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

[ArchAngel]

this is what autism looks like:

No, this captain is just epic level internet warrior and needs lots of spoons to eat the salt he generates from others.

 

[Cross]

Everything else from the list I can accept, but that one is a deal breaker for me. There's nothing worse than seeing the aiming reticule squarely over the target only for the shot to hit the cat in the apartment next door.

That was my experience with Deus Ex. I found it weird too, then I learned to keep it in mind. Just proposing stuff, I don't insist on this mechanic.

That's not how the aiming system works in Deus Ex. Your shots always land in the area of the targeting reticule. The targeting crosshairs start out wide apart, but if you stand still, they tighten to a reticule that's about the same size as you would have in a normal FPS.

The higher your skill in a type of firearm, the faster the crosshairs tighten. If you max out the skill, the crosshairs tighten so fast you essentially have the same accuracy as you would have in a regular FPS.

Of all the games that add RPG elements to first-person shooting, Deus Ex has the best implementation because it offers you clear feedback on your accuracy.

The skill levels also affect other things, like reload speed, damage and in the case of heavy weapons, your movement speed.

 

[Jenkem]

 

[JamesDixon]

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If you need to make a post like that to garner validation then you have a problem.

 

[AwesomeButton]

First off, this feels like absolute shit. In a turn-based combat system such as Underrail/Dungeon Rats, your strategy/tactics are what make the combat feel fun. There is skill involved in how you approach certain encounters, and you can see the percentages for how successful your action will be. Where does the fun come from with this system? Oh shoot, I should have aimed at his head better? You did everything right but because of some arbitrary stat, you missed

I was hoping for a better counter argument. I am not convinced by statements like "feels like absolute shit". You are being sarcastic, but many people actually like to play games of chance. The percentage displayed is just a UI convenience. VATS was insanely popular in Fallout/2. You get choice, you get tradeoffs, chance improves with skill. Therefore, RPG.

It can also also make it so you need to play a certain way, such as rushing up close to all the enemies so your inaccuracy doesn't matter if you're unloading a shotgun or assault rifle magazine two inches from their chest

"Playing a certain way" is actually "adapting your tactics to the available resources and situation". Some player may like chopping people with his axe because he is RPing Danny Trejo, but when they are too many and at a distance, he switches to a firearm. Nothing wrong with that.

Then there is the fact that the combat will feel like shit for the vast of the game until you're towards the end. If you get semi-accurate right around the middle of the game, the encounters will either be complete cakewalks or you will be reloading constantly playing against bots that auto target you with very high accuracy, essentially making it aim labs. balancing issues

Of course, when you add mechanics you need to balance them. Game design is a black hole of more and more work needed to get a seemingly "simple" "workflow" to function in a fun and satisfying way. So yeah, that's a valid problem. The bullet sponge solution has the same problem, it's just easier to adjust the numbers when the overall system is more simple.

Plus, the enemies will be suffering from the same low health/high lethality gunplay you described, unless you yourself are a bullet sponge. No one wants to reload a long fight because an enemy got lucky and hit a shot they shouldn't have while you missed five in a row despite aiming dead center on the target, and if you can take bullets while the enemies can't, I have a hard time imaging how you will make encounters feel balanced. I can totally imagine an encounter that's supposed to be easy turning into a nightmare because you keep missing easy shots while the enemy hits all of theirs, while an encounter that's supposed to be climactic and difficult ends up very easy because you end up getting a lucky headshot.

Finally, there is the issue of immersion. In an isometric game, although you see your shots as hitting, you can't see where or how they land versus if you were in a first-person view. In Underrail, if an enemy takes a full SMG burst, I can assume their energy shield absorbed the blow, or that the shots grazed him, with only one or two getting absorbed by their bulletproof vest. In a first-person game, I can see where each of my bullets are supposed to land. I just shot three bullets into this guys skull, how is he alive? I just landed a shot on the arm that's holding his weapon, how does he hold onto it? Also lol at weapons randomly breaking. It always feels like shit. Just because I have never shot a gun in my life doesn't mean it should break halfway into my first magazine.

These are just a few of the issues that come at the top of my head, and I'm sure others or myself could think of more issues as well.

In the best case scenario, the combat will never be as good as your standard FPS shooter in terms of a gunplay feel, and it will never feel as tactical/interesting as a well executed turn-based combat system. It's trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. Even if you get it in there, it's going to be fucked up on the other side

Elaborating on the balance problems. Yeah, if you go down the way of balancing the combat system, you will face the necessity of balancing encounters as well, so they don't throw your balanced system on its head. But you are concentrating on the accuracy and damage variables in what I'm proposing. Gamifying the aim down sights, reload speed, firing speed, and weight of weapons while leaving accuracy and damage mostly down to player manual skill is a compromise which I think could work for many players. Just enough feeling of systems being present (add in weapon calibres in the FNV style), with the 3d shooter skills leading the way.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The higher your skill in a type of firearm, the faster the crosshairs tighten. If you max out the skill, the crosshairs tighten so fast you essentially have the same accuracy as you would have in a regular FPS.

This is not the whole story. If your skill is low or minimum, you will still miss from a distance even if your crosshairs have fully narrowed.

 

[Irxy]

it's not a colony, there is no more Earth in Starfield, so that's all of humanity you see, not just America, hence the diversity.

Their diversity agenda kind of conflicts the lore, I think.
You can basically redo your character appearance anytime you want, and since it is a future it is not masked as a barber, surgeon or anything like that, but an in-lore service Enhance.
There are even quests about it and NPCs talking about using it etc.
And now the question, why the heck would half of NPCs look like wal-mart abominations when you can pretty get any body and looks you want?
I mean, it's pretty obvious that this body-positive bullshit would dissapear a minute after a service like this becomes available and affordable.

 

[Readher]

it's not a colony, there is no more Earth in Starfield, so that's all of humanity you see, not just America, hence the diversity.

Their diversity agenda kind of conflicts the lore, I think.
You can basically redo your character appearance anytime you want, and since it is a future it is not masked as a barber, surgeon or anything like that, but an in-lore service Enhance.
There are even quests about it and NPCs talking about using it etc.
And now the question, why the heck would half of NPCs look like wal-mart abominations when you can pretty get any body and looks you want?
I mean, it's pretty obvious that this body-positive bullshit would dissapear a minute after a service like this becomes available and affordable.

In-universe, it probably costs a lot or something, even if it's cheap for the player.

 

[JamesDixon]

If you want good shooting mechanics then look no further than Phoenix Command on how to do it right. Phoenix Command is designed to be a realistic ballistics simulator for RPGs.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

I think CP2077 is introducing some form of endurance bar for firearms in their next big patch, where you have perfect aim as long as you have some of that resource left and only start missing if you run out.

This is the first time I hear of this, do you have a source? That sounds like a hidden "bullet spread the longer burst you shoot" mechanic. Off the top of my head, I guess it will encourage more maneuvering on the player's part, running around while his accuracy builds up when attacking an outpost alone, or would encourage switching between melee, hacks and grenades, because you're no longer able to get by with just shooting. Maybe that's the intention.

Here you can see the stamina bar getting chunked while firing a gun.



The accuracy drop is speculation on my part, but I assume there's some consequence for running out.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The accuracy drop is speculation on my part, but I assume there's some consequence for running out.

Accuracy drop is just a soft-cap penalty on your damage Eventually the player sees himself forced to stop shooting and switch to a different weapon. Looks neat at first glance, and will be easy to rebalance/mod as needed.

 

[AwesomeButton]

View attachment 40873

Right. In that case, I have about 10 hours until it gets amazing. Wish me luck guys Anyone want a savegame so you can skip to the good part?

 

[Vic]

Starfield haters are retards!

 

[ColaWerewolf]

View attachment 40873

It's like trying to play chess with Todd and at first you're acting like the cocky jock who made fun of his chess club, "lmao I bet your rook doesn't even have dismemberment, idiot." You move in for the infallible scholar's mate "your pawn structure is all empty space with nothing to do, dumbass." He just smiles in that humble, innocent way he always does and moves his QWEEN Layteesha in front of your king.

You were in checkmate from the start.

 

[ItsChon]

I was hoping for a better counter argument. I am not convinced by statements like "feels like absolute shit". You are being sarcastic, but mnany people actually like to play games of chance. The percentage displayed is just a UI convenience. VATS was insanely popular in Fallout/2. You get choice, you get tradeoffs, chance improves with skill. Therefore, RPG.

First off, Fallout 1 & 2 have dogshit combat, so terrible game to cite when trying to defend this style of design. Second, comparing VATs to a Deus Ex style of FPS is ridiculous, as they're not the same thing. The issue isn't the inherent RNG of whether or not your attack lands, but instead the way the RNG is done and how it feels when playing the game.

As for some people liking said system, so what? Lots of people like to play all sorts of shit games. That's doesn't fly as a defense against my statement that the shooting mehcanics you outlined feel bad. I could explain why they feel bad but you didn't ask me that. It's akin to me defending bullet sponge mechanics which you also hand-waived away as "they suck".

"Playing a certain way" is actually "adapting your tactics to the available resources and situation". Some player may like chopping people with his axe because he is RPing Danny Trejo, but when they are too many and at a distance, he switches to a firearm. Nothing wrong with that.

There is a difference between being pigeonholed to playing a certain way versus adapting my tactics. In Underrail, you often have to adapt your tactics as a Sniper when facing different enemy compositions/types and based on your environment. That being said, said adaptation will never feel like the kind of gameplay you'll get with a close range burst SMG, and the tactical adaptions you'll have to make with that kind of build. If the way around your system is to run right up to every enemy, whether you have a sniper or a shotgun, so the accuracy malus doesn't effect you, than that's not adapting your tactics to the available resources/situation, that's just making the most out of a dogshit combat system.

Of course, when you add mechanics you need to balance them. Game design is a black hole of more and more work needed to get a seemingly "simple" "workflow" to function in a fun and satisfying way. So yeah, that's a valid problem. The bullet sponge solution has the same problem, it's just easier to adjust the numbers when the overall system is more simple.

Some things cannot be balanced. I'd love to see someone try.

Elaborating on the balance problems. Yeah, if you go down the way of balancing the combat system, you will face the necessity of balancing encounters as well, so they don't throw your balanced system on its head. But you are concentrating on the accuracy and damage variables in what I'm proposing. Gamifying the aim down sights, reload speed, firing speed, and weight of weapons while leaving accuracy and damage mostly down to player manual skill is a compromise which I think could work for many players. Just enough feeling of systems being present (add in weapon calibres in the FNV style), with the 3d shooter skills leading the way.

Maybe you just suck at shooters, but as someone that has played pretty competitively in some very high skilled shooters, this shit would not be fun for me, or anyone else that is remotely skilled. Having to figure out what attacks and abilities to use as an example is something that is purely abstract, and it's your own intellect leading the way. That is something that will be engaging for pretty much anyone that has a patrician taste in games. Playing a game with artificial difficulty built in with no way to get better outside of leveling up is not.

 

[Alex]

The game got the attention of American Krogan? I hope he is going to de-nigger it too like Fallout 4. And remove overall pozz.

Can he do that to BG3 too while he is at it as well?

Doesn't BG3 already come with an uninstaller?

 

[Vic]

uninstall tranny ville 3, play starchad

 

[Irxy]

This yet again smells like another Fallout 3 situation where anyone defending is doing so more out of some principle rather than because they have an actual reason to defend the game. I have yet to hear or read any good reasons to invest into this game and I do not see that changing any time soon. Because basically even the praise I hear most of the time sounds like a half-assed negatives.
"Oh, its get better the further you go." - great another FFXIII, didn't know Todd made JRPGs
"Its really freeform, you can do anything you want." - so yet again Bethesda has no actual idea what the gameplay loop is like
"The story is not horrible." - wowsers trousers if that is not a fucking selling point then I do not know what is!

The cherry on top is that my rtx 4070 seems to be barely enough to run the game at 1080p while its still looking like a stripped down GTAV. This is a new low even for Todd and the fact that he is mysteriously silent about it all just points me in the direction that this is the best the game can do and no patches will come along to fix it.

I understand these discussions on steam forums, but here on codex, come on?
This game is exactly what anyone who played any of the Bethesda games thought is was going to be - a Fallout/Skyrim in space.
With all the good & bad stuff that entails. And like all other Bethesda games, it is good for what it is. If you enjoy Skyrim or Fallout (or any of the older ones) despite their numerous shortcoming, you will enjoy this one too.
Why? Because there are no alternatives for this style of gameplay.
There are games with a better space sim, better combat, better plot, better open world, better overall RPG etc.
Yet there are none which have all of that, it is as simple as that. So if you want to play a space cowboy, who flights a ship of his own design, doing piloting, trading and all kinds of adventures, builds a base on some random rock to store trophies and whores, there are simply no other games which would allow you to.
And while none of its systems can really be called great, they are really not bad either, and a sum of them do provide a unique experience.

p.s. I have a 3080 and an older i5-8600 cpu, play @1440p with 75% FSR, everything on ultra. Get solid 60 fps everywhere aside from major cities, and even in those it doesn't dip often and low enough to annoy, barely noticeable with gsync.

 

[Vic]

fuck the haters

 

[thesecret1]

The sooner people realize that RPGs are incompatible with action/shooter combat, the better. The very things that make a shooter or a hack and slash action game fun are mutually exclusive with what makes a RPG combat system fun.

absolutely agree

How do you try to integrate firearms (lasers) in a first-person RPG then?

1. Make enemies bullet sponges. Then go by the "numbers go up" mantra, better weapons overcome the sponge faster. -- This sucks as system design.
2. "The pseudo-simulationist approach". Make firearms very inaccurate, very prone to breaking, add wepon condition statistic, gamify the "time to iron sights", time to reload, weight in the inventory, the recoil, rounds fired per second, etc. Make firearms suck and gradually improve them through crafting/wepon modification, or through the player finding innately better weapons in the world. This way you can have weapons that always kill or cripple from 1-2 shots, but getting to actually hit something is the skill the player can build up.
3. In addition to the stats from 2., add some player build choices that improve the same stats, i.e. a more skilled character can make more of the same weapon than an unskilled character.

IDK, this seems like a watertight way to integrate shooter combat into an RPG. Thoughts?

Gothic already solved this for melee - the better your character is, the better his swing animations, the easier it is to chain combos, etc. In other words, it copies real life, where with a low skill character, you use the sword like it was a stick that you bash people with, while at high skill, you're a swordmaster for whom the sword is an extension of his arm.

With guns, just take the same approach - make the recoil bigger because your character is shit at handling it. Don't make the gun inaccurate, but rather make the character's hands shake and move, as he's unable to keep a steady aim. Give him different reload animations based on skill level, with low level ones taking forever while high level ones are over in a second. Those are all things that stem from the CHARACTER rather than the GUN (more jamming or the gun itself shooting sideways would be rage inducing and make no sense), and make it instantly clear to the player. It will feel very natural and make the player himself feel the difference whenever his character improves, as he will actually feel the improvement first hand.

 

[Perkel]

lel someone already made better ui:

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

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A game for redditors too, not only niggers. Interesting. Seems about right from a short scientific survey.

 

[Grauken]

so basically just play No man's sky which by now is pretty good?

I think the main difference is, NMS has only aliens, Starfield has only humans and some robots

NMS doesn't have humans though, lol.

Yes, what I said. Has only aliens = no humans

 

[Alienman]

fuck the haters

Didn't you start to hate it too? I'm confused.

 

[Vic]

if you have 2 companions on your ship they engage in party banter

also, you can walk around your ship anytime if you are in space by holding E

I was just flying around and heard Andreja and Sarah talking, stepped away from the pilot's seat to listen in on their convo while drifting in space