Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[ArchAngel]

Ok, I finally finished the game and entered NG+.

I done all major faction quests, done all minor quests that got offered to me and of course main quest. I collected all temple powers game offered (but not all that exist, black pirate dude stopped telling me at one point where to find last 6 or so temples) and at lvl 50 went to finish the story. Overall still 7/10 game but only if you enjoy looter/shooter gameplay or aRPG lite gameplay. For just RPG parts it is at best 5/10 game. Still better than any other Bethesda RPG I tried. It even had speech option at last battle to circumvent it completely but unlike something like Fallout 1 or 2 the conversation and how you get there was so simple and stupid, as I said you need to like aRPG type games to like this shit (it is do not ask questions and kill more enemies design)

I dabbled into spaceship building, didn't bother to make some very cool ship. I didn't build a single Outpost. Only did 2 companion quests (Sarah and Andreja).
I think the best parts of the game were a couple of side quests you run into randomly in space. Main quest was also passable but everything around it was done lazily with no logic. You murder so many Starborn on your way to Unity (and before). How did all of them end up in this one Universe and why would they all band together to stop you. Would they not kind of go into chaos after you killed a few and offer to help you instead. Especially since you find out that once you gather all the artifacts others can enter Unity after you... Even Hunter is stupid, why cannot he just go after you?! Only Emissary actions make sense.

 

[Fedora Master]

Ok, I finally finished the game and entered NG+.

Who asked?

 

[ArchAngel]

Now I am going to try NG+ a bit, I do not plan to do any faction quests or most quests. Only main quest (that you can skip most of) to gather more powers and probably dabble into Outposts a bit. I moved difficulty into Hard now and since I started with no equipment I am now trying to clear some high level mercs and they are a danger since I lack ammo, meds and good weapons. I am actually forced to use my Starborn powers for combat for the first time (I've done first game only using Star Sense to see through walls).

Apparently if you continue going NG+ at 6th and 9th universe you get some unique stuff, maybe more later.

 

[RepHope]

Just finished it. Honestly the most fun I’ve had with a Bethesda game since replaying Morrowind a year ago.

-The main story is barebones but at least they finally came up with a story that compliments their approach to open world gameplay. For every other Bethesda game you’re up against either the end of the world or a family member is in danger, and it makes you look like a sociopath for putting the main story on pause to dick around exploring dungeons. Here at least it’s your job to go out and explore, plus the universe isn’t at risk. The Settled Systems doesn’t take any notice at all of what’s going on, it’s a much more personal story about a small group trying to unlock the secrets of the universe

-When they thought up the multiverse shit back in 2016 or whatever, it was still a hot topic but now everyone is sick of multiverse crap. Should’ve just been a first contact story about humanity meeting aliens. So much is left unclear but not in an awe-inspiring way, more of a “what was the point of this?” kind of way? Why are there Temples that give you superpowers?
Why do the Starborn run around killing each other just so they can spend 5 seconds staring into a cosmic lava lamp before being dumped in a new universe? Oh and the Hunter should have just been an evil version of you, fuck it if we’re doing multiverse stories that’s a fun one.

-I liked the ship combat. It’s solid, feels like a good foundation to expand upon for future games. Surprising considering how terrible Bethesda is with mounts elsewhere. Had a lot of fun building my own custom ship, only complaint is that the interiors could have been better. The Captain’s Habs all sucked. Never bothered with outposts, doesn’t seem like there was any point to them.

-After FO4 they did try and put more RPG shit back in their games. Lots of skill checks and background checks in dialogue, skills actually feel more useful this time as opposed to FO4, can’t hold a candle to BG3 obviously but there’s more checks in this game then there was in Cyberpunk.

-Unfortunately for a game about exploration, exploring planets is boring after the first couple. It’s the exact same procedural based copy pasted locations scattered across a bare bones map. They should’ve ditched the 1000s of planets and slimmed it down to say 20, and tried making 5-9 of those as handcrafted as they possible could. There’s zero draw to exploring every planet since barely any of them have any worthwhile content.

-The factions are shockingly not retarded? Actually they’re quite good, mostly because they’re clearly ripped off from better scifi by Heinlein but I’ll take that over the stupidity of the FO4 factions. The beef between the United Colonies, Freestar Collective, and Vaarun makes sense and I liked the differences between the three (UC are basically benevolent if heavy handed national socialists how the fuck did Todd get away with that?).

-Combat retains the solid gameplay of FO4 in terms of gun handling, only caveat is that the Powers are mostly worthless. They eat up too much mana and take too long to recharge, meaning I barely ever used them

-Oh and FUCK that temple mini game, it’s fucking boring and tedious, no idea what the hell they were thinking there.

-Only 4 companions is a weird choice because they still don’t feel all that fleshed out. All of them were fine but the most interesting member of Constellation is Vladimir and it’s a shame you can’t take him with you. Vasco is KOTOR 1 T3-M4 in terms of being a total bore. Should’ve wacked him with space magic to give him a personality

I don’t even know where the hell you go from here in a sequel when you start with meeting God and traveling to alternate universes. Feels like the next game needs to downscale the scope and just tell a story of galactic politics or humans vs aliens instead of all this Starborn shit.

 

[Vic]

yeah pretty much what guy above said

Starfield is a good game, but it's like all other Bethesda games, I play them for a couple hundred hours on release and then never touch them again. Not so with New Vegas, which I replay regularly. Go figure.

 

[Bigfass]

Combat retains the solid gameplay of FO4

Starfield is a good game

Overall still 7/10 game

This thread is officially the special ed section of the codex.

 

[Robotigan]

Combat retains the solid gameplay of FO4

Starfield is a good game

Overall still 7/10 game

This thread is officially the special ed section of the codex.

You figured out Newtonian physics yet?

 

[HammyTheFat]

I didn't build a single Outpost

There is literally zero reason to make an outpost unless you're doing the farming exploit to level to 100. You can buy materials for crafting.

 

[Vic]

I didn't build a single Outpost

There is literally zero reason to make an outpost unless you're doing the farming exploit to level to 100. You can buy materials for crafting.

there is no level cap, so you can level up way past 100

 

[ArchAngel]

Combat retains the solid gameplay of FO4

Starfield is a good game

Overall still 7/10 game

This thread is officially the special ed section of the codex.

7/10 is for me barely playable. I do not bother playing stuff below that score. I would give those games a chance if I am bored but always quit fast.

 

[Gargaune]

Whoa! Whoa! Stop!

Stop what you're doing and look at this. If you've reached the thick thighs, you've gone too far.

SlowerThanLight - Fly in a star system

This mod allows you to control the speed gear of your ship with hotkeys, from regular flight speed to the equivalent of hundreds of times the speed of light. It allows you to fly inside a star system in a relatively elegant way.

So! You're telling me that Starfield's star systems genuinely are single, consolidated spaces? Like all the planets and locations around a star do share a single space? And Bethesda didn't build freefly gameplay between them because of... what? Realism or some shit?!

Todd, my man, are you okay? I'm serious, I'm a little worried about you.

 

[ArchAngel]

Whoa! Whoa! Stop!

Stop what you're doing and look at this. If you've reached the thick thighs, you've gone too far.

SlowerThanLight - Fly in a star system

This mod allows you to control the speed gear of your ship with hotkeys, from regular flight speed to the equivalent of hundreds of times the speed of light. It allows you to fly inside a star system in a relatively elegant way.

So! You're telling me that Starfield's star systems genuinely are single, consolidated spaces? Like all the planets and locations around a star do share a single space? And Bethesda didn't build freefly gameplay between them because of... what? Realism or some shit?!

Todd, my man, are you okay? I'm serious, I'm a little worried about you.

Game uses teleport to move stuff around, I seen it yesterday by chance. I was using See Star Stuff ability on my ship (that lets me see through walls) and I noticed how suddenly one of my companions teleported from same deck I was on through walls to deck above me LOL
They do same shit with ships but hide it with that short animation of travelling and short fade to black.

 

[Hellraiser]

So! You're telling me that Starfield's star systems genuinely are single, consolidated spaces? Like all the planets and locations around a star do share a single space? And Bethesda didn't build freefly gameplay between them because of... what? Realism or some shit?!

Todd, my man, are you okay? I'm serious, I'm a little worried about you.

There's probably a technical reason behind it, and yes typical bethesda incompetence counts as one.

The keywords the mod page mentions are:

There's also a set of hotkeys for slowing down and resetting the current scene (to fix the problem of planets not loading).

This together with what was earlier discovered regarding trying to get to New Atlantis from a landing site just outside of it via cheating/console haxx, strongly points to Bethesda being unable to implement proper seamless loading. Now you could think space is way easier to do seamlessly than planetary scale terrain for on foot travel, but the way easier part is relative. I know KSP for instance had quite a few problems before their seamless solar system started working, although granted it does have seamless space to surface transitions (and better ones than NMS because loading is much faster and with no tricks to slow down the landing).

 

[Tommy Gun]

I was getting a Thunderbird 2 vibe off it.

 

[Gargaune]

Game uses teleport to move stuff around, I seen it yesterday by chance. I was using See Start Stuff ability on my ship (that lets me see through walls) and I noticed how suddenly one of my companions teleported from same deck I was on through walls to deck above me LOL
They do same shit with ships but hide it with that short animation of travelling and short fade to black.

If you're fast traveling, sure, whatever, but why? Why skip on proper space travel and exploration? Atmospheric flight, persistent planets, those would've present some technical challenges, but freeflight inside of a star system wouldn't have and now we can see that they made the spaces, they just chose to skip on building gameplay for them. Random encounters and bespoke quests taking you into deep space, shipping lanes, secret pirate stations, whatever, there should've been stuff to play with over there. You should've also been able to freefly to a planet's orbit and then get the landing menu.

And no, modders won't be able to fully fix this. Once Todd deigns to release the CK to the plebs, they'll be able to make smooth deep space freeflight and maybe even tie random encounters and "radiant" quests into it, but it'll never reach the level it would've if it'd gone through development proper.

I thought that maybe Bethesda made a major mistake early in development and created planetary orbits as isolated, individual worldspaces, but no, they were correctly compartmentalised around their respective stars. You could've had deep space gameplay, you should've had it, but you don't. And this is the game we got after Microsoft slammed the breaks and had Todd "polish" it for another year. Fuck's sake.

There's also a set of hotkeys for slowing down and resetting the current scene (to fix the problem of planets not loading).

This together with what was earlier discovered regarding trying to get to New Atlantis from a landing site just outside of it via cheating/console haxx, strongly points to Bethesda being unable to implement proper seamless loading. Now you could think space is way easier to do seamlessly than planetary scale terrain for on foot travel, but the way easier part is relative. I know KSP for instance had quite a few problems before their seamless solar system started working, although granted it does have seamless space to surface transitions (and better ones than NMS because loading is much faster and with no tricks to slow down the landing).

But this was the game, man, it's what it should've been. I'm not surprised that star space is buggy now, since deep space flight isn't a game feature so no one would've cared about it screwing up behind the scenes, but we're not talking about a complicated technical concept here. Dunno about KSP but NMS (as much as I love shitting all over it) does atmospheric flight and seamless landings, asset streaming is a major factor, but Starfield's would've just been a big map with a space skin. If Gamebryo can handle Fo4's Commonwealth, it can handle a big, black space with a bunch of globes strewn about.

 

[ArchAngel]

Haha, this is awesome. I see devs had a lot of fun with some of these:

 

[N'wah]

I don’t even know where the hell you go from here in a sequel when you start with meeting God and traveling to alternate universes. Feels like the next game needs to downscale the scope and just tell a story of galactic politics or humans vs aliens instead of all this Starborn shit.

We'll get a Starfield sequel about the same time Bioware releases a sequel to Anthem.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

As this game will have five years support , Starfield will be the greatest game in five years.

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/...cent interview on,five years plus of support.

 

[HammyTheFat]

I didn't build a single Outpost

There is literally zero reason to make an outpost unless you're doing the farming exploit to level to 100. You can buy materials for crafting.

there is no level cap, so you can level up way past 100

This game is bad enough that the only way I see people getting past 80 is if they're trying to 100% it on steam, which requires getting to 100 unless you're big brained enough to get a mod for it.

And doing that is painful unless you cheese it with outpost husbandry.

 

[Gargaune]

As this game will have five years support , Starfield will be the greatest game in five years.

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/09/bethesda-ready-to-support-starfield-for-at-least-five-years#:~:text=In a recent interview on,five years plus of support.

Oh boy, five years of breaking mods! What a time to be a gamer!

Yes, I'm pissed off about Cyberpunk...

 

[Vic]

I didn't build a single Outpost

There is literally zero reason to make an outpost unless you're doing the farming exploit to level to 100. You can buy materials for crafting.

there is no level cap, so you can level up way past 100

This game is bad enough that the only way I see people getting past 80 is if they're trying to 100% it on steam, which requires getting to 100 unless you're big brained enough to get a mod for it.

And doing that is painful unless you cheese it with outpost husbandry.

I’m not aware of husbandry, usually what I’ve seen people do is setup an outpost on a planet where 1 hour is many UT hours. They sit on a chair for 1 hour and all storage is filled up, then they spam craft components, rinse repeat.

 

[Hirato]

Game uses teleport to move stuff around, I seen it yesterday by chance. I was using See Star Stuff ability on my ship (that lets me see through walls) and I noticed how suddenly one of my companions teleported from same deck I was on through walls to deck above me LOL
They do same shit with ships but hide it with that short animation of travelling and short fade to black.

Bethesda actually started doing this in Fallout 4.
It helps keep the companions close, but I find it incredibly jarring, as it violates all manner of rules around object permanence.

You'll go into a dungeon, sneak around, and your companion gets "lost"... then you'll round a corner and your companion just comes out of a room there is no way for them to get into nor they have any business being inside of.
Another I've found immensely jarring was just running around on the overworld.
I'll turn around to see how my companion is keeping up, and I'll see them running/sprint in the distance,
Then I'll turn back to face the front and keep running, only to have a panic attack: the companion teleported right in front of me, and I shot them in the face because I mistook them for a raider.

I have no idea what Bethesda was thinking... it's the worst band-aid you could put on companion AI and pathfinding being utter garbage.
I much prefer the way Skyrim mods alleviate the pathfinding issue: Give them a temporary buff of super speed.
It looks silly, but at least you can see them move from A to B, and not just magically warp to places that make no logical sense.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

 

[Rhobar121]

Game uses teleport to move stuff around, I seen it yesterday by chance. I was using See Star Stuff ability on my ship (that lets me see through walls) and I noticed how suddenly one of my companions teleported from same deck I was on through walls to deck above me LOL
They do same shit with ships but hide it with that short animation of travelling and short fade to black.

Bethesda actually started doing this in Fallout 4.
It helps keep the companions close, but I find it incredibly jarring, as it violates all manner of rules around object permanence.

You'll go into a dungeon, sneak around, and your companion gets "lost"... then you'll round a corner and your companion just comes out of a room there is no way for them to get into nor they have any business being inside of.
Another I've found immensely jarring was just running around on the overworld.
I'll turn around to see how my companion is keeping up, and I'll see them running/sprint in the distance,
Then I'll turn back to face the front and keep running, only to have a panic attack: the companion teleported right in front of me, and I shot them in the face because I mistook them for a raider.

I have no idea what Bethesda was thinking... it's the worst band-aid you could put on companion AI and pathfinding being utter garbage.
I much prefer the way Skyrim mods alleviate the pathfinding issue: Give them a temporary buff of super speed.
It looks silly, but at least you can see them move from A to B, and not just magically warp to places that make no logical sense.

This is what happens when your AI is practically non-existent.
The companion's AI in Betard games is at Gothic 3 level

 

[HammyTheFat]

I didn't build a single Outpost

There is literally zero reason to make an outpost unless you're doing the farming exploit to level to 100. You can buy materials for crafting.

there is no level cap, so you can level up way past 100

This game is bad enough that the only way I see people getting past 80 is if they're trying to 100% it on steam, which requires getting to 100 unless you're big brained enough to get a mod for it.

And doing that is painful unless you cheese it with outpost husbandry.

I’m not aware of husbandry, usually what I’ve seen people do is setup an outpost on a planet where 1 hour is many UT hours. They sit on a chair for 1 hour and all storage is filled up, then they spam craft components, rinse repeat.

Behold the horror.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUtNYp_3qeY