Very tired of the number of people actively trying to police people playing this. It’s fun. It’s no Mass Effect or Baldur’s Gate, and it’s certainly not a GOTY, but it’s good.
The best way to play is to shut it off and just imagine exploring other planets. Seriously, this game fails to be entertaining even when it’s buggy as fuck. It’s just so goddamn boring.
You know what’s fun? Going through three loading screens to watch the same animation of a ship touching down on a planet for the zillionth time, to then get out and start sprinting/bunny hopping to a quest marker, do the thing, get back on the ship, fast travel to hub world, sell your shit, and lather rinse repeat. Or how about pointing your radar gun at the same alien rhinoceros eight times, and repeat that process five times to fill a different fucking checklist? You like campground management? How many campgrounds do you want to manage? 8? 16? up to 24? With another three loading screens between each one? Pick up the resources! What are they good for? Building more bases, of course! And mods, but only after you’ve dumped precious perk points into those skills. Speaking of - I sure hope you like doing chores, because you get slapped with a “Do this 50 times” task before you can put another point in. Oh joy!
Bethesda games always had a reputation for being boring, buggy clutter looters, but up until now there was still satisfaction in exploring and finding bespoke setpieces - one example that sticks out in my mind to this day, in FO4, the office in that first town that you can unlock to see a skeleton strangling another. It tells a story that you don’t get on the 990 procgen planets, and it’s shockingly scarce in the other 10 handcrafted ones that also suffer the issue of everything being cookie-cutter and too damn far apart. When I play this game, I don’t feel the love and care that other Bethesda games have. It feels empty and soulless, and it wastes so much of your fucking time to deliver that soullessness. I look at it and all I can think is “They spent eight years on this?”
I can not see that. This game is the most polished game Bethesda has ever released in my 29 years of playing Bethesda games since Arena. It’s just as polished as Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I’m 35 hours in and have barely scratched the surface, but I had only one crash and that was because my graphics card had a hiccup (driver update fixed it).
I’m loving the game, but I’ve had characters pop in and out of spaces, through walls/doors, models that shake uncontrollably. There’s a bunch of issues with some planets having no breathable air and companions aren’t wearing a suit. Buildings with no air locks on one side that have airlocks on the other. I picked up an item that inexplicably was on the door, to move it back to where it was supposed to be, and got instantly arrested….There is a ton of things to patch.
The floor at one of the spaceports just fully disappeared permanently for me, and bounties seem bugged in that they are not removed even after killing all witnesses. One of the transport pods in the main city is also just permanently gone. This is on top of all the issues you pointed out!
There is a massive need for QoL improvements. Clicking the left mouse button for more than .1 seconds fires off a shot. I can’t count the number of times I have accidentally started a fight in a city. Also, no one cares as long as no one is hit. Really takes the immersion out of the game. Regardless, I’m really enjoying the the game. It needed more time.
Do you not just put your weapon away in cities? Ive accidentally drawn my weapon, but the draw time is long enough that I realize and just holster it again instead. You could also just select the weapon in your favorites again and it should unequip it.
Stowing it isn’t enough for me. I’m slow and if I hold the mouse button for .5 seconds it brings up the gun and fires a round before it recognizes I’m not longer holding the button. I wish it had a slight “dead zone” when holstered.
I might be holding the button for 1 second. I’m still not thrilled with the way it works. I wish they made it one click to unholster your weapon, and a second click to start firing.
Agreed, I've had a lot of NPC jank, sometimes items in the environment fall out of place randomly. I had a bug where I couldn't land on Porrima III for a quest, I had to go to some other planets in the system, try to save, quit the game, come back, and it let me.
I sometimes wonder that people are so lax on the definition of a bug that they might say Starfield isn't buggy. It has not been like game breakingly buggy, aside from my quest bug if that had kept up, but it's certainly got a lot of low level bugs that amount to a reasonable bit of jank.
I had a couple game breaking bugs. Once I entered a building and the entire screen was very dark. I could not see anything with a flashlight, and could not turn around and leave. I had to reload. I also found a quest to mine 14 minerals, but the last one couldn’t be mined. The former wasn’t a big deal, but the mining bug drove me nuts.
I had to save scum the groundpounder mission because I got soft locked multiple times because an enemy ran off and unloaded before I could kill them to proceed with the mission.
Also, depending on the location, I've had multiple CTDs that required constant quick saving otherwise I'd have to do the same conversation repeatedly (Looking at you, GalBank in Akila City).
Its not bugs but QoL issues. Stuff like inventor management, map interface, triple loading screens, basic HDR support, absent FoV sliders, no DLSS support etc.
It is a great game, but has a lot of baffling QoL problems
I guess the Zelda franchise isn't what it used to be then?
Suit protection is apparently always depleted, even when it isn't.
The game randomly freezes my entire system at least once per day, if not more, requiring me to hard reset it.
Followers & player character often are missing various body parts.
The game crashes every now and then, sometimes even during saves.
Sometimes assets don't load properly, which bugged out a faction quest and boarding activity for me until I restarted the game and loaded an old save (which I luckily still had).
Every time you close a menu (including the container transfer menu) there's a whole bunch of graphical glitches coming from your character loading its assets back in.
Player spacesuit isn't taken off in spaceships even though I toggled the option in the inventory.
Outpost containers chain link breaks if you manually add or remove items from them, sort of defeating their point as storage units.
I somehow managed to break the rendering engine when I triggered the red mile airlock while tabbing out of the game, causing everything to be black. At first I thought I felt through the ground but I actually had to restart the game as reloading did not help and eventually also crashed the game.
During a quest in New Atlantis I got stuck when I had to use the EM rifle.
Lots and lots of possible sequence breaking that can bug out quests or other parts of the game.
The armory module just deletes all stored items when you edit your ship, instead of throwing it into the cargo. (Might also goes for other containers in other modules, not sure.)
FSR just lowers my performance instead of giving me more FPS.
Lots of other random graphical glitches, especially related to stacking transparency effects from like smoke for example (missiles, smoking docker in one mission, waterfalls, etc.).
And that's just the stuff from the top of my head after about 100 hours. I definitely had not that much and not that severe issues with Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, or Fallout 3. Kinda hoped there would be a patch for some of this stuff already.
Player spacesuit isn’t taken off in spaceships even though I toggled the option in the inventory
It only takes it off in settlements. The toggle specifically says so. That’s not a bug.
During a quest in New Atlantis I got stuck when I had to use the EM rifle.
Not sure what you mean by “stuck,” but if it’s the quest I think you’re talking about you have to shoot them until they ragdoll. I thought downing them was enough, but apparently the game wants you to fully incapacitate them.
It only takes it off in settlements. The toggle specifically says so. That’s not a bug.
Then why are crew members taking theirs off on the ship?
Not sure what you mean by “stuck,” but if it’s the quest I think you’re talking about you have to shoot them until they ragdoll. I thought downing them was enough, but apparently the game wants you to fully incapacitate them.
I mean that the bar didn't fill up at some point no matter how much I blasted them.
Then why are crew members taking theirs off on the ship?
Ask the devs. Ships aren’t settlements, I guess. They take their space suits off on habitable planets, but you still keep yours on. If you go to the helmet section the toggle says “breathable areas.” It’s not a bug, just a weird decision.
I mean that the bar didn’t fill up at some point no matter how much I blasted them.
I don’t know what that means. There isn’t a bar to fill up, you just shoot them to “death.”
There's a bar above their health when you fire at them with the EM rifle. Sorry but if you don't know what you're talking about, then stop trying to give advice, thanks.
I literally have had none of those issues in my 40+ hours of playtime. Not even those usual creation engine bugs with NPCs walking through furniture or getting stuck in walls or so. In fact, I only now encountered my first bug: A digipick puzzle was shown incorrectly.
The weirdest thing is that I didn’t experience any graphical glitches, even though my graphics card is below the minimum specs (RX 5600 XT).
I had not that much and not that severe issues with Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, or Fallout
Now that I can’t believe. Morrowind and Skyrim have been Buggy shitfests on release (can’t speak for oblivion because I didn’t play that on release)
Ah, yes, those magical issues that only affect one single game. Your entire argument that the described problems are almost all symptoms of a slow HDD is already an incredibly stupid argument to make but I guess you have to dig yourself further in with it after being proven wrong.
You are the only one here with this laundry list of issues, most of your problems stem from texture streaming issues due to a bottleneck on your system. Whether it’s the CPU, Hard Drive or GPU is for you to figure out.
So you admit your CPU is a bottleneck on your system. Sounds like you figured out the problem, not sure how that is Bethesda’s fault, should they be responsible to buy you a new CPU so you can play the game properly?
Wow. That's not just a completely broken reading comprehension but also straight up mental gymnastics. Maybe get that head out of Bethesda's ass so you get some oxygen to think straight again.
Yeah not my experience either. One point you made about the armory items not moving to cargo is not accurate. I have done that twice actually and each time my mantis gear and Livingstone pistol remained in cargo. Possible big with a particular armory piece or maybe you had a full cargo hold? I just know there is more to it than that
Full cargo is irrelevant, it stuffs items in there anyway, for example from your captains locker in the cockpit. You can find this issue through a quick google search.
I know what that term means. But that is just my gaming experience at 44h so far - my game runs absolutely stable, no clips, just one crash, no pop-ins, no graphics glitches. Only just today encountered my first visual bug in a digipick minigame.
Personally, i got that same copy, the only bug i’ve encountered has been a missing housing that a robot would sit in, but the computer to control the robot was just floating next to it. I’ve always had weirdly good luck with Bethesda games though, so it’s not surprising for me i’ve had an almost bug-free experience
Point me to an asset in Tears of the Kingdom that’s just floating in mid air. I’ll hold my breath.
I usually don’t care about small bugs and stuff. I mainly play older games and indies, so I’m fine with some bugs and odd things here and there. What gets me is Bethesda has basically trademarked having janky buggy games, and this game is no different.
The last Zelda game is so far above Bethesdas skill level it’s ridiculous.
The boss battle on the Lock for the pirates quest line. The boss bugs out and disappears somewhere, and you either have to reload an old save, or use console commands.
The adoring fan just deleted themselves, and can’t get them back. Even with console commands.
My ship disappears nearly every time I load up.
I’m fine with it tbh. No where near what I experienced with Cyberpunk. I’m thoroughly enjoying Starfield.
Huh, that’s weird. Especially the disappearing ship in connection with the disappearing fan. I know of a bug someone posted where their crew just vanished, and it turned out that they are standing outside their spaceship, but only when in space.
Frankly, I’d assume those two are connected. The adoring fan is glitched somewhere into you ship. You load the game, collision detection during load-up gets a hiccup and the ship falls through the floor or something.
What’s even more weird is that I literally do not have any of this stuff happening, even the boss battle in the lock was fine. I expected to see usual creation engine bugs like NPCs glitching through objects, and yet I don’t even see that happening. I only now encountered my second bug, now 51 hours in: in the ballroom of the siren of the seas, I get some flickering black bars from the structure outside in space. Except for that one crash and visual bug in a digipick game, that’s all the bugs I had.
Yeah I’m fairly certain it’s connected. I believe it may have something to do with modding the ship, the adoring fan, and too many characters on the ship.
The adoring fan is just gone, like straight deleted, doesn’t show up on my crew screen, and can’t bring him up with console commands.
It’s alright though, he was starting to bug, and he’s a shit companion anyway.
Really? I’ve seen lots of people complaining about loading screens. I’m playing on Xbox and haven’t had an issue with it. I’m 82 hours in and only really noticed there’s a few 2 second loading screens going from orbit to walking off the ship.
I’ve had at times 4 loading screens consecutively in the space of seconds. They are quick but they do take me out of the experience. I think the engine is just showing its age in a way that a nice new coat of paint can’t really hide for a game like this.
Fortunately I saw reviews before buying so I knew what to expect and it’s not a huge deal for me after lowered my expectations for the game but I can understand people’s disappointment.
It’s not really an engine issue. It’s a design issue. Things have to load when there’s no way to predict what will be needed soon. There are lots of ways to hide loading zones when you’re walking in connected spaces. Assets can be streamed in when and where they’re needed. When you’re fast traveling between totally disconnected spaces, there’s really no way to avoid some kind of loading screen.
The best way to handle this for a space game is to hide loading the planet surface behind your ship coming down from space. You can stream them in while keeping the player and ship loaded in so it’s seemless. There’s no way to do it when you’re just teleporting to a location though. However, it could be done better in a lot of places. For example, why does it teleport you right outside the door of the lodge. Just teleport inside and save an extra loading transition after we just had at least one to get there.
All the ways to handle making transitions better can be done in the CE I’m pretty confident. It’s constantly streaming in chunks of landscape as you travel around. They have full control over the engine source anyway, so if it can’t handle it they could spend some resources to build that functionality. There’s no reason landing on a planet should require a loading screen. Entering structures also are usually through an airlock style door. There’s no reason that couldn’t be used to mask a loading transition.
Well, yeah, it's technically possible, but it was not easy enough for them to implement in that engine for it to be the most financially feasible option in order to deliver on the amount of content/other engine changes that they wanted to, is probably the more complex answer. I'm sure if Bethesda stopped at nothing to achieve no loading screens that they could do it, but at the cost of whatever instability or lost time for other engine improvements or content created, which is the choice they made.
Unless we could see the nonexistent alternate Starfield where that was the priority instead it's hard to say whether it's "because of the engine" or not, whether that is a literal thing or more of a tradeoff of labor time thing.
I'm not going to assume the way they made space is the same way they'd make a regular overworld in their older games. If it were easy enough to just do it like they always do, then they would've done it, I think.
No matter what I feel like that's a pretty big deal, having seamless transition through space, and it's not our place to armchair speculate that they could've done it without sacrificing much else, unless the person making the criticism is a crack programmer that could've stepped in there and been like "move aside, idiots, I'm here to cure all of your shitty design with ease and miserliness"
Sure, but I think it's important to try to understand the limitations and costs of these things and why it wasn't already like that. If you whittle it down to strictly design choice then it seems braindead simple to have designed it that way to begin with, so the true answer of why it was done is probably more complicated.
Should there have been less loading screens? Duh. If there were, though, there would've undoubtedly been compromises and a difference in scope of content in other areas. It's worth criticizing, but at this point I doubt anyone from Bethesda could look through the internet without tripping over a "the loading screens suck" post
I don’t really think I can agree here. As much fun as I’m having, this engine is showing its limitations with this game. It’s honestly amazing what they’ve been able to do with it especially the space aspects where there is such a vast amount of area and all the planets modelled with orbits and everything. But in 2023 when you need a loading screen when the player opens a door, it’s pretty evident that this engine has some old school limitations hanging on. This is well beyond just loading when fast travelling which is of course understandable.
I get it though. These are huge technical challenges that would require serious investment.
They both have different intent behind the way their systems are designed. Admittedly, Epics main product (until Fortnite) was pretty much their engine, so it has had a lot more money invested into it. That said, Bethesda’s engine is almost totally different than what it started as as well, but with less investment.
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