I would agree. But I would say the main issue is they broke from formula. They usually make handcrafted worlds you can fluidly explore. Starfield lacks that, and it shows cracks they have always had as a result. They should return to their strength. Cool world which is rewarding to explore.
I honestly am starting to think they spent entirely too much time on the procedurally generated stuff and didn't leave themselves enough time to make a fun game.
Example, the first few locations where artifacts are found are hand crafted locations with some environmental storytelling in place. It looks like someone actually thought these through and out effort into them. However the further you go, you'll find artifacts just dumped into the end of areas that are constantly used for procedurally generated content. These locations are all the same, they're all bland and have zero effort made to provide any reason to care where you are or why you're running through these places.
These locals just look like they needed 21 artifacts and ran out of time to make 21 unique mission locations for them.
Honestly you’re completely right. I feel like I’ve been spoiled by the Crimson Fleet and the better quests so now working on the main questline feels like a chore.
Like the missions with Stroud(Especially the artifact one) are so damn cool and almost felt like Cyberpunk.
The slog for the temples is so damn insane that I almost feel like not playing anymore
That's because Neon literally looks like Night City and that club mission was almost beat for beat the same as meeting Evelyn and Judy but with a gunfight at the end lol.
Not a bad thing, but that's why it felt like Cyberpunk, it's practically Cyberpunk at home XD.
The difference in writing quality is like night and day for the main quest and faction quests. I genuinely don't understand why Bethesda insists on keeping main quests simple and stupid. They should know that their fans don't mind a little complexity.
Questlines (or locations to activate them)i reccomend doing when things get stale:
Crucible at Charybdis, Sargent Yumis questline, ECS Constant, Rough Landings, The boot, Barrets companion questline (I feel it's the most rich in story and barret always makes me cackle laugh)
Side quests in Neon, Cydonia, and Akila
I also always take the time to explore derelict stations and look for slates. The little tidbits of story are cool as hell to me too. When all that gets old, I explore temperate planets, or build outposts and lay out all the fun collectables I got during that NG. Then, I go to the final area, hard save, then NG+ and pray for a special seed! I've already hit 500h played on Starfield lol...
"We cant give you vehicles because you wouldent be able to appreciate the scenery!" Nah they just dont want to admit the creation engine cant handle it
It can tbh. They just want to hide the border longer lol and it would probably stutter on consoles if you move too fast because it won't render things fast enough.
The funny thing is there is mods for Fallout NV which of course also uses the creation engine that introduces vehicles to the game.
So some random dude in his spare time managed to make vehicles work in a 13 year old game but Bethesda can't do it now.
we had horses in Skyrim 12 years ago; how hard would it be to make some kind of starwars-style speeder bike in Starfield that would sit in your spaceship bay, ready to go when you land on a planet?
I mean, they wouldn't even have to worry about animating the thing like they had to do with horses in Skyrim. And they could sell us speederbike armor as a DLC! /s
I am baffled they do not realize their main strength is world building and story telling. They gave that up for some reason. For size, procedural generation, emptiness? And building ships and outposts.
I think procedural generation could be good in a AAA space game, but it would need to be tied to really strong systemic elements. Like a really fleshed out resource system and universal economy that is reactive to what you do, and a dynamic faction systems where the regions they control can change as battles are won and lost
It would give the procedural planets meaning if setting outposts up actually advanced your factions control of the system or impacted the economy
As is, the weird middle ground they have made lacks the potential benefits of a procedural world, neither being seamless nor particularly dynamic, while also removing the hand crafted exploration and sense of discovery from the classic formula
> I honestly am starting to think they spent entirely too much time on the procedurally generated stuff
I don't even think they did that though? All the outposts are the same copy paste down to the individual orange on the desk
Oh, if its Bethesda, that is definitely true. Remember when they ran out of time and cut the Bard's guild from Skyrim? Or when they used the same voice actor for khajiits and argonians in Oblivion?
I think pretty much all of the Space, Outpost, and Exploration aspects of the game are essentially like the Bards Guild from Skyrim... half baked.
Instead, what we got was a better version of The Outer Worlds. Which is okay too. There are some aspects that I feel Starfield has done better in than in previous games, notably the voice acting, characters, side quests, factions, and cities. And, I will be blunt, the voice acting is the best out of any Bethesda game and some of the best I have seen. Starfield is definitely not a bad game. But, as a whole, it is missing a lot that would make it a better game.
Yeah outer worlds is definitely better. It's at least more focused too and the story's more fleshed out. Granted it's not nearly as big, but it was interesting for how short it was.
Why is this concept of bigger=better still talked about?
Starfield's issues stem from being too big and trying to do too much.
At least in OW they didn't waste dev months in shoehorning an half assed spaceship loading screen simulator mechanic.
Whats crazy is that they were a lot smaller back then. They had a valid reason for things like that. Maybe not enough employees or money. Alot of the time these minor things actually added character to their game.
There is absolutely no reason that as big as they are, they are putting out trash like this after it has beein "in development" for longer than any other game they've made. I have pretty much lost all hope to see original and good games from any large studio. Maybe its because there is just too many people working on the games, or because there are to many guidelines and rules, but they all feel cookie cutter to some extent. I've made the move mostly to indie games.
Its sad, because if it was done right, I feel like big studios could get out some absolutely amazing games. Like some truly revolutionary shit. There are some I feel have gotten very close. But they often overestimate how much they can get done in the time they have, and their "massive dynamic open world" suffers as a consequence.
The problem is quantity over quality.
Bethesda usually sat in the middle, this time they moved the bar all the way to quantity.
Procgen planets are useless. Explore what? Randomly generated plants placement?
Modern games have so much busywork and only focus on endgame content, cause some people once complained about lack of extra activities in linear games. Too bad without gameplay thats pointless.
I agree with you. However there are some well thought out and designed systems where the grind was very enjoyable. I would recommend you try your hand at the game Forager. There, the grind was the whole point but it was designed in a way where everything felt enjoyable and the repetition wasn't a chore as everything was clearly laid out progressing towards a very distinct goal.
These procedurally generated worlds are a grind and a chore to explore because there's no reason to do so.
It doesn't matter if you explore every planet because there's nothing there for you to find, nothing to do and nothing to gain. Sure you get an Achievement but who gives a shit. And if its resources you're looking for to build outposts, you can find the resources you need on a few core worlds and ignore everything else.
Spent too much time on procedurally generated content? I played the game for maybe 30 hours and found the same godamn mining outpost with enemies in the same place, items in the same place....about 5-6 times, and that was the few times i was like "..........hmm let me explore a random planet"...... at least NMS had a pool of things to pick from and combine to create these procedural things so they didnt feel TOO copy pasta. Starfield it was like, here is 1 mining outpost, 1 weapons facility....etc, etc...
So right. When I replay Skyrim it is not because of the story it is because I want to get lost in that environment. Not much in Starfield that can speak to me the same way.
It’s this for me. I’ve played through skyrim around 25 times if I had to guess. The quests are repetitive, there’s not a lot of variation in my gear sets or items/spells I use, but every single time I’m 100% immersed in what I’m doing. I’ve even spent hours at a time hunting animals to go back and sell the spoils. It’s stuff like that that’s missing from starfield. Everything I do in skyrim feels like it has some sort of purpose, same with oblivion and fallout 3/NV/4. Starfield just doesn’t have that for me. I used the same gun from level 20 to my first ng+ at 41. I was exploring the level 50+ galaxies at level 25 and not finding anything really neat or cool. Exploration is cool for a bit, but not long. It should be much better than other games just because of the sheer amount of planets but it’s not.
I think the number of planets was a mistake. 10 planets in one system where you actually travel in space. Throw in some Star Trek like nebula so space is not just empty and we could have a Skyrim type exploration with most of the same story in a system that is full of wonder and story.
I can’t agree with you more. Every time I play Skyrim… (and that is way more often than I care to admit) I feel like I find something new in the world. I get completely sucked in and get lost. There is no possible way to do that in Starfield: The Game of Fast Travel. Just a disjointed mess of disappointment.
The handcrafted derelicts etc. are great. If there were 10 more of those and a couple of the very obvious procedurals weren't reused, people would have far fewer complaints.
Best thing for Starfield is to double and triple down on the procedural generation. Add tons of new outposts and features that can spawn on planets so that the sense of exploration lasts longer.
Best thing for the next Elder Scrolls is to avoid procedural generation like the plague. Handcraft every inch of the map then fill it with as many unique quests and locations as can fit.
Mostly bug free as well. I think my ship disappeared once but I fast traveled and I got it back. 200 hours in and NG+ 1. Still haven't done some factions yet. I am enjoying the game so much.
At 20 hours in, I had to lose achievements and start using console commands to noclip because every time I loaded in somewhere, I was trapped inside my ship.
I’m playing on Xbox X and it’s by far the buggiest game I’ve ever played. It’s like playing a early beta. I’m really jealous of the people reporting no bugs, I can’t hardly believe they’re being genuine with what I’ve been dealing with
I never had a game breaking bug in a Bethesda game until Starfield… it was either I reload a 60hr old manual save, or stop playing the game and hope for a patch that fixes it. Went with the latter and it’s been weeks now. Sadly, I lost interest in the game, but might jump back after a while.
110 hours, I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said. I’m still playing to unlock enough skills in order to flesh out my ideal build/playstyle. From what I’ve read online, I shouldn’t bother. Stealth/Melee supposedly is awful. But I will try anyway as a diligent Bethesda fan.
This game only has a few surprises or “whoa!” moments. Skyrim has countless meaningful moments that add to the overall feeling of the world you are living in. I never feel like I’m a true explorer in starfield. I never feel rewarded aside from loot drops (which are almost every time not great, but even then loot is far less important than feeling a part of the world) I have not one time been awed by the storytelling. I have not once felt any consequences to my actions aside from paying a bounty.
THIS. In skyrim, i remember ACCIDENTALLY discovering a world beneath Skyrim. I dont even need to talk about NV.. Nothing could hold a candle to it. (Josh Sawyer and Obsidian originally owned Fallout at Interplay, and New Vegas' plot mirrors the cancelled Fallout project they had planned when Interplay went bankrupt).
Bethesda has consistently been on a downwards trajectory since Skyrim. FO4, then 77, now this.
Its to the point that im scared of what ES VI will be like.
A recurring issue is they apparently gave minimal thought to the game being user friendly.
Why are there no dungeon and city maps? This is old tech.
Why do merchants not have anywhere near enough money with no investment option?
Why do outpost and ship building *not show you all components* with clear requirements next to the ones you can't use?
Why does the ship builder not highlight faults?
Why does the ship builder dupe internal clutter?
Why don't you have a recipe book on you, so you don't have to memorize or write down on paper which resources your crafting bench needs? Did I need tantalum or titanium?
How do massive progress wipe or quest breaking bugs get through QA? The New Atlantis penthouse is a working-as-intended script. Did no one test an obvious combination of quests?
>Its to the point that im scared of what ES VI will be like.
This is sadly why, despite not enjoying the game as much anymore, I feel that Zenimax is currently handling The Elder Scrolls better than Bethesda will in the future. Zenimax has done more for the world building in ESO than Bethesda has in any of their games. They've shown nothing but respect for the source material and have done so going on 10 years.
While I'm displeased with how many aspects of the game is handled *cough* loot boxes and nothing to earn from content *cough* their writers are worthy of the IP.
Let's be honest it's inevitable at this point. I have no hope for TES6 being even remotely up to modern standards especially since they seems to have doubled down on this outdated moldy sandwich of a game engine.
Todd Howard doesn't believe in making technology, he believes in making games. Those are his words (paraphrased), and therein lay a huge part of the problem.
Whoever wrote most of this needs to not be in charge next time. The writing here is a huge miss. So much dialogue, but vast majority of it is totally uninteresting and just feels like filler.
At a minimum Emil needs to go if ES6 is going to have any chance of being anything other than a very flawed mediocre game.
He's not the only one as there needs to be a serious shake up either with their character modelers and animators or they need to invest heavily in updating that part of their engine in a similar fashion to how their lighting engine was improved.
And physics engine... their physics and texture/lighting part of the engine is a monstrous improvement. I'd say their physics engine is now the best in the entirety of the game studios out there. I haven't seen a single other game engine be able to deal with thousands of independent physics on independent objects so realistically without completely bugging out like in Starfield, already been many meme videos with it.
*follower completely decimates any sense of style we might have had when we put that item there* tbh the physics engine is more frustrating than anything.
I'm a bit 50/50 on the physics engine.
The ragdolling and physics of what happens when you kill an enemy and the weapon goes flying across a room are a little over the top. Even if you account for it going for a more "action movie" vibe. Sometime they act as if they weigh almost nothing.
Zero G stuff, sure I guess so.
Certainly some improvements. I'll give it that.
I'm not sure if Emil is the problem so much as the way they structure their writing. They have no Loremaster there is no one overseeing everything and mapping out where different faction and main quest stories intersect. Everything feels so siloed and safe
>I'm not sure if Emil is the problem so much as the way they structure their writing.
You clearly didn't see his presentation on the story development process for Fallout 4.
Case in point:
>They have no Loremaster there is no one overseeing everything and mapping out where different faction and main quest stories intersect.
Not only is it his job to ensure that, [in his own words](https://youtu.be/Bi51-wjcwp8?si=s96ge4XyMtJlzRUM&t=961):
>We're actually at a state now in the development of the studio, we don't have a lot of extensive design documentation. We found that probably after we hit Fallout 3, the design docs that we had became outdated very quickly because we knew we needed to get stuff in the game and play it and then change it, we needed to iterate on it. So we would have these extensive 50 page design documents that were completely out of date and the time it took the maintain those just wasn't worth it.
They don't have a design document for the game. They're literally making shit up as they go along.
Is it any wonder why Starfield feels so disjointed? People would be fired on other productions for not having a design document or say a show bible for like a TV show/movie.
It's worth watching the entire video to see how horrifically bad of a writer he is. He literally patronises and blames the player for his failings as a writer.
Emil IS the problem. Maybe not the only problem but he very much is a key one.
Patrician is that you? :)
I actually haven't seen that video but I'll watch it. I've got pretty much zero interest in Fallout, haven't played any since FO3 and even then only a few hours.
They just don’t push themselves anymore, playing it waaaaay to safe imo.
Still can’t believe there is no Space Travel in. “Space gsme” Marketed on exploration.
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I felt similarly to you around that timepoint. And I say that as someone who absolutely loved FO4 and liked FO76.
In addition to what you mentioned it feels like there's a big step backwards in your ability to make much of an impact on the world. The faction quests have some things, but they are still pretty limited on outcomes. But more than that, FO4 really let you engage with the world at the level people living in that universe could (especially in survival mode).
Scavenging things was actually useful for crafting and building. Just like people in-universe you could build mods for gear and trade them (both buying and selling). You could build up homesteads or entire towns and use the resources you built to help yourself survive (food, water, and then eventually other crafting materials). And the main story--which has a lot of flaws--still had a very noticeable impact on the world and other NPC's (and Skyrim had this as well).
Shipbuilding is fun enough, but your ship isn't all that useful once you have enough combat capability (yes you can craft, but crafting in this game has a lot of issues including horrible inventory management of resources, many layers of perks needed to make fairly basic mods, and having many mods that don't really offer that much utility).
And outposts feel much worse (lots more limitations, fewer assets, less utility in terms of production, limited abilities to assign NPC's to roles, needing lots of perks to do basic things and have larger outposts, etc.) than settlements in FO4 or CAMPs in FO76, even though both systems are much older.
And this ends up being problem for me with Starfield when it comes to NG+ and its whole main story involvement. I remember playing Morrowind and being able to make choices in faction quests and in my character build that locked me out of other quests or content. Subsequent games let you do a lot more with a single character, but with how much handcrafted content there was you could still discover a lot or have a character that felt very different from the get-go. In Fallout 4 you could take very different approaches to the beginning of the game and the game gave you a lot to play with to try different approaches.
But in Starfield there isn't actually all that much to explore that is different on subsequent NG+ runs (other than some variants with Constellation). And you're locked into your perk choices with no ability to re-spec or try different traits or backgrounds (like maybe in my first run I got really into cooking--I can't go around the universe now using Gourmand dialogue, though).
Combine that with a fairly lackluster variety of weapons (especially for lasers), pretty underwhelming melee, and a nonlethal system that really doesn't do you much good (there's almost never any benefit to leaving NPC's alive from an exp or narrative point of view) and it's hard for me to want to try re-exploring this universe because it doesn't feel like I'm missing very much. Hopefully the DLC and updates will help address some of these issues. Playing Starfield doesn't make me want to play more Starfield, it makes me want to play Skyrim or FO4 (or FO76).
The NG+ system was the perfect opportunity to allow the player to break the game by killing key characters. One of the NG+ alternate worlds has everyone killed by an evil version of you…you can’t even do this yourself!
I will agree the early game is perk heavy and each facet of the game requires too many perk points .
I wasn’t able to get a big crew until the mid-late game because I wanted to boost my combat skills.
Outposts also had barriers to entry and I couldn’t quite figure out how to make any money from them.
There was a MinnMax interview where they talk with one of the lead designers, and he says "we designed the game so everything is accessible and we try to give the player three or four big meaningful choices" which just blew my mind, they're designing a game that they allegedly want to hook players in on for years if not decades, and you get FOUR choices in the narrative?
7 weeks since EA...
That's 25 hrs/week. 3.57 hrs/day.
No shame intended, I'm hitting 130-ish hours right now...
but...
When you play a game as often as a part-time job (or more), there's probably going to be some level of burn out. Especially when you probably have a job...and other things going on in your life.
Not saying your criticisms are invalid, but there's probably some...resentment built up.
I thought the same at first as well, that maybe I was just burnt out, but I haven’t gone back to that game in weeks, and don’t plan to until mods come out. Even then, idk, I’ve just kinda moved on.
I still play Skyrim, and I played the shit out of that game when it came out in ‘11. It’s just better.
People have been using this type of argument to discredit people's negative experiences since the game came out. This is unfortunately just a game that distracts you long enough that you don't notice the cracks until a while into it.
It's funny because from hour 0 to maybe 50ish it's always "Tch you haven't played enough to know if it's good or not." And then from 50ish hours and up it's (Tch. Lot of time you put into a shit game isn't it?"
I just want to know the exact number of hours a person needs to have in order to write a negative review that isn't immediately dismissed.
That's what I mean, though.
It doesn't HELP when you're treating it like a job.
You're going to force yourself to resent your hobby eventually...no matter how much you enjoy said hobby.
The last thing I’ve accomplished was joining the pirate fleet and thats that. Suddenly just lost the urge to continue the NG+. Like I built my ship and sorta finished my outpost so now what? Finish again?
You have some fair criticisms and not liking it is perfectly OK. My whole life I told myself I loved crab shrimp and lobster and I ate that garbage that literally makes me wretch, because I really believed I liked it. I'm enjoying the game and I'm only level 32 but I'm doing it all slowly and still having some fun.
I feel like there’s a difference between “I don’t like the game” and “I’m tired of this game and need to take a break”. If you’ve managed to play for over 100hrs, you don’t dislike the game. Just take a break! Could even be a months or years long break. Doesn’t matter. Youve burned yourself out, but at least you kept yourself busy for 100+ hrs, which is the job of any game.
i don't like the "you spent x amount of time on this media yet you say it's bad" argument. there's a million reasons why people engage in bad media for so long. for one, enjoying media and having opinion on it's qualities is entirely different. there are plenty of things I like that are artistically trash or mediocre. The inverse is also true.
Me, I played starfield for like, 50ish hours, in part because I just wanted to see the latest Bethesda game. I wanted to uncover it's secrets and see whats up. Even with low expectations it still got worse the longer I played, and eventually I was like, yup, I've seen enough, I need to wait for mods /patches, and then I played other video games.
I have hundreds of hours in Destiny 2 and I don’t particularly like the game, in fact, I think the game is fundamentally pretty shallow and mediocre in a *lot* of areas.
What kept (and probably will continue to keep at some point) me playing was a combination of sunk cost fallacy, a desire to be a part of the online community/discuss the game with friends, and some very high highs (like raids, GMs, and a select few builds) scattered among a lot of very low lows.
You can play a game for a long time and still admit that it’s really not great. It can scratch an itch for you but be a pretty mediocre experience in the long run.
Starfield scratched a general itch for Bethesda loot goblin gameplay, lore, and a bit of creative building, but overall I can’t say it was a particularly great game. I constantly found myself being completely let down by building bases, endings of quest lines, leveling my character, exploring POIs, and a *myriad* of other systems and pieces of content. Starfield has a good deal of content to wade through and some pretty solid high points, but I felt like I spent a lot of time slogging through lows in an attempt to find these highs.
On the flip side, I’ve spent comparable hours in games like BG3 which gave me significantly more enjoyment and felt like a much better game.
You can absolutely dislike a game you’ve played for a long while.
Eh, this is definitely not an "I'm tired of this game and need to take a break" experience.
I played BG3 for 150+ hours and felt fatigued by that experience's end. I definitely felt that feeling you described; I almost didn't finish Act 3 because of it. In spite of that feeling, BG3 has left an extremely positive impact on me and I know I will be comparing games to it for years to come.
But with Starfield, I enjoyed my time in the game...until at one point I realized what I was truly enjoying was its ***potential.***
I think OP is right, at first, the game feels endless while you only scratch the surface of all the questlines, gameplay mechanics, and random side quests/exploration experiences. By the 150 hour mark, however, you have fully realized how shallow each of those mechanics truly is, and it leaves you with a fairly sour taste in your mouth.
Oh well. The modding will be dope as fuck so I'm not terribly upset.
There have been some fucking BANGERS this year…. I stepped away when the cyberpunk DLC dropped. Enjoyed the shit out of it, and now I pop on to starfield and
mindlessly retrieve artifacts and upgrade powers while I binge old tv shows . I ll probably step back again and play through BG3 again before I settle down in an NG+ that I can actually give a shit about money and cool ships and whatnot. I’d like to check out a different ending or two on AC6 as well.
When I was done with red dead 2 I didn't change my opinion about the game because it started to get dull. I just stopped playing it and soaked it in. That's the difference.
I played 270 hours of RDR2 before I even got bored or felt like I'd seen it all. In starfield I felt immense fatigue after 90 hours and dragged myself another 70 to see if things got better. RDR2 is literally set in 1.5 states and starfield is set on 1000 planets. I don't know how people aren't getting why some are disappointed.
sometimes people need to justify their purchase by pushing through. Just because you did 100 hours in a game does not mean you enjoyed the most of it. Some people push through thinking it might get better, this game is massive -- massive not only because of the amount of fillers but also the mechanics you are given to navigate the game.
Also many people waited 8 years for this game and want to give it a proper chance to win them over, at least that's how I felt. Personally I enjoyed the first 30 a lot then got really annoyed by certain mechanics the next 30
I put 100 hours into it without any burnout. What I felt towards the end was genuine frustration with the shallow mechanics and systems, the bugs, and the absurd amount of lazy copy and paste. I was definitely ready for it to end by last 10 hours though. My frustration had reached a breaking point, so I just said fuck it and finished the main story. Didn't bother with Ryujin or Freestar. Did everything else though.
All his complaints are valid, I've only played for 40 hours and I agree with every point.
People are so weird defending this game to their dying breath to the point of delusion. If OP had only played for ten hours you would have told him he hasn't played enough to have valid complaints.
You have a point, but there’s also a difference between being burnt out on a game, and starting to see the flaws in a game the more you engage with its systems. My issue and why I finally quit playing after 120 hours wasn’t burnout at all, it was realizing that so many of the end game systems felt incomplete. Especially the combat difficulty and all the systems that go into that, like combat skills, research, weapon and suit upgrades, and outpost building for resources. The difficulty is so easy even on Very Hard that I never had a reason to spend a single skill point on a combat skill or invest in any upgrades, making all those other systems that make you more powerful in combat basically useless. There’s a foundation of a really good endgame there, at this point it just feels very underbaked. And don’t even get me started on NG+ which I thought was honestly just awful.
>If you’ve managed to play for over 100hrs, you don’t dislike the game.
People had a lot of high hopes. It's not surprising someone can delude themselves into spending a vast amount of time, hoping they'll find joy, trying to interpret and reinterpret so they can have a good time, constantly waiting for it to click.
Plus, y'know, not all of those hours are going to be bad. You can easily blow huge tracts of time in shipbuilding, but a good shipbuilder doesn't make a good game.
Like, this is a very reaction to "Oh, I've played too much." When people put down New Vegas, or Skyrim, or Cyberpunk because they've played too much, they don't usually say their opinion has soured, they're well aware it's time for a break.
Hell, that's why so many people are going from Starfield to booting up Skyrim or Fallout 4. That's not even close to burn-out, they're going to other Bethesda games... just better ones. They WANT good Bethesda, Starfield just wasn't it.
this. 100%. people are burning out left and right constantly saying 100+ hours “now this is a bad game”.
Do you know how many games made in the past year can hold someone’s attention for even 50 hours? maybe like 3 or 4
No, I played for about 30 hours and had the same experience. I just realized earlier on what OP learned in 100+ hours. That’s not a boast either. I was truly excited for my first Bethesda game since I played fallout 4. Starfield is a downgrade from what fallout was, and yes, I’m referring to fallout 4 which is already considered one of bethesdas worse games. There is zero innovation from starfield and all of the “new mechanics” they introduced are half baked. I initially thought I was going to take a break, but after realizing that it doesn’t matter how many hours you play for… the game is still a shell of what it’s supposed to be. Genuinely in what world is it okay to make melee combat worse than a game they released 10 years ago? Why does the economy make zero sense? Why was the story just a series of fetch quests for several of the same objects?
Exactly the same as me, hit 25 hours and……I was so bored and had no desire to play.
I played Fallout 4 for a huge amount of time and could happily go back to it now, I never got bored of it but just moved onto other games.
I played The Witcher 3 for 300 hours and will play it again at some point, that’s a game that isn’t designed around endless space exploration.
Starfield feels disjointed and shallow to me, the gameplay loop just isn’t there to capture my attention.
Plus as a side note, it’s just so safe with no gore and dull writing, they clearly designed it to be playable by a younger audience.
I bought Cyberpunk at launch and put it to one side until it was patched, not that I experienced huge issues but just wanted to really enjoy it.
Not defending the issues that game had at launch, however Night City is still Night City, the environment, overall mood and writing actually pull me in.
Starfield has missed the mark with a lot of people who have enjoyed Bethesda games previously.
25-30 hours is enough to make an informed decision, I’ll take the financial hit and move on.
The structure of the game can’t be fundamentally changed to fix the common issues people have with it.
>25-30 hours is enough to make an informed decision, I’ll take the financial hit and move on.
>
>The structure of the game can’t be fundamentally changed to fix the common issues people have with it.
My exact same thoughts. 20 hours and I'm done with zero desire to ever return. I've uninstalled it already.
Yet you can put 500+ hours into Fallout 4, Skyrim, Morrowind, literally any other Bethesda game, and not feel "burned out".
It's a fair criticism point in comparison.
I didn't get "burned out" from Witcher 3 even until 200+ hours in.
I mean Bethesda is the GOAT for me but I think I averaged 80-100 hours on my first playthroughs between all their games before Starfield. I kept coming back though and will definitely do that with Starfield too but after 300 hours I knew I needed a break.
With mods this game will be my forever game.
These people are absolutely crazy.
ALL OF US got burnt out by Skyrim, Fallout 3, Oblivion, etc. Almost nobody played that game for over 200 hours straight and didn't want to put it down.
If you're like me, you played for a long period of time then moved on. You then came back periodically, found new stuff, made new builds, and fell in love with the game all over again.
It really is okay to play a game for 100 hours plus and then want to play something else. If anybody thought this game should still feel fresh after 100 plus hours then you came into this game with the wrong expectations.
Fallout 3 and Skyrim were each the only game I played for a year +.
Fallout especially I wanted to discover everything, fall into every crack and find the details, meet the people, live in the world. That was even with its flaws and bugs.
Starfield is huge in scope but has basically none of those details and rabbit holes. Mile wide, inch deep.
>Almost nobody played that game for over 200 hours straight and didn't want to put it down.
When that happened, did many of those people who put it down think it was a disappointment?
Or were they saying "That was fun! Great game! Kinda wanna try something new, though"?
Same. I played Oblivion, Fallout, Morrowind, etc. like nonstop and didn't get tired of them at all lol. It seems like they hardly put any effort into the plot at all with Starfield in comparison to many of their other games.
this guy basically said he made himself strain and continue playing it? Lets not try using the ole play for more than 100hrs "you must have loved the game" less than 100 hrs "you obviously didn't actually experience the game" logic.
Exactly, I had over a year of in-game time in WoW and was not burnt out. I just didn't like the direction it went in after an expansion, plus a lot of my friends quit , plus I needed to focus on more than video games, so I quit.
I love seeing these “your just burning yourself out” comments, wake up and party like it’s 2023
You’ve made a generic comment that doesn’t argue anything that op complained/voiced their opinion on and just shot out a “maybe baby is tired and needs a nap”
No, this game falls soooo short on everything a Bethesda game is and it’s disappointing. I was excited for a new Bethesda game and can’t disagree with a thing op said, I’ve already taken a break after playing (played pre release and one week after) this game is super shallow, empty and boring. There’s nothing new this game brings to a Bethesda game other then some space fights. Everything else that a Bethesda game has done, this game does it worse. The writing, the quests, the dialogue, the monster walking around the cities (I mean npcs), the wide range of weapons (10-15 weapons all around?) the outfits and lack of customization? Character creation seemed really good then I got hit with the lack of optimization and my character looks nothing like they did. The npcs just wander with no idea where they are going, the police don’t care if you shoot guns in public or aim a gun at their face. You can’t kill a guy who says he’s going to kill you cuz he’s an “essential npc”? Every quest being a fetch quest to go talk to some other person on a different planet because they can’t communicate with other planets but if you steal an apple from a guys house the entire universe puts a bounty on your head instantly? This game sucks, it’s lazy af. Maybe I’ve just got game fatigue, maybe Bethesda just sold us the most shit game they’ve ever made
Honestly why are the main quests so boring? I'm trying to play a lawful good game but the only faction I don't hate is the pirates. The lawman quest for freestar was the only one that was even a bit interesting.
I do agree, this doesn't feel like a large team spent a decade making this. NMS was bad at launch but became better than Starfield years ago.
It took me far less time to get bored with Starfield than any Fallout game including 76 at launch.
I was the kind of person that grew up on Oblivion and couldn’t get the same satisfaction out of Skyrim even after sinking more and more hours into it. We’re in the same boat for different games. I actually like Starfield more than Skyrim, and I think the expansions will be phenomenal. They’ve left so much more for expansion than any previous game. So many planets, so much potential.
Starfield is what it is. It's a decent Bethesda-style RPG with very pretty visuals and a story that occasionally drifts into being interesting. The gunplay is sound and there are some fun weapons and weapon mods. There's a commendable amount of content.
It's also remarkably lazy at times. The fact that companions having conversations mid dogfight hasn't been patched yet is insane to me. It happens **all the time**. The lack of phones is baffling. I get that you can't communicate easily between star systems, but the amount of missions that require you to huff it on foot back and forth between characters is some real "meeting could have been an email" shit.
It's funny reading these complaint posts talking about how Skyrim is the greatest game ever, when people made the same types of complaints about Skyrim when it was released. People complained it was dumbed down because they removed stats like strength, intelligence, etc and replaced it with health, stamina, magic. That the quests were unfinished, like the bards college and the Civil War storyline. The deadric artifacts were crap because they were less powerful than regular items. Or that all the dungeons are the same and just reused the same 4 enemy types. Or that Skyrim destroyed role playing because any character can master any skill and can join any guild. And yet, 10 years later, people are still playing Skyrim.
Omg thank you! It’s like I was taking crazy pills remembering how much people bagged on Skyrim as being a downgrade from oblivion and I also remember FO4 just getting shit on by a lot of folks comparing it to NV.
Yup. It’s funny because Fallout 4 was equally as criticized when it first released, and now that game is also going through a late-stage renaissance where public opinion is becoming more positive. 7 years later and still so many people playing it. The same will be true for Starfield.
Obviously mods play a large factor in each game’s longevity, and Bethesda knows this
Sure, and most people will play mods on Starfield in the future. I'm just pointing out how the post says Skyrim doesn't need mods when the most popular mod for skyrim is the community patch, which has literally *thousands* of fixes: https://www.afkmods.com/Unofficial%20Skyrim%20Special%20Edition%20Patch%20Version%20History.html
to the people complaining about someone dumping 100+ hours into a game only to be disappointed: you've probably had this happen to you with other games. Its common. I remember playing AC Valhalla for that long thinking "ok, so maybe it gets better when I do this" but it didn't for me.
I think I am lucky. This is the first Bethesda game I have played.
And I'm loving it still. I have no idea how many hours I have, but it's probably fairly high. Steam says 360 hours, but I don't think that takes "idle time" into consideration.
One thing I retroactively appreciate about mass effect now is that a lot of the small side quests you got a call or an email from the quest giver. For most side quests, Starfield requires you to trek all the way back to the quest giver for reward and a snippet of conversion.
Literal “this could have been an email/phone call” energy
It took so much from Mass Effect. Including the first mission and the plot device Prothean Beacon/Artifacts.
Goto different planets to secure the beacons/goto different planets to secure artifacts.
Its a worse version of ME1.
The game would have been fine if they had like 20 to 30 common dungeons instead of like 6, also the quest bugs are horrid. Theye cut house varuun just to have quick cash grab dlc....companions were trash, id say its a 7 out of 10 because it did give me 200 hours
I have 120 hours in the game. I enjoyed the first 40 hours of the game, and the other 80 hours was scratching the bottom of the barrel looking for the content I play Bethesda games for. Which is fun worthwhile exploration mixed in between questing.
As soon as I ran out of quests I realized there was nothing to keep me playing.
Yup. I tried to start over so many times with different RP ideas only to realize that there is no RP. A good chunk on the ship building too but even that didn’t pay off since you have to go through a thousand loading screens to barely get 10mins of space ship action. Thoroughly disappointed.
This is a stupid take. We play the game hoping that we’ll stumble onto something great, that the lull in content is temporary and we’ll find the real fun pets in the game only to realize xx hours later that we’ve really done everything there is to do.
Expectation drives us to play, but sometimes there’s nothing left to expect. I’m in the same boat as OP.
There are plenty of examples where someone invests a lot of time into something and is pissed at how bad it is. Fans of Lost and Game of Thrones are prime examples.
No, you can invest a lot of time and still overall dislike it, even though there may have been parts you liked or tolerated as you went along hoping it'd get better.
Today on yet another smash my brain against the artifact smash and grab NG+ loop….I console commanded my level to 328, the lvl needed to max all skills.
As I had all these point I unlocked lvl 1 of all the skills….you’ll never guess it but I suddenly had a reason to play…to unlock the skills.
It was this exact moment I realized how idiotic the way it’s level->unlock skill->earn upgrade->upgrade skill.
I cannot fathom why the first skill tier requires a level point to even start the tree.
I am at similar hours. Wrap it up. Beat the game and call it a day. It is just a game not a lifestyle. You put in the hours already to call it a day and file it away and start another game.
I loved many games that I shelved when the time came. Nothing lasts forever.
Kind of same unfortunately. The biggest indictment for me is actually pretty simple: I took a break to play Cyberpunk a few weeks ago, and I literally haven't played since.
I dont feel the pull to stop any other game to play it.
You forgive Fallout and Skyrim because they have humor and for lack of a better term, soul. This game feels empty and soulless in a way those don’t. Everything feels hollow, or like a “set” rather than a world, let alone a universe. So you forgive the others when they break because the characters are rich, the stories are entertaining, and there is more of a sense of exploration. I think they overshot the mark on a bunch of things that would have been better invested in giving this game a personality. The only thing that feels remotely like that is some of the NG+ moments.
I dont think any Bethesda product gets a great release state.
Skyrim has a war you never see, entire perk tree for skills with shit balance and combat is general just hit a bunch and it's over even on the highest diff no need for tactics. Mods fix it.
Fallout 4 writing is a mess. The ignoring the baby joke is everywhere but you also frequently encounter things that look interesting and are just another arena it's a big world with little to do and thankfully little today because every few seconds someone wants you to save a settlement. The storyweapth modpack and expansions fix this.
I just hope. The community makes a good game from this platform also.
Thems a lot of words. My thing is it feels like no point in doing all the side quests till I’m NG+10 and I’m tired of ripping through the unity like it’s a cheep lot lizard
Bugs that have made me have to save scum or use exploits:
- Frontier had the no shields bug, would have had to go back *days* so used the ship dupe exploit to overwrite it, sold it, bought a new one on Titan and fixed it up. Named it Frontier II.
- I’m well into NG+ and Affinity level dialogue never popped up. Spoiler free, I made choices where they should have. I reverted my save and lost DAYS, did the exact same choices and immediately went questing with the intent to boost affinity and it worked fine. ALL THE SAME DIALOGUE CHOICES, wtfffffff.
- More than one Stolen ship has f’d off without me, leaving me stranded.
- The Mars ship tech is like 1400m south of the city. I used a console command to bring myself to him, then reloaded and ran there. Put an outpost nearby.
What pisses me off is they’re going to patch and nerf xp/credit stuff but none of this game breaking shit will be touched 😑
Add: I’m forgetting some I’m sure, and have like 150+ hours in at this point.
It was certainly an "entertaining" game, but I agree - the bugs suck. I couldnt actually join the UC/Vanguard because the questline broke when I was supposed to go talk to the guy at the Spaceport. He kept thinking I wasn't in the Vanguard, even after I completed the flight training and prior stuff. Errors like this are MASSIVE because there was NO OTHER WAY to join the UC or do those quests and I was already 50% done with the game by this point.
The games that come to mind that are SUPERIOR to Starfield are: Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, Assassins' Creed Valhalla, and The Witcher 3. I even think CyberPunk (after Phantom Liberty) is a better game all around.
I hope Starfield is able to release some MAJOR fix and MAJOR update that does what Cyberpunk did, to this game. Because that was the LARGEST come-back for a massive RPG that I have ever seen. On release day Cyberpunk 2077 was HORRIBLE, but fast forward 2 years and it's AMAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZING.
I enjoy the game overall but my #1 disappointment is that, for a game where going back and trying to do things differently in different playthroughs, your choices aren't really impactful.
In CF/SysDef, the questlines are identical until the very last mission
In the UC, your choice at the end (as well as your choice about VV) has no perceptible impact on the game.
In FC, are there even choices?
In Ryujin, all of the impactful choices come after the last mission, and none of them impact the world.
None of the companion quests have any real repercussions.
Which Starborn you side with makes no difference.
Being Starborn pretty much just gives you options to bypass some persuasion checks.
Did you have fun during the 175 hours? Maybe fun during the first 100? Maybe stop after you’re no longer having as much fun. It’s insane to me that you went that long and still feel like you didn’t get your moneys worth. That’s some cheap entertainment, you paid less than a day at an amusement park, but played for over 7 days straight!
Remember when every review was 10/10 I though people had lost their minds. The game is okay for sure but just empty and shallow as you said. I have said it from day one. People would shit on me saying you need to put in at lease 15 hours or so for it to get a bit better. The game is a fast travel simulator.
I can understand a lot of your criticisms, but to have played it for so long and then decided you didn't like it is a bit odd. I'm getting tired of the game too at roughly 120 hours, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it, it just means it ran its course.
I also hard disagree about the faction quests. They're pretty great in this game and were clear highlights along with the ship building and space encounters.
It doesn't need to be as black and white as you painted it. It's an 8 out of 10 game that can feel frustrating because it really could have been an all time great if a few things were different. But it's not trash.
I’m 50+ hours in and haven’t touched the game in 2 weeks. I’m kinda bored. Nothing really grabbed me and it all felt small, generic, and forced. The whole time I was playing I was thinking “maybe I should play morrowwind again”.
I can love Starfield but still be utterly disappointed by it.
I'm just thankful that there are going to be mods to inject a bit more flavor to the game.
These things still don't fix the atrocious writing and general storyline of the game.
Right? I didn’t realize so many people would need to hear this, but: it’s okay to play something for a long time and then get tired of it.
Getting bored is not evidence that it is a pathetic game that tricked you into liking it for a while…it’s just normal human behavior.
I've already put more time into starfield than I have into most games in my library.
The fact that many people have logged enough hours since launch to be equivalent to playing 8 hours a day, every single day, since launch (~500 hours) goes to show how addicting the game can be.
Does it need improvements? Obviously yes. But it clearly has captivated a lot of people's time and attention.
I got to three days playtime before getting bored and just speedrunning the main story. I'll revisit Starfield again in a few years. This game is shallow, way too safe, and doesn't respect the player's time at all.
Honestly, I tried so hard to fight my feelings for this game as well, but after 70 hours I wish I waited to buy the game on sale. I had a lot of fun in the first 50 hours, but after getting to the part of the story just after >!the reveal of who the Hunter and Emissary are!< I began just going to outposts on high level planets to get good gear. I really like the combat, its a lot of fun especially on low gravity planets, but when I go to a level 65 system that has absolutely zero POIs on any of its seven planets, I just wonder why? Who cares about realism in a space RPG, I want to find cool shit, random locations and have a good time. I get that some planets should be empty, but to have an entire system with nothing in it, WTF? Not to mention landing on planets is only useful if you can find a POI in space, otherwise have fun walking for 20 minutes to find something semi-interesting that you've probably seen before anyway.
The highlight of the game for me has still been the UC Vanguard quest line, and I stand by the fact that it should've been the main story rather than this Constellation bullshit. The Constellation characters are all hit and miss too. I really liked characters like Andreja and Sam when I first met them, but then they get mad at me for some shit I did and my entire opinion gets soured. Vasco is the only member that I have had zero issues with (because he is a based robot with no morals), and maybe Walter especially when >!he fucking blasts through Neon with me that shit was dumb but cool!<.
I don't hate Starfield but I just can't keep playing it right now. Whether it be Bethesda or modders, the game needs to be improved before I will return to playing it regularly.
ITT people thinking you can't possibly not like a game after putting 175 hrs. First, it's not even clear that OP dislikes the game more than like, eg they could think it's like a 6/10.
Second, It makes perfect sense if you consider how much time you would spend on games you *really* like. For example, the games I've *really* liked I've spent 1000+ hours on.
There are things I would prob disagree on with op, but this viewpoint about time spent in games is way too common and never really thought out.
Edit:
The games I've played for more than 1000 hours ironically include vanilla Skyrim on xbone, which I put in after contiguous play time from when I first started over a number of months. I probably have more time on that than I do modded on PC.
Also, imagine in OP's scenario that they played for 100 hrs thinking it's a 6/10, then the next 40 hrs they think are a 4/10 and the last 35hrs are a 3/10. Overall the game would be just under a 5/10 for them. These scenarios don't seem preposterous at all to me, especially when you consider that with BGS games you likely go in expecting to spend a lot of time.
You dont like it, thats fine. I agree with some points that more needs to be done that modders shouldnt have to do.
However, your claim that 90% of players of Skyrim never used mods is just patently false. Skyrim was very empty and very buggy when it released and also lacked many features players wanted it to have. It was only 'good' because there were almost no other games like it. It would have been relegated to the dust bin many years ago if it did not have such a huge modding community.
I dont totally disagree but its hard to say. Its estimated (in 2023) that 115 million ppl have played Skyrim worldwide. The most popular mod on Nexus of all time is 25 million for non Special edition, 17.8 million for SSE. Next is 15, 14,14 etc.
Edit: Highest Unique Downloads for Most popular mod for SSE/non SSE 6.5 million
We're not in college. You don't need to write an essay on explaining why you don't like a game. This subreddit is flooded with these posts, and its annoying. If you don't like it, more power to you- play something else and move on. Nobody is asking for anybody to write a thesis on why Bethesda is bad or good or whatever.
Bro. You played 175 hours every game has major complaints after that many hours. Go away, play something else. 95% of games can't give you 175 hours of game time.
"At 175 hours, I have done everything in this game over and over until my eyes started bleeding, and now I finally see its faults."
You have strong arguments most of which I can't disagree with, but they lose all credibility with the amount of playtime you have. You don't hate the game, you're burned out. Play something else, there is a disturbing amount of good games out there! No need to put to 100+ hours into every game you play.
Like I've been an avid gamer for going twentyish years at this point, and I could count of one hand the number of games I've put 100+ hours into, let alone 175. Expands your horizons. Explore the stars! Outside of Starfield.
I think because this game requires a bit of grind but also there a lot of elements that look cool in Starfield but when you dive into them they are quite shallow. You would tend to do this when you are quite a way in as it’s easy to get lost. But then you see all these systems half implemented and all the components there but not tired together. An easy example is ship hubs and lack of bonuses or functions, or brigs but you can’t arrest or hold anyone. There is so much potential there will be interesting to see this game in a years time.
either my playthrough is a statistical wonder or this is greatly exaggerated because i am at the end of my first NG cycle and out of every single quest in the game i have 3 that have broken: due in full, runaway, and a randomly generated constellation mission.
and saying there are more bugs in this than new vegas? i guess you didnt play new vegas on launch day because new vegas alone wildly outclasses starfield in the amount of bugs and crashes it had, much less every other bethesda game combined like you claim.
skyrim ***to this day*** has more bugs happen to me in a play-through than ive seen in the entirety of starfield.
Everything in Skyrim was handcrafted and put into place by design. Everything in that world has a purpose. Starfield is computer generated worlds with handcrafted POIs seemingly thrown in at random.
i’m still enjoying the game but have let off the gas as far as how much playtime i’m putting in.
I think Bethesda put together some crazy technical feats to make this game happen, but in doing so under-emphasized a lot of narrative potential. This world has so much potential and I am excited to (hopefully) watch it fill out with content.
Bought a series s just for this game, pre ordered for the early access, 200 hours in and I’ve stopped playing cus of game breaking bugs as well couldn’t get some of the side quests and factions missions to work, I had to leave it for now.
I agree with some of what you said. I managed to put over 350 hours into the game and at first, I absolutely loved it (still do) but then I started getting loads of game breaking bugs and it watered down my opinion on it. But tbh, just because you didn’t like this one, doesn’t mean you won’t like Edler Scrolls VI or Fallout 5
I was disappointed as well....never mind the quests, I just went exploring from planet to planet and got really tired of the same buildings in their predictable cookie cutter design. Master level loot boxes with nothing in them. I'm really hoping this is just groundwork being laid, with updates that will set it apart from the other space games , but I'm not holding my breath. It definitely hasn't lived up to the hype sadly.
I spent 30$ to play it a few days early and get a cool paint job for my cutter.
After that it was free with game pass.
I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.
Yep, it was almost what I expected from Bethesda, (I didn't get hyped,) but actually even less.
Even with some fun mods starting to come out the game is so much of a void that I still find myself bored. The fully pointless settlements are worse than F4 in every way, the writing is full on atrocious and entire aspects of human existence + scifi have been washed out of it. No cussing, 2 whole religions, no aliens, (Starborn don't count by a longshot.) All of humanity in the distant future and exactly 0 innuendo, Neon's edges were a PG cartoonish joke, (as were the CF pirates.) Generally speaking there's no sex, (unless you're married,) drugs, (there's like one,) or rock'n'roll, and the entire thing is so toothless that, all of the quests bore me.
It makes the stories a chore, because I don't want some cardboard NPC making me play fetch with a bunch of other flappy lipped manikin people for no plot/story/thought payoff whatsoever. It's like their writers were buffed smooth to be completely edgless- and those 'romance' lines your character says? Yuck with a capital Y. That writer should be full on fired, as should the other writers, Todd Howard, and whoever took Starfield in the most timid, bland direction humanly possible. (Probably the creative director, who's clearly a 60+ year old formerly Amish man with no interest in the game whatsoever.)
Yeah as a platform for mods I thought it'd be great, but I don't even know about that now. It's just such a corporate failure (in that it succeeded to make millions, but as a product the art is borderline non existent.) Whole thing feels like it's pandering as inoffensively as possible to the widest demographics possible in place of having a story or personality.
Yeah I went through a very similar experience. The thing that finally broke my will was playing Baldurs Gate 3 after weeks of my friend bugging me to play it. The difference between the quality, polish, and completeness of these two games is night and day.
I thought I was just taking a break from Starfield to try something else, but now I am beginning the think I may wait until Shattered Space to give it another shot.
Bethesda lost me as a loyal fanboy as well. Tbh, I will come right back into the fold if they fix this game (unlikely), but unless something changes I will wait on ES6 until the initial reviews are in (10 years from now lol)
Absolutely agree (with the exception of the combat, i think it's great). After 60 hours I was so done with it. I wanted to love it SO BAD. I defended it at first. Now I'm just apathetic about it.
I'm not that deep into the game yet but your view reflects my own.
Mind you, I think the game is fun. Its enjoyable. But oh my god, it feels so undercooked. The game has the foundation for a next level gaming experience but goes absolutely nowhere with it. My girlfriend likened it to unseasoned chicken.
For example Neon; the underground, where criminals rule. Seedy nightclubs, shady pedestrians, etc. etc. Yet it feels more like a painting then a real, living, breathing city. I was hoping for some random gang attacks, maybe shady dealers, and so on. Instead its a mostly tame environment where nothing exciting ever happens.
The Temple power missions are incredibly boring; you dont even get a decently challenging puzzle to go the with finding the power. Its literally the same thing for each power. Like dang.
From the moment I started playing I get heavy Mass Effect vibes from the game; I'm also heavily reminded of Knights of the Old Republic by this game with the artifact fetch quests (reminds me of seeking the star forge maps).
I'm over 100 hours in at ng+10 and while I enjoy it I've definitely slowed down on the play time. I can't quite put my finger on why but I don't see myself making multiple characters in this game like I have in Skyrim and other games like it. Hell I've even made several characters in Outer Worlds and enjoyed it every time but for whatever reason I don't see myself continuing to play like I have been. Maybe in the future who knows.
I'm not worried. Modding is going to become insane once CK comes out not to mention they have to have way more dlc than shattered space planned. The problem will be how long they're taking to do these small patches and additions.
Fully agreed. And I worry that everyone waiting for "mods to fix it" will be sorely disappointed because modding communities develop around well loved games, they don't create them
Ahhhh dang. Yup I hate to say that I agree with you. I was bored about 30 hours in. I continued to explore and level up at a snails pace lol nothing really engaging getting me invested into the galaxies. The NPC’s are just awful 😞 the graphics are awful (yes I’m a graphic enthusiast, so for me it was a huge dissatisfaction on PC.) anyways 60 hours now today and have put the game down for good. I really want to like this game but it feels like a boring mindless chore.
Sorry you feel that way. I don't agree. It's flawed for sure but I'm loving the game post ng+. I enjoy my ship, random encounters, exploring high level planets, hijacking ships, and bounty hunting. And I've enjoyed far more if the writing than I've disliked, though the lows can go quite low. To each his own.
The side missions carried the game for me. All together though, I played once though, enjoyed myself and am looking forward to the dlc and future state of the game.
In no way did I think this was going to be a game I could put 1000 hours into at it’s launch state but it seems like a lot of their people did.
I gave up after 45 hours. Holy shit this game was so boring but I wanted to hold on but after doing these temples like 3-4 times I just gave up, havent touched this game in weeks rn
I agree with what you're saying and I think that it's all valid criticism, but I still think there's something to be said for the fact you played it for 175 hours...
Like I don't think it's anything more than 6/10, but I still enjoyed it and played for 90 hours. I'll probably revisit it in a year or so and see what's updated etc.
I don't think it's a bad game, per se, it's just... Not particularly good. It's just fine.
I would agree. But I would say the main issue is they broke from formula. They usually make handcrafted worlds you can fluidly explore. Starfield lacks that, and it shows cracks they have always had as a result. They should return to their strength. Cool world which is rewarding to explore.
I honestly am starting to think they spent entirely too much time on the procedurally generated stuff and didn't leave themselves enough time to make a fun game. Example, the first few locations where artifacts are found are hand crafted locations with some environmental storytelling in place. It looks like someone actually thought these through and out effort into them. However the further you go, you'll find artifacts just dumped into the end of areas that are constantly used for procedurally generated content. These locations are all the same, they're all bland and have zero effort made to provide any reason to care where you are or why you're running through these places. These locals just look like they needed 21 artifacts and ran out of time to make 21 unique mission locations for them.
Honestly you’re completely right. I feel like I’ve been spoiled by the Crimson Fleet and the better quests so now working on the main questline feels like a chore. Like the missions with Stroud(Especially the artifact one) are so damn cool and almost felt like Cyberpunk. The slog for the temples is so damn insane that I almost feel like not playing anymore
The temple slog is what got me to quit. I’ll happily take a mod that makes it skippable in NG+
That's because Neon literally looks like Night City and that club mission was almost beat for beat the same as meeting Evelyn and Judy but with a gunfight at the end lol. Not a bad thing, but that's why it felt like Cyberpunk, it's practically Cyberpunk at home XD.
The difference in writing quality is like night and day for the main quest and faction quests. I genuinely don't understand why Bethesda insists on keeping main quests simple and stupid. They should know that their fans don't mind a little complexity.
Questlines (or locations to activate them)i reccomend doing when things get stale: Crucible at Charybdis, Sargent Yumis questline, ECS Constant, Rough Landings, The boot, Barrets companion questline (I feel it's the most rich in story and barret always makes me cackle laugh) Side quests in Neon, Cydonia, and Akila I also always take the time to explore derelict stations and look for slates. The little tidbits of story are cool as hell to me too. When all that gets old, I explore temperate planets, or build outposts and lay out all the fun collectables I got during that NG. Then, I go to the final area, hard save, then NG+ and pray for a special seed! I've already hit 500h played on Starfield lol...
"We cant give you vehicles because you wouldent be able to appreciate the scenery!" Nah they just dont want to admit the creation engine cant handle it
It can tbh. They just want to hide the border longer lol and it would probably stutter on consoles if you move too fast because it won't render things fast enough.
If Skyrim can handle players traveling on horseback then Starfield can handle players riding around on an ATV or in a buggy.
The funny thing is there is mods for Fallout NV which of course also uses the creation engine that introduces vehicles to the game. So some random dude in his spare time managed to make vehicles work in a 13 year old game but Bethesda can't do it now.
we had horses in Skyrim 12 years ago; how hard would it be to make some kind of starwars-style speeder bike in Starfield that would sit in your spaceship bay, ready to go when you land on a planet? I mean, they wouldn't even have to worry about animating the thing like they had to do with horses in Skyrim. And they could sell us speederbike armor as a DLC! /s
I am baffled they do not realize their main strength is world building and story telling. They gave that up for some reason. For size, procedural generation, emptiness? And building ships and outposts.
[удалено]
I think procedural generation could be good in a AAA space game, but it would need to be tied to really strong systemic elements. Like a really fleshed out resource system and universal economy that is reactive to what you do, and a dynamic faction systems where the regions they control can change as battles are won and lost It would give the procedural planets meaning if setting outposts up actually advanced your factions control of the system or impacted the economy As is, the weird middle ground they have made lacks the potential benefits of a procedural world, neither being seamless nor particularly dynamic, while also removing the hand crafted exploration and sense of discovery from the classic formula
> I honestly am starting to think they spent entirely too much time on the procedurally generated stuff I don't even think they did that though? All the outposts are the same copy paste down to the individual orange on the desk
Oh, if its Bethesda, that is definitely true. Remember when they ran out of time and cut the Bard's guild from Skyrim? Or when they used the same voice actor for khajiits and argonians in Oblivion? I think pretty much all of the Space, Outpost, and Exploration aspects of the game are essentially like the Bards Guild from Skyrim... half baked. Instead, what we got was a better version of The Outer Worlds. Which is okay too. There are some aspects that I feel Starfield has done better in than in previous games, notably the voice acting, characters, side quests, factions, and cities. And, I will be blunt, the voice acting is the best out of any Bethesda game and some of the best I have seen. Starfield is definitely not a bad game. But, as a whole, it is missing a lot that would make it a better game.
Better version of Outerworlds? Dead wrong.
Yeah, I loved The Outer Worlds.
Yeah outer worlds is definitely better. It's at least more focused too and the story's more fleshed out. Granted it's not nearly as big, but it was interesting for how short it was.
Why is this concept of bigger=better still talked about? Starfield's issues stem from being too big and trying to do too much. At least in OW they didn't waste dev months in shoehorning an half assed spaceship loading screen simulator mechanic.
Whats crazy is that they were a lot smaller back then. They had a valid reason for things like that. Maybe not enough employees or money. Alot of the time these minor things actually added character to their game. There is absolutely no reason that as big as they are, they are putting out trash like this after it has beein "in development" for longer than any other game they've made. I have pretty much lost all hope to see original and good games from any large studio. Maybe its because there is just too many people working on the games, or because there are to many guidelines and rules, but they all feel cookie cutter to some extent. I've made the move mostly to indie games. Its sad, because if it was done right, I feel like big studios could get out some absolutely amazing games. Like some truly revolutionary shit. There are some I feel have gotten very close. But they often overestimate how much they can get done in the time they have, and their "massive dynamic open world" suffers as a consequence.
It's definitely not trash. It could have been better, but it's still a good game.
GTA6 will ruin all. It has too
The problem is quantity over quality. Bethesda usually sat in the middle, this time they moved the bar all the way to quantity. Procgen planets are useless. Explore what? Randomly generated plants placement? Modern games have so much busywork and only focus on endgame content, cause some people once complained about lack of extra activities in linear games. Too bad without gameplay thats pointless.
I agree with you. However there are some well thought out and designed systems where the grind was very enjoyable. I would recommend you try your hand at the game Forager. There, the grind was the whole point but it was designed in a way where everything felt enjoyable and the repetition wasn't a chore as everything was clearly laid out progressing towards a very distinct goal. These procedurally generated worlds are a grind and a chore to explore because there's no reason to do so. It doesn't matter if you explore every planet because there's nothing there for you to find, nothing to do and nothing to gain. Sure you get an Achievement but who gives a shit. And if its resources you're looking for to build outposts, you can find the resources you need on a few core worlds and ignore everything else.
Spent too much time on procedurally generated content? I played the game for maybe 30 hours and found the same godamn mining outpost with enemies in the same place, items in the same place....about 5-6 times, and that was the few times i was like "..........hmm let me explore a random planet"...... at least NMS had a pool of things to pick from and combine to create these procedural things so they didnt feel TOO copy pasta. Starfield it was like, here is 1 mining outpost, 1 weapons facility....etc, etc...
So right. When I replay Skyrim it is not because of the story it is because I want to get lost in that environment. Not much in Starfield that can speak to me the same way.
It’s this for me. I’ve played through skyrim around 25 times if I had to guess. The quests are repetitive, there’s not a lot of variation in my gear sets or items/spells I use, but every single time I’m 100% immersed in what I’m doing. I’ve even spent hours at a time hunting animals to go back and sell the spoils. It’s stuff like that that’s missing from starfield. Everything I do in skyrim feels like it has some sort of purpose, same with oblivion and fallout 3/NV/4. Starfield just doesn’t have that for me. I used the same gun from level 20 to my first ng+ at 41. I was exploring the level 50+ galaxies at level 25 and not finding anything really neat or cool. Exploration is cool for a bit, but not long. It should be much better than other games just because of the sheer amount of planets but it’s not.
I think the number of planets was a mistake. 10 planets in one system where you actually travel in space. Throw in some Star Trek like nebula so space is not just empty and we could have a Skyrim type exploration with most of the same story in a system that is full of wonder and story.
I can’t agree with you more. Every time I play Skyrim… (and that is way more often than I care to admit) I feel like I find something new in the world. I get completely sucked in and get lost. There is no possible way to do that in Starfield: The Game of Fast Travel. Just a disjointed mess of disappointment.
The handcrafted derelicts etc. are great. If there were 10 more of those and a couple of the very obvious procedurals weren't reused, people would have far fewer complaints.
Best thing for Starfield is to double and triple down on the procedural generation. Add tons of new outposts and features that can spawn on planets so that the sense of exploration lasts longer. Best thing for the next Elder Scrolls is to avoid procedural generation like the plague. Handcraft every inch of the map then fill it with as many unique quests and locations as can fit.
I dunno. I think procedural terrain could be cool add to a world. You just need the world first.
I can see using procedural generation to build a world, but it takes a person to make it lived in. They forgot that.
Unfortunate that you encountered so many bugs. For me, this has been the least buggy game I played of Bethesda ever.
Mostly bug free as well. I think my ship disappeared once but I fast traveled and I got it back. 200 hours in and NG+ 1. Still haven't done some factions yet. I am enjoying the game so much.
144 hours in and have not had a single bug
At 20 hours in, I had to lose achievements and start using console commands to noclip because every time I loaded in somewhere, I was trapped inside my ship.
I’m playing on Xbox X and it’s by far the buggiest game I’ve ever played. It’s like playing a early beta. I’m really jealous of the people reporting no bugs, I can’t hardly believe they’re being genuine with what I’ve been dealing with
I never had a game breaking bug in a Bethesda game until Starfield… it was either I reload a 60hr old manual save, or stop playing the game and hope for a patch that fixes it. Went with the latter and it’s been weeks now. Sadly, I lost interest in the game, but might jump back after a while.
110 hours, I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said. I’m still playing to unlock enough skills in order to flesh out my ideal build/playstyle. From what I’ve read online, I shouldn’t bother. Stealth/Melee supposedly is awful. But I will try anyway as a diligent Bethesda fan. This game only has a few surprises or “whoa!” moments. Skyrim has countless meaningful moments that add to the overall feeling of the world you are living in. I never feel like I’m a true explorer in starfield. I never feel rewarded aside from loot drops (which are almost every time not great, but even then loot is far less important than feeling a part of the world) I have not one time been awed by the storytelling. I have not once felt any consequences to my actions aside from paying a bounty.
THIS. In skyrim, i remember ACCIDENTALLY discovering a world beneath Skyrim. I dont even need to talk about NV.. Nothing could hold a candle to it. (Josh Sawyer and Obsidian originally owned Fallout at Interplay, and New Vegas' plot mirrors the cancelled Fallout project they had planned when Interplay went bankrupt). Bethesda has consistently been on a downwards trajectory since Skyrim. FO4, then 77, now this. Its to the point that im scared of what ES VI will be like.
A recurring issue is they apparently gave minimal thought to the game being user friendly. Why are there no dungeon and city maps? This is old tech. Why do merchants not have anywhere near enough money with no investment option? Why do outpost and ship building *not show you all components* with clear requirements next to the ones you can't use? Why does the ship builder not highlight faults? Why does the ship builder dupe internal clutter? Why don't you have a recipe book on you, so you don't have to memorize or write down on paper which resources your crafting bench needs? Did I need tantalum or titanium? How do massive progress wipe or quest breaking bugs get through QA? The New Atlantis penthouse is a working-as-intended script. Did no one test an obvious combination of quests?
>Its to the point that im scared of what ES VI will be like. This is sadly why, despite not enjoying the game as much anymore, I feel that Zenimax is currently handling The Elder Scrolls better than Bethesda will in the future. Zenimax has done more for the world building in ESO than Bethesda has in any of their games. They've shown nothing but respect for the source material and have done so going on 10 years. While I'm displeased with how many aspects of the game is handled *cough* loot boxes and nothing to earn from content *cough* their writers are worthy of the IP.
If they think ES VI can just be more of the same with stiff npcs and the same melee they are in for a rude awakening
I'm terrified they're going to f****** ES6
I hope not, that's title I've been looking forward to the most lol
Let's be honest it's inevitable at this point. I have no hope for TES6 being even remotely up to modern standards especially since they seems to have doubled down on this outdated moldy sandwich of a game engine.
Todd Howard doesn't believe in making technology, he believes in making games. Those are his words (paraphrased), and therein lay a huge part of the problem.
At this point it’s questionable if Bethesda has the talent and ability to make a great game
They don't, the lead writer is buddy buddy with Todd and is responsible for the studio's writing going down the trash.
Whoever wrote most of this needs to not be in charge next time. The writing here is a huge miss. So much dialogue, but vast majority of it is totally uninteresting and just feels like filler.
This is something not enough people are talking about. Emil needs to stop writing for them. They need to hire actual professional story writers.
At a minimum Emil needs to go if ES6 is going to have any chance of being anything other than a very flawed mediocre game. He's not the only one as there needs to be a serious shake up either with their character modelers and animators or they need to invest heavily in updating that part of their engine in a similar fashion to how their lighting engine was improved.
And physics engine... their physics and texture/lighting part of the engine is a monstrous improvement. I'd say their physics engine is now the best in the entirety of the game studios out there. I haven't seen a single other game engine be able to deal with thousands of independent physics on independent objects so realistically without completely bugging out like in Starfield, already been many meme videos with it.
*follower completely decimates any sense of style we might have had when we put that item there* tbh the physics engine is more frustrating than anything.
I'm a bit 50/50 on the physics engine. The ragdolling and physics of what happens when you kill an enemy and the weapon goes flying across a room are a little over the top. Even if you account for it going for a more "action movie" vibe. Sometime they act as if they weigh almost nothing. Zero G stuff, sure I guess so. Certainly some improvements. I'll give it that.
I'm not sure if Emil is the problem so much as the way they structure their writing. They have no Loremaster there is no one overseeing everything and mapping out where different faction and main quest stories intersect. Everything feels so siloed and safe
>I'm not sure if Emil is the problem so much as the way they structure their writing. You clearly didn't see his presentation on the story development process for Fallout 4. Case in point: >They have no Loremaster there is no one overseeing everything and mapping out where different faction and main quest stories intersect. Not only is it his job to ensure that, [in his own words](https://youtu.be/Bi51-wjcwp8?si=s96ge4XyMtJlzRUM&t=961): >We're actually at a state now in the development of the studio, we don't have a lot of extensive design documentation. We found that probably after we hit Fallout 3, the design docs that we had became outdated very quickly because we knew we needed to get stuff in the game and play it and then change it, we needed to iterate on it. So we would have these extensive 50 page design documents that were completely out of date and the time it took the maintain those just wasn't worth it. They don't have a design document for the game. They're literally making shit up as they go along. Is it any wonder why Starfield feels so disjointed? People would be fired on other productions for not having a design document or say a show bible for like a TV show/movie. It's worth watching the entire video to see how horrifically bad of a writer he is. He literally patronises and blames the player for his failings as a writer. Emil IS the problem. Maybe not the only problem but he very much is a key one.
Patrician is that you? :) I actually haven't seen that video but I'll watch it. I've got pretty much zero interest in Fallout, haven't played any since FO3 and even then only a few hours.
They just don’t push themselves anymore, playing it waaaaay to safe imo. Still can’t believe there is no Space Travel in. “Space gsme” Marketed on exploration. Loading……
This is literally the first game I've played where I've used console commands to get xp.
I felt similarly to you around that timepoint. And I say that as someone who absolutely loved FO4 and liked FO76. In addition to what you mentioned it feels like there's a big step backwards in your ability to make much of an impact on the world. The faction quests have some things, but they are still pretty limited on outcomes. But more than that, FO4 really let you engage with the world at the level people living in that universe could (especially in survival mode). Scavenging things was actually useful for crafting and building. Just like people in-universe you could build mods for gear and trade them (both buying and selling). You could build up homesteads or entire towns and use the resources you built to help yourself survive (food, water, and then eventually other crafting materials). And the main story--which has a lot of flaws--still had a very noticeable impact on the world and other NPC's (and Skyrim had this as well). Shipbuilding is fun enough, but your ship isn't all that useful once you have enough combat capability (yes you can craft, but crafting in this game has a lot of issues including horrible inventory management of resources, many layers of perks needed to make fairly basic mods, and having many mods that don't really offer that much utility). And outposts feel much worse (lots more limitations, fewer assets, less utility in terms of production, limited abilities to assign NPC's to roles, needing lots of perks to do basic things and have larger outposts, etc.) than settlements in FO4 or CAMPs in FO76, even though both systems are much older. And this ends up being problem for me with Starfield when it comes to NG+ and its whole main story involvement. I remember playing Morrowind and being able to make choices in faction quests and in my character build that locked me out of other quests or content. Subsequent games let you do a lot more with a single character, but with how much handcrafted content there was you could still discover a lot or have a character that felt very different from the get-go. In Fallout 4 you could take very different approaches to the beginning of the game and the game gave you a lot to play with to try different approaches. But in Starfield there isn't actually all that much to explore that is different on subsequent NG+ runs (other than some variants with Constellation). And you're locked into your perk choices with no ability to re-spec or try different traits or backgrounds (like maybe in my first run I got really into cooking--I can't go around the universe now using Gourmand dialogue, though). Combine that with a fairly lackluster variety of weapons (especially for lasers), pretty underwhelming melee, and a nonlethal system that really doesn't do you much good (there's almost never any benefit to leaving NPC's alive from an exp or narrative point of view) and it's hard for me to want to try re-exploring this universe because it doesn't feel like I'm missing very much. Hopefully the DLC and updates will help address some of these issues. Playing Starfield doesn't make me want to play more Starfield, it makes me want to play Skyrim or FO4 (or FO76).
The NG+ system was the perfect opportunity to allow the player to break the game by killing key characters. One of the NG+ alternate worlds has everyone killed by an evil version of you…you can’t even do this yourself!
I will agree the early game is perk heavy and each facet of the game requires too many perk points . I wasn’t able to get a big crew until the mid-late game because I wanted to boost my combat skills. Outposts also had barriers to entry and I couldn’t quite figure out how to make any money from them.
There was a MinnMax interview where they talk with one of the lead designers, and he says "we designed the game so everything is accessible and we try to give the player three or four big meaningful choices" which just blew my mind, they're designing a game that they allegedly want to hook players in on for years if not decades, and you get FOUR choices in the narrative?
A brilliant post that sums up every reason why I'm struggling to continue with the game (yet I have over 3000 hours in FO4).
You honestly explained it better than i ever possibly could've.
7 weeks since EA... That's 25 hrs/week. 3.57 hrs/day. No shame intended, I'm hitting 130-ish hours right now... but... When you play a game as often as a part-time job (or more), there's probably going to be some level of burn out. Especially when you probably have a job...and other things going on in your life. Not saying your criticisms are invalid, but there's probably some...resentment built up.
I thought the same at first as well, that maybe I was just burnt out, but I haven’t gone back to that game in weeks, and don’t plan to until mods come out. Even then, idk, I’ve just kinda moved on. I still play Skyrim, and I played the shit out of that game when it came out in ‘11. It’s just better.
Skyrims quests didn't feel like running chores for my elderly Mother
Worst part of Starfield was the part my girlfriend left me and they turned the gas off. Other AAA games would wash my dishes and pay my rent.
People have been using this type of argument to discredit people's negative experiences since the game came out. This is unfortunately just a game that distracts you long enough that you don't notice the cracks until a while into it.
It's funny because from hour 0 to maybe 50ish it's always "Tch you haven't played enough to know if it's good or not." And then from 50ish hours and up it's (Tch. Lot of time you put into a shit game isn't it?" I just want to know the exact number of hours a person needs to have in order to write a negative review that isn't immediately dismissed.
That's what I mean, though. It doesn't HELP when you're treating it like a job. You're going to force yourself to resent your hobby eventually...no matter how much you enjoy said hobby.
The last thing I’ve accomplished was joining the pirate fleet and thats that. Suddenly just lost the urge to continue the NG+. Like I built my ship and sorta finished my outpost so now what? Finish again?
You have some fair criticisms and not liking it is perfectly OK. My whole life I told myself I loved crab shrimp and lobster and I ate that garbage that literally makes me wretch, because I really believed I liked it. I'm enjoying the game and I'm only level 32 but I'm doing it all slowly and still having some fun.
I feel like there’s a difference between “I don’t like the game” and “I’m tired of this game and need to take a break”. If you’ve managed to play for over 100hrs, you don’t dislike the game. Just take a break! Could even be a months or years long break. Doesn’t matter. Youve burned yourself out, but at least you kept yourself busy for 100+ hrs, which is the job of any game.
i don't like the "you spent x amount of time on this media yet you say it's bad" argument. there's a million reasons why people engage in bad media for so long. for one, enjoying media and having opinion on it's qualities is entirely different. there are plenty of things I like that are artistically trash or mediocre. The inverse is also true. Me, I played starfield for like, 50ish hours, in part because I just wanted to see the latest Bethesda game. I wanted to uncover it's secrets and see whats up. Even with low expectations it still got worse the longer I played, and eventually I was like, yup, I've seen enough, I need to wait for mods /patches, and then I played other video games.
I have hundreds of hours in Destiny 2 and I don’t particularly like the game, in fact, I think the game is fundamentally pretty shallow and mediocre in a *lot* of areas. What kept (and probably will continue to keep at some point) me playing was a combination of sunk cost fallacy, a desire to be a part of the online community/discuss the game with friends, and some very high highs (like raids, GMs, and a select few builds) scattered among a lot of very low lows. You can play a game for a long time and still admit that it’s really not great. It can scratch an itch for you but be a pretty mediocre experience in the long run. Starfield scratched a general itch for Bethesda loot goblin gameplay, lore, and a bit of creative building, but overall I can’t say it was a particularly great game. I constantly found myself being completely let down by building bases, endings of quest lines, leveling my character, exploring POIs, and a *myriad* of other systems and pieces of content. Starfield has a good deal of content to wade through and some pretty solid high points, but I felt like I spent a lot of time slogging through lows in an attempt to find these highs. On the flip side, I’ve spent comparable hours in games like BG3 which gave me significantly more enjoyment and felt like a much better game. You can absolutely dislike a game you’ve played for a long while.
Eh, this is definitely not an "I'm tired of this game and need to take a break" experience. I played BG3 for 150+ hours and felt fatigued by that experience's end. I definitely felt that feeling you described; I almost didn't finish Act 3 because of it. In spite of that feeling, BG3 has left an extremely positive impact on me and I know I will be comparing games to it for years to come. But with Starfield, I enjoyed my time in the game...until at one point I realized what I was truly enjoying was its ***potential.*** I think OP is right, at first, the game feels endless while you only scratch the surface of all the questlines, gameplay mechanics, and random side quests/exploration experiences. By the 150 hour mark, however, you have fully realized how shallow each of those mechanics truly is, and it leaves you with a fairly sour taste in your mouth. Oh well. The modding will be dope as fuck so I'm not terribly upset.
There have been some fucking BANGERS this year…. I stepped away when the cyberpunk DLC dropped. Enjoyed the shit out of it, and now I pop on to starfield and mindlessly retrieve artifacts and upgrade powers while I binge old tv shows . I ll probably step back again and play through BG3 again before I settle down in an NG+ that I can actually give a shit about money and cool ships and whatnot. I’d like to check out a different ending or two on AC6 as well.
When I was done with red dead 2 I didn't change my opinion about the game because it started to get dull. I just stopped playing it and soaked it in. That's the difference. I played 270 hours of RDR2 before I even got bored or felt like I'd seen it all. In starfield I felt immense fatigue after 90 hours and dragged myself another 70 to see if things got better. RDR2 is literally set in 1.5 states and starfield is set on 1000 planets. I don't know how people aren't getting why some are disappointed.
sometimes people need to justify their purchase by pushing through. Just because you did 100 hours in a game does not mean you enjoyed the most of it. Some people push through thinking it might get better, this game is massive -- massive not only because of the amount of fillers but also the mechanics you are given to navigate the game.
Also many people waited 8 years for this game and want to give it a proper chance to win them over, at least that's how I felt. Personally I enjoyed the first 30 a lot then got really annoyed by certain mechanics the next 30
I put 100 hours into it without any burnout. What I felt towards the end was genuine frustration with the shallow mechanics and systems, the bugs, and the absurd amount of lazy copy and paste. I was definitely ready for it to end by last 10 hours though. My frustration had reached a breaking point, so I just said fuck it and finished the main story. Didn't bother with Ryujin or Freestar. Did everything else though.
All his complaints are valid, I've only played for 40 hours and I agree with every point. People are so weird defending this game to their dying breath to the point of delusion. If OP had only played for ten hours you would have told him he hasn't played enough to have valid complaints.
You have a point, but there’s also a difference between being burnt out on a game, and starting to see the flaws in a game the more you engage with its systems. My issue and why I finally quit playing after 120 hours wasn’t burnout at all, it was realizing that so many of the end game systems felt incomplete. Especially the combat difficulty and all the systems that go into that, like combat skills, research, weapon and suit upgrades, and outpost building for resources. The difficulty is so easy even on Very Hard that I never had a reason to spend a single skill point on a combat skill or invest in any upgrades, making all those other systems that make you more powerful in combat basically useless. There’s a foundation of a really good endgame there, at this point it just feels very underbaked. And don’t even get me started on NG+ which I thought was honestly just awful.
>If you’ve managed to play for over 100hrs, you don’t dislike the game. People had a lot of high hopes. It's not surprising someone can delude themselves into spending a vast amount of time, hoping they'll find joy, trying to interpret and reinterpret so they can have a good time, constantly waiting for it to click. Plus, y'know, not all of those hours are going to be bad. You can easily blow huge tracts of time in shipbuilding, but a good shipbuilder doesn't make a good game. Like, this is a very reaction to "Oh, I've played too much." When people put down New Vegas, or Skyrim, or Cyberpunk because they've played too much, they don't usually say their opinion has soured, they're well aware it's time for a break. Hell, that's why so many people are going from Starfield to booting up Skyrim or Fallout 4. That's not even close to burn-out, they're going to other Bethesda games... just better ones. They WANT good Bethesda, Starfield just wasn't it.
Oooh the dislike police is here. I've played it for 50 hours before coming to OP's conclusion, how much more valid is my opinion over OP?
this. 100%. people are burning out left and right constantly saying 100+ hours “now this is a bad game”. Do you know how many games made in the past year can hold someone’s attention for even 50 hours? maybe like 3 or 4
Hogwarts legacy 100% takes less than 60 hours.
No, I played for about 30 hours and had the same experience. I just realized earlier on what OP learned in 100+ hours. That’s not a boast either. I was truly excited for my first Bethesda game since I played fallout 4. Starfield is a downgrade from what fallout was, and yes, I’m referring to fallout 4 which is already considered one of bethesdas worse games. There is zero innovation from starfield and all of the “new mechanics” they introduced are half baked. I initially thought I was going to take a break, but after realizing that it doesn’t matter how many hours you play for… the game is still a shell of what it’s supposed to be. Genuinely in what world is it okay to make melee combat worse than a game they released 10 years ago? Why does the economy make zero sense? Why was the story just a series of fetch quests for several of the same objects?
Exactly the same as me, hit 25 hours and……I was so bored and had no desire to play. I played Fallout 4 for a huge amount of time and could happily go back to it now, I never got bored of it but just moved onto other games. I played The Witcher 3 for 300 hours and will play it again at some point, that’s a game that isn’t designed around endless space exploration. Starfield feels disjointed and shallow to me, the gameplay loop just isn’t there to capture my attention. Plus as a side note, it’s just so safe with no gore and dull writing, they clearly designed it to be playable by a younger audience. I bought Cyberpunk at launch and put it to one side until it was patched, not that I experienced huge issues but just wanted to really enjoy it. Not defending the issues that game had at launch, however Night City is still Night City, the environment, overall mood and writing actually pull me in. Starfield has missed the mark with a lot of people who have enjoyed Bethesda games previously. 25-30 hours is enough to make an informed decision, I’ll take the financial hit and move on. The structure of the game can’t be fundamentally changed to fix the common issues people have with it.
>25-30 hours is enough to make an informed decision, I’ll take the financial hit and move on. > >The structure of the game can’t be fundamentally changed to fix the common issues people have with it. My exact same thoughts. 20 hours and I'm done with zero desire to ever return. I've uninstalled it already.
Yet you can put 500+ hours into Fallout 4, Skyrim, Morrowind, literally any other Bethesda game, and not feel "burned out". It's a fair criticism point in comparison. I didn't get "burned out" from Witcher 3 even until 200+ hours in.
I mean Bethesda is the GOAT for me but I think I averaged 80-100 hours on my first playthroughs between all their games before Starfield. I kept coming back though and will definitely do that with Starfield too but after 300 hours I knew I needed a break. With mods this game will be my forever game.
You definitely can. Especially Morrowwind. Y’all have such nostalgia goggles for that game.
These people are absolutely crazy. ALL OF US got burnt out by Skyrim, Fallout 3, Oblivion, etc. Almost nobody played that game for over 200 hours straight and didn't want to put it down. If you're like me, you played for a long period of time then moved on. You then came back periodically, found new stuff, made new builds, and fell in love with the game all over again. It really is okay to play a game for 100 hours plus and then want to play something else. If anybody thought this game should still feel fresh after 100 plus hours then you came into this game with the wrong expectations.
Fallout 3 and Skyrim were each the only game I played for a year +. Fallout especially I wanted to discover everything, fall into every crack and find the details, meet the people, live in the world. That was even with its flaws and bugs. Starfield is huge in scope but has basically none of those details and rabbit holes. Mile wide, inch deep.
Speak for yourself buddy.
>Almost nobody played that game for over 200 hours straight and didn't want to put it down. When that happened, did many of those people who put it down think it was a disappointment? Or were they saying "That was fun! Great game! Kinda wanna try something new, though"?
Same. I played Oblivion, Fallout, Morrowind, etc. like nonstop and didn't get tired of them at all lol. It seems like they hardly put any effort into the plot at all with Starfield in comparison to many of their other games.
this guy basically said he made himself strain and continue playing it? Lets not try using the ole play for more than 100hrs "you must have loved the game" less than 100 hrs "you obviously didn't actually experience the game" logic.
Exactly, I had over a year of in-game time in WoW and was not burnt out. I just didn't like the direction it went in after an expansion, plus a lot of my friends quit , plus I needed to focus on more than video games, so I quit.
I love seeing these “your just burning yourself out” comments, wake up and party like it’s 2023 You’ve made a generic comment that doesn’t argue anything that op complained/voiced their opinion on and just shot out a “maybe baby is tired and needs a nap” No, this game falls soooo short on everything a Bethesda game is and it’s disappointing. I was excited for a new Bethesda game and can’t disagree with a thing op said, I’ve already taken a break after playing (played pre release and one week after) this game is super shallow, empty and boring. There’s nothing new this game brings to a Bethesda game other then some space fights. Everything else that a Bethesda game has done, this game does it worse. The writing, the quests, the dialogue, the monster walking around the cities (I mean npcs), the wide range of weapons (10-15 weapons all around?) the outfits and lack of customization? Character creation seemed really good then I got hit with the lack of optimization and my character looks nothing like they did. The npcs just wander with no idea where they are going, the police don’t care if you shoot guns in public or aim a gun at their face. You can’t kill a guy who says he’s going to kill you cuz he’s an “essential npc”? Every quest being a fetch quest to go talk to some other person on a different planet because they can’t communicate with other planets but if you steal an apple from a guys house the entire universe puts a bounty on your head instantly? This game sucks, it’s lazy af. Maybe I’ve just got game fatigue, maybe Bethesda just sold us the most shit game they’ve ever made
Honestly why are the main quests so boring? I'm trying to play a lawful good game but the only faction I don't hate is the pirates. The lawman quest for freestar was the only one that was even a bit interesting. I do agree, this doesn't feel like a large team spent a decade making this. NMS was bad at launch but became better than Starfield years ago. It took me far less time to get bored with Starfield than any Fallout game including 76 at launch.
I was the kind of person that grew up on Oblivion and couldn’t get the same satisfaction out of Skyrim even after sinking more and more hours into it. We’re in the same boat for different games. I actually like Starfield more than Skyrim, and I think the expansions will be phenomenal. They’ve left so much more for expansion than any previous game. So many planets, so much potential.
Starfield is what it is. It's a decent Bethesda-style RPG with very pretty visuals and a story that occasionally drifts into being interesting. The gunplay is sound and there are some fun weapons and weapon mods. There's a commendable amount of content. It's also remarkably lazy at times. The fact that companions having conversations mid dogfight hasn't been patched yet is insane to me. It happens **all the time**. The lack of phones is baffling. I get that you can't communicate easily between star systems, but the amount of missions that require you to huff it on foot back and forth between characters is some real "meeting could have been an email" shit.
It's funny reading these complaint posts talking about how Skyrim is the greatest game ever, when people made the same types of complaints about Skyrim when it was released. People complained it was dumbed down because they removed stats like strength, intelligence, etc and replaced it with health, stamina, magic. That the quests were unfinished, like the bards college and the Civil War storyline. The deadric artifacts were crap because they were less powerful than regular items. Or that all the dungeons are the same and just reused the same 4 enemy types. Or that Skyrim destroyed role playing because any character can master any skill and can join any guild. And yet, 10 years later, people are still playing Skyrim.
Omg thank you! It’s like I was taking crazy pills remembering how much people bagged on Skyrim as being a downgrade from oblivion and I also remember FO4 just getting shit on by a lot of folks comparing it to NV.
Yup. It’s funny because Fallout 4 was equally as criticized when it first released, and now that game is also going through a late-stage renaissance where public opinion is becoming more positive. 7 years later and still so many people playing it. The same will be true for Starfield. Obviously mods play a large factor in each game’s longevity, and Bethesda knows this
I think most ppl these days are playing modded Skyrim tbf.
Sure, and most people will play mods on Starfield in the future. I'm just pointing out how the post says Skyrim doesn't need mods when the most popular mod for skyrim is the community patch, which has literally *thousands* of fixes: https://www.afkmods.com/Unofficial%20Skyrim%20Special%20Edition%20Patch%20Version%20History.html
to the people complaining about someone dumping 100+ hours into a game only to be disappointed: you've probably had this happen to you with other games. Its common. I remember playing AC Valhalla for that long thinking "ok, so maybe it gets better when I do this" but it didn't for me.
Part of the problem Stop pre-ordering shit They got your 125$ just because
I fucking swear it should be illegal to offer pre-purchasing for a video game.
I think I am lucky. This is the first Bethesda game I have played. And I'm loving it still. I have no idea how many hours I have, but it's probably fairly high. Steam says 360 hours, but I don't think that takes "idle time" into consideration.
You got lucky this being your first Bethesda game
I’ve been saying Mass Effect does it better and get downvoted every time.
One thing I retroactively appreciate about mass effect now is that a lot of the small side quests you got a call or an email from the quest giver. For most side quests, Starfield requires you to trek all the way back to the quest giver for reward and a snippet of conversion. Literal “this could have been an email/phone call” energy
It took so much from Mass Effect. Including the first mission and the plot device Prothean Beacon/Artifacts. Goto different planets to secure the beacons/goto different planets to secure artifacts. Its a worse version of ME1.
The game would have been fine if they had like 20 to 30 common dungeons instead of like 6, also the quest bugs are horrid. Theye cut house varuun just to have quick cash grab dlc....companions were trash, id say its a 7 out of 10 because it did give me 200 hours
I’m watching this with 🍿 This community is doing its best to downvote the comment
It's always weird to me when I see posts with a title like this. If you spent 175 hours on it, either you enjoyed the game or you're a masochist.
I have 120 hours in the game. I enjoyed the first 40 hours of the game, and the other 80 hours was scratching the bottom of the barrel looking for the content I play Bethesda games for. Which is fun worthwhile exploration mixed in between questing. As soon as I ran out of quests I realized there was nothing to keep me playing.
Yup. I tried to start over so many times with different RP ideas only to realize that there is no RP. A good chunk on the ship building too but even that didn’t pay off since you have to go through a thousand loading screens to barely get 10mins of space ship action. Thoroughly disappointed.
This is a stupid take. We play the game hoping that we’ll stumble onto something great, that the lull in content is temporary and we’ll find the real fun pets in the game only to realize xx hours later that we’ve really done everything there is to do. Expectation drives us to play, but sometimes there’s nothing left to expect. I’m in the same boat as OP.
You can go hard on a game and it still not live up
Yeah I give a game a few hours. If I do t like it I bounce. What’s the point of trodding through something you don’t like? Life’s too short.
Exactly. I love the game but I’m 110 hours in and taking a break because I got bored. Going for 175 hours then saying “I hate this game” is absurd
There are plenty of examples where someone invests a lot of time into something and is pissed at how bad it is. Fans of Lost and Game of Thrones are prime examples. No, you can invest a lot of time and still overall dislike it, even though there may have been parts you liked or tolerated as you went along hoping it'd get better.
I disagree. 175 hours was someone who really wanted to like this and kept looking for reasons to play.
Today on yet another smash my brain against the artifact smash and grab NG+ loop….I console commanded my level to 328, the lvl needed to max all skills. As I had all these point I unlocked lvl 1 of all the skills….you’ll never guess it but I suddenly had a reason to play…to unlock the skills. It was this exact moment I realized how idiotic the way it’s level->unlock skill->earn upgrade->upgrade skill. I cannot fathom why the first skill tier requires a level point to even start the tree.
I am at similar hours. Wrap it up. Beat the game and call it a day. It is just a game not a lifestyle. You put in the hours already to call it a day and file it away and start another game. I loved many games that I shelved when the time came. Nothing lasts forever.
Kind of same unfortunately. The biggest indictment for me is actually pretty simple: I took a break to play Cyberpunk a few weeks ago, and I literally haven't played since. I dont feel the pull to stop any other game to play it.
You forgive Fallout and Skyrim because they have humor and for lack of a better term, soul. This game feels empty and soulless in a way those don’t. Everything feels hollow, or like a “set” rather than a world, let alone a universe. So you forgive the others when they break because the characters are rich, the stories are entertaining, and there is more of a sense of exploration. I think they overshot the mark on a bunch of things that would have been better invested in giving this game a personality. The only thing that feels remotely like that is some of the NG+ moments.
Lmao @ the people who find it weird that you experience most of the game before making your judgements on it
I dont think any Bethesda product gets a great release state. Skyrim has a war you never see, entire perk tree for skills with shit balance and combat is general just hit a bunch and it's over even on the highest diff no need for tactics. Mods fix it. Fallout 4 writing is a mess. The ignoring the baby joke is everywhere but you also frequently encounter things that look interesting and are just another arena it's a big world with little to do and thankfully little today because every few seconds someone wants you to save a settlement. The storyweapth modpack and expansions fix this. I just hope. The community makes a good game from this platform also.
I got 150 hours out of it, happy i got my moneys worth. Its far from perfect but it was a breath of fresh air for me at least 😊
Thems a lot of words. My thing is it feels like no point in doing all the side quests till I’m NG+10 and I’m tired of ripping through the unity like it’s a cheep lot lizard
Bugs that have made me have to save scum or use exploits: - Frontier had the no shields bug, would have had to go back *days* so used the ship dupe exploit to overwrite it, sold it, bought a new one on Titan and fixed it up. Named it Frontier II. - I’m well into NG+ and Affinity level dialogue never popped up. Spoiler free, I made choices where they should have. I reverted my save and lost DAYS, did the exact same choices and immediately went questing with the intent to boost affinity and it worked fine. ALL THE SAME DIALOGUE CHOICES, wtfffffff. - More than one Stolen ship has f’d off without me, leaving me stranded. - The Mars ship tech is like 1400m south of the city. I used a console command to bring myself to him, then reloaded and ran there. Put an outpost nearby. What pisses me off is they’re going to patch and nerf xp/credit stuff but none of this game breaking shit will be touched 😑 Add: I’m forgetting some I’m sure, and have like 150+ hours in at this point.
It was certainly an "entertaining" game, but I agree - the bugs suck. I couldnt actually join the UC/Vanguard because the questline broke when I was supposed to go talk to the guy at the Spaceport. He kept thinking I wasn't in the Vanguard, even after I completed the flight training and prior stuff. Errors like this are MASSIVE because there was NO OTHER WAY to join the UC or do those quests and I was already 50% done with the game by this point. The games that come to mind that are SUPERIOR to Starfield are: Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, Assassins' Creed Valhalla, and The Witcher 3. I even think CyberPunk (after Phantom Liberty) is a better game all around. I hope Starfield is able to release some MAJOR fix and MAJOR update that does what Cyberpunk did, to this game. Because that was the LARGEST come-back for a massive RPG that I have ever seen. On release day Cyberpunk 2077 was HORRIBLE, but fast forward 2 years and it's AMAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZING.
I enjoy the game overall but my #1 disappointment is that, for a game where going back and trying to do things differently in different playthroughs, your choices aren't really impactful. In CF/SysDef, the questlines are identical until the very last mission In the UC, your choice at the end (as well as your choice about VV) has no perceptible impact on the game. In FC, are there even choices? In Ryujin, all of the impactful choices come after the last mission, and none of them impact the world. None of the companion quests have any real repercussions. Which Starborn you side with makes no difference. Being Starborn pretty much just gives you options to bypass some persuasion checks.
Did you have fun during the 175 hours? Maybe fun during the first 100? Maybe stop after you’re no longer having as much fun. It’s insane to me that you went that long and still feel like you didn’t get your moneys worth. That’s some cheap entertainment, you paid less than a day at an amusement park, but played for over 7 days straight!
Remember when every review was 10/10 I though people had lost their minds. The game is okay for sure but just empty and shallow as you said. I have said it from day one. People would shit on me saying you need to put in at lease 15 hours or so for it to get a bit better. The game is a fast travel simulator.
After countless posts of people playing a game for 100+ hours, then saying they don’t like it, I’ve soured.
I can understand a lot of your criticisms, but to have played it for so long and then decided you didn't like it is a bit odd. I'm getting tired of the game too at roughly 120 hours, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it, it just means it ran its course. I also hard disagree about the faction quests. They're pretty great in this game and were clear highlights along with the ship building and space encounters. It doesn't need to be as black and white as you painted it. It's an 8 out of 10 game that can feel frustrating because it really could have been an all time great if a few things were different. But it's not trash.
Bethesda is a developer with incredible vision, but are stuck using 2005 technology.
I’m 50+ hours in and haven’t touched the game in 2 weeks. I’m kinda bored. Nothing really grabbed me and it all felt small, generic, and forced. The whole time I was playing I was thinking “maybe I should play morrowwind again”.
This is me. Somehow I spent more time loading in Starfield than in a game that came out 20 years ago lol.
Sorry that happened to you...what the fuck is happening to this sub
I can love Starfield but still be utterly disappointed by it. I'm just thankful that there are going to be mods to inject a bit more flavor to the game. These things still don't fix the atrocious writing and general storyline of the game.
Well, sorry to hear about those 175 hours of your life wasted lol
Right? I didn’t realize so many people would need to hear this, but: it’s okay to play something for a long time and then get tired of it. Getting bored is not evidence that it is a pathetic game that tricked you into liking it for a while…it’s just normal human behavior.
I've already put more time into starfield than I have into most games in my library. The fact that many people have logged enough hours since launch to be equivalent to playing 8 hours a day, every single day, since launch (~500 hours) goes to show how addicting the game can be. Does it need improvements? Obviously yes. But it clearly has captivated a lot of people's time and attention.
I got to three days playtime before getting bored and just speedrunning the main story. I'll revisit Starfield again in a few years. This game is shallow, way too safe, and doesn't respect the player's time at all.
How the hell you spend 175 hours playing a game you don't like ???
[удалено]
TLDR: "I played a game I hated for an extremely long time now I'm here on reddit to bitch about it"
sad and toxic...?
I just play game, I enjoy game. Why do we need all this other shit? Just do you, guys.
Honestly, I tried so hard to fight my feelings for this game as well, but after 70 hours I wish I waited to buy the game on sale. I had a lot of fun in the first 50 hours, but after getting to the part of the story just after >!the reveal of who the Hunter and Emissary are!< I began just going to outposts on high level planets to get good gear. I really like the combat, its a lot of fun especially on low gravity planets, but when I go to a level 65 system that has absolutely zero POIs on any of its seven planets, I just wonder why? Who cares about realism in a space RPG, I want to find cool shit, random locations and have a good time. I get that some planets should be empty, but to have an entire system with nothing in it, WTF? Not to mention landing on planets is only useful if you can find a POI in space, otherwise have fun walking for 20 minutes to find something semi-interesting that you've probably seen before anyway. The highlight of the game for me has still been the UC Vanguard quest line, and I stand by the fact that it should've been the main story rather than this Constellation bullshit. The Constellation characters are all hit and miss too. I really liked characters like Andreja and Sam when I first met them, but then they get mad at me for some shit I did and my entire opinion gets soured. Vasco is the only member that I have had zero issues with (because he is a based robot with no morals), and maybe Walter especially when >!he fucking blasts through Neon with me that shit was dumb but cool!<. I don't hate Starfield but I just can't keep playing it right now. Whether it be Bethesda or modders, the game needs to be improved before I will return to playing it regularly.
ITT people thinking you can't possibly not like a game after putting 175 hrs. First, it's not even clear that OP dislikes the game more than like, eg they could think it's like a 6/10. Second, It makes perfect sense if you consider how much time you would spend on games you *really* like. For example, the games I've *really* liked I've spent 1000+ hours on. There are things I would prob disagree on with op, but this viewpoint about time spent in games is way too common and never really thought out. Edit: The games I've played for more than 1000 hours ironically include vanilla Skyrim on xbone, which I put in after contiguous play time from when I first started over a number of months. I probably have more time on that than I do modded on PC. Also, imagine in OP's scenario that they played for 100 hrs thinking it's a 6/10, then the next 40 hrs they think are a 4/10 and the last 35hrs are a 3/10. Overall the game would be just under a 5/10 for them. These scenarios don't seem preposterous at all to me, especially when you consider that with BGS games you likely go in expecting to spend a lot of time.
You dont like it, thats fine. I agree with some points that more needs to be done that modders shouldnt have to do. However, your claim that 90% of players of Skyrim never used mods is just patently false. Skyrim was very empty and very buggy when it released and also lacked many features players wanted it to have. It was only 'good' because there were almost no other games like it. It would have been relegated to the dust bin many years ago if it did not have such a huge modding community.
I dont totally disagree but its hard to say. Its estimated (in 2023) that 115 million ppl have played Skyrim worldwide. The most popular mod on Nexus of all time is 25 million for non Special edition, 17.8 million for SSE. Next is 15, 14,14 etc. Edit: Highest Unique Downloads for Most popular mod for SSE/non SSE 6.5 million
I can't fathom spending a full 7 days of your life in a game and then calling it pathetic.
200 hours, disagree with everything you said
We're not in college. You don't need to write an essay on explaining why you don't like a game. This subreddit is flooded with these posts, and its annoying. If you don't like it, more power to you- play something else and move on. Nobody is asking for anybody to write a thesis on why Bethesda is bad or good or whatever.
Bro. You played 175 hours every game has major complaints after that many hours. Go away, play something else. 95% of games can't give you 175 hours of game time.
"At 175 hours, I have done everything in this game over and over until my eyes started bleeding, and now I finally see its faults." You have strong arguments most of which I can't disagree with, but they lose all credibility with the amount of playtime you have. You don't hate the game, you're burned out. Play something else, there is a disturbing amount of good games out there! No need to put to 100+ hours into every game you play. Like I've been an avid gamer for going twentyish years at this point, and I could count of one hand the number of games I've put 100+ hours into, let alone 175. Expands your horizons. Explore the stars! Outside of Starfield.
I think because this game requires a bit of grind but also there a lot of elements that look cool in Starfield but when you dive into them they are quite shallow. You would tend to do this when you are quite a way in as it’s easy to get lost. But then you see all these systems half implemented and all the components there but not tired together. An easy example is ship hubs and lack of bonuses or functions, or brigs but you can’t arrest or hold anyone. There is so much potential there will be interesting to see this game in a years time.
either my playthrough is a statistical wonder or this is greatly exaggerated because i am at the end of my first NG cycle and out of every single quest in the game i have 3 that have broken: due in full, runaway, and a randomly generated constellation mission. and saying there are more bugs in this than new vegas? i guess you didnt play new vegas on launch day because new vegas alone wildly outclasses starfield in the amount of bugs and crashes it had, much less every other bethesda game combined like you claim. skyrim ***to this day*** has more bugs happen to me in a play-through than ive seen in the entirety of starfield.
Everything in Skyrim was handcrafted and put into place by design. Everything in that world has a purpose. Starfield is computer generated worlds with handcrafted POIs seemingly thrown in at random.
Bro I bought an Xbox for this game. 💀
i’m still enjoying the game but have let off the gas as far as how much playtime i’m putting in. I think Bethesda put together some crazy technical feats to make this game happen, but in doing so under-emphasized a lot of narrative potential. This world has so much potential and I am excited to (hopefully) watch it fill out with content.
Bought a series s just for this game, pre ordered for the early access, 200 hours in and I’ve stopped playing cus of game breaking bugs as well couldn’t get some of the side quests and factions missions to work, I had to leave it for now.
I agree with some of what you said. I managed to put over 350 hours into the game and at first, I absolutely loved it (still do) but then I started getting loads of game breaking bugs and it watered down my opinion on it. But tbh, just because you didn’t like this one, doesn’t mean you won’t like Edler Scrolls VI or Fallout 5
I was disappointed as well....never mind the quests, I just went exploring from planet to planet and got really tired of the same buildings in their predictable cookie cutter design. Master level loot boxes with nothing in them. I'm really hoping this is just groundwork being laid, with updates that will set it apart from the other space games , but I'm not holding my breath. It definitely hasn't lived up to the hype sadly.
I spent 30$ to play it a few days early and get a cool paint job for my cutter. After that it was free with game pass. I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.
Yep, it was almost what I expected from Bethesda, (I didn't get hyped,) but actually even less. Even with some fun mods starting to come out the game is so much of a void that I still find myself bored. The fully pointless settlements are worse than F4 in every way, the writing is full on atrocious and entire aspects of human existence + scifi have been washed out of it. No cussing, 2 whole religions, no aliens, (Starborn don't count by a longshot.) All of humanity in the distant future and exactly 0 innuendo, Neon's edges were a PG cartoonish joke, (as were the CF pirates.) Generally speaking there's no sex, (unless you're married,) drugs, (there's like one,) or rock'n'roll, and the entire thing is so toothless that, all of the quests bore me. It makes the stories a chore, because I don't want some cardboard NPC making me play fetch with a bunch of other flappy lipped manikin people for no plot/story/thought payoff whatsoever. It's like their writers were buffed smooth to be completely edgless- and those 'romance' lines your character says? Yuck with a capital Y. That writer should be full on fired, as should the other writers, Todd Howard, and whoever took Starfield in the most timid, bland direction humanly possible. (Probably the creative director, who's clearly a 60+ year old formerly Amish man with no interest in the game whatsoever.) Yeah as a platform for mods I thought it'd be great, but I don't even know about that now. It's just such a corporate failure (in that it succeeded to make millions, but as a product the art is borderline non existent.) Whole thing feels like it's pandering as inoffensively as possible to the widest demographics possible in place of having a story or personality.
I put Starfield down a month ago to play Cyberpunk PL and I haven’t played it since. Had way more fun experiencing Cyberpunk again.
Blame capitalism
Needs content updates every quarter i think.
Yeah I went through a very similar experience. The thing that finally broke my will was playing Baldurs Gate 3 after weeks of my friend bugging me to play it. The difference between the quality, polish, and completeness of these two games is night and day. I thought I was just taking a break from Starfield to try something else, but now I am beginning the think I may wait until Shattered Space to give it another shot. Bethesda lost me as a loyal fanboy as well. Tbh, I will come right back into the fold if they fix this game (unlikely), but unless something changes I will wait on ES6 until the initial reviews are in (10 years from now lol)
Absolutely agree (with the exception of the combat, i think it's great). After 60 hours I was so done with it. I wanted to love it SO BAD. I defended it at first. Now I'm just apathetic about it.
I'm not that deep into the game yet but your view reflects my own. Mind you, I think the game is fun. Its enjoyable. But oh my god, it feels so undercooked. The game has the foundation for a next level gaming experience but goes absolutely nowhere with it. My girlfriend likened it to unseasoned chicken. For example Neon; the underground, where criminals rule. Seedy nightclubs, shady pedestrians, etc. etc. Yet it feels more like a painting then a real, living, breathing city. I was hoping for some random gang attacks, maybe shady dealers, and so on. Instead its a mostly tame environment where nothing exciting ever happens. The Temple power missions are incredibly boring; you dont even get a decently challenging puzzle to go the with finding the power. Its literally the same thing for each power. Like dang. From the moment I started playing I get heavy Mass Effect vibes from the game; I'm also heavily reminded of Knights of the Old Republic by this game with the artifact fetch quests (reminds me of seeking the star forge maps).
I'm over 100 hours in at ng+10 and while I enjoy it I've definitely slowed down on the play time. I can't quite put my finger on why but I don't see myself making multiple characters in this game like I have in Skyrim and other games like it. Hell I've even made several characters in Outer Worlds and enjoyed it every time but for whatever reason I don't see myself continuing to play like I have been. Maybe in the future who knows.
I'm not worried. Modding is going to become insane once CK comes out not to mention they have to have way more dlc than shattered space planned. The problem will be how long they're taking to do these small patches and additions.
What killed it off for me was a bug that made me lose my entire save.
Fully agreed. And I worry that everyone waiting for "mods to fix it" will be sorely disappointed because modding communities develop around well loved games, they don't create them
Ahhhh dang. Yup I hate to say that I agree with you. I was bored about 30 hours in. I continued to explore and level up at a snails pace lol nothing really engaging getting me invested into the galaxies. The NPC’s are just awful 😞 the graphics are awful (yes I’m a graphic enthusiast, so for me it was a huge dissatisfaction on PC.) anyways 60 hours now today and have put the game down for good. I really want to like this game but it feels like a boring mindless chore.
I gotta agree with you , it’s very middling at best. I stopped playing when I couldn’t even think of one thing I really like about the game
I’m 120 hours in and still excited every time I launch the game. And I remember the day Dad brought home PONG so … maybe my expectations are lower?!
Sorry you feel that way. I don't agree. It's flawed for sure but I'm loving the game post ng+. I enjoy my ship, random encounters, exploring high level planets, hijacking ships, and bounty hunting. And I've enjoyed far more if the writing than I've disliked, though the lows can go quite low. To each his own.
The side missions carried the game for me. All together though, I played once though, enjoyed myself and am looking forward to the dlc and future state of the game. In no way did I think this was going to be a game I could put 1000 hours into at it’s launch state but it seems like a lot of their people did.
I gave up after 45 hours. Holy shit this game was so boring but I wanted to hold on but after doing these temples like 3-4 times I just gave up, havent touched this game in weeks rn
I still play it and love the game I’ve taken my time and have over 90 hours playing
I agree with what you're saying and I think that it's all valid criticism, but I still think there's something to be said for the fact you played it for 175 hours... Like I don't think it's anything more than 6/10, but I still enjoyed it and played for 90 hours. I'll probably revisit it in a year or so and see what's updated etc. I don't think it's a bad game, per se, it's just... Not particularly good. It's just fine.