It's a new thing for Bethesda RPG's...generally speaking. There's no Dragons, wizards or Deathclaws (that we know of) and all folk are seeing when they look at the pictures instead of reading the words is..
Game Discussions Bethesda Softworks Starfield Space RPG
- Thread starter Lngjohnsilver1
- Start date
-
- Tags
- space rpg
I know he's head of marketing and not involved with the game design...but still
he should know damn well what he's actually marketing
I am someone who had never played a Bethesda RPG until Fallout 4 on my GamePass subscription a few months back. The depressing, zombie filled apocalypse world never remotely appealed to me, nor do I care for the fantasy genres (Skyrim, etc.). So no, I never bothered. But on GamePass, I did jump into Fallout 4 for a few hours, since there was nothing more to be invested than the time itself, streaming the game instantly as I played. Why not?
And from what I played in those few hours, I could tell that in a space sci-fi setting, this type of game design could be really cool for me. Never would have thought so, but yea.
Personally, I can't say I care at all about things like invisible walls after a 45 minute walk on planets. I've never walked that far or long in Elite Odyssey, never will. I've spent enough SRV time on Horizons planetary surfaces to know that there will never be anything interesting or unique procedurally generated out there. And even if there were interesting, interactive POI generated (not just buildings with skimmers and canisters of tea)... I still would not walk for hours (never mind days) in a single direction.
This just is not what I am, as a player in general. So if Starfield doesn't allow it... well I'd never know, if someone else didn't tell me.
My 8 or 9 years with Elite Dangerous has also made me less interested in the "manual flight between planets" side of things. I've sat there for 20 minutes waiting to arrive at a planet. The experiences does give me an inkling of appreciation for the incredible distances between celestial bodies (an inkling tainted by the beyond light-speed elements). An appreciation of just how much would be required in the real world to turn a ship around, if it was moving at even 50% light speed toward a distant planet, in the real world.
For an evening's gameplay, just arriving at my destination after an appropriately "sci-fi" cutscene will satisfy me.
Similar with Starfield having no multiplayer or coop. This is actually a huge bonus for me. Frontier must have put a massive amount of time into the crime and punishment side of Elite. Those decisions show up in nearly every aspect of the game. From how POIs work, to even getting destroyed if your ship gets stuck in the station airlock.
Having my Beluga get it's wings stuck in the airlock, and then struggling with the FA on/off in a hopeless effort to escape... before eating a multi-million credit loss. Then later find out through Google that they can just log-out on the station and somehow fix it. Is that beyond a double face-palm moment?
In solo mode, this serves to remind me that the multiplayer side of the game haunts me, even in Solo mode. And I suppose the airlock blocking CMDRs who pioneered this fun must still be raking in millions of credits worth of joy, knowing that to this day, they still occasionally make CMDRs across the galaxy pay.
So no, I have no cares lost over multiplayer in Starfield.
This isn't intended as a slap at Elite. Far, far from it. I still recommend it heartily for others. I think I started playing in 2015, and it's been a fantastic journey. My journey has been slowly fading for the last few months, though. I've got a few billion to spare, every ship on up to outfitted Corvettes, T-10, and Cutter. Making more credits actually appeals less now to me than ever, to the point that trade and mining (my old favorites) just didn't seem to keep me hooked when I last tried them. Elite will probably offer me the most interest in the future exploring areas neighboring the Inner Orion Spur, looking for my previously undiscovered exobiologicals.
Elite Dangerous, Horizons, and Odyssey have been a fantastic ride. My thanks to Frontier, the devs working to make it happen, and David Braben. Awesome stuff.
And from what I played in those few hours, I could tell that in a space sci-fi setting, this type of game design could be really cool for me. Never would have thought so, but yea.
Personally, I can't say I care at all about things like invisible walls after a 45 minute walk on planets. I've never walked that far or long in Elite Odyssey, never will. I've spent enough SRV time on Horizons planetary surfaces to know that there will never be anything interesting or unique procedurally generated out there. And even if there were interesting, interactive POI generated (not just buildings with skimmers and canisters of tea)... I still would not walk for hours (never mind days) in a single direction.
This just is not what I am, as a player in general. So if Starfield doesn't allow it... well I'd never know, if someone else didn't tell me.
My 8 or 9 years with Elite Dangerous has also made me less interested in the "manual flight between planets" side of things. I've sat there for 20 minutes waiting to arrive at a planet. The experiences does give me an inkling of appreciation for the incredible distances between celestial bodies (an inkling tainted by the beyond light-speed elements). An appreciation of just how much would be required in the real world to turn a ship around, if it was moving at even 50% light speed toward a distant planet, in the real world.
For an evening's gameplay, just arriving at my destination after an appropriately "sci-fi" cutscene will satisfy me.
Similar with Starfield having no multiplayer or coop. This is actually a huge bonus for me. Frontier must have put a massive amount of time into the crime and punishment side of Elite. Those decisions show up in nearly every aspect of the game. From how POIs work, to even getting destroyed if your ship gets stuck in the station airlock.
Having my Beluga get it's wings stuck in the airlock, and then struggling with the FA on/off in a hopeless effort to escape... before eating a multi-million credit loss. Then later find out through Google that they can just log-out on the station and somehow fix it. Is that beyond a double face-palm moment?
In solo mode, this serves to remind me that the multiplayer side of the game haunts me, even in Solo mode. And I suppose the airlock blocking CMDRs who pioneered this fun must still be raking in millions of credits worth of joy, knowing that to this day, they still occasionally make CMDRs across the galaxy pay.
So no, I have no cares lost over multiplayer in Starfield.
This isn't intended as a slap at Elite. Far, far from it. I still recommend it heartily for others. I think I started playing in 2015, and it's been a fantastic journey. My journey has been slowly fading for the last few months, though. I've got a few billion to spare, every ship on up to outfitted Corvettes, T-10, and Cutter. Making more credits actually appeals less now to me than ever, to the point that trade and mining (my old favorites) just didn't seem to keep me hooked when I last tried them. Elite will probably offer me the most interest in the future exploring areas neighboring the Inner Orion Spur, looking for my previously undiscovered exobiologicals.
Elite Dangerous, Horizons, and Odyssey have been a fantastic ride. My thanks to Frontier, the devs working to make it happen, and David Braben. Awesome stuff.
Not that it matters, but I kind of wonder whether there is a console command to regenerate the map around your current position, without first despawning the player, their ship, and any initiated entities on the current map... Also whether POIs are persistent between regens of a part of a region where they appeared. :7
The tiles do not match with the texture of the planet that you see from space. So each landing spot will be quite randomly generated (save for the cities and special POI). The tiles around the 1st landing spot also do not align. So you don't really explore the planet that you see from space.
For example from space you see a hill where you want to land. You select that landing spot -> it procedurally generates tile 1 (map). If you select another landing spot next to tile 1, then tile 2 will not align with tile 1, because it does not match the planet terrain. Tile 1 and tile 2 are separate procedurally generated areas.
Maybe Bethesda updated the planet tech to align all the tiles for release, but I doubt it. However, there is a chance that modders could make it work in the future.
Last edited:
goddammit - this will be like the dead pixel on your brand new monitor - no matter how much you will try to convince yourself one dead pixel doesnt matter, you cannot unsee it and it will haunt you until you refund/replace that monitor (been there done that)
Does looking like it did from space matter? Not for me. It didn't in NMS either. In fact the UK looks a lot different down here than it does from the space shuttle.
Well ideally the procedural tiles would have terrain that matches the geographical features of the planet. Then all the little tiles would align and connect properly at the ground level. For example at the western boundary of Tile 1 you see hills in the distance. If you select that area as your second landing spot (tile 2): those exact hills will not be there. When you look at the edge of Tile 2 towards the east in the direction of Tile 1: you will not see Tile 1. If you build an outpost in Tile 1, then you cannot see it when you look eastward from a mountain in Tile 2.
This is how it appears based on multiple leaker sources.
Last edited:
Yes I understand completely what you are saying. However I will be looking for what is in those tiles, be it a building, a character, creature, quest item, cave, secret etc. I won't be trying to remember what the edge looked like before I landed.
Modders are already working on the tile-edge problem:
That's a shame. I really hope the amazing modding community can help out. I'm already curious what the modders of projects like Sim Settlements for fallout might have in store for Starfield (if they move over that is)
Exactly this, Starfield is an rpg not a planet simulator.
People tend to forget that, all they see is space, ships and planets and immediately start comparing it to games that belong to a different genre.
Yes I compare Starfield to ED, but not as being the same genre but as a game that I might enjoy, games with some similarities, they're both in space and on planets and they both have space ships, two things I really like.
I really don't get the drama about the fact that Starfield doesn't let you walk around a planet seemlesly, you miss the point entirely of what Starfield tries to accomplish imo, you might as well compare ED to Skyrim in that respect.
The way I see it Starfield will be like Skyrim in space genre wise, and that's something I don't mind at all.
All they see is space, ships and planets and immediately start comparing it to games that have space, ships and planets. Doesn't seem too unreasonable.
I got burned out on D&D back in the 70s. And I have refused to play any of those types of games since. The only Bethesda game I tried to play was fallout 4(?). Got tired of that real quick. Hoping for better with StarField. We'll see how it goes I guess.It's a new thing for Bethesda RPG's...generally speaking. There's no Dragons, wizards or Deathclaws (that we know of) and all folk are seeing when they look at the pictures instead of reading the words is..
![[VR] Merkir](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/141/141091.jpg?1553527154){kind=avatar}
A couple of minor technical points after viewing OA's vid...
He says that each planet will have "dozens or hundreds" of tiles. In fact an Earth sized planet would have over 10 million Skyrim-sized tiles.
I don't agree with his thinking that procedural generation will result in each player seeing different terrain on these tiles. I'd be surprised if this was the case. I expect the same seeds will be used for terrain, but different seeds to generate quantities and locations of fauna. And minor POIs may be different... another unknown.
That aside, I totally agree with everything else in OA's vid, especially his descriptions of players' expectations. Anyone buying this game and expecting a space or planet simulator is buying the wrong game. This will be a quintessential Bethesda RPG, using a game engine with 32 bit positioning only, with all the loading screens we've come to expect when travelling to different locations.
Yeah, I don't mind if planets are downscaled compared to their real-life counterparts. 1:1 scale is the best though.
None of the tile boundaries connect correctly though. If we land in a tile next to New Atlantis and walk to the boundary, then we cannot see the city. Only the biome type would be correct per region. So it will look different for each player except the key locations. We'll be exploring "press button to generate self-contained tile" rather than a planet. Fingers crossed for a big update at EA that we haven't seen yet lol.
CoheedMe said:
Space travel, loading screens: "For me at the moment. It's feeling like space travel isn't necessary. There's a lot of fast travel options so many that you can accidentally do it. Also a lot of loading screens. It's not very seamless. For instance get onto your ship loading screen take off into space loading screen warp to another planet loading screen land on the planet loading screen get off your ship loading screen. That's just something that bothers me if they're only 10 to 15 seconds at a time if even that. The other thing is that the NPCs don't feel very lifelike. But these are minor complaints I wouldn't say they are the worst thing or that there is one worse thing about this game. The game's great. There are just some issues. keep in mind this is all my opinion. I'm having a blast and it's beautiful the explorations incredible. I'm just hoping that the world feels more alive once I start getting into stories."
POI: "So points of interest seem to be three or four. Number of zones per planet you can't really measure. You just click wherever you want to and you can land there. The tiles seem to be randomly generated I don't think there's like a set amount of tiles on the planet. I clustered three together and they were pretty much on top of each other and I can still put as many as I wanted next to them. They don't connect but you can pretty much land wherever you want with no restrictions you just can't go very far in those areas"
Last edited:
Weird, that's exactly what i was telling everyone that were going ballistic regarding how Starfield will kill Elite this autumn.
Nope, they're completely different games, scratching completely different itches.
It is unreasonable though.
Both fps and rgp games can have guns, deserts, cities, cars, tanks, you name it and yet they're completely different games/genres.
Not weird, the people who claim doom over ED because of Starfield probably don't like ED or stopped liking it hoping to find the same experience in Starfield.
I can see a certain amount of present ED players switch over to Starfield though, especially console players because ED doesn't get any further development and/or because Starfield will deliver more elements of what those players are looking for in a space oriented game.
Imho you can compare ED to Starfield as a game, a means to have fun, not as being equal genres.
I play games for the fun, many genres of games, sim, rpg, racers, etc. and I compare them based on how much fun and entertainment they provide.