Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[Yosharian]

LMAO wat the fuk

 

[Lemming42]

Starfield gets a 4/10 from me

Fucking sublime punchline to months of posting, bravo.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Quicker than my sleep cycle

 

[Vic]

if you watch it in 2x playback speed it's only 4 hours

 

[markec]

 

[Vic]

his (the modder's) reply to that on reddit:

Hi, author of that post here. This is kinda blowing up, so I guess I'll make a comment here if anyone cares.

As you might've figured, I was being hyperbolic to make a point. I didn't want my announcement to turn into a proper review or anything, just wanted to quickly express my feelings on the game off the cuff.

My honest opinion is a bit more nuanced. I just think this game is aggressively mediocre. I think what Bethesda does best is exploration based gameplay, which is just quite awful in Starfield. I love the RP elements. They definitely feel like a return to form compard to Fallout 4 and even Skyrim, which makes me excited for TES 6. A handcrafted world with the exploration potential of Skyrim/Fallout 4 and the RP elements of Starfield would be insanely fun to play.

Again, I'm not saying anything new here. Overall, the game is just super mediocre, with it mostly being pulled down by the lack of (exciting) exploration. I just wrote this announcement because I did put two dozen or so hours into porting Skyrim Together into a potential Starfield Together (surprisingly easy) and wanted to open source it in case anyone who does like the game and does have the skillset to make a mod like this is interested in finishing it.

I did not mean to make anyone feel bad if they do like the game. All the more power to ya. It's just not for me. I could have written my original post to be a bit more nuanced, sorry.

 

[Rhobar121]

Even if the modders are already giving up, this game has no hope unless Bethesda starts paying them for it (to be honest, it would probably be money better spent than on the shitty programmers who made this game)

 

[Vic]

Even if the modders are already giving up, this game has no hope unless Bethesda starts paying them for it (to be honest, it would probably be money better spent than on the shitty programmers who made this game)

he is a skyrim modder who wants to design some shitty co-op mod, probably a tranny too

there are plenty of other modders who love the game and are busy creating content for it as we speak

 

[antimeridian]

You have to consider that outpost building has no real purpose in the game. Also that enemies do not scale beyond level 100 and thus become trivial relatively early, which is in contradiction to the game's design of doing multiple NG+ runs to aquire all the powers. Furthermore the itemization is absolutely horrible. Plus a myriad of other things. Most of the issues should be fixable with updates and mods though.

Sounds like a mode similar to Fallout 4's survival mode would go a long way towards helping Starfield. Maybe I'm asking for Bethestard tag but I think survival mode in Fallout 4 was awesome and made much better use of a lot of that game's systems. Suddenly base building has a gameplay purpose, and limitations on saving/fast travel added some actual gameplay stakes, rewarded the player developing knowledge of the map and made looting more meaningful. It also weakened the player and most enemies and sidestepped some of the usual Bethesda damage sponge gameplay.
Since Starfield is a bunch of small maps it shouldn't be a 1:1 implementation, and some other solutions need to be found for gameplay shortcomings, but some variation on FO4 survival could be great.
The nice thing about FO4 survival was that it asked for something more from the player without devolving into typical modder autism.

 

[Lemming42]

 

[Vic]

serves him right, next time release a finished product

 

[Gargaune]

Suddenly base building has a gameplay purpose

Like what? Supply lines will let you pool resources which is useful for modifying weapons and armour and I guess you've got a guaranteed bed to save in (though that's a stupid mechanic which I mod out). And I suppose you can dig a water pump and plant some corn to resupply, but it's hardly a game-changer. You don't even get a shared global stash for your equipment, unless you install a mod, a concession that even STALKER gave the player.

And, most importantly, none of this stuff requires you to build the settlement too much, there's no gain to having a given number of settlers or how happy they are. I enjoy fucking around with settlements, but only for its own sake, tapping into that childhood memory of playing with Lego, it's otherwise a pretty isolated aspect of the game.

 

[antimeridian]

I guess you've got a guaranteed bed to save in (though that's a stupid mechanic which I mod out).

Well you kinda answered your own question.

I suppose you can dig a water pump and plant some corn to resupply, but it's hardly a game-changer.

I found it very helpful on survival mode, having guaranteed bed + resupply means not relying on scavenging for food/water 100% of the time. The settlements are ports in the storm.

You don't even get a shared global stash for your equipment, unless you install a mod, a concession that even STALKER gave the player.

I don't hoard too much equipment, so this never bothered me. I'll concede it's annoying for different playstyles. Also, I don't believe the blue stash boxes in Stalker (SoC) are shared. Maybe the sequels, which I haven't played?

And, most importantly, none of this stuff requires you to build the settlement too much, there's no gain to having a given number of settlers or how happy they are.

You want to have enough settlers to maintain food and defense ratings, and happiness will increase resource production (although these mechanics are the same outside of survival mode). I'll admit I don't think there's a huge difference there anyway, and there are definitely still superfluous settlement mechanics in survival mode. But it takes the settlements from having zero gameplay relevance to... having some gameplay relevance. Survival mode was enough to make me happy to engage with the settlement mechanics, and it increased the importance of other gameplay systems which could usually be ignored (and adds some new ones, like illness, adreneline perk, ammo having weight etc). It's not really a hardcore survival sim, but that's the appeal for me. Starfield could benefit from something similar.

 

[FreshCorpse]

serves him right, next time release a finished product

Finishing it wouldn't have made it good. Todd's game design philosophy is heavily oriented towards the idea of emergent gameplay coming from RNG. If the procedural generation that clearly built most of Starfield had been more developed, what would you have gotten? A few more variants of bases, a few more variants of biomes, more packets of soy to pick up as levelled loot, etc. It wouldn't make it interesting. You can't polish Starfield into BG3. It polishes into some kind of cross between Minecraft and Diablo. Todd is famous as a liar but the biggest lie is that he is making RPGs. He is making some other kind of action game.

 

[jackofshadows]

Starfield isn't unfinished or not polished enough. It's fundamentally broken, bad. You cannot polish a turd. Almost every aspect of it is so underdeveloped and underwhelming that it's easier to make a new game than to "finalize" Starfield. Earlier Beth games were suffering from this "here a bunch of barebones systems and some lazy stuff to pull it together, make mods to improve it all or imagine, larp as it was a much better game" but here it's all so fucking awful that barely anyone can even pretend anymore.

 

[Ravielsk]

Well earned and deserved.

 

[Gargaune]

Also, I don't believe the blue stash boxes in Stalker (SoC) are shared.

I definitely remember them being shared, maybe it was Complete that changed it? In any case, I distinctly recall first playing Fo4 and getting the supply lines perk thinking "yes, then I'll be able to set up these bases and refit" only to realise they just shared junk items and food (for settlers).

You want to have enough settlers to maintain food and defense ratings, and happiness will increase resource production (although these mechanics are the same outside of survival mode). I'll admit I don't think there's a huge difference there anyway, and there are definitely still superfluous settlement mechanics in survival mode. But it takes the settlements from having zero gameplay relevance to... having some gameplay relevance. Survival mode was enough to make me happy to engage with the settlement mechanics, and it increased the importance of other gameplay systems which could usually be ignored (and adds some new ones, like illness, adreneline perk, ammo having weight etc). It's not really a hardcore survival sim, but that's the appeal for me.

I think that's a problem with Fo4, you've got some cool ideas like Survival Mode and settlements which would really work with the core game concept, that are then hamstrung by half-arsed implementations and poor synergy. Survival got more granular than equivalent mods for Skyrim, pestering and frustrating you at every five paces instead, requiring that it be relegated to an optional mode instead of resorting to a more streamlined but default mechanic, like it was in STALKER. Settlements were fun to fuck around with, but presented limited relevance to the core gameplay - building anything other than a shack and basic necessities right next to it is just a vanity timesink.

Starfield could benefit from something similar.

I'm dismayed to hear that Starfield has even less value for settlements. And I'm pretty sure Todd said they won't be doing a Survival Mode for it.

 

[Ravielsk]

Starfield isn't unfinished or not polished enough. It's fundamentally broken, bad. You cannot polish a turd. Almost every aspect of it is so underdeveloped and underwhelming that it's easier to make a new game than to "finalize" Starfield. Earlier Beth games were suffering from this "here a bunch of barebones systems and some lazy stuff to pull it together, make mods to improve it all or imagine, larp as it was a much better game" but here it's all so fucking awful that barely anyone can even pretend anymore.

Ironically I think that the fact nobody is really pretending that Starfield is "good" or "a ocean with the depth of a puddle" or "muh mods" or any other of the trillion copes surrounding FO4 or Skyrim puts Starfield into a position where it might be the fist Beth game that might stand a chance to be actually "fixed". Without all these extra layers of delusion maybe an actual overhaul in the vein of no man's sky has a chance of occurring.

That said its a tiny tiny chance, higher than 0% chance that it is with Skyrim or FO4 but its still in single digits.

 

[Lemming42]

The game is fascinating and I can't stop examining it. It's almost surreal, you can actually see the unfolding fractal of fuckups and bad ideas and mid-development course changes that led to the game being what it is.

- The art direction which clearly began as one thing ("NASApunk") and then was considered boring midway through so they suddenly started sprinkling any old shit in (cyberpunk, western) without bothering to make it make sense.

- The procgen which they must have started off with and then given up on very early on, leaving an entire universe of empty planets.

- The utter failure of a single person at Bethesda to comprehend anything about what people enjoyed in their previous games, despite every review for the past twenty years clearly detailing that people like exploring interesting hand-crafted overworlds, diving into lengthy dungeons, and simulation aspects (NPC routines, crime system, etc). The result: an uninteresting setting with absolutely no handcrafted overworld exploration, few dungeons, and the total loss of simulation aspects.

- The writing which seems to have undergone a similar mid-development whiplash-inducing shift to the art style: it's a post-apocalyptic game where Earth has been destroyed but it's also 70s-themed "NASApunk" but it's also about the aftermath of a war with genetic engineering but it's also about the clash between order and freedom but it's also a high-concept thing about "Starborn" and the hunt for supernatural treasure.

Again it's like they didn't want to create another "Bethesda game" and just wanted to make and FPS or something - which would have been fine and would have served the game far better - but instead of cutting down on their usual open world stuff, they instead inflated it to a comically absurd degree while also stripping it of appeal entirely via the procgen shit. I like the game and even I can't understand how it's such a trainwreck.

With a budget that high, a development time that long, and a team that big, there is no explanation as to some of the decisions made here.

 

[Shaja]

If the sources are true, then Bethesda is an employee-friendly company. Where its employees enjoy a fixed full time job, great salaries and a great American life in the upper-class neighbourhoods of Rockville, Maryland.

Why would they have to stress and risk their job conditions? Because the opinion of some nerds?

There´s nothing better than doing some assets on Creation engine and copy some coding lines from previous games. Then leave work at 5PM.

Life is good.

 

[Yosharian]

If the sources are true, then Bethesda is an employee-friendly company. Where its employees enjoy a fixed full time job, great salaries and a great American life in the upper-class neighbourhoods of Rockville, Maryland.

Why would they have to stress and risk their job conditions? Because the opinion of some nerds?

There´s nothing better than doing some assets on Creation engine and copy some coding lines from previous games. Then leave work at 5PM.

Life is good.

Unironically based

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

puts Starfield into a position where it might be the first Beth game that might stand a chance to be actually completely abandoned in a matter of minutes

ftfy.

 

[Vic]

You can't polish Starfield into BG3. It polishes into some kind of cross between Minecraft and Diablo. Todd is famous as a liar but the biggest lie is that he is making RPGs. He is making some other kind of action game.

yeah, duh. but for those of us who already like what the game is, the major complaint is that it's unfinished. I don't care about people who don't like the game.

 

[Lemming42]

I wonder if it's a case of the game being unfinished, or more of a case of the game having superfluous shit that actually needs to be trimmed away. Expanding on the procgen possibilities won't really improve the game as far as I can see, it'll just add extra detail to something everyone already avoids.

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced - it's a 10 hour action game (a decent one) that includes 20 - 30 hours of irrelevant timewasting stuff between actual content.

 

[Vic]

it's a fair point. you have to like the looter shooter aspect of it I think. Also be a fan of proc gen stuff. It's just really different from their previous hand-crafted games.

the other poster said it's like a mix between Minecraft and Diablo, and that's not too far off I think.