Support NeoGAF

[Archaic101]

Look, I don't hate Starfield, and I don't want to over-embellish criticism that has already been thoroughly leveraged. It's just that, after playing for several weeks now, I'm just astonished at how *old* it all feels. And it's not just the interface, the animations, the fact that NPCs still "disappear" when approaching doorways, the stilted NPC relationships, etc. Though all of that contributes, I have two major problems with the game:

1. Impediments in games need to be a challenges that are overcome by skill, not inconveniences overcome by time management. When I play Resident Evil 4, Midnight Suns, Forza Horizon 5, heck...even Spiderman 2 on harder difficulties, I have encountered gameplay challenges that become easier on account of practice, tactical differentiation, and in-game resource management. In Starfield, my biggest challenges are -I kid you not- encumbrance, inventory, and travel/loading time. It is NOT satisfying to launder your stolen items by selling them to the trade authority and then immediatley buying them back. It is not satisfying to sit though 3 docking/loading screens to return an item to a quest giver. And it is not satisfying to move inventory between your companions' possessions and your own. I, as a player, am not engaged nor bettered by these systems. I am merely inconvenienced

2. Along these same lines, I would assert that the only "fun" part of Starfield is the FPS combat. Despite that, I would estimate that 90% of my game time has been spent otherwise. I have run items between quest givers, scanned plants, engaged in no-risk, banal conversations with my companions, bought and sold items, etc. There is, I concede, an *admirable* amount of content in Starfield...more than possibly any game I've played since AC: Valhalla? But in a space game, why neglect fun things like alien sentience, capital ships, nuanced dogfighting, cool new technology (seriously: grav drives are kind of the only sci-fi thing in the whole game), etc.? Instead, there are stores, slums, banks, mines, bureaucracy, ballistic weapons, fines, bars, corporations...all of which you have to deal with constantly. It's so pedestrian that I honestly can't understand why they even used space as the backdrop for the player experience in the first place.

Well, that's more than enough, I suppose. Again, I honestly don't hate the game. It's just that I was such a big fan of both Skyrim and Fallout 3, both of which I have now become reluctant to ever return to due to my experiences with Starfield...I wonder if these older titles suffered from the same design flaws mentioned in the thread title, but the novelty of their open worlds just outweighed the inconvenience of Bethesda game design..?

 

[BouncyFrag]

Encumbrance and item management are antiquated as fuck and killed the game for me. Such a beating.

 

[zombrex]

Your right about the setting it is so boring and vanilla and most of it would not be out of place in game set in contemporary of even past times.

They had the freedom of the entire universe in the future and they came up with, western town, slumtown, neon nightclub town and modern architecture town. None of it is remotely interesting or inspired.

 

[semiconscious]

Look, I don't hate Starfield, and I don't want to over-embellish criticism that has already been thoroughly leveraged. It's just that, after playing for several weeks now, I'm just astonished at how *old* it all feels. And it's not just the interface, the animations, the fact that NPCs still "disappear" when approaching doorways, the stilted NPC relationships, etc...

very good post, op. as someone who also enjoyed starfield up to the point where i was just tired of it, i completely agree with your 2 main points, the over-all effect of which is to make something as potentially exciting as exploring other worlds into something both tediously mundane & weirdly overly familiar. & a goodly part of this, i feel, definitely has to do with the fact that the game simply is old - old in concept, old in design, & an overly-long 8 years in the oven. &, as well as really straining the limits of 'traditional' bethesda rpg creation, this's only compounded by the fact that they decided to set the game in a 'world' that fundamentally mandates a good amount of fast travel, which seriously undermines the basic sense of exploration & the satisfaction to be gotten from it that's always been a major proponent & selling point of their rpgs up till now...

but not to worry - their older games (up to & including fallout 4) still feel just fine to me. starfield, sadly, was just a case of taking much too big a bite, & not making any real adjustments to their customary approach accordingly, resulting in an experience that feels both swollen & held together with duct tape...

 

[DaGwaphics]

It's a game that allows the player to choose to put time in because they want to do it. If you want to play the game very quickly you can, all the players enjoying the game are choosing to continue investing their time in it. There really isn't any grind in the game which makes it hard to make a credible case that the game is bloated. Sounds like Bethesda RPGs simply aren't your thing, at least not in their current form which is certainly a position that some gamers will have.

Since it is a single player game, it's amazing that it is still the #10 most played on Xbox after a few months, that almost never happens. With the nearly endless expansion possibilities they have with it, it might be one of those evergreen titles that stays in the top 50 for years.

 

[tommycronin]

I think a hoverboard would fix a lot of the games immediate issues and I'm not even kidding

 

[CoreyFlawless]

No it’s fine. Don’t need every it to change. Don’t want every game to become the same.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

It's plenty fun to me, I mean why would you even play a game if you aren't having fun? Just drop it and move on, these threads just scream of "stophavingfun.jpg" energy to anyone that does enjoy it.

 

[radewagon]

Encumbrance and item management are antiquated as fuck and killed the game for me. Such a beating.

Both of these CAN add to gameplay. Both of them CAN make a game more interesting and engaging. They just often don't. I'm playing REmake 4 and the item management, while annoying, certainly adds to the survival horror aspect. The fact that I can't bring infinite resources with me is limiting in exactly the way I think it should be to increase the tension. It's just strict enough to cause me to consider my options while not being so restrictive as to make me curse its inclusion.

As for encumbrance, the way it is used in the Dark Souls series is perfection. The fact that encumbrance is a choice instead of simply a straight penalty is what makes it a good system to include. The slower movement comes with huge benefits so the encumbrance isn't just something you hate. It's something you can accept as a fair trade in order to have insane armor and weaponry.

While I agree that some mechanics are generally awful, there are ways for them to be effective if used in a thoughtful way so that they compliment the rest of the game. Even something as bad as BOTW's weapon breaking could have been tweaked to make it less detestable.

 

[damidu]

I think a hoverboard would fix a lot of the games immediate issues and I'm not even kidding

a hoverboard would make you hit their ancient tech limits even more annoyingly quick.
there is a reason for it not having any ground vehicle, and you can bet its not because no one thought about it.

 

[SirKicksalot]

I don't understand why would you even buy the game when we knew how the mechanics and setting work. That's like me getting mad at Anno because it's not Age of Empires.
Some real "if only you could talk to the monsters energy" in this post...

 

[March Climber]

I agree about encumbrance.

Also, I think they should eventually get rid of level scaling. It sucks that ESO took it out to emulate Skyrim more. I miss the dread and challenge in RPGs of entering areas that I'm not supposed to be in yet. Needing to literally flee a planet due to high level mobs would have been a great feature in Starfield. That same non-level scaling should also lead to more XP earned when you manage to kill higher level mobs, thus giving you the option to earn skills faster.

The pace with Bethesda level scaling always makes their games feel way, way slower when climbing that XP ladder, and no matter what level you're at you still feel like you're struggling just as much as when you would struggle from level 5 to level 6 near the beginning of the game.

 

[Raven117]

It’s just old game design and clunky. Sadly.

There can be fun had for some folks. I wanted tu he one of them but just found the whole thing a slog. And I’m very much a Bethesda RPG fan

 

[Cyberpunkd]

I think it’s just the writing and world building. A lot of elements you see in Starfield you see in Morrowind but that game holds 20 years later.
I think it’s just very vanilla setting, they don’t try anything interesting. Even ME when it came out had great worlds and incredible ideas for the plot, this has nothing. It’s like a foresting on the outside and hollow on the inside.

We already discussed Morrowind, ME (first time riding through Ilos anyone? Talk with Sovereign?). Witcher 3 has Baron’s quest, Cyberpunk also has a few memorable quests (I remember the growing farm, that shit was creepy), what does Starfield have?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Encumbrance has been a pain in the ass since Morrowind. That's why the first mod I always installed when playing any of TES title is the one that removes Encumbrance, the famous "Bag of Holding" mod

 

[bender]

Encumbrance issues were largely solved by Torchlight and I'm really surprised their system didn't get aped more. You get a pet from the start who has its' own inventory slots and who you can send back to town to sell unwanted items to vendors at a reduced rate. The deeper in a dungeon you are (further away form the vendor) the longer the trip takes for your pet and while your pet is away, you are penalized by not having his offensive/defensive capabilities. It's simple but brilliant.

 

[killatopak]

Personally, a lot of these stuff can be fixed by a Survival or Hardcore mode that actually makes these stuff matter and not make it just tedious busy work with no risk. Economy usually always takes the plunge in Bethesda games sooner or later and you become rich enough to buy everything. Actually limiting your inventory more and making it harder to procure stuff and making you proactively decide what’s important to loot instead of mindlessly hoarding everything makes a difference in game perception.

The game just needs more agency and consequence.

 

[Del_X]

Long winded way to say the writing is bad (it is). A lot of the dialogue is just inoffensive garbage.

 

[bbeach123]

The Game had all of their older game cons and lack of their charm . The older game had so much personality/charm in their own way . Starfield was just too safe too corporation,too inoffensive .

Skyrim had cannibalism , this game you cant even harvest enemy's organs to sell wtf .

 

[John Marston]

What saddens me the most is what made the previous games so great; exploration.

Hop around on barren planets for 10 minutes only to find the same copy/pasted outpost or asteroid rocks...

The companions are all bland.
It's like the writers were told to just make it "safe". The choices you make in critical main missions don't matter.

I'm the "chosen one" after about 1 hour ingame gimme a break.

And those powers... Hey we had those in Skyrim why not add that shit in?

I'm a ferocious Todd Howard Whore but will finish this game and never touch it again.

 

[semiconscious]

Since it is a single player game, it's amazing that it is still the #10 most played on Xbox after a few months, that almost never happens. With the nearly endless expansion possibilities they have with it, it might be one of those evergreen titles that stays in the top 50 for years...

you can't be serious: the game was released a bit more than 2 1/2 months ago. it is easily the most anticipated exclusive triple-a release on xbox this year. i mean, how the hell bad of a game would it have to be to not still be in the top 10? which other game pass blockbusters have been released in the last 2 1/2 months?...

that this somehow speaks to the success of starfield seems somewhat desperate to me. i'm thinking it speaks as much to the scarcity of alternatives as it does anything else...

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Inventory limit is ridiculous because when you think about it, you already have unlimited inventory thanks to instant fast travel system from anywhere… if you’re willing to sit and watch loading screens.

It’s the same with credit limit for vendors. Why is it even there? Once again, they have unlimited credits… if you’re willing to sit and wait 48 in game hours.

It’s like the game hates you and wants to waste your time at every opportunity.

 

[March Climber]

Personally, a lot of these stuff can be fixed by a Survival or Hardcore mode that actually makes these stuff matter and not make it just tedious busy work with no risk. Economy usually always takes the plunge in Bethesda games sooner or later and you become rich enough to buy everything. Actually limiting your inventory more and making it harder to procure stuff and making you proactively decide what’s important to loot instead of mindlessly hoarding everything makes a difference in game perception.

The game just needs more agency and consequence.

They might add this mode, but they need to make it much better than Skyrim's survival mode because that one felt broken unless you used specific gear. And if you didn't have certain gear you would suffer from freezing for almost 90% of the world map.

 

[acidagfc]

I think it’s just the writing and world building. A lot of elements you see in Starfield you see in Morrowind but that game holds 20 years later.
I think it’s just very vanilla setting, they don’t try anything interesting. Even ME when it came out had great worlds and incredible ideas for the plot, this has nothing. It’s like a foresting on the outside and hollow on the inside.

We already discussed Morrowind, ME (first time riding through Ilos anyone? Talk with Sovereign?). Witcher 3 has Baron’s quest, Cyberpunk also has a few memorable quests (I remember the growing farm, that shit was creepy), what does Starfield have?

Being hired by a major corp in the infamous Neon city... only to be sent out for coffee.
They must have planned this as edgy and thought-provoking, but no, it's just as dull as it sounds.

 

[Rhazkul]

What's even the point of a sci-fi game without any sentient aliens? Skyrim had Dragons, Oblivion had Daedra Demons....Starfield has what? Space. That's not enough.

 

[Fredrik]

I’m in over 200 hours now, in 2.5 months, that basically never happens so it’s easy to say that I’m enjoying the game.

That said, being over-encumbered is so so sooo annoying.

Using a companion gives you some extra space and your stats and pack can boost your carry weight further.

But imo the game needs tweaked weight values and most importantly a ground vehicle, hover craft, to transport resources back to your ship. No Man’s Sky got that in a later update, hoping Bethesda can add that to Starfield as well.

They could also do it like in ship building where you simply add more storage. A backpack builder. Where you can add storage and boost packs and shields etc. Change colors and visuals and textures. Yeah I’d like that. A lot. I’m gonna go to Twitter and ask for it right away.

I also don’t like the character design, it’s so incredibly bland, faces are okayish but I’m not a fan of boring bodies. Thankfully there are mods now on PC to add some eye-candy.

Other than that I love the game and it’s literally all I’m playing. It is old in ways but for me it’s No Man’s Sky with role playing and I’m okay with that. As with NMS it feels like it’ll never end, which is my thing. I’m definitely not a fan of short games, just means I’ll be finished in a week and then I’m back waiting for the next big thing or complain here that there are no games or whatever. I enjoy being stuck playing games for months or years if possible.

My usual play session consists of building on my outposts, try to find cool planets, build space ships, do raids on pirate nests and ships and do the usual side quests that pops up. Already finished the main quest once so no rush doing that again. Will go for the Ryujin faction this weekend. Done the Crimson Fleet in a previous playthrough and did the Ranger faction on this playthrough awhile back (awesome reward!).

Unpopular opinion but it is a great game

 

[damidu]

What's even the point of a sci-fi game without any sentient aliens? Skyrim had Dragons, Oblivion had Daedra Demons....Starfield has what? Space. That's not enough.

lol. and that is if it actualy had any space, it has static planet pngs and loading screens. thats the "universe"

 

[Panajev2001a]

It's a game that allows the player to choose to put time in because they want to do it.

Is that the excuse we give to Xbox Velocity Architecture exclusives for the plethora of loading screens all over the place breaking any sort of travel and exploration?

 

[Markio128]

What annoys me most are the gamers who cry, ‘it’s a Bethesda game, what do you expect?’ Well, it’s been 10 years since Skyrim, and forgive me for expecting better. Gamers expectations are a lot different nowadays.

I didn’t play Starfield long enough to notice the encumbrance issue, but what killed it for me was the general archaic feel of the game, like someone had modded a game made 10-20 years ago.

Plus, it doesn’t matter how much content a game has, if that content is stuck behind immersion breaking barriers all the time.

 

[Roni]

Cyberpunk had to redesign its whole gameplay because they didn't do a good enough job of considering encumbrance into the design. Avoiding this shit because of the lazy crowd that doesn't want to deal with it is actively holding game design back...

 

[Bernardougf]

Another bethesda/tod's game stuck in the past with garbage engine and assets from 15 years ago riding in the laurels of past success ? ... noooo .. Im shocked

 

[DaGwaphics]

Is that the excuse we give to Xbox Velocity Architecture exclusives for the plethora of loading screens all over the place breaking any sort of travel and exploration?

What does Starfield have to do with the IO hardware/software of the Xbox? LOL. Plenty of open-world games stream data on the box, the engine Starfield is built with appears not to do that however.

 

[Panajev2001a]

What does Starfield have to do with the IO hardware/software of the Xbox? LOL. Plenty of open-world games stream data on the box, the engine Starfield is built with appears not to do that however.

Oh well, sorry next generation console exclusive (on a console that is designed around making data streaming MUCH faster) game made by a first party developer that is expected to focus on seamless exploration blocked by tons of loading screens… and your reaction is “eh, what can you do, engine does do that “… high bar for MS’s games studios…

 

[DaGwaphics]

Oh well, sorry next generation console exclusive (on a console that is designed around making data streaming MUCH faster) game made by a first party developer that is expected to focus on seamless exploration blocked by tons of loading screens… and your reaction is “eh, what can you do, engine does do that “… high bar for MS’s games studios…

Yeah right, game being built for years, that likely started development on last-gen kits, built on an engine that doesn't leverage data streaming in the same way as some others do, but suddenly MS should have forced this.

 

[Kings Field]

I’ve been going back and forth about starting the game but ultimately I don’t have the time to sink into a game with no real payoff. The last Bethesda game I enjoyed was Oblivion.

They did a poor job selling the game to me and others like me in my opinion.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Oh well, sorry next generation console exclusive (on a console that is designed around making data streaming MUCH faster) game made by a first party developer that is expected to focus on seamless exploration blocked by tons of loading screens… and your reaction is “eh, what can you do, engine does do that “… high bar for MS’s games studios…

Loading screens are very short. Like a few seconds, fade in and out. Velocity architecture is doing it's job.

Am not a game programmer so i won't pretend I know about game engines, but Bethesda games and Starfield does enough different from other games. They get a pass due to object persistence and interactivity.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yeah right, game being built for years, that likely started development on last-gen kits, built on an engine that doesn't leverage data streaming in the same way as some others do, but suddenly MS should have forced this.

You are completely right, it is not their job to uphold standards and ensure their flagship games are making use of the hardware / pushing the platform.

Not that a game about exploration needs smooth streaming, you are right, everyone expected all these loading screens all the time and enjoys them. Your bar is really really low.

You are here defending MS for not giving Bethesda more time/resources earlier on and throughout to make sure that something as integral to this game as exploration was not broken down by tons of loading screens. I am sure I will see you complaining about something anti consumer in some other thread about some other company :rolleyes.

 

[JimmyRustler]

The biggest flaw of Starfield is that it feels like a Lego set. Bethesda stopped making real games. curated content is rare and mostly indistinguishable from generated content.

I think Bethesda made a mistake of labeling it as Skyrim in space. It’s more akin to Minecraft in space.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Loading screens are very short. Like a few seconds, fade in and out. Velocity architecture is doing it's job.

Sure it is… there are tons of them and not as instant as you make them… (you meet loading screens far more often than you did in Skyrim, Morrowind, or Oblivion). You cannot be serious…

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Sure it is… there are tons of them and not as instant as you make them… (you meet loading screens far more often than you did in Skyrim, Morrowind, or Oblivion). You cannot be serious…

What I am saying is, VA is doing it's job. I don't notice loading in game once I have played for sometime. It has more loading screens than Skyrim (HDD) but total time spend is similar cause they are way faster.

On HDD this game would be unplayable.

 

[Bry0]

Encumbrance and item management are antiquated as fuck and killed the game for me. Such a beating.

They aren’t antiquated imo, they can serve a purpose, and I think stalker does this well as you need to pick and choose what is most valuable and useful to you to deal with threats. The problem is starfield has no threats, value is near pointless, and thus any concessions you need to make due to encumbrance does not lead to any interesting choices beyond being a time waster.

 

[Krappadizzle]

 

[March Climber]

Cyberpunk had to redesign its whole gameplay because they didn't do a good enough job of considering encumbrance into the design. Avoiding this shit because of the lazy crowd that doesn't want to deal with it is actively holding game design back...

There are people in this thread who are actively listing better forms of encumbrance that are present in other games. The game design argument is no longer a good enough excuse for Bethesda’s outdated encumbrance system.

 

[Saber]

Well, that's more than enough, I suppose. Again, I honestly don't hate the game. It's just that I was such a big fan of both Skyrim and Fallout 3, both of which I have now become reluctant to ever return to due to my experiences with Starfield...I wonder if these older titles suffered from the same design flaws mentioned in the thread title, but the novelty of their open worlds just outweighed the inconvenience of Bethesda game design..?

Thats certainly the case, as Skyrim is basically a gigantic "time waster" simulator. The amount of time I had just to sell my stuff(big note, very small quantity since at the start of the game you can't basically carry anything) is absurd and 100% don't respect your time. It is as if 80% of the sellers in the game doesn't have money at all and the game still use some retard rpg economy where you aways the dumbest person selling your itens for a dime and buying the same item as the price a house made of gold.

 

[Loke]

But imo the game needs tweaked weight values and most importantly a ground vehicle, hover craft, to transport resources back to your ship. No Man’s Sky got that in a later update, hoping Bethesda can add that to Starfield as well.

Yeah, the lack of ground vehicles is supremely annoying. Running around barren moons gets tedious after 5 minutes. But I can see them adding vehicles in a DLC to be honest.

 

[EviLore]

POIs don’t need to all be exactly 400 meters apart. Solving that would make ground traversal less annoying without the need for vehicles.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Encumbrance and item management are antiquated as fuck and killed the game for me. Such a beating.

But that makes it so much more realistic and immersive when you can only carry like 16 weapons, 4 different space suits, and 1 buffet worth of food around with you.

 

[DaGwaphics]

You are completely right, it is not their job to uphold standards and ensure their flagship games are making use of the hardware / pushing the platform.

Not that a game about exploration needs smooth streaming, you are right, everyone expected all these loading screens all the time and enjoys them. Your bar is really really low.

You are here defending MS for not giving Bethesda more time/resources earlier on and throughout to make sure that something as integral to this game as exploration was not broken down by tons of loading screens. I am sure I will see you complaining about something anti consumer in some other thread about some other company :rolleyes.

MS gave Bethesda an extra year, they weren't going to have them scrap the game and rebuild their engine entirely or switch to a different one. The creation engine does what it does, that's the technology used by the studio. That was never going to change, at least not with a release this soon after the ownership change.

 

[Fredrik]

tons of loading screens

For real how big of a deal is this?
On my PC with a standard 980 Pro it takes 3-5 seconds for standard fade to black loading sequence when going inside doors for new areas, I can barely grab a new candy.

Takes two three times longer though when they start showing loading screens for planet to planet travels. But it’s mostly cool since it’s often my own photos which I don’t mind looking at, reminds me of my adventures.

 

[Fredrik]

The character design though. I just uploaded a video when I go through Neon. I don’t understand how a character artist can be proud about this. Some quest NPCs looks fine but random citizens are just plain ugly. Sorry to be so blunt but it’s true. And as a Scandinavian I feel like I should go to Twitter and complain about representation because there has clearly been some questionable cleasing in this universe.