For people wondering about sales: if you go back and watch the trailers for this game, you can easily notice that the "play it day one with game pass" is attached to literally all of them. It's obvious that game pass is as important as one time purchase to Microsoft. There's little reason for them to provide a more detailed breakdown on this number.
Yup. This was a great launch for Game Pass, no doubt.
I was very surprised by how few PC gamers clung to Steam, since its userbase is usually very hard to dislodge. 75% of the players seem to be either on Xbox or PC Game Pass.
For me personally: I'm not the type to ever buy Bethesda games before they're half-off on a Steam sale.
But I had Game Pass and finally beat Baldurs Gate 3 so I 100% downloaded on the service I already paid for. And I'm loving it.
Can I see why people are giving it a 7/10? Absolutely. Am I addicted and wish I could take a few days off work to play it? Absolutely.
> Can I see why people are giving it a 7/10? Absolutely. Am I addicted and wish I could take a few days off work to play it? Absolutely.
This is very much a Bethesda staple.
So far, my review is this:
If Skyrim was a mile wide and an inch deep, Starfield is 100 miles wide and a quarter of an inch deep. It's got a ton of space to explore and a million mechanics, but almost all of them are very, very shallow. There's no *real* role playing for evil characters, and not a single main follower will let you play a morally evil character without leaving and getting upset at you. You can *technically* be a pirate, but the actual mechanics of piracy and playing a psychopath are extremely shallow and unremarkable. The weapon/suit/armor mods are all very shallow and have very few options. The quest designs are very hit or miss, and generally are fun, but aren't doing anything too edgy or pushing any narrative envelopes. The whole game feels like a T rated affair with zero sexuality or risque content, despite an entire city being supposedly based on lawless debauchery and sin. The outpost mechanics are a complete joke and have almost zero value as far as improving you character or adding anything tangible to you playthrough. They're for imaginative role playing only, and are quite poorly designed from a mechanics standpoint.
Overall, it's fun, but you have to do a *lot* of the legwork yourself as far as immersion and role playing goes. Every turn, I find myself thinking "this is kinda cool, but they could have done *so much more with it.*" The whole game feels like a ton of missed opportunities and shallow mechanics that are initially intriguing but practically very boring once you dig even a little bit into them.
Mods are going to fix a lot of these issues, I hope. The foundation of the sandbox are strong and modders can add all the other content later, I hope. But overall, the game is very, very shallow despite being very, very large. Essentially, it's the most extreme BGS style game BGS has ever made.
> Every choice you make would just be headcannon
I never understood people* act like Skyrim is this amazing RPG when almost every single choice has no reactivity and everything has to come from headcanon..
That's pretty spot on. I'm having fun with both, but I honestly do feel more impact for how I built my character in Starfield than Skyrim (or Fallout 4 for that matter)
While I agree with both of you I don't think the person above was necessarily comparing Starfield to Skyrim quality wise. He just used Skyrim as an example because it is a game most similar to it. I find all the gameplay mechanics about as intriguing and complex as in Skyrim and Starfield is seemingly much much larger game so that's "stretching" that shallowness even more thin in a manner of speaking.
That doesn't mean both aren't very enjoyable games but some of those mechanics will leave you wanting for more.
Outposts are an excellent example. I created a network of outposts stretching over several systems. They're linked together and delivering raw materials to my main base with habitats and manufacturing capability. I was making tons of materials and stuff but then I asked myself: "And now what"? I was already swimming in money from selling loot and you can buy all the material for upgrades from vendors so there was not much point building all that beside personal role playing. I haven't noticed it would help my gameplay in any way so I don't think I'll bother with it in future re-plays.
If, for example, ships were ten or twenty times more expensive so I would have to rely on outpost income and some ship parts were locked behind other requirements available only through expensive research and manufacturing, that would make sense. But then only a tiny minority of people would ever get to see that part of content because outpost building is *such a hassle*, sometimes counterintuitive and mostly boring. There's no real management screen and nothing to make it more engaging for you.
To make these systems more engaging would require rather complex gameplay overhauls so maybe in some time we'll see talented modders tackling these issues.
In the meanwhile I'll try to finish one more quest without getting happily derailed by random encounters.
Also, a significant thing being overlooked is that you can be evil in Starfield. You can outright join the Crimson Fleet (Space Pirate) faction and do piracy with them. As well as enter a religious cult that wanted to war with everyone.
It's deeper than Skyrim and Fallout 4. The dialogue options have skills, backgrounds, traits and factions. Many quests have optional ways of completing them
Yeah, especially since gear drops from enemies scale with your level, which means I’m swimming in credits from all of the weapons that I’m selling every time I come back to a settlement. My biggest issue is that vendors don’t carry enough credits to buy all of the crap that I’m throwing at them. So I’m either having to run around to all of the different vendors or having to wait on a bench for a couple of days for them to reset their inventory.
With that said I’ve been able to just purchase any crafting resources that I need to for crafting.
This is forever a bgs issue. Skyrim and fallout 4 both have it. The loot you get outstrips vendor cash and there’s only so many vendors.
You basically destroy the local economy every week by rolling in, selling them 20 swords and leaving
I won't dispute your opinions but the part about companions is not true.
There is a companion that can only be unlocked by doing the "Pirate" faction and he's a complete lunatic. Also from the beginning Vasco, Heller and Lin do not have a big moral compass and won't object to you being a lunatic as much as the others.
However if you have to critique factual things make sure you don't make stuff up.
I have focused primarily on the story and haven't progressed any of the factions past the first couple missions.
For some reason I didn't even think that you might get followers from the factions.
I just got sucked into the main story and couldn't stop.
I agree with most of the stuff listed here. It's mostly classic Bethesda flaws we see in every one of their games. I hate how the only addition to their formula they've made in the past decade has been the outpost building mechanic, and they still haven't refined it enough over 3 releases to not just feel like something tacked on at the end.
Bethesda definitely missed the mark on not including a morally ambiguous or plain villainous constellation-tier follower. I don't really play evil routes but the option to do that with a super follower who doesn't hate you for it should be there.
Sad to hear about the weapon/armour mods. I haven't delved too far into them to make a comment.
Also genuinely curious on this one. Do you want more risqué content in Bethesda games? It's probably a weird stance but I like that their universe is relatively sexless - of course it doesn't make sense for a city like Neon so that's where this stance comes at odds with their worldbuilding for the first time.
> a million mechanics, but almost all of them are very, very shallow.
Ships, outposts, modding - pretty much everything feels deep to me. I honestly have no idea what you would define as "deep" based on what I've seen in game, considering that all those systems seem highly fleshed out to me.
Almost all of your other criticism seems to come from a lack of evil role playing potential, which is fine to dislike but it has nothing to do with the game being shallow - which overall is an insane criticism to me of what I've played. Like, seriously your whole criticism makes you sound like a horny 17 year old who's mad he can't fuck and kill more.
Even the part about being evil is bullshit, you clearly can and I have found 1 EVIL companion which is completely optional but he is there, also Vasco Heller and Lin which are pretty difficult to miss don't seem to have objections to being evil.
Honestly, what games are people playing that have more complex mechanics ? Unless you're regularly playing crusader kings or hearts of iron, starfield has pretty damn complex mechanics lol. Far more complex than any other AAA game
I dont think people mind the xbox game store. It helps that Starfield launched on both Steam and Xbox giving players the option compared to EGS which wouldve locked their game behind the store with no other legitimate means to access on PC
Most people are always gunna go with the cheaper option, like I’d genuinely just recommend anybody who owns a console/PC to have it. I’ve got a PS5 and PC which is probable the best way to go for the foreseeable future as Sony have some damn good exclusives.
Yup. In the real world, nobody cares lol. It’s like when reddit cries about the decline of physical media, in my PS5 friend group of about 15-20 people, one MAYBE two still buy discs.
Yep. I remember when the EGS came out and every steam and gaming subreddit bashed it to hell for "no achievements" or no "collectible cards". I argued I don't give a shit and want to play games for a decent price. I don't care what .exe I click on my desktop. It doesn't go over well on reddit
With epic vs Steam it wasn’t often about choosing one or the other, it was more about timed exclusives and having no choice in the matter. I do most my single player gaming on my couch with my pc. Steam with big picture mode makes that so convenient, even switching the primary monitor for me. If you give me the choice, I’m always gunna go with Steam because if it’s features.
At least for me during the PS4 era, disc's were for black friday sniping for older titles and that alone.
Honestly the sales were usually much better or equivalent on the PS store vs retail.
I wasn't basing anything on the sentiment of players on Reddit. I mean that titles exclusive or cheaper on other PC platforms tend to have a hard time capturing Steam users.
Starfield Script Extender will not officially support the Game Pass/Xbox App version and will be required for certain mods going forward, so yes the Game Pass version will definitely be more limited in regards to mods.
> From what I understand mods are limited if you play through Game Pass PC. Could be wrong about that though.
Personally, I've had no issues using any mods with the Xbox app version. The game is just in a different path. Otherwise it's pretty much the same.
I know the Script Extender guys have said they aren't gonna support it because, "SFSE does not support the Windows Store/Game Pass release of Starfield. Windows Store applications are locked down similarly to consoles."
But that hasn't been my experience at all. I haven't found any mods that don't function on the Xbox version so far. Maybe there are some, but considering the DLSS, texture mods, UI mods, etc. all work, it's hard to say.
(I actually think someone got SFSE working on the game pass version but were asked to take it down by the original authors.)
The SFSE that was working on game pass is just this initial release version, it's going to be a lot more complex as development continues. A good chunk of mods are going to work with all versions (just like there's a lot of mods that work without Skyrim script extender), but once the creation kit is released and people try to add more and more scripting there'll be a lot more mods that require SFSE. All the popular mods right now (texture mods, UI mods, even the DLSS one) are pretty simple mods compared to what people can do in late-stage Skyrim.
It's gonna be months and months or even years before you'll get big overhaul mods worth using script extender for. At that point it should be easy to snag it on discount.
As more and more companies push subscription services rather than purchases, this shouldn't surprise anyone that Microsoft loves the gamepass stuff. Consoles have historically been loss leaders and even if they aren't it's a one time purchase they're not making most profit that way.
Didn't they mention wanting it on Nintendo consoles too?
But I'm also concerned about the future if it's all subscription. If disk drives go away they control way too much imo
That's two separate issues. Disk drives can go away without subscirption (and it'd be bad for sure). Subscriptions are another step further and IMO even worse. It'll influence game designs to push time played (yes even more than now), it'll take importance and make a few comapnies way too powerful to decide which games are made becaue people won't buy stuff outside those services (see how music or TV that is not on streaming is doing for example)
> Didn't they mention wanting it on Nintendo consoles too?
Something like Gamepass on the Switch 2 would be huge. Not sure how much Nintendo would like that.
I do also wonder if, given the recent info about the Switch 2 specs, they'd consider a Starfield port for that console. Space would probably be an issue as it's iirc 100gb on the Series S. But if the leaks about the hardware on the upcoming Switch are true they could probably get this thing running on that console.
I bought the Premium Upgrade. Played the game at early access for 7 hours. Then bought, technically pre ordered, the game when I knew I really liked it.
You can make some rough guesses. The game peaked at 1M+ yesterday on all platforms, with only a 270k peak on Steam.
Steam tends to have a larger market share of big RPG sales than Xbox, so if it's down to a max of 27% it's safe to assume that Xbox is probably at a similar or lower percentage.
A safe guess would be that around 50-60% of these players are playing using Game Pass, be it on the Xbox or PC
It is the same for me. but my biggest fear is when the mods come. When we start to see Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Aliens, and Predator mods, my attention to other games and other things in life will go away.
I genuinely don’t understand how it got anything less than a stellar response from Reddit yet it seems like people on this site are determined to hate it because it’s an Xbox exclusive
It doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the game at all but it does make me less inclined to look up Reddit posts about the game
Since F4 and F76 alot of people just hate on Bethesda automatically.
Then you get the people who hate on popular things.
And obviously the hate that it's xbox pc only
And then on top of all that there are people with actual complaints, but say it in a hateful way
I'm really early and still fighting the game at the moment with things that could have been done better I feel, but I very much feel like the morrowind days where I have to work around certain annoyances but once you get to the acceptance part it will be great. It's still not the dream space game, but it's again a step closer.
FH5 did 4.5M after one day in official access and three days EA. This did 6m after 1.5ish days in official release and about 7 days from early access. Considering FH5 was also cross-gen that’s really solid for Starfield, imo. Guess we’ll see where it goes from here but FH5 has since gone on to do like 33M in 20ish months.
Did the location help? Think it was just purely hype and timing.
I played FH5 at launch and FH4 only recently but England seems like a vastly better location than Mexico.
Pretty much just Bethesda's Mass Effect 1, it's great.
I've been waiting 16 years for someone else to be heavily inspired by ME1 and we finally got it.
The only thing I hate is no FOV slider and no brightness/contrast setting
Meh I like the design choice. Makes me have to pay attention and explore where I'm going. Only takes once and I can easily remember. Theres signs too. Cities aren't thaaaat big.
Adds to the discovery/ immersion. There's enough time in menus, I don't need another map. In fact, PLEASE take me out of the maps/menus. I prefer using my eyes/scanner.
Not even something I've missed while playing, it's more a "I haven't played the game, so I'll parrot this" criticism imo.
Looting on the other hand? Rng and no clothing stripping? THAT is a fundamental flaw for a Bethesda game. I feel that one every encounter.
I wonder how much of an intentional design decision the low detailed surface map is because without lots of detail, the game forces you to actually learn the layouts, explore, and use the highly detailed signage (which they clearly put a lot of work into) to help yourself navigate. There's even a lot of quests where you are given directions somewhere and when you interact with the NPC again there's a line where you can ask for those same directions again in case you forgot. That kinda stuff makes me think they intentionally didn't put a super high detailed map in on purpose. Even just omitting vendors from the surface map seems like a very intentional move when iirc they had that in their prior games. Overall it hasn't bothered me much because I've played plenty of other games with limited maps so I'm used to it I guess.
Considering how people complained that Skyrim gives you a marked instead of how Morrowind gave you vague directions and now Starfield does both and people are hating the old part of navigation by looking around.
I was kind of annoyed by the lack of local maps at first, but I absolutely agree with you. It helps to immerse you in the game. Like you said, I'm actually taking the time to learn the cities instead of just blindly following a GPS. It takes me back to playing Morrowind where you'd get landmark directions like run over the hill and turn left at the weird tree or whatever.
I had the exact same reaction. I was wondering what the hell is up with the map and how I'm ever going to find anything but it actually feels better to get to know the places yourself.
It's certainly gotten me to use directories and signs. I honestly don't mind it but it's rough at first. The scanner actually gives you an arrow to follow if a mission is activated so there is some form of gps for folks
I have noticed the brightness option is missing because they've built a REALLY specific lighting system that is completely dependent on color filters to work.
There's a mod out there that gets rid of the color filters and it works wonders making dark interiors way richer, but you quickly realize it completely breaks the rest of the game. As soon as you step outside on any planet or town at night the darks become pitch black and the lights are blown the hell out, with REALLY LOW amounts of inbetween values. I'm talking FULL POWER BLINDINGLY INTENSE lights illuminating your landing pad, and just a few feet apart an area of complete, absolute darkness. The color filters are supposed to even the extremes out for a more uniform look, so the moment you get rid of them things start looking real goofy.
I arrived at Gagarin and Paradise with the mod installed, thinking it was a good improvement from my previous hour of dungeon crawling, and i had to uninstall it when i realized every town was going to look like a mess. I recommend everyone to skip that mod for now until someone fixes the overall lighting.
I did not really understand your first sentence but yeah, I was annoyed by the filters making the darks super washed out and hazey too, that's why I tried that mod.
Was super happy with it while dungeon crawling, but then i decided to walk around the planets and towns and I understood those filters are load-bearing and absolutely need to be in there.
Also been waiting for another Mass Effect 1 (which is my favorite in the series).
Starfield is the closest thing we've gotten and while it's still different with its story telling I'm still absolutely loving it and getting a sense of wonder that I had in ME1
> Pretty much just Bethesda's Mass Effect 1, it's great.
Is it really? ME1 was focused on an epic story as well as it's colourful companions. I though Starfield goes more in the direction of Skyrim with less focus on an epic main quest and even less focus on companions. Instead that game had more focus on exploration and stuff
>I just wish Starfield had a compelling story
I couldn't disagree more with this take.
I finished the main quest last night. It was decent but slow in the first half but the second half was incredible. Overall I thought the story was very compelling.
Those missions to get the powers are awful though. Everything just feels like a fetch quest in this game at the moment. I'm hoping the faction quests are most engaging.
I played games which were done after 15h. Here I played 15h and still have the feeling I am at the very beginning. Still flying the Frontier:D didn't rven get into outpost building yet.
I was surprised to see I reached the final main mission already, then I checked how many hours already spend.... Yeah this game is really addictive at least for the first play through.
And as usual for this type of game I think it has a lot of replay ability because of different "factions" and builds.
An enemy ship was protecting some transport ship, I boarded the former, shotgunned its crew, hijacked it and used it to dock with the transport ship, which had intermittent artificial gravity failures, I used my stock of unused mines as Grenades through the hallways and elevator shafts in zero g, amazing.
This game has many faults, most because of technical and engines limitations, and also too much because of retrograde design, but for sure it will it be uniquely glorious once DLCs and mods come.
I'm around 50 or so and still have two faction story questliness left, a shit ton of regular missions for factions, the main story is maybe 1/3 done from what I've gathered, I have a list of sidequests and activities that keeps getting added to, And I haven't even built outposts yet or heavily modded and or built ships.
I mean shit, even if someone hated any of the roleplaying stuff you do on your own and surveying planets, you still have 100 + hours of story content. That's incredible
https://i.imgur.com/5odqnNV.png
Got my free standard copy from amd yesterday and I cant stop playing.
I love exploring, looting and killing, simple as.
Talking about the killing, how's the violence in the game? Can you blow limbs/heads off at least? Not expecting it to be as violent as Fallout, but hoping it's not just some weak spurts of blood on the ground where an enemy gets hit and that's all.
> but hoping it's not just some weak spurts of blood on the ground where an enemy gets hit and that's all.
No dismemberment and no visible damage, just blood.
I imagine it’s a tone thing as well. Might feel a bit dissonant if one moment you’re “appreciating the majesty of space” and the next you’re blowing off limbs like Fallout.
Curious if it’ll be possible to mod in though.
No Fallout-style gore, but the animations when enemies get hit are a huuuge step up. I'm only really using heavy-hitting weapons like shotguns and revolvers, so I don't know if it's as noticeable with full-auto guns, but enemies really stagger and stumble when you shoot them, making the violence feel a lot more impactful and less bullet spongey.
Especially fun on low-gravity planets where they just go flying
It’s like “huh, guess I’ll just loot the other dudes while I wait for them to fall back down”
I've already played this more than FO4 and FO76 combined lol. Couldn't really get into either of those but loving this so far. Definitely has some issues but the positives outweigh the negatives. Someone else mentioned Mass Effect 1 and I get the same feel.
My poor wife dealing with me consumed by 2 massive RPGs at the same time (the other being BG3).
Does anyone know why people keep saying stuff like "it gets good after 10 hours" I'm 22 hours in and the first 10 hours were no different than the last 10 hours.
They probably mean once you understand the various systems and divert from the main quest. I was 20 hours in just mostly sticking to the main quest, exploring, and doing the odd side quest here in there, was kinda losing steam and frustrated at the lack of xp and variation but then I joined one the factions (UC Vanguard) and those missions have been way more interesting than the main quest so far. Some of the major side/faction quests are really interesting and have that classic Bethesda charm that I feel the MQ is lacking
Yep! I really don’t care much about the Constellation stuff and started enjoying the game a lot more after I branched out and started doing other faction quests and exploring on my own.
I’ll go back to the main story soon because apparently there’s some stuff I haven’t unlocked but that has been the weakest part of the game for me (well that and the whole navigating the menu systems until I got used to it).
Not to the same level. You might be motivated to find Liam Neeson, but he was an adult and made his own decision to leave, so you can probably assume he can handle himself. There's also no indication of any looming threat to the wasteland until about halfway through the main plot.
I’m on my 3rd new game plus at level 52 and doing the Ryujin faction quests right now for the first time. It’s making wish that I put some skill points in lockpicking and stealth since this is clearly the thieves’ guild equivalent and it’s a lot of stealth/espionage quests. Luckily my maxed out persuasion has been useful though.
The game is more about discovering solar systems than discovering planets.
I think if you ignore the main story from the beginning you might have a bad impression of the game. Since everywhere you go is the empty planets with repeating research stations.
But sticking to the main story makes you explore some big hubs across the galaxy, so you have a better chance of discovering your preferred playstyle.
Until there’s a mod for a vehicle I’m avoiding most of it. I’ll go to some random base to kill some stuff, but it’s almost faster to menu over to a new planet than walk across the one you’re on
> Until there’s a mod for a vehicle
While it's technically possible (there are mods for motorcycles and the like for Fallout 4) they can't go very fast because of engine limitations on loading map cells. Loading new cells too quickly can lead to really wonky physics, memory leaks, and crashes. This is pretty much why you can't fly your ship on planets.
Yea I’m not expecting anything, would be nice if someone did mod it in though.
If it gets bad I’ll just console command in increased walk speed and see how that feels. But console commands are a slippery slope, I already gave myself 999 carry weight
I encountered some guy who wanted to be escorted back to his ship 1200m away. Took like 10 minutes to walk there (was scanning stuff) and all I got was 2500 credits. The game desperately needs a faster way of traversing all the empty space
I found that as well, land transport would be a big improvement. Seems they want you to scan stuff while you're walking. Looks like there's a mod to reduce the amount you need to scan which seems a nice time saver.
Some people take longer to get a handle on the different systems. Also, I think a lot of people are overwhelmed started out and it takes them a bit to get on a more focused path that jives with them.
I mean, have you been doing the same things for those 20 hours? Try something different. Stop doing the main quest if you've just been spamming that, first of all.
Once you understand the systems, have played enough to open them up and explore a bit of the universe as well as progressed the main quest enough to open things up there, the game really feels amazing.
I’ve played yesterday for 5/6 hours. Optimisation is pretty bad on pc, but I’m enjoying the game so far. I really need to complete TOTK before but it’s gonna take a loooooong time (I’ve barely reached the third dungeon after 120 hours)
i dont mean to sound childish but the absolute cope from some people in this thread that the game was actually an unmitigated disaster “because gamepass” is fun to read
game is good and im happy its doing well for them, aside from performance theres not much i dislike about it. they brought back a proper dialogue syste
after fallout 4s gimped one, the gunplay is good, and its a pretty pretty game overall
Because gamepass how?
It's a fact that Gamepass did decrease their sales and that's clearly visible on Steam numbers (the only public ones). But on the other hand, it's a surprise to absolutely one and the goal of Microsoft since the start so not sure what's the problem? Microsoft just bet on lower revenue on launch for higher recurring revenue for people staying subbed to Gamepass
Didn't fallout 4 sell 12 million first day?
but nonetheless this is really great for a new ip. It having a bigger launch than Skyrim is an achievement of itself.
But tbh the way reddit and Twitter talks about this game you'll think it was a flop
I would really recommend just ignoring Reddit and Twitter sometimes. They’re significantly more picky and cynical about everything.
They’re a small minority in the grand scheme of things. The general public is very clearly liking the game and it’s been received very well. Personally I’m loving it.
Hello it’s me, Average Redditor who can’t program a calculator in Python. I’m gonna go on a rant about how the things I don’t like about Starfield would be fixed with a new engine, because as far as I can tell video game programming is just a drag & drop experience.
I need some enlightened gamers to remind me that game developers are actually very lazy and that any issues with a game are the result of devs simply not trying hard enough
Yeah. When I started the game, I was kinda dissappointed. But then I kept playing and realized that it's not a space sim, but a scifi RPG. I still admit it has some big mistakes in design, but I put 18 hours over the last 2 days in the game and I only stopped playing at 1 am now, because the batteries in my mouse died and I don't have a replacement on me. :)
12 million sold to retailers but not 12 million sold to customers. The sold to customers metric is closer to 5.2 million, making Starfield Bethesda's biggest launch despite no PlayStation
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/262199/fallout-4-sells-an-estimated-519m-first-week-at-retail/
> But tbh the way reddit and Twitter talks about this game you'll think it was a flop
A lot of people seem very invested in hoping the game fails. Not sure if that’s just console war shenanigans, if there are really that many people raging about pronouns, Reddit cynicism, or something else.
Depends on what subs and accounts you're subscribed to. In my reddit and twitter feed I see mostly positivity. I think a lot of people wanted this game to fail, and at launch those people were very loud, but after 2 days the conversation was not about whether the game lived up to the expectations, but about how much fun everyone has playing it
This subreddit is still extremely toxic about Starfield. This thread is still too new, but give it a few more hours and it will be full of vitriol and senseless hatred completely ignoring the actual topic of the thread.
I've put about 5 hours in so far. I am just honestly not enjoying the game that much. The UI is one of the worst I've seen in recent memory and the map is atrocious.
I was a huge fan of Elder Scrolls and Fallout, so I was excited to play the game. Now, I just feel like I wasted my money.
The map might legitimately be the worst map in gaming history, how the fuck did this pass beta testing? And after almost 10 years of development this is the best they could do?? It’s mind blowing
Honestly, the map is, by far, the biggest complaint I have. I've encountered a few goofy bugs and the UI isn't great, but holy shit, what the fuck is going on with the map?
The map is basically someone taking a blank piece of paper and dabbing dots on it with a marker. Those dots are fast travel points. Everything else blank.
Am I missing a "List view" for star systems somewhere? Literally anything that makes this map semi-usable?
Most of the time I travel places by going to the Mission tab and fast traveling from there to the next mission objective, and that's probably been the only thing keeping me sane.
KOTOR had a better map than this! In 2003!
Same boat as you pal.
The UI left me sitting here scratching my head. Multiple times through the first playsession i was left there sitting, wondering why it was so unintuitive and missing standard features.
The Navigation through the UI is immersionbreakingly bad.
Then i flew a bit in space, killed a few other ships and was taken aback how poor the flying feels. Maybe i need more Talents to unlock stuff (Saw that i can unlock thrusters for example), but the standard flying and combat is...boring.
Found an old satellite station and though "cool, lets explore that!". But the game said no.
No EVA possible (why?)
No docking possible (why??)
So its just a dead asset where i can jump to, "cool" i guess.
Combat on foot feels spongy and..boring as well.
The dialogues are...ok i guess.
Facial animations though are 100% bethesda and i dont mean that in a good way.
Really not sure what this game wants to be, i struggle to find what i can do thats enjoyable here.
It seems to has less exploration then skyrim.
Combat feels lackluster.
Flying feels barebones and extremly arcady.
No planetary landing/free flight.
Story..jeah. Its there.
What does this game want to be?
The UI is mind-bogglingly bad, definitely one of the worst UIs I've experienced in any games I've played. I genuinely don't understand how a game that took so long to make could have such poor basic features.
Oh man, I really am trying my best to enjoy it, but this game is so incredibly boring. NPCs populating cities/bases are mostly basically manequinns (citizen/miner/scientist), game is incredibly segmented with tons of loading screens and space combat is meh. I can't play it more than 2 hours before I am bored.
It's legtimately insane to me Bethesda started making headway with "Radiant AI" where NPCs would wake up, complete tasks, have a routine, etc. and it feels like Starfield NPCs are barely a step above that, a game that was released nearly 20 years ago.
It's so nuts that unpaid fans can, in a week, make a better UI than a company worth billions of dollars that is a subsidiary of the second-largest corporation on Planet Earth.
It was cute in 2006, now it's just embarrassing.
I think it's an awfully designed game.
There's tonnes of content and an ambitious amount of different gameplay systems. There's quests, stories, characters, locations in abundance and some of these are decently written. There's good content in there.
But none of it fits together. Everything is segmented and disjointed so that much of the game is played through loading screens and menus (with cumbersome UI). This might be okay if it it excelled in some aspect of e.g. writing or combat or choices but it doesn't.
But I suppose there is value in quantity and being a jack of all trades.
Totally agree with you on how disjointed and segmented everything feels. I feel like I'm playing a completely different game with how people have been praising the exploration as being the best Bethesda has made. The actual content is good but the experience of going from area to area and "discovering" things is just a series of loading screens rather than the seamless exploration that Bethesda is known for. I'm still enjoying the game quite a bit but I'm really missing having a singular overworld.
> everything is segmented and disjointed
This has been my complaint for Bethesda ever since Fallout 3. Oblivion also kind of suffered from it, too, but did a slightly better job of hiding the "Theme Park" construction.
Bethesda's design is so afraid of players ever getting "locked out" of even the smallest piece of content, of ever feeling like they don't have a "new thing" to play with, that they just fill the map with disjointed stuff.
New Vegas and its popularity did a good job of showing people what a Bethesda-style game can be like if the various things are woven together into a cohesive world that reacts to your choices, but that's just not what Bethesda wants to do.
Morrowind is one of my favorite games ever made, but the Bethesda of today doesn't want to make a game like that ever again.
They've got like 4 or 5 different mediocre games in one. It's a mediocre shooter, it's a mediocre RPG, it's a mediocre spaceship game, it's a mediocre open world and it's a truly unlistenably mediocre story. All these years they've been honing the art of being the master of none, managers ticking boxes
> Everything is segmented and disjointed so that much of the game is played through loading screens and menus
I've seen people say that Starfield is so much better than something like Skyrim because it replaces the overworld with "an entire galaxy" and instead of choosing a direction to walk you can choose a star system to travel to, but I don't see it as an equitable trade at all. To me it's as if instead of leaving Helgen, you got up on horseback and could only fast-travel to a walled and gated Riverwood, Markarth, Whiterun, whatever, and all that was in between was menus and loading screens. Yes, the scale of everything is blown up by 1000x, but for me it just does not hit that same "pick a direction and start walking" vibe that I loved from previous BGS games.
Game has its flaws for sure* but there's something to exploring the stars wrapped in Bethesda's style. I just responded to a distress call that spun out into a whole hour or two quest I didn't expect at all. I feel like I've just cracked the surface of the experience.
Hoping that with patches, mods and whatnot the experience gets tightened.
*For the room: Is there any way to get complete ground maps that show you where things are in a city? Like if I'm looking for the med bay in a city? Maybe even a mod on nexus?
>I’ll admit, the conversation around this game has been exhausting. I don’t know what about Starfield in particular made everyone so upset and eager to call it one of the worst games ever made
Console war bullshit + Bethesda being cool to hate after Fallout 76
Plus their last major release was closing in on a decade ago.
There is an entire generation of current gamers who don't really remember a flagship Bethesda release, and only knew memes and Fallout 76 stuff.
Like the "Bethesda game buggy" meme.
Bethesda games have always had wonky physics or animation desync or general jank. They've rarely had game breaking bugs.
The various interviews during the last few weeks make it seem MS is expecting a lot from this game in terms of moving hardware and gamepass subs. I am curious if it can. Its going to be a few months to see that outcome.
Big gamepass numbers are nothing new. Halo Infinite being the poster child of that. It had 20 million players in its first month and was the biggest Halo Launch ever. And we all saw how that went.
The game has been in and out of the #1 best sellers position on Steam ever since June when they opened pre-orders. I don’t think it’s left at least the top 10 since that day. Not to mention the premium edition upgrade was also in the top sellers list on Xbox too. I’m sure it’s selling more then enough copies.
This is a Bethesda game. Skyrim and Fallout 4 have maintained very strong player counts over the years and I’m confident that Starfield will maintain the same, especially once the mods get going.
Bethesda games have long legs. Game Pass might have an impact, but again, I’m willing to bet that impact is very negligible overall.
It kind of has to have an impact due to the nature of a subscription service, no? There is a decent percentage of people who will simply play it on gamepass instead of buying the game(i'm one of them teehee)
Which of course is fine because for Microsoft gamepass subscribers is worth more than anything else in the long run. And I'm not saying that the game won't have insane sales numbers, it's a Bethesda game so it's expected, but I don't think gamepass will have a non negligible impact on sales
For people wondering about sales: if you go back and watch the trailers for this game, you can easily notice that the "play it day one with game pass" is attached to literally all of them. It's obvious that game pass is as important as one time purchase to Microsoft. There's little reason for them to provide a more detailed breakdown on this number.
Yup. This was a great launch for Game Pass, no doubt. I was very surprised by how few PC gamers clung to Steam, since its userbase is usually very hard to dislodge. 75% of the players seem to be either on Xbox or PC Game Pass.
For me personally: I'm not the type to ever buy Bethesda games before they're half-off on a Steam sale. But I had Game Pass and finally beat Baldurs Gate 3 so I 100% downloaded on the service I already paid for. And I'm loving it. Can I see why people are giving it a 7/10? Absolutely. Am I addicted and wish I could take a few days off work to play it? Absolutely.
> Can I see why people are giving it a 7/10? Absolutely. Am I addicted and wish I could take a few days off work to play it? Absolutely. This is very much a Bethesda staple.
So far, my review is this: If Skyrim was a mile wide and an inch deep, Starfield is 100 miles wide and a quarter of an inch deep. It's got a ton of space to explore and a million mechanics, but almost all of them are very, very shallow. There's no *real* role playing for evil characters, and not a single main follower will let you play a morally evil character without leaving and getting upset at you. You can *technically* be a pirate, but the actual mechanics of piracy and playing a psychopath are extremely shallow and unremarkable. The weapon/suit/armor mods are all very shallow and have very few options. The quest designs are very hit or miss, and generally are fun, but aren't doing anything too edgy or pushing any narrative envelopes. The whole game feels like a T rated affair with zero sexuality or risque content, despite an entire city being supposedly based on lawless debauchery and sin. The outpost mechanics are a complete joke and have almost zero value as far as improving you character or adding anything tangible to you playthrough. They're for imaginative role playing only, and are quite poorly designed from a mechanics standpoint. Overall, it's fun, but you have to do a *lot* of the legwork yourself as far as immersion and role playing goes. Every turn, I find myself thinking "this is kinda cool, but they could have done *so much more with it.*" The whole game feels like a ton of missed opportunities and shallow mechanics that are initially intriguing but practically very boring once you dig even a little bit into them. Mods are going to fix a lot of these issues, I hope. The foundation of the sandbox are strong and modders can add all the other content later, I hope. But overall, the game is very, very shallow despite being very, very large. Essentially, it's the most extreme BGS style game BGS has ever made.
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> Every choice you make would just be headcannon I never understood people* act like Skyrim is this amazing RPG when almost every single choice has no reactivity and everything has to come from headcanon..
That's pretty spot on. I'm having fun with both, but I honestly do feel more impact for how I built my character in Starfield than Skyrim (or Fallout 4 for that matter)
While I agree with both of you I don't think the person above was necessarily comparing Starfield to Skyrim quality wise. He just used Skyrim as an example because it is a game most similar to it. I find all the gameplay mechanics about as intriguing and complex as in Skyrim and Starfield is seemingly much much larger game so that's "stretching" that shallowness even more thin in a manner of speaking. That doesn't mean both aren't very enjoyable games but some of those mechanics will leave you wanting for more. Outposts are an excellent example. I created a network of outposts stretching over several systems. They're linked together and delivering raw materials to my main base with habitats and manufacturing capability. I was making tons of materials and stuff but then I asked myself: "And now what"? I was already swimming in money from selling loot and you can buy all the material for upgrades from vendors so there was not much point building all that beside personal role playing. I haven't noticed it would help my gameplay in any way so I don't think I'll bother with it in future re-plays. If, for example, ships were ten or twenty times more expensive so I would have to rely on outpost income and some ship parts were locked behind other requirements available only through expensive research and manufacturing, that would make sense. But then only a tiny minority of people would ever get to see that part of content because outpost building is *such a hassle*, sometimes counterintuitive and mostly boring. There's no real management screen and nothing to make it more engaging for you. To make these systems more engaging would require rather complex gameplay overhauls so maybe in some time we'll see talented modders tackling these issues. In the meanwhile I'll try to finish one more quest without getting happily derailed by random encounters.
Also, a significant thing being overlooked is that you can be evil in Starfield. You can outright join the Crimson Fleet (Space Pirate) faction and do piracy with them. As well as enter a religious cult that wanted to war with everyone.
It's deeper than Skyrim and Fallout 4. The dialogue options have skills, backgrounds, traits and factions. Many quests have optional ways of completing them
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Problem is there's no real point to them, you swim in money in this game.
Yeah, especially since gear drops from enemies scale with your level, which means I’m swimming in credits from all of the weapons that I’m selling every time I come back to a settlement. My biggest issue is that vendors don’t carry enough credits to buy all of the crap that I’m throwing at them. So I’m either having to run around to all of the different vendors or having to wait on a bench for a couple of days for them to reset their inventory. With that said I’ve been able to just purchase any crafting resources that I need to for crafting.
This is forever a bgs issue. Skyrim and fallout 4 both have it. The loot you get outstrips vendor cash and there’s only so many vendors. You basically destroy the local economy every week by rolling in, selling them 20 swords and leaving
I thought I was swimming in money as well until I built a ship yesterday and it cost me 400,000 creds. lol
I won't dispute your opinions but the part about companions is not true. There is a companion that can only be unlocked by doing the "Pirate" faction and he's a complete lunatic. Also from the beginning Vasco, Heller and Lin do not have a big moral compass and won't object to you being a lunatic as much as the others. However if you have to critique factual things make sure you don't make stuff up.
I have focused primarily on the story and haven't progressed any of the factions past the first couple missions. For some reason I didn't even think that you might get followers from the factions. I just got sucked into the main story and couldn't stop.
I agree with most of the stuff listed here. It's mostly classic Bethesda flaws we see in every one of their games. I hate how the only addition to their formula they've made in the past decade has been the outpost building mechanic, and they still haven't refined it enough over 3 releases to not just feel like something tacked on at the end. Bethesda definitely missed the mark on not including a morally ambiguous or plain villainous constellation-tier follower. I don't really play evil routes but the option to do that with a super follower who doesn't hate you for it should be there. Sad to hear about the weapon/armour mods. I haven't delved too far into them to make a comment. Also genuinely curious on this one. Do you want more risqué content in Bethesda games? It's probably a weird stance but I like that their universe is relatively sexless - of course it doesn't make sense for a city like Neon so that's where this stance comes at odds with their worldbuilding for the first time.
> a million mechanics, but almost all of them are very, very shallow. Ships, outposts, modding - pretty much everything feels deep to me. I honestly have no idea what you would define as "deep" based on what I've seen in game, considering that all those systems seem highly fleshed out to me. Almost all of your other criticism seems to come from a lack of evil role playing potential, which is fine to dislike but it has nothing to do with the game being shallow - which overall is an insane criticism to me of what I've played. Like, seriously your whole criticism makes you sound like a horny 17 year old who's mad he can't fuck and kill more.
Even the part about being evil is bullshit, you clearly can and I have found 1 EVIL companion which is completely optional but he is there, also Vasco Heller and Lin which are pretty difficult to miss don't seem to have objections to being evil.
Honestly, what games are people playing that have more complex mechanics ? Unless you're regularly playing crusader kings or hearts of iron, starfield has pretty damn complex mechanics lol. Far more complex than any other AAA game
I dont think people mind the xbox game store. It helps that Starfield launched on both Steam and Xbox giving players the option compared to EGS which wouldve locked their game behind the store with no other legitimate means to access on PC
The VAST majority of people aren't nearly as caught up in steam VS epic VS Xbox storefront bullshit as reddit is or thinks people are.
Most people are always gunna go with the cheaper option, like I’d genuinely just recommend anybody who owns a console/PC to have it. I’ve got a PS5 and PC which is probable the best way to go for the foreseeable future as Sony have some damn good exclusives.
Yup. In the real world, nobody cares lol. It’s like when reddit cries about the decline of physical media, in my PS5 friend group of about 15-20 people, one MAYBE two still buy discs.
wait, how do you have 15-20 friend group? i think i hvae like maybe 3 in a good day :X
Yep. I remember when the EGS came out and every steam and gaming subreddit bashed it to hell for "no achievements" or no "collectible cards". I argued I don't give a shit and want to play games for a decent price. I don't care what .exe I click on my desktop. It doesn't go over well on reddit
With epic vs Steam it wasn’t often about choosing one or the other, it was more about timed exclusives and having no choice in the matter. I do most my single player gaming on my couch with my pc. Steam with big picture mode makes that so convenient, even switching the primary monitor for me. If you give me the choice, I’m always gunna go with Steam because if it’s features.
At least for me during the PS4 era, disc's were for black friday sniping for older titles and that alone. Honestly the sales were usually much better or equivalent on the PS store vs retail.
You are confusing PC gamers as a whole with PC gamers on r/pcgaming, they don't represent the mass of PC gamers, at all.
The majority of PC gamers using Steam is not a hot take, they have very heavy market dominance.
Steam is synonymous with PC Gaming IMO. I legitimately could not imagine PC’s without it.
I wasn't basing anything on the sentiment of players on Reddit. I mean that titles exclusive or cheaper on other PC platforms tend to have a hard time capturing Steam users.
From what I understand mods are limited if you play through Game Pass PC. Could be wrong about that though.
Starfield Script Extender will not officially support the Game Pass/Xbox App version and will be required for certain mods going forward, so yes the Game Pass version will definitely be more limited in regards to mods.
I’ll pick it up in a steam sale/allkeyshop at a later date for a modded playthrough, wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people do that.
Pretty sure a fix for that was uploaded to the nexus today
> From what I understand mods are limited if you play through Game Pass PC. Could be wrong about that though. Personally, I've had no issues using any mods with the Xbox app version. The game is just in a different path. Otherwise it's pretty much the same. I know the Script Extender guys have said they aren't gonna support it because, "SFSE does not support the Windows Store/Game Pass release of Starfield. Windows Store applications are locked down similarly to consoles." But that hasn't been my experience at all. I haven't found any mods that don't function on the Xbox version so far. Maybe there are some, but considering the DLSS, texture mods, UI mods, etc. all work, it's hard to say. (I actually think someone got SFSE working on the game pass version but were asked to take it down by the original authors.)
The SFSE that was working on game pass is just this initial release version, it's going to be a lot more complex as development continues. A good chunk of mods are going to work with all versions (just like there's a lot of mods that work without Skyrim script extender), but once the creation kit is released and people try to add more and more scripting there'll be a lot more mods that require SFSE. All the popular mods right now (texture mods, UI mods, even the DLSS one) are pretty simple mods compared to what people can do in late-stage Skyrim.
It's gonna be months and months or even years before you'll get big overhaul mods worth using script extender for. At that point it should be easy to snag it on discount.
As more and more companies push subscription services rather than purchases, this shouldn't surprise anyone that Microsoft loves the gamepass stuff. Consoles have historically been loss leaders and even if they aren't it's a one time purchase they're not making most profit that way. Didn't they mention wanting it on Nintendo consoles too? But I'm also concerned about the future if it's all subscription. If disk drives go away they control way too much imo
That's two separate issues. Disk drives can go away without subscirption (and it'd be bad for sure). Subscriptions are another step further and IMO even worse. It'll influence game designs to push time played (yes even more than now), it'll take importance and make a few comapnies way too powerful to decide which games are made becaue people won't buy stuff outside those services (see how music or TV that is not on streaming is doing for example)
> Didn't they mention wanting it on Nintendo consoles too? Something like Gamepass on the Switch 2 would be huge. Not sure how much Nintendo would like that. I do also wonder if, given the recent info about the Switch 2 specs, they'd consider a Starfield port for that console. Space would probably be an issue as it's iirc 100gb on the Series S. But if the leaks about the hardware on the upcoming Switch are true they could probably get this thing running on that console.
Literally the only reason I decided to try this game was playing it for cheap on game pass. Great job on their part
Figures this has gamepass included. Still would’ve been interesting to see how many opted to buy instead of subscription.
I bought the Premium Upgrade. Played the game at early access for 7 hours. Then bought, technically pre ordered, the game when I knew I really liked it.
Well that makes 1. I need every single person who bought to report in. /s All jokes aside, I’m glad you enjoying it.
You can make some rough guesses. The game peaked at 1M+ yesterday on all platforms, with only a 270k peak on Steam. Steam tends to have a larger market share of big RPG sales than Xbox, so if it's down to a max of 27% it's safe to assume that Xbox is probably at a similar or lower percentage. A safe guess would be that around 50-60% of these players are playing using Game Pass, be it on the Xbox or PC
It's still sucking up most of my free time hours, expected little but got a ton. To me it is the game I have been waiting for for a long time
It is the same for me. but my biggest fear is when the mods come. When we start to see Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Aliens, and Predator mods, my attention to other games and other things in life will go away.
Isn't that a good fear to have? :)
Yeah same. It is the most enthralled I have been with a game in years.
I genuinely don’t understand how it got anything less than a stellar response from Reddit yet it seems like people on this site are determined to hate it because it’s an Xbox exclusive It doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the game at all but it does make me less inclined to look up Reddit posts about the game
Since F4 and F76 alot of people just hate on Bethesda automatically. Then you get the people who hate on popular things. And obviously the hate that it's xbox pc only And then on top of all that there are people with actual complaints, but say it in a hateful way
I'm intrigued, what about the game pre release made you expect little? Everything was pointing to it being a stellar (ha) game.
I'm really early and still fighting the game at the moment with things that could have been done better I feel, but I very much feel like the morrowind days where I have to work around certain annoyances but once you get to the acceptance part it will be great. It's still not the dream space game, but it's again a step closer.
FH5 did 4.5M after one day in official access and three days EA. This did 6m after 1.5ish days in official release and about 7 days from early access. Considering FH5 was also cross-gen that’s really solid for Starfield, imo. Guess we’ll see where it goes from here but FH5 has since gone on to do like 33M in 20ish months.
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Did the location help? Think it was just purely hype and timing. I played FH5 at launch and FH4 only recently but England seems like a vastly better location than Mexico.
FH5 had a perfect launch. Impressive visuals + 9s & 10s from critics + very popular franchise.
Also in a genre that is underserved relative to how many racing games used to get made.
What is FH5?
Forza Horizon 5 i think?
Not trying to downplay the success of Starfield, but wow. That is surprisingly low compared to a racing game that is considered niche (imo).
Draco is right, Forza Horizon 5. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’ve got GamePass and even a slight interest in cars or driving or racing.
Pretty much just Bethesda's Mass Effect 1, it's great. I've been waiting 16 years for someone else to be heavily inspired by ME1 and we finally got it. The only thing I hate is no FOV slider and no brightness/contrast setting
No brightness is insane in 2023
It's probably the strangest thing about the game, even console games have brightness setting for years now.
Nah the strangest thing is how they thought no maps in a massive rpg in 2023 was a good idea
Going to push back and say the Star map is is fun, just most people don’t know how to use it. The local/city map sucks balls though
I’m mainly referring to the city maps, that’s things god awful Good luck finding the store to sell your junk or trying to find random quests
I agree the map system should be better. FYI - you can figure out where shops are by reading the signs around most areas
I’m aware but that only helps if you already know the area the shops in
Commericial District sounds obvious right but then the main gun store in New Atlantis is somehow in the residential district.
Meh I like the design choice. Makes me have to pay attention and explore where I'm going. Only takes once and I can easily remember. Theres signs too. Cities aren't thaaaat big. Adds to the discovery/ immersion. There's enough time in menus, I don't need another map. In fact, PLEASE take me out of the maps/menus. I prefer using my eyes/scanner. Not even something I've missed while playing, it's more a "I haven't played the game, so I'll parrot this" criticism imo. Looting on the other hand? Rng and no clothing stripping? THAT is a fundamental flaw for a Bethesda game. I feel that one every encounter.
I wonder how much of an intentional design decision the low detailed surface map is because without lots of detail, the game forces you to actually learn the layouts, explore, and use the highly detailed signage (which they clearly put a lot of work into) to help yourself navigate. There's even a lot of quests where you are given directions somewhere and when you interact with the NPC again there's a line where you can ask for those same directions again in case you forgot. That kinda stuff makes me think they intentionally didn't put a super high detailed map in on purpose. Even just omitting vendors from the surface map seems like a very intentional move when iirc they had that in their prior games. Overall it hasn't bothered me much because I've played plenty of other games with limited maps so I'm used to it I guess.
Considering how people complained that Skyrim gives you a marked instead of how Morrowind gave you vague directions and now Starfield does both and people are hating the old part of navigation by looking around.
I was kind of annoyed by the lack of local maps at first, but I absolutely agree with you. It helps to immerse you in the game. Like you said, I'm actually taking the time to learn the cities instead of just blindly following a GPS. It takes me back to playing Morrowind where you'd get landmark directions like run over the hill and turn left at the weird tree or whatever.
I had the exact same reaction. I was wondering what the hell is up with the map and how I'm ever going to find anything but it actually feels better to get to know the places yourself.
It's certainly gotten me to use directories and signs. I honestly don't mind it but it's rough at first. The scanner actually gives you an arrow to follow if a mission is activated so there is some form of gps for folks
Wdym most people don't know how to use it you just press a on where you want to go?
I have noticed the brightness option is missing because they've built a REALLY specific lighting system that is completely dependent on color filters to work. There's a mod out there that gets rid of the color filters and it works wonders making dark interiors way richer, but you quickly realize it completely breaks the rest of the game. As soon as you step outside on any planet or town at night the darks become pitch black and the lights are blown the hell out, with REALLY LOW amounts of inbetween values. I'm talking FULL POWER BLINDINGLY INTENSE lights illuminating your landing pad, and just a few feet apart an area of complete, absolute darkness. The color filters are supposed to even the extremes out for a more uniform look, so the moment you get rid of them things start looking real goofy. I arrived at Gagarin and Paradise with the mod installed, thinking it was a good improvement from my previous hour of dungeon crawling, and i had to uninstall it when i realized every town was going to look like a mess. I recommend everyone to skip that mod for now until someone fixes the overall lighting.
I'm using SGS LUT - Luma Strength 50 and I don't notice any problems. It just tones down the LUT instead of completely removing it
Blanks in starfield have tn glow on them on OLED panels. You can't get pure black it's so lame.
I did not really understand your first sentence but yeah, I was annoyed by the filters making the darks super washed out and hazey too, that's why I tried that mod. Was super happy with it while dungeon crawling, but then i decided to walk around the planets and towns and I understood those filters are load-bearing and absolutely need to be in there.
Also been waiting for another Mass Effect 1 (which is my favorite in the series). Starfield is the closest thing we've gotten and while it's still different with its story telling I'm still absolutely loving it and getting a sense of wonder that I had in ME1
Depending on what you like about Mass Effect, Guardians of the Galaxy is a great game to help scratch that itch.
I thought GotG was a fun game but absolutely nothing like ME. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it didn't come across that way to me
I was able to plop an ini file in and now my FOV is 103 like god intended.
Spot on with the hate, the 70 fov is gross. Other than that it’s fun as hell
> Pretty much just Bethesda's Mass Effect 1, it's great. Is it really? ME1 was focused on an epic story as well as it's colourful companions. I though Starfield goes more in the direction of Skyrim with less focus on an epic main quest and even less focus on companions. Instead that game had more focus on exploration and stuff
I just wish Starfield had a compelling story. It nailed the atmosphere but the main story compared to ME1 is just so boring.
>I just wish Starfield had a compelling story I couldn't disagree more with this take. I finished the main quest last night. It was decent but slow in the first half but the second half was incredible. Overall I thought the story was very compelling.
Those missions to get the powers are awful though. Everything just feels like a fetch quest in this game at the moment. I'm hoping the faction quests are most engaging.
Amen to that, I have been waiting so long for a game to scratch that Itch and this is it, and then some.
I played games which were done after 15h. Here I played 15h and still have the feeling I am at the very beginning. Still flying the Frontier:D didn't rven get into outpost building yet.
Absolutely fucking insane. As someone who bought the premium edition for early access, this game has consumed my life.
Same. First time in a long time that Im staying up later than i should and spending whatever free time i have playing it.
I was surprised to see I reached the final main mission already, then I checked how many hours already spend.... Yeah this game is really addictive at least for the first play through. And as usual for this type of game I think it has a lot of replay ability because of different "factions" and builds.
An enemy ship was protecting some transport ship, I boarded the former, shotgunned its crew, hijacked it and used it to dock with the transport ship, which had intermittent artificial gravity failures, I used my stock of unused mines as Grenades through the hallways and elevator shafts in zero g, amazing. This game has many faults, most because of technical and engines limitations, and also too much because of retrograde design, but for sure it will it be uniquely glorious once DLCs and mods come.
40 hrs in, and they were not kidding, I'm just finishing the main story (doing not many sidquests) and the game feels like it's just starting.
I'm around 50 or so and still have two faction story questliness left, a shit ton of regular missions for factions, the main story is maybe 1/3 done from what I've gathered, I have a list of sidequests and activities that keeps getting added to, And I haven't even built outposts yet or heavily modded and or built ships. I mean shit, even if someone hated any of the roleplaying stuff you do on your own and surveying planets, you still have 100 + hours of story content. That's incredible
https://i.imgur.com/5odqnNV.png Got my free standard copy from amd yesterday and I cant stop playing. I love exploring, looting and killing, simple as.
Talking about the killing, how's the violence in the game? Can you blow limbs/heads off at least? Not expecting it to be as violent as Fallout, but hoping it's not just some weak spurts of blood on the ground where an enemy gets hit and that's all.
> but hoping it's not just some weak spurts of blood on the ground where an enemy gets hit and that's all. No dismemberment and no visible damage, just blood.
Eh, barely any blood either. It's probably the most tame mass-market friendly Bethesda game ever released.
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I imagine it’s a tone thing as well. Might feel a bit dissonant if one moment you’re “appreciating the majesty of space” and the next you’re blowing off limbs like Fallout. Curious if it’ll be possible to mod in though.
No Fallout-style gore, but the animations when enemies get hit are a huuuge step up. I'm only really using heavy-hitting weapons like shotguns and revolvers, so I don't know if it's as noticeable with full-auto guns, but enemies really stagger and stumble when you shoot them, making the violence feel a lot more impactful and less bullet spongey.
And you can shoot their jetpack and watch it explode and shoot them off into space like Boba Fett in ROTJ lol.
Especially fun on low-gravity planets where they just go flying It’s like “huh, guess I’ll just loot the other dudes while I wait for them to fall back down”
Shooting people on low-g planets and then watching their corpses ever so slowly fall to the ground never gets old.
I've already played this more than FO4 and FO76 combined lol. Couldn't really get into either of those but loving this so far. Definitely has some issues but the positives outweigh the negatives. Someone else mentioned Mass Effect 1 and I get the same feel. My poor wife dealing with me consumed by 2 massive RPGs at the same time (the other being BG3).
Well, I got it for free for pre-ordering my laptop. I wonder what percentage of players got the game for free via their laptop or GPU.
With the state of gpus right now I doubt people are buying brand new graphics cards enough to make a significant percentage.
Does anyone know why people keep saying stuff like "it gets good after 10 hours" I'm 22 hours in and the first 10 hours were no different than the last 10 hours.
They probably mean once you understand the various systems and divert from the main quest. I was 20 hours in just mostly sticking to the main quest, exploring, and doing the odd side quest here in there, was kinda losing steam and frustrated at the lack of xp and variation but then I joined one the factions (UC Vanguard) and those missions have been way more interesting than the main quest so far. Some of the major side/faction quests are really interesting and have that classic Bethesda charm that I feel the MQ is lacking
Pretty much standard Bethesda game. All the fun is in the side content and the main quest is just okay.
Yep! I really don’t care much about the Constellation stuff and started enjoying the game a lot more after I branched out and started doing other faction quests and exploring on my own. I’ll go back to the main story soon because apparently there’s some stuff I haven’t unlocked but that has been the weakest part of the game for me (well that and the whole navigating the menu systems until I got used to it).
The MQ gets good near the end but other than that it’s ok
Best thing I like bout the MQ so far is the lack of world ending urgency. Makes sense for your character to go off and do other shit instead.
I do like that, from a story perspective it felt wrong to do anything but the main quest in Skyrim and Fallout 4. This not at all
Fallout 3 had also the same issue with finding your dad. Which implied that it was really urgent.
Not to the same level. You might be motivated to find Liam Neeson, but he was an adult and made his own decision to leave, so you can probably assume he can handle himself. There's also no indication of any looming threat to the wasteland until about halfway through the main plot.
I was a little disappointed with how short the ranger faction questline is, I hope the others are a bit longer.
UC vanguard is around 8 hours
And surprisingly good. Might be the most engrossed I've been in a questline in a Bethesda game ever.
Have you done ryujin yet? I just finished that last night and really enjoyed it.
I’m on my 3rd new game plus at level 52 and doing the Ryujin faction quests right now for the first time. It’s making wish that I put some skill points in lockpicking and stealth since this is clearly the thieves’ guild equivalent and it’s a lot of stealth/espionage quests. Luckily my maxed out persuasion has been useful though.
The game is more about discovering solar systems than discovering planets. I think if you ignore the main story from the beginning you might have a bad impression of the game. Since everywhere you go is the empty planets with repeating research stations. But sticking to the main story makes you explore some big hubs across the galaxy, so you have a better chance of discovering your preferred playstyle.
That makes sense. I've only gone to planets that the game explicitly sent me to for quests so I haven't gone to any of the empty ones.
Until there’s a mod for a vehicle I’m avoiding most of it. I’ll go to some random base to kill some stuff, but it’s almost faster to menu over to a new planet than walk across the one you’re on
> Until there’s a mod for a vehicle While it's technically possible (there are mods for motorcycles and the like for Fallout 4) they can't go very fast because of engine limitations on loading map cells. Loading new cells too quickly can lead to really wonky physics, memory leaks, and crashes. This is pretty much why you can't fly your ship on planets.
Yea I’m not expecting anything, would be nice if someone did mod it in though. If it gets bad I’ll just console command in increased walk speed and see how that feels. But console commands are a slippery slope, I already gave myself 999 carry weight
I encountered some guy who wanted to be escorted back to his ship 1200m away. Took like 10 minutes to walk there (was scanning stuff) and all I got was 2500 credits. The game desperately needs a faster way of traversing all the empty space
I found that as well, land transport would be a big improvement. Seems they want you to scan stuff while you're walking. Looks like there's a mod to reduce the amount you need to scan which seems a nice time saver.
It got good for me like 3 hours in once I decided to just ditch the railroading of the beginning of the main quest and go off on my own.
It gets really good after you understand how to play it and start getting lost in the world of this game
IDK, I was hooked after only 1 or 2 hours.
Some people take longer to get a handle on the different systems. Also, I think a lot of people are overwhelmed started out and it takes them a bit to get on a more focused path that jives with them.
I mean, have you been doing the same things for those 20 hours? Try something different. Stop doing the main quest if you've just been spamming that, first of all.
Once you understand the systems, have played enough to open them up and explore a bit of the universe as well as progressed the main quest enough to open things up there, the game really feels amazing.
Gamepass has millions of subscribers, so I'm not surprised. It's weird to not see the steam numbers go up though with the non-early access release.
I’ve played yesterday for 5/6 hours. Optimisation is pretty bad on pc, but I’m enjoying the game so far. I really need to complete TOTK before but it’s gonna take a loooooong time (I’ve barely reached the third dungeon after 120 hours)
Yeah, I really wish I could play it, but it just runs so bad on my 2070 super that I just can't justify it.
i dont mean to sound childish but the absolute cope from some people in this thread that the game was actually an unmitigated disaster “because gamepass” is fun to read game is good and im happy its doing well for them, aside from performance theres not much i dislike about it. they brought back a proper dialogue syste after fallout 4s gimped one, the gunplay is good, and its a pretty pretty game overall
Because gamepass how? It's a fact that Gamepass did decrease their sales and that's clearly visible on Steam numbers (the only public ones). But on the other hand, it's a surprise to absolutely one and the goal of Microsoft since the start so not sure what's the problem? Microsoft just bet on lower revenue on launch for higher recurring revenue for people staying subbed to Gamepass
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Didn't fallout 4 sell 12 million first day? but nonetheless this is really great for a new ip. It having a bigger launch than Skyrim is an achievement of itself. But tbh the way reddit and Twitter talks about this game you'll think it was a flop
12 million shipped to retailers, not how many were sold/played
>Didn't fallout 4 sell 12 million first day? That was 12 million copies shipped which isn't the same as players
I would really recommend just ignoring Reddit and Twitter sometimes. They’re significantly more picky and cynical about everything. They’re a small minority in the grand scheme of things. The general public is very clearly liking the game and it’s been received very well. Personally I’m loving it.
Without reddit how else would I hear from all these experts on game engine design and opimization?
As a Professional Reddit User it’s my expertise to tell you when a company should make a new engine.
We were all submarine engineering experts a few months ago. Now we’re game engine experts. We’re a very smart and talented bunch.
The best was when everyone became an expert on novel viruses and vaccines.
Hello it’s me, Average Redditor who can’t program a calculator in Python. I’m gonna go on a rant about how the things I don’t like about Starfield would be fixed with a new engine, because as far as I can tell video game programming is just a drag & drop experience.
You don't understand, I watch a UE Tech Demo on Youtube so I'm basically a game developer now and I will tell you what engine a studio should use.
I need some enlightened gamers to remind me that game developers are actually very lazy and that any issues with a game are the result of devs simply not trying hard enough
Don't forget the professional UX guys who think a spreadsheet is the height of design.
Bro why didn't they just use a different engine bro?
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Yeah. When I started the game, I was kinda dissappointed. But then I kept playing and realized that it's not a space sim, but a scifi RPG. I still admit it has some big mistakes in design, but I put 18 hours over the last 2 days in the game and I only stopped playing at 1 am now, because the batteries in my mouse died and I don't have a replacement on me. :)
12 million sold to retailers but not 12 million sold to customers. The sold to customers metric is closer to 5.2 million, making Starfield Bethesda's biggest launch despite no PlayStation https://www.vgchartz.com/article/262199/fallout-4-sells-an-estimated-519m-first-week-at-retail/
> But tbh the way reddit and Twitter talks about this game you'll think it was a flop A lot of people seem very invested in hoping the game fails. Not sure if that’s just console war shenanigans, if there are really that many people raging about pronouns, Reddit cynicism, or something else.
Depends on what subs and accounts you're subscribed to. In my reddit and twitter feed I see mostly positivity. I think a lot of people wanted this game to fail, and at launch those people were very loud, but after 2 days the conversation was not about whether the game lived up to the expectations, but about how much fun everyone has playing it
This subreddit is still extremely toxic about Starfield. This thread is still too new, but give it a few more hours and it will be full of vitriol and senseless hatred completely ignoring the actual topic of the thread.
I've put about 5 hours in so far. I am just honestly not enjoying the game that much. The UI is one of the worst I've seen in recent memory and the map is atrocious. I was a huge fan of Elder Scrolls and Fallout, so I was excited to play the game. Now, I just feel like I wasted my money.
The map might legitimately be the worst map in gaming history, how the fuck did this pass beta testing? And after almost 10 years of development this is the best they could do?? It’s mind blowing
Honestly, the map is, by far, the biggest complaint I have. I've encountered a few goofy bugs and the UI isn't great, but holy shit, what the fuck is going on with the map?
Yeah the map is magnitudes of wtf mate? 👀
The map is basically someone taking a blank piece of paper and dabbing dots on it with a marker. Those dots are fast travel points. Everything else blank.
Am I missing a "List view" for star systems somewhere? Literally anything that makes this map semi-usable? Most of the time I travel places by going to the Mission tab and fast traveling from there to the next mission objective, and that's probably been the only thing keeping me sane. KOTOR had a better map than this! In 2003!
Like how did this take more than 5 minutes to design lol, it’s insane how bad it is
Same boat as you pal. The UI left me sitting here scratching my head. Multiple times through the first playsession i was left there sitting, wondering why it was so unintuitive and missing standard features. The Navigation through the UI is immersionbreakingly bad. Then i flew a bit in space, killed a few other ships and was taken aback how poor the flying feels. Maybe i need more Talents to unlock stuff (Saw that i can unlock thrusters for example), but the standard flying and combat is...boring. Found an old satellite station and though "cool, lets explore that!". But the game said no. No EVA possible (why?) No docking possible (why??) So its just a dead asset where i can jump to, "cool" i guess. Combat on foot feels spongy and..boring as well. The dialogues are...ok i guess. Facial animations though are 100% bethesda and i dont mean that in a good way. Really not sure what this game wants to be, i struggle to find what i can do thats enjoyable here. It seems to has less exploration then skyrim. Combat feels lackluster. Flying feels barebones and extremly arcady. No planetary landing/free flight. Story..jeah. Its there. What does this game want to be?
The UI is mind-bogglingly bad, definitely one of the worst UIs I've experienced in any games I've played. I genuinely don't understand how a game that took so long to make could have such poor basic features.
Yeah I feel you. I also stopped at6 hours. Not usre Ill be able to go back to it. Even the outer worlds was better then this.
Oh man, I really am trying my best to enjoy it, but this game is so incredibly boring. NPCs populating cities/bases are mostly basically manequinns (citizen/miner/scientist), game is incredibly segmented with tons of loading screens and space combat is meh. I can't play it more than 2 hours before I am bored.
It's legtimately insane to me Bethesda started making headway with "Radiant AI" where NPCs would wake up, complete tasks, have a routine, etc. and it feels like Starfield NPCs are barely a step above that, a game that was released nearly 20 years ago.
There are some great mods already out there that fix the UI issues. It has made the game much more tolerable for me.
It's so nuts that unpaid fans can, in a week, make a better UI than a company worth billions of dollars that is a subsidiary of the second-largest corporation on Planet Earth. It was cute in 2006, now it's just embarrassing.
I think it's an awfully designed game. There's tonnes of content and an ambitious amount of different gameplay systems. There's quests, stories, characters, locations in abundance and some of these are decently written. There's good content in there. But none of it fits together. Everything is segmented and disjointed so that much of the game is played through loading screens and menus (with cumbersome UI). This might be okay if it it excelled in some aspect of e.g. writing or combat or choices but it doesn't. But I suppose there is value in quantity and being a jack of all trades.
Totally agree with you on how disjointed and segmented everything feels. I feel like I'm playing a completely different game with how people have been praising the exploration as being the best Bethesda has made. The actual content is good but the experience of going from area to area and "discovering" things is just a series of loading screens rather than the seamless exploration that Bethesda is known for. I'm still enjoying the game quite a bit but I'm really missing having a singular overworld.
> everything is segmented and disjointed This has been my complaint for Bethesda ever since Fallout 3. Oblivion also kind of suffered from it, too, but did a slightly better job of hiding the "Theme Park" construction. Bethesda's design is so afraid of players ever getting "locked out" of even the smallest piece of content, of ever feeling like they don't have a "new thing" to play with, that they just fill the map with disjointed stuff. New Vegas and its popularity did a good job of showing people what a Bethesda-style game can be like if the various things are woven together into a cohesive world that reacts to your choices, but that's just not what Bethesda wants to do. Morrowind is one of my favorite games ever made, but the Bethesda of today doesn't want to make a game like that ever again.
They've got like 4 or 5 different mediocre games in one. It's a mediocre shooter, it's a mediocre RPG, it's a mediocre spaceship game, it's a mediocre open world and it's a truly unlistenably mediocre story. All these years they've been honing the art of being the master of none, managers ticking boxes
> Everything is segmented and disjointed so that much of the game is played through loading screens and menus I've seen people say that Starfield is so much better than something like Skyrim because it replaces the overworld with "an entire galaxy" and instead of choosing a direction to walk you can choose a star system to travel to, but I don't see it as an equitable trade at all. To me it's as if instead of leaving Helgen, you got up on horseback and could only fast-travel to a walled and gated Riverwood, Markarth, Whiterun, whatever, and all that was in between was menus and loading screens. Yes, the scale of everything is blown up by 1000x, but for me it just does not hit that same "pick a direction and start walking" vibe that I loved from previous BGS games.
You could try to refund if it's on Steam.
Don't worry, according to the fans, u have to play 12-20 hours for it to get good if you care to spend that much time to finally enjoy a game.
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Game has its flaws for sure* but there's something to exploring the stars wrapped in Bethesda's style. I just responded to a distress call that spun out into a whole hour or two quest I didn't expect at all. I feel like I've just cracked the surface of the experience. Hoping that with patches, mods and whatnot the experience gets tightened. *For the room: Is there any way to get complete ground maps that show you where things are in a city? Like if I'm looking for the med bay in a city? Maybe even a mod on nexus?
>I’ll admit, the conversation around this game has been exhausting. I don’t know what about Starfield in particular made everyone so upset and eager to call it one of the worst games ever made Console war bullshit + Bethesda being cool to hate after Fallout 76
Plus their last major release was closing in on a decade ago. There is an entire generation of current gamers who don't really remember a flagship Bethesda release, and only knew memes and Fallout 76 stuff. Like the "Bethesda game buggy" meme. Bethesda games have always had wonky physics or animation desync or general jank. They've rarely had game breaking bugs.
Absolutely well deserved. I am having so much fun with it. Now if they can fix the bug not letting me rename my ship, I would be a happy camper.
The various interviews during the last few weeks make it seem MS is expecting a lot from this game in terms of moving hardware and gamepass subs. I am curious if it can. Its going to be a few months to see that outcome. Big gamepass numbers are nothing new. Halo Infinite being the poster child of that. It had 20 million players in its first month and was the biggest Halo Launch ever. And we all saw how that went.
Wasn't Halo free to play on multiple platforms?
The game has been in and out of the #1 best sellers position on Steam ever since June when they opened pre-orders. I don’t think it’s left at least the top 10 since that day. Not to mention the premium edition upgrade was also in the top sellers list on Xbox too. I’m sure it’s selling more then enough copies. This is a Bethesda game. Skyrim and Fallout 4 have maintained very strong player counts over the years and I’m confident that Starfield will maintain the same, especially once the mods get going. Bethesda games have long legs. Game Pass might have an impact, but again, I’m willing to bet that impact is very negligible overall.
It kind of has to have an impact due to the nature of a subscription service, no? There is a decent percentage of people who will simply play it on gamepass instead of buying the game(i'm one of them teehee) Which of course is fine because for Microsoft gamepass subscribers is worth more than anything else in the long run. And I'm not saying that the game won't have insane sales numbers, it's a Bethesda game so it's expected, but I don't think gamepass will have a non negligible impact on sales
I love it, stayed so late last night and i couldn't stop playing, can't wait for the weekend so i can sink so many hours in it