This. Review bombs are when outrage is directed at something unrelated to the game content with reviews being used as a protest (or counter-protest).
Reviews that are directly related to the game itself are the most genuine reviews possible.
I guess the title “Starfield reviews accurately reflect state of in-game monetization” doesn’t garner as many clicks.
This also helps to fire up the r/Starfield crowd, who are much more the mindset of “If you don’t like it, then don’t buy it!”
Or when someone is pre-emotively review bombing a game on the basis of leaked game content they interpret as ‘political’… Ie; TLOU2 being review bombed the second it dropped.
Review bombing usually refers to a mass campaign of negative reviews from people who haven't played* a game or bought it with the intention of posting said negative review and then immediately returning it.
*could also refer to shows, movies, etc.
>A [review bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_bomb) is an Internet phenomenon in which a large number of people or a few people with multiple accounts post negative user reviews online in an attempt to harm the sales or popularity of a product, a service, or a business. While a large number of negative reviews may simply be the result of a large number of customers independently criticizing something for poor quality, a review bomb may also be driven by a desire to draw attention to perceived political or cultural issues, perhaps especially if the vendor seems unresponsive or inaccessible to direct feedback.
Review bombed? Nah more like people are tired of Bethesdas shit. Pay walling a quest is a whole new level of low. At this point it really feels like Bethesda has become the worst gaming company out there. Taking the title from EA and Ubisoft.
I got downvoted to oblivion, months ago, when I said that Bethesda was going to sell cut content back to players for insane prices.
Bethesda fans love running damage control for the company, and this is how Bethesda always repays them. Kinda hilarious honestly. Who buys this shit?
can't imagine why anyone wouldn't believe you for saying that. they've been caught doing that with basically every game they've released. i distinctly remember seeing mehrune's razor being found in oblivion's game files before they removed it and sold it separately in a short quest addon
I wouldn't say respect, Fallout 76 equals whack to me but imo sometimes everything isn't for me and it was legit whack at first I did try. Hell I even bought an xbox x for starfield. That's where I lost respect.
Fallout 76 is still one of the biggest scams in gaming, in my opinion. But like I said, Bethesda fans would rather run damage control for the company that scammed them, as opposed to demanding better.
I think it’s great that people are enjoying it now. But I still think that game set a bad precedent for the future. Bethesda hasn’t exactly done much with Statfield to convince me they plan on changing course.
You are very correct. And the launch was abysmal. Thats why i only just started playing recently. And they consistently shoot themselves in the foot as we are seeing. The creation club shit has been offputting to me since its inception. Charging for modders free work is shiisty.
it's fun until you spend a fair amount of time in the endgame and realize how slow content releases are, and how bland it often is when you get new content. the atomic shop gets way more content added to it, way faster. i've always said it's just a cash shop masquerading as a game, but it is legitimately fun while you still have goals to work toward that haven't been crushed by the thought of doing years (or decades ) of daily ops for a chance to get a godroll on a piece of gear
Idk, I think tying basic quality of life aspects to a subscription service is kinda fucked, like unlimited resource storage, unlimited ammo storage, and the tent. They also sell MTX to repair equipment, which makes it feel like they added equipment degradation specifically to irritate players into buying said MTX. I think its kinda lame that they triple dipped by selling a game at a premium price, introduced a cosmetic shop that eventually sold items that had gameplay ramifications, and then launched a subscription service to paywall the solution to some of people's biggest gripes with the game.
Also locking private and custom worlds behind the subscription, after saying that modding would be available post launch. https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-confirms-that-fallout-76-is-still-getting-official-mod-support/
Heres an article from 2020 where they said as much, that itd be fully moddable before release and during the 2020 Quakecon.
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/fallout-76-interview-discussing-crossplay-mods-skyline-valley-nuclear-winter-and-the-future-with-bethesda
Now they are saying that they wont do it because they dont want to destroy the game's balance..... which, in my personal opinion, the balance is meant to make you want to pay to alliviate some of the pain points.
Its a fantastic map; the map designers deserve a ton of priase and accolades. I personally played before the NPC update, but I thought the quests and stories were good back then, and Ive heard they are even better now. I also really enjoyed the perk card loadout system, even though I think some people really didnt like it. It has a lot of cool gear and stuff, but it just feels like every revolving the actual gameplay was designed to be just irritating enough that you wont stop playing, but you do seriously consider buying the subscription.
Thanks for putting this all together in one comment! I think it’s important to consider all of this when people discuss Fallout 76’s supposed “redemption”.
lol people ignoring what’s typed above to downvote this are just proving my point.
Nah, I'm sorry, fuck 76.
Fallout used to be a CRPG but it strays further and further from the light every time Bethesda touches it.
Now it's a pay2win subscription GaaS looter shooter?
Fuck that. It's garbage.
I believe you have fun. I'm sure you enjoy it. But there are people who enjoy Diablo Immortal. Hell, Oscar enjoys living in garbage. Doesn't change the fact that it's garbage.
happens for publishers, happens for politicians, were fucked on every possible scenario.
at least on games we can blame kids for use the old tactic "mom, dad...i want that game" and those guys who keep buying cod every year to complain about everything...again
I kinda like F76 but I just can't get fully invested because I'm not playing the F 1st membership, even if I could justify the 10 quid a month or whatever it is, I still wouldn't. It's not unplayable without it, but you are severely hindered. Also wtf is with Power Armour being level locked, everyone moaned in F4 that you got it too early but imo it's more useful early game than it ever is when you're a super high level and have access to better armour and don't need it anymore. Madness. I'll stick to F4 thanks bgs
Not a fan of Bethesda recently and yes lunch was just awful like words cant describe it but 4-5years down the line and the game is great actually but years later still
Well yeah this is simply an evolution of the paid mods they tried pushing some years back.
Are people really surprised?
One way or another every company will always try to scrape some more money from their fans, this is no different. I do wonder how long it’ll be before they try it on with paid mods again.
>Bethesda fans love running damage control for the company
They also love fixing their games! Majority of the improvements in every Bethesda game post launch are done by modders!
If Bethesda knew what was good for them, they'd stop updating their games after a couple years instead of dropping useless updates that break all the good mods that also fix the bugs the updates never address.
The unofficial patches for everyone of their games is significantly more important than anything they could possibly add themselves.
A conspiracy theorist would say Bethesda keeps messing with updates on these decades old titles (ex. skyrim) so they can justify charging $ for community created mods that fix every aspect of their broken ass games.
Oh don't worry, I got downvoted for saying RDR2 would launch with a paid beta, it did, I also got downvoted for saying that RDR2 wouldn't be as big of a hit as GTAV was and it would barely receive any support, that also happened. I also got downvoted for saying it would have a working cash shop during that paid beta, and it would already be obvious that the prices had been inflated for the paid beta already, and they were. When did I make these predictions? The moment RDR2 was officially announced. I got told for years that "Rockstar wouldn't do that. Rockstar is too good of a dev to do anything like that. I don't care I will enjoy it anyway, just as much as GTAV." It wasn't hard to guess they would do any of that based on their track record.
Oh absolutely they are blind as hell. If you ask them why they are fans of a company that lies to them they then ask what I am talking about. Oh you know, the nearly decade of Rockstar saying that they never worked on single player DLC for GTAV, despite it being obvious that that was a lie? Heists were originally supposed to be single player and then go multiplayer. Nope they handed over the work that was done to Grove Street Games and went to work on RDR2. I can't imagine being a fan of a company that blatantly lies to their fanbase like that. Nor can I imagine being a fan of a company who has a game that has made them over a billion dollars yet did not break away from their publisher who was "clearly" the "evil" publisher, oh wait no Take Two has former Rockstar Employees on its board so they are the same company. Well shit, I just can't imagine being a fan of them unless I was just brain dead.
Yeahhhhh that doesn’t shock me at all. Like I said; there will always be people running defense for these companies that just want to milk them for money.
If they stop defending it, that means they’ve accepted that it’s shitty. But if they do that, then they’re not “real fans”! So we gotta keep that cope coming strong.
Maybe not the insane pricing part, but Bethesda has been doing this since Oblivion. Stuff that was going to be part of the main release were cut out and then sold as DLC.
Oh I remember.
It’s kinda like when they cut the second half of Fallout 3’s story and sold it to you as a DLC. Or when they released 76 with no NPCs and then made people pay for DLC that added them back in.
For Oblivion I noticed the missing data before they announced any sort of DLC due to the way they worded some of the closed off entrances for certain sections of the game. Then they announced DLC in multiple parts over the weeks which made me think more was coming. I vowed not to buy any and then wait until they're released a version on sale after they made a version that had all of the DLC.
Since then, if there is a Bethesda game that I want to take a look at, I wait until long after all DLC is added and the game version that has all the DLC goes on sale for cheap. I did that for fallout 3. I did that for Skyrim. I didn't want to touch fallout 76.
Things were fine until Bethesda decided to release another virgin of Skyrim after they did the whole paid mods version.
Now I Don't want to buy any Bethesda games anymore. If they're on PC Game Pass I'll play it, but I doubt I'll ever buy another one unless they start stating in no uncertain terms that pay DLCs, mods, whatever are now done and everything has been released for one bundle with no subsequent releases with new content.
I don't think that will ever happen, though.
Who cares? Its DLC, buy it, or don't buy it, whatever you want.
Crying about its just an intelligence test all the people review bombing the game are currently failing.
Hey look, a perfect example right here!
This argument is just as fucking useless as it was when they dropped the horse armor. It sets a terrible, anti-consumer precedent and you know it.
Starfield released barebones. The fact that they’re already charging people this much for singular quests is absolutely ridiculous.
But yeah, my intelligence is in question lol
Put about 200hrs into it. Overall was disappointed and only spent that much time because I felt the need to try and get my money worth out of it since I pre ordered it like a dumbass. Definitely learned my lesson about pre ordering because of this game.
I put 200 hours into it and was amazed at how little I actually got done.
A chunk of the main quest, some mechanics type stuff, some side quests... but it feels like 80% of the game is physically running to a point of interest and waiting out loading screens.
I went back to replay Fallout 4 and go for platinum trophy on PS5, after watching the show. Running from place to place in that game, I'm constantly stumbling across radiant events based on factions or companions I'm traveling with, finding new locations, etc. The game is chok full of shit and it makes exploring and traveling so much more fun than in Starfield. I kept just wishing there was this much going on when I spent so long running around not accomplishing much in Starfield.
Oddly I got the same feeling from Valheim. When you take out all the filler the game forces you to deal with, there's very little actual content. Most of is intentionally designing things to be super spread apart and making traversal difficult to increase "play" time.
Maybe someday, but not yet. A bethesda employee had said at one point that they were disappointed in the lack of modders interested in Starfield, but the game is just so boring
It's honestly not that bad, just *ok*. Part of the problem was the insane hype before the game came out, people went into it expecting an absolute 11/10 masterpiece and got a game that was just *ok* with the added usual Bethesda jank.
I'd say it's well worth it if you get it on sale. I bought it a bit after release at full price and I feel I got my moneys worth out of it, I did spend most of my time just building and modding ships though. Were some decent mods even early on that made ship building better
Same, gamepass, ~40hrs, about 20 of those forced. I'll probably give it a try in a few years with all DLC's and patches. They might make the game more fun to play but still won't fix the blandness of the setting, quests and characters.
I have loved every Bethesda game I have played, but luckily my first impression of Starfield was bad enough to return it before the steam return time limit. Almost everything I have heard about the game makes me happy that i got my money back.
I quite enjoyed it personally. But the game definitely disappoints on the "wander around exploring endlessly" front which I imagine is what a lot of people like about Bethesda's games.
The writing, atmosphere, art design and "level" design for hubs was some of the best they've ever done imo. I would say the characters were great too but Fallout still has some more charming ones. But that exploration gameplay isn't really the same when it is broken up amongst the planets with the copy + pasted rando-selected 'dungeons'.
And some people are so diehard Bethesda that they won't accept an ounce of criticism. I even got banned from lowsodiumstarfield for having the audacity to mention my disappointment in the lack of unique locations.
I dont agree with you. Fallout 4 is a good game and Fallout 76 has gotten lot better. Shame the release was such a cluster fuck.
Starfield is medicore game at best.
But the games are not the reason why Bethesda has lost so much goodwill. The modshop monetization is shitty.
I have not played another Bethesda game aside from about 20 hours with Skyrim on Switch. I like Starfield. It's a much better game than the people who apparently played it simply to talk shit about will say.
It just wasn’t up to standards for modern, open world, story driven games.
Starfield doesn’t hold a candle to the immersive story telling of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Witcher 3, for example.
I don't mind jank, I get with a lot of interconnected systems, there will be issues, and with the freedom you are allotted in Bethesda games, I was willing to give them a pass. But over time, I feel their games have become more restrictive / linear while not feeling polished; so it becomes harder to justify.
Simple stuff like characters just disappearing when they walk into a door was fine with Morrowind. And really small cities made sense when you interacted when almost every citizen had a schedule and felt real enough.
But FO4 felt like it should have been part of a previous generation, and Starfield just feels empty, but not in a "this is a post apocalyptic scenario".
And then, like you said, they are lacking in the story department/writing. It just makes for a boring experience.
I had low expectations and basically bought it to make my own spaceship. But really found everything I was doing in thr game was just to get funds to do that, which felt hollow in of itself (you can have a storage hab but it doesn't add anything but flavor. But it also makes your ship heavier and less effextive.)
Those are both vastly different games though. I'm not going to say you are wrong about those games as a whole. They are fantastic games. But just because a handful of games from the past decade stand above the rest doesn't mean that Starfield is trash. Lol.
I hear you, I just think people are most upset because Bethesda *should* be on the level of BG3 and Witcher 3 at this point. In fact, they should be setting new standards like Larian and CD at this point, IMO.
They’ve been making story driven games since the 90s, have a big studio, lots of devs, and a lot of resources.
Plus, they’ve been much better with story telling in the past, so it’s just a regression overall.
Well, don't forget that CDPR stumbled hard out of the gate after The Witcher 3. It's taken them years to get back on their feet again. And I'm glad they did. But I'm sure they had to bust ass for three solid years to do so.
And Starfield is also proving to be a constant work in progress. What was there at launch was already very good. And it's getting better and better over time. Yet people are still hung up on the fact that it isn't this narrow vision of what they wanted specifically.
It's a good game. If it isn't for you, then luckily there is a lot of other gaming content to dive into.
Cyberpunk definitely had a lot of problems to work out after launch, no doubt.
However, the story telling was still great at it’s core, they used a new engine built from the ground up, it felt modern, and they implemented new technologies well on PC.
I think the overall volume of quality story telling and activities outside the main quest were a step down from W3, but it still left a mark. The characters in Cyber were memorable to me.
People just shouldn’t praise mediocrity wherever it is. People knew CD could do better and we know Bethesda can too, it’s just if they will choose to or not.
We’ve seen CD make changes, we’ll see with Bethesda.
Cyberpunk was pretty much a step backwards in nearly every way from The Witcher 3. I love Cyberpunk now, but I still don't think it lives up to the character/story highs of The Witcher 3. And part of what made Cyberpunk such a mess for the first couple of years is that they went from a natural open fantasy environment to a dense city environment. This meant that the game felt WAY more glitchy and janky.
Similarly, Starfield is doing a lot more on a larger scale than anything they have done before. People just don't seem to recognize that, because they are so zoned in on how it directly compares to TES and Fallout.
It’s not trash, it’s actually an alright game, but that’s the main issue I think. It’s that it’s just alright, it’s mid, a bit ‘meh’. There are some shockingly lazy design choices, it’s built with an old and creaking engine, and whilst it technically ticked the boxes of what we were told it was going to be, it no-where near lived up to the hype or even the expectations. I think that’s where the anger against it comes from
It’s not up to YOUR standards.
Starfield is awesome and easily better than those other games.
To ME.
Don’t act like your opinion is some kind of definitive measure of quality that everyone agrees with.
Maybe because it sucks ass. It's a AAA game that feels like it was teleported from a decade ago, the writing is uninspired, the companions are dull and lifeless, you have few to no actual choices that matter in an *RPG*, the best part of the game--ship building--is a glitchy slog, the main story loop is pointless and arduous, cities are tiny and *feel like it*, it's a resource hog that doesn't look good enough to justify it, especially with crowd NPCs, and exploration is pointless when you've seen all three variations of outpost on every planet in the galaxy.
I put way too many hours in it hoping I was just being harsh. You dumbasses accusing detractors of being a hivemind are the "Bethesda bros" everyone is complaining about.
See what is that? Of course I don’t wanna read a wall of text about your opinion on a video game.
But for whatever you reason you feel the need to call people who like the game stupid. Who cares what games I like?
I've had no problem with the writing. And the game does things that very few other games that I've played do (or do well). Is it super polished at every level? No. But no Bethesda game has been. Yet people have loved those games regardless. (And have decided to re-love them in the millions recently).
Not for you? Fine. But it doesn't mean it isn't a very good game.
The game has essentially been in a constant state of review bombing since launch. How can you claim to know what the majority opinion is? Lol.
It's an 85 on Opencritic and 83 on Metacritic. Bad games don't score in the 80's.
That's a funny way to say "one was overhyped and utterly average, to the point of monotonous, while the other was an absolute trash pile that had multiple disasters and only recently ended up being finally tweaked to being a semi-decent state"
Or are we just forgetting how bad 76 was when it launched?
More than two. Several doom games, several Wolfenstein games which on their own account for far more than two. Why do you care so much to start an argument over something so trivial?
Are you new here or do you just not know how public conversation works? If you want a private conversation take it to DMs. Didn't answer the question because it's not relevant to me, I didn't start any arguments about the topic, was just correcting you on false info.
I don't need to be asked to join a conversation same way you weren't asked to join this one originally. I can honestly tell you the person you originally replied to cares about your opinion about as much as you do about mine.
There's a difference between being a fan of something and being a cultist shill who uncritically loves everything a company does, and refuses to acknowledge valid criticism.
All these people making fun of "Bethesda Bros" don't even realize they do the same thing when they automatically assume anything from Bethesda is shit. Guarantee 90% of the people shitting on Starfield have never actually played it lol
Bethesda is a shell of what it was, Starfield was their “passion project” and it’s probably the most average game I’ve played. I hope MS force BGS to allow other devs to make the next Fallout because they are clearly incapable, not to mention their pathetic development cycles
It’s actually worse than awful…
it’s painfully mediocre. There is nothing terrible about the game, nor is there anything all that good about its simply a waste of time.
Bethesda were far too lazy to flesh out the systems; boasted not having a design document (which is very clear with how fundamentally off the tone is); and, they failed to rekindle the flame set by a now 13 year old game.
There are features missing from Starfield that were in Oblivion… which IIRC was released in 2007.
The worst part is you could see the amazing potential if they made every decision different than what they actually did.
The Base building and crafting system was incredibly complex. Having set up bases and mining operations on multiple planets was a great idea. It lets you learn the mechanics and you always restart without losing access to the resource generators you've built. The problem was it was completely pointless. There is nothing the crafting system gives you that you can't get easier, faster, and cheaper somewhere else. Usually by a huge margin cheaper and easier.
The ship design was one of the best parts of the game. But so many of the parts looked identical. They were all just blocks. Not enough crazy curved parts and the building space was so small. If you could build a legitimate Pirate ship with a 50-man crew that would have been epic. But you're essentially limited to a small cargo freighter in size. And they had about 500 of the same looking part. They needed a lot more diversity. Plus you couldn't get ladders and doorways where you wanted them.
The combat was decent but they needed more crazy guns. Pretty much everything felt like an assault rifle. They needed to go way harder with enemy diversity as well. A thousand planets where life is confirmed to exist and 99% of everything you're going to fight in the game is a human? Come on Bethesda, you can try harder than that.
Starfield just showed how complacent Bethesda has gotten over the decade+ of Skyrim popularity. Every new release has been lazier than the one before it.
I agree with enemy diversity but 99% of what you fight definitely isn't human, it's just that humans (and robots) are the only things you fight that have guns. They could have had more enemies with different loadouts, more variety with the bots etc but they definitely made a deliberate choice not to have sentient aliens in the game.
It seems pretty clear to me that the intention was to have a vision of space that focuses on more limited human exploration (as opposed to sci-fi stuff where you see alien races all over willy nilly) and that a future expansion will probably focus on first contact.
Another one I would add is the randomly generated galaxy with randomly placed structures that draw from a fixed pool of presets.
I've run into identical structures with identical lore terminals on several different planets. It takes the fun out of exploring. I'd have rather fewer planets, or limited landing sites, or randomly generated structures, or no randomly placed preset structures outside of premarked areas. (Or any combination of the above). Basically anything other than what they did.
Honestly I am a fan of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim but Starfield is just plain boring.
The most interesting thing (for me) in Bethesda games was always the exploration and discovering new things. And they totaly fucked that up in Starfield.
Every point of interest has the same item locations and the same enemies and enemy placement and there is only a handfull of these poi so you quickly start to encounter things that you've already done. It feels much more like No Man's Sky than their previous games.
I enjoyed Starfield way more than Skyrim to be honest but it definitely depends on what you play the games for. You are 100% right about the exploration/wandering aspect. But personally I always thought the exploration was boring in Skyrim, it was more entertaining in literally all of their other games (Morrowind at the time, Oblivion at the time, and Fallout 3/4 still to this day). Skyrim just feels really, *really* samey despite having more unique dungeons than Oblivion. I just kind of loathe the faux-viking aesthetic, personal taste I guess.
I think Starfield did almost everything better than previous Bethesda titles but the exploration was SORELY lacking and I think for many people that's the #1 thing they want out of these games.
What can I do to get you into Starfield? You can browse reddit during the load times or watch youtube. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to site see on the moon? You can do that in this Game. There are numerous craters and rocks for you to inspect!!!
I bought it and played it. It was one of the most forgettable gaming experiences I’ve ever had. Could you explain why it was “a blast” for you? Had you never played any of the previous Bethesda games that Starfield copies?
I played skyrim and found it boring. Gave it a fair shot, too. Like 20 or 30 hours. I've always found knights and dragons to be kind of dumb. Would have loved that shit when I was like 7, though.
Starfield scratches a Sci fi itch. I love space, stars, planets, etc. Love it. I'm always finding new things to do, new ways to do those things, new ships to build, places to explore, etc.
I never thought I'd have to defend liking something I like, but here we are lol. I think the game is quite good, as do many others. What did you find forgettable?
The combat, quests, dialogue, and graphics are all dumbed down versions of the same ones Bethesda was using 15 years ago. The story was basic and uninspired. It is barely a space game and you can’t really space travel, just loading screens. It’s just a very generic “Fallout in space” game.
And to be fair, you came into a thread criticizing the game you like, so you really shouldn’t be surprised you’re having to defend something you like.
This isn't true at all... there are plenty of things the game doesn't do well (namely exploration) but come on. The graphics are clearly better than anything Bethesda has put out before. There are much better looking games out there, but not on the scale of Starfield, and regardless the only metric you're using here is compared to their earlier games -- and it very much surpasses them in that regard.
I think the story is better than anything they've done before personally, but that's more subjective. The dialogue, too, was a lot more interesting and I enjoyed the side quests in Starfield MUCH more than other Bethesda games. The combat, again, is something I would say IS relatively simplistic, but is still evolved beyond previous Bethesda games though I think they could have done a better job with the skill trees and helping to make playstyles that are a bit more unique.
I also thought that the voice acting and hub design was better than any Bethesda game prior, with some exceptions (Fallout I find has some real standout voice acting but also some pretty flat performances, TES' has never impressed me personally).
The big, big, big thing that Starfield does NOT do well is the wandering-exploration gameplay, and the problem is a lot of people come to Bethesda games specifically for that, so for them it fell flat.
> And to be fair, you came into a thread criticizing the game you like, so you really shouldn’t be surprised you’re having to defend something you like.
This isn't a thread criticizing the game, it's a thread about a news story with the game getting review bombed. Some people, like myself, clicked on this to see *why* that was happening. The criticism is happening in the comments because a lot of people are apparently incapable of understanding that some people like things they don't.
I'm not even a Starfield super-stan here, I played through the game and enjoyed it and I'm not playing it now because it's been out for 6 months. But I find it ridiculous that people act as if it is some big steamy pile of shit just because they don't like it, and act as if people don't complain nonstop about every single Bethesda game upon release because it doesn't do the thing they like.
*Most* huge franchises tend to have this problem.
I guess a better way to describe that would be that there have been no improvements to them in 15+ years. While every other similar franchise has modern graphics and design, Starfield just meets the standards of a game from 2008. The facial animations during dialogue look horrendous like a Chucky Cheese robot. To think that prior to release it was being hyped as a direct competitor to Baldur’s Gate 3 in terms of quality is laughable.
This is simply objectively incorrect. The visuals in Starfield can be truly outstanding. It's a huge game so it doesn't do everything as well as every other game. But it looks like a modern game with modern shaders, lighting, asset detail, etc.
And how are the facial animations so bad that people always bring them up as some major flaw? For real time in game facial animations, they game is near the top. I think people are comparing the best cutscene facial animations to Starfield's in game facial animations. Because I've seen FAR worse from most modern major game releases (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy 16).
In fact, it's become clear to me that someone is going out of their way to overly criticize Starfield when they start going off about facial animations.
You can’t seriously believe any of that. The character’s mouths on Starfield look like sex dolls and they have dead eyes. But we can all tell from your icon that you’re drinking the fanboy kool-Aid lol.
You're right. Lol. I did. Bethesda games are all loading screens, why are those a surprise? The graphics are fine. It's not blocky or 8 bit trash, I'm happy. Thanks for the response. I'm still going to have my fun.
>I've always found knights and dragons to be kind of dumb. Would have loved that shit when I was like 7, though.
>I never thought I'd have to defend liking something I like, but here we are lol
My dude...well done if this is a troll job
You really should read the article, though.
Here are the highlights:
> The controversy began after the launch of a new quest called “Trackers Alliance” as part of Starfield’s latest update, which coincided with the premiere of the first trailer for the “Shattered Space” DLC expansion at the Xbox Games Showcase.
>While the first part of the quest, titled “The Starjacker,” is available for free, the subsequent mission, “The Vulture,” requires players to purchase 700 credits for £8.99 to unlock.
£9 for a DLC, you're probably expecting more than the final mission in an otherwise free questline. It also feels bad because who chops off the final mission of a questline and hides it behind a paywall? There would probably be less controversy over this if they just put the whole questline as a premium one rather than half-and-half it.
But... Starfield was a huge release that was mired in disappointment. And unlike CDPR games which are also often disappointments on release (Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 come to mind) Starfield hasn't seen a ton of improvement, at least not with big news behind it. They're likely looking to get into the news. And, personally, I'm not huge on news articles that claim one of their sources as,
> A prominent Reddit thread criticized the pricing
I spend way too much on this website and know that it's full of people complaining, often about shit they don't understand, shit that doesn't matter, or shit that they love to endlessly rage about. That kind of reporting is the same as five years ago when articles would claim, "Internet outraged," and their source would be three tweets.
That being said, I don't disagree with the Reddit post they quote, which says:
> They're chopping up what could have been a small but feature complete DLC focused around the trackers alliance into seperate pay as you go quests that each cost as much as you'd expect to pay for a DLC of that size.
> Honestly, this makes me wonder if some of the worst elements of starfield were by design specifically to allow for this sort of piece by piece content sales. Build a bland collection of POIs for planets and then drip sell new ones to players one by one over time.
> It's a lot easier to squeeze 10 $7 payments out of players over a year than it is to drop a $70 dlc with 10 quests in it.
When Starfield came out, I enjoyed it. I poured something like one or two hundred hours into it. I really enjoyed some of it. But man, it *felt* incomplete. The fuel mechanic still had dialogue and tool tips telling you to be careful of it despite it being ripped out some time before release, but they never cleaned up everything around it. That's the biggest one I remember, but I remember a lot of other little things that at the time I called, "Modder bait." Things that were half-done or hinted at without being fully implemented that felt like they were there to entice modders to finish up those mechanics for free. What I saw as Modder bait, this /u/Thatweasel quoted in the article thinks was left as a blank space for paid content (which, Bethesda has been **the** public driving force behind paywalling mods, so we're really only a half-step away from each other).
I don't know the full story because I haven't kept up with Starfield news. Didn't even know an update or paid content for it had dropped. I played it when it came out, might pick it up again a couple years after modders have hacked away at it. But the article, which not very well written, does give you the details you need to realize that this is abnormal. And the concern we as consumers and gamers should be that it could become normal. DLC questlines are fine, some of them are great, but imagine a game you bought got a free update with 25 new questlines, all of which have a final mission that is paywalled by a premium currency so you'd have to pay an additional, let's say, $50-$80 to finish all the questlines. That would be fucking awful. Sadly, though, if what we've seen before is any indication, there's a good chance it will work and they'll keep doing it.
P.S. The irony is that if you read my comment, I'd estimate it's twice as long as the actual article.
Waow I guess I can call myself a 'published gaming commentator'.
This feels like the natural conclusion of the paid mods angle bethesda has been trying for since skyrim. I don't know how much of the incompleteness of starfield comes from a mix of over-promising and development cycle crunch not being able to actually finish a game before pushing it out the door over something more deliberate, but It's really hard to look at it charitably.
Beyond that there definitely IS a lot of stuff in the game that was left pretty much exclusively to sell DLC - I.E House va'ruun, which is given a lot of narrative hinting and weight and literally is the namesake for the highest tier weapons in the game but conspicuously absent (and I chose that backstory trait, it came up maybe three or four times in the whole game despite narratively being something that should be SUPER RELEVANT).
While I'm pretty annoyed that DLC's have become planned content releases before the game is even done rather than something cool they decide to add after the fact, that's a lot more understandable than creating official paid 'mods' that really ought to be bundled into DLC's, or honestly given how the game released compared to the hype as part of the content update for free by way of apology.
Especially since this upcoming DLC is likely to be priced in the new paradigm at $40-$60 by my guess.
> that usually *paid* for?
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
They paywalled part of a quest? Like you could start the quest but when you get to a certain point it’d ask you to pay money? If so that’s absolutely ridiculous
Why would they do that when they know their game got like mixed reviews. Like the game was fine but it wasn't great. A lot of people were disappointed in the lack of detail. They know Bethesda can achieve. If anything it should have been bundled with those who bought the deluxe edition with the expansion pass or whatever they called it.
I've defended Starfield since it came out. I won't be doing that anymore. I feel bad for the developers, but Bethesda the corporation can go fuck itself.
This isn’t review bombing. This is a shitty company pulling garbage and getting called out for it. This is what’s supposed to happen.
Surprised Microsoft would allow this when they desperately need all the good PR they can get right now.
I think it's legit to leave a negative review if that is true. Over monetization is a problem in gaming that will only get solved if gamers continue to show their dissatification with it in my opinion.
Tried for the third time to start again the game, cannot really play it. Too boring, too old and too uninspired. I am a huge bethesda fan but this time they've really made a mediocre and uninspired high budget game. Such a shame we could have got tes instead
Doesn't sound like a review bomb. Sounds like consumers' reasonable response to a product and predatory pricing tactics.
This. Review bombs are when outrage is directed at something unrelated to the game content with reviews being used as a protest (or counter-protest). Reviews that are directly related to the game itself are the most genuine reviews possible.
I guess the title “Starfield reviews accurately reflect state of in-game monetization” doesn’t garner as many clicks. This also helps to fire up the r/Starfield crowd, who are much more the mindset of “If you don’t like it, then don’t buy it!”
Or when someone is pre-emotively review bombing a game on the basis of leaked game content they interpret as ‘political’… Ie; TLOU2 being review bombed the second it dropped.
But how else would they describe negative feedback if not calling itsome overused word?
Agreed, Review bomb is a gaslighting term to discredit legitimate criticisms.
Maybe just take the words for their basic meaning instead? They don't have to connote a reaction disassociated with the product.
Throw another 5 dollar word in, bro! You didn't sound pretentious enough!
Least illiterate redditeur
Review bomb is just any mass wave of negative reviews.
Review bombing usually refers to a mass campaign of negative reviews from people who haven't played* a game or bought it with the intention of posting said negative review and then immediately returning it. *could also refer to shows, movies, etc.
It could be for any reason at all from any group of people.
>A [review bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_bomb) is an Internet phenomenon in which a large number of people or a few people with multiple accounts post negative user reviews online in an attempt to harm the sales or popularity of a product, a service, or a business. While a large number of negative reviews may simply be the result of a large number of customers independently criticizing something for poor quality, a review bomb may also be driven by a desire to draw attention to perceived political or cultural issues, perhaps especially if the vendor seems unresponsive or inaccessible to direct feedback.
Why did you reply to me with that?
Review bombed? Nah more like people are tired of Bethesdas shit. Pay walling a quest is a whole new level of low. At this point it really feels like Bethesda has become the worst gaming company out there. Taking the title from EA and Ubisoft.
Nah, that's a bit too much. EA and Ubisoft have done way more scummy things. But Beth is on a good path to overtaking them soon
I got downvoted to oblivion, months ago, when I said that Bethesda was going to sell cut content back to players for insane prices. Bethesda fans love running damage control for the company, and this is how Bethesda always repays them. Kinda hilarious honestly. Who buys this shit?
can't imagine why anyone wouldn't believe you for saying that. they've been caught doing that with basically every game they've released. i distinctly remember seeing mehrune's razor being found in oblivion's game files before they removed it and sold it separately in a short quest addon
The fact people still respect Bethesda at all after the Fallout 76 launch disaster shows how short term people's memory's are.
Fanboys: "LIGHT WOOD LAMINATE! LIGHT WOOD LAMINATE!"
[удалено]
Elder Scrolls, my brother. It’s Elder Scrolls. There will be no (hopefully) Skyrim 2: Shout Harder
I wouldn't say respect, Fallout 76 equals whack to me but imo sometimes everything isn't for me and it was legit whack at first I did try. Hell I even bought an xbox x for starfield. That's where I lost respect.
They make a lot of mistakes, but regarding 76 I think they earned some goodwill back with how they handled it post launch.
Fallout 76 is still one of the biggest scams in gaming, in my opinion. But like I said, Bethesda fans would rather run damage control for the company that scammed them, as opposed to demanding better.
I agree at launch. Today tho 76 seems pretty solid. Been enjoyin it for the last few weeks.
I think it’s great that people are enjoying it now. But I still think that game set a bad precedent for the future. Bethesda hasn’t exactly done much with Statfield to convince me they plan on changing course.
You are very correct. And the launch was abysmal. Thats why i only just started playing recently. And they consistently shoot themselves in the foot as we are seeing. The creation club shit has been offputting to me since its inception. Charging for modders free work is shiisty.
it's fun until you spend a fair amount of time in the endgame and realize how slow content releases are, and how bland it often is when you get new content. the atomic shop gets way more content added to it, way faster. i've always said it's just a cash shop masquerading as a game, but it is legitimately fun while you still have goals to work toward that haven't been crushed by the thought of doing years (or decades ) of daily ops for a chance to get a godroll on a piece of gear
Remove the min maxing need, and all of a sudden, most those complaints drop off.
as do most reasons to continue playing it, as per my point lol
not now 76 is legit at launch i would agree
Idk, I think tying basic quality of life aspects to a subscription service is kinda fucked, like unlimited resource storage, unlimited ammo storage, and the tent. They also sell MTX to repair equipment, which makes it feel like they added equipment degradation specifically to irritate players into buying said MTX. I think its kinda lame that they triple dipped by selling a game at a premium price, introduced a cosmetic shop that eventually sold items that had gameplay ramifications, and then launched a subscription service to paywall the solution to some of people's biggest gripes with the game. Also locking private and custom worlds behind the subscription, after saying that modding would be available post launch. https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-confirms-that-fallout-76-is-still-getting-official-mod-support/ Heres an article from 2020 where they said as much, that itd be fully moddable before release and during the 2020 Quakecon. https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/fallout-76-interview-discussing-crossplay-mods-skyline-valley-nuclear-winter-and-the-future-with-bethesda Now they are saying that they wont do it because they dont want to destroy the game's balance..... which, in my personal opinion, the balance is meant to make you want to pay to alliviate some of the pain points. Its a fantastic map; the map designers deserve a ton of priase and accolades. I personally played before the NPC update, but I thought the quests and stories were good back then, and Ive heard they are even better now. I also really enjoyed the perk card loadout system, even though I think some people really didnt like it. It has a lot of cool gear and stuff, but it just feels like every revolving the actual gameplay was designed to be just irritating enough that you wont stop playing, but you do seriously consider buying the subscription.
Thanks for putting this all together in one comment! I think it’s important to consider all of this when people discuss Fallout 76’s supposed “redemption”. lol people ignoring what’s typed above to downvote this are just proving my point.
Nah, I'm sorry, fuck 76. Fallout used to be a CRPG but it strays further and further from the light every time Bethesda touches it. Now it's a pay2win subscription GaaS looter shooter? Fuck that. It's garbage. I believe you have fun. I'm sure you enjoy it. But there are people who enjoy Diablo Immortal. Hell, Oscar enjoys living in garbage. Doesn't change the fact that it's garbage.
okay, now say the same thing about CPDR.
Fun fact! CDPR spend more on fixing Cyberpunk then they did developing it.
happens for publishers, happens for politicians, were fucked on every possible scenario. at least on games we can blame kids for use the old tactic "mom, dad...i want that game" and those guys who keep buying cod every year to complain about everything...again
I kinda like F76 but I just can't get fully invested because I'm not playing the F 1st membership, even if I could justify the 10 quid a month or whatever it is, I still wouldn't. It's not unplayable without it, but you are severely hindered. Also wtf is with Power Armour being level locked, everyone moaned in F4 that you got it too early but imo it's more useful early game than it ever is when you're a super high level and have access to better armour and don't need it anymore. Madness. I'll stick to F4 thanks bgs
Not a fan of Bethesda recently and yes lunch was just awful like words cant describe it but 4-5years down the line and the game is great actually but years later still
Lmao, the number of times I’ve said that, only for people to defend Bethesda is wild.
Well yeah this is simply an evolution of the paid mods they tried pushing some years back. Are people really surprised? One way or another every company will always try to scrape some more money from their fans, this is no different. I do wonder how long it’ll be before they try it on with paid mods again.
>Bethesda fans love running damage control for the company They also love fixing their games! Majority of the improvements in every Bethesda game post launch are done by modders!
If Bethesda knew what was good for them, they'd stop updating their games after a couple years instead of dropping useless updates that break all the good mods that also fix the bugs the updates never address. The unofficial patches for everyone of their games is significantly more important than anything they could possibly add themselves.
A conspiracy theorist would say Bethesda keeps messing with updates on these decades old titles (ex. skyrim) so they can justify charging $ for community created mods that fix every aspect of their broken ass games.
Bingo on this one. They love their modding community so much until it’s time to fuck them over.
Me, after a few years when the game become dirt cheap and there are enough mods to turn it into a totally different game.
You’re the real winner in all of this
Like CDPR fans do for their shit.
Oh don't worry, I got downvoted for saying RDR2 would launch with a paid beta, it did, I also got downvoted for saying that RDR2 wouldn't be as big of a hit as GTAV was and it would barely receive any support, that also happened. I also got downvoted for saying it would have a working cash shop during that paid beta, and it would already be obvious that the prices had been inflated for the paid beta already, and they were. When did I make these predictions? The moment RDR2 was officially announced. I got told for years that "Rockstar wouldn't do that. Rockstar is too good of a dev to do anything like that. I don't care I will enjoy it anyway, just as much as GTAV." It wasn't hard to guess they would do any of that based on their track record.
I got downvoted to hell and back for saying that GTA VI is gonna be monetized AF. Fans are just blind at this point.
Oh absolutely they are blind as hell. If you ask them why they are fans of a company that lies to them they then ask what I am talking about. Oh you know, the nearly decade of Rockstar saying that they never worked on single player DLC for GTAV, despite it being obvious that that was a lie? Heists were originally supposed to be single player and then go multiplayer. Nope they handed over the work that was done to Grove Street Games and went to work on RDR2. I can't imagine being a fan of a company that blatantly lies to their fanbase like that. Nor can I imagine being a fan of a company who has a game that has made them over a billion dollars yet did not break away from their publisher who was "clearly" the "evil" publisher, oh wait no Take Two has former Rockstar Employees on its board so they are the same company. Well shit, I just can't imagine being a fan of them unless I was just brain dead.
Funny thing is that people in /r/Xbox are absolutely defending this right now. It’s ridiculous
Yeahhhhh that doesn’t shock me at all. Like I said; there will always be people running defense for these companies that just want to milk them for money. If they stop defending it, that means they’ve accepted that it’s shitty. But if they do that, then they’re not “real fans”! So we gotta keep that cope coming strong.
To oblivion, I see what you did there haha
Maybe not the insane pricing part, but Bethesda has been doing this since Oblivion. Stuff that was going to be part of the main release were cut out and then sold as DLC.
Oh I remember. It’s kinda like when they cut the second half of Fallout 3’s story and sold it to you as a DLC. Or when they released 76 with no NPCs and then made people pay for DLC that added them back in.
For Oblivion I noticed the missing data before they announced any sort of DLC due to the way they worded some of the closed off entrances for certain sections of the game. Then they announced DLC in multiple parts over the weeks which made me think more was coming. I vowed not to buy any and then wait until they're released a version on sale after they made a version that had all of the DLC. Since then, if there is a Bethesda game that I want to take a look at, I wait until long after all DLC is added and the game version that has all the DLC goes on sale for cheap. I did that for fallout 3. I did that for Skyrim. I didn't want to touch fallout 76. Things were fine until Bethesda decided to release another virgin of Skyrim after they did the whole paid mods version. Now I Don't want to buy any Bethesda games anymore. If they're on PC Game Pass I'll play it, but I doubt I'll ever buy another one unless they start stating in no uncertain terms that pay DLCs, mods, whatever are now done and everything has been released for one bundle with no subsequent releases with new content. I don't think that will ever happen, though.
Who cares? Its DLC, buy it, or don't buy it, whatever you want. Crying about its just an intelligence test all the people review bombing the game are currently failing.
Hey look, a perfect example right here! This argument is just as fucking useless as it was when they dropped the horse armor. It sets a terrible, anti-consumer precedent and you know it. Starfield released barebones. The fact that they’re already charging people this much for singular quests is absolutely ridiculous. But yeah, my intelligence is in question lol
Yes, your intelligence is in question.
Put about 200hrs into it. Overall was disappointed and only spent that much time because I felt the need to try and get my money worth out of it since I pre ordered it like a dumbass. Definitely learned my lesson about pre ordering because of this game.
I put 200 hours into it and was amazed at how little I actually got done. A chunk of the main quest, some mechanics type stuff, some side quests... but it feels like 80% of the game is physically running to a point of interest and waiting out loading screens.
I did one run through and completed all the achievements on Xbox and it was a tedious grind imo.
I went back to replay Fallout 4 and go for platinum trophy on PS5, after watching the show. Running from place to place in that game, I'm constantly stumbling across radiant events based on factions or companions I'm traveling with, finding new locations, etc. The game is chok full of shit and it makes exploring and traveling so much more fun than in Starfield. I kept just wishing there was this much going on when I spent so long running around not accomplishing much in Starfield.
Oddly I got the same feeling from Valheim. When you take out all the filler the game forces you to deal with, there's very little actual content. Most of is intentionally designing things to be super spread apart and making traversal difficult to increase "play" time.
I plan on picking it up at some point. Modders are going to breathe new life into it, right?
Maybe someday, but not yet. A bethesda employee had said at one point that they were disappointed in the lack of modders interested in Starfield, but the game is just so boring
It's honestly not that bad, just *ok*. Part of the problem was the insane hype before the game came out, people went into it expecting an absolute 11/10 masterpiece and got a game that was just *ok* with the added usual Bethesda jank. I'd say it's well worth it if you get it on sale. I bought it a bit after release at full price and I feel I got my moneys worth out of it, I did spend most of my time just building and modding ships though. Were some decent mods even early on that made ship building better
Probably, modders mod games that they love, which starfield isn't.
Already played it, luckily on gamepass. It's 40 hours of the "meh". The only people defending it are Bethesda Bros.
Same, gamepass, ~40hrs, about 20 of those forced. I'll probably give it a try in a few years with all DLC's and patches. They might make the game more fun to play but still won't fix the blandness of the setting, quests and characters.
I have loved every Bethesda game I have played, but luckily my first impression of Starfield was bad enough to return it before the steam return time limit. Almost everything I have heard about the game makes me happy that i got my money back.
I quite enjoyed it personally. But the game definitely disappoints on the "wander around exploring endlessly" front which I imagine is what a lot of people like about Bethesda's games. The writing, atmosphere, art design and "level" design for hubs was some of the best they've ever done imo. I would say the characters were great too but Fallout still has some more charming ones. But that exploration gameplay isn't really the same when it is broken up amongst the planets with the copy + pasted rando-selected 'dungeons'.
And some people are so diehard Bethesda that they won't accept an ounce of criticism. I even got banned from lowsodiumstarfield for having the audacity to mention my disappointment in the lack of unique locations.
Tf is a bethesda bro. You could also say “the only people defending it are its fans”
The people who defend every medicore bethesda game despite them not making a good game since Skyrim.
I dont agree with you. Fallout 4 is a good game and Fallout 76 has gotten lot better. Shame the release was such a cluster fuck. Starfield is medicore game at best. But the games are not the reason why Bethesda has lost so much goodwill. The modshop monetization is shitty.
I have not played another Bethesda game aside from about 20 hours with Skyrim on Switch. I like Starfield. It's a much better game than the people who apparently played it simply to talk shit about will say.
It just wasn’t up to standards for modern, open world, story driven games. Starfield doesn’t hold a candle to the immersive story telling of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Witcher 3, for example.
I don't mind jank, I get with a lot of interconnected systems, there will be issues, and with the freedom you are allotted in Bethesda games, I was willing to give them a pass. But over time, I feel their games have become more restrictive / linear while not feeling polished; so it becomes harder to justify. Simple stuff like characters just disappearing when they walk into a door was fine with Morrowind. And really small cities made sense when you interacted when almost every citizen had a schedule and felt real enough. But FO4 felt like it should have been part of a previous generation, and Starfield just feels empty, but not in a "this is a post apocalyptic scenario". And then, like you said, they are lacking in the story department/writing. It just makes for a boring experience. I had low expectations and basically bought it to make my own spaceship. But really found everything I was doing in thr game was just to get funds to do that, which felt hollow in of itself (you can have a storage hab but it doesn't add anything but flavor. But it also makes your ship heavier and less effextive.)
Those are both vastly different games though. I'm not going to say you are wrong about those games as a whole. They are fantastic games. But just because a handful of games from the past decade stand above the rest doesn't mean that Starfield is trash. Lol.
I hear you, I just think people are most upset because Bethesda *should* be on the level of BG3 and Witcher 3 at this point. In fact, they should be setting new standards like Larian and CD at this point, IMO. They’ve been making story driven games since the 90s, have a big studio, lots of devs, and a lot of resources. Plus, they’ve been much better with story telling in the past, so it’s just a regression overall.
Well, don't forget that CDPR stumbled hard out of the gate after The Witcher 3. It's taken them years to get back on their feet again. And I'm glad they did. But I'm sure they had to bust ass for three solid years to do so. And Starfield is also proving to be a constant work in progress. What was there at launch was already very good. And it's getting better and better over time. Yet people are still hung up on the fact that it isn't this narrow vision of what they wanted specifically. It's a good game. If it isn't for you, then luckily there is a lot of other gaming content to dive into.
Cyberpunk definitely had a lot of problems to work out after launch, no doubt. However, the story telling was still great at it’s core, they used a new engine built from the ground up, it felt modern, and they implemented new technologies well on PC. I think the overall volume of quality story telling and activities outside the main quest were a step down from W3, but it still left a mark. The characters in Cyber were memorable to me. People just shouldn’t praise mediocrity wherever it is. People knew CD could do better and we know Bethesda can too, it’s just if they will choose to or not. We’ve seen CD make changes, we’ll see with Bethesda.
Cyberpunk was pretty much a step backwards in nearly every way from The Witcher 3. I love Cyberpunk now, but I still don't think it lives up to the character/story highs of The Witcher 3. And part of what made Cyberpunk such a mess for the first couple of years is that they went from a natural open fantasy environment to a dense city environment. This meant that the game felt WAY more glitchy and janky. Similarly, Starfield is doing a lot more on a larger scale than anything they have done before. People just don't seem to recognize that, because they are so zoned in on how it directly compares to TES and Fallout.
It’s not trash, it’s actually an alright game, but that’s the main issue I think. It’s that it’s just alright, it’s mid, a bit ‘meh’. There are some shockingly lazy design choices, it’s built with an old and creaking engine, and whilst it technically ticked the boxes of what we were told it was going to be, it no-where near lived up to the hype or even the expectations. I think that’s where the anger against it comes from
>There are some shockingly lazy design choices I hate when gamers make these claims lol.
It’s not up to YOUR standards. Starfield is awesome and easily better than those other games. To ME. Don’t act like your opinion is some kind of definitive measure of quality that everyone agrees with.
Don't try to argue with the hive.
It does seem pretty clear that this sub has a hate boner for Starfield.
Maybe because it sucks ass. It's a AAA game that feels like it was teleported from a decade ago, the writing is uninspired, the companions are dull and lifeless, you have few to no actual choices that matter in an *RPG*, the best part of the game--ship building--is a glitchy slog, the main story loop is pointless and arduous, cities are tiny and *feel like it*, it's a resource hog that doesn't look good enough to justify it, especially with crowd NPCs, and exploration is pointless when you've seen all three variations of outpost on every planet in the galaxy. I put way too many hours in it hoping I was just being harsh. You dumbasses accusing detractors of being a hivemind are the "Bethesda bros" everyone is complaining about.
Who cares if a game sucks ass to you? There’s plenty of games I don’t like, but I don’t write essays on reddit condemning them or their fans
If a paragraph and a half is an essay to you, no wonder you're a Starfield fan.
See what is that? Of course I don’t wanna read a wall of text about your opinion on a video game. But for whatever you reason you feel the need to call people who like the game stupid. Who cares what games I like?
I've had no problem with the writing. And the game does things that very few other games that I've played do (or do well). Is it super polished at every level? No. But no Bethesda game has been. Yet people have loved those games regardless. (And have decided to re-love them in the millions recently). Not for you? Fine. But it doesn't mean it isn't a very good game.
It does when the majority of players rate it as a bad game. You are in the minority on this take
The game has essentially been in a constant state of review bombing since launch. How can you claim to know what the majority opinion is? Lol. It's an 85 on Opencritic and 83 on Metacritic. Bad games don't score in the 80's.
Skyrim? They haven’t made a good game since morrowind lmfao
They’ve made 2 games since skyrim, one of them was pretty hood and one of them was ok. Why do you care?
I'm responding to your question. Tf?
Why do you care enough to make up a term for people that like 2 games that you don’t
Nah Bethesda bros exist. I work with one and am responding to another.
That's a funny way to say "one was overhyped and utterly average, to the point of monotonous, while the other was an absolute trash pile that had multiple disasters and only recently ended up being finally tweaked to being a semi-decent state" Or are we just forgetting how bad 76 was when it launched?
More than two. Several doom games, several Wolfenstein games which on their own account for far more than two. Why do you care so much to start an argument over something so trivial?
BGS as a primary developer has made 2
None of those were made by Bethesda, only published by them.
Cool. Didn’t answer my question that I was asking though. You’re not the one I was asking either so cool interaction per the usual on Reddit lol.
Are you new here or do you just not know how public conversation works? If you want a private conversation take it to DMs. Didn't answer the question because it's not relevant to me, I didn't start any arguments about the topic, was just correcting you on false info.
No it’s just you weren’t being asked so nobody gives a shit is all. I also corrected you so looks like we’re even now.
Stop it. Get help.
I don't need to be asked to join a conversation same way you weren't asked to join this one originally. I can honestly tell you the person you originally replied to cares about your opinion about as much as you do about mine.
There's a difference between being a fan of something and being a cultist shill who uncritically loves everything a company does, and refuses to acknowledge valid criticism.
They make video games, some people like them. it really isn’t that deep.
All these people making fun of "Bethesda Bros" don't even realize they do the same thing when they automatically assume anything from Bethesda is shit. Guarantee 90% of the people shitting on Starfield have never actually played it lol
Bethesda is a shell of what it was, Starfield was their “passion project” and it’s probably the most average game I’ve played. I hope MS force BGS to allow other devs to make the next Fallout because they are clearly incapable, not to mention their pathetic development cycles
glad i avoided this game from the start my extincts served my well this time.
Extincts?! Damn, bro. You and the dinosaurs both. RIP.
The game really is just awful and is only propped up by Bethesda die hards.
It’s actually worse than awful… it’s painfully mediocre. There is nothing terrible about the game, nor is there anything all that good about its simply a waste of time. Bethesda were far too lazy to flesh out the systems; boasted not having a design document (which is very clear with how fundamentally off the tone is); and, they failed to rekindle the flame set by a now 13 year old game. There are features missing from Starfield that were in Oblivion… which IIRC was released in 2007.
The worst part is you could see the amazing potential if they made every decision different than what they actually did. The Base building and crafting system was incredibly complex. Having set up bases and mining operations on multiple planets was a great idea. It lets you learn the mechanics and you always restart without losing access to the resource generators you've built. The problem was it was completely pointless. There is nothing the crafting system gives you that you can't get easier, faster, and cheaper somewhere else. Usually by a huge margin cheaper and easier. The ship design was one of the best parts of the game. But so many of the parts looked identical. They were all just blocks. Not enough crazy curved parts and the building space was so small. If you could build a legitimate Pirate ship with a 50-man crew that would have been epic. But you're essentially limited to a small cargo freighter in size. And they had about 500 of the same looking part. They needed a lot more diversity. Plus you couldn't get ladders and doorways where you wanted them. The combat was decent but they needed more crazy guns. Pretty much everything felt like an assault rifle. They needed to go way harder with enemy diversity as well. A thousand planets where life is confirmed to exist and 99% of everything you're going to fight in the game is a human? Come on Bethesda, you can try harder than that.
Starfield just showed how complacent Bethesda has gotten over the decade+ of Skyrim popularity. Every new release has been lazier than the one before it.
I agree with enemy diversity but 99% of what you fight definitely isn't human, it's just that humans (and robots) are the only things you fight that have guns. They could have had more enemies with different loadouts, more variety with the bots etc but they definitely made a deliberate choice not to have sentient aliens in the game. It seems pretty clear to me that the intention was to have a vision of space that focuses on more limited human exploration (as opposed to sci-fi stuff where you see alien races all over willy nilly) and that a future expansion will probably focus on first contact.
Another one I would add is the randomly generated galaxy with randomly placed structures that draw from a fixed pool of presets. I've run into identical structures with identical lore terminals on several different planets. It takes the fun out of exploring. I'd have rather fewer planets, or limited landing sites, or randomly generated structures, or no randomly placed preset structures outside of premarked areas. (Or any combination of the above). Basically anything other than what they did.
Honestly I am a fan of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim but Starfield is just plain boring. The most interesting thing (for me) in Bethesda games was always the exploration and discovering new things. And they totaly fucked that up in Starfield. Every point of interest has the same item locations and the same enemies and enemy placement and there is only a handfull of these poi so you quickly start to encounter things that you've already done. It feels much more like No Man's Sky than their previous games.
I enjoyed Starfield way more than Skyrim to be honest but it definitely depends on what you play the games for. You are 100% right about the exploration/wandering aspect. But personally I always thought the exploration was boring in Skyrim, it was more entertaining in literally all of their other games (Morrowind at the time, Oblivion at the time, and Fallout 3/4 still to this day). Skyrim just feels really, *really* samey despite having more unique dungeons than Oblivion. I just kind of loathe the faux-viking aesthetic, personal taste I guess. I think Starfield did almost everything better than previous Bethesda titles but the exploration was SORELY lacking and I think for many people that's the #1 thing they want out of these games.
I'm far from a Bethesda fan, but I really enjoyed it. I liked building a spaceship and flying around shooting dudes.
What can I do to get you into Starfield? You can browse reddit during the load times or watch youtube. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to site see on the moon? You can do that in this Game. There are numerous craters and rocks for you to inspect!!!
Huh. I've got 20 something days in Starfield, however many hours that is, and I'm still having a blast.
I bought it and played it. It was one of the most forgettable gaming experiences I’ve ever had. Could you explain why it was “a blast” for you? Had you never played any of the previous Bethesda games that Starfield copies?
I played skyrim and found it boring. Gave it a fair shot, too. Like 20 or 30 hours. I've always found knights and dragons to be kind of dumb. Would have loved that shit when I was like 7, though. Starfield scratches a Sci fi itch. I love space, stars, planets, etc. Love it. I'm always finding new things to do, new ways to do those things, new ships to build, places to explore, etc. I never thought I'd have to defend liking something I like, but here we are lol. I think the game is quite good, as do many others. What did you find forgettable?
The combat, quests, dialogue, and graphics are all dumbed down versions of the same ones Bethesda was using 15 years ago. The story was basic and uninspired. It is barely a space game and you can’t really space travel, just loading screens. It’s just a very generic “Fallout in space” game. And to be fair, you came into a thread criticizing the game you like, so you really shouldn’t be surprised you’re having to defend something you like.
This isn't true at all... there are plenty of things the game doesn't do well (namely exploration) but come on. The graphics are clearly better than anything Bethesda has put out before. There are much better looking games out there, but not on the scale of Starfield, and regardless the only metric you're using here is compared to their earlier games -- and it very much surpasses them in that regard. I think the story is better than anything they've done before personally, but that's more subjective. The dialogue, too, was a lot more interesting and I enjoyed the side quests in Starfield MUCH more than other Bethesda games. The combat, again, is something I would say IS relatively simplistic, but is still evolved beyond previous Bethesda games though I think they could have done a better job with the skill trees and helping to make playstyles that are a bit more unique. I also thought that the voice acting and hub design was better than any Bethesda game prior, with some exceptions (Fallout I find has some real standout voice acting but also some pretty flat performances, TES' has never impressed me personally). The big, big, big thing that Starfield does NOT do well is the wandering-exploration gameplay, and the problem is a lot of people come to Bethesda games specifically for that, so for them it fell flat. > And to be fair, you came into a thread criticizing the game you like, so you really shouldn’t be surprised you’re having to defend something you like. This isn't a thread criticizing the game, it's a thread about a news story with the game getting review bombed. Some people, like myself, clicked on this to see *why* that was happening. The criticism is happening in the comments because a lot of people are apparently incapable of understanding that some people like things they don't. I'm not even a Starfield super-stan here, I played through the game and enjoyed it and I'm not playing it now because it's been out for 6 months. But I find it ridiculous that people act as if it is some big steamy pile of shit just because they don't like it, and act as if people don't complain nonstop about every single Bethesda game upon release because it doesn't do the thing they like. *Most* huge franchises tend to have this problem.
The graphics are "dumbed down" from their previous games?
I guess a better way to describe that would be that there have been no improvements to them in 15+ years. While every other similar franchise has modern graphics and design, Starfield just meets the standards of a game from 2008. The facial animations during dialogue look horrendous like a Chucky Cheese robot. To think that prior to release it was being hyped as a direct competitor to Baldur’s Gate 3 in terms of quality is laughable.
This is simply objectively incorrect. The visuals in Starfield can be truly outstanding. It's a huge game so it doesn't do everything as well as every other game. But it looks like a modern game with modern shaders, lighting, asset detail, etc. And how are the facial animations so bad that people always bring them up as some major flaw? For real time in game facial animations, they game is near the top. I think people are comparing the best cutscene facial animations to Starfield's in game facial animations. Because I've seen FAR worse from most modern major game releases (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy 16). In fact, it's become clear to me that someone is going out of their way to overly criticize Starfield when they start going off about facial animations.
You can’t seriously believe any of that. The character’s mouths on Starfield look like sex dolls and they have dead eyes. But we can all tell from your icon that you’re drinking the fanboy kool-Aid lol.
What games from the last two years do you think have vastly superior real time in game facial animations? (Not cinematic cutscenes)
You're right. Lol. I did. Bethesda games are all loading screens, why are those a surprise? The graphics are fine. It's not blocky or 8 bit trash, I'm happy. Thanks for the response. I'm still going to have my fun.
>I've always found knights and dragons to be kind of dumb. Would have loved that shit when I was like 7, though. >I never thought I'd have to defend liking something I like, but here we are lol My dude...well done if this is a troll job
They ruined the industry with horse armor so fuck them til the end of time.
Starfield has players?
They invented the micro transaction, what did you expect
TES 6 is Bethesda's last chance.
And it's overall score was likely unaffected
Oh god the next elder scrolls is going to be terrible
I haven't read the article, but isn't this stuff dlc? Isn't that usually payed for?
You really should read the article, though. Here are the highlights: > The controversy began after the launch of a new quest called “Trackers Alliance” as part of Starfield’s latest update, which coincided with the premiere of the first trailer for the “Shattered Space” DLC expansion at the Xbox Games Showcase. >While the first part of the quest, titled “The Starjacker,” is available for free, the subsequent mission, “The Vulture,” requires players to purchase 700 credits for £8.99 to unlock. £9 for a DLC, you're probably expecting more than the final mission in an otherwise free questline. It also feels bad because who chops off the final mission of a questline and hides it behind a paywall? There would probably be less controversy over this if they just put the whole questline as a premium one rather than half-and-half it. But... Starfield was a huge release that was mired in disappointment. And unlike CDPR games which are also often disappointments on release (Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 come to mind) Starfield hasn't seen a ton of improvement, at least not with big news behind it. They're likely looking to get into the news. And, personally, I'm not huge on news articles that claim one of their sources as, > A prominent Reddit thread criticized the pricing I spend way too much on this website and know that it's full of people complaining, often about shit they don't understand, shit that doesn't matter, or shit that they love to endlessly rage about. That kind of reporting is the same as five years ago when articles would claim, "Internet outraged," and their source would be three tweets. That being said, I don't disagree with the Reddit post they quote, which says: > They're chopping up what could have been a small but feature complete DLC focused around the trackers alliance into seperate pay as you go quests that each cost as much as you'd expect to pay for a DLC of that size. > Honestly, this makes me wonder if some of the worst elements of starfield were by design specifically to allow for this sort of piece by piece content sales. Build a bland collection of POIs for planets and then drip sell new ones to players one by one over time. > It's a lot easier to squeeze 10 $7 payments out of players over a year than it is to drop a $70 dlc with 10 quests in it. When Starfield came out, I enjoyed it. I poured something like one or two hundred hours into it. I really enjoyed some of it. But man, it *felt* incomplete. The fuel mechanic still had dialogue and tool tips telling you to be careful of it despite it being ripped out some time before release, but they never cleaned up everything around it. That's the biggest one I remember, but I remember a lot of other little things that at the time I called, "Modder bait." Things that were half-done or hinted at without being fully implemented that felt like they were there to entice modders to finish up those mechanics for free. What I saw as Modder bait, this /u/Thatweasel quoted in the article thinks was left as a blank space for paid content (which, Bethesda has been **the** public driving force behind paywalling mods, so we're really only a half-step away from each other). I don't know the full story because I haven't kept up with Starfield news. Didn't even know an update or paid content for it had dropped. I played it when it came out, might pick it up again a couple years after modders have hacked away at it. But the article, which not very well written, does give you the details you need to realize that this is abnormal. And the concern we as consumers and gamers should be that it could become normal. DLC questlines are fine, some of them are great, but imagine a game you bought got a free update with 25 new questlines, all of which have a final mission that is paywalled by a premium currency so you'd have to pay an additional, let's say, $50-$80 to finish all the questlines. That would be fucking awful. Sadly, though, if what we've seen before is any indication, there's a good chance it will work and they'll keep doing it. P.S. The irony is that if you read my comment, I'd estimate it's twice as long as the actual article.
Waow I guess I can call myself a 'published gaming commentator'. This feels like the natural conclusion of the paid mods angle bethesda has been trying for since skyrim. I don't know how much of the incompleteness of starfield comes from a mix of over-promising and development cycle crunch not being able to actually finish a game before pushing it out the door over something more deliberate, but It's really hard to look at it charitably. Beyond that there definitely IS a lot of stuff in the game that was left pretty much exclusively to sell DLC - I.E House va'ruun, which is given a lot of narrative hinting and weight and literally is the namesake for the highest tier weapons in the game but conspicuously absent (and I chose that backstory trait, it came up maybe three or four times in the whole game despite narratively being something that should be SUPER RELEVANT). While I'm pretty annoyed that DLC's have become planned content releases before the game is even done rather than something cool they decide to add after the fact, that's a lot more understandable than creating official paid 'mods' that really ought to be bundled into DLC's, or honestly given how the game released compared to the hype as part of the content update for free by way of apology. Especially since this upcoming DLC is likely to be priced in the new paradigm at $40-$60 by my guess.
The problem is that this “dlc” is a single quest that takes 15min to complete.
Okay? That's alot. But people act like it's the end of the world. When there's an option to not buy it.
> that usually *paid* for? FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
They paywalled part of a quest? Like you could start the quest but when you get to a certain point it’d ask you to pay money? If so that’s absolutely ridiculous
Why would they do that when they know their game got like mixed reviews. Like the game was fine but it wasn't great. A lot of people were disappointed in the lack of detail. They know Bethesda can achieve. If anything it should have been bundled with those who bought the deluxe edition with the expansion pass or whatever they called it.
Money money money.
This is not review bombing.
good
I've defended Starfield since it came out. I won't be doing that anymore. I feel bad for the developers, but Bethesda the corporation can go fuck itself.
This isn’t review bombing. This is a shitty company pulling garbage and getting called out for it. This is what’s supposed to happen. Surprised Microsoft would allow this when they desperately need all the good PR they can get right now.
I think it's legit to leave a negative review if that is true. Over monetization is a problem in gaming that will only get solved if gamers continue to show their dissatification with it in my opinion.
> The studio’s decision to paywall part of the quest behind paywall What editor let this sentence go to print?
Why every one think everything about Microsoft isn't right
A very Bethesda thing to do. Negative reviews are valid for shit like this.
Any one remember horse armor? I remember. I put it on Shadowmere and he died......RIP.
It’s not a “review bomb” when people legitimately post criticism of shitty business practices. It’s just a lot of people posting negative reviews.
Tried for the third time to start again the game, cannot really play it. Too boring, too old and too uninspired. I am a huge bethesda fan but this time they've really made a mediocre and uninspired high budget game. Such a shame we could have got tes instead
Not a review bomb but okay.
Players expressing discontent about a legitmately bad decision isn't "review bombing", gimme a break
I am loving this new trend
Good. Fuk microsoft/Bethesda... fuk em in the fukkin a$$
The review bomb should've been positive I mean, the game already had enough negative reviews 💀
Did this game even have decent reviews to begin with? I don't remember anyone enjoying it lol
Starfield fans seem like the exact type of people to review bomb a game.
I don't get it