Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Clockwork Knight]

the self-defeating Open World design of Daggerfall

I will grudgingly allow you this description only because of the lack of technology available back then to make the empty spaces between cities anything more than flat planes of color interspersed with pixelated trees, with an occasional wandering monster. Oh, and maybe a random dungeon if you're lucky.

The point in this thread, however, is that the technology is available now, if we are to believe Todd and his sweet little lies, to *possibly* make the manual exploration of the vast spaces between known POIs worth it, if one were to stumble upon another, new POI, albeit one possibly procedurally generated.

Is this new A.I.-generated content going to be worth discovering, though? Can it ever be?

Sounds like Minecraft. But without the "mine" aspect it might amount to landing somewhere and departing if there's no interesting features nearby.

 

[WHATAMESS]

Without trying to defend potential lack of customized content anywhere but considering we're talking about space here in general, outside of resource gathering it would seem sensible that most places would be void of anything all that interesting to do.

Sure, but a highly advanced multi-solar spacefaring civilization should have more than 4 cities and 4 people to hang out with. The scale is way out of proportion.

People here have no fucking idea about how a to-scale space RPG would be literally IMPOSSIBLE to make now or even in 100 years. I'm no Bethesda shill, but they have a team size in the low hundreds. It would take decades to fully realize such a setting. People here should criticize the game for what it is, not for their insane impossible expectations.

Bethesda's the only RPG developer that makes cities that are that interactive, with every NPC being named and having unique homes with physics objects and daily schedules. No other developer does things that way. Think of the fucking TIME it would take to even make a Rockstar-scale city but with Bethesda's level of interactivity and NPC detail.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Imagine you finish a six month shift mining asteroids. You get paid, head straight to the nearest strip club and this is what you find.

Now imagine that with Bethesda animations and character models in their full glory

 

[Kiste]

It's not even hard - just relatively linear corridors with a few traps and enemy rooms, a couple of side areas, and some big memorable thing at the end with a loot reward.

Yeah, the loot reward. I was always at the edge of my seat every time I opened that chest at the end of the dungeon. What will it be this time? Some coin, a fork and a cheese wheel or maybe some coin, a plate and a loaf of bread?

 

[AwesomeButton]

until you realize they offer nothing to do

I hate playing Devil's Advocate for Bethesda since it makes me feel so dirty but having so many planets that can be explored and having so much open space with nothing interesting in it is going to make the eventual discovery of something interesting.... well, interesting.

Meh, this is Bethesda we are talking about. It's fully within the realm of possibility that they'll design a moronic system where "every fifth planet" you set foot on has 100% chance to be inhabited, include a dungeon, a radiant quest or something in those lines.

 

[BruceVC]

the self-defeating Open World design of Daggerfall

I will grudgingly allow you this description only because of the lack of technology available back then to make the empty spaces between cities anything more than flat planes of color interspersed with pixelated trees, with an occasional wandering monster. Oh, and maybe a random dungeon if you're lucky.

The point in this thread, however, is that the technology is available now, if we are to believe Todd and his sweet little lies, to *possibly* make the manual exploration of the vast spaces between known POIs worth it, if one were to stumble upon another, new POI, albeit one possibly procedurally generated.

Is this new A.I.-generated content going to be worth discovering, though? Can it ever be?

Crispy makes several valid l points I agree with and I want to go into detail on this

Firstly no one on this thread has played Starfield so the point being raised that " 1000 planets is meh, its just going to be 1000 meaningless\empty\boring maps " is completely subjective, cynical and worst of all it is based on no evidence. Until the game is released we cant say what the 1000 planets implementation is going to be

But we do have some information as the galaxy map has been showcased. Its going to be similar to ME which means some planets will have resources, some will have alien artifacts, some will have outposts, aliens, ruins and other similar things. But each planet will have different weather and design due to procedural generation. Thats all anyone can reasonably expect with such a large number of planets and it will be similar to Daggerfall dungeons which is great and Im playing DFU at the moment and that design is loads of fun and works

Then I play and love RPG for several reasons and one of the main reasons is the love of " whats over that hill, whats in that keep or temple" so another major design point of so many planets is the exploration and excitement of the finding out and travelling across space. Thats the point

In closing, I havent heard a single valid or convincing criticism towards the intended point of the 1000 planets in Starfield and until the game is released no one can say with any conviction its going to be shit

 

[BruceVC]

Frankly I don't get the "muh hardcore no fast travel gameplay" people are pushing for

It's about designing a game space and activity loop that people don't want to skip. Adding fast travel is planning for failure.

Outward is like that and is frankly a massive boring slog. You literally press button and avoid all fight anyway from point a to b and just fucking see the screen moving for 30 minutes

These devs learned the wrong lesson then. Instead of making a game people don't want to skip, they made a game people do want to skip and removed the option to skip it. That's really not the same thing.

Isnt fast travel convenient when you have explored enough planets manually and you want to save time? I support limited fast travel like using hubs which means you still need to travel normally from a point thats close to your destination?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Daggerfall's scope is appealing because the gameplay allows for abstraction (via fast travel) while still letting the player have the experience of actually being in an enormous, to-scale world. You don't generally have reason to travel through the countryside, but you do have reason to travel through towns which are more or less 1:1 scale.

Daggerfall is fundamentally in the Underworld-like subgenre, based around dungeon exploration; the distinctions between UU:TSA and TES II: Daggerfall are that the latter employs procedural generation to enable the creation of enormous dungeons from building block elements, rather than a single hand-crafted dungeon, and that the latter also possesses a variety of settlements, ranging from an isolated inn to a sizable city, which are similarly made possible via procedural generation. The player's time is spent entirely in the dungeons and settlements, transit between which is carried out via the game's fast travel map function (or magical teleportation, if the player-character has access to it). Even though an enormous Open World exists on a 1-1 scale, the player never experiences it aside from the settlements, or the area immediately surrounding a dungeon entrance, as the time to directly traverse the overworld is prohibitive precisely due to its realistic size.

Morrowind is fundamentally in a different CRPG subgenre, namely the Open World subgenre, of which it is the first 3D example, due precisely to a major design difference in which the use of procedural generation is sharply limited to aspects such as placing flora or shaping the contours of the landmass, while the overworld itself is scaled down from what it represents. Due to the scaling down, the player-character is now able to directly traverse the overworld in order to reach a quest's destination, or simply to explore for the sake of exploration, encountering terrain features that are handcrafted as well as entrances and exterior spaces for the many hand-crafted dungeons and also a variety of settlements that are hand-crafted and scaled-down. There are several mechanisms for fast travel, but they occur via transportation systems (silt striders, boats) that make sense for the game's setting, plus a few magical effects, and therefore are quite limited in the number of locations that can be reached. A large portion of the player's time is now occupied with overland travel, versus dungeon-crawling or town functions.

 

[Drakortha]

You nerds put more thought into this than Bethesda does. Do you think they sit around talking about this shit? No, they are talking about what's going to sell copies.

 

[BruceVC]

You nerds put more thought into this than Bethesda does. Do you think they sit around talking about this shit? No, they are talking about what's going to sell copies.

And what sells most copies of any game is positive reviews and a game design that is fun and worthwhile and gamers want to play it

So generating revenue sales and the game being entertaining are inextricably connected so Bethesda would consider both like most development companies

 

[Drakortha]

And what sells most copies of any game is positive reviews and a game design that is fun and worthwhile and gamers want to play it

So generating revenue sales and the game being entertaining are inextricably connected so Bethesda would consider both like most development companies

You're right. Positive reviews are indicative of quality. And the best part is, reviews are always done with integrity and cannot be bought and paid for.

 

[Zombra]

Isnt fast travel convenient when you have explored enough planets manually and you want to save time? I support limited fast travel like using hubs which means you still need to travel normally from a point thats close to your destination?

Well sure, it's convenient; of course it's convenient; that's the only reason to have it. But convenience does not always equal better in gaming. It'd be more convenient in horror games to be able to turn the lights on to see things better. It'd be more convenient in fantasy RPGs for the King to give you a million gold right at the beginning to go rescue the princess with endgame weapons and armor. And so forth. But dark corners make better horror and struggling heroes make more challenging RPGs. In a game about traversing an environment, it's better to make traversal challenging and interesting than to make it convenient. Is Starfield a game about traversal? Not really I guess, but that seems like such a waste with all these amazing worlds it's supposed to have.

Another reason I resist anything where it's "press this key and instantly teleport anywhere", even in a science fiction game, is because it devalues any substantial sense of place, of transition.

Obviously in a game of this scale there has to be some form of travel that's faster than walking! A hub based thing like you describe, or like in Red Dead Online, is a good compromise (although in RDO I still didn't like the sense of teleportation).

Part of my dislike of fast travel is as I described above - games shouldn't be designed to be skipped. Part is because it devalues the sense of place. And part is because teleporting is jarring to almost any setting. The third one is an easy fix for Starfield because they could have actual teleporters, portals etc. which would make it all feel natural (or if not "natural", at least "diegetic"). Weirdly, Daggerfall solved the second and third issues by simply showing an animation of the PC riding a horse from place to place. You didn't teleport. There was an actual transition and sense of traveling instead of teleporting. It was a big deal and then they threw it out and never brought it back! Silt Striders are glorified teleporters! Would it have been so hard to show a picture of somebody riding a Strider on the loading screen? I wouldn't hate fast travel nearly so much if any devs did, well, anything to preserve the illusion of travel.

 

[BruceVC]

Isnt fast travel convenient when you have explored enough planets manually and you want to save time? I support limited fast travel like using hubs which means you still need to travel normally from a point thats close to your destination?

Well sure, it's convenient; of course it's convenient; that's the only reason to have it. But convenience does not always equal better in gaming. It'd be more convenient in horror games to be able to turn the lights on to see things better. It'd be more convenient in fantasy RPGs for the King to give you a million gold right at the beginning to go rescue the princess with endgame weapons and armor. And so forth. But dark corners make better horror and struggling heroes make more challenging RPGs. In a game about traversing an environment, it's better to make traversal challenging and interesting than to make it convenient. Is Starfield a game about traversal? Not really I guess, but that seems like such a waste with all these amazing worlds it's supposed to have.

Another reason I resist anything where it's "press this key and instantly teleport anywhere", even in a science fiction game, is because it devalues any substantial sense of place, of transition.

Obviously in a game of this scale there has to be some form of travel that's faster than walking! A hub based thing like you describe, or like in Red Dead Online, is a good compromise (although in RDO I still didn't like the sense of teleportation).

Part of my dislike of fast travel is as I described above - game's shouldn't be designed to be skipped. Part is because it devalues the sense of place. And part is because teleporting is jarring to almost any setting. The third one is an easy fix for Starfield because they could have actual teleporters, portals etc. which would make it all feel natural (or if not "natural", at least "diegetic"). Weirdly, Daggerfall solved the second and third issues by simply showing an animation of the PC riding a horse from place to place. You didn't teleport. There was an actual transition and sense of traveling instead of teleporting. It was a big deal and then they threw it out and never brought it back! Silt Striders are glorified teleporters! Would it have been so hard to show a picture of somebody riding a Strider on the loading screen? I wouldn't hate fast travel nearly so much if any devs did, well, anything to preserve the illusion of travel.

Okay I see what you mean and I agree, also you can reduce or have limited fast travel and mods can add it later

What I also dont like about fast travel anywhere is it makes me lazy and then I start using it all the time which does undermine the point of travel and ruins the immersion of a game world

 

[Hace El Oso]

I may not have seen those, since the only planets I've seen so far had dull Earth-like horizons with the skies looking nothing near as fantastical and impressive as some on actual exoplanets are thought to look.

As an aside, can you give examples or links about this?

 

[BruceVC]

And what sells most copies of any game is positive reviews and a game design that is fun and worthwhile and gamers want to play it

So generating revenue sales and the game being entertaining are inextricably connected so Bethesda would consider both like most development companies

You're right. Positive reviews are indicative of quality. And the best part is, reviews are always done with integrity and cannot be bought and paid for.

Come on, lets be reasonable. Who decides to buy a game just on reviews? You get shills and paid reviewers and then you get objective and honest gaming journalists, they very different

But I use a hierarchy to decide if I will play a new game and its based on this structure from most important to least important

• have I played and enjoyed a previous game in the series or from the studio (for example I will be playing BG3 because I loved D:OS2 and the whole BG and Forgotten Realms world)
• do my family or friends in RL recommend it
• what do other gamers on forums like Codex think
• is the game well supported by the modding community
• what do reviews and gaming journalists think

But all these things are still influenced by the game being fundamentally enjoyable and fun because without that most of my points become moot

 

[Drakortha]

Come on, lets be reasonable. Who decides to buy a game just on reviews?

A LOT of fucking people. Much more than the few people in this thread who give a damn about quality. They will do a google search for reviews or check the official rating on Metacritic, and that will make up their mind for them. There are even more who won't even go that far because they will see Bethesda on the box and day 1 buy it.

 

[Yosharian]

The thing about fast travel which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is that it encourages/props up lazy fetch quest design from the devs

You have a simple fetch quest masquerading as interesting gameplay because it involves visiting a few locations

And as soon as you remove the fast travel you see how fucking stupid it is

 

[BruceVC]

The thing about fast travel which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is that it encourages/props up lazy fetch quest design from the devs

You have a simple fetch quest masquerading as interesting gameplay because it involves visiting a few locations

And as soon as you remove the fast travel you see how fucking stupid it is

But dont you find in ES games the silly fetch quests are just a way to gain relatively easy and quick gold and XP while you are low level and lack resources or skill? For example in DFU I have been on several of these but you gain reputation and it has helped me on levels 1-3 or so

The point Im making is they do have an advantage even if they silly and hackneyed

 

[Robotigan]

The thing about fast travel which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is that it encourages/props up lazy fetch quest design from the devs

You have a simple fetch quest masquerading as interesting gameplay because it involves visiting a few locations

And as soon as you remove the fast travel you see how fucking stupid it is

If a fetch quest isn't fun, the gameplay designers have utterly failed and are freeloading off the quest designers.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You nerds put more thought into this than Bethesda does. Do you think they sit around talking about this shit? No, they are talking about what's going to sell copies.

Yeah, knowing Bethesda storytelling, I foresee that these pieces of a metallic rotating ring we see in footage will be artefacts that we'll have to collect by planet-hopping. Then the main quest will progress based off the percentage of total artifacts we've collected, which might even scale with difficulty. At the end of the main quest we open an intergalactic, no actually interuniverse portal, and see a message recorded for us by the aliens.

In 5 years we'll have a gray haired Todd going "We're offering you to venture accross 1000 galaxies/universes each with 1000/1000 000 planets respectively". "See that universe? You can space-jump into it!"

 

[Giskard]

Fast travel in and of itself is not really an issue, how it's implemented can be an issue. The real issue is the size of the game, your personal play style and how much time you can devote to playing said game.
If you have 300 hours to sink into large open world game, then you probably can afford to spend the time walking across the map and seeking out those obscure locations and events. If however, like most people you have 'Real Life Shit' going on that means you can only spend maybe 20 or 30 hours total (and maybe only half an hour at a time) or whatever then you need something like fast travel to have a chance to see large section of the game in a reasonable time.
One answer to that is to make the games shorter...
Another is fast travel to allow those that enjoy large game-worlds to take shortcuts so they can skip all the stuff they don't have time for.

 

[Hace El Oso]

(and maybe only half an hour at a time)…

…allow those that enjoy large game-worlds to take shortcuts so they can skip all the stuff they don't have time for.

That’s like saying those who enjoy skiing but can’t get themselves to the slopes. Time to hang up your poles.
If you have so little time, better to just play a round of COD or whatever. RPGs, tabletop or video game, have never been friendly to people who can’t or don’t make time for them.

 

[Drakortha]

Game devs need to sit down long and hard to try to determine how to make their game suit every type of player. It's the secret recipe for awesome games.

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

 

[BruceVC]

Fast travel in and of itself is not really an issue, how it's implemented can be an issue. The real issue is the size of the game, your personal play style and how much time you can devote to playing said game.
If you have 300 hours to sink into large open world game, then you probably can afford to spend the time walking across the map and seeking out those obscure locations and events. If however, like most people you have 'Real Life Shit' going on that means you can only spend maybe 20 or 30 hours total (and maybe only half an hour at a time) or whatever then you need something like fast travel to have a chance to see large section of the game in a reasonable time.
One answer to that is to make the games shorter...
Another is fast travel to allow those that enjoy large game-worlds to take shortcuts so they can skip all the stuff they don't have time for.

You make a good point here which cant be ignored and thats around the reality of limited time in RL and how that translates to how much time you want to or can spend on mechanics like travel in an RPG

And it differs from person to person but the Developers do have to consider that and find a balance to try to accommodate most gamers

For me the easy solution to this is to offer a way to disable fast travel completely like in Oblivion with one of the mods but my preferred option is travel hubs which provides fast travel but you still need to put in some effort