Starfield - No Man's Bethesda

[Ag3ma]

Yeah normal companies learn eventually but not Bethesda, for some reason they've been able to just get by on janky, buggy, boring, messes of games and people eat it up like it's soooo cool.

Bethesda, ultimately, make good games. They don't sell that many copies by hypnotising gamers. They're by no means perfect games, but they work. Pick any Bethesda game, and there are definitely deserved criticisms you can make, but all of them have also done a load of stuff very well. If Bethesda "don't learn", it's because they sell a shit-ton of product, and if they're selling a shit-ton of product, what are they supposed to learn? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

There's stuff about Starfield to really admire. Yeah, it's not well written, but it's adequate. There's an element of gameplay staleness - they've barely moved on since ES: Oblivion in many ways, nearly 20 years ago. There appears to be a substantial group of "haters" out there, and that should be sending them warning bells. The failure to implement a consistent universe (with loading screen cuts) is underwhelming. And yet... fundamentally you can run round, explore tons, do a load of stuff, and it pretty much all works okay-well, loads of worldbuilding has gone in, etc. That's probably their big selling point, and they hit the mark again, and again, and again.

 

[Ag3ma]

TBF, can we really call any form of space combat "realistic" in any medium? I mean aside from the debris flying around in zero gravity, space dogfights will probably be something none of us will be alive to see.

You can't carry around 8+ large guns and take multiple wounds from bullets that can be healed instantly with a medkit either, but no-one complains Doom isn't realistic.

 

[sXeth]

Dogfighting combat in space is pure space opera. The only realistic combat out there would be capital ships firing missiles at each other from light-seconds away.

Theoretically railguns, if you can solve the energy generation problems (which you presumably have, if people are travelling space in anything but multigeneration colony ships). Which would basically apply to lasers too. We can make lasers that can burn through metal (though they'd be beams, not pew pew shots) but the energy to fire them would be insane. And also again, heat buildup lol

 

[Baffle]

The failure to implement a consistent universe (with loading screen cuts) is underwhelming.

I've moved it (again) to a PCI SSD and the loading is negligible at this point. I mean, it's still loading when you move from area to area, but I am playing a game so I expect that.

My two biggest gripes are that space isn't great, though I'm very bad at space combat in most games, and having to watch the same cut scene animations repeatedly for getting out of my chair, docking, landing, etc.

Oh, (so three) and the first time I tried to build an outpost it said the planet was too inhospitable and wouldn't let me. Let me make my own mistakes and create a robotic mining colony!

 

[Ag3ma]

I've moved it (again) to a PCI SSD and the loading is negligible at this point. I mean, it's still loading when you move from area to area, but I am playing a game so I expect that.

Yeah, it's smooth enough when on the SSD. I'd prefer games on my HDD, but having read the reviews and hummed and hawed at installation, I went for the SSD.

My two biggest gripes are that space isn't great, though I'm very bad at space combat in most games, and having to watch the same cut scene animations repeatedly for getting out of my chair, docking, landing, etc.

Having played a lot of Elite: Dangerous - like, thousands of hours over the last 6-7 years - I would describe the space element as underwhelming, even perfunctory. I don't know that the game would have lost much by simply skipping it. Could have just allowed you to move around a space map, and the only interactions were sort of boarding operations in standard FPS or sort of dialogue-like choices.

That said, Elite has some little cheats. For instance, when you embark / disembark, you don't physically get out of your pilot seat and go to the exit, you sort of just "teleport" with a brief fade out and fade in. Although the universe is still persistent, so what was going on before you transitioned from ship/buggy/foot remains after.

 

[Gordon_4]

Spoiler

Good thing then that space ships fire laser beams and photon torpedoes and not ballistic projectiles.

Spoiler

Except Starfields don't lol. I mean, they have that stuff but you specifically use ballistics to pierce the hull once the obligatory stagger meter is done via laser (somehow). Nor does its tech level seem to be up to Trek with actual targeting computers and such.

Also the perennial problems with balllistics in space. Vacuum doesn't carry heat away, and anything you fire, will, by physics fire you back just as much. So to shoot something that can pierce a ships hull, you're eating a not-dissimilar backforce yourself, which even with bracing (and there's no planets worth of solid mass and gravity to lean on), is going to knock your course off completely with every shot while building up immense thermal stress on the weapon itself. All those weird-ass atmospheres a ship (or a person carrying a gun) goes in and out of are also going to be hell on the guns maintenance, at a minimum to stop it from corroding away.

And the baseline concern, of space being kind of lethal. Which carries over into the ground as well. If ballistics misfire or explode on you... you are open to the non-mercy of space. Trek and the like have magic healing pens and force fields and such to re-establish pressure for hull breaches. Starfields half-attempt at being "hard sci fi" doesn't get to that level of luxury. Prettymuch only the most crazed of people would carry that sort of risk around instead of using magnetic or electric weapons, or possibly even stuff like Prey's paste gun.

Spoiler

Dogfighting combat in space is pure space opera. The only realistic combat out there would be capital ships firing missiles at each other from light-seconds away.

You three may appreciate this playlist and the rabbit hole undoubtedly to follow.

Yeah, it's smooth enough when on the SSD. I'd prefer games on my HDD

You are deliberately gimping yourself. Games are only going to be developed more with the assumption that they're going on an SSD. Spinning rust still has its place, but the game drive is not it. Not any more.

 

[Baffle]

You are deliberately gimping yourself. Games are only going to be developed more with the assumption that they're going on an SSD. Spinning rust still has its place, but the game drive is not it. Not any more.

Yeah, this is my first PCI SSD and I'm amazed by the speed increase (as I was amazed when I first moved to a standard SSD drive). Available slots for PCI SSD drives will be a consideration for my next PC build for sure, and I'll probably max them out at the time of building, given how cheap the drives are now (I paid less for this 2TB PCI than I paid for my 2TB standard SATA drive (though that was some time ago)).

 

[Gordon_4]

Yeah, this is my first PCI SSD and I'm amazed by the speed increase (as I was amazed when I first moved to a standard SSD drive). Available slots for PCI SSD drives will be a consideration for my next PC build for sure, and I'll probably max them out at the time of building, given how cheap the drives are now (I paid less for this 2TB PCI than I paid for my 2TB standard SATA drive (though that was some time ago)).

Its less about slots and more about lanes. As I understand it - and I may be a little out of date - most commercial motherboards and CPUs have about 24 PCIe lanes. 20 of them run through the CPU, usually at the highest speeds - PCIe Gen4 or Gen5 - of which you will lose 16 immediately to any kind of decent GPU you install. Your first M.2 slot (that's the form factor) gets those last 4 lanes. The second M.2 slot then runs through a chipset on the motherboard, sometimes (but not always) at a lower speed; my game drive runs at PCIe Gen 3 but that's still plenty quick for gaming.

 

[meiam]

Except Starfields don't lol. I mean, they have that stuff but you specifically use ballistics to pierce the hull once the obligatory stagger meter is done via laser (somehow). Nor does its tech level seem to be up to Trek with actual targeting computers and such.

Also the perennial problems with balllistics in space. Vacuum doesn't carry heat away, and anything you fire, will, by physics fire you back just as much. So to shoot something that can pierce a ships hull, you're eating a not-dissimilar backforce yourself, which even with bracing (and there's no planets worth of solid mass and gravity to lean on), is going to knock your course off completely with every shot while building up immense thermal stress on the weapon itself. All those weird-ass atmospheres a ship (or a person carrying a gun) goes in and out of are also going to be hell on the guns maintenance, at a minimum to stop it from corroding away.

And the baseline concern, of space being kind of lethal. Which carries over into the ground as well. If ballistics misfire or explode on you... you are open to the non-mercy of space. Trek and the like have magic healing pens and force fields and such to re-establish pressure for hull breaches. Starfields half-attempt at being "hard sci fi" doesn't get to that level of luxury. Prettymuch only the most crazed of people would carry that sort of risk around instead of using magnetic or electric weapons, or possibly even stuff like Prey's paste gun.

You're assuming two ship shooting at each other going the same speed/direction. Space ship would probably just shoot grape shoot/flak with very little speed, but because each ship would go insanely fast compared to each others, even a glancing shoot from a tiny projectile going relatively slowly (from the point of view of the ship firing it) would do catastrophic damage to the receiving ship.

The real big problem with space combat, when easy FTL travel exist, is that there's no way to make defensive line, so every planet would be incredibly vulnerable to orbital bombardment. Space battle would be incredibly rare since as soon as a ship would detect an oncoming ship, they'd just wrap away.

 

[Ag3ma]

You are deliberately gimping yourself. Games are only going to be developed more with the assumption that they're going on an SSD. Spinning rust still has its place, but the game drive is not it. Not any more.

SSD is also expensive, especially at high volumes. I don't play that many games (nearly always AAA) with high drive requirements.

You're assuming two ship shooting at each other going the same speed/direction. Space ship would probably just shoot grape shoot/flak with very little speed, but because each ship would go insanely fast compared to each others, even a glancing shoot from a tiny projectile going relatively slowly (from the point of view of the ship firing it) would do catastrophic damage to the receiving ship.

The real big problem with space combat, when easy FTL travel exist, is that there's no way to make defensive line, so every planet would be incredibly vulnerable to orbital bombardment. Space battle would be incredibly rare since as soon as a ship would detect an oncoming ship, they'd just wrap away.

When very young, I read a David Brin book where a ship is escaping pursuers at extreme speed, but it's carrying a huge amount of water. It simply dumps the water, which freezes into ice in space, and when the pursuing ships hit the brand new ice field at that speed, well... I'm not sure this is actually realistic, but it was a nice illustration of the idea that if a ship is going fast enough, you just need to leave a sufficiently large obstacle in the way. In practice, however, I think any ship going that speed would have a ton of frontal armour in case of incidental bits of stuff, or some sort of shield/deflector, so a sufficient large and accelerated shot would probably still be required in combat.

I also liked some books (70s / 80s, can't remember author) which took the idea that space combat would have strong elements of submarine warfare. Space is so vast, you cannot realistically find anything as small as a ship, you'll only know when it arrives at a very small volume where there are lots of sensors (like an inhabited star system). Unless there are jump gates / wormholes that constrain routes, space warfare - particularly between star systems - would require constantly guessing where an attacking fleet is going because it would be all but impossible to know until it gets there.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

When very young, I read a David Brin book where a ship is escaping pursuers at extreme speed, but it's carrying a huge amount of water. It simply dumps the water, which freezes into ice in space, and when the pursuing ships hit the brand new ice field at that speed, well... I'm not sure this is actually realistic, but it was a nice illustration of the idea that if a ship is going fast enough, you just need to leave a sufficiently large obstacle in the way.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to call "not realistic" on that one. With nothing acting to slow the ice down, it'll be travelling (in a relative sense) at exactly the speed it was ejected at. The pursuing ships should have encountered a relatively mild hailstorm.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Bethesda, ultimately, make good games.

They USED to make good games. But the last good game they made was in 2011 in Skyrim and that was a buggy mess too. The problem Bethesda has is that they are milking an ancient engine and theyve done nothing to update their game design with the times.

If this was 2014 and Starfield kaunched it would be fine. Sadly we are in the hellscape of the 2020's now and game design has progressed in the last 12 years, but Starfield hasnt. There are basic things that are unacceptable these days, like the constant loading screens. The proceedural nothingness of space. The floaty controls, the lack of enemy variety, weapon variety, variety variety. The blank stares and expressionless NPCs, a world that doesnt react to simple reactions, a leveling system and skill system that is somehow worse than Skyrim's.

Like if you like Starfield, awesome enjoy it. But enjoying a bad game doesnt make it good. It just means you enjoy it dispite the smell.

 

[Gordon_4]

SSD is also expensive, especially at high volumes. I don't play that many games (nearly always AAA) with high drive requirements.

Very high capacity SSDs, like 4TB and above, are still expensive. But a 2TB drive - the arguable sweet spot for most gamers - in M.2 will cost you 68 quid. Possibly less if you get a SATA interface drive rather than PCIe. And considering I paid over $800 for a SATA one about six years ago, that is a significant drop.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

If this was 2014 and Starfield kaunched it would be fine. Sadly we are in the hellscape of the 2020's now and game design has progressed in the last 12 years, but Starfield hasnt. There are basic things that are unacceptable these days, like the constant loading screens. The proceedural nothingness of space. The floaty controls, the lack of enemy variety, weapon variety, variety variety. The blank stares and expressionless NPCs, a world that doesnt react to simple reactions, a leveling system and skill system that is somehow worse than Skyrim's.

Yep.

And I just don't have patience any more.

I mean- yes, I didn't play it so whatever, but as we got closer to release and I saw this is what it was going to be, I was just not in the mood.

I freaking loved Skyrim, but I also freaking loved Duck Hunt but I don't wanna play this shit no more, neither. It drives me nuts how much current gaming "innovation" is driven by nostalgia.

 

[sXeth]

SSD is also expensive, especially at high volumes. I don't play that many games (nearly always AAA) with high drive requirements.



When very young, I read a David Brin book where a ship is escaping pursuers at extreme speed, but it's carrying a huge amount of water. It simply dumps the water, which freezes into ice in space, and when the pursuing ships hit the brand new ice field at that speed, well... I'm not sure this is actually realistic, but it was a nice illustration of the idea that if a ship is going fast enough, you just need to leave a sufficiently large obstacle in the way. In practice, however, I think any ship going that speed would have a ton of frontal armour in case of incidental bits of stuff, or some sort of shield/deflector, so a sufficient large and accelerated shot would probably still be required in combat.

I also liked some books (70s / 80s, can't remember author) which took the idea that space combat would have strong elements of submarine warfare. Space is so vast, you cannot realistically find anything as small as a ship, you'll only know when it arrives at a very small volume where there are lots of sensors (like an inhabited star system). Unless there are jump gates / wormholes that constrain routes, space warfare - particularly between star systems - would require constantly guessing where an attacking fleet is going because it would be all but impossible to know until it gets there.

I think the water would actually heat up in that scenario. Because its going to slide out of the ship and against itself at incredibly high speeds (friction, which makes heat) and vacuum isn't cold, it doesn't disperse any kind of temperature at all. They'd have to be ejecting into some kind of extremely cold atmopshere, which would then siphon the heat away.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The problem Bethesda has is that they are milking an ancient engine

But but but... if they change game engines they'll have to actually do their own fucken work until the modders catch up with the new tech.

 

[BrawlMan]

neither. It drives me nuts how much current gaming "innovation" is driven by nostalgia.

Yes and no; depends where you look. AAA industry suffers more from this than anything else. It's either poorly baited nostalgia, or selling something old as new, but they keep doing the same crap over and over again without much rhyme or reason. Other than "it worked before!". Indies do rely on nostalgia to a certain extent, most of them either are more up front about it, add something just as good as the tiles from yesterday year and the old days, or said titles become better in gameplay and mechanics compared to the classics they were inspired by. Not every single Indie has gotten this down, but at least most of them are trying something different or just making the game actually fun.

Here's an example of AAA doing nostalgia right: Capcom. DMC 5 is pretty much a throwback PS2 game with modern graphical detail, and advanced gameplay mechanics with story. Coming to a close with a nice ending arc. Street Fighter 6 is pretty much Street Fighter 3 X 2, but even better. It simplifies some stuff, but SF6 brings about more advanced mechanics, and is more beginner friendly. The game came with one of the best single player contents for fighting game ever. A Shenmue/Yakuza open world, fighting game, and brawler style, combined with RPG elements.

 

[Ag3ma]

I think the water would actually heat up in that scenario. Because its going to slide out of the ship and against itself at incredibly high speeds (friction, which makes heat) and vacuum isn't cold, it doesn't disperse any kind of temperature at all. They'd have to be ejecting into some kind of extremely cold atmopshere, which would then siphon the heat away.

Well. At first instance upon exposure to space, water technically boils into vapour because of the massive pressure drop so it would probably expand very quickly into a cloud and lose that friction. However, it will then very rapidly freeze into a solid: there's still heat radiation in space, and it's plenty enough to cool things down quickly, especially if it's diffused and so not a sizeable, solid mass where the internal area would be insulated by the outer area.

Hence my thoughts on why it might not work is that water would possibly expand into a vast cloud of ice particles with few if any sizeable chunks that would be likely to have enough mass to seriously damage a spacecraft.

Yes and no; depends where you look. AAA industry suffers more from this than anything else. It's either poorly baited nostalgia, or selling something old as new, but they keep doing the same crap over and over again without much rhyme or reason.

AAA games tend to be too big to fail.

When a developer is spending $100+ million to make a game, failure is... horrible. (The big publishers probably can afford to suck up the pain, but they'll be mightily unhappy and could can the development studio if they own it). This is not an atmosphere that promotes risk: quite the opposite. The obvious comparison is Hollywood, geared towards derivative but showy adequacy. And to be fair, even in the case of abject failure, Hollywood is still producing box office bombs with a degree of gloss almost no others could match.

In that sense, everyone should expect AAA to be "just like the last with modest upgrades", because that's what the industry and its economics are about. The other factor, of course, it that it sells. For all the people angry about "just like the last with modest upgrades", millions buy them. People buy them even though they don't expect greatness and complain about them. (Of course, at the other end, some people like the comforting sense of the familiar, too)

So risk is a really a thing for smaller studios. A lot of the time, it just doesn't work: for every moment of greatness, there are dozens of failures. Many of these teams are toiling away with plenty of partial or full-on failures along the way, never making much or even collapsing when something goes badly enough wrong.

I think some of the complaints about Starfield seem to me to be expecting things from it that it was never designed to do. At one level, anyone can say "that's not what I want from a game", but that's telling is about personal preference rather than a game's core quality. I also think there's a degree of animosity to Starfield (a sort of "AAA hater" vibe?) and colouring opinions. I notice, for instance, an absurd number of minimum scores in player review aggregators that screams "review bombing". We could contrast with BG3: I get the feeling there's a lot of generosity going on towards BG3's flaws in contrast to harshness about Starfield's.

 

[BrawlMan]

AAA games tend to be too big to fail.

When a developer is spending $100+ million to make a game, failure is... horrible. (The big publishers probably can afford to suck up the pain, but they'll be mightily unhappy and could can the development studio if they own it). This is not an atmosphere that promotes risk: quite the opposite. The obvious comparison is Hollywood, geared towards derivative but showy adequacy. And to be fair, even in the case of abject failure, Hollywood is still producing box office bombs with a degree of gloss almost no others could match.

I wasn't talking from a financial standpoint. Yes, those things are all true, but if the nostalgia doesn't hit or is done poorly, then that's that. Money or no money. All you're left with is hope that the game is actually good gameplay wise and functions.

think some of the complaints about Starfield seem to me to be expecting things from it that it was never designed to do. At one level, anyone can say "that's not what I want from a game", but that's telling is about personal preference rather than a game's core quality. I also think there's a degree of animosity to Starfield (a sort of "AAA hater" vibe?) and colouring opinions. I notice, for instance, an absurd number of minimum scores in player review aggregators that screams "review bombing". We could contrast with BG3: I get the feeling there's a lot of generosity going on towards BG3's flaws in contrast to harshness about Starfield's.

When Bethesda has been making the same type of game, with the same type of problems since 2007, there's going to be resentment and issues. It doesn't excuse the people going overboard, but I don't even hate this game. I plain just don't care and have no interest. There's about 10 to 15 different games coming out that look and play better or are more interesting than Starfield.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I think the water would actually heat up in that scenario. Because its going to slide out of the ship and against itself at incredibly high speeds (friction, which makes heat) and vacuum isn't cold, it doesn't disperse any kind of temperature at all. They'd have to be ejecting into some kind of extremely cold atmopshere, which would then siphon the heat away.

But if it’s in open space, wouldn’t friction only be relevant if there’s atmospheric pressure to produce it though? There’s no resistance otherwise, from what little I understand of it.