't a good alternative built into the game systems.)
Yeah, outposts seemed to me to be the thing that Starfield was designed and marketed around, but it's so jank. So many basic things missing and so many quality of life failures. It's like they didn't even test it themselves first.
Does it eventually give you a purpose or guide you to making an outpost, I haven't felt much of a need yet.
There's one part in the story that you need to build a thing in a shop or an outpost, but it doesn't require you to really build an outpost. I did it so I can have any supplies for upgrading things without too much effort. I think that was a mistake, but now I'm too invested. Lol.
I hope not, i came for the RPG, if i wanted to play worse version of minecraft i would just go play minecraft.
I gotta be honest this looks like Minecraft construction but even in Minecraft there are ways to sort out and destroy unwanted items
This sounds like factorio without the biters
Yeah, and without any way to actually manage the resources. I want to like it, but I see so many issues that should be easy to solve that they just didn't. Sure, it'll be fixed with mods and maybe DLC, but that shouldn't be required for basic UX.
Another one of my big gripes with outposts is that there is no way to view your existing outposts. There's not a list, and definitely no way to view what an outpost is producing. Hell, you can't even view what an outpost is producing when you're there. It'll tell you the total quantity produced of everything combined, but not of what. It's bad.
[accidentally attracting Satisfactory fans intensifies]
That reminds me of how annoyed I get with Satisfactory as well...
As a Factorio player, this could all be handled so much better in both games, but Starfield is particularly bad. It's like they never even tried building outposts before launch. So many basic functions are missing.
No Man's Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn't matter what planet it is, there's nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.
No Man's Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets. At least in Starfield, there's some magic in seeing actual fauna. You don't get that feeling in No Man's Sky because you've seen fauna and flora on the last 30 planets you've been to. You need those empty planets to make the planets with life actually feel special.
Regarding the variety and interesting features of the bare planets, I tend to agree. My point was rather that there is more to do now and the fun with - even familiar planets - lasts longer.
This is not correct. The amount of more dead planets immensely depends on - spoiler alert - ::: spoiler spoiler the galaxy you're in. NMS has different galaxies with different distributions for lush or dead planets. This also has some effects on the difficulty. :::
I don't want to have to beat the game in order to finally enjoy it.
You don't need to. There are different possibilities for switching galaxies. The simplest ones would be to use portals which is accessible very early in the game.
Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.
For someone whose put in a few hours into the game multiple times as the game has been steadily updated, I didn't know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. So telling me I'm incorrect because it's NG+ COULD have fixed it for me is pretty disingenuous. How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?
As soon as you can use the space anomaly (which happens very early) you already have a possibility. But apart from that, sure, it still takes a bit of effort and is not an option available when starting the game. The latter would be a nice idea though.
By using an internet search engine of your choice.
https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Galaxy_Centre#Travelling_to_other_galaxies
But I get what you mean as this is not clearly communicated right from the beginning in the game and something to be discovered. So your best chance to know this, besides doing the story missions, is to talk to other players or by curiously clicking on some suitable links in the NMS wiki.
I've played Starfield and it's fantastic. There's so much story. The world-bulding is different because there's literally 1000+ worlds and they're mostly uninhabited. I'm not sure what else you would expect. There are some huge, in-depth cities and some beautiful landscapes. But there's also empty deserts and plains, just like we see everywhere in space.
I expected to be able to fly my ship considering I am able to customize it
If you want the astronaut experience, play Kerbal Space Program 🚀
tell this to elite dangerous players
Yeah, the first thing I did when getting to the core was to generate an ancestral galaxy so that there would be more dead worlds. Didn't like having every place overrun with life.
Starfield sounds like an okay game but all the PR responding to complaints sounds like an absolute disaster. Stop letting Todd answer these things directly
I've flipped flopped my consensus about the game a couple times, but my conclusion is this...
Starfield is not going to be what you expected from Skyrim in space, at first. It will seem weird and claustrophobic and broken.
But if you give yourself a bit to acclimate to the world they've built, there is a surprisingly engaging game underneath.
I believe they've left most planets barren on purpose, so they can easily shove DLC wherever they want for the next 10 years.
"New facehugger planet, 20 hours of exciting quests and valuable loot! - $29.99"
That's 100% going to happen.
So far, Starfield is exactly like Skyrim in space to me. There's as many carefully crafted cities, and quite a few carefully crafted locales. There's just a lot more space in Starfield (estimated about 500x more. Skyrim is 15sq miles, and those 1000 planets are each a couple square miles ingame). Sounds like there may be less hand-crafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, but that's hard to tell.
I'm definitely not finding Starfield to be claustrophic. On the contrary, a bit agoraphobic.
I think there's definitely more handcrafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, there's also tons tons more dead space with nothing at all.
Some folks say there's only about 25 hours of handcrafted stuff. I'm not late enough in to know for sure.
Yeah no way. I've played longer than that and I haven't even done the main quest.
I'm approaching that, but I have to admit I take my time and revisit towns a lot.
I've only gone to a dozen dungeons so far that were hand-crafted. There were literally hundreds of them in Skyrim. I'd love to get real numbers.
So far, I am enjoying the hell out of the game, if my lack of twitch reflexes is hurting that a lot. I keep having to juggle between ship upgrades (my Mantis keeps dying to small fleets more than 10 levels lower than me) and face-to-face. Usually by now in other Bethesda games, dying is rare. I'm too stubborn to drop the difficulty, though, so I suppose that's on me.
There's a pirate fleet in orbit around the planet I want to build my first output. Last 5 times I tried to go there, fleet keeps showing up and killing me. That's somewhat annoying.
Save in space often. There's a semi common bug I've just run into that will cause your ship to vanish and it somehow retroactively removes it from all previous saves. No recreateable way to get it back. The only thing that saved me was a previous save where I was in orbit, still lost a few hours of progress.
Weird. I haven't heard of that one yet.
Are you certain that you know what Agoraphobia is? Tip: it is not the opposite of Claustrophobia.
I had agoraphobia growing up. I know exactly what it is. And I had moments of it exploring the planets. I found myself hugging to keep buildings in range and not wanting to stray out into the great wide open. For some odd reason, I got more of that in Starfield than in NMS.
I'm also still fairly early into the game, so perhaps I'll spend more time indoors than I have so far.
EDIT, also, it kinda is the opposite of claustrophobia in some ways. There are some overlaps and nuances (both fears sometimes include fear of crowds). I had a grandparent with really bad claustrophobia who never used an elevator in her life. Ironically, we could relate on a lot. But they were still opposite issues.
I don't know, been agoraphobic for quite some time. Never had problems in elevators (alone), but trains or tunnels are the worst. Guess that's why it's hard for me to imagine how a game could ever transport that.
How can one person have a consensus?
It's only a problem when they can't.
When they have dissociative personality disorder :D
I really don't understand all the negative comments. It feels like a very fun game and I can't wait to play it again.
If your enjoying it then don't worry about the negative comments. Unlike some other space games you dont do much travel yourself, you fast travel everywhere which means seeing the same non-skippable cutscenes again and again, i fast travel to the system, then fast travel to the planet, then fast travel to the surface; then if i want to go elsewhere on the planet i have to fast travel back to orbit then back down to the planet. Its "fast travel:the video game" Given that similar games have managed to let you fly your ship from space down and around the planet for years now I dont why you cant in this, im constantly pulled out of playing for a loading screen
Not arguing with the crux of your argument here, but most fast traveling I've done is way more direct than that. New planet, sure there's a few stages, but anywhere you've been before you can pretty much fast travel to directly from anywhere.
How often are you just hopping between places you've already been?
As to the people saying you can fast travel back to cities, last time (which was about 5 mins ago) i went to go back to New Atlantis i had to faat travel to the system first before i could even select the city, but other times ive been able to directly select the landing spot and fast travel there from another system so I dunno.
I just went and did stuff in Sol, i fast travelled to the system, fast travelled to the city, ran to the bar close to the landing pad, ran back to the ship, fast travelled to orbit, fast travelled to Venus, killed 3 ships, interacted with satellite, fast travelled to staryard, fought a decent amount of people which was good, fast travelled to Neptune, short fight, board, kill 3 or 4 peeps, fast travel to lodge. Then fast travel to mining planet system, fast travel to planet, talk, fast travel to different system, fast travel to planet run to ship, no bad guys just a quick convo, then fast travel back to ship, fast travel to orbit, and now fast travel to different planet.
Also fuel auto refills after every jump just seems to mean more fast travelling if you need to go further
If your enjoying it then im happy for you not trying to detract, just sharing my experience, i just wish they pushed what could be done more
I think if there's a patrol scanning your cargo you have to hit the system before landing, otherwise you'd fast travel your way past contraband scans. I'm having a lot of fun in the game, I agree there's too much fast traveling though.
taking the other side of the argument, planetary landings in E:D are just loading screens at 10x the length. Travelling to a planet at .3 C is neat the first time but then you look at trade routes as “how long do I sit paying attention in case of an interdiction?” StarCitizen falls into the same trap. QD is neat but then it takes you 5 minutes and a fuel stop to go from one side of a system to another. Its mundane trudging for reality rather than getting the boring monotony out of the way of the player.
Just because the tech exists doesn’t mean it makes for compelling gameplay.
I can agree with this but I do wish it involved fewer loading screens and clicking through each time. If you're gonna skip the "realism" to make it more convenient then make it actually convenient.
With that said despite that and the fact I'd love to fly the ship over the planets manually, I'm really liking it so far (2h in).
Yeah I can't really disagree with people's assessment of how much travel-by-loading-screen there can be, but like... while it's there, I just mostly haven't noticed it. Thirty hours in now and I find I'm mixing up fast travelling wide distances with "manually" travelling by launching into orbit and jumping place to place fairly regularly, I don't think I'd even have thought to criticize it without coming here.
I like how immersive travel can be in a game like NMS, but it's not like it's all that exciting or fun to pull into the atmosphere for the 500th time and maneuver to your landing pad, or spend longer than a loading screen amount of time to boost out of atmosphere to hit the jump button. We're exchanging one form of slightly tedious load for a different one.
The best answer I have to minimizing the interaction is setting routes from your mission list. On PC this cuts down to L > click mission > R > hold X.
It is still 4 discrete inputs, which sucks, but it is substantially better than navigating by the star map which is how my brain defaulted to fast travel for most of my first play through.
There are all kinds of possibilities, and for one example of a video game system for travelling among the stars that gives you a sense of actually going somewhere without getting too dull I'd point to EVE. You can go anywhere, but there are distant and dangerous places that take actual effort to get to. It lets you get some kind of sense of the distances involved. Having made that comparison it's hard to avoid noticing that the space combat (even against NPCs) and ship outfitting are quite good too compared to how it looks in Starfield. Planetary interaction was pretty tedious when I played it, but EVE is mostly really good at the space stuff.
Another example would be good old Star Control II, another of my favourite space games. Another one that managed to make space feel big. You had to carefully manage fuel and resources, and if you wanted to go all the way across the map you'd have a long and interesting journey during which many things would happen. Combat and navigation were primitive compared to what people expect today, but still it made it feel like you were exploring a vast space, not just a big catalogue of planets.
As for Starfield, I don't know whether it does that or not since I haven't played it yet; I'd sort of like to find out before I spend $ on it.
you cant really compare gate-to-gate traversal to the other primary space games though. unless you are in a capital ship, generally you have a warp around 3-5 so even Niarja (minus dock workers) only takes a few seconds to cross. If we just focus on hub routes, I don’t recall the exact number, but Amarr to Jita/Dodi is between 25-60 jumps depending on your risk tolerance. That is 25 discrete load screens, with a Leopard and no 0 tick gate camps thats still around 10-20 minutes of just loading. EVE is an exceptionally bad example to pull and why I excluded it.
If you want something like Star Control then running the bubble in E:D is your best option, just never install a fuel scoop.
What I want is just something where travel takes enough time and effort that interesting problems can arise during the course of it that aren't just generic random encounters. Something where different parts of space have local character, something like geography rather than a flat isotropic void where distance is meaningless. In each case the technology used for moving about is entirely fictional, so I don't see a reason not to make it interesting. I was just pointing out examples of that being done, not advocating for either of them being the one true way to do it.
transit in EVE isn’t really anything to write home about though. Target, align, warp, jump, target, align, warp, jump.
Gate camps are player based RNG with a difficulty slider. Do you take the shorter run thru Niarja or do you add an extra 30 jumps for relative safety barring CODE affiliates.
if what you want is a completely bespoke experience where a system has only explicit experiences then you immediately lose out on the design intent behind Starfield and the storyline within is immediately hollowed out and meaningless.
besides, its a video game. everything is a generic random encounter rolled on a table hidden from the player. if you want a better experience, Starfinder is there.
I used to make a living hauling valuable stuff from the outer edge of low-sec in to Jita and such places. Sure it got to be pretty much routine after a while. Well, most of the time. But then it's always possible in that game to go off and do something else instead. The experience of exploring it all for the first time though, having not yet gathered the knowledge and resources to do it in anything like safety or comfort, was fantastic. If you could just teleport instantly from one place to anywhere without significant cost it wouldn't even be a game. I'm not saying that the mechanics of transportation should dominate every game like they do EVE, but having at least some of that sort of thing seems like a good idea in a game that's supposed to be about exploring a space of any kind. I disable fast travel in Skyrim too. It makes things too quick and convenient.
Well, guess what? You can walk to the starport, open the door to your ship, walk into the cockpit, sit down, launch into space, target your next system navpoint, power up your grav driv, and jump to the next system. You won’t be on a planet, you will be in space. Will you find a trader? System security fighting pirates? A bounty hunter wanting to cash in on you? An old lady that wants you to come over for tea? Dunno. But you aren’t fast traveling. Genuinely the crux of your complaint has been “i dont know how it works but its bad and I dont like it”
Anyway, thanks, I guess that question is more or less answered.
You can actually fast travel directly to cities, even when you're in a different system.
Yes, you can. There are several levels of fast travel and you can use it how you prefer.
For me, the criticism is more directed toward the PR and hype. There's still lots to like about the game, it's just frustrating how they spin it.
I'm glad you're enjoying it!
I haven't had a chance to play it yet. Moving and still have to get through BG3. But I'm actually excited for it. Like I see posts over and over and over and over and over and over about the the fact that it's not NMS. Sure, kind of disappointing. And I will agree that if you keep running into the same exact structures over and over, maybe they could have done something different. Have some sort of procedurally generated structures.
But that seems to mostly be it. Every review I've watched talks pretty positively about the other aspects. It's got some bugs, which is to he expected, and apperantly the melee combat isn't clunky and awkward. But those seem to be the biggest complaints outside of not being able to land.
So I'm gonna do what I've seen a lot of people said to do. I'm gonna go into the Bethesda game and play it largely like it's a Bethesda game. Gonna go through the main story, the different factions, do some side quests, etc.
It's not No Man's Sky. Cool. Call of Duty isn't Escape From Tarkov. I have played both of those and loved them both for completely different reasons, and I don't expect them both to be the same. If anything I got bored of No Man's Sky after a bit. Partially because I'm just not into the base building, and itnfelt like that was the main thing to do outside of explore. Little to no stories. Last I heard we still don't have the faction system they talked about when the game was first launching. Starfield has things going for it over NMS.
I think people had their expectations too high. People are expecting it to be as good as skyrim was for 2011 but in 2023, but I went in expecting it to be as good as (vanilla) skyrim is now and so far that's what I feel like I got.
Yeah, I had no expectations and I like it. I always get disappointed when I have high expectations.
Tbh I'm mainly disappointed in the graphics of the surroundings.
I really like the game so far but it really needs some kind of vehicle for travelling around planets. Like the exocraft from No Man's Sky.
You can't even traverse the whole thing, right? Don't you hit a barrier and are forced to backtrack and take off/land somewhere else?
Yeah but it's a fairly huge area... something like 8km in any direction from the ship.
Could be covered pretty quickly in a land vehicle.
4km any direction if I'm not mistaken. Takes me around 30 minutes to each it.
It's very, very small actually.
Game engine limitations, apparently. Say a thread on exactly this earlier today.
Agree it is much poorer for lacking them. It's immersion breaking being in the far future, zipping around on an interstellar craft, yet being forced to explore slowly on foot. I really can't even use the ship? Cmon.
They thought they had a brilliant idea, but it's not. It's a classic. The space is beautiful, of course, but it's the interactions that make a game unique. No interaction, no party.
Bro I've spent at least ten hours just building cool space ships.
The ship builder is just tons of fun. I wish the controls were a little bit more obvious but once you get the hang of it, I think it's my favourite in genre. I love building something neat and then going to check out the interior walkthrough, particularly. I think I need a save where I just cheat in millions of credits so i can experiment for a while
What are you gonna do with it when you are done?
Photo mode in space?
Your ship is kinda like a player home you bring around with you. Having one that uniquely suits your needs and preferences is cool, and also I want a damn weapon workbench.
There is space combat
It's pretty garbage though :/
1v1 me in space punk
Is it? I find it pretty fun, sure games like everspace did it better, but that is literally a space dogfighting game lol.
NMS space combat is noticably worse in comparison, and some of the upgrade paths and the ability to adjust your reactor usage (very reminiscent of FTL) make it interesting enough for me.
nice argument lol
Who needs logic and rhetoric when you have 💰
Lord knows there’s enough content creators now to self sustain shit games and businesses for all of time regardless of what genpop is interested in
Why don't they just have Skyrim level of detail on all 1000 planets, smh!
Yeah. I failed math on purpose too.
If there's more going on outside my window than in the $90 game I just bought, there's a problem.
Long haul flight simmers must really confuse you
I have MSFS2020 and enjoy completing long haul flights. literally a whole workday spent where I see nothing but cockpit controls and the sky through the window, with no interaction needed due to autopilot. then I bring her in to land 10 hours later.
and that's fun.
fun is what you make it man
Very different games and very different expectations of effort spent. I've space trucked a lot in Elite, spending hours going back and fort. But it was never dull, more of a relaxing experience.
That comment stems from games failure to live up to its promises.
This game was marketed as an explorers game with 1000 planets to see, for example.
None of those planets have even the half of the content Skyrim/Fallout has. None of those planets are barren as Elite's planets, either. You can't traverse them more than 30 minutes, so it doesn't even scratch NMS itch. People that liked the exploration of any of those four games would dislike this games exploration very much.
The person above was probably expecting a more lively game, like any other Bethesda game and got whatever this is instead. It's completely justified to be disappointed.
I have no clue what people are talking about? I have beaten it twice and surveyed an entire solar system and there was plenty. You can fly around to any point in most planets and moons and have stuff generate at each landing, within hiking distance.
I feel like the game is so big and good, the haters are just hating and being stupidly immature about it.
I think here we are reacting to the colossally dumb reasoning in the quote from the article. Astronauts had a few things to be excited about that gamers... won't
Beaten it twice? like the main story? Honestly I forgot Skyrim had a story too. I always wandered for so long I forgot what I was doing.
Didn't this game come out like last week?
Everything in the game is "within hiking distance" because that's how the game generates planets. You don't just "land on a planet". You go through several hidden loading screens and arrive in a 1km x 1km square of planet.
Thats exactly what they were saying
Your point is?
*Fast travel around to any point.
Ng+2 ? Any more change at +2 over +1, apart from the item & ship? Does the suit even improve ? And the ship ?A good mantis still is better I found
I've been enjoying Starfield - but the empty planets suck, especially without vehicles. The scanning thing is boring and dumb, worse than trying to get 100% on a NMS world. It's a shame that fast travel disconnects you from the space feel of the game, but it makes the rest of the game playable. I like the game overall, but they have definitely dropped the ball on space travel. In theory it'd be cool to come across different "dungeons" etc, as in Skyrim when wandering around, but doesn't happen in Starfield because you're generally not going to happen upon them. It's not interesting to drop down to random planets.
I've found all kinds of shit on planets... spacer hideouts, caves, artifacts.... look harder
Yeah started finding some neat stuff as I go further out. It's not that it's not there, it's just that you don't tend to stumble upon it. Like I'll go to a planet do a mission open up and scan and see some POI like 1200m away. Now do I really want to tedious run over empty nothingness to see if it's like a space hut or another pirate base etc? I definitely check out nearby POI especially if they are on the way to where i need to go. (Still having fun in the game though and I guess later having options to at least poke around in new places will be fun and i'm curious if the critters are fixed or procedural, like will there be variants all over or just the same few species)
I gave Starfield a fair chance, I played it for 20 hours, patiently waiting on why it deserved an "8.4" rating from critics. But it never delivered. The gameplay is a copy of Fallout 4, the user interface is a mess (they've gone backwards somehow) and the world is just so generic and uninspiring that I couldn't bear one more minute of it.
I can see why it's got a 5.5 from real players.
On a side note, the gaming reviews now mirror Rotten tomatoes. What the professional paid "critics" love, doesn't necessarily mean the players do, and vice versa. The real players always give a more fair rating.
Imagine it in five years when the modding scene has popped off though. It could truly be something spectacular. Which is frankly the only saving grace of Bethesda games. They're a solid sandbox/framework for others to fill in.
Bethesda, are you high?
Did this game focus on anything in particular and do that well? Exploring isn't it.I'm tired of being negative gamer. This game looks fun even if it isn't mind blowing, but seeing as I've never played a Bethesda game I think I'm just as likely to play one of the older games because they look about as good.
There does seem to be some people out there who are just radiating negativity about this game even more so than most.
I played a good few hours last night and it's Skyrim in Space which is what I wanted.
I don't know if it's the Xbox console exclusivity that's bringing fanboys out the woodwork or just that people like to attack a big, hyped up release like they did with Cyberpunk, but it's brought out the worst in people.
Wasn't Cyberpunk actually catastrophically bad at release, and then got fixed later?
Depends on your platform, PC and Current Gen machines were pretty good from day one, bar a few little bugs.
Only the bugs are gone. Weird design decisions and some horrendous mechanics are still here. It's still isn't an incredible game, but not a bad game either.
Having tried a bit of it, this game is fun. It plays a bit like outer world but bigger and with a more mature tone.
But i am really glad that after getting hyped in spring i actually forgot it was coming out. My gpu was not prepared.
Personally it feels like a lot of the promise of Mass Effect: Andromeda was channeled into Starfield and they took the launch version of the story in No Man’s Sky and ran with it. It definitely stands on the shoulders of other games but it is a reasonably solid iteration.
The game is good, I have fun with it more than Oblivion and Skyrim, as well as Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.
People are just complaining to complain.
The only Bethesda game I like more than Starfield is Morrowind.
It's a pretty entertaining crafting-shooter, but it's not an AMAZING one.
counterpoint: there’s not a single “amazing” game of this genre. Elite Dangerous does the space sim perfectly, but it’s boring apart from that. No Man’s Sky has the wonder and exploration, but every planet is functionally the same. Starfield expands on No Man’s Sky with a comprehensible story and actual gameplay. Star Citizen will never come out. Did i miss anything?
That maybe so, but if Earth had 1000 moons, we'd have likely gone to one with something interesting on it.
Just wait then DLCs start to populate the void...
Apart from that, what I've seen on some YT videos is impressive - When they populate a planet, they really mean it.
I'm an Elite Dangerous veteran and have no problem with that. I think it's more realistic.
I'm about 18 hours in and the illusion of variety hasn't worn off yet. Plenty of things to find, with some travel time though. Unlock/upgrade your backpack boosters and it's almost like Tribes though, as you go flying across the landscape in short bursts to keep moving forward in the air.
Shazbot!
New match starts and half the team instantly spams
"I've got the flag!"
"I've got the flag!"
"I've got the flag!"
"I've got the flag!"
"I am the greatest!"
"No."
"I am the greatest!"
"It's almost like Tribes" are the four magic words to get me interested in any game.
Oddly enough, it's misleading. Planets are covered with procedural generated POIs what he meant is that the environment of most planets is barren. I wish there were actually unexplored planets that weren't covered in POIs too.
This is a nice sentiment, but it falls apart when you realize that a lot of the exploration is procedurally generated POI that eventually copies not just assets, but layouts and granular details. That tends to detract from a sense of wonder and mystery.
Which is fine, if they would just embrace that instead of trying to change how people perceive their work.
It didn't take me long to find two resesrch facilities that were identical down to enemy and loot placements less than 1km from each other.
That's exactly it-- The game is what it is and will be alot of fun for many people. They'll have nailed some stuff and missed the mark elsewhere...
But all the spinning shortcomings as design decisions is off-putting. Like if a restaurant is taking a long time to make my food, just say "it'll be a few extra minutes..." Not "Actually the anticipation of waiting a little longer will enhance your enjoyment, so you're welcome."
I still haven't found a completely empty planet, there is always outposts, abandoned mines or caves with space pirates or other factions. Every time I walk to a point there is like 3 more points you can just explore endlessly
That's false as moving away from your ship a certain distance (I think 6 or 7 km), it'll literally tell you you've reached the boundary of the area and you need to land somewhere else to get a new stretch of land.
Yeah but that's a long walk, I usually do about three or four locations and I'm over encumbered, maybe once my ship is upgraded and can store more junk I can stay on planet longer
No! That's impossible! I was told by people who played less than an hour if at all that you simply can't walk or fly anywhere and MUST fast travel everywhere.
This particular point really annoys me, I'd love to have somewhere that actually feels remote, where I don't have four more copies of the same mining and science outposts in visual range. No matter how large humanity has become it just doesn't make any sense that you can't find a single ~15km square without anything man made on it.
The best remote places I've found so far has been in some quest-specific areas, but even then there's usually a facility somewhere within a kilometer of the quest location.
Yeah I had the same thought, the caves and stuff are cool but finding so many abandoned outposts full of people is kind of weird
Especially on planets supposedly never surveyed by anyone ever.
We came here and set up a secret medical research laboratory, and have since abandoned it, and not once did we have the area surveyed
I totally agree, I wish there were actually some barren planets without POIs.
Why are they selling it as a fantasy action adventure game when it was a moon simulator all along.
The moon is boring, so every planet in the universe must be boring. Earth is mostly capitalist right now, so every planet with humans must be one form or another of late capitalist dystopia. A whole galaxy made of inert rocks, fast travel, and people eager to exchange gunfire with you.
I haven't played it yet, but from what I've seen the setting looks even more bleak and depressing than Bethesda Fallout.
For all the problems the game has, the major thing they get right is the environment.
Almost every area looks more than great, some are industrial, luxurious, barren, creepy, outright hostile, or cozy, but they are usually always gorgeous.
The environments are what pushed me to keep giving the game a chance after the initial shock of not having a cohesive overworld.
The setting is actually really cool. New Atlantis is actually quite utopian looking. I haven't gotten too deep into the game yet, only about 3 hours so far.
New Atlantis does look pretty cool, but I worry that it seems a bit empty. From what info I can find it seems to have maybe half as many named NPCs as the average Skyrim city even if it is three times the size. But maybe there are many more and they just haven't all made it to the wiki yet? I don't know, it's little things that annoy me. Like it's the glorious spacefaring future and every city is still full of fast food franchises selling coffee in what look like exactly the same kind of disposable cups with plastic lids we use today? Maybe that's a failure of imagination too small to complain about in itself, but it seems representative of how everything is when you look closely. Is it meant to be allegorically examining the social problems of our current world rather than presenting future humanity as doing something genuinely new? If so what's it trying to say about that, exactly? Where's the deep lore? Where are the characters you'd actually care about as people rather than video game NPCs that help you advance a quest? I was hoping for Skyrim in space, but to me it looks more like Fallout 4 in space. Never mind the reviewers who compared it to Oblivion and got my hopes up. The only thing it has in common with Oblivion is the Annoying Fan who I must admit is genuinely annoying.
Eh well, it's a Bethesda game. I'll probably give in and play it eventually.
this game is a lot more like KOTOR than any of the bethesda games. if you loved KOTOR you will probably love starfield
and people will always bitch about the NPC amount, whiterun is too little (but everyone is unique). well okay, we'll add an actual city population but now everyone is just a random citizen (but it looks like a city size population)
How is this any different than No Man's Sky?
Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy fewer planets.
I think they meant in terms of disappointment
Hello Games put a lot of effort into giving NMS a plethora of free updates over the course of years to make good on their promises.
We all know damn well Bethesda isn't gonna do shit except a couple of over-priced half-baked DLCs.
HG just kept duct taping more crap to the game without adding any depth or integrating their crap together. It's still an incredibly shallow game where you've seen all that there's worth seeing on the first day of playing.
Here are the patch notes via wiki. They went hard.
That just isn't true.
https://youtu.be/qXGUOWMNxqc?si=djyB5X3wsnLbnn5Z
But that's real life, this is a video game. People will not share that same respect for it lol.
ROFL…
Straight out of "30 things I hate about your pitch", which is a great GDC talk. In that talk he has one thing that is "in the real world you can't double jump". Don't make a realistic setting that is realistic just because.
Classic!
The thing about video games is that they're a multivariate equation. Fun is a variable, and so is realism. Depending on how much realism there already is, and the nature of it, adding more can also increase the fun but it can also take away from the fun. There's a reason that even the hardcore simmers who do things like drive pretend trucks across Europe in real time or run pretend air traffic control at pretend airports pay to pretend to do those things instead of getting paid to do them for real.
Yeah, fun should always come before realism. If you can do fun and realism then do both otherwise do fun. Unfortunately realismcucks are a very loud minority.
Looking at a boring planet on a screen and slgetting into a rocket and blast to a boring planet is obviously the same.
Crazy amount of spin
Can they let gamers or modders fill those? I'm sure many would love to claim a planet and get creative in it.
As per bethesda modding standards, the community has to go through 10 years of genitalia before any mods worth checking out start to pop up
Video games are supposed to be a fun escape of reality...
Glad I went with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk over this.
Cool, so you put in intricate research discoveries and generations of inventions and innovation and matched the sense of wonder being the handful of people that stepped foot on a non-teristrial surface?
Edit link I intended to hyperlink
Did you mean to post a YouTube video about a bicycle car?
Haha no :D
\
You people want to hate this game so bad 🤣
Looked boring af, now getting confirmation it's boring af