It’s tough to make games, so I cut the Devs a lot of slack. Starfield was definitely too ambitious for the engine they built it on but it’s probably the best it could possibly be… With that engine.
I disagree, I’m pretty sure the same-y dungeons and lack of interesting space traversal (but requirement to engage in it) was a design choice, not an engine limitation. I’m happy to cut them slack on a lot of things, but not game design.
I just finished xenosaga episode 1 and it was way better executed than starfield. Starfield felt like chores while Xenosaga managed that I tuned in completely.
I don’t need to know why it is the way it is. For AAA titles it doesn’t matter. Finish the game or fuck off. If you can’t do that your Company should sink and make room for those that can.
Indies proving left and right that it is possible with a lot less.
Man, Outer Wilds was like that Bethesda magic concentrated to a fine point that stabbed right into my heart and I didn’t even want to pull it out.
Just absolutely the best of what passion can do with the mechanics and make something feel original and unique even if it has inspiration from stuff before it.
The thing is that this industry(AAA) runs on poor impuls control and maybe on younger people wo don’t know it any other way.
Why should they(AAA) change? They make profit so there is no incentive.
And If no one would buy that shit on release they would blame the market (“there just isn’t enought people wanting singleplayer expiriences”). Like a child who blames the dog for the fartsmell.
In my opinion it is best to just ignore them(AAA). There are enought devs(AA, A, indie) who deserve my money and, what is more important, NEED the money.
And with those i am more inclined to listen why it couldn’t be the game they promised. NMS for example with their flooded office.
Fair enough, but as far as NMS goes they way over promised what was coming out on release day. They have since really done a good job of cleaning it all up and making a good game, but all they had to do was set realistic expectations rather than the PR nightmare they stirred up.
shades of the Jamie Kennedy documentary where any time someone says they didn’t like Malibu’s Most Wanted he complains that he “worked really hard on it” as though explaining why something is shitty is just as good as making it not be shitty
If your game sucks due to design and implementation decisions that were made with sound rationale behind them, your game sucks. It doesn’t matter at all why it sucks, or that there’s no feasible way to make it better. It sucks. You can tell me that there’s no way to make it not suck, but I play plenty of games all the time that don’t suck.
I think both ideas can be true: that game development is a complex, creative endeavor and that as a product, consumers can be dissatisfied with a video game they paid $70 for.
Lately, I'm finding myself waiting for sales on AAA games because so many release in a buggy, incomplete state. This paid dividends with games like Jedi Survivor, that had a big number of bugs and performance issues at launch and plays decently now several months later.
Jedi survivor didn’t have a big number of bugs, there were some yes and they were patched almost immediately. Anecdotally, I played it starting week one and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as the average experience.
If you’re going to give an example, how about an actual buggy mess of a launch like cyberpunk, especially since you are also talking about incompleteness. Jedi survivor was an excellent and completed game on launch
Anecdotally, I played cyberpunk starting day 1 and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as the average experience.
Isn’t that like… Literally the point of waiting for a review? Anyone can have a game work flawlessly when others are having massive issues. Some people may want to test that for themselves, but an increasing number just don’t want to deal, and will… Well, use the reviews to make a more informed decision.
If you’re going to give an example, how about an actual buggy mess of a launch like cyberpunk
Anecdotally, I played it starting day one and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as a bad experience. Cyberpunk 2077 was an excellent and completed game on launch.
Except for gta online and the trilogy remaster, and rdr2 online. Thats only like 10 years out of the infinity of never, so its probably a good percentage, right?
They fail to deliver on PC every time, and there’s no way I’m buying a console just to play it. I’ll probably even wait for a PC sale since I’ll already have to wait for 2+ years for the PC launch because Rockstar wants to double dip.
You can’t argue me into believing the game is fun when it’s just… overall not that fun compared to other Bethesda efforts.
To be clear, it’s far from an outright “bad” game, but I’m still frustrated that I spent $70 on the fucking thing. If you charge that much, it’s completely reasonable for me to have high expectations for your game.
I enjoyed it but I also know that it wasn’t “great”. But I’ll admit that I got it on game pass and I’m a BES nerd, so that probably elevates it more. Had I paid full price my attitude would probably be very different.
And that’s why I never buy on release. Studios have consistently rewarded waiting for months to a year since you’ll pay a lower price for a better product.
The only reasons I’d buy at launch are:
I’m a game reviewer and somehow didn’t get a free copy
I’m a streamer, so that’s the cost of doing business
it’s an MP game and I can’t convince my friends to play something else
I play almost exclusively SP games, I don’t stream, and I am not a reviewer, so it’s in my interest to wait several months for patches and sale prices.
My biggest complaint is how they absolutely murdered the modding scene for the sake of greed… They wanted their cut of a thing they had NO input in so they forced their way in to have input and in the process ruined modding for those that were good at it…
Seeing how amazing Skyrim was with mods gave me so much hope for what this game could become and now I’m just sickened by what they did… So much potential gone. Now you’ll have to pick between what 4 mods you want as you’ll have to spend $5+ for each one… Yeah I’m not spending $100+ just to make your game fun for you while also paying you…
It’s the changes they made to the way you mod in order to sell mods that screwed with how modding works supposedly. Apparently a few of the good modders have already said “fuck this garbage” and bailed. That coupled with starfields flop leaves less people interested in fighting the system to get mods to work anyway :(
These guys are getting harder and harder to take seriously. As disappointing as the game itself is, what the fuck is this? Defensively and passive-aggressively trying to argue with reviewers? Long ramblings on how unfair it is that one of the world's most significant game studios, freshly taken over by enormous capital... gets a little criticism for the flaws it its products? Do you need to be an expert Twinkie mass manufacturing engineer, really, if a new product is, let's say, a tenth of the size and tastes of sawdust?
If they're gonna insinuate it's not the obvious reasons, maybe they should've served up some less obvious reasons - I'm sure they would've been convincing.
“People have unrealistic expectations for AAA games! It’s impossible to make them as good as people expect them to be!”
I remember lots of big studios saying that shit after Baldur’s Gate 3 officially released. The work of a comparatively small studio with a Skyrim budget (100 million USD) did what many bigger budgets failed to do. How was that possible? Clearly, it’s the fault of gamers for expecting too much!
Side note: Witcher 3’s budget was around 34 million USD, with less than 13m for development proper, which is another good example of a game that even at release was already looking and playing great.
And those examples are not hard to come up with either. For example:
any Nintendo game
games with a passionate designer - "Nier: Automata* and Death Stranding come to mind
refined, broad market appeal sequels to popular niche games - as Elden Ring is to Dark Souls
Starfield was a mediocre rehash of their Elder Scrolls formula, but without the interesting variation that Elder Scrolls games have. And performance sucks, so you’re paying a penalty for an average gameplay experience.
Yup, it is an anomaly in that it feels like the quality I used to expect 20 years ago when devs couldn’t just patch flaws after launch and had to actually QA their games before going gold. They rely so much on after launch patches that games often aren’t finished until a year after release.
BG3 is an excellent game, but saying it’s unlike the rest of games because it “does its QA before launch” is very silly. Look at the 100GB of huge patches the game’s received, reading the pages and pages of patch notes for the bug fixes and also the basic RPG features added after launch like the ability to change your character’s appearance.
BG3 had more bugfixes and hotfixes than Starfield did by a long shot, the difference between the two is not the absence of bugs. It’s that BG3 under the bugs was a phenomenally VA’d/Mocapped game with a great story line, memorable characters, meaningful choices, and combat that doesn’t become a rote chore or a numbers go up game with randomized loot.
BG3 was a complete, enjoyable experience all the way through at launch. There were a lot of patches, but those weren’t as necessary as other games, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Fallout: New Vegas. For example, character customization is nice to have, but lots of games don’t bother.
Starfield on the other hand, was relatively bug free at launch, but it didn’t have a good gameplay loop. Outposts were repetitive, gunplay and weapon variety wasn’t particularly interesting, and cities weren’t very plentiful or interesting (Morrowind was way better in all three, and the game is ~20 years old).
Yeah, BG3 wasn’t as solid as launches before OTA updates were a thing, just it felt a lot more like that era than most of the AAA game launches in recent memory.
How many times does Bethesda have to shit in your mouth to realize they themselves are shit? Fallout 4 was a downgrade from NV, then fallout 76, rereleasing the same game over and over again, and now starfield.
We should be way passed “hard to take them seriously”
I bailed after Skyrim. I loved the immersiveness and scale of their previous games, but Skyrim didn’t have that. It was a relatively small world, the storyline was barely even there, and the side content was a lot more limited vs other games. It looked great and had your typical gameplay improvements, but it was just a massive downgrade in terms of overall experience.
I wanted Morrowind in space, and I got stripped-down Skyrim in space, which was already a stripped down experience. Either make a great dup (like Oblivion) or make something completely new and interesting. They went with mediocre dup in a different setting.
Like with pretty much all things for the last decade we hit stagnation and consistent money making with low effort.
So clearly now everyone else is wrong or why are they making so much money? If they throw out garbage that people pay for and then complain about them why should they take the criticism seriously… I’m fact it’s just bad people trying to ruin them because they are perfect and right.
Everyone is right all the time and everything is gold no matter how lazy. No one wants the discussion they want to be told they are right and then to move on to the next thing without stopping or asking questions.
If we can’t impact their bottom lines then nothing will ever change until it collapses.
Read: console support and changes to modding so they could take more money for the lesser product they provided… The need to be on shitty older consoles kills games ambition and scope. I hate it so much.
Kind of sick of devs being such cunts and denying the criticism so publically.
Starfield might not be objectively shit, but there is heaps of fair criticism. I fucking hated it for what it’s worth. Probably worst game I’ve played in 3-5 years.
Kind of sick of devs being such cunts and denying the criticism so publically.
Well this was going to be their next big cash cow game that they keep re-releasing for 10 years, and they find it hard to accept that it's not working out.
Orrrrr “sorry guys but you wrote a dog of a game so we’re letting you all go” since that seems to be in vogue these days.
Maybe some enterprising souls in the mod community will release an overhaul at some point, but that point will unfortunately not be soon, given the work it would entail.
If anyone thinks they won’t, then they haven’t been paying attention since fallout 4’s release. Then fallout 76’s release. And now this. No way elder scrolls doesn’t shit the bed in 20 years, or whenever it’s coming out.
To this very day 76 runs like absolute dog shit. They just released a paid DLC (on top of all the MTX bullshit) and yet shooting enemies is still broken and takes literal seconds in some cases to register, enemies still teleport around, and there’s no real direction or incentives to explore anything. One of the worst games I’ve ever tried to play and every time I give it another chance, nothing has improved for the better.
I’m gonna try and save you time and money. Just wait for modders to make that game in Skyrim. I’m fairly sure Beyond Skyrim: Elsweyr isn’t as far along as some of the others, but you’ll have other major mods to play in the meanwhile.
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