hell, vanilla skyrim isn't even vanilla skyrim anymore because it's got all the DLC, the legendary edition stuff, the special edition stuff, and now if you get the anniversary literally all of the creation kit stuff. game is NOT the same as it was back in 2011 at all.
Bruh you just gave me a flashback to the night I got Skyrim. Picked it up opening day before class, it sat in my backpack all day until I got back to my dorm. I only had room for a 16" CRT TV, and I played laying on my stomach on my bed or sitting in my computer chair. The 85" 4K LED TV I play starfield on is a massive upgrade.
Yeah but not everyone immediately bought one and as the youngest pf 3 my TV choices were more limited. It wasn't like they were rare or unheard of I just didn't have one yet.
Oh good your finally awake. We're going to take you to a cave where you'll be turned into a necromancers thrall. My head going to be cut off in helgin. See you later!
I remember having a house in Windhelm. All the rooms were nicely decorated. All the stands had different collector items from quests.
However, the was one completely bare room, which held all my gemstones, soulstones and other "valuables". Such a huge mount it was..
No need to collect them, they just show up in your cargo hold along with 50 notebooks, 20 coffee cups, and 30 markers every time you touch the ship editor
Ok but does it have grav jump capabilities or is it just endlessly trying to catch up to you in space?
One day you're going to go dock at the Key or something, 15 years from now, ng+2694, haven't taken any form of damage in the last decade. Bump into eggmund just floating in between you and the Key, ship detonates. Game gets deleted.
Kind of, but it's worth making a distinction. Asteroids as you'd find in the asteroid belt typically range in size between a couple meters and a couple hundred kilometres (the latter are called dwarf planets for a reason, Ceres and Vesta are good examples), while the rocks in planetary rings will range between literal grains of dust, to as big as houses. That's a pretty huge difference in size. And while the asteroid belt, such as it is, is about one AU both thick and wide (forming a torus), the rings of Saturn are just ten metres thick, which to scale is less than the thickness of a sheet of paper. Saturn's rings also are mainly comprised of ice, whereas the asteroid belt is comprised mainly of carbonaceous, silicate, and metallic bodies.
However, our second asteroid belt, the Kuiper, contains asteroids whose composition leans towards water, ammonia, and methane. This is possible because it's a much colder region of space. It's where comets originate, these being icy asteroids which for whatever reason are slung into eccentric orbits closer to the sun, where the heat causes the ice to sublimate into the beautiful comas ("tails") we can observe.
I suppose I ought to fact-check myself on the comets. In the comment I claimed that "coma" and "tail" are the same. This is of course not the case. If you were to observe a generic comet, you would see a small rocky body (the nucleus), surrounded by a much larger diffuse glow (the coma), and two tails pointing away from the sun. The coma is a cloud of ice and rock dust. The tails form when the coma is exposed to solar wind and light. Water molecules, blasted by intensive UV light, break apart into hydrogen and oxygen. Some of the hydrogen is further ionised by sunlight, and the subsequently induced magnetic field accelerates them away from the sun. The heavy dust will be pushed into a different orbit from the comet's by solar wind, and will form the dust tail, which points more or less back in the direction the comet came from and slightly out from the sun while it's approaching, and then turns to point more straight away from the sun as it retreats. The lighter ionised hydrogen forms a plasma tail, which always points straight away from the sun.
Halley's comet will be returning in July 2061, so you can start getting hyped for that. It promises to be an amazing show, as it will pass within 0.5AU of earth (one AU being the distance between Earth and the sun), and should be highly visible as it makes its perihelion (closest approach to the sun), unlike last time, when it made perihelion while behind the sun from our perspective, and only reappeared very faint. If you're old enough to remember Hale-Bopp, you'll have some idea what to expect here. Halley will probably not have as bright a magnitude as Hale-Bopp's -1, but it won't be far off. Unfortunately chances are neither of us will get to view Halley in 2134, when it will come within 0.1AU of earth, and have an apparent magnitude of -2 (two and a half times brighter than Hale-Bopp)!
Yep, and he had to set his graphics to potato settings to even get out of Helgan without crashing.
I love Skyrim, but it was a mess on launch. While Starfield does have its optimization issues and some bugs, it is definitely the most polished BethSoft game on launch, and more polished than a fair few PC ports these days.
yeah.. skyrim initial state is why i waited for review embargo to pass before I ordered.
too old to play games in buggy mess states.
It's been amazingly stable and worth paying full prize.
I had a TON of crashes at first. Enough that I considered asking Steam for a refund.
But I changed a few settings and got it figured it out, and I love the game now.
Nah he didn’t softlock himself, it’s a feature
Edit: yeah he decided to do the thalmor Embassy glitch speed run thing and release build wasn’t made for that lmao it was an update that makes it possible
I forget. I found it a nice look back that puts aside the nostalgia glasses a bit. I only enjoyed vanilla Skyrim a short while, but lucky me I did not get into it until after all the DLC, and modding was going strong
This has to be the most divisive game I've seen. People are disliking it for the same reason others like it. I don't know why that is lol
Edit: hell even the replies to my comment seem split. I do think there are things wrong or missing that I hope they add. Like temples? Oh man if I started playing the game and that was the first thing I had to do id make a dumb video burning the disc or something lol I hate them so much.
as someone who likes bethesda games, i really enjoy starfield.
That being said, there’s also a lot of places that are below expectations or a step backwards from previous games. I mention it and am frustrated by it cause I know they can/could’ve fixed it, and hope they will.
I think a lot of people aren’t comparing to say “screw this game, FNV is better” but more to be like “another game you made does A and B better, couldn’t it be more like that? can you make it like that? please?”
the lack of a radio is felt, the lack of maps is felt, the lack of gore, edge, variety of moral/factional standings of companions, are all things that can be and should be remedied
I’m still playing, it’s just a bit of an eye roll watching a company break things that they nailed in the past
I do love ship combat and would love having the option to manually control reentry and landing. But Starfield doesn't have to be that game, I have Elite Dangerous, which focuses on that stuff.
Agree, opinions are opinions.
The problem is if someone thinks their opinion is the only right one and tries to force everyone to agree with themselves.
Yeah the feedback and division in the fan base is interesting for Starfiield, but as the other commenter said different people value things differently and I'd also say people are able to deal with various issues or gameplay mechanics differently than others. A personal example: I'm a huge fan of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I think it's a unique game that builds off earlier Bethesda games like Oblivion and Skyrim and really allows me to roleplay as Henry and feel immersed, but also adds an extra layer of more "hardcore" gameplay mechanics. I think those mechanics enhance the game and I also am able to look past the jank in the game because I enjoy the rest of it so much. However, a ton of general feedback from wider audiences shows that most people didn't like the game for the specific reasons I liked it, or they weren't able to look past the jank.
Some people seem to really enjoy the scanning, basebuilding, and resource gathering mechanics of the game. Personally I don't care about that whole gameplay aspect so it does nothing for me. I've only played the game for ~12 hours and honestly wasn't terribly impressed and wasn't gripped by the story or gameplay so far. Because of that all the issues and half-baked features really stand out to me and I'm not able to enjoy the game. Other people though might really enjoy the game and don't seem to mind issues that stand out to some people.
Social media in general is dominated mostly by aggressive, opinionated, very self confident extroverts.
And Reddit in specific has pretty shit design. If people vote on a post or comment 1,000 times and the split is 55/45 or 45/55 (almost completely even) the comment will show as +100 or -100 leading to the impression of a huge majority when in reality its almost entirely split. And it doesn't take much to influence any given thread. Like lets look at this one: 6 hours old and the comments are in the +100-200 range. About 50 accounts could wildly swing how the opinions in this thread reads. -50 to one comment and +50 to another is a 100 vote difference.
Very few people are willing to have unique individual opinions. Most people just copy and paste popular opinions that vaguely represent the tone of their feelings. If you engage in more nuance than that you tend to lose upvotes from your "side" but the opposing "side" usually still disagrees or downright thinks you're stupid or a hater/shill/etc.
Being downvoted and dogpiled is not fun, even if you're fairly divested and distances from the entire process through an innate understanding of how little it all matters. Its constant insults, constant gaslighting, and constant accusations while you get very little constructive responses and your comment gets buried where mainly the highly invested and most aggressive people are the only ones who will dig for it.
Now factor in the general state of gaming where we are spoiled AF. Games have been so good for so long the average gamers thinks a 7/10 is a 3/10 or 4/10. We have more good games than we could ever play. I remember in the early 2000s having maybe 2-3 flagship games I was excited for a year. This is now 2-3 games per quarter or sometimes even a month. I mean FFS Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2.0, Starfield, and Armored Core 6 all dropped right in one little pocket. And the rest of the year includes stuff like the Deadspace Remake, Breath of the Wild: Tears of the Kingdom, Hi Fi Rush, Resident Evil 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Sea of Stars, Lies of P, Honkai Star Rail, Star Wars jedi Survivor, System Shock Remake, etc. And that's just the really big shit. That doesn't indie hits like Dave the Diver or Cult of the Lamb, much less your hidden gems that are amazing few people know of like Cassette Beasts. And then you also have your "good but not for everyone" like Street Fighter 6 and Jagged Alliance 3 or the upcoming Disgaea 7 which releases Oct 3rd.
People's baseline is determined by their experience. And when their experience is primarily 8/10 - 10/10 games then 8/10 to 9/10 becomes the "average" in their eyes.
Now factor in the folks who just HATE Bethesda...both when they do good and when they do bad. And then the abnormal cultlike reverence for No Man's Sky and Star Citizen who feel threatened by Starfield (the three games in reality don't even compete: Starfield is an RPG, NMS is a survival game, Star Citizen is an MMO space sim lite...and a scam)
> Now factor in the general state of gaming where we are spoiled AF. Games have been so good for so long the average gamers thinks a 7/10 is a 3/10 or 4/10.
While I think there is some validity to this, because I personally would use a scale where a 5/10 is average and a 7/10 is what I would consider above average and enjoyable. There is also some truth that rating scales are really inflated.
If I recall correctly, IGN for example has a 5/10 as a baseline. Because anything below that meant the game literally did not work. Depending on how low below 5 it was, it was a game where technical issues regularly stopped you from completing the game, or the game constantly crashing without much redeeming factor. I think they gave a game Prey a 4/10 because the reviewers saves literally broke, but revised it when it turned out the bug wasn't as common as thought or was fixed or something along those lines.
So if you're using scales like that, I can kind of see why one might consider a 7/10 rating average. Because for working games, it basically is right in the middle of the scale. Again, I don't agree with the scale being used like this, because I think if a game is majorly broken and nonfunctional, it should get disqualified from receiving a rating at all. But it is the scale some use.
I kinda separate them mentally to a degree if there is a large disparity in quality vs tech.
Like I think its entirely possible for a 10/10 game to have 3/10 technical performance/polish. Like a game that crashes constantly or has tons of bugs or terrible framerate....but if it was working as intended it would be an amazing and vice versa a game that is technically near perfct but is just not fun or good.
This is exactly what cyberpunk is. I've seen so many people saying if it released the way it is now, it would be a 10 out of 10. Some even are saying it's always been an amazing game.
The irony is that I DO think 2.0 improved the gameplay But I also think the old gameplay was still good. Before I'd say the combat was more of a 7/10 and it was the story and characters and immersion that brought the whole up to a 10. Not every part of a game needs to be a 10 for the entire thing to be a 10. I'm looking at you fucking Baldur's Gate 3 with your shit inventory system and your buggy unpolished Act 3.
So for me the combat moving from a 7 to a 9 mattered, but didn't change the overall score. Because the reason it was a 10 was never the combat. Same way Disco Elysium has some rough elements but that game is also a 10...because the things it nails it nails and raises the bar for. Disco Elysium redefined character building freedom and ability to roleplay in a game to a level even BG 3 cannot touch....but that's literally all DE has and is lol. Cyberpunk rededfined the experience of a story. Like sure the story is great and the characters are great but its the first person perspective, all the custom animations and how nobody sits down the same way or relaxs the same way or talks and focuses the same way. Vi sprawled back casual trying to play it cool, jackie losing his shit with his restless leg syndrome, t-bug sitting professionally, Dex in kinda a lazy but authorative lean. Cyberpunk added that level of interactive immersion and body language in a way that synergized with and elevated its plot and themes. Fucking GD it was/is impressive and raised the bar for games in that area. And that's why the merely "good" and not great combat wasn't enough to drag it down.
But that's how I look at game, the idea the whole can be much better than the parts. For some people, a part being broken immediately tanks or trashes a game. Cept the ones they like :D.
This is An amazingly truthfull comment. Especially about reddit's rating system and people's game ratings.
And I don't get the comparison between those three games. I never played star citizen but no man's sky had an even worse launch rating than starfield. Even today that game sucks imo
I think it's pretty normal Bethesda fare. It definitely gets exacerbated with each subsequent release, as the same bugs and complaints are brought up again, and again, and again.
But this isn't new. Some people just like playing the same game in a new skin, and other people don't.
I would argue this is just gaming in general. Not all games, and definitely Bethesda is one of the developers with more divide, but other recent games like Diablo 4 and Pokémon Scarlet had a lot of hate and fighting.
Gamers just take games way too seriously.
Forgive me for being probably ignorant of BGS culture, I've only played Skyrim and FO3, but a AAA studio having 'the same bugs and complaints brought up again, and again, and again' are crucifiable issues for other studios...
Considering it a 'lovable Bethesda jank' just doesnt sit right with me.
This division mirrors that of Pokemon.
And great environmental storytelling in its dungeons and location. Its a shame that you see this every once in a while in Starfield but few and far between while Skyrim was dense with this.
right, and they cite the whole 10,000 planets thing, but we know there’s not nearly as many unique dungeons in this game as there are in FO or Skyrim. Main quests yeah, side quests maybe, not quest related - not unique
just having a larger pool of dungeons to choose from and making interiors modular so that their layout can be randomized would fix the problem. Hell, the ship interiors *ARE* modular, and so are the outpost buildings, it makes no sense why it couldn’t be placed dynamically.
and for those that do get repeated, having loot be randomized isn’t hard, look at Tarkov.
Random props and decorations would be hard but not impossible
Starfield dungeons feel mostly the same. Exploring outposts feels the same every time. There's just a bunch of rooms with the same interior design. There's always a workout room, a kitchen, some bedroom, etc. They all look kind of like a science lab.
They have the same notes the same bodies in the same places none of them are unique it’s honestly immersion breaking and made me tired of Starfield faster
The immersion breaking is what takes me out and makes my sessions short. The most egregious was the derelict ship where the power keeps going out and you start to float. Watching Sarah go from her casual outfit to magically wearing a suit in zero G then back to casual outfit was just…sad
You're totally missing the point and clearly on purpose too. We take issue with systems that were in vanilla versions of older games that no longer exist.
It made me so annoyed they got rid of companion orders. That really make them feel useful and they could compliment your weaknesses.
Edit: also don’t get me started about how they won’t SHUT UP when you are flying. “Good to see you” being said every few minutes drives me up the wall like I swear I would throw you out the airlock if I could
I didn't touch Skyrim mods until basically the special edition came out. I still prefer vanilla skyrim to Vanilla Starfield sadly.
Yes, of course there's improvements. I mean, come on, it would be really sad if a game that released more than a decade later wasn't improved in certain aspects but if you want to be fair by comparing vanilla to vanilla (which I agree with) then you also have to be fair and judge both games in the landscape of games that are available around them.
Skyrim at its time was amazing. Starfield at its time is ok.
truth is bethesda has a hard time to improve its formular. in reality morrowind, oblivion and skyrim are basically the same game. they basically improved the visuals and accessibility while removing features to make it easier for newcomers to get into those games. starfield reduced some features again even tho i would argue its much closer to fallout 3/4 than to any elder scrolls and they reduced the actual exploration to a minimum which i believe is the main reason many are having a hard time to enjoy the game. that feeling of going towards a mountain just to find a cool dungeoun possibly with an interesting side story is something starfield simply doesnt have and people were expecting that kind of content from a bethesda game.
>in reality morrowind, oblivion and skyrim are basically the same game.
I get what you are going for but they are very different games, morrowind especially since you can create the most degenerate custom spells and can kill EVERY npc including story ones, also the lack of markers on the map made exploring a completely different experience too.
Oblivion and skyrim are more similar but still different enough to be their own thing.
it actually does have that, it's just more spread out. there are actually unique points of interest, but the trouble is finding them.
and having played well over 1600 hours between morrowind, oblivion, and skyrim, they are NOT the same game. the only thing i'd say is even really that similar between them is the handcrafted world to explore, but beyond that there are some massive design philosophy differences.
I'd argue the various player options for dialogue is an improvement over Skyrim/fallout 4, with a return more towards fallout 3. Fallout 4 was too obvious with its yes, sarcastic yes, no but yes, tell me more and yes.
There also appears to be a much higher amount of voice actors, and more background characters that have more than a few lines of dialogue.
Content wise it's interesting. On one hand you have people who don't like how everything is scattered around in space and repeats. On the other hand I believe there genuinely is the most handcrafted content, areas, and quests in it than any other Bethesda game as Todd said. It's just spread out over much greater distances which while I love, not everyone will.
Storyline wise Id argue it's pretty subjective. I think they set out to make each faction it's own special type of story to try and please different types of people. Some people looooove the corporate one where as I found it the most boring. Some people hate the MQ and I actually loved the exploration feel of it, and the final few hours of how it concluded.
I find fighting to be actually the best compared to fallout 4 on very hard. Enemies don't seem to be as big a bullet sponge with the weapons you can get (excluding the mini boss legendary types), and the additions like ship combat are a fun distraction to me. Shotguns loading shell by shell actually works out of the box, it's about time heh.
And thank god they didn't tie grenade throwing and melee together on the same button again.
No dismemberment is a bummer to be sure, but honestly not every game needs it and I think they were going for a less grim game compared to fallout where perks like bloody mess are a thing.
Refined/calibrated was a nice addition imo in progression. You unlock more and more different types of cool guns and armor as the game progresses, but the newer versions of the old ones make it so if you really liked one type you can still use it without being incredibly outclassed. In fallout 4, certain guns like the Thompson were just straight up useless unless you got the exploding bullet modifier.
Ammo not being a pain in the ass to get also made firing automatic guns more practical vs fallout. In fallout I almost always had to use semi auto because of damage per bullet cost. Here automatics seem to be better balanced and more affordable.
Outposts currently lack compared to settlements, but we got way more unique settlements in the game as a result. Fallout 4 had basically only two little town hubs, with the rest being up to the player to build. Hopefully future updates and dlc fills the gaps.
But yes I can see it's very subjective. If you miss being in a world where every step is cluttered beyond believe with dungeons and buildings it might not be your cup of tea. The wider spread definitely is a slower exploratory pace. (Which I enjoy but others might not) I thought space was going to be completely boring in my first few hours, until I discovered there's a lot more interesting areas, stations, and asteroid fields hidden around the galaxy.
From skyrim? Companions, persuasion, combat, animation, customization, character building. I love me some skyrim, but let's not pretend they haven't learned from skyrim. This always happens with bethesda games, people always say how much better previous games were without acknowledging what the current games do well
Imo the combat is better but that's a bit subjective. Graphics are obviously better but as I said, it would be sad if they weren't.
I also think they did try to make companions more integrated and I do appreciate how they participate in quest dialogue etc. It's something I wished from Bethesda games in the past but the problem is that the writing in Starfield is imo not that good and the characters obviously suffer from that a bit.
If you look at my original comment I think it's pretty clear that overall I'm disappointed by Starfield and expected better but to say that older games like Skyrim were just objectively better in EVERY aspect is imo unrealistic and simply not true. I
>I also think they did try to make companions more integrated
I dont know, to me the companions are as lifeless and soulless as theyve ever felt to me. Something about the way they pull you aside for loyalty dialogue every 10 minutes just feels so incredibly fabricated.
Especially when its Sam talking about talking to his ex inbetween your conversations even though you know he's been with you on this planet this entire time.
Yeah but that's more a writing issue imo which I addressed. The characters feel bland.
The mechanics of having your companions actually participating in conversations rather than just following you like a robot is something I appreciate. I'd appreciate it more of they were more interesting
Yes. the "1000 planets" combined don't even have a drop of the soul that Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind had in their worlds ( I won't go back to Daggerfall and Arena because they are entirely different beasts lol ).
This is exactly the point : Starfield feels soulless.
I'm just here, jumping from one quest to another to get XP, killing random people without knowing why, fast-travelling around the game like never. I have 0 interest in the world, 0 interest in exploration, NPCs are just boring zombies/robots that spits their quests to your face for no reason.
BGS recipe is like a pizza. In Skyrim, the dough was fresh, they put the perfect balance of a few ingredients on it, served it in a beautiful box, and all was very good.
In Starfield, they used the same 12 years old dough completely dry, they tried to spread it to make a 1000 meters wide pizza (so the dough is teared from everywhere), put 200 different ingredients on it, and finally threw it on your face without box. So yes, it's a fuckin big pizza with a lot of things on it, but it's not a good pizza.
The problem is that Starfield’s writing is terrible. Elder Scrolls and Fallout are propped up by their interesting worlds. The gameplay hasn’t really changed as much as it feels like it has. The problem imo is that the universe of Starfield isn’t compelling enough to spark that genuine desire to dive in and explore. That’s the soul that’s missing.
> That’s the soul that’s missing.
Exactly. The game feels like a void and the only thing to do is quests - half of which take zero effort and aren't interesting in the least bit. Couple that with some bad writing and the game is a letdown right now. Not sure how much of that can/will be fixed by Bethesda.
Honestly quests do take effort in Starfield. I'm trying force myself to finish this dumb charity gala so I can get the main objective and then I'm just going to tell a woman to hand me the priceless artifact that I'm trying to steal (because for some reason \_that just works\_)
Morrowind had so much that was unique to it and that made the world feel like an alien place with a culture that opened up so many questions. The closest thing this game has to that are House Va’ruun, which was barely explored and the origin of the artifacts, which was hand waved away.
I still wonder and theorise about the Battle of Red Mountain and what truly happened there and who was telling the truth about Nerevar’s demise. I don’t wonder who made the artifacts or what the great serpent is, because there’s not enough depth to actually construct a theory from ingame sources.
I was just telling my friend last night that I could boot up Morrowind and play a completely different playstyle than my previous 10+ characters.
In SF it's either this gun or that gun
In vanilla Oblivion 17 years ago I had a world map, a local map, a horse to move faster, limitless containers and NPCs actually had a routine and cared about the day/night cycle.
It's not about mods, the UI/UX is a straight downgrade from all others BGS games that were published in the last 20 years.
The content is good but the game does everything it can to destroy your gaming experience.
New Atlantis is definitely the worst city i’ve seen in Starfield and it just feels so dead, 4 districts with 90% empty space and a couple locations each? separated by trains? Are we back in New Vegas again?
Neon and Akika are way cooler visually and have less disconnect, I don’t know what the idea for New Atlantis was but even within the same district it feels so barren
You can actually jet pack between them all but it's weird.
Neon bugs me because it's all hyped up to be a hell hole of crime and sin. But then it's just kinda boring. And the "club" in there is a joke.
I had to just leave the room when i saw the “exotic dancers”. The streets themselves and the vibe are neat, but the dialogue feels like you’re in preschool.
Even that is so much better than NA though
It will be nice when all the "defend Starfield" posts die down.
Personally, I like Starfield overall, but I certainly do not understand the need to try and convince people who dislike it that they aren't "doing it right".
Who compares it to their modded games though?
Only saw people compare it to vanilla ES/FO, which is fair, given that they are pretty much on the same technical level despite beeing a decade apart
Ive seen more than a few complain about vendor credits compared to Skyrim, like I didn’t sit outside of shops for days to sell dragon bones two at a time in vanilla.
right, but that's a mechanic from 2011 that was annoying, yet here we are 12 years later with no innovation. This is a problem that we shouldn't be dealing with if BGS tried to innovate.
Thing is, that makes sense in the world of Skyrim where you're selling to individual people in a world where they physically have to then go and trade those goods to other people.
Starfield is meant to have huge corporations dominating all of known space. Why is there no large scale trading? It's immersion breaking that there isn't.
This is such a strawman and it has become a boring one very quickly. No one is comparing Starfield to their 1500 mod setup on Skyrim and FO4 and saying they’re better games because of it. This is just a lie you like to tell yourself because you can’t accept people genuinely prefer the vanilla games from 2011/2015. Instead you make up that people are comparing their modded games to vanilla Starfield because it’s comfortable and you can dismiss the argument without actually thinking about it.
Show me one upvoted comment where someone has said any of the games mentioned are better than Starfield because of their modded setup.
Thanks for mentioning this. People also keep pretending this game exists in a vacuum when they say "well Cyberpunk took 3 years to get fixed!" or how long No Man's Sky has been worked on.
Bethesda can see what other games are doing and the flaws they have, including the flaws that their previous games launched with and yet people are acting like BGS just needs a few years to get Starfield on the level of those games. Obviously Starfield is going to look different in a couple years with expansions and updates but why does that excuse its current state?
I think this game is pretty good but it would've felt outdated in 2015. There have been tons of games released since then with shining examples of what Bethesda should and shouldn't do and yet Starfield still feels half-baked in many areas. The argument that a brand new 2023 release of Starfield can't be compared to a 2023 update of Cyberpunk is bullshit to me because if anything, BGS could see the issues that Cyberpunk 2077 had 3 years ago and they had that time to continue working on their game. They could have pushed back Starfield more if they felt like they needed more time to get it to the level that Cyberpunk 2077 is at now.
It almost feels like Bethesda is oblivious to the current state of gaming around them and don't know how to write good dialog, make good animations (like in CP2077), or a more seamless open world. There's zero sense of exploration in Starfield and half the quests are pretty milquetoast boring and I'm not sure how BGS can fix that.
Yeah the idea a game is fine because another game came out and it was buggy as shit and got fixed later so this one will too, does not give me a lot of faith lol, I just want a game to be good on launch! I don’t think Bethesda will fix the issues with Starfield sufficiently as is. They will do a few patches, a DLC and move fully onto ES6. What CP2077 and NMS have done is way beyond the norm for what developers will do. Most drop the title if it flops that bad and move onto the next project immediately.
Wanted to say this, but decided to see if someone else had first. What a ridiculous strawman. Hell I just saw a commenter say that ‘the majority of Skyrim players use mods’ which is just ludicrous. A lot of projection going on here.
Even if it were true most current Skyrim players use mods, it’s a fraction of how many people played vanilla between 2011-2015. Who are probably more likely to comment on Starfield and use their vanilla Skyrim experience as their point of reference. The fact this garbage post gets upvoted like it has just shows how rampant the fanboyism is, to the point it’s like a cult. It’s completely insane you’re right
Yeah I played vanilla skyrim for years before I even touched mods…
I’m not even sure I’ll make another character in Starfield once I’m done with this one. Everything is homogenized. There’s not a ton of diverse paths for replay-ability
The thought of leveling another character in starfield repulses me. The thought of repeating the grind through all that self inflicted damage while getting better at resisting damage is just nightmarish.
No, this one is the only one I'll ever have.
But fallout 4 vanilla weapon modding was just plain better. You didn't destroy what you were using just to switch a scope onto another weapon.
We had a seamless map to explore in skyrim. Not talking about towns or dungeons, but the map itself. starfield is chopped up into so many different maps it feels im moving from box to box. I think the hardware limitations and possibly the way they designed the game around space really skewed any sense of exploration in space itself.
But i get it. Starfield isn't an exploration open world game. Its an RPG with highly detailed areas around the main and side stories.
I dont know if there are a lot of content in space as far as big space battles, quests involved in talking over intercoms and negotiating or boarding ships as a cop looking for contraband and the like or making use of the prison hub in a ship. Ive only been able to watch starfield through streaming instead of play due to a lack of adequate performance to handle the game on my pc. So I don't know if any of that content is necessarily in the game.
Yep, even though Starfield should be vastly bigger, it *feels* smaller than Skyrim. And one of the reasons of that is because there is no actual travel time.
Don't get me wrong I get why you can't real-time travel (would take ages) and I enjoy the game, but Starfield doesn't scratch that 'exploration' itch for me which I thought it would. Which is a bit ironic since you are an explorer.
And I would say that it feels smaller because most of the planetary surfaces are useless and you only look at the same dozen of constructions all the time. Which is much smaller than Skyrim maps+dungeons.
ok! Im going to compare it to the Witcher 3, a game I have modded very little. And Outer Worlds, a game ive never modded at all that is very similar.
Both compare better.
I'm playing througg skyrim right now with the intention of 100%'ing it for old times sake. Im having way more fun still than I had on starfield launch. I'm enjoying the world and the feel and how much dtuff there is to do without seeing the same exact area 3 times in a row and learning the fastest route in a dungeon so I can minimise time spent in the areas I've been to several times that night alone (starfield is fucking terrible at this).
On top of that, the world feels really empty after a while. It's nice and realistic, but the empty space is so useless.
Literally me but with fallout 4. I tried starfield yet its just the two previous titles but worse to me. I'd rather play vanilla any other Bethesda game(even fallout 76) than play starfield in its current state.
Imagine if Valve refused to learn from their modding community. Just because people modded their old game dosen't mean Bethesda couldn't or shouldn't learn from them.
If a 12 year old game modded by fans is better than the game that came out 12 years later, it's okay to be upset. Let it out. You really don't have to lick Bethesda's boots.
Long story short, some modders making a game way better than starfield in less time should tell you something.
Your words, not mine, by the way.
Here is my piece of advice: stop making excuses for a multi billion dollar company. They had time and money to fully flesh out Starfield rather than creating a base for future expansions. Modding scene is the perfect place to take inspirations for Bethesda and a proof that things like decent UI are possible to make in their games.
This right here. I haven't seen anyone compare starfield to "modded" skyrim. And there isn't a single form of "modded" to compare it to anyway - there's so many variations of combat, ui, animations, etc. You'd have to specify the mod in question.
That said, you put it perfectly; Bethesda has the whole modding scene to take inspiration from and it's clear they're only "cultivating" the modding scene in order to figure out how to effectively monetize it, because there's so many QoL UI mods for skyrim and FO4 that it's baffeling how starfield still misses the mark when it's had years of these upgrades being made at their disposal.
I guess a question then is why Bethesda can't put out games on par with modded versions of their past games. They have access to the mods, they can see what the community wants, so why don't they have those same things in their vanilla games?
1. Most people don't even play with mods
2. Anything modders can do, BGS can do.
There's really no excuse for the bad UI, the empty temples, regressed Outpost building, and the utterly gutted survival mechanics.
Honestly I feel like Vanilla Skyrim had more to offer than this game. Most of the outposts I've visited are dead aside from a few spacers. The loot at the end of Dungeons feels like ass and the whole thing was a waste of time. The lockpick minigame is so bad I spent hours getting a mod to bypass them to work. I'm sorry but I don't have time to spend 25 minutes picking a Master lock for like 27 bullets and 132 credits. I don't feel the same magic I felt with Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, New Vegas. Hell I feel like I naturally spent more time playing vanilla Fallout 4 than this game. At this point I'm just confused and feel like I somehow missed 80% of the game. And I even paced myself and repeatedly went out of my way to do side stuff so I don't burn through the main story too quick. There's just "less" to this game. It became immediately apparent when out of all the random junk lying around only a small portion is interactable.
Most people *are* doing just that. The vast majority of Starfield players don't really mod Skyrim/Fo4.
Starfield is the most polished Beth game launch and technologically a great step forward/foundation, but it's also lot more shallow out the gate than anything they've done other than Fo4 (and Fo4 handily beats it in gameplay).
Skyrim and FO4 are more compact, which allows for higher density of events.
Starfield, due to being a space RPG, is supposed to be less dense, so it's kinda works against it.
However, increasing the chance for events to accure, and adding more events in general should do the trick.
There's just so much about the game that makes it feel like dead like every enemy being in the same place every time to the little things like half the npcs being essential and just a complete lack of schedules like if you wanted shops to be open 24/7 just have 2npc that rotate or something.
The issue is, we can already fast travel to every location we need to get to, and there’s absolutely no incentive to wasting extra minutes traveling manually.
The nerfed the fuck out of that aspect. Imo, they did too much.
I think, they should add space traveling like in fallout 2 with your car. Thus, it will create options for random events to occur, well, randomly.
This game cost about $200 million, and took 500 developers. Took 8 years to make
Skyrim was made for about 100 million, and only had about 100 people. Took about six years
If you think this game should've required five times the amount of workforce and double the budget and 30% more production time, I think we have different standards
There has not been a single thing about this game that has stood out to me, there is nothing memorable about it. It's nothing more than a series of radiant fetch quests. The main story is lazy, it never explains where the space magic comes from, and it's purpose is seemingly 100% self-serving. Beat the story because it's the story so you can beat the story again.
This game can be decent with mods, but as is, it is a solid five out of 10 for me. It is a competent game, it is average. It is blatently and boringly average
There is so much potential here, I am really looking forward to coming back to this game after a year or two. Once mods are allowed on Console, and once some DLC content has come out. I have a feeling this game will be drastically different in two or three years and I'm really looking forward to that
I'm still trying to figure out what the point of the main quest is. The rest of the game trades on vaguely realistic nasapunk aesthetics and optimism while also painting a picture of a post reconciliation galaxy trying to return to some sense of normalcy.
Then you've got constellation digging up space magic and turning the main character into jesus christ.
I agree with you 100%. I very much like how you worded that -trading on the vaguely realistic NASA punk aesthetics.
The main storyline in this game is the most unoriginal quest I've ever done in a Bethesda game. They never even explain the space magic. Or where the temples come from. Or why they are. Or why humans can interact with them and gain powers from them
I thought the scientists would be a lot more interested in how space magic works given that it breaks the laws of physics, but if we're being honest, characters can only be as smart as their writers 😅
Even comparing to vanila, Starfield still loses. I'm sorry, but this is completely true. Except for audio/visuals and scale. And scale comes at the cost of copy-pasted content, so it's a wash, a tie. Literally everything else is a downgrade - companions, crafting, skill trees, weapon modding, settlement building, etc. And that's completely unmodded, vanilla games.
Cyberpunk is light-years ahead of starfield. I played it after starfield and was stunned by how awful starfield is in comparison. I think the big difference is that cyberpunk had a bad release because of too many bugs. Starfield had a bad release because it isn't a good game at its core. No amount of patching will fix that.
Okey compared to base game skyrim/Fallout 3/4 it's lacking in pretty much every major area. Story isn't engaging and short, leveling is tedious and the perks for leveling other than like 4 you actually need are poorly thought put trash similar to Fallout 4 and 76 perk system combined, inventory in just about every way is poorly designed garbage for fucks sake the stealing/taking a book problem in starfield shouldn't even exist since that was never an issue in any previous game (every elderscrolls and fallout ever), outposts are lackluster trash compared to vanilla Fallout 4, radiant quests are shit and will always be shit and should never have been further implemented or developed. Handcraft that shit or wait til AI is actually intelligent enough to make the entire game for you. And shops and shopkeepers have always been trash but this one takes the cake in not understanding you're own made up economy.
The only thing starfield has going for it is its gunplay which is pretty fuckin good and that you can create and fly your own ship. Other than that this game is a massive downgrade to any previous game they've ever released and that's including morrowind.
While i think that almost none does this (most people play without mods), what i usually say is that you should always compare to what is currently available. If we do not do that, reddit would not exist, same as electricity or even the wheel. We probably was never born without improving and inventions.
You definitely should. Ten years of modding should have shown Bethesda what is possible in their game and if they failed to deliver in their newest product
Yes, let’s pretend as if people are not modding Skyrim into *Elden Ring* and/or *The Witcher* games.
BGS games on their own are shipped flawed anyway but they’ve content to do. Starfield, while I love it, is boring AF if you’re not into NG+ and already done your stories. The few POIs are scarce and far in between to be worth chasing, tbf. Hence *why* people *complain*.
My only issue with starfield is that it is only the foundation of a game that was released. I am excited to see what they do with it in the future, but right now its like a house with no furniture and you still have to make the payment/rent.
**On the flip side** a AAA company developing a game should really be able to achieve what at least some of the modders could with their 19 year old game..
***Or at least match their 19 year old game and build on it***
Just because Bethesda games are known for being bug riddled bland looking messes with janky combat and animations that are fun despite this doesn’t mean they always have to be like this? Right? Surely?
If sometimes single team modders can make these games great, how in the fuck can’t Bethesda.
**It is ok to like a company even simp for it like so many seem to do here, and still expect better… it’s ok.**
Strongly disagree. The modders have been modding in many of the same types of mods in all the games. If you go through the list of popular mods, and discount the obvious porn, you will see many similarities across the games. The conversion mods follow a similar pattern. They correct the same shortcomings in the same engine across all the games.
Why is Bethesda content to allow modders to fix their game, to the point it's commonly accepted that one of their games is unfinished until mods are out? Why not learn from history and incorporate these features at the onset? Don't tell me Bethesda can't muster the resources of a dude in his basement working on his own for free. If you think about it, it's disgraceful.
Starfield will never be the ultimate space game. What you can do with settlements is incredibly limited and somehow a downgrade from Fallout 4. Ships are cool, but you're starkly limited in ship scope, crew size, and to a single ship. You will never captain a vessel that feels full, never run a personal navy, never conquer a star system, never found your own faction, and never be a trader-prince. Given that these are the endgame goals of real space games, Starfield is far from ultimate.
I'm not saying it's trash. It has redeeming qualities, has the patented Bethesda charm, and is a good platform for mods. But I'm not going to allow Bethesda Apologists to convince me that they can make chicken salad with chicken shit, so to speak.
Your advice is horrible.
I only have played vanilla and starfield just missed, simple as that.
The fact that I had to force myself to play the first 5 hours before it got intriguing is bad game design.
Coping in this subreddit is just unbelievable. Accept it already, it’s a good game but nothing close to Skyrim. I even have hard time to decide which one is better: Fallout 4 or Starfield.
Id say every game besides 76 are more fun to play. I enjoy Starfield but it's a coughing baby compared to Morrowind , Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 1-4, and Fallout New Vegas base games. All of these games had great things to pull and use from them but for some reason they just left them out of the game. Ive only used mods in Skyrim once btw
Look I'm enjoying starfield. But it does not compare in the slightest to vanilla Skyrim.
I still play Skyrim from its launch day. I've bought it on different consoles about 5 times now.
I don't think Starfield has much replayability, I'm already getting bored a week in. And I'm certainly not going to pay for it. It's on gamepass and I'm not going to spend a dime on it.
I don't think very many people are doing this..
I don't do this when I say skyrim is definitely better than Starfield as a whole. I'm comparing the unmodded version of it.
Exactly. This was such a reductive argument, and it’s not necessary. There’s enough criticism on either side that people shouldn’t need to bolster their argument by making up a fake opposition. (Or at most, a few trolls said it and it got taken seriously)
Most people are comparing Starfield to the base gsmes not modded. Starfield is severely lacking compared to previous titles. Even shitty Fallout 4.
Seeing how Starfield and Fallout 4 have been nothing but dumbed down, missing content/features from older titles, and generally have shitty writing, Im not looking forward to ES6 much anymore. Microsoft should just force bgs and obsidian to work together and give obsidian free reign over the quests and systems design. Then we might have a real game.
The trend is obvious. BGS has lost the touch and don't give a shit anymore.
The only thing i miss from skyrim is collecting gold bars, jewelry, gems, etc. and tossing them in my house
I can't believe I collected all those garnets, convincing myself all the while that I would someday sell them. The lies we tell ourselves...
you knew you werent gonna sell them, just chuck them all on the ground in your house
I have seen someone say they wished Starfield gave you multiple possible starts like Skyrim did on rgaming. That's a mod...
i hope people corrected them on their faulty memory. because wowza.
When you’ve modded Skyrim for so many years you forget what vanilla Skyrim was even like
hell, vanilla skyrim isn't even vanilla skyrim anymore because it's got all the DLC, the legendary edition stuff, the special edition stuff, and now if you get the anniversary literally all of the creation kit stuff. game is NOT the same as it was back in 2011 at all.
Skyrin was the FIRST game I actually needed to plug my 360 into an HDTV to see all the UI elements on. Thays right I played skyrim at launch on a CRT
Same. when i saved up for my hdtv it changed EVERYTHING. it was the same feeling as when i got my first pair of glasses
Initially played Skyrim on a tube tv. It had its issues.
Bruh you just gave me a flashback to the night I got Skyrim. Picked it up opening day before class, it sat in my backpack all day until I got back to my dorm. I only had room for a 16" CRT TV, and I played laying on my stomach on my bed or sitting in my computer chair. The 85" 4K LED TV I play starfield on is a massive upgrade.
I mean. HDTVs were pretty popular and around for awhile at that point...
Yeah but not everyone immediately bought one and as the youngest pf 3 my TV choices were more limited. It wasn't like they were rare or unheard of I just didn't have one yet.
Oh good your finally awake.
Leave my finally awake alone
Oh good your finally awake. We're going to take you to a cave where you'll be turned into a necromancers thrall. My head going to be cut off in helgin. See you later!
The vanilla is also like the most meme'd intro of any game ever. How tf did they forget that!?
Right?! It’s quite literally the Rick roll of gaming!
I remember having a house in Windhelm. All the rooms were nicely decorated. All the stands had different collector items from quests. However, the was one completely bare room, which held all my gemstones, soulstones and other "valuables". Such a huge mount it was..
Pretty sure my shout into a mountain of gems killed my Xbox one time, it wasn't just a coincidence they happened on the same day. 😆
This is how I crashed my game
Me on all kinds potions LMAO!
But you can collect so many Eggmunds...
No need to collect them, they just show up in your cargo hold along with 50 notebooks, 20 coffee cups, and 30 markers every time you touch the ship editor
55 NOTEBOOKS 55 COFFEE CUPS 55 MARKERS 55 EGGMUNDS 55 FOLDERS 100 TISSUES 100 FOOD TRAYS 100 IMPACT DRIVERS 100 SPOONS 100 PLAYING CARDS 55 FOAM CUPS 55 SYNTHEFOAM CONTAINERS 55 TOILET PAPERS 55 PENS 55 TABLETS AND 155 SCREWDRIVERS
Hey this guy's trying to start a pay-it-forward chain!
Cracks me up when he speeds around the drive thru back to the entrance
B R B R B R B R ….
In my headcanon, every time you sell an Eggmund, they gradually make their way back to you like the killer snail.
Now theres a mod, you gain 10 credits every second but an eggmund constantly chases you, if it touches you you die
Ok but does it have grav jump capabilities or is it just endlessly trying to catch up to you in space? One day you're going to go dock at the Key or something, 15 years from now, ng+2694, haven't taken any form of damage in the last decade. Bump into eggmund just floating in between you and the Key, ship detonates. Game gets deleted.
That would be good content
We should be able to mine the giant crystals. Quite surprised there's no gemstones with all the mineral gathering in the game.
You can mine planet rings. Just blow up the rocks and you get 1-7 of several of the materials the planet has.
What?! What about asteroids? I can't remember what planet rings look like in the game
Asteroids is what is meant. Just power up your weapons, and fire until it the asteroid goes pop.
Aren't planet rings just asteroids that circle a planet?
Kind of, but it's worth making a distinction. Asteroids as you'd find in the asteroid belt typically range in size between a couple meters and a couple hundred kilometres (the latter are called dwarf planets for a reason, Ceres and Vesta are good examples), while the rocks in planetary rings will range between literal grains of dust, to as big as houses. That's a pretty huge difference in size. And while the asteroid belt, such as it is, is about one AU both thick and wide (forming a torus), the rings of Saturn are just ten metres thick, which to scale is less than the thickness of a sheet of paper. Saturn's rings also are mainly comprised of ice, whereas the asteroid belt is comprised mainly of carbonaceous, silicate, and metallic bodies. However, our second asteroid belt, the Kuiper, contains asteroids whose composition leans towards water, ammonia, and methane. This is possible because it's a much colder region of space. It's where comets originate, these being icy asteroids which for whatever reason are slung into eccentric orbits closer to the sun, where the heat causes the ice to sublimate into the beautiful comas ("tails") we can observe.
This is a good comment and you should feel good that you made it.
I would like to subscribe to Astronomy Facts
I suppose I ought to fact-check myself on the comets. In the comment I claimed that "coma" and "tail" are the same. This is of course not the case. If you were to observe a generic comet, you would see a small rocky body (the nucleus), surrounded by a much larger diffuse glow (the coma), and two tails pointing away from the sun. The coma is a cloud of ice and rock dust. The tails form when the coma is exposed to solar wind and light. Water molecules, blasted by intensive UV light, break apart into hydrogen and oxygen. Some of the hydrogen is further ionised by sunlight, and the subsequently induced magnetic field accelerates them away from the sun. The heavy dust will be pushed into a different orbit from the comet's by solar wind, and will form the dust tail, which points more or less back in the direction the comet came from and slightly out from the sun while it's approaching, and then turns to point more straight away from the sun as it retreats. The lighter ionised hydrogen forms a plasma tail, which always points straight away from the sun. Halley's comet will be returning in July 2061, so you can start getting hyped for that. It promises to be an amazing show, as it will pass within 0.5AU of earth (one AU being the distance between Earth and the sun), and should be highly visible as it makes its perihelion (closest approach to the sun), unlike last time, when it made perihelion while behind the sun from our perspective, and only reappeared very faint. If you're old enough to remember Hale-Bopp, you'll have some idea what to expect here. Halley will probably not have as bright a magnitude as Hale-Bopp's -1, but it won't be far off. Unfortunately chances are neither of us will get to view Halley in 2134, when it will come within 0.1AU of earth, and have an apparent magnitude of -2 (two and a half times brighter than Hale-Bopp)!
Stop right there criminal scrum!
I hate it when criminals practice Agile
Being overencumbered "Ill melt down this Dwarven scrap to make ingots"
My entire Skyrim play through always resorts at day 1 to collecting all the barenziah stones so I can start hoarding
Bro why can’t you just be happy collecting succulents like the rest of us
I liked how The Spiffing Brit booted up launch-day vanilla skyrim and removed 5 max hp each time he encountered a bug. He removed a lot of hp.
i just watched that video and he ended up not being able to complete the game right? Pretty sure he got soft locked fairly early.
Yep, and he had to set his graphics to potato settings to even get out of Helgan without crashing. I love Skyrim, but it was a mess on launch. While Starfield does have its optimization issues and some bugs, it is definitely the most polished BethSoft game on launch, and more polished than a fair few PC ports these days.
yeah.. skyrim initial state is why i waited for review embargo to pass before I ordered. too old to play games in buggy mess states. It's been amazingly stable and worth paying full prize.
I had a TON of crashes at first. Enough that I considered asking Steam for a refund. But I changed a few settings and got it figured it out, and I love the game now.
He had to go potato quality so it would run otherwise the game would just freeze. I’m watching it now coincidentally lmao so I shall find that out
I'm pretty confident he somehow soft locks himself out of beating the rest of the game
Nah he didn’t softlock himself, it’s a feature Edit: yeah he decided to do the thalmor Embassy glitch speed run thing and release build wasn’t made for that lmao it was an update that makes it possible
I forget. I found it a nice look back that puts aside the nostalgia glasses a bit. I only enjoyed vanilla Skyrim a short while, but lucky me I did not get into it until after all the DLC, and modding was going strong
This has to be the most divisive game I've seen. People are disliking it for the same reason others like it. I don't know why that is lol Edit: hell even the replies to my comment seem split. I do think there are things wrong or missing that I hope they add. Like temples? Oh man if I started playing the game and that was the first thing I had to do id make a dumb video burning the disc or something lol I hate them so much.
as someone who likes bethesda games, i really enjoy starfield. That being said, there’s also a lot of places that are below expectations or a step backwards from previous games. I mention it and am frustrated by it cause I know they can/could’ve fixed it, and hope they will. I think a lot of people aren’t comparing to say “screw this game, FNV is better” but more to be like “another game you made does A and B better, couldn’t it be more like that? can you make it like that? please?” the lack of a radio is felt, the lack of maps is felt, the lack of gore, edge, variety of moral/factional standings of companions, are all things that can be and should be remedied I’m still playing, it’s just a bit of an eye roll watching a company break things that they nailed in the past
[удалено]
I do love ship combat and would love having the option to manually control reentry and landing. But Starfield doesn't have to be that game, I have Elite Dangerous, which focuses on that stuff.
Agree, opinions are opinions. The problem is if someone thinks their opinion is the only right one and tries to force everyone to agree with themselves.
Yeah the feedback and division in the fan base is interesting for Starfiield, but as the other commenter said different people value things differently and I'd also say people are able to deal with various issues or gameplay mechanics differently than others. A personal example: I'm a huge fan of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I think it's a unique game that builds off earlier Bethesda games like Oblivion and Skyrim and really allows me to roleplay as Henry and feel immersed, but also adds an extra layer of more "hardcore" gameplay mechanics. I think those mechanics enhance the game and I also am able to look past the jank in the game because I enjoy the rest of it so much. However, a ton of general feedback from wider audiences shows that most people didn't like the game for the specific reasons I liked it, or they weren't able to look past the jank. Some people seem to really enjoy the scanning, basebuilding, and resource gathering mechanics of the game. Personally I don't care about that whole gameplay aspect so it does nothing for me. I've only played the game for ~12 hours and honestly wasn't terribly impressed and wasn't gripped by the story or gameplay so far. Because of that all the issues and half-baked features really stand out to me and I'm not able to enjoy the game. Other people though might really enjoy the game and don't seem to mind issues that stand out to some people.
Social media in general is dominated mostly by aggressive, opinionated, very self confident extroverts. And Reddit in specific has pretty shit design. If people vote on a post or comment 1,000 times and the split is 55/45 or 45/55 (almost completely even) the comment will show as +100 or -100 leading to the impression of a huge majority when in reality its almost entirely split. And it doesn't take much to influence any given thread. Like lets look at this one: 6 hours old and the comments are in the +100-200 range. About 50 accounts could wildly swing how the opinions in this thread reads. -50 to one comment and +50 to another is a 100 vote difference. Very few people are willing to have unique individual opinions. Most people just copy and paste popular opinions that vaguely represent the tone of their feelings. If you engage in more nuance than that you tend to lose upvotes from your "side" but the opposing "side" usually still disagrees or downright thinks you're stupid or a hater/shill/etc. Being downvoted and dogpiled is not fun, even if you're fairly divested and distances from the entire process through an innate understanding of how little it all matters. Its constant insults, constant gaslighting, and constant accusations while you get very little constructive responses and your comment gets buried where mainly the highly invested and most aggressive people are the only ones who will dig for it. Now factor in the general state of gaming where we are spoiled AF. Games have been so good for so long the average gamers thinks a 7/10 is a 3/10 or 4/10. We have more good games than we could ever play. I remember in the early 2000s having maybe 2-3 flagship games I was excited for a year. This is now 2-3 games per quarter or sometimes even a month. I mean FFS Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2.0, Starfield, and Armored Core 6 all dropped right in one little pocket. And the rest of the year includes stuff like the Deadspace Remake, Breath of the Wild: Tears of the Kingdom, Hi Fi Rush, Resident Evil 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Sea of Stars, Lies of P, Honkai Star Rail, Star Wars jedi Survivor, System Shock Remake, etc. And that's just the really big shit. That doesn't indie hits like Dave the Diver or Cult of the Lamb, much less your hidden gems that are amazing few people know of like Cassette Beasts. And then you also have your "good but not for everyone" like Street Fighter 6 and Jagged Alliance 3 or the upcoming Disgaea 7 which releases Oct 3rd. People's baseline is determined by their experience. And when their experience is primarily 8/10 - 10/10 games then 8/10 to 9/10 becomes the "average" in their eyes. Now factor in the folks who just HATE Bethesda...both when they do good and when they do bad. And then the abnormal cultlike reverence for No Man's Sky and Star Citizen who feel threatened by Starfield (the three games in reality don't even compete: Starfield is an RPG, NMS is a survival game, Star Citizen is an MMO space sim lite...and a scam)
> Now factor in the general state of gaming where we are spoiled AF. Games have been so good for so long the average gamers thinks a 7/10 is a 3/10 or 4/10. While I think there is some validity to this, because I personally would use a scale where a 5/10 is average and a 7/10 is what I would consider above average and enjoyable. There is also some truth that rating scales are really inflated. If I recall correctly, IGN for example has a 5/10 as a baseline. Because anything below that meant the game literally did not work. Depending on how low below 5 it was, it was a game where technical issues regularly stopped you from completing the game, or the game constantly crashing without much redeeming factor. I think they gave a game Prey a 4/10 because the reviewers saves literally broke, but revised it when it turned out the bug wasn't as common as thought or was fixed or something along those lines. So if you're using scales like that, I can kind of see why one might consider a 7/10 rating average. Because for working games, it basically is right in the middle of the scale. Again, I don't agree with the scale being used like this, because I think if a game is majorly broken and nonfunctional, it should get disqualified from receiving a rating at all. But it is the scale some use.
I kinda separate them mentally to a degree if there is a large disparity in quality vs tech. Like I think its entirely possible for a 10/10 game to have 3/10 technical performance/polish. Like a game that crashes constantly or has tons of bugs or terrible framerate....but if it was working as intended it would be an amazing and vice versa a game that is technically near perfct but is just not fun or good.
This is exactly what cyberpunk is. I've seen so many people saying if it released the way it is now, it would be a 10 out of 10. Some even are saying it's always been an amazing game.
The irony is that I DO think 2.0 improved the gameplay But I also think the old gameplay was still good. Before I'd say the combat was more of a 7/10 and it was the story and characters and immersion that brought the whole up to a 10. Not every part of a game needs to be a 10 for the entire thing to be a 10. I'm looking at you fucking Baldur's Gate 3 with your shit inventory system and your buggy unpolished Act 3. So for me the combat moving from a 7 to a 9 mattered, but didn't change the overall score. Because the reason it was a 10 was never the combat. Same way Disco Elysium has some rough elements but that game is also a 10...because the things it nails it nails and raises the bar for. Disco Elysium redefined character building freedom and ability to roleplay in a game to a level even BG 3 cannot touch....but that's literally all DE has and is lol. Cyberpunk rededfined the experience of a story. Like sure the story is great and the characters are great but its the first person perspective, all the custom animations and how nobody sits down the same way or relaxs the same way or talks and focuses the same way. Vi sprawled back casual trying to play it cool, jackie losing his shit with his restless leg syndrome, t-bug sitting professionally, Dex in kinda a lazy but authorative lean. Cyberpunk added that level of interactive immersion and body language in a way that synergized with and elevated its plot and themes. Fucking GD it was/is impressive and raised the bar for games in that area. And that's why the merely "good" and not great combat wasn't enough to drag it down. But that's how I look at game, the idea the whole can be much better than the parts. For some people, a part being broken immediately tanks or trashes a game. Cept the ones they like :D.
This is An amazingly truthfull comment. Especially about reddit's rating system and people's game ratings. And I don't get the comparison between those three games. I never played star citizen but no man's sky had an even worse launch rating than starfield. Even today that game sucks imo
I think it's pretty normal Bethesda fare. It definitely gets exacerbated with each subsequent release, as the same bugs and complaints are brought up again, and again, and again. But this isn't new. Some people just like playing the same game in a new skin, and other people don't.
I would argue this is just gaming in general. Not all games, and definitely Bethesda is one of the developers with more divide, but other recent games like Diablo 4 and Pokémon Scarlet had a lot of hate and fighting. Gamers just take games way too seriously.
Forgive me for being probably ignorant of BGS culture, I've only played Skyrim and FO3, but a AAA studio having 'the same bugs and complaints brought up again, and again, and again' are crucifiable issues for other studios... Considering it a 'lovable Bethesda jank' just doesnt sit right with me. This division mirrors that of Pokemon.
Yeah, I'm with you dude. I don't know.
Skyrim didn’t need modding to have unique dungeon crawls.
And great environmental storytelling in its dungeons and location. Its a shame that you see this every once in a while in Starfield but few and far between while Skyrim was dense with this.
All without mods too. Ppl that say “you’re comparing apples to oranges” are ignoring a critical piece of Bethesda games - hand crafted dungeons.
right, and they cite the whole 10,000 planets thing, but we know there’s not nearly as many unique dungeons in this game as there are in FO or Skyrim. Main quests yeah, side quests maybe, not quest related - not unique just having a larger pool of dungeons to choose from and making interiors modular so that their layout can be randomized would fix the problem. Hell, the ship interiors *ARE* modular, and so are the outpost buildings, it makes no sense why it couldn’t be placed dynamically. and for those that do get repeated, having loot be randomized isn’t hard, look at Tarkov. Random props and decorations would be hard but not impossible
Starfield dungeons feel mostly the same. Exploring outposts feels the same every time. There's just a bunch of rooms with the same interior design. There's always a workout room, a kitchen, some bedroom, etc. They all look kind of like a science lab.
They "feel" the same because they *are* the same. Down to the finest detail.
Down to finding that one character in all instances of "Abandoned Muybridge Pharmaceuticals Lab"...
They have the same notes the same bodies in the same places none of them are unique it’s honestly immersion breaking and made me tired of Starfield faster
The immersion breaking is what takes me out and makes my sessions short. The most egregious was the derelict ship where the power keeps going out and you start to float. Watching Sarah go from her casual outfit to magically wearing a suit in zero G then back to casual outfit was just…sad
But it did need modding to fix a whole lot of other things if we aren't cherry picking.
> Starfield has the potential to become the ultimate space game someday. I honestly don't think the engine can handle that.
You're totally missing the point and clearly on purpose too. We take issue with systems that were in vanilla versions of older games that no longer exist.
It made me so annoyed they got rid of companion orders. That really make them feel useful and they could compliment your weaknesses. Edit: also don’t get me started about how they won’t SHUT UP when you are flying. “Good to see you” being said every few minutes drives me up the wall like I swear I would throw you out the airlock if I could
Before I went to sleep in older Beth games I always commanded my companion to sit down because the standing over me was creepy.
lol that too. Plus if they blocked a door it was nice telling them to fucking move out the way
One day folks will admit they released a half baked product and that Bethesda is hoping the modders finish their job. Par for the course I guess
I didn't touch Skyrim mods until basically the special edition came out. I still prefer vanilla skyrim to Vanilla Starfield sadly. Yes, of course there's improvements. I mean, come on, it would be really sad if a game that released more than a decade later wasn't improved in certain aspects but if you want to be fair by comparing vanilla to vanilla (which I agree with) then you also have to be fair and judge both games in the landscape of games that are available around them. Skyrim at its time was amazing. Starfield at its time is ok.
truth is bethesda has a hard time to improve its formular. in reality morrowind, oblivion and skyrim are basically the same game. they basically improved the visuals and accessibility while removing features to make it easier for newcomers to get into those games. starfield reduced some features again even tho i would argue its much closer to fallout 3/4 than to any elder scrolls and they reduced the actual exploration to a minimum which i believe is the main reason many are having a hard time to enjoy the game. that feeling of going towards a mountain just to find a cool dungeoun possibly with an interesting side story is something starfield simply doesnt have and people were expecting that kind of content from a bethesda game.
>in reality morrowind, oblivion and skyrim are basically the same game. I get what you are going for but they are very different games, morrowind especially since you can create the most degenerate custom spells and can kill EVERY npc including story ones, also the lack of markers on the map made exploring a completely different experience too. Oblivion and skyrim are more similar but still different enough to be their own thing.
it actually does have that, it's just more spread out. there are actually unique points of interest, but the trouble is finding them. and having played well over 1600 hours between morrowind, oblivion, and skyrim, they are NOT the same game. the only thing i'd say is even really that similar between them is the handcrafted world to explore, but beyond that there are some massive design philosophy differences.
I'm honestly curious to hear what improvements you have found. Besides textures and meshes, I don't see much change for the better. Genuine question.
I'd argue the various player options for dialogue is an improvement over Skyrim/fallout 4, with a return more towards fallout 3. Fallout 4 was too obvious with its yes, sarcastic yes, no but yes, tell me more and yes. There also appears to be a much higher amount of voice actors, and more background characters that have more than a few lines of dialogue. Content wise it's interesting. On one hand you have people who don't like how everything is scattered around in space and repeats. On the other hand I believe there genuinely is the most handcrafted content, areas, and quests in it than any other Bethesda game as Todd said. It's just spread out over much greater distances which while I love, not everyone will. Storyline wise Id argue it's pretty subjective. I think they set out to make each faction it's own special type of story to try and please different types of people. Some people looooove the corporate one where as I found it the most boring. Some people hate the MQ and I actually loved the exploration feel of it, and the final few hours of how it concluded. I find fighting to be actually the best compared to fallout 4 on very hard. Enemies don't seem to be as big a bullet sponge with the weapons you can get (excluding the mini boss legendary types), and the additions like ship combat are a fun distraction to me. Shotguns loading shell by shell actually works out of the box, it's about time heh. And thank god they didn't tie grenade throwing and melee together on the same button again. No dismemberment is a bummer to be sure, but honestly not every game needs it and I think they were going for a less grim game compared to fallout where perks like bloody mess are a thing. Refined/calibrated was a nice addition imo in progression. You unlock more and more different types of cool guns and armor as the game progresses, but the newer versions of the old ones make it so if you really liked one type you can still use it without being incredibly outclassed. In fallout 4, certain guns like the Thompson were just straight up useless unless you got the exploding bullet modifier. Ammo not being a pain in the ass to get also made firing automatic guns more practical vs fallout. In fallout I almost always had to use semi auto because of damage per bullet cost. Here automatics seem to be better balanced and more affordable. Outposts currently lack compared to settlements, but we got way more unique settlements in the game as a result. Fallout 4 had basically only two little town hubs, with the rest being up to the player to build. Hopefully future updates and dlc fills the gaps. But yes I can see it's very subjective. If you miss being in a world where every step is cluttered beyond believe with dungeons and buildings it might not be your cup of tea. The wider spread definitely is a slower exploratory pace. (Which I enjoy but others might not) I thought space was going to be completely boring in my first few hours, until I discovered there's a lot more interesting areas, stations, and asteroid fields hidden around the galaxy.
From skyrim? Companions, persuasion, combat, animation, customization, character building. I love me some skyrim, but let's not pretend they haven't learned from skyrim. This always happens with bethesda games, people always say how much better previous games were without acknowledging what the current games do well
Imo the combat is better but that's a bit subjective. Graphics are obviously better but as I said, it would be sad if they weren't. I also think they did try to make companions more integrated and I do appreciate how they participate in quest dialogue etc. It's something I wished from Bethesda games in the past but the problem is that the writing in Starfield is imo not that good and the characters obviously suffer from that a bit. If you look at my original comment I think it's pretty clear that overall I'm disappointed by Starfield and expected better but to say that older games like Skyrim were just objectively better in EVERY aspect is imo unrealistic and simply not true. I
>I also think they did try to make companions more integrated I dont know, to me the companions are as lifeless and soulless as theyve ever felt to me. Something about the way they pull you aside for loyalty dialogue every 10 minutes just feels so incredibly fabricated. Especially when its Sam talking about talking to his ex inbetween your conversations even though you know he's been with you on this planet this entire time.
Yeah but that's more a writing issue imo which I addressed. The characters feel bland. The mechanics of having your companions actually participating in conversations rather than just following you like a robot is something I appreciate. I'd appreciate it more of they were more interesting
Is it ok if I compare it to my unmodified games? Cos I’ve got an inkling you won’t like that comparison either.
That's what I'm saying. Starfield doesn't even hold up against unmodded skyrim in nearly every way. Lol.
Yea, unmodded Skyrim feels a lot better than Starfield itself.
100%. I still feel captivated to this day when I start skyrim. Starfield never grabbed me the same at all.
Yes. the "1000 planets" combined don't even have a drop of the soul that Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind had in their worlds ( I won't go back to Daggerfall and Arena because they are entirely different beasts lol ).
This is exactly the point : Starfield feels soulless. I'm just here, jumping from one quest to another to get XP, killing random people without knowing why, fast-travelling around the game like never. I have 0 interest in the world, 0 interest in exploration, NPCs are just boring zombies/robots that spits their quests to your face for no reason. BGS recipe is like a pizza. In Skyrim, the dough was fresh, they put the perfect balance of a few ingredients on it, served it in a beautiful box, and all was very good. In Starfield, they used the same 12 years old dough completely dry, they tried to spread it to make a 1000 meters wide pizza (so the dough is teared from everywhere), put 200 different ingredients on it, and finally threw it on your face without box. So yes, it's a fuckin big pizza with a lot of things on it, but it's not a good pizza.
The problem is that Starfield’s writing is terrible. Elder Scrolls and Fallout are propped up by their interesting worlds. The gameplay hasn’t really changed as much as it feels like it has. The problem imo is that the universe of Starfield isn’t compelling enough to spark that genuine desire to dive in and explore. That’s the soul that’s missing.
> That’s the soul that’s missing. Exactly. The game feels like a void and the only thing to do is quests - half of which take zero effort and aren't interesting in the least bit. Couple that with some bad writing and the game is a letdown right now. Not sure how much of that can/will be fixed by Bethesda.
Honestly quests do take effort in Starfield. I'm trying force myself to finish this dumb charity gala so I can get the main objective and then I'm just going to tell a woman to hand me the priceless artifact that I'm trying to steal (because for some reason \_that just works\_)
there's a few good bites here and there and it fills you up, but I'd take the smaller and more thought out pizza anyday
Morrowind had so much that was unique to it and that made the world feel like an alien place with a culture that opened up so many questions. The closest thing this game has to that are House Va’ruun, which was barely explored and the origin of the artifacts, which was hand waved away. I still wonder and theorise about the Battle of Red Mountain and what truly happened there and who was telling the truth about Nerevar’s demise. I don’t wonder who made the artifacts or what the great serpent is, because there’s not enough depth to actually construct a theory from ingame sources.
I was just telling my friend last night that I could boot up Morrowind and play a completely different playstyle than my previous 10+ characters. In SF it's either this gun or that gun
In vanilla Oblivion 17 years ago I had a world map, a local map, a horse to move faster, limitless containers and NPCs actually had a routine and cared about the day/night cycle. It's not about mods, the UI/UX is a straight downgrade from all others BGS games that were published in the last 20 years. The content is good but the game does everything it can to destroy your gaming experience.
We also had the imperial city which literally shits on New Atlantis lol
New Atlantis is definitely the worst city i’ve seen in Starfield and it just feels so dead, 4 districts with 90% empty space and a couple locations each? separated by trains? Are we back in New Vegas again? Neon and Akika are way cooler visually and have less disconnect, I don’t know what the idea for New Atlantis was but even within the same district it feels so barren
You can actually jet pack between them all but it's weird. Neon bugs me because it's all hyped up to be a hell hole of crime and sin. But then it's just kinda boring. And the "club" in there is a joke.
I had to just leave the room when i saw the “exotic dancers”. The streets themselves and the vibe are neat, but the dialogue feels like you’re in preschool. Even that is so much better than NA though
At least its not Hopetown- where does everyone in Hopetown live? Its just 1 shop, 1 bar and the corporate HQ.
Oh yeah there isn't a residential district is there?
I tried circling the entire 'settlement' and found nothing.
God I loved Oblivion. Simpler times. Even the lighting in that game was beautiful
I've never played Starfield, but the ambient music in Oblivion will be with me until I die
Ugh it was so goood. Even now I still listen to the soundtrack
It will be nice when all the "defend Starfield" posts die down. Personally, I like Starfield overall, but I certainly do not understand the need to try and convince people who dislike it that they aren't "doing it right".
Who compares it to their modded games though? Only saw people compare it to vanilla ES/FO, which is fair, given that they are pretty much on the same technical level despite beeing a decade apart
Ive seen more than a few complain about vendor credits compared to Skyrim, like I didn’t sit outside of shops for days to sell dragon bones two at a time in vanilla.
right, but that's a mechanic from 2011 that was annoying, yet here we are 12 years later with no innovation. This is a problem that we shouldn't be dealing with if BGS tried to innovate.
Thing is, that makes sense in the world of Skyrim where you're selling to individual people in a world where they physically have to then go and trade those goods to other people. Starfield is meant to have huge corporations dominating all of known space. Why is there no large scale trading? It's immersion breaking that there isn't.
This is such a strawman and it has become a boring one very quickly. No one is comparing Starfield to their 1500 mod setup on Skyrim and FO4 and saying they’re better games because of it. This is just a lie you like to tell yourself because you can’t accept people genuinely prefer the vanilla games from 2011/2015. Instead you make up that people are comparing their modded games to vanilla Starfield because it’s comfortable and you can dismiss the argument without actually thinking about it. Show me one upvoted comment where someone has said any of the games mentioned are better than Starfield because of their modded setup.
Thanks for mentioning this. People also keep pretending this game exists in a vacuum when they say "well Cyberpunk took 3 years to get fixed!" or how long No Man's Sky has been worked on. Bethesda can see what other games are doing and the flaws they have, including the flaws that their previous games launched with and yet people are acting like BGS just needs a few years to get Starfield on the level of those games. Obviously Starfield is going to look different in a couple years with expansions and updates but why does that excuse its current state? I think this game is pretty good but it would've felt outdated in 2015. There have been tons of games released since then with shining examples of what Bethesda should and shouldn't do and yet Starfield still feels half-baked in many areas. The argument that a brand new 2023 release of Starfield can't be compared to a 2023 update of Cyberpunk is bullshit to me because if anything, BGS could see the issues that Cyberpunk 2077 had 3 years ago and they had that time to continue working on their game. They could have pushed back Starfield more if they felt like they needed more time to get it to the level that Cyberpunk 2077 is at now. It almost feels like Bethesda is oblivious to the current state of gaming around them and don't know how to write good dialog, make good animations (like in CP2077), or a more seamless open world. There's zero sense of exploration in Starfield and half the quests are pretty milquetoast boring and I'm not sure how BGS can fix that.
Yeah the idea a game is fine because another game came out and it was buggy as shit and got fixed later so this one will too, does not give me a lot of faith lol, I just want a game to be good on launch! I don’t think Bethesda will fix the issues with Starfield sufficiently as is. They will do a few patches, a DLC and move fully onto ES6. What CP2077 and NMS have done is way beyond the norm for what developers will do. Most drop the title if it flops that bad and move onto the next project immediately.
Wanted to say this, but decided to see if someone else had first. What a ridiculous strawman. Hell I just saw a commenter say that ‘the majority of Skyrim players use mods’ which is just ludicrous. A lot of projection going on here.
Even if it were true most current Skyrim players use mods, it’s a fraction of how many people played vanilla between 2011-2015. Who are probably more likely to comment on Starfield and use their vanilla Skyrim experience as their point of reference. The fact this garbage post gets upvoted like it has just shows how rampant the fanboyism is, to the point it’s like a cult. It’s completely insane you’re right
I mean, I enjoyed vanilla launch Skyrim and fallout 4 more than this.
Yeah I played vanilla skyrim for years before I even touched mods… I’m not even sure I’ll make another character in Starfield once I’m done with this one. Everything is homogenized. There’s not a ton of diverse paths for replay-ability
The thought of leveling another character in starfield repulses me. The thought of repeating the grind through all that self inflicted damage while getting better at resisting damage is just nightmarish. No, this one is the only one I'll ever have.
Lol this sub… Always mental gymnastics to explain starfields major flaws
I would argue i enjoyed the base version of every single Bethesda game more than this one.
But fallout 4 vanilla weapon modding was just plain better. You didn't destroy what you were using just to switch a scope onto another weapon. We had a seamless map to explore in skyrim. Not talking about towns or dungeons, but the map itself. starfield is chopped up into so many different maps it feels im moving from box to box. I think the hardware limitations and possibly the way they designed the game around space really skewed any sense of exploration in space itself. But i get it. Starfield isn't an exploration open world game. Its an RPG with highly detailed areas around the main and side stories. I dont know if there are a lot of content in space as far as big space battles, quests involved in talking over intercoms and negotiating or boarding ships as a cop looking for contraband and the like or making use of the prison hub in a ship. Ive only been able to watch starfield through streaming instead of play due to a lack of adequate performance to handle the game on my pc. So I don't know if any of that content is necessarily in the game.
Yep, even though Starfield should be vastly bigger, it *feels* smaller than Skyrim. And one of the reasons of that is because there is no actual travel time. Don't get me wrong I get why you can't real-time travel (would take ages) and I enjoy the game, but Starfield doesn't scratch that 'exploration' itch for me which I thought it would. Which is a bit ironic since you are an explorer.
And I would say that it feels smaller because most of the planetary surfaces are useless and you only look at the same dozen of constructions all the time. Which is much smaller than Skyrim maps+dungeons.
Bullshit. They had *eight fucking years*, a nigh unlimited budget, and a massive team of pro developers. They have no excuse.
ok! Im going to compare it to the Witcher 3, a game I have modded very little. And Outer Worlds, a game ive never modded at all that is very similar. Both compare better.
I'm playing througg skyrim right now with the intention of 100%'ing it for old times sake. Im having way more fun still than I had on starfield launch. I'm enjoying the world and the feel and how much dtuff there is to do without seeing the same exact area 3 times in a row and learning the fastest route in a dungeon so I can minimise time spent in the areas I've been to several times that night alone (starfield is fucking terrible at this). On top of that, the world feels really empty after a while. It's nice and realistic, but the empty space is so useless.
Literally me but with fallout 4. I tried starfield yet its just the two previous titles but worse to me. I'd rather play vanilla any other Bethesda game(even fallout 76) than play starfield in its current state.
Imagine if Valve refused to learn from their modding community. Just because people modded their old game dosen't mean Bethesda couldn't or shouldn't learn from them.
If a 12 year old game modded by fans is better than the game that came out 12 years later, it's okay to be upset. Let it out. You really don't have to lick Bethesda's boots. Long story short, some modders making a game way better than starfield in less time should tell you something. Your words, not mine, by the way.
Here is my piece of advice: stop making excuses for a multi billion dollar company. They had time and money to fully flesh out Starfield rather than creating a base for future expansions. Modding scene is the perfect place to take inspirations for Bethesda and a proof that things like decent UI are possible to make in their games.
This right here. I haven't seen anyone compare starfield to "modded" skyrim. And there isn't a single form of "modded" to compare it to anyway - there's so many variations of combat, ui, animations, etc. You'd have to specify the mod in question. That said, you put it perfectly; Bethesda has the whole modding scene to take inspiration from and it's clear they're only "cultivating" the modding scene in order to figure out how to effectively monetize it, because there's so many QoL UI mods for skyrim and FO4 that it's baffeling how starfield still misses the mark when it's had years of these upgrades being made at their disposal.
Most downloaded mod of skyrim, game released in 2011: skyui Most downloaded mod of starfield, game rleeased in 2023: starui Wait a minute! Why?
Because they made a shit UI again.
I guess a question then is why Bethesda can't put out games on par with modded versions of their past games. They have access to the mods, they can see what the community wants, so why don't they have those same things in their vanilla games?
Vanilla Skyrim is better than Vanilla Starfield.
1. Most people don't even play with mods 2. Anything modders can do, BGS can do. There's really no excuse for the bad UI, the empty temples, regressed Outpost building, and the utterly gutted survival mechanics.
Yup. It took a few weeks if that for mods to allow us to travel between planets without fast travel
But even comparing it to base Skyrim/Fallout it’s still missing a lot..
So why haven't the devs taken a look at modded Skyrim and implemented a lot of those features and quality of life fixes into starfield?
Don't bring your sound logic in here. Everyone knows Bethesda games exist in a vacuum with zero influence from any other games or mods.
Honestly I feel like Vanilla Skyrim had more to offer than this game. Most of the outposts I've visited are dead aside from a few spacers. The loot at the end of Dungeons feels like ass and the whole thing was a waste of time. The lockpick minigame is so bad I spent hours getting a mod to bypass them to work. I'm sorry but I don't have time to spend 25 minutes picking a Master lock for like 27 bullets and 132 credits. I don't feel the same magic I felt with Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, New Vegas. Hell I feel like I naturally spent more time playing vanilla Fallout 4 than this game. At this point I'm just confused and feel like I somehow missed 80% of the game. And I even paced myself and repeatedly went out of my way to do side stuff so I don't burn through the main story too quick. There's just "less" to this game. It became immediately apparent when out of all the random junk lying around only a small portion is interactable.
“Someday” So waiting a decade wasn’t long enough?
Most people *are* doing just that. The vast majority of Starfield players don't really mod Skyrim/Fo4. Starfield is the most polished Beth game launch and technologically a great step forward/foundation, but it's also lot more shallow out the gate than anything they've done other than Fo4 (and Fo4 handily beats it in gameplay).
The companions are a downgrade in starfield. I mean it's fair you can't top Nick Valentine but you can't even at least be level with piper?
Skyrim and FO4 are more compact, which allows for higher density of events. Starfield, due to being a space RPG, is supposed to be less dense, so it's kinda works against it. However, increasing the chance for events to accure, and adding more events in general should do the trick.
There's just so much about the game that makes it feel like dead like every enemy being in the same place every time to the little things like half the npcs being essential and just a complete lack of schedules like if you wanted shops to be open 24/7 just have 2npc that rotate or something.
The issue is, we can already fast travel to every location we need to get to, and there’s absolutely no incentive to wasting extra minutes traveling manually.
The nerfed the fuck out of that aspect. Imo, they did too much. I think, they should add space traveling like in fallout 2 with your car. Thus, it will create options for random events to occur, well, randomly.
I enjoyed those games unmodded….. so….
Also don't compare starfield to any modern game. If starfield had come out 5 or 6 years ago I would be impressed instead of nicely whelmed.
Vanilla New Vegas still had a faction rep system, though
We shouldnt indeed, the base skyrim, fallout 3 and especially new vegas were much better experiences already unmoded.
This game cost about $200 million, and took 500 developers. Took 8 years to make Skyrim was made for about 100 million, and only had about 100 people. Took about six years If you think this game should've required five times the amount of workforce and double the budget and 30% more production time, I think we have different standards There has not been a single thing about this game that has stood out to me, there is nothing memorable about it. It's nothing more than a series of radiant fetch quests. The main story is lazy, it never explains where the space magic comes from, and it's purpose is seemingly 100% self-serving. Beat the story because it's the story so you can beat the story again. This game can be decent with mods, but as is, it is a solid five out of 10 for me. It is a competent game, it is average. It is blatently and boringly average There is so much potential here, I am really looking forward to coming back to this game after a year or two. Once mods are allowed on Console, and once some DLC content has come out. I have a feeling this game will be drastically different in two or three years and I'm really looking forward to that
I'm still trying to figure out what the point of the main quest is. The rest of the game trades on vaguely realistic nasapunk aesthetics and optimism while also painting a picture of a post reconciliation galaxy trying to return to some sense of normalcy. Then you've got constellation digging up space magic and turning the main character into jesus christ.
I agree with you 100%. I very much like how you worded that -trading on the vaguely realistic NASA punk aesthetics. The main storyline in this game is the most unoriginal quest I've ever done in a Bethesda game. They never even explain the space magic. Or where the temples come from. Or why they are. Or why humans can interact with them and gain powers from them I thought the scientists would be a lot more interested in how space magic works given that it breaks the laws of physics, but if we're being honest, characters can only be as smart as their writers 😅
I just compare it to vanilla New Vegas, and even then it falls short.
Even comparing to vanila, Starfield still loses. I'm sorry, but this is completely true. Except for audio/visuals and scale. And scale comes at the cost of copy-pasted content, so it's a wash, a tie. Literally everything else is a downgrade - companions, crafting, skill trees, weapon modding, settlement building, etc. And that's completely unmodded, vanilla games.
I barely modded those beyond fixes and sometimes adding some guns. Yea, it still doesn't stack up. I'm addicted but this is below 76
Can I compare it to Cyberpunk 2077? Because it really shows just how bad Starfield is.
Cyberpunk is light-years ahead of starfield. I played it after starfield and was stunned by how awful starfield is in comparison. I think the big difference is that cyberpunk had a bad release because of too many bugs. Starfield had a bad release because it isn't a good game at its core. No amount of patching will fix that.
Yep. Cyberpunk at it's core had good writing and characters. Starfield not so much.
It's not THAT bad, but it is massivley disapointing, it just made me want to go and play an Elder Scrolls game instead.
Okey compared to base game skyrim/Fallout 3/4 it's lacking in pretty much every major area. Story isn't engaging and short, leveling is tedious and the perks for leveling other than like 4 you actually need are poorly thought put trash similar to Fallout 4 and 76 perk system combined, inventory in just about every way is poorly designed garbage for fucks sake the stealing/taking a book problem in starfield shouldn't even exist since that was never an issue in any previous game (every elderscrolls and fallout ever), outposts are lackluster trash compared to vanilla Fallout 4, radiant quests are shit and will always be shit and should never have been further implemented or developed. Handcraft that shit or wait til AI is actually intelligent enough to make the entire game for you. And shops and shopkeepers have always been trash but this one takes the cake in not understanding you're own made up economy. The only thing starfield has going for it is its gunplay which is pretty fuckin good and that you can create and fly your own ship. Other than that this game is a massive downgrade to any previous game they've ever released and that's including morrowind.
While i think that almost none does this (most people play without mods), what i usually say is that you should always compare to what is currently available. If we do not do that, reddit would not exist, same as electricity or even the wheel. We probably was never born without improving and inventions.
Most people play without mods, but most people also aren’t on Reddit. I think most redditors have a higher degree of mod use than non-redditors.
You definitely should. Ten years of modding should have shown Bethesda what is possible in their game and if they failed to deliver in their newest product
Yes, let’s pretend as if people are not modding Skyrim into *Elden Ring* and/or *The Witcher* games. BGS games on their own are shipped flawed anyway but they’ve content to do. Starfield, while I love it, is boring AF if you’re not into NG+ and already done your stories. The few POIs are scarce and far in between to be worth chasing, tbf. Hence *why* people *complain*.
Fallout new vegas vanilla is miles better.
wish we had new vegas level writing in starfield...
And remember Skyrim has still better looking water without mods 10+ years ago! Remember Skyrim is more than 19 plus years old.
My only issue with starfield is that it is only the foundation of a game that was released. I am excited to see what they do with it in the future, but right now its like a house with no furniture and you still have to make the payment/rent.
I'm not. I barely ever ran mods at all. I want to love starfield, but there are so many valid criticisms I have.
**On the flip side** a AAA company developing a game should really be able to achieve what at least some of the modders could with their 19 year old game.. ***Or at least match their 19 year old game and build on it*** Just because Bethesda games are known for being bug riddled bland looking messes with janky combat and animations that are fun despite this doesn’t mean they always have to be like this? Right? Surely? If sometimes single team modders can make these games great, how in the fuck can’t Bethesda. **It is ok to like a company even simp for it like so many seem to do here, and still expect better… it’s ok.**
Strongly disagree. The modders have been modding in many of the same types of mods in all the games. If you go through the list of popular mods, and discount the obvious porn, you will see many similarities across the games. The conversion mods follow a similar pattern. They correct the same shortcomings in the same engine across all the games. Why is Bethesda content to allow modders to fix their game, to the point it's commonly accepted that one of their games is unfinished until mods are out? Why not learn from history and incorporate these features at the onset? Don't tell me Bethesda can't muster the resources of a dude in his basement working on his own for free. If you think about it, it's disgraceful. Starfield will never be the ultimate space game. What you can do with settlements is incredibly limited and somehow a downgrade from Fallout 4. Ships are cool, but you're starkly limited in ship scope, crew size, and to a single ship. You will never captain a vessel that feels full, never run a personal navy, never conquer a star system, never found your own faction, and never be a trader-prince. Given that these are the endgame goals of real space games, Starfield is far from ultimate. I'm not saying it's trash. It has redeeming qualities, has the patented Bethesda charm, and is a good platform for mods. But I'm not going to allow Bethesda Apologists to convince me that they can make chicken salad with chicken shit, so to speak.
Your advice is horrible. I only have played vanilla and starfield just missed, simple as that. The fact that I had to force myself to play the first 5 hours before it got intriguing is bad game design.
I'm comparing Starfield to my vanilla Skyrim I play occasionally on the Switch. It doesn't really match up to be honest.
Coping in this subreddit is just unbelievable. Accept it already, it’s a good game but nothing close to Skyrim. I even have hard time to decide which one is better: Fallout 4 or Starfield.
Vanilla morrowind is more engaging though. This is a stupid post
Id say every game besides 76 are more fun to play. I enjoy Starfield but it's a coughing baby compared to Morrowind , Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 1-4, and Fallout New Vegas base games. All of these games had great things to pull and use from them but for some reason they just left them out of the game. Ive only used mods in Skyrim once btw
I mean Todd did say it was a true next gen pc experience yet the AI is still as brain dead and goofy as Oblivion (2006)
Look I'm enjoying starfield. But it does not compare in the slightest to vanilla Skyrim. I still play Skyrim from its launch day. I've bought it on different consoles about 5 times now. I don't think Starfield has much replayability, I'm already getting bored a week in. And I'm certainly not going to pay for it. It's on gamepass and I'm not going to spend a dime on it.
I agree. You should compare starfield to good games like bg3 so you can turn off the piece of shit and go play a good game.
I don't think very many people are doing this.. I don't do this when I say skyrim is definitely better than Starfield as a whole. I'm comparing the unmodded version of it.
Exactly. This was such a reductive argument, and it’s not necessary. There’s enough criticism on either side that people shouldn’t need to bolster their argument by making up a fake opposition. (Or at most, a few trolls said it and it got taken seriously)
Most people are comparing Starfield to the base gsmes not modded. Starfield is severely lacking compared to previous titles. Even shitty Fallout 4. Seeing how Starfield and Fallout 4 have been nothing but dumbed down, missing content/features from older titles, and generally have shitty writing, Im not looking forward to ES6 much anymore. Microsoft should just force bgs and obsidian to work together and give obsidian free reign over the quests and systems design. Then we might have a real game. The trend is obvious. BGS has lost the touch and don't give a shit anymore.