Rating down at 77%

I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.

While it was not a Cyberpunk-grade overhype, I think it must still have been overhyped. Because if you see it as Skyrim with better graphics, it is pretty much what you’d expect.

Some of the common criticism seems to be intrinsic to the sci-fi genre. In Skyrim, you walk 100 meters and then you find some cave or camp or something that a game designer has placed there manually with some story or meaning behind it. And as a player, you notice that, because most locations in Skyrim feel somehow unique. Even though for example the dungeons have rooms that repeat a lot. Having a designer place them manually with some thought gives them something unique.

In interstellar sci-fi, a dense world like this is simply impossible. Planets are extremely large so filling them manually with content is simply not possible. And using procedural generation makes things feel meaningless. Players notice that fast. So instead, Starfield opted for having a few manually constructed locations that are placed randomly on planets, unfortunately with a lot of repetition. But that is a sound compromise, given the constraints of today’s game development technology. The dense worlds that we are used to from other genres simply don’t scale up to planetary scale, and as players, we have to get used to that.

FluorideMind,

I just don’t understand why some key binds are random. Why am I using b to add favorites? Why not f. Or x to exit the ship. Why not q? It just seems like the binds are just chosen at random when there are available keys where my hands are already resting.

gerbler,

I love that 0 is to heal but O is to repair my ship. I’m constantly just mashing both because I can’t remember which is which when my shields are down and I’m trying to dodge a missile.

100,

Until this very second I thought my game was bugged because 0 (zero) wasn’t repairing my ship. I was literally going into the menus to repair my ship mid battle.

FluorideMind,

There is a big issue with tedious repeating animations. Like standing up from the cockpit. Or docking a station. The hand made content is still there it’s just placed into the world procedurealy.

Poob,

So much of the game is simply infuriating, and I’m not all that far in yet.

The menus are attrocious. It feels like wading through mud every time you try to get to menu. Half of them are locked to what feels like 10fps. You go into the map and it’s 37 presses of the tab key to get out, or else use the awkward as fuck hold tab to exit. The inventory menus are a fucking joke. It took two weeks for modders to fix all of Bethesda’s UI garbage that they have to fix every time a new game comes out. How is there not an option to sort by value/weight yet?

There’s a lot of time wasting crap too. If you want to go to a different planet you have to walk to your ship, go up the ladder and go to the cockpit, watch an animation to sit down in the cockpit, watch a cutscene to take off, open the map, find your planet, set course, watch a cutscene as you jump to the planet, open the map again, find where you want to land, watch a cutscene as you land, get out of your ship. That’s a lot of steps. Unskippable cutscenes every time you go somewhere sucks.

howsetheraven,

I keep seeing this “Skyrim in space” moniker from the people who are lukewarm yet still positive about the game. I’d argue you can’t even say that. From what I’ve seen, the game is a regression in a lot of ways. Skyrim and other earlier BGS titles are superior products.

Jakeroxs,

Person who hasn’t played the game weighs in

howsetheraven,

Yep. Saw what I would be buying and didn’t waste money. Funny how that makes me the dumb one in your eyes?

Gotta have that credit card number locked in by the E3 launch apparently.

Jakeroxs,

You can’t really form an opinion of a game you’ve never played aside from surface level or opinions from others.

howsetheraven,

Yes I can. Just did. There isn’t some magic epiphany when you get your greasy nubs on the keyboard and the software is running locally on your machine. I see everything there is to see and know everything there is to know about it because I looked extensively. Not buying it.

Like you have any power to invalidate my opinion because you gave some dumbass corp money. I’m not the idiot who bought dogshit and try to convince everyone else it’s not just to make myself feel better.

Jakeroxs,

Sure you “can” but it’s not actually an informed opinion until you see or experience it yourself, no need to be a pedantic ass.

HellAwaits,

Have you actually played the game? No you didn’t

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

It literally has the same mechanics and systems simply shuffled around, rebalanced and presented differently.

TheMightyCanuck,

Most common bug for me so far is the invis cloak glitching and becoming visually permanent (but not the effect on stealth. Boo)

Honestly not even a tiny problem for a Bethesda vet.

7/10 basically space skyrim

sverit,
@sverit@feddit.de avatar

I know, gameplay is more important than tech, but for an AAA game it’s kinda disappointing techwise. No 32:9 support, HDR is mediocre, no FOV settings, language cannot be properly changed,…

Jakeroxs,

Hey look, elden ring doesn’t have even 21:9 support, hdr was broken for a while at launch, and no fov setting

potustheplant,

From software has always been pretty crappy from a technical standpoint.

Jakeroxs,

I didn’t see the Internet awash with complaints about it strangely.

fushuan,

Because their history is being so bad technically that elden ring was an improvement to what people were expecting.

Jakeroxs,

And Bethesda isn’t known for their buggy games lmao?

fushuan,

I mean… have you played dark souls 1 without the community patch with k&m? Not only the controls, performance is… uf.

Jakeroxs,

I never did play the PTD, I have heard it was very rough though.

First time a really playing Dark Souls was when the remaster came to PC, then binged 2 and 3 and played through all endings on ER when it came out and put 300 hours in, waiting on the DLC eagerly.

I also did mod elden ring quite a bit, including dlss+fg from the much hated PureDark, and the excellent seamless coop mod along with a 32:9 support mod.

Ultimately my point is people are nitpicking Starfield lmao

fushuan,

PTD was with the dlc man, the original DS was almost unplayable on release, some random internet person released a mod called DSFix like 30 minutes after it released on pc that unlocked the fps to 60 and improved performance in some places. Multiplayer was also pretty fucking bad, so bad that yet another mod released that exposed how the networking p2p graph worked internally where you could bypass the normal network to connect directly to your friends to be able to see their signals.

My point is that the reason why people weren’t so critical of ER is because compared to other FROM games, it was quite the improvement. People expected much, much worse.

Maybe since it’s been so long since Bethesda released Skyrim, people just don’t remember the pure vanilla experience which is why they are being harsher with Starfield. That, and that Bethesda has way more funding for their games.

Psythik,

That’s what happens when you’ve been using the same engine since 1997, and just slap a fresh coat of paint on it every few years instead of actually improving it like Unreal.

GoodEye8,

Is there HDR? Because I’m certain there’s no option for it on PC.

sverit,
@sverit@feddit.de avatar

There are no ingame settings, which is bad. But when you activate HDR in your Windows settings the game seems to use HDR. It just looks rather bad imho (black levels too high).

GeneralEmergency,

I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.

If you care so much about what others think you probably aren’t enjoying it as much as you think.

iforgotmyinstance,

Harsh. I avoided most marketing for this game and honestly it’s a great game. Alternating between PC and Steamdeck works great. I haven’t had any tech issues or crashes.

The largest single issue with the game is the atrocious menus. I get that the radial design benefits controllers, but even with gamepad layouts it’s ass. Editing ships is ass, selecting destinations is ass, God forbid you try to find out which mission is closest to you without memorizing which systems are connected to where.

GenesisJones,

The user interface at nearly every turn is bafflingly obtuse. On top of cool features like the option to go to your cockpit or board a ship, you get insanely weird decisions like no waypoint system? There is technically a waypoint option but it’s definitely not a usable system.

Also what’s with the galaxy map? Fuckin mass effect had this shit figured out 15 years ago. With a banging soundtrack for the menu lol

Also why the hell is there no tutorials for these crazy indepth systems and menus… like if they need to suck tell me how to bear it

charred,

Honestly I haven’t been looking at the public reception at all because I’ve been playing it since it released. I didn’t even know people weren’t loving it, it’s exactly what I want from a Bethesda game and more (136 hours so far)

supercriticalcheese,

Already 136 hours? Do not forget to get some sleep :)

charred,

Haha don’t worry I can take care of myself. The game has launched while I’m in a gap between finishing an industrial work placement and beginning my final year at uni so I’ve been making the most of it. Thank you for your concern!

supercriticalcheese,

Okay enjoy then

Pohl,

Honestly I assumed that the critical reception would be middling, the zeitgeist is done with this studio and it’s games. Which is completely fair they are janky and weird and frankly often break in un-fun ways.

It’s a BGS game warts and all and I had a great time with it. I love these big, ambitious, broken games and this is a better than average one of them.

Grass,

I’m still sad that stellar overload failed. I easily put more hours in that and it never made it out of early access.

srasmus,
@srasmus@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t played a new Bethesda game since Skyrim came out in 2011. So I went into starfield expecting Skyrim in space. I knew it would rely on more radiant randomly generated systems. I knew it wasn’t going to have entire planets. Based off my expectations, I believe they have all been met. I’ll probably log a ton of hours into the game. Was it overpriced? Maybe. But I don’t really buy new games all that often, so it’s hard for me to say.

c0c0c0,

When you do the math on pennies per hour, it’s hard to argue that it’s overpriced.

ShadowRam,

My biggest complaint is still an RPG being consolified, meaning its menu's are all shit because of controllers.
Interactions in this game would me so much better if it were designed from the ground up for mouse, point and click, drag, etc.

My only other complaint is I wish I could fly and land the craft myself similar to No Man's Sky. You can land on planet, shit is still random gen, but there's some hardpoint spots where your ship can land in a city or outpost.

The positive sides that surprised me is the ship building is great. Always wanted a game that allowed this kind of ship building.
Space Engineers or similar are great, but can be too much detail. This snap together modular blocks is nice middle ground.

I'm also impressed the engine is able to handle so many micro collisions of items on the ground.

ArchmageAzor,
@ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think the engine allows for such an open world. The engine is built around cells, and BGS shot itself in the foot by making a game in a setting that requires open-ness using an engine that only works with enclosed spaces.

DarkThoughts,

Implementing dynamic asset streaming would've been a massive hurdle that would've likely broken so many other things and delayed the entire release by a year or two. I can understand why they didn't go that route, especially during the pandemic. For what its worth, the terrain gen and all is still pretty impressive, even if you cannot seamlessly travel around.

I agree that they could've hidden some parts better though, like why can't I select an existing landing spot from within the ships cockpit instead of having to use the map? They already show you the markers when you're in the scanning mode anyway so that could've been a pretty quick thing to do. After all it works with other targets already too.

A lot of the negativity seems to stem more from the fake outrage though.

Stillhart,

My biggest complaint is still an RPG being consolified, meaning its menu’s are all shit because of controllers.

That’s weird because I’m playing on console and the menus and UI are shit with a controller too.

John_Coomsumer,

Luckily mods have already addressed the menu problems for PC. StarUI and Undelayed Menus.

Shouldn’t even remotely be necessary for a studio this size. But whatever.

The only other actual negative I feel for the game at this point (20ish hours) is the skill points/system feeling like 5% good choices and 95% pointless garbage.

aesopjah,

Ship building is fun, but man they are lacking in detail.

What is the difference between these two cockpits? Idk, build it twice and find out. Oh, they’re identical, then why even have a second one?

Oh, this giant 3x3 module must have a ton of stuff in it! Nope, the 2x1 is actually better. But which one? Dunno, try them all and reload.

You’re ship is too big in either length, width, or height. Which one is it? Dunno, I just figured I’d throw all the errors together into one warning and let you figure it out.

Modders sure have their work cut out for them…

thesprongler,

Ratings are so hard to trust these days. Some people never play the game they are reviewing, others use it as an opportunity to enact some vendetta based on prior games, and some are worth reading. 77 is fair enough at this stage, but the only way to know for real is how the game feels for you.

dumdum666,

You have to own the game to review it on Steam… so how is your Scenario possible?

some_guy,
@some_guy@kbin.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    dumdum666,

    You are kinda toxic, but I will answer anyways: Why do you think people are that stupid to buy a game for a premium price at launch and then not play it? Or is this something you do on a regular basis?

    GreenMario,

    Buy it, play 0.5 hours, review, refund.

    CaptainEffort,

    Except the amount of hours played is shown on each review. So we can see if a review is bs.

    GreenMario,

    Did they add a “disregard all reviews.under X hours option, yet?”

    thesprongler,

    I guess I’m a dipshit and didn’t follow the link and assumed this was a metacritic score (which is actually 87, with a 5.6 user score).

    BarterClub,

    It’s just a number. Play the games you like and don’t care what others think.

    supercriticalcheese,

    Exactly review scores are meaningless, early reviews even less so.

    Potatos_are_not_friends,

    “Not recommended. This game is so boring. 150 hours played”

    lemming007,

    You can’t fault them for not giving it a fair chance.

    I played for about 25 hours before I gave up.

    Those 25 hours were mostly me waiting for the moment when it would finally get better. The moment never arrived.

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