Game Discussions Bethesda Softworks Starfield Space RPG

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

After spending 25 hours on Game Pass, i realised i will be playing vanilla for much longer than a month. So the switch to Steam felt natural course of action for me.
But since Modding Kit won't be released for 6 month or so, so there is indeed no rush, and you can just sleep on it:

Distinguishing between short presses and long ones is a common way to get additional controls out of limited controls. I wouldn’t read anything else into that.

Its not the button mechanic, its more than even if you choose to skip every form of quick travel, its still hold x to travel.

Gaming preferences are too personal for me to recommend any game to anyone.

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Thanks for the responses. I think im going to wait for a discount like old duck... (that's todays conclusion anyway).

Going off topic... I feel flushed and rich with joy from the experience, not so much starfield (though the tweaking was enjoyable), but from gamepass.. gamepass turned out brilliant for me..

Spoiler: off topic

• I found jwe 2, purchased it on steam, can't stop playing it. In short, the original jwe was frontiered HARD. Definite disappointment. They must have been financially successful with the first title, because the sequel uncharacteristically is not, im getting the modern jpog experience that i wanted originally. So happy.
• I found everspace 2. When starfield grounds your expectations, as a fun indie title this exceeds them, looking to pick up the retail version.
• Found hotwheels unleashed. My sons interest is engaged in the "intrigued with whats dad doing" way and so can't wait for gaming parent time.
• Planet of lana was nice, but still firmly one of those 2005 indie art titles. These are only a novelty once. Will definitely claim it when its free in a bundle somewhere.

Yeah starfield isn't beating jwe2 for me personally, this is a problem, and i think i might be waiting. Its so good

 

[Der Zeitgeist]

...

So just about to buy the thing on steam... but being distracted by other games off gamepass haven't done it yet. Seeing that the average opinion is getting lower with starfield, and having been "its not as good as i hoped it was" with diablo 4..

Decided to sit down and actually play it a bit more even though i'll have to start again on steam.

Sure its easy to keep playing, but i'm not sure if its worth greater than full price that they're charging for it?

Since you guys have played for alot more, does it justify the full price or would it be it in fact better on sale? There's something about hold x to travel (that's taking the long cut) that feels like it it could be more finished implementing. I just finished removing the possibility of exploration outside of poi's... when you land in a random place its identical everywhere as far as i have seen.

Guess there's no rush

Indeed there is no rush at all.

I preordered the premium edition and started playing on September 1st, and I've been enjoying it immensely. I'm at 70+ hours now, barely into the main quest and mostly did side-quests so far. I didn't encounter any severe bugs so far, but other people have been encountering quite a few quest-related bugs and I'm doing a lot of hard save games at every stage just in case.

It's very much a Bethesda game, with all that comes with it. I always liked these games, with the freedom and unique experiences they provide, but the cracks in the foundation of the engine and game design are clearly visible here.

If you're unsure, my recommendation would be to wait a while. The game will drastically improve in the coming months, especially on a technical level (native DLSS support + a lot of the quest-related bugs that are still present). The situation with mods (which in some cases are highly risky hack jobs right now that can break your saves) will also stabilize once official support arrives. There might even be some attractive discounts for the game around the holiday season, depending on how sales develop.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

If you're unsure, my recommendation would be to wait a while. The game will drastically improve in the coming months, especially on a technical level (native DLSS support + a lot of the quest-related bugs that are still present). The situation with mods (which in some cases are highly risky hack jobs right now that can break your saves) will also stabilize once official support arrives. There might even be some attractive discounts for the game around the holiday season, depending on how sales develop.

Yeah i got the headset and the controller both of which i'm enjoying regardless of the starfield, so later on im sure i'll still be fond to the game. Im curious what bethesda will do now that they're owned by microsoft. If you wanted to, you could easily see that certain aspects might even have been left deliberately basic to let the modding community get some quick wins (same idea as frontier with their lack of tutorials). I wonder if microsoft will make them do those obvious things like the ui because they're now a console flagship. I hope so. Modding skyrim was immense, but always felt a bit dumb to replace the basics.

I like what i see, you can hop in and play for hours, no worries there. I feel like i want to give them 6 months to do something about the loading screens (even if it is extend the time between them), or wait for a good discount, where you can let things pass more easily.

 

[Morbad]

And related to this, I've heard from OA that the NPCs in this game are quite "stiff" compared to NPCs in games like Skyrim. I'm already plagued with games that have stiff Disney animatronics for NPCs. Not that I'm looking for every NPC in Starfield to have 1000 unique voice lines, but they should at the very least be on some sort of logical routine and schedule.

NPCs are very basic even compared to other Bethesda games.

Combat isn't about small and nimble in this game. You need to be able to duke it out.

It's definitely possible to evade a significant portion of hostile fire. I was also able to take out the Va'ruun Shroudbearer very early on in the game by sitting it's blindspot until it popped.

Later on evasion is less critical and I'm still not very keen on the controls, so it's the ship doing most of the work most of the time.

Took me 74 hours to finish main quest, I totally ignored all quests from some factions to save them for another playthrough. I barely touched the outpost stuff, I never built a ship from scratch, and I visted less than half the systems, never mind the planets.

Took me 100 hours to start the main quest.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

As for NPC character depth...it's certainly a Bethesda game. All the main storyline characters are portayed as sociopaths who've all bonded together with other like for like social outcasts for no apparent rhyme or reason except to find a common purpose in just excluding themselves from normal life.

All of them have story lines that would make a bad TV movie script read like Shakespeare...it's certainly no Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate 3 when it comes to character depth. Constellation as an organisation is like a space explorers club exclusively for manic depressives

Your standard D&D gaming group...

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Speaking "like Elite", is there any sense of a BGS? I'm not looking for anything as complex, but assuming there's trading, mining, etc, does the player's actions influence the game world in any meaningful way? Or is it all missions that you check off the list one by one? I'm just wondering if the game is "done" when all missions are done, or if there is any sort of dynamic variability that will keep things fresh even after all missions are finished. It would be nice if there were dynamic fetch missions based on a simulated economy.

Of course modders will make this game last forever. Maybe they can even make a sort of BGS if one doesn't currently exist.

Trading isn't really a thing, the vendors all have the same prices so it's a waste of credits even trying that.
There are a couple of characters that will buy particular items at above the going rate but it's somewhat pot luck as to what they'll buy and what just has to be sold at standard prices.
There's the Trade Authority missions that want you to deliver a particular tonnage but they're not really worth bothering with.
You start out as a miner and have full kit so you can traipse across endless miles shooting rocks, though this is primarily for engineering mats resources... (Seriously it could only be closer to raw mats gathering in Horizons if they gave us an SRV instead of having to cover the endless miles on foot, or jet pack...)
The main plot and faction quests are the only things that seem to change anything - It's a Bethesda game. Given I ignored those except for the start of the Ryujin one I can't tell you any more about it.

 

[Astaran]

Your standard D&D gaming group...

Four Dwarves with anger issues and an adopted pet Dragonborn Bard? That's my current group and we did not even talk about our characters beforehand

 

[Ronzer]

Yeah i got the headset and the controller both of which i'm enjoying regardless of the starfield, so later on im sure i'll still be fond to the game. Im curious what bethesda will do now that they're owned by microsoft. If you wanted to, you could easily see that certain aspects might even have been left deliberately basic to let the modding community get some quick wins (same idea as frontier with their lack of tutorials). I wonder if microsoft will make them do those obvious things like the ui because they're now a console flagship. I hope so. Modding skyrim was immense, but always felt a bit dumb to replace the basics.

I like what i see, you can hop in and play for hours, no worries there. I feel like i want to give them 6 months to do something about the loading screens (even if it is extend the time between them), or wait for a good discount, where you can let things pass more easily.

I find the loading screens a bit odd, in that it's creating the loading screen using assets in your area, so it builds the loading screen so you can change character movement?
I think from that, if/when they make an MMO out of this, it'll all be smooth transitions. I have this feeling they can do smooth transitions already, but maybe they're just perfecting it. With that comes ships moving while you are out of your seat (if I stand while flying, the ship stops dead) and EVA stuffs and maybe SRV type vehicles.

Today I had some illegal items and jumped into a system and got scanned...as I was scanned I jumped away, I went to a barren planet (Sagan I?) and dropped those items on the ground. For kicks, I lifted off, flew around in space a bit, then went back to that landing area. The items I dropped were still there! Surprisingly nice! When I jumped back to the system I was scanned in, though, they still sent me to jail even though on this scan, the items weren't on me.

From the landing area being made where I chose to land, I got this idea of how they possibly could generate all the land areas on planets in an MMO. It'd be similar to how in ED, first person jumps to a new system, it populates the planets etc. Take that same idea, but instead of 400 billion systems, you have tonnes of landing areas (there must be thousands?) on each planet (did they say 1000 star systems?) and when someone touches down in a new area, it spawns that area of the planet and makes it a persistant thing. Then anyone visiting that same landing area in future, now sees what the first persons landing generated. If that is how they do it, wouldn't it be awesome if each area had the "first persons" info like ED's star systems do?

I find scanning wild life and resources on planets fun. That stuff seems way more "real" to me than NMS stuff.

I spent about 6 hours in SF today, barely progressing the story, but picking up side bits here and there and in general, just enjoying the whole time. Is an MMO in the works for sure? Sign me up.

 

[Factabulous]

You know you have too much storage at your base when it starts to fail to update the container 'fullness' indicators

Spoiler

 

[Felix DiCestria]

I find the loading screens a bit odd, in that it's creating the loading screen using assets in your area, so it builds the loading screen so you can change character movement?
I think from that, if/when they make an MMO out of this, it'll all be smooth transitions. I have this feeling they can do smooth transitions already, but maybe they're just perfecting it. With that comes ships moving while you are out of your seat (if I stand while flying, the ship stops dead) and EVA stuffs and maybe SRV type vehicles.

Today I had some illegal items and jumped into a system and got scanned...as I was scanned I jumped away, I went to a barren planet (Sagan I?) and dropped those items on the ground. For kicks, I lifted off, flew around in space a bit, then went back to that landing area. The items I dropped were still there! Surprisingly nice! When I jumped back to the system I was scanned in, though, they still sent me to jail even though on this scan, the items weren't on me.

From the landing area being made where I chose to land, I got this idea of how they possibly could generate all the land areas on planets in an MMO. It'd be similar to how in ED, first person jumps to a new system, it populates the planets etc. Take that same idea, but instead of 400 billion systems, you have tonnes of landing areas (there must be thousands?) on each planet (did they say 1000 star systems?) and when someone touches down in a new area, it spawns that area of the planet and makes it a persistant thing. Then anyone visiting that same landing area in future, now sees what the first persons landing generated. If that is how they do it, wouldn't it be awesome if each area had the "first persons" info like ED's star systems do?

I find scanning wild life and resources on planets fun. That stuff seems way more "real" to me than NMS stuff.

I spent about 6 hours in SF today, barely progressing the story, but picking up side bits here and there and in general, just enjoying the whole time. Is an MMO in the works for sure? Sign me up.

I strongly doubt there will be seemless transitions 'when it becomes an MMO'.
In FO76 the loading screens when walking through a door cover the transition from the multiplayer open world to the single player bits where you interact with the plot.

 

[Old Duck]

While I don't expect any game to become a "master of all things" like Star Citizen supposedly attempts to be, I'm also opposed to artificial constraints. "It's an RPG, so of course it doesn't have an economy or 6DoF flight or [insert thing forbidden in an RPG]" just doesn't cut it with me. This isn't a knock against Starfield, but rather this "Two dimensional thinking" that puts artificial limits on games based on proclaimed (self or external) category labels. Going faster than light may be impossible IRL, but programming an RPG that has a rudimentary economy (or a trading game with role play aspects) is not only possible, it should be relatively trivial, at least compared to other programming challenges a game like Starfield (or Elite for that matter) overcomes.

 

[Der Zeitgeist]

While I don't expect any game to become a "master of all things" like Star Citizen supposedly attempts to be, I'm also opposed to artificial constraints. "It's an RPG, so of course it doesn't have an economy or 6DoF flight or [insert thing forbidden in an RPG]" just doesn't cut it with me.

This is especially funny since Starfield actually does have 6DoF flight.

 

[Dutchman141]

Regarding Starfield, there are some things I've heard and read that concern me. People in this thread are blazing through the game in record-breaking time. I thought this game was supposed to provide 20 years of play, not 20 hours!

I'm playing a couple of hours almost every day but I'm still way far off of finishing it.
I haven't completed the main story yet, done only two of the bigger side quests and some "activities" which are quests you run into by hearing npc's speak.
I have been concentrating on ship building but haven't even touched outpost building yet.

I had early access and been playing only Starfield every day, I'm not at all concerned about running out of things to do and if I do then there's ng+ or a new playthrough which I will do quite differently from the first.
The replayability is very high.

 

[Comandante]

I had a lot of fun today playing the first part - mines and shoot-out on the surface - but not progressed past that mainly due to time. I'll get chance in the week.

I found some Europium in the mines, then found out it was quite rare. Love my NASA mug, too!

Probably won't embark much on the first quest to begin with - will probably do some planet scanning, city wandering and general getting about places to get used to the game.

 

[The Lawful]

FWIW, TBH I got not sucked in (yet?) after 8 hours of play. It was way different with Fallout 3 | 4.

Maybe it's the story, but it feels like Tomb Raider lair up to now. Not exactly thrilled.

On to ED.

O7,

 

[Old Duck]

I had early access and been playing only Starfield every day, I'm not at all concerned about running out of things to do and if I do then there's ng+ or a new playthrough which I will do quite differently from the first.

Is it true that each playthough generates a different procgen seed? If so, how does that work? To entire solar systems (the non-important ones) get shuffled with different planets, or is it just the surface and flora / fauna that gets shuffled up? Or is the universe the same every time like the typical game map?

 

[Mika L]

I have now played the main story so far that last night my spaceman got two superpowers from ancient alien temples. I find such a bit ridiculous for this game, but maybe that should be expected because this is a Bethesda RPG. Looks like there are eight of them, and the player gets them all by the end of the main story. Then my spaceman will surely be awesome!

I have gotten coordinates to a couple of historical sites, which I shall visit, but sooner or later I will continue playing Elite Dangerous again. I have gotten a bit tired with the continuous fighting with monster animals in the main story missions. It will be relaxing to do exploration and exobiology in ED again. The whole atmosphere out in uninhabited space in ED is much calmer than in Starfield, which suits me well. But maybe I'll launch Starfield from time to time, for example when I want to wield a shotgun (Laredo Demoralizing Modified Coachman, a legendary shotgun) against big animals.

Spoiler: A legendary shotgun

And by the way, I installed the mod "NaturaLUTs Standard" a couple of days ago, and it made the game look much better. It removes the prevalent greenish haze, making everything clearer and the sky in New Atlantis properly blue. And it also makes shadows darker. Thanks to @Morbad for the link!

 

[Surefoot]

Is it true that each playthough generates a different procgen seed? If so, how does that work? To entire solar systems (the non-important ones) get shuffled with different planets, or is it just the surface and flora / fauna that gets shuffled up? Or is the universe the same every time like the typical game map?

Given how the game is designed, I suppose that each "map" on each planet would be shuffled around but not the whole 100 star system map itself (which seems pre-determined ?)

 

[Der Zeitgeist]

Is it true that each playthough generates a different procgen seed? If so, how does that work? To entire solar systems (the non-important ones) get shuffled with different planets, or is it just the surface and flora / fauna that gets shuffled up? Or is the universe the same every time like the typical game map?

Planets and also the planet surfaces are always the same, what's different is the procedurally generated POIs that get placed around the planetary landing sites.

These POIs are handcrafted in themselves, but their placement is random.

 

[wrmiller]

While I don't expect any game to become a "master of all things" like Star Citizen supposedly attempts to be, I'm also opposed to artificial constraints. "It's an RPG, so of course it doesn't have an economy or 6DoF flight or [insert thing forbidden in an RPG]" just doesn't cut it with me. This isn't a knock against Starfield, but rather this "Two dimensional thinking" that puts artificial limits on games based on proclaimed (self or external) category labels. Going faster than light may be impossible IRL, but programming an RPG that has a rudimentary economy (or a trading game with role play aspects) is not only possible, it should be relatively trivial, at least compared to other programming challenges a game like Starfield (or Elite for that matter) overcomes.

Just an observation, but given your lengthy list of questions, likes, and dislikes about this game (that you haven't even played), maybe you should just move on to a different game? Just my opinion of course.