Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[just]

go to titan
whole gimmick of the settlement is that they stick to the old ways, traditional, conservative and all that crap
father in charge of farming was all like dont talk to my wife and kids
now i will do so coz you act like a bitch
mother asking all the questions about hows life outside acting all innocent
insert ideas of greater life outside
let's also indoctrinate the kid
realize it was all an act coz the kid was black, but they're both white
mommy sure tasted the outside world
try looking for john redcorn farmhand maybe theres a quest related to them
there isnt
cant even tell the guy he's a cuck
have to wait for mods so i can impregnate her to prove shes a whore

 

[Orud]

I saw the tech jesus steve (gamer nexus) video. So you're saying I need an 5.8ghz processor and a 4090 in order to make it so the game is purely GPU bound. ahah.

... what the fuck is eating up all the CPU? Please don't tell me they incorporated one of those horrible 'visual scripting' frameworks.

 

[Nikanuur]

Very positive on Steam after 9k reviews.

Lately, it's become an adventure in its own right to watch how reviews fare in the first hours after a release of a AAA game. I hardly believe something as complex can have 'very positive' these days.

 

[Nikanuur]

I saw the tech jesus steve (gamer nexus) video. So you're saying I need an 5.8ghz processor and a 4090 in order to make it so the game is purely GPU bound. ahah.

... what the fuck is eating up all the CPU? Please don't tell me they incorporated one of those horrible 'visual scripting' frameworks.

Microsoft telemetry? :D

 

[Mojobeard]

Alright I've played it for some hours, most of it was figuring out how mods work again. It truly is Fallout 4 with more menus.
I have a 5800X3D + 3060 Ti. Runs "fine" so far with DLSS 2 F at 90%, with Hardware Unboxed's suggested quality settings. I mean it jumps around from 118 to 55 FPS, mostly hovering around 78, but those jumps are not that noticeable. Probably because I'm so used to the engine.

Also noticed the photo mode has "poses". They were ready for the loverslab crowd.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Some mods I find good to have:

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/978

I was tired of my character walking too slow but jogging too fast, so I made this script that modifies the speedmult value of the character alternatively so it matches your button press between walk and jog, that way each one will have a more in line speed. This is merely a band-aid fix I thought I could use while we wait for someone more competent to create a mod that directly modifies those values without the use of console commands.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/809

Useless, low-value, miscellaneous objects can no longer be looted.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/799

This is a simple mod that automatically runs a few console commands when you load the game. These commands change the following settings.

• All enemies take 2 times damage, on all difficulties.
• The player takes 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 times damage, depending on the difficulty setting.
• All enemy health gain from leveling has been disabled.

This will actually make it necessary to use powerup aid items especially if you are melee and need to close in (not that anybody plays that way).

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/344

Enemies in Starfield have a lot of health. A lot. Tweaking the damage output will not directly solve the issue. So this mod was born.
This mod sets the fNPCHealthLevelBonus to 0, 5, 10 or 15. (Was 20 before)
Enemies still get more health, even when this is set to 0. This is an added bonus, which they get in addition.

This seems to only affect enemies, not the player.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/500

Changes the Default fov for the best option for 16:9 screens (90) (Setting the FOV too low or too high may cause vertigo)

 

[Zarniwoop]

Apparently the crashing is related to framerate cap so I'm gonna use control panel to set it to 30 and see if console gaming fixes it

I'm on a 4790k / 1080ti and I'm heavily CPU bound, I suspect I can't load the GPU properly.

The first thing to reduce is the overall resolution, but I guess you've done that. Graphics options shouldn't matter much if you are CPU bound but just in case, don't go over medium in anything. Upscaling at 67% of your display resolution should give you the next lower resolution. In my case - 67% of 3840x2160 is 2560x1440. You'll see internet advice "set your scaling to 50%, that's half your resolution", it's sad how many people can't do basic maths.

I started having silent CTDs recently, around my 16-17th hour of playing, and I assume it has to do with savegame data corruption, because I am not overloading my hardware in any way, and I haven't experienced issues in other games. So be prepared for the occasional crash.

If it's not crashing but freezing for you... who knows. Might be related to the GPU rather than CPU. Start with setting everything to default values in your GPU's control panel, and disabling any overlays-creating software like Steam's and geforce experience if you have that.

The 30 fps thing makes sense actually. Bethesda gonna Bethesda.

Fallout 4 TO THIS DAY only works properly when capped to 30fps on some setups

Years of patching, modding, GOTY Uber Ultra Editions, nothing fixed it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The 30 fps thing makes sense actually. Bethesda gonna Bethesda.

Fallout 4 TO THIS DAY only works properly when capped to 30fps on some setups

Years of patching, modding, GOTY Uber Ultra Editions, nothing fixed it.

Yeah, if the developer says stick to 30fps (because my engine is shit!) and you're having problems, start from there

 

[Zarniwoop]

Todd took a big risk and there's something worthwhile in the result. Give me a risk that only pans out halfway over a "safe product" any day of the week.

There was no risk, between Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, and No Man Sky there is a clear pattern established that Space Sims will always make mad fucking cash regardless of how underdeveloped/unsophisticated they are at release.

And yet the most sophisticated ones (X series) make barely any money at all. Because it's not the space part modern shitgamers are interested in, it's the planets and LARPing.

They want The Sims in Space.

 

[Beastro]

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I saw the tech jesus steve (gamer nexus) video. So you're saying I need an 5.8ghz processor and a 4090 in order to make it so the game is purely GPU bound. ahah.

... what the fuck is eating up all the CPU? Please don't tell me they incorporated one of those horrible 'visual scripting' frameworks.

Considering GN was able to get it to full GPU bound there's your tell, its the renderer. The CPU isn't able to keep the GPU busy because its unable to process the draw calls fast enough - meaning that the draw is held in CPU until another frame becomes available this has the consequence then of forcing the GPU to wait resulting in dropped frames. GN's Metrics prove its got nothing to do with things like number of agents on the screen, or the complexity of the game, it has everything to do with the fact that what is being drawn on the screen is badly inefficient and isn't being handled as well as it could (and should) be. Pretty much because they're bootstrapping a PBR (physically based renderer) onto an engine that was never designed to use one reminder the renderer is all BGS they developed it and it only goes to show how terrible they are given that its the NEW renderer that is causing their problems not the game engine itself necessarily - Though that certainly is a factor for stability and load times as other games that use Gamebryo also suffer from that.

But yeah I think we're at a point now with games, specifically AAA where Multi-threading of render calls is a requirement going forward because pretty much every AAA game neglected it this year and in previous years and paid the consequences for it. Starcitizen shockingly was one of the few that got it right but its "god tech" only really scored it double digit frame improvements - its still not perfect, it can only take you so far - good art optimization is crucial and more important.

I do hope people start picking apart the game so we can get down to the details. I think GN's new "GPU Busy" benchmarks are going to be a big win for both consumer and developer alike and I hope it really takes off as a standard. There's a lot more accountability from that than we were otherwise getting before.

The reason you don't want a balance 50/50 split of CPU to GPU is because the CPU is always going to be slower than the GPU, GPUs are so incredibly fast, the bottleneck will likely be the CPU. BUT no game should need a 4090 and a 5.8GHz CPU just to be GPU bound, that is ridiculous. The more load that ends up on the GPU end the better.

 

[sebas]

Ahaha, you can't mod the Game Pass version with ReShade because, get this, you don't OWN the .exe. It's telling me to contact the owner, what was Todd's email address?

 

[Irxy]

Some of these uenxplored systems are intended for level 40 characters. I'm level 24 and I've nearly finished all the big faction quests in the game, and many city side quests. What the fuck am I meant to do for 16 more levels? I don't know how the game's gonna sustain itself, unless an absolute motherlode of new content is going to suddenly spring up before me at some point.

Do enemy levels even matter? I always feel like I’m fighting enemies above or below my level with no describable difference.

they matter for human enemies, but not for wildlife

Levels are weird. A single lv.10 terramorph felt more challenging than a bunch of lv.20 mercs when I played yesterday (I'm lv.12).

 

[Heroic Liberator]

A single lv.10 terramorph felt more challenging than a bunch of lv.20 mercs when I played yesterday (I'm lv.12).

Tangentially related I guess, but if we're talking about the one from the first Vanguard mission... you can trivialize the encounter by jumping on a high enough structure and just shooting it until it's dead. It can still hurt you with some ranged (/AoE?) attack, but you can just pop a medpack for every few hits.

 

[Bad Sector]

Pretty much because they're bootstrapping a PBR (physically based renderer) onto an engine that was never designed to use one

For the engine side PBR is just a slightly different set of lighting calculation equations in the shaders, it does not affect CPU usage at all.

 

[Vyvian]

Very positive on Steam after 9k reviews.

Fallout 76 sits at "Mostly Positive" just to give you an idea of the type of people that review Bethesda steam games.

As for the CPU/GPU discussion: Is there any hope for patches or even mods to lighten that load for those of us on less than stellar hardware? Or is this is as "good" as it's gonna get.

 

[JamesDixon]

Just like anything not published by TSR is dandino(dnd in name only) in D&D

This looks vaguely familiar...

 

[RobotSquirrel]

For the engine side PBR is just a slightly different set of lighting calculation equations in the shaders, it does not affect CPU usage at all.

What I meant by that is they rewrote the renderer to do PBR (I recall it was Fallout 4 that did this), not that PBR was the culprit. It was them redesigning how it worked to add PBR, when they did that they have obviously made their renderer worse as a result. PBR in fact from my experience can run better if handled properly (ie. Texture Packing - Atlases - Stacks - Efficent reusing of shaders/materials) then the older DiffuseNormalSpecular approach.

 

[Irxy]

Done the main quest part in Akila. That was some boring shit. At least the town seems to have been one of the first ones they did, because the transition to wilderness was seamless, maybe they changed the methodology later, or maybe Atlantis was too heavy to leave as one location.

But Atlantis is also a single location. Well, aside from the underground area. You can go anywhere within the city and outside seamlessly.
I was also initially confused since the spaceport is walled and the only way to the main city is by the tram teleporter for some reason.
Yet can actually use a jetpack to move around those and it works fine.
Nothing really stops the modders from animating those trams/elevators for seamless transportation, no idea why Bethesda didn't do it in the 1st place.

 

[markec]

 

[Irxy]

You may also want to go ahead and just buy a new ship to start with as a base for either designing your own from or upgrading. Some ships come with components you can only add if you get the starship engineering skill, which is a fairly late game skill.

My current cargo holds and one other component (I forget which one) are ones I can't normally add to a ship because they require that skill, but I get to use them because they were already on it. You can still upgrade and edit the rest, but you get to keep and use those components.

It's weird that you can't for some reason design a ship from scratch, but must always use another ship as a base. Sure, you can delete all of the components, but you are not compensated for them, so you are basically required to buy the cheapest ship for 50-60k (which is a lot) you're going to throw away.

 

[markec]

 

[Readher]

Professional reviews are completely worthless. Just look at scores they give to any japslop, especially Nintendo. Japs get extremely preferential treatment from them, aside from Kotaku and similar, which sperg out about objectifying women and what not. Jap game can release at $70 with early PS3 graphics and no one will ever mention that. When a Western game does the same, everyone immediately points out the graphics are outdated (like with the LOTR Golum slop). Plus, they can release the same game over and over again for 30 years and everyone claps, while Pathfinder: Kingmaker gets a negative point for offering "nothing new" (somehow didn't apply to PoE which was shilled by the press left and right, now we know where Feargus funnels money). It's all one big scam.

 

[Swen]

 

[Bad Sector]

What I meant by that is they rewrote the renderer to do PBR (I recall it was Fallout 4 that did this), not that PBR was the culprit. It was them redesigning how it worked to add PBR, when they did that they have obviously made their renderer worse as a result.

It is possible though i think if the rendering side is the CPU hog, a more likely culprit is their new approach to modular meshes - something their own graphics programmers apparently warned them against (according to a GDC presentation about it in Fallout 4, though those who came up with the idea softened it by saying that the graphics programmers weren't happy when someone from the audience asked them if this didn't had performance implications :-P).

PBR in fact from my experience can run better if handled properly (ie. Texture Packing - Atlases - Stacks - Efficent reusing of shaders/materials) then the older DiffuseNormalSpecular approach.

These are different things, texture packing, atlases, material reuse, etc are orthogonal to PBR and can be used with engines that do not use it. For the engine PBR is really only about how the light is calculated. If you are interested this page shows the shader code for PBR (some code is missing and can be found in the previous page which describes the theory) and as you can see it is really all about the shaders. The engines which introduced PBR also introduced a bunch of other things alongside it, but that is just engines improving over time.