Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[Vic]

would have thought that Starfield, given how different the concept of it is compared to their normal games, would have been a logical point to potentially make the investment in switching to a new engine.

they did! They developed Creation Engine 2™ specifically for Starfield and TESVI !

https://www.starfielddb.com/creation-engine-2/

it's just the latest version of the morrowind engine bro', it's not new by any means.

understand irony !

So you shilling the game is irony? Got it, should have known

now you're interpreting too much! you must find a middle ground!

 

[Ryzer]

This argument is retarded since Rockstar still use to this day the 2006 RAGE engine for Red dead 2 and GTAV they used first in a ping-pong game.

If the game is 2 decades technically delayed, it's because the developers are incompetent.

 

[volklore]

would have thought that Starfield, given how different the concept of it is compared to their normal games, would have been a logical point to potentially make the investment in switching to a new engine.

they did! They developed Creation Engine 2™ specifically for Starfield and TESVI !

https://www.starfielddb.com/creation-engine-2/

it's just the latest version of the morrowind engine bro', it's not new by any means.

understand irony !

So you shilling the game is irony? Got it, should have known

now you're interpreting too much! you must find a middle ground!

This is codex, there is no such think as middle ground n'wah

 

[Gargaune]

maybe reduce the player's look speed and despawn everything behind them?

Why stop there? Dream bigger, despawn shit in front of the player!

I think Bethesda's familiarity with their current engine and tools, and how it allows them to have an efficient and well-practiced content creation pipeline, is the main reason they don't ever really change to a new engine. They just keep updating the current one, but not in ways that dramatically change how it fundamentally works.

And given how they are generally industry leaders in terms of the mod-friendliness of their games and how well they do, it is hard to say it isn't a good decision.

Good. I have no interest in playing a Bethesda game on Unreal or Frostbite or whatever.

 

[fantadomat]

Pretty sure that the game is a flop. 7 years of paying hundreds of people and couldn't even beat tranny simulator 3. Those "6 million" claim is around of 200 mil profit,at optimal. That is hardly their operational cost for 7 years and marketing lol.

The game is on gamepass, which means that a lot of it is not even a purchased game. Maybe one day gamepass will become profitable, but it won't happen quickly, especially if they plan to release AAA games there at launch.
I don't want to believe that the game will make any money.

I was giving todd the benefit of the doubt. It is pretty obvious that there is no more than a million copies sold. Which won't even cover the staff's pay for those 7 years,let alone hidden costs or the facilities lol.

 

[volklore]

I think Bethesda's familiarity with their current engine and tools, and how it allows them to have an efficient and well-practiced content creation pipeline, is the main reason they don't ever really change to a new engine. They just keep updating the current one, but not in ways that dramatically change how it fundamentally works.

And given how they are generally industry leaders in terms of the mod-friendliness of their games and how well they do, it is hard to say it isn't a good decision.

Good. I have no interest in playing a Bethesda game on Unreal or Frostbite or whatever.

They should just roll back everything to morrowind keep only NPC schedules and stealth from whatever shit they did in oblivion.
Bring back diceroll and stats based combat. I can only get so hard.

 

[fantadomat]

I think Bethesda's familiarity with their current engine and tools, and how it allows them to have an efficient and well-practiced content creation pipeline, is the main reason they don't ever really change to a new engine. They just keep updating the current one, but not in ways that dramatically change how it fundamentally works.

And given how they are generally industry leaders in terms of the mod-friendliness of their games and how well they do, it is hard to say it isn't a good decision.

Good. I have no interest in playing a Bethesda game on Unreal or Frostbite or whatever.

They should just roll back everything to morrowind keep only NPC schedules and stealth from whatever shit they did in oblivion.
Bring back diceroll and stats based combat. I can only get so hard.

I say,pull up the writing and the stats from morrowind in skyrim mechanic game,also add the gothic inventory system and you have goty.

 

[GaelicVigil]

I think Bethesda's familiarity with their current engine and tools, and how it allows them to have an efficient and well-practiced content creation pipeline, is the main reason they don't ever really change to a new engine. They just keep updating the current one, but not in ways that dramatically change how it fundamentally works.

And given how they are generally industry leaders in terms of the mod-friendliness of their games and how well they do, it is hard to say it isn't a good decision.

Good. I have no interest in playing a Bethesda game on Unreal or Frostbite or whatever.

They should just roll back everything to morrowind keep only NPC schedules and stealth from whatever shit they did in oblivion.
Bring back diceroll and stats based combat. I can only get so hard.

I say,pull up the writing and the stats from morrowind in skyrim mechanic game,also add the gothic inventory system and you have goty.

Morrowind to this day still has the best inventory UI they've ever done...one of the best RPG UIs of all time IMO. Nothing fancy, just beautifully simple and functional.

 

[darkpatriot]

Netflix has shown that entertainment as a service is a very viable model.

Microsoft has been investing a lot into game pass, and putting Starfield on game pass rather than focusing on trying to make money from game sales is yet another investment in game pass. Will game pass become the revenue stream Microsoft wants? Uncertain, so we will have to see. I don't think people play games in the same way they watch movies and TV shows, so I don't think Netflix has proven that the model works for games.

But it does mean that people who are trying to use the concurrent steam player numbers to divine either the number of players or the success or failure of Starfield are pretty misguided. Same thing for total number of sales. Because it isn't clear how much Microsoft is hoping to make from game sales compared to how much they are hoping to improve the value of the library of games you can play with game pass.

 

[Tyranicon]

Gamepass made it impossible to prove if games succeeded on their own merits or not.

"It didn't undersell because people got it off gamepass."

"No don't look at their playtime and how quickly they uninstalled it!"

"That's not the right metric to look at!"

If I was a gamedev employee at any of these studios, I would love it. Every game is a heckin success.

 

[MerchantKing]

I'm sure glad I didn't torrent this game. I was considering doing it in a year after the bethesda bugs were fixed but now I see no reason to waste hard-drive space on this game.

 

[Vic]

Gamepass made it impossible to prove if games succeeded on their own merits or not.

ultimately that's up to the studios. even if you only sell copies, there's a difference in development costs. I've read a few examples of studios that went broke despite releasing successful games because they couldn't figure out how to develop them cost efficiently

 

[darkpatriot]

Gamepass made it impossible to prove if games succeeded on their own merits or not.

"It didn't undersell because people got it off gamepass."

"No don't look at their playtime and how quickly they uninstalled it!"

"That's not the right metric to look at!"

If was I a gamedev employee at any of these studios, I would love it. Every game is a heckin success.

I am 100% sure that Microsoft has established metrics to determine if Starfield overperforms, underperforms, or does just as they expected. It is very much in their interest that they can determine if a game did well or not, and they have a lot of people who can do that kind of analysis.

But those metrics are not available to us, and Microsoft won't necessarily be open and honest with their assessment of how different games have performed. Afterall, if they came out stating or implying that a game has flopped, that is bad press and will likely decrease future revenue further. And if they come out stating or implying that the game is doing better than expected, that is good press and can potentially increase revenue.


I don't really have any good recommendations for what metrics the public can use to evaluate that, but I can confidently say that concurrent steam numbers (which were always a metric you had to be careful using when comparing games that are available on other platforms) are a terrible metric to use in this case. And anyone trying to claim Starfield has flopped based off that is, well, kinda retarded.

It might not be until Microsoft releases various required public accounting reports before we find out how Microsoft has assessed the performance of Starfield. Assuming it winds up being significant enough to end up in the explanations for any of the figures in those reports.

 

[Vic]

oh, yeah. Internally they can definitely track it if they look at how many people sign up for gamepass to play starfield, then count the months they stay subscribed and boom, starfield is an investment in M1CRO$OFT

Who's laughing now, Todd? The CEO of Microsoft, probably, who's Indian btw.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

BRUTAL

A question for you tech guys, why is the game designed like this? I mean, it's the same old engine, so we know it allows for vast open environments. Is it only because of area transitions? But then, we know for example Skyrim can have the cities open through mods, as in being part of the open world.

It is very strange. For example when you landed on a planet you can look at what is happening outside through your pilot windows and it is all happening in real time as if you were outside the ship (except they ignore you).
You can see same NPCs, battles, areas, environment and such. But you are still required to do a loading screen to exit the ship. Probably some engine limitation..

It's for the NPCs I think, gives them a reset maybe?

As you said the amount of cells loaded is ridiculously far ahead of their prior games. It's prolly why so many are struggling with performance.

 

[Vic]

I don't really have any good recommendations for what metrics the public can use to evaluate that, but I can confidently say that concurrent steam numbers (which were always a metric you had to be careful using when comparing games that are available on other platforms) are a terrible metric to use in this case. And anyone trying to claim Starfield has flopped based off that is, well, kinda retarded.

an interesting metric might be to look at how many members the subreddit has, which would roughly indicate how many people are interested in a game, compared to other games! It's 600k for starfield, and 848k for BG3 at the moment.

Science!

https://subredditstats.com/r/Starfield
https://subredditstats.com/r/BaldursGate3

 

[Moink]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1716740/view/3687940304703443230

First, an enormous thank you to all of you playing Starfield and your support. We are absolutely blown away by the response and all you love about the game. We’re also reading all your great feedback on what you’d like to see improved or added to the game. This is a game we’ll be supporting for years and years to come, so please keep all the feedback coming! Even if we don’t get to your requests immediately, we’d love to do it in the future, like city maps. Our priority initially is making sure any top blocker bugs or stability issues are addressed, and adding quality-of-life features that many are asking for.

This first update is a small hotfix targeted at the few top issues were are seeing. After that, expect a regular interval of updates that have top community requested features including:

• Brightness and Contrast controls
• HDR Calibration Menu
• FOV Slider
• Nvidia DLSS Support (PC)
• 32:9 Ultrawide Monitor Support (PC)
• Eat button for food!

We’re also working closely with Nvidia, AMD, and Intel on driver support, and each update will include new stability and performance improvements.

Additionally, we are working on our built-in mod support (Creations) that will work across all platforms similar to what we’ve done with Skyrim and Fallout 4. This full support is planned to launch early next year. Until then, we know our PC community is already very active in the modding space and if you have any feedback on how we can make this better, please let us know . Modding and creating in our games will always be a vital and important part of who we are, and we love seeing the community get off to such a strong start.

Keep the feedback coming, we really do read it all, and thank you all again for taking this journey with us!

Bethesda Game Studios
---
Update Version 1.7.29 - Fixes and Improvements
Performance and Stability

• Xbox Series X|S
  Improved stability related to installations.
• Various stability and performance improvements to reduce crashes and improve framerate.

Quests

• All That Money Can Buy
  : Fixed an issue where player activity could result in a quest blocker.
• Into the Unknown
  : Fixed an issue that could prevent the quest from appearing after the game is completed.
• Shadows in Neon:
  Fixed an issue where player activity could result in a quest blocker.

 

[Moink]

Update: I did boot up the game again, FOV slider is apparently a "later" feature.

 

[Vic]

Update: I did boot up the game again, FOV slider is apparently a "later" feature.

you can customize FOV with an ini file

great to finally see an update!

 

[Yosharian]

So play it in 6-12 months and it will be finished

 

[Vic]

So play it in 6-12 months and it will be finished

not according to them:

This is a game we’ll be supporting for years and years to come, so please keep all the feedback coming!

Also this:

Even if we don’t get to your requests immediately, we’d love to do it in the future, like city maps.

So, they couldn't figure out how to do city maps?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Calling it now, mod access will be a subscription platform

 

[Old Hans]

As you said the amount of cells loaded is ridiculously far ahead of their prior games. It's prolly why so many are struggling with performance.

the uGridsToLoad is over 9000!

 

[PanteraNera]

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

So, they couldn't figure out how to do city maps?

Pretty sure the game is just incomplete in its current state. Lots of cut corners in a variety of areas.