Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[Caim]

Getting forced by the authorities to infiltrate a criminal organization for ostensibly committing a crime without you knowing what you did wrong sounds like the plot of a Jackie Chan movie.

 

[Vic]

 

[GaelicVigil]

My question is why would you play that mediocrity instead of the dozens of other First Person Shooters that do it better? Nothing in that video intrigues me whatsoever. I've seen FPS gunplay ad nauseum.

 

[Vic]

My question is why would you play that mediocrity instead of the dozens of other First Person Shooters that do it better? Nothing in that video intrigues me whatsoever. I've seen FPS gunplay ad nauseum.

why not

 

[Fedora Master]

My question is why would you play that mediocrity instead of the dozens of other First Person Shooters that do it better? Nothing in that video intrigues me whatsoever. I've seen FPS gunplay ad nauseum.

why not

Stop being part of the problem

 

[GaelicVigil]

I see

My question is why would you play that mediocrity instead of the dozens of other First Person Shooters that do it better? Nothing in that video intrigues me whatsoever. I've seen FPS gunplay ad nauseum.

why not

What do you mean, "why not"? Good grief people like you...are you a woman?

 

[Vic]

I see

My question is why would you play that mediocrity instead of the dozens of other First Person Shooters that do it better? Nothing in that video intrigues me whatsoever. I've seen FPS gunplay ad nauseum.

why not

What do you mean, "why not"? Good grief people like you...are you a woman?

it was a rhetorical question, so I gave you a rhetorical answer.

 

[Star Citizen]

Lawl with dog shit AI less reactive than the earliest FPS games, may as well just be shooting cardboard cutouts.

 

[Jaesun]

At least we now know what Vic is: A Doorsexual.

 

[GaelicVigil]

He makes a good point @3:30. Even in other RPGs where there were loading screens, you could at least SEE what you were walking into. So Fallout 1&2 and Baldur's Gate had interconnected areas. These areas were connected to each other. When I see a door in a dungeon, I pass through it into a sewer. I see a door in the sewer, I know I'll be passing into a street area of a city.

In Starfield, one second I'm on a windy, freezing blizzard 150 light years away from Earth. With two clicks of the mouse I'm instantly on a sunny afternoon on New Atlantis. In most cases my ship is not even to be seen at any point. It's just like waving a magic wand.

One moment I'm picking up a shotgun from a Spacer in a snowstorm, I snap my fingers and the next moment I'm selling said shotgun at a shop on New Atlantis 150 light years away. All immersion is lost. That's not a real RPG to me, because a true "role" requires you to be put into a reasonable number of situations to actuate said role.

So my analogy to a Madden or NBA career mode is very apt I think. One moment you're outside playing basketball at the gym, the next moment you're starting tip-off in pre-season.

 

[GaelicVigil]

I am convinced you could easily play Starfield from a spreadsheet with some background bitmaps for "visualization". Hell, I bet I could make Starfield the browser-based game in a weekend and you'd get about the same amount of enjoyment from it.

 

[Vic]

In Starfield, one second I'm on a windy, freezing blizzard 150 light years away from Earth. With two clicks of the mouse I'm instantly on a sunny afternoon on New Atlantis. In most cases my ship is not even to be seen at any point. It's just like waving a magic wand.

fast travel was in their games since Oblivion

 

[GaelicVigil]

It's not the fast travel, it's the fact that there is NOTHING BETWEEN point A and point B.

Ship -> POI: Empty
POI -> Ship: Empty
Planet -> Space: Nothing
Planet -> Planet: Nothing
Zone -> Train: Nothing
Train -> Zone: Nothing

A series of boxes. No connecting game-play between any of them.

 

[Bad Sector]

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.

My guess is that it is/was more about workflow than hard technical requirements. Based on a review, the initial city/planet/world/whatever is broken down to several areas but other cities of similar complexities you find later are more seamless, even with shops being part of the city itself instead of separate areas and probably the initial city was done earlier in development.

FWIW personally i am not a fan of always having a large seamless world as they tend to have a lot of unnecessary stuff thrown in and feel like padding. But that is my take, the only game where i found the seamless world to work in its favor was Morrowind - even in New Vegas (which i otherwise really like) i'd rather have the overworld be abstracted ala Fallout 1/2 with only the interesting areas (cities, caves, vaults, settlements, whatever) be actual navigable places.

It also makes modding easier :-P.

To simplify a lot, because there is a limit to how many objects the memory can load. Bugthesda always had interiors and exteriors as different "scenes". But I'm not a game dev, I can be talking shit.

Note that AFAIK ever since Oblivion it was possible to have multiple "worldspaces" where each worldspace is made out of multiple cells which are streamed on demand so loaded objects shouldn't really be a limit in an area/worldspace.

You misspelled Netimmerse. It's a Frankenstein engine that's been around since 1997.

NetImmerse (and Gamebryo for most of the time) was only a renderer and not a full game engine. Most of the "engine" stuff people associate with Bethesda's games were actually written by Bethesda. I don't think the modern Creation Engine uses much of the Morrowind era rendering code anymore, though they may still be using some file formats (NIFs).

 

[Vic]

It's not the fast travel, it's the fact that there is NOTHING BETWEEN point A and point B.

Ship -> POI: Empty
POI -> Ship: Empty
Planet -> Space: Nothing
Planet -> Planet: Nothing
Zone -> Train: Nothing
Train -> Zone: Nothing

A series of boxes. No connecting game-play between any of them.

I see, yeah that makes sense. I think the difference between games like Baldur's Gate which had interconnected areas without "empty space" in between is that the whole game takes place on a small part of one planet (Toril). Even then, the distances are abstracted as it would take you much longer to walk from say, Beregost to Nashkel than what the game is showing you in in-game time. So we have an abstraction going on here for the sake of gameplay.

In Starfield, we have the same kind of abstraction to compensate for the incredible scale of the game. You could, I guess, try to go from one planet's cell to an adjacent one, maybe with console commands, or with a mod, but be aware that there is a LOT of space there.

I think cells usually get discarded after you leave them and re-generated once you enter. So I guess to make it persistent you'd have to build an outpost, as far as I understand. So if that's something you'd like to try, I'd be interested in hearing the results.

 

[Gargaune]

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.

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

That's not the only factor, there's also a question of what and how much of that data will be readily available at various decision-making levels inside the organisation. The standalone product model of "game X sold Y copies" is a very stark and easily parsed metric, whereas measuring and reporting the performance of individual titles on a subscription package is much more open to "massaging" in the grand scheme of things, and not just for the external public. Megacorporations the size of Microsoft are rife with conflicting interests and diluted shareholder control, and you should never assume all their ducks are quacking in the same direction.

Bottom line - yes, Gamepass and similar competing services are the cable model for videogames and they will certainly lead to a decline in quality as various inner circles leverage reduced accountability to push their own financial interests inside their respective companies. Not saying this will be the case for Starfield here, but in the long run, this will happen.

The end is nigh.

Repent.

 

[Vic]

Bottom line - yes, Gamepass and similar competing services are the cable model for videogames and they will certainly lead to a decline in quality as various inner circles leverage reduced accountability to push their own financial interests inside their respective companies. Not saying this will be the case for Starfield here, but in the long run, this will happen.

did the same happen to film and tv with Netflix? Asking because I really have no idea.

 

[Alienman]

We got Dishonored at home edition.

 

[Gargaune]

did the same happen to film and tv with Netflix? Asking because I really have no idea.

Hasn't it? I don't have Netflix and I don't watch TV, but as far as I can tell from the internet and people I know, that certainly seems to be the case. You hear about all these Netflix shows that nobody watches, you turn on the TV and start flipping through a hundred channels and can't find anything worth your attention before you finally settle on watching Discovery's show about chimps in the zoo, just because they seem about as miserable as you feel. Hell, I have TV as part of my internet package, but I never watch it.

The thing about cable models is that they incentivise the old "there's nothing better on" model of consumption. You're not gonna go out and buy a videogame or a DVD just because it's inoffensively mediocre, it needs to appeal to you somehow, but if you're already paying ten bucks a month for a subscription package and you've got some time to kill, you "might as well" settle for the least shit thing on even though you know it'll leave you with a feeling of ennui by the end.

Meanwhile, the people running the crap factory have a stable income that's unlikely to vary short of collossal fuckups in adverse market conditions, and their only remit is to occasionally make their crap slightly less crap than the competition's crap. One or two tentpoles will keep the entire thing running 'cause you won't cancel whatever service has Game of Thrones on, and under that umbrella they'll keep hiring their friends and associates to make the rest of the crap you've never heard about and wouldn't watch if you were the one getting paid instead. And the scope of the business makes it unrealistic for the shareholder to be able exercise any genuine control over its course even in the unlikely event that they do know anything beyond "number go up."

And that's how, ten years from now, you're gonna be playing Assassin's Creed 23. "Because I pay for it anyway and there's nothing better on."

 

[Vic]

did the same happen to film and tv with Netflix? Asking because I really have no idea.

Hasn't it? I don't have Netflix and I don't watch TV, but as far as I can tell from the internet and people I know, that certainly seems to be the case. You hear about all these Netflix shows that nobody watches, you turn on the TV and start flipping through a hundred channels and can't find anything worth your attention before you finally settle on watching Discovery's show about chimps in the zoo, just because they seem about as miserable as you feel. Hell, I have TV as part of my internet package, but I never watch it.

The thing about cable models is that they incentivise the old "there's nothing better on" model of consumption. You're not gonna go out and buy a videogame or a DVD just because it's inoffensively mediocre, it needs to appeal to you somehow, but if you're already paying ten bucks a month for a subscription package and you've got some time to kill, you "might as well" settle for the least shit thing on even though you know it'll leave you with a feeling of ennui by the end.

Meanwhile, the people running the crap factory have a stable income that's unlikely to vary short of collossal fuckups in adverse market conditions, and their only remit is to occasionally make their crap slightly less crap than the competition's crap. One or two tentpoles will keep the entire thing running 'cause you won't cancel whatever service has Game of Thrones on, and under that umbrella they'll keep hiring their friends and associates to make the rest of the crap you've never heard about and wouldn't watch if you were the one getting paid instead. And the scope of the business makes it unrealistic for the shareholder to be able exercise any genuine control over its course even in the unlikely event that they do know anything beyond "number go up."

And that's how, ten years from now, you're gonna be playing Assassin's Creed 23. "Because I pay for it anyway and there's nothing better on."

My hope is that indies and smaller studios can't afford to release their games on subscription services and will try to make great games to win people over. I think as long as there is competition and not one monopoly over something people will continue to innovate. In this vain, maybe Microsoft buying Bethesda was a good move for all to maintain a healthy competition with Sony.

Also don't big budget movies usually not appear on subscription services when they're new? I think they need to be in theaters to make money. So there's that too. In this case, the theater owns the studio

 

[GaelicVigil]

Game is shit. And the reason why we keep getting shit games like this is because the sheer number of shit people who gobble the shit up.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

the reason why we keep getting shit games like this is because the sheer number of shit people who gobble the shit up

Nigger shut the fuck up. I want more BGS games and lots of mods because BGS games scratch an itch for me that no other games scratch. Others might come close, but they don't have the mod support to carry them to the finish line. I hope SF thrives because I want mods, mods, and more mods. I don't mean to single you out, you're not the only one retarded, but whenever I go to this thread it's the same people bitching and whining for pages and pages like you're owed something for not liking the game. NIGGER JUST DON'T PLAY THE GAME. Nobody is forcing you to like it. The only reason you niggers post here is to farm upvotes like cattle plebbitors from the usual suspects. I also don't even mean for you to shut up, because in the back of my head I know that more thread activity is good, even if it's negative. But hoooly fuck the whiny attitude is so unappealing and off-putting. You have fucking Mebrilia the Viera Queen of all people making fun of how effeminate and whiny you guys are and you still don't use that to self-reflect.

Full disclosure, I didn't buy Starfield or any other BGS games, only pirated them, but I commend the people who do buy them (even just to shit on them) in my place. Thanks paypigs, much love to you

 

[Grampy_Bone]

did the same happen to film and tv with Netflix?

From what I have heard, the salary received from working an entire season of netflix shows is the same as what actors used to get per episode of normal TV or cable.

Streaming is a race to the bottom. Netflix does not make money from subscribers, they make money from packaging their IPs into financial investment products. Netflixs big innovation was not making good television, it was flooding the market with so much crap investors couldn't tell the difference anymore. They also declared that the payback period for an IP-backed bond should be 10 years instead of the normal standard of 5 years, effectively doubling their market value overnight, at least on paper. So it doesn't matter if they make anything good or not, as long as they can keep converting IPs to investment products, the magic of ponzi schemes I mean sound market policy will keep them in business.

All modern corporations are converting to this financialization model, with worse products made for customers. The purpose of things like gamepass is to monetize the typical gamer's back library and ensure a constant revenue stream which can then be multiplied through stonk wizardry.

The profits all flow to the corporation and the creators get shit. There's no reason for an individual company to release on gamepass if their game is good enough to sell on its own; they are just increasing Microsoft's value at the expense of their own. Hence why Microsoft is buying the pot so to speak, gobbling up game studios.

It's the same thing that happened with Kindle Unlimited. Amazon captured half the profits of the indie author space for themselves, and everyone got worse books as a result. KU remains a dumping ground for trash. You have to sift through such an ocean of garbage to find a decent read most people don't bother. That's the future of Gamepass.

 

[Vic]

yeah when I got Netflix I didn't understand what the hype was about, it was all shit and old movies. literally the bargain bin. never watched it but my ex binged that shit, no wonder she's my ex, no 2 brain cells to rub together like some of the shitposters in this tread. I hope they introduce a tutorial in the next update that takes these people by the hand and shows them step by step how to play the game because they just don't get it. This is what happens if you try to release Daggerfall to the masses in 2023.

 

[The_Mask]

Not even close, Vic... not even close.