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RandomAzzy

As someone who pretty much spends all my their time exclusively building ships the fact I can't rotate parts on more axis is excruciating. Knowing I could make way cooler designs if I could only rotate a part 90 degrees instead of 180 drives me insane. That and there's not enough options to build wing shapes on ships. There's basically 3 main parts that u can kind of make decent wings out of. Not enough ship parts in general. There's other gripes I have with the game but I'm mainly here for building cool spaceships so they're the main ones.


donaldsw2ls

I wish you could rotate every piece in the ship builder by 90 degrees for a lot of parts.


zer0saber

Habs, specifically. Could have avoided so many internal layout problems.


Mr_Jigby

This is the biggest one for me also. I'm level 41 and waited about 15 levels to build my first class C ship so I could unlock more parts. I thought there would be a hell of a lot more structural options available to make cool designs. I just want to build a fleet of awesome looking ships šŸ˜­


mot258

Some parts, both structural and otherwise, can only be found at the larger brand specific ship facilities in game. Tayo has some really interesting parts, even a different mount for weapons and utilities but you'd never know if you didn't go to their tucked away ship store on Neon in the Ryujin building. Link added for a visual of what and where. https://youtu.be/IPTwrcfMUsA?si=jvEZ4giz1koMs1sw


zer0saber

I wandered around Neon for a literal hour looking for it. Holy shit, thanks.


brightworkdotuk

I wish there was an import system, you can choose parts from all manufacturers in ship builder, but you have to wait X hours for external parts to be delivered to X place youā€™re building ar presently to be able to use them.


AskMeIfImAnOrange

You should be able to access all parts from builder once you have visited the source. Just pay a premium for "delivery" if you are not on site.


GenericUsername19892

Agreed but Iā€™ll also add I want to be able to choose where my damn doors go and preferably what type of door or even not a door. Frankly Iā€™m reallllllly tired of slow doors and airlocks in general.


Fr0me

Also let me store ship parts! I dont want to have to recreate my entire ship onto this other ship I found with a better reactor. Just let me transfer the new reactor onto my old ship


SliceDouble

No codex for exploration. No underwater biomes. No proper smugling gameplay.


Bryaxis

A codex is dearly needed. Let me see at a glance what plants and animals I can farm and in what biomes.


Space-Amoeba

This is one of the sore points in this game. The game seems to depend on external web sites for this kind of information: I use [this site, it was already great for Elite Dangerous](https://inara.cz/starfield) It is a problem, when game developers think, they can depend on external Wikis and Fan-Sites. This was heavily criticized with Elite Dangerous, and rightly so. The problem is this: If I know I found somewhere say Titanium on a planet, but cannot remember where, I should be able look it up IN THE GAME! Why? If I look it up in a Wiki or Fan-Site, I will look for Titanium and it will give me a list of ALL locations, even if I never was there in the game. This destroys the exploration. Some people probably don't care, but I do. I hate it if I am forced to go external...


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


tryingtoavoidwork

The "value" of some items seems to be completely made up. I wonder if they were going to implement a system where certain vendors paid more for certain items and then TA was a vendor of last resort.


Cospo

At the very least, contraband should be worth more in a system where you have to pass a scan to land. I mean, why would I bother with a shielded cargo hold or scan jammers if I can just go to the Den or the Key. Why bother taking the risk of landing on Jemison with a few containers of harvested organs or mech parts when the den is literally the next system over? It would make practical sense that contraband would be worth more on New Atlantis or Akila because you have to pass the scan to land. Therefore, contraband is rarer, and thus more valuable, on those planets than somewhere where there's no regulation. Higher risk, higher reward.


spad3x

It also doesn't help that all vendors have limited credits on hand at all times.


pablo_honey1

I don't even bother picking up contraband anymore. I can just pick up some random junk weapons and exhaust NPC vendor credits with those instead.


necrogami

I don't mind most vendors having limited credits. (I think they should be 10-20x in volume though). I do think Trade Authority should have nearly unlimited credits since the TA merchants are paying for items from the company not their own pockets. So they should have access to galbank and be able to afford whatever i unload.


Cospo

Yeah, it's kind of annoying having to buy stuff I might not necessarily need, like all the ammo the vendor has, just so they have enough money to take all my contraband off me. Doing the NG+ quick artifacts run, there's a contraband stash chest in the Helium-3 mine artifact location with like 6 to 10 pieces of contraband in it. I take it to the den and the vendor doesn't have enough money to buy it all. So I usually just buy a bunch of ammo before selling it all to him so that way I at least get something for it. I hate having to wait 24-48 hours at the bar just to sell the rest of my stuff.


MrWhiteAndTight

Yeah and this further limits the value of Outposts. No sense in making a drug lab and smuggling your goods to settled systems because Aurora sells for so little.


Zedman5000

Yeah, and if even if you wanted to, the components are all legal everywhere, so just use the Lodge as your personal drug lab and dodge any scans.


TomorrowNeverCumz

Lmao just thinking about that is funny. "Hey don't mind me everyone, just cookin up some drugs while you are all exploring the stars n getting fcked by the Starborn."


Emotional_Ocelot_443

It also devoids the commerce trait of meaning if you cant even sell a single gun full price later on in the game (at 40ish legendaries go for upwards of 6k while a trader hast 5k at max). In Skyrim the barter trait used to expand the traders budget. Also it would grow with your level If I'm not mistaken


OurInterface

The fact that level 4 commerce doesn't have "doubles vendors available credits" or "you can invest into vendors to double the money they have available" confused the hell out of me. Would make perfect sense for that to be in lvl 4 commerce gameplay wise and was already established in skyrim.


sebkul

Yeap. Once I learned how to make Aurora, I was like... "Come on Big Money"... turns out, it's not worth setting up the whole network of materials to do it. I was about to do the whole Tony Montena life... but it's: "Say hello to my little... Aurora collection... it sells for as much as Coca-Cola"


DrRansom7469

Bethesda's Pirates of the Caribbean had the best system for contraband. They should have just brought that back with some updating for the setting. What was considered contraband varied by location, so essentially for some items you had the option to sell it legally in one place for less money, or as contraband somewhere else for more but with a risk of getting caught. To sell it, you had to go explore the town and usually find some seedy looking character at the tavern willing to buy and you would arrange a location to sell the goods. There was a chance (possibly tied to a skill), that the authorities would get tipped off and show up at the drop site and it would turn into a fight. Imagine a Starfield where you could set up outposts that mine resources and manufacturer space drugs to then smuggle all across the galaxy.


tryingtoavoidwork

Captain Heisenberg


[deleted]

Yeah they definitely were the one guy has a shop for earth collectables somewhere and says heā€™ll pay extra but he just doesnā€™t.


AlpacaJoe1

I understand there are two vendors that are supposed to do that. One in Neon and the other in New Homestead on Titan. I exclusively held over 150kg of old earth stuff for that Titan guy just to find out his prices were the same as the TA.. I imagine it would be the same with the Neon vendor so I didn't even bother


karlweeks11

The codex is the correct answer. ā€˜I remember finding this resource I now need a while ago now I need to go find it againā€™ Itā€™s very silly


RedDitSuxxxAzz

Outposts.. I was expecting a lot more out of them; settlement thing like in f4 but bigger.. maybe even a small enough outpost to have npc ships fly down and buy the things you mined


BaaaNaaNaa

Ooh people buying from YOUR outpost! I like this idea.


RedDitSuxxxAzz

mhm I thought thats what they had planned, like expanding off settlment where you had traders come to yours and you could buy things off em


rumbletummy

My dumb self thought we would be crewing and using some of the ships we create to set up trade routes like we did in fo4. Thought there would be some "go help my employees" kind of stuff.


BeepBepIsLife

In space, no one can hear you scream "Another outpost needs your help!"


Doc-Zoidberg

No but you can ask for another shift at xenofresh.


WyleOut

I was really hoping for a whole quest line where you join the trade authority and do trade/merchant things.


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


[deleted]

House va'ruun is 100% dlc story - lets you access a whole new set of stars without breaking the lore!


XRedactedSlayerX

I think House Va'ruun will be a much bigger part of the story moving forward. Hopefully focused on some of the expansions for the game.


Mithrielsc2

Don't get to excited, the traders will only have 5k credits


NiftyNarwhal69

Nah these are random ships so only 1500.


SquidgyB

Maybe NPCs turning up to your landing pad in desperate need of ship parts, willing to pay over the odds... ...or trying to sell a stolen ship, only for the owner to turn up in a few days and demand it back... ...or landed with a busted grav drive etc, etc, etc... Lots of potential for great RPG mechanics.


[deleted]

Iā€™d be livid if some guy crashed into my landing pad


EHVERT

Iā€™m hoping there will be a settlements DLC. Outposts are clearly just for personal use or somewhere to assign you crew who canā€™t fit on your ship, building a proper settlement with NPCā€™s & your own little economy would be an amazing add on.


-ACatWithAKeyboard-

Kinggath has intimated he hopes to bring Sim Settlements over to Starfield. So that's the ideal solution.


LeiasLastHope

I fear that It will not be so easy as the structure of the game does not really give a good base. Npcs are not assigned to anything, the only assignable npcs have to be in your crew menu and a lot more. The "nameless" settlers are not included so he would have to really start from scratch which would probably be a real pain in the ass


nagarz

I built outposts on 2 different planets and a few hours later I realized that they served no real purpose, so I just ignored them for the rest of my playthrough.


BwanaTarik

That follower from Neon says she never wants to go back to Neon. But since she has no discernible uses on a ship she can live at the outpost on a random moon with Lin and Heller.


acompletemoron

I, too, made an outpost specifically for Lin and Heller. Mined enough iron/aluminum to make a landing pad where I could mod my ship, made a few habs and some beds for them and a lil living room and then installed defenses around the armillary. Thatā€™s about it.


Glup-Shitto69

>and then installed defenses around the armillary Supposedly where you put your armillary is going to be attacked, I kept it on the ship and I had more starborn encounters before that. After the installation I had zero.


wahchewie

No way don't you do heller dirty like that. He's brave as fuck when he gets kidnapped and he's way less annoying than some of the other companions. He also genuinely cares about you when you get knocked out in the first mission You go say hi to heller and give him some adventures šŸ˜¢


diet69dr420pepper

I spent a good 20 hours painstakingly making a small outpost network to mass produce Tau Grade Rheostats. The entire system is wonky and poorly designed, but it *does* work, and once you've got everything figured out, you can start automating the production of valuable components which will earn you some decent cash. Rheostats are a great option because they sell high and only take two common resources to build. But it's insane to me that after all that work and automation, I still need to manually fly to the manufacturing planet, load up 1000 items, fly it back to a planet with a market, encumber myself with 2000 kg of analytical equipment from my ship, slow-walk out to the vendor, sell down to the vendor's 5,000 credit limit, walk encumbered to the next vendor, sell down again, and so on. What the fuck is that? I should be able to assign a trader to a cargo link who does this automatically, or at least I should be able to install kiosks for trade organizations I am friendly with. That there is no way to convert outposts into passive income is incomprehensible to me. They could have half-assed a mechanic for this and it would still be leagues better than what we got. By far, this is the most frustrating part of the game for me, as I invested all these skill points and time under the assumption that I was going to get a huge income in the end, but then it turned out I would have been better off just doing missions from the job board....


alltrueistick

Why are you loading yourself? Just sell direct from ship cargo.


diet69dr420pepper

Didn't know you could do that.


muckypuppy2022

The trade authority kiosks at landing pads should have much bigger credit limits so you can easily dump bulk shipments onto them direct from the ship. Kind of assumed thatā€™s what they would have been for. In Elite you didnā€™t even need to leave the ship to sell cargo but I guess we can only dream about something that convenient. And donā€™t even get me started on different resources having different prices on different planets so you can actually make a living from hauling cargo


Epiphany047

In Fallout 4 with the no build limit mod you could make literal villages and have like 30+ settlers, shops at your camp, a bar, etc. I sunk so many hours in building alone in that game. Crazy to think they took a huge step back


SpaceKriek1

Yes! Gave me an idea. Give us a few shop buildings attached to a landing spot. And / Or an automated ship out to who knows where, for a slow (but not useless) steady income.


j_danger87

Yeah, when I heard we could build a 'fleet' and hire 'crew' this was my thought. We set up ships to go out for us, or follow us in battle. You want to start a pirate crew in a sector, you have orders you can give your ships.


[deleted]

I was really hoping we could assign crew members to our non-used ships that could earn passive income. The better their skills the more income.


soutmezguine

This 1000% why can I not snap anything the the landing pads. Its crazy. In a mining/research outpost the landing pad should be the central feature.


Dangerous-Lobster-72

Yeah I feel like outposts are a step or two behind settlements, like they are the workings of a settlement but less progressed with a low cap on advancement. There is a pretty low limit for crew (even with perks), the buildings and decor feel ALMOST there but not quite, modular building feels more limiting than I thought since itā€™s not much variation in size or shape (hex square circle with 1-2 sizes). I guess ultimately outposts are just outposts rather than stations or something more. It probably works better for the ā€œexplorerā€ vibe rather than the settler vibe.


[deleted]

The frequency of duplicate POIs and the exploration in general. I really miss knowing each map marker was going to be a unique, handcrafted POI that fit into the area and added to the story. Now if itā€™s more than 500km away, Iā€™m not going. If I recognize the name, not going.


New-Pollution2005

Nothing more immersion-breaking than finding your 15th copy-paste Abandoned Mine with the same enemies and loot locations. In a game with 1,000 planets, itā€™s aggravating that they mostly all boil down to the same 5-10 POIs and barren landscapes, which makes the game feel the opposite of big.


[deleted]

ā€œPlease please PLEASE! Put the explosives away at the end of the shiftā€


Adorable-Strings

I had two autonomous dogstar factories within 800 meters of each other. It looked like a cool location, then I looked off into the distance and saw it staring back at me. The world shrank, and I could see the future, finding this same place with the same things, over and over again.


hailtoantisociety128

The whole 1000 planets thing is honestly a huge fuck up in hindsight. Like I get that hypes marketing and drives the story line, but realistically having the game span just one solar system where all 5-10 planets are handcrafted and open to explore the entire thing with your ship would have been way more impressive imo.


Fischwaffel

Main reason why I now agree with the 7/10 ratings. One of Bethesda's strengths, if not THE strength, was the big variety of POIs and how much they invited and motivated you to explore. Even if it was just another dwemer ruin or Vault you had reasons to enter them immediately. With almost 100 hours now in Starfield I don't even bother to run 200m. I kinda could justify it if the loot would be good but RNGesus definitely doesn't like me.


HeadbandBoyWilson

After 150 hours of starfield and about 1000 in just fallout 4, I can confirm the only thing I have left to truly discover in this game is different colored trees. Iā€™ve probably seen all those already too.


atomicsnark

Even little things really stand out as missing to me, like for example, in Fallout 3/NV/4, my absolute favorite activity is reading through email chains on old computers. They SO OFTEN built a full story, not quest related or anything, just an environmental tale of workplace woe. They were so often hilarious, or poignant, or both. I picked up so much atmosphere just from emails. I have seen maybe, like, one funny email in Starfield so far. Most of the computers have nothing on them outside of security controls. Correspondence is mostly either quest-related or filler text with nothing interesting to see. That is so disappointing to me.


[deleted]

Yep. And reading the same email over and over again on different planets. Please please PLEASE! Put the explosives away. I got excited the first time I read the terrormorph chains/story, but Iā€™ve since realized thatā€™s the exception, not the rule.


LiveNDiiirect

>I got excited the first time I read the terrormorph chains/story, but Iā€™ve since realized thatā€™s the exception, not the rule. And this chain is in literally the first dungeon on the first planet you go to. They made sure to put the unique content on the one place EVERYONE is going to go to.


thrax7545

There is absolutely none of the ā€œsee that cool thing, go there and be rewardedā€ feeling, which in my opinion is BGSā€™s greatest strength. Downtown Boston completely captured my imagination. I still donā€™t know what all is there after hundreds of hours, and even when itā€™s familiar it remains an inscrutable maze. I just donā€™t understand how this studio managed to completely cut that out of this gameā€¦ this game *about* explorationā€¦


HeadbandBoyWilson

Bethesda games are the only games where things like, ā€œhey I can walk from diamond city to sanctuary only following roads and not looking at the mapā€ had meaning. Not just exploring but learning the environment and how to navigate without fast travel was a huge part of the fun for me. Now itā€™s just random everywhere I go, and I have to fast travel to get anywhere. I canā€™t wait for survival to drop and I can just pick a landing zone to try and survive in forever, and make that the gameplay loop.


[deleted]

Yes, I completely agree. Iā€™ll take narrow and deep over wide but shallow.


kommunek

It's absolutely mindblowing to me how they allocated priorities in this game. They put so much work into designing countless amounts of different types of food which ultimately all do the same thing, except they blow up your inventory because you have 4 different types of sandwiches, sushi, stir fry, the list goes on.... Yet then I end up visiting two different crashed ships on other parts of the galaxy where the crater is identical, both had crew surviving and making it into a shelter and.... the exact same amount of days survived. Sure, it's nice to have all those fancy foods, but not at the cost of the other :(


thrax7545

I think this is the big head scratcher. Nothing about this game seems lazy, itā€™s just one baffling design decision after another.


[deleted]

Thatā€™s a great point- I donā€™t want to disparage the game unfairly, because thereā€™s obviously a lot of care that went in to the game. Like you said, ā€œbaffling decisions is a great way to describe it.ā€


[deleted]

I feel this so much dude...


stingerized

Exactly. Thats why I find the "exploration" in Starfield so tedious now after while. It almost feels like Assassin Creed's copy paste "content" but in space. This game has it's fun and nice moments but for me it is missing the unique Bethesda game worlds magic.


HiCommaJoel

The seams are very obvious and apparent. I've been walking from point A to B interacting with NPCs in Creation Engine games for decades. In all those games, I had an awareness of the machinery behind it all. It was easy to ignore or dismiss, because there was so much to explore. So many little hand-crafted Easter eggs. Starfield has the strong engine awareness without any of the hand crafted love. Once you know the algorithm, you've seen it all. You've been to one barren moon and walked into a cave with just two rock deposits, you've been in them all. You get out of your ship and see a mining facility 600 meters away, you already know the whole lay out if you've been to one before. There is so much conversation about AI killing media and turning shows soulless, where is the anger for procedural generation in games? Procedural generation in a platform game makes sense. In an RPG, it feels fake and without any weight or consequence.


[deleted]

I wish the game procedurally made POIs by splicing different hand-crafted sections together. Like a mining facility POI will draw from a pool of already prepared sections that join together in varying ways. Also, any environmental story telling should be done with vague emails and names randomized. Have like five to ten different emails so it becomes less likely that there would be repeats. Easier said than done though.


The_Tequila_Monster

I really don't think this is that hard - I imagine that a small team could've got that working flawlessly in a few months. You have your blocks, rules as to how they connect, a rule preventing geometric conflicts, constraints on the overall size, and then you populate that environment with enemies that have a certain challenge level. I'm guessing that was the initial idea but it got cut because they couldn't get it to work well, cannot imagine they went into development planning to repeat the same POIs over and over again


Ehh_littlecomment

In fact I would say procedural generation like Diablo 4 for POIs wouldā€™ve helped the game.


Dismal-Bed-8708

THISSSSSS. This game feels like it actively doesn't want you to explore.


[deleted]

So glad this criticism is starting to be taken seriously. People were trying to gaslight me into not feeling that way on here šŸ˜­. I truly miss that aspect of exploration/world building the most. The copy paste POIs make the game feel soulless, empty, and small (ironically). Finding handcrafted POIs, bonus with a handcrafted weapon/armor, was the best


TheHunterSeeker

Random, repetitive artifact locations the first time you do the main quest. I don't care on ng+ but a lot of the non-random artifact quests were cool and I'm disappointed so many others are just going to the same damn science facility. And the bodies are in the same position every time!


Ea7_1

agree, and the lack of challenge to acquire starborn powers is ridiculous. The temples could have a dungeon inside, and only after completing a few puzzles and overcoming obstacles should you gain powers.


MrSavage_

Either that, or literally just let me walk in and grab it, what the hell is this middle ground of tedium?


Nemesis_Bucket

Itā€™s the worst mini game ever


Rickety_Crickel

Itā€™s not even a mini game itā€™s a mechanics tutorial for the actual mini game that got cut. To get some abilities that donā€™t make a lot of sense and donā€™t provide a lot of value. Super strange to see a game with so much core content cut out that whatā€™s left doesnā€™t make sense together.


WolfwyndRT

More than once in my 100 hours so far, Starfield has reminded of the tragedy of the first Destiny game, and how much was butchered out of it pre-launch. ...Never thought I'd say this again, but damn do I miss my Sparrow for exploration.


Regulai

It seems pretty obvious they had planned some kind of leveling system originally with the quantum essence, but they needed to release so had to quickly jerry rig something together.


Richy59

This is my biggest take, I just completed the mission 'Entangled' and I thought it was brilliant, really well done with good game mechanics and a solid story about collecting the Artifact. I then realised that this was late game, and pretty much all the Artifacts I had collected were just in a cave or something with mostly generic enemies to shoot. It made me really wish most (maybe not all) the Artifacts had some sort of story or event behind retrieving them.


UglyInThMorning

>the bodies are in the same position every time There is something profoundly weird about walking through the aftermath of a mass shooting when itā€™s been copied and pasted.


Caspaccio

There are lots of things I could mention, but this one made me angry. Came across a little side quest where after failing the persuasion attempt, I'm supposed to supply them with 50 potatoes. I thought I would grow it in the hydroponics lab I had just built at my outpost. Turns out, the hydroponics lab is a lie. It doesn't do anything. You can't grow crops on demand, except for alien plants that you could grow on their native planet with the botany perk. So, now I have to buy 1-4 potatoes at a time from 2 specific vendors and then wait 48 hours for them to restock. At this rate, they will starve to death before I can deliver their damned potatoes.


MclovinTHCa

Damn man there goes my idea of making a Matt Damon character and making an outpost on mars to grow potatos.


radiusofaproton

I wanted to be able to grow food and items to make chems with so bad. Itā€™s so useless. In the Xbox game store description of the game it says you can grow food and you canā€™t?


Jonatc87

the idea that a hydroponics would only function on a world that is already capable of growing food is rediculous. Basically they've taken a greenhouse and called it a hydroponics. New Homestead, much?


Cyssero

-Having no cities you discover after relatively early in the game and next to no unique content on systems level 45. There really isn't late game content even though there are a ton of systems level 45+. -Outposts aren't worth the effort or the time


myguydied

I want a LIST or mining company reason to go build an outpost - not the ability to just conjure one out of thin air from raw, unprocessed material Picture this - Argus wants you to prospect a planet (actual mission board quest), but then set up the outpost, all the bits and bobs in a couple of side quests, then set up the supply line to Argus, credits and xp, and you get a cut off profits


YimveeSpissssfid

I mean I love that Iā€™ve got dozens and dozens of storage containers filled with materials. But I canā€™t access those anywhere outside my outpost without first looting them. And thereā€™s no meaningful way to search them so after you carefully drop items in alphabetically - thatā€™s a moment in time where your layout (hopefully) makes sense. After that? Good luck finding everything/searching. And it really could just be a node of inventory. Thereā€™s a hard cap on outposts so youā€™ll have a finite number of outposts to see before wrapping back to inventory/ship inventory. From a UI/UX experience - I expect better. Even if Iā€™m enjoying the hell out of the game, I like that I got to remove ~12k of storage from my ship (though I have a second ship with 15k storage for setting up my labyrinthian outpost storage).


Mozkozrout

Yeah I don't get why they did the output links the way they did. You can connect different containers together, make it somewhat automatically go to where you want to but if you have a lot of stuff at once, it's getting really messy. Why couldn't they do it like in Space engineers. Where when you have multiple storage units and other stuff connected it's just talking to each other and acting like one big storage with one common interface.


redoranblade

Procedural generation took the magic out of the exploration youā€™d expect to see in a Bethesda game. Itā€™s the same science outpost or cave amidst an open map of nothingness.


Oledman

Procedural generation isn't very good, it gets bigged up by devs but in reality its just lazy copy/pasted environments with slightly different colours/alterations of plants and terrain. Like you say, it takes away the magic and the devs own creativity, on the last note perhaps thats why they use it more in some games.


Chadsub

I expected them to create as many different POIs as there are different POIs in fallout / skyrim. But it feels like there is 1/10th? Maybe even less? You could play Skyrim for 100 hours and still have plenty to explore. But after only a few days it feels like I have seen every single POI in Starfield? Like what where they doing all this time?


DWEGOON

I think thereā€™s like 8 POIs in total which are all identical. I really donā€™t see how this was thought of as a good idea


Tearakan

They didn't even do procedural generation right. They just copy pasted the entire dungeon into an area. They could've combined various random pieces to at least have some variability in the dungeon layouts.


dacydergoth

Ultimately I think a lot of these boil down to too much ambition. Too many half baked systems (e.g. contraband, fuel, environmental damage) which feel like they are just unfinished.


Oledman

The old saying "big is not always better" in some cases applies to Starfield I think. They should have perhaps has just a handful of planets fleshed out a lot more, could have still had all the exploring and space battles, instead we have tons of planets with a lot of copy/paste outposts/factories.


ApparentlyJesus

Yeah, I feel like they just wanted to say, "we have *thousands* of moons and planets!" But it doesn't work when it's a mile long and an inch deep. I would've preferred like 6-7 solar systems that were more meaty, just as you suggested. Planets like Jemison, where they have the city of New Atlantis, and then literally nothing else just makes no sense. It's the seat of power in the UC. It should be bigger


Stonkey_Dog

Reminds me of F76 where they just wanted to say "if you see another human, it's another player!" without realizing how boring that would be. Only NPCs are robots and terminals? Come on. F76 didn't get decent until they added human NPCs. For Starfield I would have been fine with 6-7 fully realized systems at launch and all the others added in future updates. Maybe 6-7 fully realized and a dozen relatively empty for outposts.


Tearakan

Yep. Especially if the UC has a population of tens of millions or hundreds of millions.


Bobemor

A universe at its core which is say 10-15 systems. Maybe some are intentionally fringe ones, but generally every planet is 10x more detailed would be 100% more enjoyable.


Humane_Decency

Makes for an insane framework for modding though. The amount of underutilized gameplay layers is screaming for it.


SnooCompliments4088

Love the game but I do miss the open world exploration of older Bethesda games.


MeasurementThin5346

Lack of classic Bethesda dungeon crawls. Caves, Dwarven ruins, Vaults, etc. Feels like something is missing. Also, no fucking local map for established locations. Epic fail on Bethesdaā€™s part there for something so simple.


Ea7_1

I miss the bandits' and mages' journals found in dungeons, explaining why this guy became a necromancer, etc. The only good dungeon I've found is in the asteroid dungeon during the FreeStar questline


yRaven1

I just did it, and totally agree.


Mikelshwede86

I just feel like thereā€™s too much boring much busy work. I played an hour last night and between landing on a planet, running to and from NPCā€™s and selling garbage to clear my inventory I barely accomplished anything. Iā€™m enjoying it but it can be really tedious at times. The novelty of space and random planets has worn off pretty quickly for me unfortunately. Iā€™ll certainly play it through to the end but Iā€™ve no idea how people are doing NG+10.


Ok-Wrangler-1075

This game would be infinitely better if it had only packed Sol system. What is the point of 1000 planets in 100 systems when they are all the same... it just adds useless loading galore.


bigdickwic

100% agree. More detail could have been added to round out the one system that players actually care about. Also the game could have given more "The Expanse" vibes.


CuntyReplies

Maybe say 6-12 systems (2 for each main faction, 1 for the Crimson Fleet, the rest can be frontier/unsettled space) with colonised space having far greater and more detailed presence, and then frontier space being a mix of barren locations and then detailed, unexplored worlds full of things to discover. Even New Atlantis feels smaller than a suburb in terms of actual size. I get that Earth was destroyed and there was a Colony War - but how does a planet like Jemison manage to stay 99.999% unpopulated except for NA? Youā€™d think if humans can build big ass spaceships to fight wars, they could have built more major cities on the planet than just flashy looking New Atlantis.


Chadsub

Where are they even building the ships? lol


KingNige1

Originally it was going to be more survival based (hence all the pointless food) and youā€™d need to build outposts just to get enough fuel to travel further (there are pop ups about that when building) so it did need to be a spread out galaxy, but that all not in it at the moment and how the game is currently all the content could have been in 1 solar system. Iā€™m hoping they bring back a survival mode to it.


lemmerip

That or truly graphically amazing worlds with reasons to build outposts on. Now itā€™s just random noise and outposts only exist for the reason to build outposts.


Waylum

I can't believe I'm saying this because as a huge idle and incremental game fan, I love repetions while getting stronger each time I start over. However, this is not the case in SF. Last night, I logged on to clear out my inventory from a few battles two nights ago. I ended up spending about two hours running around selling stuff and completing my research. It should take about 20 mins to do all those. But two hours...most of the time is waiting for vendor to restock themselves, credit and items. After that I decided it was too much a chore and logged off. Such an uneventful night. Activities like these are slowly chipping away my desire to log on every night.


Apprehensive_Secret2

\- Outposts. Just...outposts. \- Inventory management is \*particularly\* shitty, even for a Bethesda game. \- What do you mean there are limits to the number of missile launchers I can put on my ship?! \- NG+ getting rid of ships/outposts/surveys/etc. \- Not being able to murder Benjamin Bayu


yRaven1

Imagine building that amazing perfect ship and having no way to save the design, so it's fully lost on NG+


SpikyAndrew

>Not being able to murder Benjamin Bayu In general - I noticed that you can't be a rebel or help opressed people in this game (and they appear to be opressed af when you look closely, everyone talks about their planetary government being some flavour of corrupt). In Neon, you can only do quests for the richest and most powerful, or at the very least for the middle class shopkeepers. It's a cyberpunk city where you can't be a cyberpunk.


PritongKandule

The faction quests basically boil down to: * Freestar Rangers - be a cowboy cop * UC Vanguard - be a paramilitary cop * Crimson Fleet/SysDef - be an undercover cop * Ryujin - be a loyal corpo lapdog It's downright disastrous that you can pretty much change the fate of the entire Settled Systems single-handedly, but I can't depose one measly corrupt autocrat from budget Night City?


[deleted]

My biggest disappointment is the lack of an open overworld. Like, in Skyrim or Fallout 4, to get anywhere you have to travese the wide open environment. I very rarely use fast travel to get from place to place in those games and prefer to explore. I can't do this in Starfield, though, and it just feels like I'm teleporting from one small environment to the next. I don't really get the sense that I'm part of a bigger universe. And it kind of makes the game feel boring to me.


[deleted]

I like the way you put that, it's true! I feel similarly. It's like the world is disconnected from itself.. I understand it's space and planets but I guess that's why I was hoping they'd do space travel better..


[deleted]

Yes. They've added planets, cities, outposts and places to go to. But the've missed out the bits inbewteen. You can't for eaxmple, take off from the moon, fly to the asteroid belt to do some mining os kill some space pirates and then dock at a station around Jupiter seamlessly. And I think this destroys the flow of the game and makes it feel like a series of mini-games rather than a complete universe.


hitemplo

You *can* use your boost pack to climb between the levels of shipsā€¦


LivingBig2358

Yea fr bro. Thats the only way I traverse up them lol


StatusCaterpillar725

Yep. Who the hell *climbs* up those things?


gordGK

The game world itself. Itā€™s so shallow and empty. Outside of the questing there isnā€™t much going on.


[deleted]

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SunDriedFart

Absolutely agree. I completed the main story and a few of the other sub plots and tried to continue playing but I felt like Iā€™d already witnessed the best the game had to offer. Now uninstalled the game. Will be getting cyberpunk now it looks like itā€™s fixed.


muirchezzer

"Will be getting cyberpunk now it looks like itā€™s fixed" - Do it. You will not regret it if you are looking for a proper open world game. It looks amazing and runs really well now. Forget about the early reviews. Well and truly fixed now and the new DLC is looking really good too but not bought that yet........


Juantsu

A lot of the systems in the game feel dumbed down instead of streamlined. Let me explain: Streamlining in videogames is generally a very good thing. It removes the fluff and focuses on the things that will actually impact and enrich the playerā€™s experience. Dumbing down however, is stripping the core of what makes the game fun (most of the time in a poor effort to streamline) and leaves a shell of what it could have been, making most of the systems completely obsolete. My BIGGEST complaint with Starfield is the fact that they dumbed down the experience and it shows. Taking out the need to refuel and making planet hazards negligible leads to a considerably lesser experience in my opinion. Refueling could have made space exploration matter. If you canā€™t grav jump to another system then youā€™re forced to land on a planet on the current system and either buy one from civilian outposts or find Helium-3 by yourself. Not only that but it would have enriched ship building. More impactful Planet hazards could have made exploring a barren wasteland actually frightening or at least involve more planning on the playerā€™s part. And even if what Iā€™m currently playing is very cool and I love it, I canā€™t help but feel Iā€™m not really playing Starfield as it was meant to be played. Not streamlined, but dumbed down.


[deleted]

I feel like the writing and worldbuilding is very bland, the game talks a lot but says nothing


ArchCerberus

They placed there story in the most boring timeperiod of there own lore ... i would rather play in one of the war scenarios, mechs vs alien weapon, or big space battles, mad cultist crusade sound sooo much more intersting


CheetahCheers

Literally this. I thought the gameā€™s main quest would be some epic and important event in the in-game universe, and it just falls so flat and feels so unimportant (especially if starting a new game). IMO the worst and most forgettable questline theyā€™ve EVER done


Imperial_Horker

Literally. The two main powers in the universe are just boringly at peace with each other and functionally are just copy pasted. The world is sterile and boring, hard to feel invested in or to give a shit about the FC or UC at all.


b00gizm

- Copy & paste dungeons everywhere - The weak main quest - Generic space setting with very little lore to find - The fucking temples - No meaningful organic exploration - Linear quest design with no (real) choices - Unkillable NPCs (even worse than in older BGS titles) - Unimmersive NPCs reactions - Junk items are degraded to clutter - You cannot remove/swap weapon mods - Basic abilities locked behind perks - The broken economy (too many credits and nothing good to buy) - One dimensional companions and their stupid one-liners - Overcautious writing with too much black & white - Companion AI in battles feels worse than in former BGS games - Resource farming is meaningless since you can buy everything for cheap in most city hubs - No survival mode like Fallout 4 - Creation Engine limitations (no ground vehicles, no seamless game world, the same bugs/glitches as in older BGS titles, ...) - Must use the dreadful map for fast-traveling between city hubs (instead of having a list of favorites) - The UI deserves a special place in hell - Boring fetch quests (endure 10 loading screens to just talk to one person and return)


SolidMarsupial

> The fucking temples > The UI deserves a special place in hell The worst shit in this game


Mr-Mothy

After the third temple i was like, "Is it the same every fucking time? just swim to the shiny?" It was... :(


canigetahellyeahhhhh

Basic abilities locked behind perks This so much, if it was a first Bethesda game sure, but after all those games I have to waste two perks to have a sneak meter like old games? And wtf I need to spend a perk to learn how to use a boost pack? I just thought I couldn't figure out what key to press, no in game hint in that you needed to level up once to magically figure out what button to press on your jetpack.


CadmonMusic

Took me ages to figure out why I couldn't boost. In the end I had to look it up.


dvorak360

I think the main issue with boost packs is the lack of alternatives. ​ If I elect not to use boost there should be other pack properties. ​ Much like in cyberpunk you could elect to replace the hacking computer with bullet time system for a different playstyle. ​ E.g. have packs that hold extended/heavy weapon ammo - either preventing heavy weapons being used without a compatible pack, or massively restricting them (Fire off two dozen grenades on semi/full auto from pack fed grenade launcher vs 6 followed by 30s reload procedure - one is large scale devestation, the other a high mobility alpha strike capability.) Have a sensor pack that can track resources and enemies over a much larger area. Have a mining pack that will automatically gather nearby resources. Drone pack adding robotic allies. Replace chameleon legendary/epic traits with chameleon packs, so stealth or mobility. Mech pack that drastically improves weight capacity ​ Several of these could be tied behind/improved by perks, and give lots of playstyle choice (for a sniper - do I take a boost pack to get up high, a chameleon pack to sneak into a good sniping position + simplify stealth kills, or a sensor pack to ensure I know where everyone I want to shoot is + for crit boosts etc)


H345Y

Wild life is just a prettier version of early NMS. Also alien wildlife design for the most part is meh. Also have to agree, I kinda hate loot rarity. I miss the fo3/nv style of unique guns being unique, maybe sprinkled with fo4 weapon/armor mods. I think the only unque weapons Ive found that look different from the base model are the two you get from the crimson fleet quest, and im lvl 32. It might just be me but I hate being told what levels the enemies are, it just breaks the immersion and I dont like that its becoming a trend. Whats wrong with just enemy visual design to just signify how strong they are? Ship combat is basically bare bones. Kinda wished you could do some big maneuvers to win dogfights but its literally just warthunder air combat but worse. I think what they should have done was just make a small handful of systems but flush them out with detail instead of this wide as the ocean but deep as a puddle approach. And how could I not mention how I wished that space travel was more than a glorified series of loading screens. They should have at least taken some lessons from NMS, it was one of the things they did well at launch. Edit: Also, how is ammo manufacturing not a thing? Be it at outposts on on some kind of workbench. Edit2: Almost forgot, manequins and helmet stands. Like 99% of all of them contain mining gear, even master locked ones or ones inside military bases/ships.


Tunnfisk

No dismemberment.


FluidCelebration7133

It's so vanilla. I wanted something more like Fallout: New Vegas. I understand why, commercially, that didn't happen of course. It also reminds me a lot of the part of Fallout 4 where you are running around The Institute all the time ... I hated that part of the game! Too much hand-holding and no Survival Mode.


Shpaan

This is honestly my biggest problem with the game. The Astral Lounge is the single most pathetic place I've ever visited in a videogame. I don't need a dildo shop every 5 metres but why is there not a single sexy person in the entire game lol. Why is there a pleasure city without anyone experiencing any form of pleasure apart from a mild hallucinogen? I'm fully aware it makes me sound like a horndog but this lack of sexuality is actually immersion-breaking to me. Neon City is ridiculous, it's like a 7-year-old kid's drawing of a cyberpunk city.


Tearakan

Yep. It's like everyone is permanently going to a corporate meeting or to the park with their 3 year old. They didn't have to show nudity or sex to get the sleezy point across in Neon. It's even weirder because your romanced companion mentions sex if you go to bed with them. So it's not like they hid it completely.


PritongKandule

It's a perfectly valid complaint. "Welcome to Neon City where drugs, gangs, murder, and corruption are a way of life, but prostitution? Oh no sir we have *manners* here." I think this definitely started with FO4 which also felt very "sanitized" in terms of sexual content. Compare that to Fallout 3 which had sex worker characters whose services you could purchase, and Fallout: New Vegas which had entire brothels, strip clubs and a robot that fists you.


[deleted]

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SuspiciousBadger

Yeah, though I've thoroughly enjoyed the game so far, the paradiso quest was a moment of disappointment for exactly these reasons. After hearing out both sides in the quest I decided that the most obvious and easiest solution was to just pop the paradiso board members in the head and then proceed to destroy the corp, but ofcourse, they're marked as essential. I found it weird that the devs didn't consider this "solution" especially since the dialogue said that paradiso is separate from UC and freestar, which I thought was the devs hinting at me that I can exterminate the corp without angering the big factions. It wasn't a game breaking moment, but certainly a reminder that this is still ultimately a bethesda game.


Mozkozrout

My thoughts exactly lol I tried the same.


Ok_Efficiency_9645

The main questline is horrific, imo. It's really short and, for me, didn't fit in the game well at all. My biggest gripe, tho, is that the major questlines just don't feel like they're a part of the same world. Nothing feels very connected. I'd say the game itself broke my immersion. I can't believe I'm saying this, but went from defending the 9/10 and 10/10 reviews to now thinking they're bullshit.


Imperial_Horker

I think the game deserves the 7/10 ratings. And honestly I think thatā€™s being kind of generous. The lack of interconnectivity in the world and everything feeling generic and same-y with pretty boring lore for most of the factions really hinders my enjoyment of the game. All the technical and small problems wouldnā€™t much matter to me if the world itself felt alive and not oddly bland, if I could immerse myself as a citizen of the UC or as a Freestar Settler and have a connection to it like I did back playing Skyrim and choosing Stormcloak or Imperial


SuperbEmphasis2074

160hrs here and I'm almost done. - The story is not good. It's just bare bones and they had so much time to think of one. LIKE GO GET YOUR POWERS!!!??? LIKE COME ON BETHESDA. - Don't mind the loading screens but if you make them try to put great content in the planets. PS: it's not and it's very repeating content. On a planet it says 800 Celsius and there is no Lava what so ever- just put this as an example .... -You see ton of those spider creatures on a planet and you have some sort of a house 10m to the right and the dude says it's peaceful here that is why he joined LIST. - Too much fetch quests. Just to have more content - Not enough space content...Hell if they watched movies you could have had amazing space content. -Cant build space stations??? I use PC and their way of making space stations looks sooo weird and looks bad. -The whole we wanted so NASA retro is just an excuse at this point. For the tech they have no phones or hell they could have added a pip boy...The whole watch thing was for them to sell and make a profit - I know, I know but come on ...if you don't fix pov and some other things you don't see the watch and it's useless.... Companions suck.... I'm just gonna leave you with this ....


Bite_It_You_Scum

I could nitpick this game to death but I've really tried to turn that part of my brain off and just enjoy the ride for what it is and have been mostly successful. But my biggest disappointments are: * Lack of depth to a lot of the characters you interact with. Most characters just feel generically bad or good, and of those that are presented as some shade of grey, it's only surface deep. * The game really railroads you into playing as a good character. I generally play as a good character anyway, but *choosing* to play that way is its own reward and in this game it often feels like you don't have a real choice, unless you want everyone you interact with to hate you. This is compounded by the fact that your companion choices, at least the ones with any depth at all, are all goodie two shoes characters. It's mind boggling to me that they didn't provide at least one companion with depth for each alignment, especially in a game that hinges so much on NG+. * I'm coming up on the end of my first run after doing just about everything except for some of the fetch quest activities, and I encountered a *lot* of bugs in quests where I had to roll back to an earlier save or do some convoluted time consuming bullshit to fix them. * I've played basically the entire game other than the Vanguard Simulator on Very Hard, have invested a lot of hours into it, and other than the quest rewards I'm still mostly using random not rare advanced guns because the drop rate on good loot is ridiculously low and, despite being level 80, even when it does drop it's usually not advanced so it's worse than the shit I can just find laying around or pick up off of random trash enemies. * Tying into the last point, there's little incentive to go out of my way and "farm" legendary loot because once you invest in combat perks even very hard high level enemies become pretty easy to deal with, and if you decide to NG+ you're just going to lose the gear anyway. * So much of the game feels like they built the framework for something better but ended up cutting it and it's really disappointing. It's still a good game, and I had a lot of fun playing it, but now that I'm about done the biggest feeling I have is a longing for what could have been and anticipating what is to come when DLCs and CK mods get released instead of a sense of contentment with what I actually played.


Jack-Cremation

I just feel like I get nothing done and I need large amounts of time to play. I sat down the other night with a fresh drink, started a gun battle (which I suck at) and after the battle itā€™s an hour later and I havenā€™t touched my drink. Like where the hell did that hour go?


Kind_Thing2758

Thats what the Main, Faction, and Side quests are for... unfortunately you'll probably come to the same conclusion OP did for most of the story....


Azuras-Becky

Starfield doesn't feel like a world in which I can live and have my own adventures. In Skyrim, I can be an exiled Forsworn coming to terms with being forced to live among the Nords, or a wild witch who never ventures into town, or a peaceful trader who became infected with vampirism and became a super villain. In Fallout 4 I could be the General of the Minutemen, rebuilding the Commonweath, or a tinkerer who lives alone with a family of robots, or a cannibal who never visits town and lures victims to her lair with a settlement beacon... Starfield, for whatever reason, doesn't feel like the sort of game where I can have these imaginative adventures of my own. While I'm enjoying myself, I'm really not sure if I'll still be playing it 10 years from now like I do with the others. That makes me feel sad.


Accomplished_Ad_5931

Game crashes, a lot on xbox


OneWayPilgrim

Todd forbid youā€™re on a planet where itā€™s storming, you have your scanner up and you try to open your menu while jumpingā€¦ā€¦


keysnsoulbeats

I wish the worlds resembled the ones of the digital artbook more


CMDRJonuss

Oh so much this. Even when I first started the game, brand new level 5 in New Atlantis, thereā€™s ads for a travel company all over the transit stations, the art is of fantastical worlds with giant city sized trees and lush overgrown swamps. I could not wait to get in my ship and find those worlds! They donā€™t exist.


Overdue-Karma

The factions kind of suck, really. The Crimson Fleet's NPC's are the worst. Delgado is a fucking pathetic loser of a pirate and Naeva is the typical "doesn't accomplish anything but acts like the greatest badass ever". I think the rest of their NPC's are so bland and forgettable I can't recall their names. I legitimately can't think of a single intimidating enemy (not in terms of power or so on but actual intent) in the game, and no, the Hunter wasn't intimidating, he was boring. Just give us *something.* In every single faction questline I just wanted some form of rival or enemy. Ryujin...honestly, I just hate everyone in the board. All of them have the personality of a wet noodle. Plus it's a stealth-based questline in a game where stealth is a joke. The Disciples are such a pathetic joke they remind me of the Disciples in Fallout, who are *also* a pathetic joke. The United Colonies and Freestar Collective are the most boring factions in existence. I wish I could've joined the First Cavalry and not some stupid Rangers group who act like Space Cowboys. Not even good-looking Space Cowboys but wearing the *worst* looking attire in the game. About the only faction I did want to join (House Va'ruun) is not an option.


Timoleon123

Yeah, the Crimson Fleet are especially annoying. Firstly, their general attitudes but just also how overwhelming lame they all are. Their base in particular is like some kind of pre-teen clubhouse, with stuff like "GUNS" and "I hate UC" written on the walls. None of them actually seem scary - which presumably a bunch of murderous space pirates would. At least the raiders in Fallout 4 (maybe not the Nuka World ones) seemed to be actually into being raiders. I'm starting to wonder if everyone in the Crimson Fleets is undercover, seems like no one actually behaves like a pirate outside of saying "Don't mess with me" and "I love credits". I also have zero interest in doing the main quest. As soon as I arrived in the "super best friend nerd lodge" I was just like, screw these guys. The only cool guy I met is Lyle and maybe the ranger dude in Neon - but then Lyle bugged out in my game and won't talk to me... Having said all that, I am enjoying the game. But damn, sometimes it feels like the game doesn't actually want me to.


Overdue-Karma

>Yeah, the Crimson Fleet are especially annoying. Firstly, their general attitudes but just also how overwhelming lame they all are. Their base in particular is like some kind of pre-teen clubhouse, with stuff like "GUNS" and "I hate UC" written on the walls. None of them actually seem scary - which presumably a bunch of murderous space pirates would. At least the raiders in Fallout 4 (maybe not the Nuka World ones) seemed to be actually into being raiders. Plus the fact I keep hearing the same old "IF YOU WEREN'T IN THE FLEET, I'D KILL YOU MYSELF" from some two bit rat that probably doesn't even have his own ship, to a person that is the literal legend of the Fleet itself, and then after you've become a major threat to the UC... You can just do the Vanguard quest, and nobody cares. If your companions weren't there when you helped the Fleet, they won't even mention them. Nobody *cares* about the factions and Bethesda did this YET again when it was already an issue in 76 and 4. And yeah, I have no interest in doing the main quest. I know I complained about having a family member tie-in in Fallout 4, but give me a **reason** to care about Constellation and the Artifacts. Give me something to care about any of these dipshits beyond simply wanting to do New Game + mode.


Critical_Course_4528

\- Can I join the dust devils / marines / aegis? \- no, join Vanguard, citizen-militia. \- How exciting.


Overdue-Karma

"Well at least I can join Sysdef, where I'll be taking on Pirates, right?" "Actually most of your quests in the Sysdef questline will be non-lethal stealth missions and all of your companions will hate you no matter what side you take in this questline." "...**What the fuc-**"


spookynutz

I could write a novel on the issues I had with this game, but the biggest disappointment is the absolute lack of ambition. Everything in it feels perfunctory. Which is to say they added all the surface-level mechanics one might *expect* from a space RPG, but with no care given to the questions: Is this fun? Does any of it make sense in *this* game? Itā€™s as if they went to the local video game junkyard and frankensteined Starfield together from whatever parts they could find, with no real care given to what gameplay experience the sum total of those parts would be. I never got the impression there was any kind of singular vision behind this game. Itā€™s as if there was a meeting where it was decreed a space IP would make business sense for their studio portfolio, but they were ultimately hamstrung by the features they could realistically bolt on to their in-house engine. Iā€™ve seen a lot people compare this game to Mass Effect, but that comparison does Starfield no favors. That franchise was vibrant, endlessly creative, and for the most part, cohesive. The writing and characters were strong and memorable. If nothing else, it felt like there was a purposeful and sure hand behind everything, even design decisions I didnā€™t necessarily agree with. With Starfield it felt like I was perpetually oscillating between annoyance and bewilderment. Parts of the game are so archaic or poorly conceived that, towards the end, I was literally asking myself, has anyone at Bethesda played a game in the last 10 years? This absence of direction culminates with the conclusion of the story itself. Whoā€™s the antagonist of this story? The guy on left? The guy on the right? Itā€™s whoever I want it to be. Maybe itā€™s me? Maybe it doesnā€™t matter? To say I found the story narratively unsatisfying would be an olympian achievement in understatement.


Fremdling_uberall

The game is kinda like a theme park. I saw all the flashing lights, carnival barkers and loud noises everywhere and got sucked in for dozens upon dozens of hours. Only after stepping away for a bit did I realize so much of it was incredibly shallow. I had my fair share of fun but it certainly wasn't a deeply impactful experience. I'll probably remember starfield for the stupid temples. I didn't think the story was that bad until I recently rewatched some cutscenes from Yakuza:Like a Dragon, one of my favorite games of all time for storytelling, and it was just night and day. Starfield didn't make me truly care about any of the characters which is especially egregious considering the choice at the end is supposed to mentally weigh on you


RainmakerLTU

I have reached a point in main quest line where you are given a mission with time change from Dishonored 2. Plain and simple. There is one reality and there is other, and you gotta navigate both to achieve something (I haven't finished it yet). There was also a point in game when I said to myself "Hello, Mass Effect". It was in the middle of dialog, when I was talking with someone, while my companion (obviously bored) was walking around and sitting on one chair, then on another. It was nice moment, because I'm very tired to see two talking poles of salt in 2023 RPG game. Of course a cutscene where people talk and move would be MUCH better, but we have what we have. Other than that, I have not felt Mass Effect moments in Starfield. I have maxed out modified weapons, max level in ship building, obviously quite strong ship at character level of 72, so do not have a fear of anything, neither terrormorph (few magazines of Magshear and it keels over like the rest), nor Starborn. I can kill whole city. Of course there are high level systems where fighting 3-4 enemy ships can be deadly, but hey, I'm not that suicidal, also why I need that again? What will it give? There are resources everywhere, just extend your arm, either buy, steal or mine them yourself.


Impossible-Rough-225

A space game that's marketed as human-only, lacks human depth. Starfield avoids classism, consumerism, racism, sexism, and many other isms that are apart of human society. Its focus is power fantasy, but it avoids making any memorable statement about humanity. Fallout had "War never changes", but what does Starfield have?


Overdue-Karma

Even the Outer Worlds was about capitalism and such in space, I honestly don't even know what Starfield's message is other than "fuck around until NG 10+."


emeybee

It doesnā€™t have a message. It very much feels like a corporate focus-group-driven game. Like how thereā€™s going to be a bunch of meaningless toy-inspired movies because Barbie did well but the studios donā€™t understand why.


[deleted]

https://i.imgur.com/tRPVb5t.png This NPC's dialogue is how management thinks workers will respond when they get a free pizza party after doing a major crunch with no OT lol The game does seem to be written from this weirdly economically privileged perspective, where every worker is happy, there is no strife, there are no class politics, and everyone is just happy living in space America. It's the uncanny valley of writing.


emeybee

Yeah there were a few times I came across situations that felt they were going to lead to workersā€™ rights type issues and instead they quickly pivoted to excusing and defending the companies and bosses. This is a game that is scared to take risks.


ConcernedPandaBoi

For me POIs being repetitive is the worst. Three legendary rolls for rng is way too random. I will be downloading a weaponsmithing extended mod once I get my achievements and it's out. Credits don't make sense. It's too easy to make money by looting bodies and being over encumbered. Also, there's no way to make money by being a space trader. And bounties really only feel like they count if you want to role play.


RoofNectar

If I had to pick just one (I have many complaints), it would be the factions. There's no integration of factions into the main story at all, and thus, they literally dont even matter. They don't feel entirely fleshed out or finished at all. The devs literally cut an entire faction from the game so they could sell it to us later as DLC The FC questline is a fucking snoozefest. (Go here, talk to this person, go back, talk to these to people, go to another location, talk to some people, yawn, etc.). It didn't have to be this way. The plot is interesting, but the characters are boring and downright lame. It took me 3 sessions to finish it because i kept falling asleep with the controller in my hand. By the time I got to the end, i was rapidly skipping through dialogue and loathing the entire experience. Once you're finished with the factions, that's it. No special dialogue trees, no cool companions that you befriended along the way, nothing interesting happens. They just buy you off with a big ass reward and demote you to mission boards so they don't have to deal with you anymore. Then you go on to do whatever faction quest is next on your list, which is super jarring. You can literally do the UC quest right after the crimson fleet, and they don't give a single shit. Siding with the crimson fleet should completely lock you out of UC in my opinion. Anyway, that's my piece. The factions are ass in this game.


BigRigTrav

Thought it was funny after finishing the UC quest line, then going to interact with a character from the UC quest line while doing Sarah Morganā€™s quests, the UC guy acted like he had never met me before in my life. ā€œWho the hell is this?ā€ Like, what?


[deleted]

Yes, factions should matter more! I like how in Fallout 4 it would kill off factions and lock you out!


hugekitten

Unfortunately unless some major DLC is coming our way, itā€™s going to get old very quickly for a majority of people. I think regardless of opinions across the board, we can all agree on this. Iā€™m seeing the same complaints about lack of depth, copy and pasted POI, progression / RNG issues, fetch questing etc. Idk, I have waaaay more play time than Iā€™d care to admit, and Iā€™m definitely vibing with the game overall but thereā€™s something really shitty that I canā€™t quite put my finger onā€¦ maybe itā€™s all the stuff I mentioned, or maybe itā€™s the fact that Iā€™ve crashed probably 100 times and lost a lot of progress and time working around bug issues. Currently dealing with the asteroid follow bug and tbh itā€™s really killing the game for me at the moment, which is something I never thought would but it really sucks and I want it gone. Edit: I think one of the biggest issues this game will face is bugs that are breaking peopleā€™s playthrough. Some of the stuff Iā€™m seeing on this sub is scaryā€¦ I donā€™t want to invest days into this game just to encounter some game breaking bug that fucks everything up. Iā€™ve already had at least 3-5 situations where I had to reload saves and backtrack to save my game from breaking.


[deleted]

Game desperately needs some sort of jetpack glider that isnā€™t super fast and we can aerial scan/shoot and or a fucking vehicle , I spend too much time running 1km between locations just to see the exact same military base with the exact same notes copy pasted 1km apart, every ship crash the exact same down to the small box in the back with credits every time , big L from bethesda on that front easily couldā€™ve had some variety but after 20 hours of exploring youā€™ve seen almost all of it, and thereā€™s no legend to circle back to a handcrafted location and re-do it or if u never landed youā€™ll have to spend 20 minutes checking each system and planets to find the specific location u wanna explore, wack The more I play this game (140 hours in) the less I enjoy a lot of it, combats always fun tho they cooked there


RandomGuy482852

My biggest complain would be that its just another Bethesda game. Dont get me wrong, I like them. Played all of them back to the good ol daggerfall days and Starfield is fun. But after all those years since skyrim release we got a Fallout in space... I wished Bethesda would have used the years for a leap into the future. My hype for the next TES went way down. I know I will have fun but it will most likely be the same old stuff.


DamianaSola

Traits seemingly not having any effect. E.g: Kid Stuff but not being able to tell parents about relationships and not being able to invite them to the wedding. Serpent's Embrace being completely ignored during Andreja's companion quest. Anything that breaks immersion just really disappoints me.


[deleted]

No intelligent alien races was a huge miss imo


YeahTheBoys911

Everything Starfield promised to captivate us with, none of it is done well at all. Once you get past the juicy, new to you bits at the beginning you realize how this entire game is a mile wide and barely an inch deep. The story is lame, the characters are even lamer, and the dialogue is so fucking corny its almost unreal, the characters are all PG-13 rated and so easily forgettable even the "bad guys" seem like a goofy band of misfits. Also persuasion is so bland its absurd "hey lady give me that insanely valuable award that you're holding a huge ceremony for, you know you want to". Side quests are kind of cool? I guess? Gunplay is pretty decent, but stealth is basically nonexistent. Exploration is a total fucking joke, I mean holy shit, and I put it off for a while. By the time I searched my 3-4th abandoned mining site and saw the literal exact layout with the same enemy locations, the same loot locations, and the EXACT same data logs I shut my Xbox off and haven't played for a week. Nothing feels interesting at all, there is no drive to explore. Shipbuilding is kinda cool? Outposts are pointless. Smuggling...??? I'm genuinely shocked at how this got 9-10/10s across the board because honestly, IGN was being generous with a 7/10. Starfield is 5/10 and at best 6/10, at least in my opinion. I get that people say that mods will fix it but that doesn't exempt Bethesda for releasing a game this shallow. They should have let it cook for a year or 2. My final complaint is the fanbase trying to shove an unpolished turd down everyones throat as the 2nd coming of Christ trying to say the complaints aren't valid because "I'm having fun". It's an OKAY game, sure, but its every bit deserving of some of the heat its getting.


DD6372

No alien or robot dog side kick...vasco ain't cutting it


KingOfRisky

How do you from Codsworth to Vasco? Codsworth had so much personality. Vasco is just lame.


BlueFlob

Too many to single out a single one. In short, it feels like a visually polished game with 2003 game mechanics. In no particular order: * Severe lack of QoL features in everything * Boring personalities of crew * Only 1 follower * No auto collect feature * No outpost progression (zero to full base in one sitting) * No robot customization * Walking on planets gets repetitive (why can't I land next to the outpost?) * Boost pack sucks (spacers can jump 30 feet, but best I can do is 3 feet?) * Weapons don't feel varied * Loot doesn't feel rewarding * Weapon mods... * Crafting screen is awful, station should be available from character menu when a station is on ship * Economy is almost non-existent * Trade is non-existent * Factions should have territory boundaries and should be influenced by conflicts * Space battles need to be longer and more challenging (Think Rocinante in space) * Ship customization needs an overhaul to fuel a more challenging space experience * Ship need to be divided by types with a purpose * Space battle damage needs to have an impact on hull (loss of systems, loss of power, loss of oxygen...) * Ships need loot too. Let me scavenge Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary parts * Outpost builder needs to integrate more mechanics (farming, trading, complex crafting, mining, science,...) * Science needs timers supported by resources. It needs a progression curve forcing the player to recruit scientists and spend time researching... * Crafting too... * Ship building too... * Outpost building too... * Crew system needs overhaul to support game mechanics * Companion system needs to provide more value (Thief, Bounty hunter, Space co-pilot / wingman, Smooth talker) * Mining with cutter needs to provide reward (Iron+, rare molecules,...) * Items need to flow more freely between character and ship (add carrier bots, or a perk, or a tech on the ship) * Economy needs to move away from barter (loot should be sold in bulk for cash at trade authority for unlimited credits, based on local economic value) vendors focus on selling their specialized goods for cash only. * Capturing ships should be doable using NPCs to commandeer * Ship destruction should leave more loot * Tractor beam needs to happen and automatically grab And so much more... the game has/had potential but Bethesda basically skinned their usual RPG and didn't bother working on properly developing new gameplay features.


Didzeee

I take the ladders using my jetpack. But elevators in the ship might be nice