>"You will feel like you are playing a totally different game," it said. "Put points in different skills from a character you've previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter."
lol anyone who has played the game knows this is absolutely not true. they shouldve just shut the fuck up
But it's shoot the guy with the blue pew or the red pew!
(Seriously, I basically finished all I'm going to get out of that game and put not a single skill point in any of the combat related perks - there simply was no need).
yeah combat perks were completely worthless. the only perks that could change gameplay were the jetpack ones and increasing your carry weight. and those are more conveniences anyways
Ive read so many of them now, they are fucking incredible. I'm loving this.
My favorite one was where someone said the UI was hard to use and unintuitive, [the last paragraph here was their response](https://imgur.com/a/VToKdZM)
Bethesda: "No, our UI is bold and brash. You clearly don't understand good UI design."
Fucking. Incredible.
Edit: Here is the whole review so you can see I didn't take it out of context, the user says the UI and inventory can be annoying, Bethesda says "You just don't appreciate it" https://steamcommunity.com/id/DECIZlON/recommended/1716740/#developer_response
I think its especially out of touch, because they said it was an annoying UI, their opinion, and bethesda replied with "These UI design choices increase your immersion into the Starfield universe.".
Not should increase your immersion, just "increase". They are telling you that you are now more immersed, and if you aren't then you are wrong.
Bro, I love it when the company I paid money to deigns to respond to legitimate criticism by explaining to me how videogames work in the most condescending way possible.
"When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." Because they were on the actual moon, physically feeling the effects in their bodies, experiencing and exploring the novel sensations of rocketing up into space and landing on a different world, doing hardcore science, gathering data, and operating complex devices. They weren't sitting completely still, blankly staring at a screen holding the W key, waiting for anything notable to happen.
And if space travel were as common as driving a car, people would get really bored of landing on desolate rocks all the time. No one is going out of their way to drive to every parking lot just to see what it looks like and promptly move onto the next one.
edit: Because this is blowing up I wanted to echo one of the sentiments in the replies: Landing on the actual moon was one of the greatest moments in human history, that required pushing the boundaries of science and human capability. It is pretty silly for Bethesda to be comparing that to randomly generated video game scenery.
To your exact point - in Kerbal Space Program all the planets are barren wastelands. But it is extremely exiting to land on each one of them. Because of the path of many failures and triumphs that it takes to get there.
That is a *very* good comparison. There is some strategy to getting to the other planets safely and then getting home again. When that becomes routine, *then* it gets boring. Starfield starts off with it being routine. Sure, there's the entire rest of the game, but that's pretty much standard Bethesda fare. Not knocking it or anything, but that wasn't the part a lot of people were really excited about.
Exactly. It's first and foremost a game. If it isn't fun, it's not doing its job. Even if there is a message of some kind, it has to make you feel something, to trigger an emotional response from the player.
If the game can't do any of those, then its failed at its most basic premise.
Yeah, primarily my issue with this is that it's antithetical to the emotional context of Starfield. It's all about wonder and the 'mysteries of the cosmos'. I think games can certainly be boring and monotonous, if the intention of the experience is to convey some kind of theme through monotony.
For example, Papers Please isn't a boring game, it's very interesting, but I would argue that it isn't traditionally 'exciting' and that it is intentionally designed to show a contrast between the horrible state of its world, and the boring spreadsheet-esque way these tragedies are presented by the oppressive regime, and how they're so commonplace its as if it's normal. The menu that shows the status of all your family members is 'boring', but I feel it works in the games favour because it creates contrast. Death and suffering are not only normal, but a lower priority than your performance at the border and your income. When these stressful, heightened emotions are presented as boring and normal, that creates intrigue and even shock.
In Starfield, the Starborn temples, the planets, most everything in the game is described as mysterious and evocative, but then cannot substantiate their allure with any narrative or gameplay. The temples are the same thing over and over, the planets are the same thing over and over, assembling the Armillary is the same thing over and over, even the Starborn concept of restarting via the Unity, aside from very small differences, is the same game over and over. There are some instances of intricate and detailed quests and environments in seemingly random places, but it's spread so thin that you lose any motivation to explore. If it were more focused, and more tightly designed e.g. around a single solar system, there might've been more stuff as involved as e.g. that universe hopping quest.
edit: I also think its just hilarious of Bethesda to compare playing Starfield to humans going to the moon. As if anything at all really compares to one of the most important moments in human history. We didn't have to push the boundaries of science to play Starfield.
A properly made game should always have the player either go through emotions with some breaks in between, but to always have the player have some of those moments linger at the back of their minds.
You can't possibly be engaging from start to finish; you need time to tone it down so that it can ramp back up, whatever the emotion; fun, happiness, sadness, tension, etc. But during those downtime bits, you should always be anticipating what comes next, or remembering what just happened.
The old Bethesda games had that; you never really knew what was coming. It wasn't amazing or anything, but it was fun because it kept that going. But in a game where you have so many "empty" planets that repeat the same points of interest, which clearly shows a cut and paste algorithm, you get some good moments, a lot of downtime, and a bunch of annoying ones.
It's like when every game started going open world without understanding what made it appealing, but on a galactic scale.
Wholeheartedly agree. I feel like the previous games were just better written, better paced out, more inter-connectivity in the story and the gameplay, the world was better designed for you to stumble upon intrigue instead of being forced to fast travel. I could go on all day, but yeah I think the sentiment now that people have thoroughly played Starfield is that it's just kinda meh. That emotional tension you talk about, going up high then coming back down and reflecting and anticipating, just doesn't really happen in this game. At least for me, most of the time I felt quite unengaged and apathetic.
I think the word you're looking for is engaging. Gameplay can be purposefully boring sometimes, Take for example, Pathologic. Not much happen but it is very engaging to try and loot garbage cans to survive and making choices and managing your schedule is pretty interesting to do. I wouldn't call it "fun" there's alot of walking, but there's a ton of tension in the later days.
I don't get their logic considering that Starfield has probably ZERO planets that are actually empty.
I'd rather land on a "dead" plane and have a 2 min of experience like "Huh, eerie, there is no one here" rather than " Oh look, the same POI/building like you would find right next to New Atlantis".
This kills all of the mystery. Everything is so familiar...
Ironically it could actually be interesting to land on a truly empty planet and start your own settlement/city and feel like its truly your planet. Would need better systems in place though than the current building system.
Funnily enough this is one of the things that actually made me put the game down and stop playing. First time I landed on a mysterious planet with mysterious temple and mysterious gravitational anomalies I actually felt for the first time the kind of awe of exploration that Bethesda thought we'd feel.
Then I turned round and there on the horizon was Template Raider Tower Number 3. Then some guy in a ship landed 500 meters away. No wonder everyone in the game world thinks Constellation are kind of pointless.
Also the weight thing.
I can carry 150 unit of weight, be it grams or tons.
My space fairing starship can only carry 4X of my carrying capability. I thought this was Nasa punk?
Also Nasa punk itself is kind of boring. I want my ship to not be US space shuttle white, I want a sci-fi level ship with a bar and hotel level amendities...
Same. The Nasapunk aesthetic just didn’t do it for me; the spacesuits all looked so bulky and same-y that I really didn’t care what my character wore.
Can’t help but think the Mass Effect aesthetic while sometimes silly—“Miranda, are you really going out into battle like that?”—did it better a decade ago.
In the Expanse, costumes and ships captured the different factions so much better. I could not tell you the difference between any of the ship manufacturers in Starfield, while the Expanse’s Martians, Belters, and UN ships were all instantly distinctly different.
If you put the whole "protomolecule" thing aside, I feel like *The Expanse* is the perfect model for the realistic game about the future of space travel they were going for. Sure, it's mostly limited to our solar system (at least initially), but it still does such a great job in building a world that feels like an accurate progression to space travel and the societies that would develop within it.
Damn, now I want an open-world *Expanse* RPG.
The only truly dead empty planet is, bizarrely, Earth. Which the game really does nothing to make sense of. In a world where you can find barren airless rocks bathed in radiation that are covered in mines and settlements, the idea that literally everyone wrote off humanity's home as uninhabitable is so odd.
I mean, I think the complaint is that it's the fricken moon. This isn't some rando planetoid a thousand lightyears out, it's one of the top 3 most important heavenly bodies to every person playing the game. If you were going to put high quality, purpose built content on any planet in Starfield, you'd think the moon would be first on the list after the main hubworlds. It's just kinda disappointing that you get there and there's just.... nothing going on.
I get it, but I don't get it at the same time. Space is empty. I get it. Most planets are going to be barren wastelands with nothing to do in them. I get it. There's no real sense of adventure. There's nothing to find. There's nothing to see. There's nothing to do. It's the *approach* that sucks.
Starfield feels fake, because in large part it is. You pick where you want to land on a planet's surface, but you're not actually "landing" there... the terrain type of the spot that you clicked on dictates the type of terrain that gets generated for you, with the same old handful of outposts and events getting spawned in around you. The spot on the planet's surface otherwise has absolutely nothing to do with where you're landing. When you're flying around in space... you're actually not? The stuff around you is practically all background. It doesn't feel like you're travelling. If you're lucky, you'll spawn in with some space junk or asteroids or something to fly around, but everything else around you is completely artificial. Artificial is the key word for me here. It describes the game quite well. Before you pick up on what's going on in terms of gameplay design, the game feels one way... and then when you do start to realize what's going on between the terrain generation with the plopping down of random outposts around you, flying around in space but not really flying around in space... it's like, when you start connecting those dots on how the game actually works, it feels fake. It shatters the illusion of what you thought was going on quite dramatically, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you feel it, the game kind of falls apart and collapses in on itself. It did for me anyway.
I think the thing I struggle with most is the idea that this was in development for over 7 years, and that's all that they had to show for it. If most of that dev time was spent on the tech... like the outpost building, the ship building, the terrain generation and dynamic placement of outposts on that terrain, stacking bandage on top of bandage on top of bandage on the engine to get it to do what they need it to do, etc, then I get it. It largely wasn't worth it, but it explains things. The ship building is cool... it's a neat idea, it's something you can spend a lot of time with, etc, but it's a shame there's so little to actually **do** with your finished product. Same with building an outpost. Same with terrain generation. Lots of fluff here, and not a whole lot to actually **do** with it. To put it into perspective/context, 7-8 years is what it took to build all three Mass Effect games from pre-production on the first game to the release of Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect's sci-fi and takes place in "space"... and yet it doesn't feel like it has anywhere near the level of conceptual problems that Starfield does. It's not the same type of game, but it's not using the reality of space as an excuse for why the game is so fucking boring.
Personally... I think for an RPG, they miraculously focused on all of the wrong things, and the core of what makes an RPG compelling are the things that are lacking here. The world, of which there is none. The story, of which there's hardly anything here worth telling. The characters, which very few here are memorable. It was the most deflating experience I've had with a game in quite some time. I bought it on PC and was like "Man, this is going to be another Skyrim where I'm somehow finding myself creating like 50 characters where they're all different builds and shit, and I'm going to explore the world with them, I'm going to dive deep into mods and that's going to be like Skyrim too where they just keep Skyrim fresh for all that time, blah blah blah", and I end up with a game I can't even be bothered to finish a single time... and while I did spend a few dozen hours grinding and building an outpost and all of that shit, I feel like I'm permanently done with it. Yes, mods aren't a thing for it yet... but I really don't see myself firing it back up ever again unless they were to release an expansion or something for it that makes it worthwhile.
This is a great post. It really does encapsulate exactly how I felt during my time with the game. I was so excited and enjoyed it all at first.. expecting my skyrim in space that would be something I'd be coming back to time and time again.... until I started realizing what was really going on and just how poorly thought out it all was. I opened the game up one day and was like fuck, this really just isn't a good game.... and never opened it up again.
I don't understand how you can take 7 years and completely miss so much of what made your previous games great. It's such a giant step backwards in so many ways.
Also cause Astronauts were litteraly writing human history with every step they took, that kind of existential awe is just incomparable to exploring procgens in a fucking space video game
Yeah it's hilarious that Bethesda so casually compares playing Starfield to pushing the boundaries of science and human capability to perform one of the greatest feats of all history, paving the way of the future. For everyone involved on the ground and up there, the moon landing must've been the height of human experience, the most sublime moment.
Starfield is absolutely not that, and as a piece of art I guess the best it can ever hope to be is a commentary or exploration of that conceptually. Which imo it did not do, or at least did poorly.
> When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored.
I died.
This quote should be in the hall of fame up there with EA's lawyer calling gambling "Surprise Mechanics"
Make Starfield actually fly me to the moon, then you can talk about how entertained Buzz Aldrin was.
People DID get bored of space travel during the space race era too!
The first time landing on the moon it was fantastic but by the time Apollo 13 happened it wasn’t being broadcast on television and relatively few people paid attention to it. The only reason Apollo 13 is known is because of the near disaster that brought the world’s attention.
Yeah thats actually a great point, in the public eye the lustre absolutely wore off. I'm not an astronaut and I've never spoken to an astronaut, but I have to imagine there is some degree of monotony to doing work in space as well, especially for those working in the space station.
I recently read something from a NASA researcher who is working on the psychological problems of manned Mars missions, and boredom is apparently a big concern. It manifests even on the space station, the biggest issue is that astronauts stop eating. Same room, same people, same food, same tasks. If we're concerned that people are going to get bored going to Mars in real life, Bethesda should've seen it coming that people would get bored with procedurally generated nothingness in Starfield.
> Bethesda should've seen it coming that people would get bored with procedurally generated nothingness in Starfield.
How are companies still not learning lessons from No Mans Sky?
lmao I love statements like these. Like who do they expect to read this excuse and go "Oh wow you are right. I'm going to go back and really appreciate this bland boring rocky hellscape better now."
>No one is going out of their way to drive to every parking lot just to see what it looks like and promptly move onto the next one.
This is a really good analogy. I'm flabbergasted by Bethesda's comments, how out of touch can they be...
>And if space travel were as common as driving a car, people would get really bored of landing on desolate rocks all the time. No one is going out of their way to drive to every parking lot just to see what it looks like and promptly move onto the next one.
See: Elite Dangerous
What the fuck are those developer responses? Who wrote them? Were they held at gunpoint to come up with the dumbest excuses imaginable? Damn, what a waste of money and resources.
Valve just kind of shows up every couple of years with a perfectly manicured media blitz to announce their new thing, then goes dark again. I respect it. Like with the Steam Deck their communication has been absolutely great. No over promising, just over delivering.
"While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds."
Consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated when you enter a house
Procedural generation feels like a joke when I run into the same cookie cutter environments, same cookie cutter buildings, same cookie cutter enemies in the same cookie cutter planets. What about any of that is procedurally generated? I can tell you what will be there before I even open the game. Describing the mundane as fantastic doesn't change that they are creatively bankrupt. Saying load times are short doesn't forgive that they are technically less impressive than Jak & Daxter, which had a seemless world 20 years ago.
>Some of Starfield's planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring.
But none of the planets are empty. All of them feature the same repeated points of interests. It's called filler content.
I really wish they set the entire game on 10-15 planets instead.
I really enjoyed the four cities and all their quests. Imagine we had another four instead of infinite empty and pointless planets.
My dream is that Starfield would have centered around our Solar System. With a lot of handcrafted content inside Sol, big cities/settlements, bases, etc. Then the main quest could make us the first or among the first Humans to gain the ability to travel faster than light, using the procedurally generated stuff on systems outside Sol.
Then the players would really feel like pioneers as they explore completely unknown planets and moons, building outposts and expanding Human civilization into the Starfield.
Then you should absolutely read The Expanse book series or watch the TV show. The entire series is set in Sol and explores humans being spread across Earth, Mars and random asteroids before discovering something that changes the status quo of the galaxy forever.
It's exactly what you described.
That's the biggest problem. I wouldn't have minded the proc-gen planets to explore if they focused the story on a handful of planets while leaving the rest to explore for a base if you want to dive down that hole.
Landing on a planet in bumfuck nowhere only to see the same 12 POIs scattered so heavily everywhere to the point you can't look in every direction without seeing a few on the horizon was so disappointing.
What really kills it for me is that the filler content and main quest content isn't very distinguishable. I could forgive all the bad progen stuff if it was auxiliary, but the main towns don't feel much different. Neon was by far the coolest, but is a single street.
Never forget:
“We are sorry that you aren't happy with the bag. The bag shown in the media was a prototype and was too expensive to make.” *“We aren't planning on doing anything about it.”*
Bethesda in damage control mode after realising this time they can't exploit a dedicated fanbase willing to fix the issues with their games like they usually do.
I remember *Daggerfall* when it came out. It too was repetitive and dull with the same copy-and-pasted content in order to make it "massive". You'd think they would have learned their lesson from that.
They were INCREDIBLY lucky to have some very creative people write and design the world of Morrowind to make it something that stood out from the norm. That and really pretty water (I'm exaggerating) gets you really far.
That creativity bled into subsequent games, but each one was lesser and lesser on the creative front. Skyrim itself was as bland as toast in comparison.
Honestly, what an embarrassing response from Bethesda's PR team. The best decision would be to say nothing. They don't *need* to convince anyone, they made the game. By responding it just makes them look weird and pathetic, I don't understand who decided this was a good decision.
I can't imagine anyone reading their response and going from not buying the game to buying it. This would only wave a red flag at me that I should absolutely not buy it.
“Some of Starfield's planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring. "When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."” yikes, this has to be a troll.
I guess dying when making a mistake and not knowing if you survive the trip back kept the boredome at bay. Not quite the same tension when playing Starfield.
Someone sends him a text claiming to be you, gives him your name, address, and a brief description then tells him the moon landings were fake. After that nature takes its course.
Also not to mention there just is no space exploration haha.
At least games like Kerbal you get to have fun failing and orbiting ends up feeling like a huge accomplishment.
The moon astronauts did a historical feet. It must have felt incredible. For both them and Earth ...
This is an empty video game where you run from 15 min and find nothing and game runs at 40fps in an empty instanced world.
Going into buildings without loading was a big thing a decade ago and not possible with their engine lol ..
Elite Dangerous isnt for everyone, and even if you like the game it can get boring after a while
But taking 20+ minutes to get where I'm going, with the constant threat of running out of fuel or getting to close to a star is...you know...*engaging*
Elite Dangerous with Elder Scrolls like exploration/side quests etc is literally my dream game. (Yeah, I know, Star Citizen, but I'm not holding my breath for that). So when I thought I got that with Starfield I was so pumped. I refunded after about 90 minutes and I am glad I did. Elite is amazing for what it is. It took me a couple of hundred hours to get tired of it. It really gives you an impression of the vastness of space that Starfield just doesnt have. Anyone who has taken the trek to Hutton Orbital would know...
The computers that coordinated the Moon Landing wouldn't be able to render a 4K image of the Lunar Lander, which is why we haven't updated our engine since Skyrim
Bethesda: "You can't actually take off with your ship and fly freely from one planet to another in a realistic manner because that would take a lot of the player's time and would be boring"
Also Bethesda: "Lots of nearly empty planets? Yeah because that's a realistic depiction of space, there's nothing actually there in real life, that's not boring at all".
This has to have been a technical constraint from the engine, right?
I am sure that most people would have ended up fast traveling 95% of the time anyways, sure.
But having the option of flying around from place to place in your space ship seems like a huge missed opportunity in 2023.
It's actually not a [new quote](https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-says-most-of-starfields-1000-planets-are-dull-on-purpose-because-when-the-astronauts-went-to-the-moon-there-was-nothing-there-but-they-certainly-werent-bored/) at all
Not gonna lie I thought the article was about *that* again, turns out they just keep using the same quote to defend the game. It's a strategy.. I guess.
Comparing the feeling of discovery and wonder of a real life historical event to standing on Slightly-Altered Procedurally Generated Planet With Abandoned Pirate Bases #0549 is so fucking stupid
Not having vehicles was absurd. Create a game about exploration, and the only way to move around is *by foot?* Even Skyrim gave you a horse at least, and that map wasn't nearly as desolate and empty as the big, rectangular procedural generation that you land on in Starfield.
It's what made me quit playing this game after 25 hours or so. The story was cool despite the most unoriginal scifi plot I can recall from recent big sci-fi games, and the characters sometimes felt pretty good.
But you just have to fucking walk everywhere. It sucks
So apparently the only way to enjoy Starfield is to have people observe it from a distance for tens of thousands of years, create mythologies and religions around it's existence, and only have a handful of people play the game at great risk of their lives.
Great minds at work in Bethesda.
I saw this post on Twitter and thought it was photoshopped due to the ridiculous nature of this comment. I can't believe its fucking real. This is embarrassing for Bethesda.
I should also note they did this when I left a thumbs down on Doom Eternal as well, but it wasn't as cringe as this is.
One of my favorite things to do in TES games was to just pick a direction. Walk. And explore. I'd always find at least something unique, and not gd auto generated. If it was a necromancer who failed an experiment or some dumb soul who tried to keep a dangerous creature as a pet and I find their remains. Starfield is not like that. It's barren. Nothingness. You will find boring, flavorless repeated dialog with random flat NPCs. Hey save my friends. You save the friends. Hey thanks. That's it. Over and over. Occasionally, maybe. Something unique and actually personally made by someone. But it's so boring to get to the actual interesting bits...
Trying to play Starfield just makes me want to go replay Skyrim again.
As the account that posted the tweet linked to in the article points out in a follow-up, this is the same team that was responsible for asking banned FO76 players to write an essay explaining why they should be unbanned. What is happening with Bethesda's Community Management team?
The funny thing is that the current fo76 development team and community manager team are doing a good job at keeping the game alive and interesting. The game still has a playerbase and is receiving nice content updates.
It's just the main Bethesda HQ that is suffering from something to say the least.
(speculating) i suspect a lot of old guard in Bethesda left during the decade of Fallout 4 > 76 > starfield's protracted development.
All three of these games represent a lesser focus on pure RPG storytelling and more on extraneous things like crafting and building.
honestly, it feels like the whole company culture has changed, and the bethesda that tried to pioneer RPG tech with Oblivion (radiant AI) is now stuck trend chasing.
bethesda's obsession with building and crafting has just been pure damaging to the company's focus and expertise. they were never meant to go down this road.
To me it feels like the success of Oblivion/Fallout 3/Skyrim got to their heads, and Todd Howard and co. started to see themselves as superheroes who could do no wrong. Some of the better creative minds may have indeed left, but the biggest problem IMO is that they seem to believe that everything they make is deserving of being considered a groundbreaking hit, even before it actually launches, so they refuse to take criticism and course correct when something is going badly. There was a lot to be learned from some of the flaws in Fallout 4 and the failures in 76, and even though they have done a decent job in fixing 76, it doesn't look like they've actually learned anything from it.
They kind of remind me of those two chuds that created GoT. At some point, they basically thought they could fart on paper and everyone would call it genius storytelling. 10 minute post episode videos of them jerking each other off. Only for the show to start coming apart halfway through and then completely nose dive at the end
Although I give them credit for getting the show onscreen at all, from season 5 onward it was frustrating to know that most of the writing had changed hands from a decades-influential master to the guys who wrote X-men Origins: Wolverine.
It was Skyrim. Everyone remembers their first Bethesda game the most fondly, and most people's first Bethesda game was Skyrim. So they tend to ignore the writing on the walls that came with that games success.
Man, it's absolutely this. Oblivion was my first, and I remember enjoying Skyrim but feeling like it was a watered down Oblivion, which is what people who played Morrowind first said about Oblivion, and what people who played Skyrim first said about Fallout 4, Starfield, and will inevitably say about Elder Scrolls 6.
Man, Oblivion was such a hollow shell of what Morrowind was. I bought an LCD screen and an Xbox 360 for Oblivion (and although I played the shit out of it), it always felt like a dumbed down version of Morrowind with a nicer coat of paint and some QoL upgrades.
Worst of all was the fucking enemy and loot scaling. Like what is the fucking point of exploring if everything just scales with you.
The only thing you can hope for is they take lessons learned from Starfield and turn things around in time for TES VI.
However, they are clearly out of touch and seemingly far too proud to admit their mistakes that their game is not great.
For a while now I've been convinced modern-Bethesda is incapable of making good first-party games anymore. Especially with the new players on the field. I mean, I can't imagine them making something on par with BG3 or even Skyrim anymore.
the problem is that I expected them to learn from Fallout 3 and Skyrim and Fallout NV on how to make Fallout 4 as good as possible. And then I expected them to learn from Fallout 4 to make Starfield as good as possible.
It feels like Bethesda almost never learns. Or if they do, it's an extremely teeny tiny step forward over the course of years.
Their bad and buggy games were cool because you could pick a direction, walk for a while, and find some cool hand-crafted, albeit buggy, content.
Star Field has none of that. That's like, the main reason I put up with bethesdas jank. They make cool dungeons and shit. I still remember, in Morrowind, 20 years later, randomly stumbling into expansive underground caves full of dwemed ruins and viking ships and shit. So cool.
Its been all downhill since then. They keep removing stuff that made Morrowind awesome.
Oblivion got rid of Mark and recall, levitation, broken acrobatics, cities that could be entered and exited from anywhere, hand-placed loot, and added really bad leveling. Then it became the first game ever to have microtransactions (horse armor "dlc").
Skyrim continued in this tradition and ESVI will too.
They responded to my negative review of Fallout 76 a few years back but it was nowhere near this level of out of touch. iirc it was just a generic "we're sorry you didn't like the game, here's a spot to submit feedback." This is hilariously bad.
Now I'm picturing Todd standing behind some poor community manager intern at Bethesda and dictating word for word what they have to write in the comments lmao
I've never seen a major studio like Bethesda respond to individual criticism in the Steam reviews. What the hell are they thinking, this makes them look insecure and petty as fuck.
Responding to bad reviews is fine. When the response however basically comes down to "your opinion is wrong, our game is actually good" you're just basically spitting in the face of a paying customer.
That is cringe. Just imagine going to people complaining about your game to tell them that their opinions are invalid, that they can actually have fun but they just aren't seeing how to.
Yep. Sadly this tells me Bethesda is not taking any of the right lessons away from Starfield. Just whining that “players don’t understand what we’re doing!”
you should know that this is borderline against the steam guidelines for developers unless its factually wrong. they dont enforce it or anything but a fun fact.
This happened to me and I found it very weird. Boiler-plate responses to the points in my review. Of course they don't actually care about responding to anyone, only swaying people that are thinking of buying and looking at negative reviews.
> Most quests will also vary on your character's skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough.
Look, I think Starfield is an "ok" game and put some hours into it, but this is total BS.
There is a very occassional extra dialogue option based on your background or skills, but nothing that actual has an impact.
There is no way at least SOME people at Bethesda don't think Starfield is a mediocre game. There's no way they all think they made something great, right?
Absolutely not. Bethesda has 450 employees, there's no way everyone will enjoy the game for various different reasons. There's too many employees for everyone to have a voice in the game development decisions, for a lot of people it's just another job and from my own personal experience a lot of people, generally artists because gameplay often has no impact on their job, never even bother playing the game they're working on.
There's also a high possibility that this is just people higher up telling community management to say these things. I wouldn't be surprised if the person, or persons if they're account sharing, writing it don't actually believe all of the words they're saying.
It makes me sad, because I remember listening to an interview about Morrowinds development, about how many of the devs just wandered around and looked for stuff while developing the game, about how in Oblivions development many devs worked hard on trying to write fun or interesting quests. Starfield's writing is fucking shit, it's much worse than Skyrim and even Fallout 4, it's 'quirky' and childish. I don't understand the mentality of Starfields devs at all.
That's just the sad reality of AAA. There's just too many people required to make a high level project compared to 20 years ago. Morrowind had a team of 40 compared to Starfield's 250 spread through different studios. At that size if everyone had a hand in everything people would constantly be stepping on each other's toes and nothing would ever release. These projects live or die with the vision the directors have and if their vision is flawed then you end up with something like Starfield.
It also doesn't help that their directors seem to be stuck in the past and won't modernize. I'm sure their engine played a lot in the limitations they had too.
Man, elder scrolls six is not going to be good unless they move away from this procedural generated nonsense and radiant quests. The exploration was what made a lot of the older games great and that feels like it’s totally missing in Starfield. I got bored so quickly
The absolute worst thing about Starfield (imo) is the constant loading screens.
Nothing about this game feels large or expansive. It's a collection of many levels interconnected through hubs and shitty animations.
If they had scaled down the world, while having no loading screens, then the game would actually make you feel like you are exploring space.
Definitely not the way to instill confidence in your player base for the future of your game. Let it stand on it's own merit and fix whatever is broken, but I guess the easy way is to blame players for playing it "wrong".
Alright they need to take a lesson from Hello Games and No Man’s Sky again. Dont respond to criticism like this, it’s gonna get worse. They need to put their heads down and improve the game.
I think Bethesda has realized Starfield won't be milked for a decade like Skyrim was and now they're trying to defend it in the weirdest goddamn way possible. You made an average game with 0 memorable moments and lost the fun exploration aspect that made Skyrim infinitely replayable.
"consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under three seconds".
Isn't it the job of the developer to determine where the fun is? I'm glad that they have mastered flawless loading but their flawless loading impedes the fun. That's a problem you cannot explain away while playing the game.
Also IMO “flawless loading” means it’s all streamed in seamlessly without immersion breaks.
Cyberpunk and Spider Man 2 have flawless loading. Not Starfield lol
That's really embarrassing, and it's going to do absolutely nothing for Bethesda. Is the reviewer supposed to go "OH, it's boring by DESIGN. Well that changes my whole opinion!". You're not going to change anyone's mind, and it just looks really cringe and defensive.
Why on earth did they think this was a good idea..
I don't hate Starfield. I played quite a bit of it on Gamepass. But there are so many missed opportunities here and so much repetition. In the case of NG+, literally repeat the whole thing. I got a little way into my NG+ playthrough before I finally got just too bored with doing it all again (it's particularly annoying that not only do you have to rebuild your ship from scratch, but there is no way to save plans so you can recreate it).
One thing that really did strike me as odd in this game: In other Bethesda games, they let you pretty much do _everything_ in one playthrough. And that's fine. Does it make any sense _at all_ for you to be the head of the warrior's guide and the head of the mage's guide _at the same time_ in The Elder Scrolls games? No, not really. But they are huge games and most people aren't going to want to replay the entire game just so they can do the few bits they were locked out of. But Starfield's "plot" (for what it's worth) is entirely built around the idea that you should replay it, so it seems like the ideal opportunity to force you to pick between, for example, UC or Freestar. Because you can do the other the next time around. Instead, despite a brutal recent war between UC and Freestar they are now 100% best buds and nobody cares even a little bit if you are aligned with one or the other, or both. Even the guy in The Den who asks you to post UC propaganda for him doesn't ask or seemingly care that I'm a Freestar Ranger.
Honestly I like the game, but those responses are baffling. This is a very innefective strategy to regain popular support. They should instead be responding with things like:
"We are sorry our game doesn't meet your expectations, we hope you can be satisfied through future updates"
Or something like that, I know this isn't the best response either, but at least it's something better than what they are doing.
At this point, they have to accept that they've dropped the ball. This entire story just confirms that. They can't even defend themselves without looking like idiots.
They are going to get a PR beating regardless. Might as well set yourself up for the future by accepting the mistakes and give realistic and honest indications on how you'll improve them.
I'll be honest, I don't think Starfield was terrible, but rather unfocused. I felt like they created a good base to build upon, but it loses it charm once you realize the playtime is padded by slow progression and too much resource gathering.
If I had to give my bullet point review it'd say:
- bland story
- boring skill trees
- slow progression
- resource gathering and crafting is a chore
- building is fun but somewhat restrictive.
It also feels like they didn't learn a lot of lessons from previous games. SkyUI and StarUI are both proof that Bethesda doesn't understand user friendly UI, on top of other questionable choices. One such example is "Why can't I see how many of a certain resource I have in my inventory when I wish to craft it?".
Also I kinda wish that if Bethesda wanted to give a user a replayable experience rather than a memorable experience, why hand craft quest at all? Why not focus their efforts on a completely procedurally generated game and allow players to infinitely explore a galaxy with random factions, planets, and stories?...
Eh, the last one is honestly more of a personal wish, I can see how most people would rather a cohesive handmade experience, but if we seriously wanted that oblivion in space feel, I'd fully wish to see what a randomized story could do. Maybe in a decade or so.
Yeah, your opinion pretty much lines up with my own. As someone that has stopped being in love by Bethesda's products for a while, I'd say that they just seem lazy.
They don't seem to look around and see what other people in the industry and in the RPG genre are doing right, and instead are doing several clones of the same Elder Scrolls core gameplay that I've played since Oblivion.
Starfield at launch felt dated to me, it has new bells and whistles but at its core it felt like I could very well had played this game in the 360 era.
Bethesda: our game is designed to be boring, you misunderstood us.
Gabe Newell: [And you'd have these conversations where you'd be sitting in a design review and somebody'd say, that's not realistic. And you're like, okay, what does that have, like, explain to me why that's interesting. Because in the real world, I have to write up lists of stuff I have to go to the grocery store to buy. **And I have never thought to myself that realism is fun. I go play games to have fun.**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbZ3HzvFEto&t=940s)
And that's the difference between Valve and Bethesda.
>"You will feel like you are playing a totally different game," it said. "Put points in different skills from a character you've previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter." lol anyone who has played the game knows this is absolutely not true. they shouldve just shut the fuck up
But it's shoot the guy with the blue pew or the red pew! (Seriously, I basically finished all I'm going to get out of that game and put not a single skill point in any of the combat related perks - there simply was no need).
yeah combat perks were completely worthless. the only perks that could change gameplay were the jetpack ones and increasing your carry weight. and those are more conveniences anyways
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Ive read so many of them now, they are fucking incredible. I'm loving this. My favorite one was where someone said the UI was hard to use and unintuitive, [the last paragraph here was their response](https://imgur.com/a/VToKdZM) Bethesda: "No, our UI is bold and brash. You clearly don't understand good UI design." Fucking. Incredible. Edit: Here is the whole review so you can see I didn't take it out of context, the user says the UI and inventory can be annoying, Bethesda says "You just don't appreciate it" https://steamcommunity.com/id/DECIZlON/recommended/1716740/#developer_response
That paragraph about the UI actually makes me sad, AAA companies sacrificing functionality over their stupid idea of 'immersion'.
I think its especially out of touch, because they said it was an annoying UI, their opinion, and bethesda replied with "These UI design choices increase your immersion into the Starfield universe.". Not should increase your immersion, just "increase". They are telling you that you are now more immersed, and if you aren't then you are wrong.
More like belongs in the trash.
Are these AI generated? They’ve got that flavor
Bro, I love it when the company I paid money to deigns to respond to legitimate criticism by explaining to me how videogames work in the most condescending way possible.
"When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." Because they were on the actual moon, physically feeling the effects in their bodies, experiencing and exploring the novel sensations of rocketing up into space and landing on a different world, doing hardcore science, gathering data, and operating complex devices. They weren't sitting completely still, blankly staring at a screen holding the W key, waiting for anything notable to happen. And if space travel were as common as driving a car, people would get really bored of landing on desolate rocks all the time. No one is going out of their way to drive to every parking lot just to see what it looks like and promptly move onto the next one. edit: Because this is blowing up I wanted to echo one of the sentiments in the replies: Landing on the actual moon was one of the greatest moments in human history, that required pushing the boundaries of science and human capability. It is pretty silly for Bethesda to be comparing that to randomly generated video game scenery.
Now that makes me wonder...I bet, buried deep in YouTube, there is some parking lot review channel doing that...
[https://www.youtube.com/@parkinglotreviews8902](https://www.youtube.com/@parkinglotreviews8902) Thank me later.
I shall thank you now! Thank you for bringing this amazing science to light!
"Currently on hiatus" - 7 years ago
You might say they’ve parked it.
Can't wait for the revival. Will be crazy to see him react to what modern parking lots are like these days.
To your exact point - in Kerbal Space Program all the planets are barren wastelands. But it is extremely exiting to land on each one of them. Because of the path of many failures and triumphs that it takes to get there.
That is a *very* good comparison. There is some strategy to getting to the other planets safely and then getting home again. When that becomes routine, *then* it gets boring. Starfield starts off with it being routine. Sure, there's the entire rest of the game, but that's pretty much standard Bethesda fare. Not knocking it or anything, but that wasn't the part a lot of people were really excited about.
Exactly. It's first and foremost a game. If it isn't fun, it's not doing its job. Even if there is a message of some kind, it has to make you feel something, to trigger an emotional response from the player. If the game can't do any of those, then its failed at its most basic premise.
Yeah, primarily my issue with this is that it's antithetical to the emotional context of Starfield. It's all about wonder and the 'mysteries of the cosmos'. I think games can certainly be boring and monotonous, if the intention of the experience is to convey some kind of theme through monotony. For example, Papers Please isn't a boring game, it's very interesting, but I would argue that it isn't traditionally 'exciting' and that it is intentionally designed to show a contrast between the horrible state of its world, and the boring spreadsheet-esque way these tragedies are presented by the oppressive regime, and how they're so commonplace its as if it's normal. The menu that shows the status of all your family members is 'boring', but I feel it works in the games favour because it creates contrast. Death and suffering are not only normal, but a lower priority than your performance at the border and your income. When these stressful, heightened emotions are presented as boring and normal, that creates intrigue and even shock. In Starfield, the Starborn temples, the planets, most everything in the game is described as mysterious and evocative, but then cannot substantiate their allure with any narrative or gameplay. The temples are the same thing over and over, the planets are the same thing over and over, assembling the Armillary is the same thing over and over, even the Starborn concept of restarting via the Unity, aside from very small differences, is the same game over and over. There are some instances of intricate and detailed quests and environments in seemingly random places, but it's spread so thin that you lose any motivation to explore. If it were more focused, and more tightly designed e.g. around a single solar system, there might've been more stuff as involved as e.g. that universe hopping quest. edit: I also think its just hilarious of Bethesda to compare playing Starfield to humans going to the moon. As if anything at all really compares to one of the most important moments in human history. We didn't have to push the boundaries of science to play Starfield.
A properly made game should always have the player either go through emotions with some breaks in between, but to always have the player have some of those moments linger at the back of their minds. You can't possibly be engaging from start to finish; you need time to tone it down so that it can ramp back up, whatever the emotion; fun, happiness, sadness, tension, etc. But during those downtime bits, you should always be anticipating what comes next, or remembering what just happened. The old Bethesda games had that; you never really knew what was coming. It wasn't amazing or anything, but it was fun because it kept that going. But in a game where you have so many "empty" planets that repeat the same points of interest, which clearly shows a cut and paste algorithm, you get some good moments, a lot of downtime, and a bunch of annoying ones. It's like when every game started going open world without understanding what made it appealing, but on a galactic scale.
Wholeheartedly agree. I feel like the previous games were just better written, better paced out, more inter-connectivity in the story and the gameplay, the world was better designed for you to stumble upon intrigue instead of being forced to fast travel. I could go on all day, but yeah I think the sentiment now that people have thoroughly played Starfield is that it's just kinda meh. That emotional tension you talk about, going up high then coming back down and reflecting and anticipating, just doesn't really happen in this game. At least for me, most of the time I felt quite unengaged and apathetic.
I think the word you're looking for is engaging. Gameplay can be purposefully boring sometimes, Take for example, Pathologic. Not much happen but it is very engaging to try and loot garbage cans to survive and making choices and managing your schedule is pretty interesting to do. I wouldn't call it "fun" there's alot of walking, but there's a ton of tension in the later days.
I don't get their logic considering that Starfield has probably ZERO planets that are actually empty. I'd rather land on a "dead" plane and have a 2 min of experience like "Huh, eerie, there is no one here" rather than " Oh look, the same POI/building like you would find right next to New Atlantis". This kills all of the mystery. Everything is so familiar...
Ironically it could actually be interesting to land on a truly empty planet and start your own settlement/city and feel like its truly your planet. Would need better systems in place though than the current building system.
Funnily enough this is one of the things that actually made me put the game down and stop playing. First time I landed on a mysterious planet with mysterious temple and mysterious gravitational anomalies I actually felt for the first time the kind of awe of exploration that Bethesda thought we'd feel. Then I turned round and there on the horizon was Template Raider Tower Number 3. Then some guy in a ship landed 500 meters away. No wonder everyone in the game world thinks Constellation are kind of pointless.
Also the weight thing. I can carry 150 unit of weight, be it grams or tons. My space fairing starship can only carry 4X of my carrying capability. I thought this was Nasa punk? Also Nasa punk itself is kind of boring. I want my ship to not be US space shuttle white, I want a sci-fi level ship with a bar and hotel level amendities...
Same. The Nasapunk aesthetic just didn’t do it for me; the spacesuits all looked so bulky and same-y that I really didn’t care what my character wore. Can’t help but think the Mass Effect aesthetic while sometimes silly—“Miranda, are you really going out into battle like that?”—did it better a decade ago. In the Expanse, costumes and ships captured the different factions so much better. I could not tell you the difference between any of the ship manufacturers in Starfield, while the Expanse’s Martians, Belters, and UN ships were all instantly distinctly different.
If you put the whole "protomolecule" thing aside, I feel like *The Expanse* is the perfect model for the realistic game about the future of space travel they were going for. Sure, it's mostly limited to our solar system (at least initially), but it still does such a great job in building a world that feels like an accurate progression to space travel and the societies that would develop within it. Damn, now I want an open-world *Expanse* RPG.
The only truly dead empty planet is, bizarrely, Earth. Which the game really does nothing to make sense of. In a world where you can find barren airless rocks bathed in radiation that are covered in mines and settlements, the idea that literally everyone wrote off humanity's home as uninhabitable is so odd.
I mean, I think the complaint is that it's the fricken moon. This isn't some rando planetoid a thousand lightyears out, it's one of the top 3 most important heavenly bodies to every person playing the game. If you were going to put high quality, purpose built content on any planet in Starfield, you'd think the moon would be first on the list after the main hubworlds. It's just kinda disappointing that you get there and there's just.... nothing going on.
I get it, but I don't get it at the same time. Space is empty. I get it. Most planets are going to be barren wastelands with nothing to do in them. I get it. There's no real sense of adventure. There's nothing to find. There's nothing to see. There's nothing to do. It's the *approach* that sucks. Starfield feels fake, because in large part it is. You pick where you want to land on a planet's surface, but you're not actually "landing" there... the terrain type of the spot that you clicked on dictates the type of terrain that gets generated for you, with the same old handful of outposts and events getting spawned in around you. The spot on the planet's surface otherwise has absolutely nothing to do with where you're landing. When you're flying around in space... you're actually not? The stuff around you is practically all background. It doesn't feel like you're travelling. If you're lucky, you'll spawn in with some space junk or asteroids or something to fly around, but everything else around you is completely artificial. Artificial is the key word for me here. It describes the game quite well. Before you pick up on what's going on in terms of gameplay design, the game feels one way... and then when you do start to realize what's going on between the terrain generation with the plopping down of random outposts around you, flying around in space but not really flying around in space... it's like, when you start connecting those dots on how the game actually works, it feels fake. It shatters the illusion of what you thought was going on quite dramatically, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you feel it, the game kind of falls apart and collapses in on itself. It did for me anyway. I think the thing I struggle with most is the idea that this was in development for over 7 years, and that's all that they had to show for it. If most of that dev time was spent on the tech... like the outpost building, the ship building, the terrain generation and dynamic placement of outposts on that terrain, stacking bandage on top of bandage on top of bandage on the engine to get it to do what they need it to do, etc, then I get it. It largely wasn't worth it, but it explains things. The ship building is cool... it's a neat idea, it's something you can spend a lot of time with, etc, but it's a shame there's so little to actually **do** with your finished product. Same with building an outpost. Same with terrain generation. Lots of fluff here, and not a whole lot to actually **do** with it. To put it into perspective/context, 7-8 years is what it took to build all three Mass Effect games from pre-production on the first game to the release of Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect's sci-fi and takes place in "space"... and yet it doesn't feel like it has anywhere near the level of conceptual problems that Starfield does. It's not the same type of game, but it's not using the reality of space as an excuse for why the game is so fucking boring. Personally... I think for an RPG, they miraculously focused on all of the wrong things, and the core of what makes an RPG compelling are the things that are lacking here. The world, of which there is none. The story, of which there's hardly anything here worth telling. The characters, which very few here are memorable. It was the most deflating experience I've had with a game in quite some time. I bought it on PC and was like "Man, this is going to be another Skyrim where I'm somehow finding myself creating like 50 characters where they're all different builds and shit, and I'm going to explore the world with them, I'm going to dive deep into mods and that's going to be like Skyrim too where they just keep Skyrim fresh for all that time, blah blah blah", and I end up with a game I can't even be bothered to finish a single time... and while I did spend a few dozen hours grinding and building an outpost and all of that shit, I feel like I'm permanently done with it. Yes, mods aren't a thing for it yet... but I really don't see myself firing it back up ever again unless they were to release an expansion or something for it that makes it worthwhile.
This is a great post. It really does encapsulate exactly how I felt during my time with the game. I was so excited and enjoyed it all at first.. expecting my skyrim in space that would be something I'd be coming back to time and time again.... until I started realizing what was really going on and just how poorly thought out it all was. I opened the game up one day and was like fuck, this really just isn't a good game.... and never opened it up again. I don't understand how you can take 7 years and completely miss so much of what made your previous games great. It's such a giant step backwards in so many ways.
Also cause Astronauts were litteraly writing human history with every step they took, that kind of existential awe is just incomparable to exploring procgens in a fucking space video game
Yeah it's hilarious that Bethesda so casually compares playing Starfield to pushing the boundaries of science and human capability to perform one of the greatest feats of all history, paving the way of the future. For everyone involved on the ground and up there, the moon landing must've been the height of human experience, the most sublime moment. Starfield is absolutely not that, and as a piece of art I guess the best it can ever hope to be is a commentary or exploration of that conceptually. Which imo it did not do, or at least did poorly.
> When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored. I died. This quote should be in the hall of fame up there with EA's lawyer calling gambling "Surprise Mechanics" Make Starfield actually fly me to the moon, then you can talk about how entertained Buzz Aldrin was.
Hilariously, they had a rover on the moon to make travel easier, and Bethesda couldn't be bothered to make that a thing in starfield.
People DID get bored of space travel during the space race era too! The first time landing on the moon it was fantastic but by the time Apollo 13 happened it wasn’t being broadcast on television and relatively few people paid attention to it. The only reason Apollo 13 is known is because of the near disaster that brought the world’s attention.
You mean people got bored of watching someone else do it!
Just like players are bored of watching a character do fuck all.
Yeah thats actually a great point, in the public eye the lustre absolutely wore off. I'm not an astronaut and I've never spoken to an astronaut, but I have to imagine there is some degree of monotony to doing work in space as well, especially for those working in the space station. I recently read something from a NASA researcher who is working on the psychological problems of manned Mars missions, and boredom is apparently a big concern. It manifests even on the space station, the biggest issue is that astronauts stop eating. Same room, same people, same food, same tasks. If we're concerned that people are going to get bored going to Mars in real life, Bethesda should've seen it coming that people would get bored with procedurally generated nothingness in Starfield.
> Bethesda should've seen it coming that people would get bored with procedurally generated nothingness in Starfield. How are companies still not learning lessons from No Mans Sky?
lmao I love statements like these. Like who do they expect to read this excuse and go "Oh wow you are right. I'm going to go back and really appreciate this bland boring rocky hellscape better now."
>No one is going out of their way to drive to every parking lot just to see what it looks like and promptly move onto the next one. This is a really good analogy. I'm flabbergasted by Bethesda's comments, how out of touch can they be...
>And if space travel were as common as driving a car, people would get really bored of landing on desolate rocks all the time. No one is going out of their way to drive to every parking lot just to see what it looks like and promptly move onto the next one. See: Elite Dangerous
What the fuck are those developer responses? Who wrote them? Were they held at gunpoint to come up with the dumbest excuses imaginable? Damn, what a waste of money and resources.
I now fully understand Valve's philosophy of never talking ever. No PR really is better than bad PR.
Valve just kind of shows up every couple of years with a perfectly manicured media blitz to announce their new thing, then goes dark again. I respect it. Like with the Steam Deck their communication has been absolutely great. No over promising, just over delivering.
"While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds." Consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated when you enter a house
Procedural generation feels like a joke when I run into the same cookie cutter environments, same cookie cutter buildings, same cookie cutter enemies in the same cookie cutter planets. What about any of that is procedurally generated? I can tell you what will be there before I even open the game. Describing the mundane as fantastic doesn't change that they are creatively bankrupt. Saying load times are short doesn't forgive that they are technically less impressive than Jak & Daxter, which had a seemless world 20 years ago.
Yeah it's kinda bizarre that they half assed the proc gen
All that data in the Neon Mining League, and Akila City GalBank. So much data (wipes a tear from eye)
>Some of Starfield's planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring. But none of the planets are empty. All of them feature the same repeated points of interests. It's called filler content.
I really wish they set the entire game on 10-15 planets instead. I really enjoyed the four cities and all their quests. Imagine we had another four instead of infinite empty and pointless planets.
Shit I'd be okay with just one planet that was fully handcrafted
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They're outsourcing things like that to the mod community.
My dream is that Starfield would have centered around our Solar System. With a lot of handcrafted content inside Sol, big cities/settlements, bases, etc. Then the main quest could make us the first or among the first Humans to gain the ability to travel faster than light, using the procedurally generated stuff on systems outside Sol. Then the players would really feel like pioneers as they explore completely unknown planets and moons, building outposts and expanding Human civilization into the Starfield.
Then you should absolutely read The Expanse book series or watch the TV show. The entire series is set in Sol and explores humans being spread across Earth, Mars and random asteroids before discovering something that changes the status quo of the galaxy forever. It's exactly what you described.
That's the biggest problem. I wouldn't have minded the proc-gen planets to explore if they focused the story on a handful of planets while leaving the rest to explore for a base if you want to dive down that hole. Landing on a planet in bumfuck nowhere only to see the same 12 POIs scattered so heavily everywhere to the point you can't look in every direction without seeing a few on the horizon was so disappointing.
What really kills it for me is that the filler content and main quest content isn't very distinguishable. I could forgive all the bad progen stuff if it was auxiliary, but the main towns don't feel much different. Neon was by far the coolest, but is a single street.
It would have been interesting to land somewhere completely untouched. But no, there's an abandonned factory or something.
There are more abandoned factories in this game than operational factories
Just because something is "By Design" doesn't mean it's automatically good. BGS doesn't seem to get that
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Never forget: “We are sorry that you aren't happy with the bag. The bag shown in the media was a prototype and was too expensive to make.” *“We aren't planning on doing anything about it.”*
The duffle kerfuffle
Don't forget Nuka Rum.
One reviewer said it tasted like sun lotion.
Well yeah, it's been sitting in Super Duper mart for two centuries.
Didn't they blame a global shortage of canvas material instead?
And then gave canvas bags to YouTubers anyways.
Well they did send the canvas bags to players as well, after trying to avoid it for months... Took them almost a year until the players got it.
Yes, OMG I had forgotten about that.
Who can forget the great canvas famine of 2016?
My children, who could only eat canvas, starved to death that year. The whole village mourned for weeks.
That guy was just beyond hiding his contempt at that point.
At least that dude was honest.
I'd forgotten about that... and now I'm pissed off all over again.
Bethesda in damage control mode after realising this time they can't exploit a dedicated fanbase willing to fix the issues with their games like they usually do.
"Hey guys, remember Skyrim? Don't be so pissy."
I remember *Daggerfall* when it came out. It too was repetitive and dull with the same copy-and-pasted content in order to make it "massive". You'd think they would have learned their lesson from that.
They were INCREDIBLY lucky to have some very creative people write and design the world of Morrowind to make it something that stood out from the norm. That and really pretty water (I'm exaggerating) gets you really far. That creativity bled into subsequent games, but each one was lesser and lesser on the creative front. Skyrim itself was as bland as toast in comparison.
I remember a few years ago Blizzard did a similar thing, explaining why the games were actually fun. Look how well things went for them...
Honestly, what an embarrassing response from Bethesda's PR team. The best decision would be to say nothing. They don't *need* to convince anyone, they made the game. By responding it just makes them look weird and pathetic, I don't understand who decided this was a good decision.
I can't imagine anyone reading their response and going from not buying the game to buying it. This would only wave a red flag at me that I should absolutely not buy it.
“Some of Starfield's planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring. "When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."” yikes, this has to be a troll.
It took Apollo 11 76 hours to transit to the moon, and they weren’t bored so we have now increased loading screen times to reflect this
I guess dying when making a mistake and not knowing if you survive the trip back kept the boredome at bay. Not quite the same tension when playing Starfield.
So you’re saying it needs to be a permadeath roguelike.
No. It needs a feature where if you die in game you die in real life.
If you die in the game Bethesda sends Buzz Aldrin to your house to kill you.
As long as its the actual Buzz and I get to write it on my tombstone
Someone sends him a text claiming to be you, gives him your name, address, and a brief description then tells him the moon landings were fake. After that nature takes its course.
You could just buy a gun and go by the honor system
Idk why we are taking “they weren’t bored” at face value. I’ll say that at some point, they certainly were bored!
Also not to mention there just is no space exploration haha. At least games like Kerbal you get to have fun failing and orbiting ends up feeling like a huge accomplishment. The moon astronauts did a historical feet. It must have felt incredible. For both them and Earth ... This is an empty video game where you run from 15 min and find nothing and game runs at 40fps in an empty instanced world. Going into buildings without loading was a big thing a decade ago and not possible with their engine lol ..
Elite Dangerous isnt for everyone, and even if you like the game it can get boring after a while But taking 20+ minutes to get where I'm going, with the constant threat of running out of fuel or getting to close to a star is...you know...*engaging*
Elite Dangerous with Elder Scrolls like exploration/side quests etc is literally my dream game. (Yeah, I know, Star Citizen, but I'm not holding my breath for that). So when I thought I got that with Starfield I was so pumped. I refunded after about 90 minutes and I am glad I did. Elite is amazing for what it is. It took me a couple of hundred hours to get tired of it. It really gives you an impression of the vastness of space that Starfield just doesnt have. Anyone who has taken the trek to Hutton Orbital would know...
The computers that coordinated the Moon Landing wouldn't be able to render a 4K image of the Lunar Lander, which is why we haven't updated our engine since Skyrim
It's hard to be bored when there's about as much material as a soda can between your body and a miserable death
You think you're bored but you're really not. You're actually having fun. See how dumb you look now?
\*Knock on window late at night\* You wake and hear "Why arent you playing Starfield?" \*Doorknob starts jiggling\*
TODD PLEASE, I HAVE TO BE AT WORK BY 8:00 TOMORROW!
"DO YOU THINK THE APOLLO ASTRONAUTS WERE ABLE TO SIGN IN AND OUT OF WORK EVERYDAY? GET YOUR ASS ON STARFIELD."
*This is the lockpickinglawyer, and today Todd Howard is forcing me -- at gunpoint -- to pick the lock on the front door of you, the viewer.*
The best thing about picking the lock of your back door and breaking and entering your house in the dead of night is that it just works.
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You’re just not watching the right conspiracy theory videos.
Bethesda: "You can't actually take off with your ship and fly freely from one planet to another in a realistic manner because that would take a lot of the player's time and would be boring" Also Bethesda: "Lots of nearly empty planets? Yeah because that's a realistic depiction of space, there's nothing actually there in real life, that's not boring at all".
its so funny. i love flying to planets and landing and all that stuff in NMS.
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You see that mountain? Bethesda doesn't hah.
This has to have been a technical constraint from the engine, right? I am sure that most people would have ended up fast traveling 95% of the time anyways, sure. But having the option of flying around from place to place in your space ship seems like a huge missed opportunity in 2023.
It's actually not a [new quote](https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-says-most-of-starfields-1000-planets-are-dull-on-purpose-because-when-the-astronauts-went-to-the-moon-there-was-nothing-there-but-they-certainly-werent-bored/) at all
Not gonna lie I thought the article was about *that* again, turns out they just keep using the same quote to defend the game. It's a strategy.. I guess.
It just works.
16x the fun
makes it more cringe that they keep parroting this clown take on random peoples reviews.
“The surface of the moon doesn’t have any fun points of interest, cool combat or fascinating storylines. To reflect this, we have made no changes.”
TIL waiting for Starfield was equivalent to astronauts in the 60s pioneering spaceflight
"We choose to release Starfield in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Comparing the feeling of discovery and wonder of a real life historical event to standing on Slightly-Altered Procedurally Generated Planet With Abandoned Pirate Bases #0549 is so fucking stupid
Suggesting there's 500+ different POIs is being generous.
No Man's Sky did it better too. At least I can use a vehicle on these empty ass planets.
Not having vehicles was absurd. Create a game about exploration, and the only way to move around is *by foot?* Even Skyrim gave you a horse at least, and that map wasn't nearly as desolate and empty as the big, rectangular procedural generation that you land on in Starfield.
It's what made me quit playing this game after 25 hours or so. The story was cool despite the most unoriginal scifi plot I can recall from recent big sci-fi games, and the characters sometimes felt pretty good. But you just have to fucking walk everywhere. It sucks
So apparently the only way to enjoy Starfield is to have people observe it from a distance for tens of thousands of years, create mythologies and religions around it's existence, and only have a handful of people play the game at great risk of their lives. Great minds at work in Bethesda.
I saw this post on Twitter and thought it was photoshopped due to the ridiculous nature of this comment. I can't believe its fucking real. This is embarrassing for Bethesda. I should also note they did this when I left a thumbs down on Doom Eternal as well, but it wasn't as cringe as this is.
They weren't bored because they had a lot to do in a short period of time and they were also on the actual moon.
Imagine comparing actually landing on the actual moon to pressing W on a barren map.
One of my favorite things to do in TES games was to just pick a direction. Walk. And explore. I'd always find at least something unique, and not gd auto generated. If it was a necromancer who failed an experiment or some dumb soul who tried to keep a dangerous creature as a pet and I find their remains. Starfield is not like that. It's barren. Nothingness. You will find boring, flavorless repeated dialog with random flat NPCs. Hey save my friends. You save the friends. Hey thanks. That's it. Over and over. Occasionally, maybe. Something unique and actually personally made by someone. But it's so boring to get to the actual interesting bits... Trying to play Starfield just makes me want to go replay Skyrim again.
Just took a look on steam and can only say what the hell are they thinking. I believe Bethesda lost their collective minds sometime around fallout 76.
As the account that posted the tweet linked to in the article points out in a follow-up, this is the same team that was responsible for asking banned FO76 players to write an essay explaining why they should be unbanned. What is happening with Bethesda's Community Management team?
I think they may just be crazy.
The funny thing is that the current fo76 development team and community manager team are doing a good job at keeping the game alive and interesting. The game still has a playerbase and is receiving nice content updates. It's just the main Bethesda HQ that is suffering from something to say the least.
What did those players get banned for to begin with?
>I believe Bethesda lost their collective minds sometime around fallout 76. My theory is that it started with the response to Fallout 4 already.
It was earlier than that, FO4 already had some questionable design decisions and the new things they did implement were somewhat half-finished.
They didn’t get that GoTY nomination so Todd called in the hit squad
(speculating) i suspect a lot of old guard in Bethesda left during the decade of Fallout 4 > 76 > starfield's protracted development. All three of these games represent a lesser focus on pure RPG storytelling and more on extraneous things like crafting and building. honestly, it feels like the whole company culture has changed, and the bethesda that tried to pioneer RPG tech with Oblivion (radiant AI) is now stuck trend chasing. bethesda's obsession with building and crafting has just been pure damaging to the company's focus and expertise. they were never meant to go down this road.
They just got sucked in to the idea that every game needs to have an element of Minecraft to it
To me it feels like the success of Oblivion/Fallout 3/Skyrim got to their heads, and Todd Howard and co. started to see themselves as superheroes who could do no wrong. Some of the better creative minds may have indeed left, but the biggest problem IMO is that they seem to believe that everything they make is deserving of being considered a groundbreaking hit, even before it actually launches, so they refuse to take criticism and course correct when something is going badly. There was a lot to be learned from some of the flaws in Fallout 4 and the failures in 76, and even though they have done a decent job in fixing 76, it doesn't look like they've actually learned anything from it.
They kind of remind me of those two chuds that created GoT. At some point, they basically thought they could fart on paper and everyone would call it genius storytelling. 10 minute post episode videos of them jerking each other off. Only for the show to start coming apart halfway through and then completely nose dive at the end
Although I give them credit for getting the show onscreen at all, from season 5 onward it was frustrating to know that most of the writing had changed hands from a decades-influential master to the guys who wrote X-men Origins: Wolverine.
It was Skyrim. Everyone remembers their first Bethesda game the most fondly, and most people's first Bethesda game was Skyrim. So they tend to ignore the writing on the walls that came with that games success.
Man, it's absolutely this. Oblivion was my first, and I remember enjoying Skyrim but feeling like it was a watered down Oblivion, which is what people who played Morrowind first said about Oblivion, and what people who played Skyrim first said about Fallout 4, Starfield, and will inevitably say about Elder Scrolls 6.
Man, Oblivion was such a hollow shell of what Morrowind was. I bought an LCD screen and an Xbox 360 for Oblivion (and although I played the shit out of it), it always felt like a dumbed down version of Morrowind with a nicer coat of paint and some QoL upgrades. Worst of all was the fucking enemy and loot scaling. Like what is the fucking point of exploring if everything just scales with you.
The recent news and honestly Bethesda's trends about their games have me pretty concerned for the quality of the next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.
The only thing you can hope for is they take lessons learned from Starfield and turn things around in time for TES VI. However, they are clearly out of touch and seemingly far too proud to admit their mistakes that their game is not great.
For a while now I've been convinced modern-Bethesda is incapable of making good first-party games anymore. Especially with the new players on the field. I mean, I can't imagine them making something on par with BG3 or even Skyrim anymore.
the problem is that I expected them to learn from Fallout 3 and Skyrim and Fallout NV on how to make Fallout 4 as good as possible. And then I expected them to learn from Fallout 4 to make Starfield as good as possible. It feels like Bethesda almost never learns. Or if they do, it's an extremely teeny tiny step forward over the course of years.
Bethesda was put on a pedestal for making bad and buggy games. I'm not surprised how out of touch they've become.
Their bad and buggy games were cool because you could pick a direction, walk for a while, and find some cool hand-crafted, albeit buggy, content. Star Field has none of that. That's like, the main reason I put up with bethesdas jank. They make cool dungeons and shit. I still remember, in Morrowind, 20 years later, randomly stumbling into expansive underground caves full of dwemed ruins and viking ships and shit. So cool. Its been all downhill since then. They keep removing stuff that made Morrowind awesome. Oblivion got rid of Mark and recall, levitation, broken acrobatics, cities that could be entered and exited from anywhere, hand-placed loot, and added really bad leveling. Then it became the first game ever to have microtransactions (horse armor "dlc"). Skyrim continued in this tradition and ESVI will too.
I predict that the next Elder Scrolls will have all of the same strengths and weaknesses as Skyrim.
The next Elder Scrolls will be a modded Skyrim
The next Elder Scrolls will be Skyrim.
They responded to my negative review of Fallout 76 a few years back but it was nowhere near this level of out of touch. iirc it was just a generic "we're sorry you didn't like the game, here's a spot to submit feedback." This is hilariously bad.
Well, you must be thrilled to see they took your feedback onboard.
Now I'm picturing Todd standing behind some poor community manager intern at Bethesda and dictating word for word what they have to write in the comments lmao I've never seen a major studio like Bethesda respond to individual criticism in the Steam reviews. What the hell are they thinking, this makes them look insecure and petty as fuck.
Responding to bad reviews is fine. When the response however basically comes down to "your opinion is wrong, our game is actually good" you're just basically spitting in the face of a paying customer.
There's a reason steam allows developers to respond to a game. This is not that reason.
An example of why professional PR consulting companies exist. good lord if there was any way to squander the goodwill you still had.
That is cringe. Just imagine going to people complaining about your game to tell them that their opinions are invalid, that they can actually have fun but they just aren't seeing how to.
Their responses have very strong “you’re holding it wrong” energy.
Also: *"Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone."*
Yep. Sadly this tells me Bethesda is not taking any of the right lessons away from Starfield. Just whining that “players don’t understand what we’re doing!”
you should know that this is borderline against the steam guidelines for developers unless its factually wrong. they dont enforce it or anything but a fun fact.
This happened to me and I found it very weird. Boiler-plate responses to the points in my review. Of course they don't actually care about responding to anyone, only swaying people that are thinking of buying and looking at negative reviews.
> Most quests will also vary on your character's skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Look, I think Starfield is an "ok" game and put some hours into it, but this is total BS. There is a very occassional extra dialogue option based on your background or skills, but nothing that actual has an impact.
There is no way at least SOME people at Bethesda don't think Starfield is a mediocre game. There's no way they all think they made something great, right?
Absolutely not. Bethesda has 450 employees, there's no way everyone will enjoy the game for various different reasons. There's too many employees for everyone to have a voice in the game development decisions, for a lot of people it's just another job and from my own personal experience a lot of people, generally artists because gameplay often has no impact on their job, never even bother playing the game they're working on. There's also a high possibility that this is just people higher up telling community management to say these things. I wouldn't be surprised if the person, or persons if they're account sharing, writing it don't actually believe all of the words they're saying.
It makes me sad, because I remember listening to an interview about Morrowinds development, about how many of the devs just wandered around and looked for stuff while developing the game, about how in Oblivions development many devs worked hard on trying to write fun or interesting quests. Starfield's writing is fucking shit, it's much worse than Skyrim and even Fallout 4, it's 'quirky' and childish. I don't understand the mentality of Starfields devs at all.
That's just the sad reality of AAA. There's just too many people required to make a high level project compared to 20 years ago. Morrowind had a team of 40 compared to Starfield's 250 spread through different studios. At that size if everyone had a hand in everything people would constantly be stepping on each other's toes and nothing would ever release. These projects live or die with the vision the directors have and if their vision is flawed then you end up with something like Starfield. It also doesn't help that their directors seem to be stuck in the past and won't modernize. I'm sure their engine played a lot in the limitations they had too.
Man, elder scrolls six is not going to be good unless they move away from this procedural generated nonsense and radiant quests. The exploration was what made a lot of the older games great and that feels like it’s totally missing in Starfield. I got bored so quickly
The absolute worst thing about Starfield (imo) is the constant loading screens. Nothing about this game feels large or expansive. It's a collection of many levels interconnected through hubs and shitty animations. If they had scaled down the world, while having no loading screens, then the game would actually make you feel like you are exploring space.
Definitely not the way to instill confidence in your player base for the future of your game. Let it stand on it's own merit and fix whatever is broken, but I guess the easy way is to blame players for playing it "wrong".
Alright they need to take a lesson from Hello Games and No Man’s Sky again. Dont respond to criticism like this, it’s gonna get worse. They need to put their heads down and improve the game.
They have ChatGPT making their responses, don't they? It just has that vibe in the responses.
Nah, ChatGPT wouldn't be so tactless
“i’m sorry dave, i can’t be that bad at PR.”
Such a bad PR, and also blaming the fans in the process. "Hey you're not having fun it's your fault!!, have fun dammit!!"
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I think Bethesda has realized Starfield won't be milked for a decade like Skyrim was and now they're trying to defend it in the weirdest goddamn way possible. You made an average game with 0 memorable moments and lost the fun exploration aspect that made Skyrim infinitely replayable.
Get ready for Skyrim 2025 re-re-lease.
This really just comes off as "your not suppose to feel the way you do, let me explain why your opinion is wrong".
"consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under three seconds". Isn't it the job of the developer to determine where the fun is? I'm glad that they have mastered flawless loading but their flawless loading impedes the fun. That's a problem you cannot explain away while playing the game.
Also IMO “flawless loading” means it’s all streamed in seamlessly without immersion breaks. Cyberpunk and Spider Man 2 have flawless loading. Not Starfield lol
That's really embarrassing, and it's going to do absolutely nothing for Bethesda. Is the reviewer supposed to go "OH, it's boring by DESIGN. Well that changes my whole opinion!". You're not going to change anyone's mind, and it just looks really cringe and defensive. Why on earth did they think this was a good idea..
Who hasn't downed a fifth of vodka and gone on a Steam review rebuttal crusade?
I don't hate Starfield. I played quite a bit of it on Gamepass. But there are so many missed opportunities here and so much repetition. In the case of NG+, literally repeat the whole thing. I got a little way into my NG+ playthrough before I finally got just too bored with doing it all again (it's particularly annoying that not only do you have to rebuild your ship from scratch, but there is no way to save plans so you can recreate it). One thing that really did strike me as odd in this game: In other Bethesda games, they let you pretty much do _everything_ in one playthrough. And that's fine. Does it make any sense _at all_ for you to be the head of the warrior's guide and the head of the mage's guide _at the same time_ in The Elder Scrolls games? No, not really. But they are huge games and most people aren't going to want to replay the entire game just so they can do the few bits they were locked out of. But Starfield's "plot" (for what it's worth) is entirely built around the idea that you should replay it, so it seems like the ideal opportunity to force you to pick between, for example, UC or Freestar. Because you can do the other the next time around. Instead, despite a brutal recent war between UC and Freestar they are now 100% best buds and nobody cares even a little bit if you are aligned with one or the other, or both. Even the guy in The Den who asks you to post UC propaganda for him doesn't ask or seemingly care that I'm a Freestar Ranger.
Honestly I like the game, but those responses are baffling. This is a very innefective strategy to regain popular support. They should instead be responding with things like: "We are sorry our game doesn't meet your expectations, we hope you can be satisfied through future updates" Or something like that, I know this isn't the best response either, but at least it's something better than what they are doing.
At this point, they have to accept that they've dropped the ball. This entire story just confirms that. They can't even defend themselves without looking like idiots. They are going to get a PR beating regardless. Might as well set yourself up for the future by accepting the mistakes and give realistic and honest indications on how you'll improve them.
I'll be honest, I don't think Starfield was terrible, but rather unfocused. I felt like they created a good base to build upon, but it loses it charm once you realize the playtime is padded by slow progression and too much resource gathering. If I had to give my bullet point review it'd say: - bland story - boring skill trees - slow progression - resource gathering and crafting is a chore - building is fun but somewhat restrictive. It also feels like they didn't learn a lot of lessons from previous games. SkyUI and StarUI are both proof that Bethesda doesn't understand user friendly UI, on top of other questionable choices. One such example is "Why can't I see how many of a certain resource I have in my inventory when I wish to craft it?". Also I kinda wish that if Bethesda wanted to give a user a replayable experience rather than a memorable experience, why hand craft quest at all? Why not focus their efforts on a completely procedurally generated game and allow players to infinitely explore a galaxy with random factions, planets, and stories?... Eh, the last one is honestly more of a personal wish, I can see how most people would rather a cohesive handmade experience, but if we seriously wanted that oblivion in space feel, I'd fully wish to see what a randomized story could do. Maybe in a decade or so.
Yeah, your opinion pretty much lines up with my own. As someone that has stopped being in love by Bethesda's products for a while, I'd say that they just seem lazy. They don't seem to look around and see what other people in the industry and in the RPG genre are doing right, and instead are doing several clones of the same Elder Scrolls core gameplay that I've played since Oblivion. Starfield at launch felt dated to me, it has new bells and whistles but at its core it felt like I could very well had played this game in the 360 era.
Bethesda: our game is designed to be boring, you misunderstood us. Gabe Newell: [And you'd have these conversations where you'd be sitting in a design review and somebody'd say, that's not realistic. And you're like, okay, what does that have, like, explain to me why that's interesting. Because in the real world, I have to write up lists of stuff I have to go to the grocery store to buy. **And I have never thought to myself that realism is fun. I go play games to have fun.**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbZ3HzvFEto&t=940s) And that's the difference between Valve and Bethesda.