Starfield - No Man's Bethesda

[immortalfrieza]

I'm not sure if that's how it work in UC, I thought it was just a path to citizenship for non current resident. Even if it isn't, its not like non citizen are really discriminated against, at the very least there's no sign of it in the city and plenty of people mention getting their citizenship trough other non military method. It just seem like being a non citizen in UC is much better than being a citizen anywhere in the alliance.

It's definitely Tell Not Show syndrome in action. New Vegas did the same thing but in the other direction. The game showed the Legion as nothing but a bunch of Kill Rape Burn psychopaths but tried to tell us the Legion actually had good points... while never actually having any of those good points be something the player sees. Similarly, it looks like they're treating the UC as way worse narratively than it actually is presented to be in the game itself.

 

[BrawlMan]

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[Baffle]

One of the problems I'm having with this game is that the world is unresponsive to the things I do, even though I am a Big Deal.

I think this is partly because I played BG3 so recently, where the things I do or don't do have been considered and can actually have an effect. But here I've sort of bumbled my way into what I think is some sort of faction stronghold (Crimson Fleet), blown up all their ships and now I'm wailing on a space station (The Key) and no one seems to care (and the space station is completely unaffected). I'm probably supposed to have a mission to be here, but it feels like an oversight in an open world game that I couldn't just come here of my own accord because I like killing pirates (my backstory is that I spent all my money on cannons).

Also, lock picking is boring so I just accept that I can't have things in safes etc. I've put the points in it, why do I still have to work out how to unlock the box?!

 

[Ag3ma]

Also, lock picking is boring so I just accept that I can't have things in safes etc. I've put the points in it, why do I still have to work out how to unlock the box?!

Because someone many years ago decided that lock-picking minigames were a thing, and certain games don't want to let that go. Honestly, in a way, I sort of prefer it to "Roll d20 +3 +2 +1d4 to beat target 10. You rolled 2 and got 9 total HAHA screw you LOO-OO-OO-OO-SERRRR!!!!"

After the 5 minutes I invested working out how lockpicking works, I don't think I've ever failed to unlock a box. If ever AI is ever going to be any use, I would hope it might be for a game to notice that and say "Hey, y'know, I think this guy gets this so I'll save him the time from now on." Or maybe if you get the skill to higher levels it just autos the easy ones and only tests the really hard ones.

 

[Baffle]

After the 5 minutes I invested working out how lockpicking works, I don't think I've ever failed to unlock a box. If ever AI is ever going to be any use, I would hope it might be for a game to notice that and say "Hey, y'know, I think this guy gets this so I'll save him the time from now on." Or maybe if you get the skill to higher levels it just autos the easy ones and only tests the really hard ones.

I don't really see why I, the player, need to be good at lockpicking specifically as a minigame. I, the player, cannot fly space rockets, but my character can.

It doesn't really matter because I always have far more loot than I can actually easily sell, so the only thing I feel I'm missing out on are pick ups of credit sticks, which is fine.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I don't really see why I, the player, need to be good at lockpicking specifically as a minigame. I, the player, cannot fly space rockets, but my character can.

On the other hand, I find the lockpicking in 7 Days to Die to be supremely annoying, as there's absolutely nothing the player can do to affect the outcome (aside from invest perk points into lowering the chance of failure, which requires investment into a broader skill tree).

I also don't know why I can't use any of my assortment of firearms, melee weapons and tools to just force the goddamn thing open but that's another annoyance.

 

[Baffle]

On the other hand, I find the lockpicking in 7 Days to Die to be supremely annoying, as there's absolutely nothing the player can do to affect the outcome (aside from invest perk points into lowering the chance of failure, which requires investment into a broader skill tree).

I also don't know why I can't use any of my assortment of firearms, melee weapons and tools to just force the goddamn thing open but that's another annoyance.

There's lock picking in 7 Days?! I haven't played in years, they seemed to change it in such a way that playing as just a duo didnt really work anymore.

But yes on forcing locks, another area where BG3 let you take the Big Stick approach.

 

[sXeth]

There's lock picking in 7 Days?! I haven't played in years, they seemed to change it in such a way that playing as just a duo didnt really work anymore.

But yes on forcing locks, another area where BG3 let you take the Big Stick approach.

I feel like its kind of a pointless option when you can just cut the doorframe away lol. Be like lockpicking in Minecraft

 

[Ag3ma]

But yes on forcing locks, another area where BG3 let you take the Big Stick approach.

Although if you do, sometimes it detroys the contents. (Because apparently you can only force open a chest by hacking it to bits rather than, say, jemmying the lid open.) This is also just a game device - offering you an alternative, but punishing you for not using the most approved method.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

On the other hand, I find the lockpicking in 7 Days to Die to be supremely annoying, as there's absolutely nothing the player can do to affect the outcome (aside from invest perk points into lowering the chance of failure, which requires investment into a broader skill tree).

I also don't know why I can't use any of my assortment of firearms, melee weapons and tools to just force the goddamn thing open but that's another annoyance.

Kinda like RDR2 where locks can be opened by shooting them or using explosives. Or if you want it done silently just buy a lockbreaker from a fence.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is probably at least in the running for worst though. There are different levels of the skill, where you have to have to keep the position of a brass ball in a rotary tumbler steady and the only variance is how shakey it is.

 

[wings012]

Well I finally beat the game. I might have missed some random sidequests and whatnot, but I did all main faction questlines and finished the main story. I had fun but I kinda agree with what some people were saying - that this was the biggest mid thing that Bethesda has done. I played it on gamepass and had my fun, maybe in 2-3 years I'll buy the GOTY edition with all the paid DLC bundled in on steam and mod myself a space harem of the Dead or Alive girls.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is probably at least in the running for worst though. There are different levels of the skill, where you have to have to keep the position of a brass ball in a rotary tumbler steady and the only variance is how shakey it is.

It got better as you upgraded the lockpicking skill IIRC. Initially there's fuck all room for error, but as the skill improves the game actually becomes easier. I really hated it initially but by the end of it I was opening locks like it was Fallout's lockpick minigame.

I still rather not have any lockpicking minigames at all. My favourite lockpicking was the first Deus Ex. It was just a matter of skills and resources. The lock had health, your picks took out a certain amount of that health and the better your skill is the more they did. You could still bruteforce a lock with sheer amount of picks if you were shit at it. Also DX allowed you to blow doors up too.

I also liked the Pillars of Eternity rendition of it. If you were really good at the skill, you didn't need picks. But you could use picks as a consumable to make up for lacking in the skill. And if the lock difficulty was too beyond your skill, you couldn't open it at all.

I think it should just be all down to character build and resource management rather than stupid minigames. No matter how well designed and fun they are, they will eventually wear out their welcome.

 

[Ag3ma]

I think it should just be all down to character build and resource management rather than stupid minigames. No matter how well designed and fun they are, they will eventually wear out their welcome.

Yes. I often look at chests in Starfield now and think whether it's worth the bother wasting time on the mini-game - how many dozens, (hundreds?) have I done already? Not least because the game throws so much stuff at you that you don't really need to bother.

I've just hit level 50. I've completed every major questline except the main one - I actually did that by around level 40, I've just been rampaging over planetary wildlife (quick way to level up) for most of the last 10. And yet there are still, ooh, 300+ levels more needed to max out. I've already had the end spoilered so I get why, but I also think that they are kind of asking a lot of their players.

 

[Ag3ma]

Starfield: Outpost Building.

From my perspective, this sucks, with the best thing about it being that you don't have to do it. I know that some people will love it, and may disregard some of my complaints.

1) Resources. Resources in Starfield are just a pain in the backside. That goes way beyond outposts, but outposts are heavily hit by it. There are a zillion elements / chemicals and you need the right amounts of the right ones, plus you also need manufactured components (that you can make from the elements, or just buy). It is amazing how often you don't have what you need. Honestly, I'd just buy everything, because resource gathering in Starfield is shit when you need bulk. Unless you build outposts to collect them, but that's no good when your task is building outposts. Except that buying everything is also annoying, because shops never have that much stock so if you want bulk, you need to do a shopping spree round over half a dozen vendors. Is it really asking too much for a wholesaler who can sell you 1000 lumps of aluminium? (Yes, because then you wouldn't build outposts.)

1b) Building an outpost to supply resources is frustrating, because you can't collect many different resources per outpost (4-6 generally, only 2-3 you really want), so you need a ton of outposts. Then you end up building a load of stuff in your outposts to turn raw materials into manufactured goods just to make more stuff. It's all way, way, too much.

2) There's all this logistical faff linking extractors to cargo containers to facilities to transport facilities (to other outposts). Honestly, this all strikes me as wildly overcomplicated and clumsy.

3) So you set up buildings. This is just like Fallout 4: place buildings, then put stuff in them. I think my complaint here is that this fiddly. If you just want to chuck stuff in haphazardly, not so big a deal. But if you want to make a finely crafted, beautiful base... yeah, that'll take days. There's a snap function to link certain buildings together, but otherwise it's extremely time-consuming to do something as simple as neatly making furniture line up flush with the wall. What I'd really like are sort of outpost "pre-fabs" where I can buy a hab full of stuff (crafting benches, furniture, etc.) and fit them together. Which they effectively did with the ships.

4) There are of course all the woes of having to research all the techs to be able to make good outposts. There aren't that many, but with over 350 skill points to spend (one per level) a single playthrough probably won't get you remotely close, and that's plenty of skill points you might want to put elsewhere.

5) And what do you really get for all this? You don't need to do any of it - you can perhaps build some outposts to get some annoying resources that you otherwise have problems with (protip: titanium and adhesives, which you never seem to have enough of).

6) The game sort of gives you a "home base" right at the start: it's the Constellation HQ. It actually gives you a second base, in the form of your ship. You can also buy homes as well in the major cities. None of these give you quite as much as an outpost (e.g. the issues of resource collection), but they allow you access to all the important stuff you want to like crafting and storage.

This is playing "virtual interior decorator" at its worst. How many players are really going to use what amounts to a wildly overelaborate and not fun minigame? Sink hours and hours into a clumsy and annoying process that gets benefits which are... unclear. Okay, I absolutely know some will. And hey look, imagine you put that effort in, and then lose it all on 'finishing' by entering New Game Plus! But it feels like a huge programming investment many players will bypass, and to a large extent many will bypass it because has not been programmed well enough to be reasonably accessible.

 

[Baffle]

Starfield: Outpost Building.

From my perspective, this sucks, with the best thing about it being that you don't have to do it. I know that some people will love it, and may disregard some of my complaints.

1) Resources. Resources in Starfield are just a pain in the backside. That goes way beyond outposts, but outposts are heavily hit by it. There are a zillion elements / chemicals and you need the right amounts of the right ones, plus you also need manufactured components (that you can make from the elements, or just buy). It is amazing how often you don't have what you need. Honestly, I'd just buy everything, because resource gathering in Starfield is shit when you need bulk. Unless you build outposts to collect them, but that's no good when your task is building outposts. Except that buying everything is also annoying, because shops never have that much stock so if you want bulk, you need to do a shopping spree round over half a dozen vendors. Is it really asking too much for a wholesaler who can sell you 1000 lumps of aluminium? (Yes, because then you wouldn't build outposts.)

It seems strange (well, poorly thought-out) in the era of intergalactic travel that I can't just order stuff for delivery. And indeed the same for selling my stuff: I want to just pop it all on Space e-Bay and sell or for whatever I get (or be able to employ a broker to deal with that stuff for me).

 

[Ag3ma]

It seems strange (well, poorly thought-out) in the era of intergalactic travel that I can't just order stuff for delivery. And indeed the same for selling my stuff: I want to just pop it all on Space e-Bay and sell or for whatever I get (or be able to employ a broker to deal with that stuff for me).

Uh-huh. Again, I suspect this is blocked for reasons of game balance. Like the way shops only have 5000-10000 creds or so, presumably just to stop pack rat players amassing millions of creds by level 5.

Once you set up your bases, as far as I can see it delivers stuff between them for free. Ships just come and go. So why not a delivery of tons of Al and Fe to get started?

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

This is playing "virtual interior decorator" at its worst. How many players are really going to use what amounts to a wildly overelaborate and not fun minigame? Sink hours and hours into a clumsy and annoying process that gets benefits which are... unclear. Okay, I absolutely know some will. And hey look, imagine you put that effort in, and then lose it all on 'finishing' by entering New Game Plus!

Holy crap, they really did crib off of No Man's Sky.

 

[Ag3ma]

Starfield - Ship Building.

Ship building is almost fun. All ships are modular, and it's pretty easy to stick stuff together - and you can have fun making obscene monstrosities, too. Most of it is fairly straightforward - pick a reactor, grav drive (for hyperspace jumps), some engines for mobility, cockpit, weapons, etc. You've got to make trade-offs for weight, power, etc. and all in all it's a workable exercise. A slight criticism I have is that the differences between various manufacturers are pretty much trivial. You're picking designers more because you like the look than because it makes a shred of difference in performance.

Simple ships are fun enough. The "almost fun" arrives when you want to try to include all sorts of useful modules (e.g. workshops for crafting, etc.)

And when I say "almost fun", when it misses the fun mark, it's an abrupt collapse into utter dogshit. You want your ship to be functional getting around from A to B and shooting anything unwise enough to take you on. But you also have to do stuff on your ship, involving moving around in it. And where Bethesda have managed to utterly screw the pooch is with ladders.

There are two things to know here. Firstly, ladders are click to interact with, slow and annoying to use. No FPS convention of just running into them and up/down you go. This means what you really want to do is minimise ladder use wherever possible for efficiency. The second problem with ladders is you can't decide where the ladders go in your ship: the game decides that for you (as well as where some of the doors go). And sure, it tries, but it mostly fails. Design a ship in the shipbuilder, find out it's a catatrophic, chaotic maze. There are specialist linking rooms "companionways" that it favours to put a ladder in... but not that much. The end result is that a nice clean layout requires padding out your ship with lots of dead space just to force the game not to make a really annoying ladder layout, thus bulking your ship up irritatingly.

Oh, Bethesda.

 

[wings012]

Starfield: Outpost Building.

The only real reason I see you need to build Outposts.... is if you want to build outposts. Generally the amount of resources outposts can amass is beyond any practical in game use. There are some repeating quests you can find where you need to deliver thousands of certain elements, or establish delivery routes to certain planets of specific resources. But there's far easier ways to earn credits than doing these.

Researches and gear mods require far too much variety in too few quantity to require outposts for. It's far easier to just buy up every element that merchants stock up whenever you're around. They won't have enough credits to buy all your loot anyway, so you might as well offload for elements/crafting components and rare ammunition.

Unless you really spend hours minmaxing for the perfect outpost location - which is an absolute pain in the arse it is already very difficult to find an outpost that can provide 3 elements. Then unless that planet has He-3, you need to ship it in from another planet in order for it to be able to ship its own elements off since that's the universal fuel for doing anything basically. You could just jump to the planet and take what you need I suppose...

If you want to build your dream home, then outposts kinda 'work' in the sense that the only way you are getting enough aluminum, iron and whatever the hell else to build your megastructures is through outpost resource gathering. It's a mechanic that fuels itself.

There's also the power leveling thing I guess, the Starfield equivalent of crafting a billion iron knives or whatever to max out smithing at the start of Skyrim. I can see the appeal in that, especially if you enter post game shit and just want to be a god.

There are a lot of people who love to use Bethesda games as their creative outlet and I wonder if they won't be better served just learning Blender or proper art.... I guess the latter is harder and doesn't come with free internet points from fans of the game. But each to their own. I'm already a 3D artist at work so I can't see myself doing a watered down version of my job in a game with jankier inferior tools.

Starfield - Ship Building.

It's fun at first, then you realize just how bloody pointless it is. Controlling the layout of your ship is a pain in the ass and there's no real meaningful choices when it comes to ship builds. After discovering some way overpowered particle weapons(Vanguard Obliterator Projector FTW), you just slap the best shield, engine and guns together and just go. There's some dirdling around needed to figure out a good amount of engines vs weight I guess but blah.

The most frustrating thing I found about it is having to account for the docking port and landing bay which seems incredibly finnicky as to what it wants to accept. I often just take existing ships and swap out a few parts and roll with it.

The energy allocation thing is one of those things that seem interesting on paper, but ship combat just flows too fast for you to want to mess around with it. It's one thing if it was slower tactical combat where you position yourself to broadside or whatever like in the age of sail or something, but it's really more like fighter jets having a go at each other. You'll generally just come up with a default energy allocation and stick with it. Which also means fuck lasers/ballistics to strip shields then target hull - just stick to full force particle weapons which deal equal damage to both shields and hull. I don't know if the DPS is on paper 'inferior' to minmaxing lasers with ballistics or whatever, but you can just keep firing without having to reroute energy and that's a win for me.

Also ship combat is just... not that hard. My first C-Class ship was just a B-Class I bought(the Shieldbreaker) with the engine and weapons swapped out. I was able to fly into Kryx and wipe out a whole Crimson Fleet armada on my own. I did need to spam ship parts, but I earned them back from all the salvage.

Considering you can just quick travel land onto a lot of places, you kinda skip out ship segments a lot. Some quests do need you to participate, but it just feels slightly less optional than outpost building a lot of the time.

I kinda specced heavily into Piloting early on regardless cause I wanted to get more sweet ass cargo space. Probably the most important part of ships for me.


That's just kinda Bethesda in a nutshell. They go real wide, but it's as deep as a puddle. I kinda like that sorta game every now and then though, it allows me to live out a fantasy for a bit though at the end most of it is in my own head rather than the game facilitating it all that well.

 

[BrawlMan]

Hey Howard, still doesn't solve nor helps the game's main issues and flaws.

Todd Howard says Starfield was ‘intentionally made to be played for a long time’ | VGC

Starfield director Todd Howard has said that Starfield was” intentionally made to be played for a long time.”

www.videogameschronicle.com

 

[CriticalGaming]

Alright so throughout the course of the weekend I buckled down and finished Starfield.

Never before have I regretted playing through a video game before, because Starfield was a totally unrewarding experience to complete. Before I can really explain why I have to explain what technical shortcomings come through with Bethesda's latest game. The fundamental thing that pulls me out of the story is how the story is presented, most of it is done through expository dialog with characters blankly and emotionlessly staring at you and spitting out whatever bullshit they are going to say. There is no interaction between characters, no emotion in their animations, no life to anybody.

Compare this to Cyberpunk or The Witcher 3, where characters interact during dialog. Not just interact but they move around on screen, sit down, smoke, open up items, point guns. Furthermore there are things you can do that will change these interactions.

The best and easiest example to point out is an early mission in Cyberpunk (which considering the shitshow state it released in, I now find it wild to be using it as a GOOD example of things), in this mission you are told that you are to pick up a robot from a gang which had stolen the robot from one of the corporations. There are several different ways you can approach this mission, go in gun's blazing, go in and pay extra when they try to scam you out of more money, go in and talk your way to a perfect deal the way it should go down, or you can meet with the corporation before hand and they'll give you a hacked money card you can use to betray the gang when they try to extort you for more money. All of these scenarios all built into the game for a single mission.

Starfield has none of this. Usually there are two options if any, talk your way through a conflict, or fight. Design which was rather impressive in the early 2000's but not so much today. Additionally Starfield lacks any agency for the player. In Oblivion you are in prison and the King says "holy shit you're the chosen one!", in Skyrim you are about to be killed when a fucking dragon attacks and suddenly it's everyone running for their life. In Starfield you are a miner, regardless of any background you are about to pick, and you find an artifact, have a vision that isn't really interesting and predicts no excitement, then Barrett from the main faction of the game shows up and says "Welp, you're one of us now, go take this thing to our headquarters." Sure pirates attack, but they always attack so it means nothing. There is no hook, nothing frantic to tell the player that this vision or these artifacts are important.

I mean it straight up rips off Mass Effect 1 and the Promethian artifact. However that vision was a vision of the extinction of the galaxy and had a big sense of urgency to it. Starfield's light show visions mean nothing and they never get more advanced as you go through them.

So the cycle begins, go to a planet, hunt down an artifact, bring it back. UIntil eventually you start hunting down temples, but there isn't really hunting down temples, the people of Constellation seem to know where to go everytime and you just go there. Eventually the Constellation base is attacked and one of your companions are killed, which is meant to be a big moment but the companions all suck and this death is mostly meant to be a confusion moment later when you encounter your dead companion as one of the Star hunters.

Turns out the Starborne are actually people like you. People who've chased the artifacts and made it to the center of the universe in which they've been able to go to a multi-verse where they sort of repeat the process of gathering the artifacts and jumping to another universe. But what's the fucking point? Why? Nothing happens, nothing has meaning for them or you for that matter to jump into another universe. In fact it's just a stupid excuse to have NG+.

Starfield is the only RPG I've ever played, (that I can remember at least) with no villain, no big bad, no world ending danger we are set about to thwart. There are small conflicts and pirates that get in your way but there is no one to point a finger at and say, "That is a fucking bad guy." And it's very weird because it makes the game feel like it never goes anywhere and you spend the whole time just puttering about.

In typical Bethesda fashion the side quests are quite a bit better, but that's because they have a smaller scope and also focus on a key goal to tackle. Miners on Mars need new gear so they can get the job done and move on from Mars, but the company wont authorize the equipment. So you help by getting a job as the bosses assistant and use his computer to approve the corporate request for the gear they need. You can get hired by the cops to go undercover with the Crimson pirates to infiltrate them expose their leader and spring the cops on him, which is an interesting quest especially when you have a Constellation companion with you.

Speaking of companions, evil is not an option here. There are no evil companions in Starfield, nor is evil really an option for you. You can kinda be a dickhead but nothing else. NPC's in the game are no longer killable. Even the leader of the evil pirate gang cannot be killed, this is because the game has a predetermined space mission where you kill him and trying to kill him before that climatic fight is not allowed. You can't kill anyone in Constellation, or really anyone that you'd like to be honest. None of your companions are evil either, so stealing and doing naughty shit just makes them hate you which makes them annoying. You never get a pirate on your team or anyone even morrally grey. Which to be fair I wasn't going to do anyway because I don't like doing evil playthroughs, but it just means that one of the things Bethesda USED to do is no longer there.

Now let's get onto the technical shortcomings of Starfield. The game loads constantly even for mundane shit like in and out of buildings. Why is this a thing? Open world games haven't needed loading screens for buildings in over a decade. Yet you can't go in and out of your ship, in and out of the Constellation building, in and out of caves, take an elevator, nothing without a loading screen. In fact travel in this game is a loading screen. You see there is ship combat but you can't really fly your spaceship anywhere. You can't fly to other planets, you can't even traverse a planet freely. It's all fast travel menus and nothing more.

Then when you land on planets the game proceedurally generates you a tile map where all points of interest will be several hundred meters away from your landing zone and you will have to spend five minutes or more running from point to point. Only for most of the points of interest to be copy pastes of shit you've seen on other planets. Pirates taken over a base, a random NPC outpost, a cave with nothing in it, or something for a quest usually involving pirates to shoot. There are no aliens, not really, there are some alien bits of wildlife but they aren't interactable, you can kill them if you want.

Why did they make a space game without aliens, other species of intelligent life? It just speaks to a lack of creativity throughout the game. What did Bethesda spend so much time working on? They didn't make a huge open galaxy to explore, it's entirely fast travel based. They didn't create new cultures and species of aliens with creative new designs and languages. They didn't make an engaging story with conflict and characters good and bad. So where did the budget go? Todd's cocaine addiction?

Most of Starfield is copied from previous games which would be fine if there was something more added to it, or something exciting built around it. But there isn't, base and shipbuilding is lifted from Fallout 4 and 76, Starpowers are Skryrim shouts, the roleplaying has been removed because you can't be evil, the open world has been removed because you can't explore, there is no space in the space game....

I don't know I'm just really fucking confused as to what the hell happened here. OH and of course combat sucks, loot sucks. Not only is your carry weight limit fucking dogshit but there isn't hardly anything worth picking up in the first place. There are 3 lazer guns, 4 balistic weapons, and one plasma gun. None of which have interesting modifers or properties or do anything to change up combat. All the melee weapons swing and behave the exact same way so despite there being several different melee weapons they are all just different skins of the same weapon functionally. This further removes the RPG out of the game.

What even is this? What's the point?

Bethesda didn't make a game here, they made a modding platform. It's going to be up to other people doing free work to make Starfield fun and engaging, and that's fucked up because what the fuck are people on Xbox supposed to do? Xbox and Gamepass people wont get to mod the cool shit into the game. The mod API only works on Steam from what I've read. So unless you bought this on Steam, you are hosed. Jesus....is it Febuary yet?