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Starfield has 'Mixed' reviews on Steam (Up: 'Recent' reviews are Mostly Negative)

Fabieter

Fabieter

Member
GHG said:
The discourse surrounding this game has been fascinating to witness on Steam. There are some people blaming the mythical "Sony pony" for this games' demise on the platform.

steamcommunity.com

Starfield :: Steam Community

steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com

Never seen anything like it before.
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People don't understand that high expectations never make games any favours.

The last time I felt this way was with calisto protocol last December. I played through it but it was far from my dead space expectations. I even hated it at times.
 
Fabieter

Fabieter

Member
StreetsofBeige said:
For those of you above talking cloud, loss leading, game pass etc.... I say just take any deal you can get and consider it a win and an option. Who gives a shit if a company makes or loses money. Will it last forever? Probably not. Not many things do. I dont care if a store or supplier loses money on a front page Black Friday or 99 cent blowout deal, why do I care if a game company's financials? The company I work for loses money on some stuff too. I dont think anyone gives a shit if some dirt cheap floor cleaner or soap needing to be dumped goes for a loss sometimes, so who really cares. I just care about getting a good deal and let the bean counters worry about it.

I think of all this dirt cheap GP (I subbed for two 3 year terms for $1 and 1 month extra fees over my $60/yr Costco Canada gold) so like when a bunch of us older people did Columbia House CDs in the 90s. It was nuts. CDs were $20 CDN at the time, but if you do those promo plans with CH, you'd get 8 or 9 free CDs and all you had to do is buy 5 regular priced CDs for maybe $30. So $150 for like 14 CDs. I'll take it. I can totally find 14 good CDs among the 100s in the booklet. Then after that the deal it turned into Buy 3, get 5 or something. I forget. At some point if the content isnt there (I ran out of CDs to get) and more importantly CDs at stores started getting cheaper to $10-15, it doesn't make sense to do it. So I quit after a handful of years.

But during that time, I scored a deal. Doesn't sound like much now saving a couple hundred bucks, but worth it as a student.
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The point is that loss leading the industry has the potential to change the industry to the negative. The short term gains aint worth it at all.
 
DJ12

DJ12

Member
GHG said:
The discourse surrounding this game has been fascinating to witness on Steam. There are some people blaming the mythical "Sony pony" for this games' demise on the platform.

steamcommunity.com

Starfield :: Steam Community

steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com

Never seen anything like it before.
Click to expand...
'I am telling you Sony players are glad now they did not got the chance to be scammed by Tod Howard'

Comment of that thread.
 
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Badlucktroll

Badlucktroll

Member
Gp1 said:
At least in my pov Bethesda really did a good job in almost every point they tackled with this game. It has a "good" shooting mechanic, the space combat is passable, the cities are big and well developed, the main characters didn't look like ass, the ship customization options is very interesting, the engine is robust, etc.

The problem is that all these points are connected not by you average open world experience, but with one of the shittiest UI of the last decade.
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I agree, its a passable timesink, but i think the main story is a bunch of hooey
 
Bernoulli

Bernoulli

M2 slut
GHG said:
The discourse surrounding this game has been fascinating to witness on Steam. There are some people blaming the mythical "Sony pony" for this games' demise on the platform.

steamcommunity.com

Starfield :: Steam Community

steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com

Never seen anything like it before.
Click to expand...

DJ12 said:
'I am telling you Sony players are glad now they did not got the chance to be scammed by Tod Howard'

Comment of that thread.
Click to expand...
that thread is just a way to spin the narrative, and everyone agrees on steam:

I don't own a console... Its just a mid game. Was expecting some forward progress from Bethesda after so many years, not steps backwards.
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bro starfield is bethestas first game that forces us to fast travel to get somewhere, this is a step back from their previous games...
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have you considered this game is really mid and regressive from previous Bethesda titles? you're posting on the Steam forums, most of us are PC gamers foremost.
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I own PC, XBOX Series X, PS5, and Switch. I don't care about console wars. This game is simply bad and not up to my standards or expectations (which weren't that high to begin with).
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D

damidu

Member
Gudji said:
Honestly from what I played so far the 7.5 score seems to be spot on.
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same, for a game where you spend most of the time talking, shooting and zipping between places, all three aspects are extremely archaic.

for talking parts; bland ass bethesda writing, horrible looking npcs
for shooting; braindead ai, no fun, almost zero impact gunplay
for traverse; well we already know how they fucked that up, its at their worst.

there are some fun quest designs, and honestly thats the only redeeming part so far

7.5 seems more than fair
 
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Topher

Topher

Gold Member
ZehDon said:
With DF shining a light on the clear lack of NVidia optimisation (45% advantage for AMD?!), combined with 80% of Steam users have an NVidia card, Bethesda shot themselves in the foot. For a good number of users, it's going to run like crap unless they voluntarily make it look like crap.
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Seriously? I saw the thread but have not really looked into the details about what was talked about. Yeah, that's just shitty. No wonder people are pissed. Surprised the positive rating is as high as it is frankly.
 
STARSBarry

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Topher said:
What?
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tDLICqi.gif
 
feynoob

feynoob

Member
Topher said:
Going to keep dropping until Bethesda gets off their ass and addresses the performance issues. Todd Howard can pretend that's already done to his own detriment.
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Performance isn't an issue.
The game lacks core gameplay which will take sometimes to fix it.

Right now, people are rightfully angry due to Bethesda stubbornness.

We will see whether they can do a cdpr move and fix the game, or let modders do the job for them.
 
C

chromatic9

Member
PC has a lot of fans the can lap up a space role playing game, they will be in their element with the aesthetic and ship alone. A bit like a driving sim can be praised heavily but a wider group will see the drawbacks and lack of a product. Not saying this is a sim, more a role play space/ship experience but a lot will be like is this it?

7-8 seems a fair score much like their recent games, It's a good basis for a bigger sequel or expansions/fixes.
 
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Topher

Topher

Gold Member
feynoob said:
Most complaints are loading screen and menu which are clustered as hell.
Performance are the least problematic part with this game.
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That's fine, but I'm reading the reviews from others and the people are bailing on this game immediately are doing so because the game runs like shit on their hardware. I can't blame them a bit considering Bethesda has done NOTHING about it. The game runs ok for me as well except in Akila City and New Atlantis where it can dip into the 40s and even 30s at times and I'm playing on a 4080. Performance is an issue.

GHG said:
I think people would be able to overlook the performance if the game itself more than made up for it.

It's not like baldurs gate 3 has stellar performance on PC (but at least they were sensible and launched with DLSS instead of taking some bum AMD marketing deal).
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The game has made up for performance for a significant percentage. Not like the game is getting mostly negative reviews.
 
ZehDon

ZehDon

Member
Topher said:
Seriously? I saw the thread but have not really looked into the details about what was talked about. Yeah, that's just shitty. No wonder people are pissed. Surprised the positive rating is as high as it is frankly.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I had to look into some of the other YouTube comparison videos to double check - but it’s absolutely repeatable.

Starfield has CPU scaling issues, where more threads/cores can actually decrease performance, and combined with the AMD sponsorship leaving 80% of customers with poorly utilised hardware, it’s really not performing well. As I’ve posted before, I can brute force it - and I’m absolutely loving the game - but for the average Steam user, 30FPS with fuzzy FSR2 visuals, frame hiccups, and long load times would leave a bad taste.

Bethesda has the very real opportunity to release an optimisation patch that drastically improves the performance of the game for the majority of their users. I’m hoping the diminishing Steam reviews are the impetus; it’s a terrific game that people should get the opportunity to enjoy.
 
GHG

GHG

Gold Member
Topher said:
The game has made up for performance for a significant percentage. Not like the game is getting mostly negative reviews.
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It's cratering towards the "mixed" reviews territory.

Games like Ark, path of exile and Cities skylines are infamous for being unoptimised but still manage to hold very positive ratings without any issues.

It would help if they were to fix things on that front but it's not going to solve everything.
 
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ReBurn

ReBurn

Gold Member
AALLx said:
So is that it? 313,993 CCU on Steam? People have been swearing up and down not to read into the 250k CCU during EA and the 270k CCU during release and that people should wait for the weekend. Do we wait for the second weekend? The third weekend? When is it going to beat BG3's CCU?
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What should the CCU number have been for the game to be considered successful? And what does BG3 have to do with it?
 
feynoob

feynoob

Member
ReBurn said:
What should the CCU number have been for the game to be considered successful? And what does BG3 have to do with it?
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Nothing.
People like to compare without applying critical thinking.
BG3 had PC launch as the only platform for 1 month. Was never on subscription service.

Though the game is miles better than starfield.
 
Kilau

Kilau

Gold Member
Topher said:
Going to keep dropping until Bethesda gets off their ass and addresses the performance issues. Todd Howard can pretend that's already done to his own detriment.
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I had to drop Skyrim for a month waiting for updates that didn't fix my quest bugs. I think I will drop Starfield until updates or mods can fix some performance/bug issues. It's been manageable and enjoyable but losing all audio with no fix is just too much.
 
Topher

Topher

Gold Member
GHG said:
It's cratering towards the "mixed" reviews territory.

Games like Ark, path of exile and Cities skylines are infamous for being unoptimised but still manage to hold very positive ratings without any issues.

It would help if they were to fix things on that front but it's not going to solve everything.
Click to expand...

Sure, there are definitely inherent weaknesses in the game itself. Its slow start certainly doesn't help when gamers are keeping an eye on that 2 hour mark to decide whether they want to keep the game or not. I'm not suggesting that fixing performance cures all as some are still going dislike the game regardless. But there is definitely a significant number of reviews that are highlighting performance and crashes. Those folks don't even give the game itself an opportunity to win them over and frankly, I don't blame them. Bethesda needs to stop pretending they already optimized this game and optimize this game.

ZehDon said:
Yeah, I had to look into some of the other YouTube comparison videos to double check - but it’s absolutely repeatable.

Starfield has CPU scaling issues, where more threads/cores can actually decrease performance, and combined with the AMD sponsorship leaving 80% of customers with poorly utilised hardware, it’s really not performing well. As I’ve posted before, I can brute force it - and I’m absolutely loving the game - but for the average Steam user, 30FPS with fuzzy FSR2 visuals, frame hiccups, and long load times would leave a bad taste.

Bethesda has the very real opportunity to release an optimisation patch that drastically improves the performance of the game for the majority of their users. I’m hoping the diminishing Steam reviews are the impetus; it’s a terrific game that people should get the opportunity to enjoy.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm having a blast as well and I'm almost at 90 hours. So I know full well I'm biased here in defending the game, but the reviews for those playing less than two hours are definitely highlighting these technical issues. Bethesda dropped the ball here.
 
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D

Dane

Member
Hugare said:
Movies/tv shows are so much cheaper than games, tho (mostly)

Bethesda is making TES VI next and I doubt that MS would change it in any way, but if Starfield wasnt being made before the acquisition, I doubt that MS would have greenlit it as it is today.

A big open world singleplayer game with no microtransactions at all. It doesnt make sense financially in Game pass. They just delivered it day one on GP because it was already what, 80% done when MS bought Bethesda?

Halo became GAAS, Forza became GAAS ... I can garantee you that TES VI will have some form of microtransactions in it.

@EviLore is right: for the customer its an amazing deal. But I'm curious to see for how long MS can hold this kind of deal.
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Forza is now GaaS because its senseless to make a "iterative expansioney" sequel when you can update the current game, GT7 despite being an iteration of Sport has microtransactions.
 
feynoob

feynoob

Member
If you can have 30+ on a game, then there is something going with that game.
Most people would have quit after 10+ hours.
 
Dirk Benedict

Dirk Benedict

Member
ArtHands said:
Some folks trying to review bomb and then refund it 😬
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I hope they remove those reviews. I don't care if the game ends up with a lower score, or what have you, I just would rather see it under the weight of its own merits, and not some army of basement dwellers, flailing about in their overloaded yellow diapers, brimming with salty piss. :messenger_grinning_squinting:
 
feynoob

feynoob

Member
Topher said:
What? The game has 83% positive rating for those playing over 10 hours. The positive rating increases as the number of hours played increase.
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That data doesn't show first. So people just assume the overall ratings.

It sucks that the game doesn't pick it's bones in the first few hours.
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Member
Topher said:
What? The game has 83% positive rating for those playing over 10 hours. The positive rating increases as the number of hours played increase.
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Yeah, assumption is that most people willing to put up with a game for 10+ hours are going to be more positive. I am sure if you go like 20-30 hours it will increase.

You will have folks that are going to be disappointed but all in all in most games higher hours played equivalent to higher ratings holds.
 
Topher

Topher

Gold Member
Dirk Benedict said:
I hope they remove those reviews. I don't care if the game ends up with a lower score, or what have you, I just would rather see it under the weight of its own merits, and not some army of basement dwellers, flailing about in their overloaded yellow diapers, brimming with salty piss. :messenger_grinning_squinting:
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That's not what is happening though. A significant number of negative reviews are coming from those who bought the game outside Steam and are not eligible for refund. I think the poor reviews are due to 1) people who just don't like the game 2) poor performance. One of those can be fixed and desperately need to be.
 
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