• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

STARFIELD |OT| 2023: A Space Toddity

The ship can travel… faster. Sure not realistic with today’s tech, but… psst… grav drives are not either.

How much faster?

Planet transition will still take longer than 6-7 seconds you currently take.

Game will do same thing, loading new planet in both cases. With seamless travel, it will just increase their workload to create assets for transition.

This effort will be far more productive if they focus on adding unique quest lines on planet surfaces.
 

Sybrix

Member
Their games are immersive when you are exploring. When you are doing quests, their animation system itself will remind you it's a game.

They are immersive for about the first 10 hours of this game, after that you know if you find a cave or research lab or outpost it's going to be what you have experienced already. This is my main issue with the game.

The warning signs were there though, as soon as Todd Howard said 100s of planets..... you knew, you knew it would be rinse and repeat and that's excatly what it is.

Such a dissapointment.
 
They are immersive for about the first 10 hours of this game, after that you know if you find a cave or research lab or outpost it's going to be what you have experienced already. This is my main issue with the game.

The warning signs were there though, as soon as Todd Howard said 100s of planets..... you knew, you knew it would be rinse and repeat and that's excatly what it is.

Such a dissapointment.

It badly needs modular dungeons.
It pulls POIs from a single pool so you find picnic scenes on moons without atmosphere.
There's also the issue of dungeon gravity not matching the outside...
And the most annoying thing for me: it wipes your save when you go to NG+ so there's no chance you'll ever go back to the original universe in some late expansion - but it also forgets all quests. You can only skip part of the main story. I want to fast-forward all faction content!
 

BigLee74

Member
Planet exploration is poor. So poor, I just didn’t do it.

I still visited lots of different planets for research purposes to gain money, but I rarely even bothered with the points of interest after the first two or three.

The tech to generate the planets is great, there is just nothing to do when there (and traversal is an absolute CHORE). That’s the nature of the beast. How can you have 1000 life size planets and make them entertaining?

What’s important to remember is that it’s not the main point of the game. The factions and their many quests are - those will take you to all the curated areas that are interesting and unique, and there are LOTS of them.

If you do nothing but land on random planets waiting for the game to come to you, you are going to be very disappointed.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
If you planet hop, it will always be broken down by something.

Either you can fly a space ship, or you can do it quickly like they do it here.

I find planet hopping to be superior experience compared to exploring a single land mass. New biomes to see always is exciting.

What they need to do here, is add something to look forward to when I land on a new planet.

I think they have foundation of great franchise here. It's already quiet addicting. It does need a bit more work though.

Not to mention the area that is generated when you land is huge, larger than the entire oblivion map. Running, it takes your character 30+ minutes to run from corner to corner. LOL

This is one of those imaginary problems that bothers people that don't play this game but isn't an issue for the people that actually do.

@ BigLee74 BigLee74 , I land on random planets all the time and "find the game" so to speak. It's true that this can be somewhat predictable, almost all the planets have abandoned stations taken over by pirates or ecliptics, I like the combat loop though.
 
Last edited:

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
This is one of those imaginary problems that bothers people that don't play this game but isn't an issue for the people that actually do.
Of course the “true fans” get it. High bar that sure drives change… cue for obvious thing being blamed on engine, tools, stuff that is not updated because… well not a priority as “true fans get it”.

Everyone that does not get it / finds a fault? Either they are not playing it or they are not true fans.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Of course the “true fans” get it. High bar that sure drives change… cue for obvious thing being blamed on engine, tools, stuff that is not updated because… well not a priority as “true fans get it”.

Everyone that does not get it / finds a fault? Either they are not playing it or they are not true fans.

I honestly don't think someone that wants to run in a straight line for a few hours is a fan of gaming or themselves. LOL

I think the landing zones are plenty big for the content that is contained on the planets. Sure, if there were huge hidden cities and things like that on most planets you might need it to be bigger, but the game would have come out in 2033 in that case.
 
Last edited:

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Came across another outpost type I havent seen yet. Its pretty big. Didnt want to post multiple pics in here.



Noticed another new tree type, or at least a type of palm tree I never see.
 
Of course the “true fans” get it. High bar that sure drives change… cue for obvious thing being blamed on engine, tools, stuff that is not updated because… well not a priority as “true fans get it”.

Everyone that does not get it / finds a fault? Either they are not playing it or they are not true fans.

That's clown talk from a fanboy is what that is.
 
Holy shit, one of the Neon activities ended up with me killing a guard that was shooting at me. It ended up turning almost the entire city against me, I killed so many security team people. Now one of the main story missions is taking me there and I’m trying to romance Sarah for the achievement and it’s impossible to do the mission because everyone is shooting and if I shoot back she leaves. I went to the bounty board on Jemison… 300k paid to clear that bounty 😭

We will see if it makes any difference.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Holy shit, one of the Neon activities ended up with me killing a guard that was shooting at me. It ended up turning almost the entire city against me, I killed so many security team people. Now one of the main story missions is taking me there and I’m trying to romance Sarah for the achievement and it’s impossible to do the mission because everyone is shooting and if I shoot back she leaves. I went to the bounty board on Jemison… 300k paid to clear that bounty 😭

We will see if it makes any difference.
Brutal lol. I always have 30 saves for just such an occasion.
 
Brutal lol. I always have 30 saves for just such an occasion.

Yeah I should have done that but some of these missions seem like they’re impossible to do without getting people to attack you.

But at least it worked. When I took the elevator up to Neon, like twenty security bodies fell out of the sky and onto the ground but no one is shooting 😆 I guess it’s some sort of glitch.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Just noticed this lol. Very handy.

When piloting a ship and adjusting power allocation, you can hold up or down on the dpad for 1 second and then let go. It will fully empty or fully fill the power bar instantly. Sooooo much faster.
 
I’m now starting to fight

Starborn

and getting some sort of “essence” or something when I murder them. Also finally starting to get weapons and equipment that beat the Mantis stuff I got super early in the game.

I see now why people claimed you need to play a long time for things to click and start opening up. Not that I am making excuses for the game, that’s poor design. But I am glad I stuck with it.
 

Fredrik

Member
If you planet hop, it will always be broken down by something.

Either you can fly a space ship, or you can do it quickly like they do it here.

I find planet hopping to be superior experience compared to exploring a single land mass. New biomes to see always is exciting.

What they need to do here, is add something to look forward to when I land on a new planet.

I think they have foundation of great franchise here. It's already quiet addicting. It does need a bit more work though.
They should add bigger local quests, there are lots of cool areas to explore but most side quests are just simple delivery requests.

Every time a quest stays longer at one place and demand some traversal through caves or underground base or a tower etc I end up enjoying it.

And they should add some more difficult enemies as road blocks, mini bosses, BOTW lynels. I love the combat, I want more challenging combat scenarios.

In general most side quests are just over too quickly and the easy fast travel system makes them even shorter than they needs to be.

Removing fast travel and have some maniac chase you off into space for a dogfight would be cool. Or interrupting fast travel and traversing a dangerous asteroid field. Or a dangerous storm on a planet coming from nowhere making it difficult to survive or find your way back to the ship. Etc.
Many quests are showing lots of missed opportunities imo.

The faction quests are great though, and the mantis, I generally liked the colony ship too even though the art team wasn’t involved there, I enjoyed the homestead quests too, and red mile, many other bigger ones too I can’t remember the names of.

In general as soon as I’m forced to stay for awhile I end up enjoying my time. Rushed quests and delivery boy gameplay is not my thing.

——

I started doing the Ryujin faction at the weekend by the way. Delivery boy snoozefest at first but the stealth tower was great, really enjoyed going through the vents and trying to go through it all without any kills. Haven’t finished the whole questline yet so we’ll see how it lands but I had low expectations from the talk here so right now I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would.
 
Last edited:
They should add bigger local quests, there are lots of cool areas to explore but most side quests are just simple delivery requests.

Every time a quest stays longer at one place and demand some traversal through caves or underground base or a tower etc I end up enjoying it.

And they should add some more difficult enemies as road blocks, mini bosses, BOTW lynels. I love the combat, I want more challenging combat scenarios.

In general most side quests are just over too quickly and the easy fast travel system makes them even shorter than they needs to be.

Removing fast travel and have some maniac chase you off into space for a dogfight would be cool. Or interrupting fast travel and traversing a dangerous asteroid field. Or a dangerous storm on a planet coming from nowhere making it difficult to survive or find your way back to the ship. Etc.
Many quests are showing lots of missed opportunities imo.

The faction quests are great though, and the mantis, I generally liked the colony ship too even though the art team wasn’t involved there, I enjoyed the homestead quests too, and red mile, many other bigger ones too I can’t remember the names of.

In general as soon as I’m forced to stay for awhile I end up enjoying my time. Rushed quests and delivery boy gameplay is not my thing.

——

I started doing the Ryujin faction at the weekend by the way. Delivery boy snoozefest at first but the stealth tower was great, really enjoyed going through the vents and trying to go through it all without any kills. Haven’t finished the whole questline yet so we’ll see how it lands but I had low expectations from the talk here so right now I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would.

Zipping across planets for quests doesn't feel great.

That's why I feel they are still experimenting with quests that work in this setting.

Agree, anywhere I had to stay and explore over 1/2 hour I enjoyed them a lot. Like Sarah's quest on Cassiopia was great.

Also I spent almost all 100 hrs of my playthrough exploring galaxy. I feel each system needs atleast one planet with a 1-2 hrs long unique quest.

That will make random exploration of galaxy so much better. Have stopped playing for now, hoping for survival mode or quests like these.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I’ve managed to get through this done all the faction stuff and I have one main story mission left.

I’ve not touched ship building and don’t understand the planet colony building thing. I’ve put this beacon down but then cannot build anything else.

Ship building just seems convoluted. This doesn’t fit or that makes your balance go wrong or you can’t reach this or that so just fucked that off. Some people must have more patience or more time than me the ships they've come up with.
 

Fredrik

Member
Zipping across planets for quests doesn't feel great.

That's why I feel they are still experimenting with quests that work in this setting.

Agree, anywhere I had to stay and explore over 1/2 hour I enjoyed them a lot. Like Sarah's quest on Cassiopia was great.

Also I spent almost all 100 hrs of my playthrough exploring galaxy. I feel each system needs atleast one planet with a 1-2 hrs long unique quest.

That will make random exploration of galaxy so much better. Have stopped playing for now, hoping for survival mode or quests like these.
Yeah agreed on everything, except that I still can’t stop playing.

I think my favorite quest so far was the NASA tower thing with the museum installations and the gravity swap. Absolutely loved that.

I like the one with the two dimensions too. And the pirate quest down on the hellhole planets with the bigger alien at the end. And the Mantis.

I actually kicked Sarah off my ship early in my first playthrough and haven’t brought her to the ship on my second playthrough, so haven’t done her quests, didn’t like her condescending tone. Maybe I should try again now that mods has at least thiccen her up a bit.

All in all I understand most complaints but for me the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s my fav game of the year.
 

Gavon West

Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
I played Skyrim recently, just to go back to see if i was recalling it with rose tinted glasses........... i wasn't.

For those that havent played Skyrim in a long time, go back and play it for 6 hours at least, then play Starfield and see how backwards this game is compared to Skyrim.

Skyrim has genuine exploration, you are finding and discovering things that aren't rinse and repeat and you actually feel like your exploring, as opposed to Starfield where if feels like you jump from one arena to another, each planet is like a bubble, nothing feels connected or gives the feeling of genuine space exploration.
Hard disagree. There are genuine moments of real exploration throughout the entire game, in my opinion. It's not just jumping from 0lanet to planet. It's the whole experience: from collecting resources to ship battles, to creating your ship and outposts, cave diving, abandoned outposts of pirates, to hiring crew on cities. It's YOU living the life of an explorer with an entire universe to do so. I've been finding new locations on planets I've never seen before lately.

There are some copy/paste locations (Skyrim also has them) but there are ones that are much different from the others, too. Sometime if I'm on one planet and there isn't a location to discover, I'll travel to another part of the same planet, and usually there's more that I've missed. More loot. More pirates. More ships to hijack. It's kind of overwhelming in my opinion.

I dunno. I'm a science fiction nut anyway so the setting speaks to immensely.
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
Just noticed this lol. Very handy.

When piloting a ship and adjusting power allocation, you can hold up or down on the dpad for 1 second and then let go. It will fully empty or fully fill the power bar instantly. Sooooo much faster.

I wish that on PC it would be possible to 'unlock' your cursor and just adjust these things with quick point and click. I hate navigating that menu.
 

soulbait

Member
Quick note: I think the last update improves the look of the game? It looks fantastic for some reason, and I all ready thought it looked pretty good!
You talking about on XSX? I have noticed it looking better. I think the resolution is staying higher is some scenes now, but not 100% certain. It could also be the improvement to HDR.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I am looking forward to see what they do for DLC. I want more, like right now lol. I suppose I could new game plus it but I want to hang fire with this save until DLC comes.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Zipping across planets for quests doesn't feel great.

That's why I feel they are still experimenting with quests that work in this setting.

Agree, anywhere I had to stay and explore over 1/2 hour I enjoyed them a lot. Like Sarah's quest on Cassiopia was great.

Also I spent almost all 100 hrs of my playthrough exploring galaxy. I feel each system needs atleast one planet with a 1-2 hrs long unique quest.

That will make random exploration of galaxy so much better. Have stopped playing for now, hoping for survival mode or quests like these.

Agreed. Creating deeper reasons to explore should be something they tackle in upcoming expansions.

I'm taking a bit of a break from the game myself for the moment, not because I dislike it in any way, but just because I put 170+ hours into it over the first couple months. After I play a game for that long I need to switch to something different for a minute.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
I’m still on my break. I have a large amount of quests to still complete. I just really needed to step away. I’m at 271 hours played, and still on my first playthrough. I’ll return after I complete some of the other year end games.
 
Last edited:

JackMcGunns

Member
I guess I’m a bot since I’ve logged 17d so far. Building outputs, making credits, building new awesome class C ships

Here’s my latest creation, called it BumbleBee

79cLdgl.jpg
 

Mindman

Member
Quick note: I think the last update improves the look of the game? It looks fantastic for some reason, and I all ready thought it looked pretty good!
Someone on Reddit mentioned they fixed the black levels in the game so it no longer looks washed out in many places. Can someone confirm?
 

JackMcGunns

Member
Someone on Reddit mentioned they fixed the black levels in the game so it no longer looks washed out in many places. Can someone confirm?

I did notice that, but I also noticed that in some areas the image can get crushed blacks, but maybe I just need to calibrate my black levels again after the update, but I did notice it looks better and the game loads much faster, but could still use some improvement in that area.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Did you do all the quests and activities? I'm still finding new quests every time I play.

Nope, I bet I still have loads to do but I fall into this habit with every Bethesda game. I play like 100 hours, do all the main side content and leave what is more or less the main quest...then I can't bring myself to do the main story line and wait for DLC then do all that and finally complete the main quest.

im deffo gonna jump back in over the holidays and just poke around at looking for stuff.
So i assume you liked the game? It wasn't a disappointment?

I think the games brilliant. One of the best 8 out of ten games I've ever played. I think it has flaws, but I do not regret any of my time with it and I'm well over a hundred hours.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Nope, I bet I still have loads to do but I fall into this habit with every Bethesda game. I play like 100 hours, do all the main side content and leave what is more or less the main quest...then I can't bring myself to do the main story line and wait for DLC then do all that and finally complete the main quest.

im deffo gonna jump back in over the holidays and just poke around at looking for stuff.


I think the games brilliant. One of the best 8 out of ten games I've ever played. I think it has flaws, but I do not regret any of my time with it and I'm well over a hundred hours.
Well don't force it. Just play it if its fun. I took a little break for a week and blew through Cocoon and Jusant and maxed Exoprimal S2 then just went back to it.
 

amigastar

Member
Nope, I bet I still have loads to do but I fall into this habit with every Bethesda game. I play like 100 hours, do all the main side content and leave what is more or less the main quest...then I can't bring myself to do the main story line and wait for DLC then do all that and finally complete the main quest.

im deffo gonna jump back in over the holidays and just poke around at looking for stuff.


I think the games brilliant. One of the best 8 out of ten games I've ever played. I think it has flaws, but I do not regret any of my time with it and I'm well over a hundred hours.
Nice, i will make sure to check it out once i complete my current games.
 
New beta update, still no fixes for broken quests... but hey they PARTIALLY fixed a common bug:

Addressed an issue that would cause space matter to become stuck to player's ship during space travel. Loading a save will now remove the space clingon. Please note: This fix should address any space matter being stuck in your travels, but not in instances where player ships have New Atlantis attached. A fix for that will be released in a later update.
Spit Take GIF


Photo reference of a city attached to your ship:
ld2uag28a5pb1.png


They're taking actual baby steps with updates for this game. I was hoping to continue my playthrough sometime this year but at this rate, I'm just gonna uninstall it to save some space and hope that shit still isn't broken when the DLC launches.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
New beta update, still no fixes for broken quests... but hey they PARTIALLY fixed a common bug:


Spit Take GIF


Photo reference of a city attached to your ship:
ld2uag28a5pb1.png


They're taking actual baby steps with updates for this game. I was hoping to continue my playthrough sometime this year but at this rate, I'm just gonna uninstall it to save some space and hope that shit still isn't broken when the DLC launches.
Honestly that would be pretty convenient lol
 
Planet exploration is poor. So poor, I just didn’t do it.

I still visited lots of different planets for research purposes to gain money, but I rarely even bothered with the points of interest after the first two or three.

The tech to generate the planets is great, there is just nothing to do when there (and traversal is an absolute CHORE). That’s the nature of the beast. How can you have 1000 life size planets and make them entertaining?

What’s important to remember is that it’s not the main point of the game. The factions and their many quests are - those will take you to all the curated areas that are interesting and unique, and there are LOTS of them.

If you do nothing but land on random planets waiting for the game to come to you, you are going to be very disappointed.

This was me. I wad just so shocked at how disappointing planet traversal and exploration is. The problem with focusing on faction and questing is the God damn loading screen Simulator it becomes

I still think they could've made planet exploration better by giving us more resources and wildlife to scan. No man's sky you can scan much more. Course that only goes so far.
 
Top Bottom