Starfield Gameplay Reactions

[Reigor]

As promised, reporting from my initial impressions so far. 

 

First, if you preordered and having problems getting Starfield to be playable, restart Steam.

No Gamma Adjust, my monitor was a bit too bright. Had to adjust my 1080 settings.

Speaking of which, game runs smooth on a 1080 with medium settings.

No option to turn off all the HUD elements. Can’t turn off XP notices which annoys me. StarUI when?

There is a flashlight, you need to have a helmet on to use it.

You can  punk out your character with different some different hair colors, but definitely need a color wheel for hair, eyes, and skin.

Most traits’ game mechanics (less oxygen, more endurance, etc…) are kind of boring. Choose for RP.

 

Tutorial is spread out into different chunks. The first chunk is fairly short. Maybe half the length of Skyrim.

You can start exploring the starting moon then, but POI's are spread apart, several minutes on foot. As far as I know with the exception of the mining outpost, they are dynamically placed, so you don't HAVE to check them out. 

The second part is space combat and navigation. Make sure not to max out your ship's speed or else you won't be able to turn it quick enough to face the enemy.

The third part is the Kreet Lab, you don't HAVE to do it, but I'd recommend it. When exploring it reminded me strongly of Fallout4, just different creepy music and better graphics and combat.

Armor is lootable, but random. BGS did go away from the previous loot model. Enemies typically will have only 2-4 pieces of gear vs. what might be seen in Fallout4 or Skyrim. 

Vasco is very responsive to being shoved to get out of the way so doesn't block doors for long. 

 

Crowds in New Atlantis are likely proc gen, they are much like CP2077 except they don't mysteriously vanish. So that is a step backwards from Skyrim, but I guess the sheer number of people with their own routines would be too much of a CPU load. The sandboxing is pretty good and there are conversations between them.

 

If anyone has any non-spoiler questions let me know.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Reigor

[Wandering_Mania]

I was watching The ArchCast and Starfield looked like complete dog shit. The 'big exploreable maps' have no point to explore them, because there is nothing to find. While to actually see anything you gotta 'Fast travel' spam. No wonder BGS said it must be installed on an SSD, with the amount of load screens they packed in that game, it looks more like a 'Load screen simulator'.

 

Boy am I glad I didn't drop a bill ($100USD) on it. I mean where's the game!? It's 95% load screen!

 

And that's my reaction to it.

[jg8ts]

17 minutes ago, Wandering_Mania said:

I was watching The ArchCast and Starfield looked like complete dog shit. The 'big exploreable maps' have no point to explore them, because there is nothing to find.

 

Not entirely true. There are always nodes of metal: iron, silver etc. Fairly easy to spot given they have a different color from the generally monotone rock that is everywhere else. You walk up to them, hit them with your laser cutter thingy, and it explodes straight into your backpack. Like using your pickaxe in SKyrim, but nodes are much smaller. I assume the raw materials are going to be useful for something but haven't got far enough yet.

 

Few monsters as well which you can kill for xp.

[Miauzi]

Vor 15 Minuten sagte jg8ts:

 

Nicht ganz wahr. Es gibt immer Knoten aus Metall: Eisen, Silber usw. Ziemlich leicht zu erkennen, da sie eine andere Farbe haben als das allgemein monotone Gestein, das überall sonst zu finden ist. Du gehst auf sie zu, triffst sie mit deinem Laserschneider-Ding und es explodiert direkt in deinen Rucksack. Wie die Verwendung Ihrer Spitzhacke in SKyrim, aber die Knoten sind viel kleiner. Ich gehe davon aus, dass die Rohstoffe für etwas nützlich sein werden, aber noch nicht weit genug fortgeschritten sind.

 

Es gibt auch ein paar Monster, die du für XP töten kannst.

 

I have that in Elite too ... but I drive around with a ground vehicle and can cover considerable distances ... and process some of the explored materials on the spot.

Yes - it's like mining metals in Skyrim with a pickaxe - an ore vein of several cubic metres size yields -> 4-6 units of metal - enough for 1-2 swords

(what an absolute shit if you think about it - but who knows about metallurgy *muhahaha*)

[Wandering_Mania]

41 minutes ago, jg8ts said:

 

Not entirely true. There are always nodes of metal: iron, silver etc. Fairly easy to spot given they have a different color from the generally monotone rock that is everywhere else. You walk up to them, hit them with your laser cutter thingy, and it explodes straight into your backpack. Like using your pickaxe in SKyrim, but nodes are much smaller. I assume the raw materials are going to be useful for something but haven't got far enough yet.

 

Few monsters as well which you can kill for xp.

Well yeah I saw that. But I mean there's no smaller Points of Interest (POIs), no random bases, nothing of that sort. It's like, how the hell they gonna make a game about 'Exploring Space' without even including more than half of the exploration. So I ask again:

 

Where's the game?

[Miauzi]

Vor 33 Minuten sagte Wandering_Mania:

Nun ja, das habe ich gesehen. Aber ich meine, es gibt keine kleineren Points of Interest (POIs), keine zufälligen Stützpunkte, nichts dergleichen. Es ist wie, wie zum Teufel sollen sie ein Spiel über „Exploring Space“ machen, ohne auch nur die Hälfte der Erkundung einzubeziehen? Also frage ich noch einmal:

 

Wo ist das Spiel?

 

By "Exploring Space" I mean first of all -> exploring the WORLD SPACE and not an already settled "stone sphere".

Those who go into space and other star systems always have a space infrastructure - which, among other things, scans various asteroid belts and rings of gas giants for raw materials and extracts them.

Moving all this to the bottom of the gravitational funnel of "stone balls" is bullshit from a transport energy point of view -> Bullshit.

In almost every halfway good SFi world construction you proceed like this ... but of course not "Bugdesta" - they want something "special" again and what comes out -> a waste

Edited September 1, 2023 by Miauzi

[Reigor]

36 minutes ago, Wandering_Mania said:

Where's the game?

 

Do the quests. That's the game. The random planets are for XP, loot from POI's, and resources that can be used to power level. 

 

There is a lot of game just by following the main quest, side quests, and space stuff, certainly getting my money's worth. 

 

 

[Wandering_Mania]

18 minutes ago, Reigor said:

Do the quests. That's the game. The random planets are for XP, loot from POI's, and resources that can be used to power level. 

 

There is a lot of game just by following the main quest, side quests, and space stuff, certainly getting my money's worth.

Well I was just reading an article that put it quite nicely, it said:

"Starfied has everything, except a reason to keep playing it."

The article linked in the spoiler.

Spoiler

https://mashable.com/article/starfield-review-impressions-xbox-game-pass

And I would have to agree with that 100%, and that is just from what I could gather by watching about 5 hours of that aforementioned stream. So yeah, my opinion on it is, it ain't even worth $20. And for $20 you could get Empyrion, which is much better of a space RPG than Starfield. Volcanic planets can cook you alive. Frozen planets can turn you into an ice cube. There's stuff everywhere to find, in the over 1,000 star systems with over 5,000 planets.

 

Bethesda has failed again in my eyes, but just in a different way this time.

[hitmanh]

39 minutes ago, Wandering_Mania said:

Well I was just reading an article that put it quite nicely, it said:

"Starfied has everything, except a reason to keep playing it."

The article linked in the spoiler.

  Reveal hidden contents

https://mashable.com/article/starfield-review-impressions-xbox-game-pass

And I would have to agree with that 100%, and that is just from what I could gather by watching about 5 hours of that aforementioned stream. So yeah, my opinion on it is, it ain't even worth $20. And for $20 you could get Empyrion, which is much better of a space RPG than Starfield. Volcanic planets can cook you alive. Frozen planets can turn you into an ice cube. There's stuff everywhere to find, in the over 1,000 star systems with over 5,000 planets.

 

Bethesda has failed again in my eyes, but just in a different way this time.

Yeah, you keep posting you don't like it, we get it now.

 

I'm 30 minutes in after a quick lunchtime go, enjoyable enough so far, no regrets about buying the game. Will be getting a good play over the weekend, sadly now I have to go back to work.

[Liriel-666]

1 hour ago, Wandering_Mania said:

Well I was just reading an article that put it quite nicely, it said:

"Starfied has everything, except a reason to keep playing it."

The article linked in the spoiler.

  Reveal hidden contents

https://mashable.com/article/starfield-review-impressions-xbox-game-pass

And I would have to agree with that 100%, and that is just from what I could gather by watching about 5 hours of that aforementioned stream. So yeah, my opinion on it is, it ain't even worth $20. And for $20 you could get Empyrion, which is much better of a space RPG than Starfield. Volcanic planets can cook you alive. Frozen planets can turn you into an ice cube. There's stuff everywhere to find, in the over 1,000 star systems with over 5,000 planets.

 

Bethesda has failed again in my eyes, but just in a different way this time.

Yeah starfield has everything.

But exempt full exploration of Planets, free fly in a solar system, no atmospheric fly, no entry fly from space to Planet, no  fly over a Planet, no self landing and Starts and to final only poor beggar Version with 100 systems.

 

 

And a full milky Way? NEVER in Starfield.

Every Planet be special? Never

[Gameplayer]

Only got about 2 hours on it last night.

 

So got character created, got to the constellation group base and stopped.

 

Took a moment to consider the skill structure, the tiered system requires you to invest 4 levels of points in tier 1 skills before being able to invest in t2 goes up to tier 4.

Since there are 5 categories, easily skills you may want may be in a set that you are not starting in and could be gated deep in a tree.

So at least there is potentially interest in leveling mechanics.

 

Thoughts,

Well I understand it is difficult for a game dev to develop so.ething as interesting as the fully modded games that we do with fallout 4 and Skyrim SE, easily exceeding 200 gigs in mods and dozens of active frameworks working together so well,

 

There are things that I tire of.

 

Unattractive female bodies and faces check.

 

Washed out color palette

-again, alright should the colors be so lacking in vibrance and richness when high end television and monitors are so available?

-easily fixed, even just a tweak in ck, reshade, or future enb profile.

Issue with some options costs more performance.

-animations seem uninspired

Since I have seen so much from modders it hardly seems possible to use engine as an excuse.

-map boundaries being falsely reported as number one issue.  Have the people who say this been to steam? Answer no.

[Wandering_Mania]

1 hour ago, Liriel-666 said:

Yeah starfield has everything.

You, everything except for a reason to play it because there's no fun to be had. As there are already posts popping up on Steam about how boring it is. 'RPG'? Yeah, if by 'RPG' you mean 'Real Prolonged Game'. I mean if you gotta play for at least 10+ hours just for it to start to become fun; That's a waste of 10+ hours.

[Miauzi]

Vor 1 Stunde sagte Wandering_Mania:

Sie, alles außer einem Grund, es zu spielen, weil es keinen Spaß macht. Auf Steam tauchen bereits Beiträge darüber auf, wie langweilig es sei. 'ROLLENSPIEL'? Ja, wenn Sie mit „RPG“ „Real Prolonged Game“ meinen. Ich meine, wenn man mindestens 10+ Stunden spielen muss, damit es Spaß macht; Das ist eine Verschwendung von mehr als 10 Stunden.

 

My wife should probably have added something like "is meant sarcastically".

?

[nymphaspect]

Why does it feel like everyone I run into in Starfield talks like they are in their 50s? Besides Matteo of course.

[elsaeraser]

14 hours ago, Reigor said:

Can’t turn off XP notices which annoys me. StarUI when?

There are already two mods on Nexus that fix that

[bjornk]

I watched about half an hour of game play yesterday, character creation, first tutorial space fight, capturing a ship, landing etc. and I honestly can't overlook the amount of stupidity I witnessed in such a short amount of time. I've posted some of it in another thread. Why should I play this game, what is fun about it? I have no interest in pretending that I'm a gender fluid interstellar garbage collector with special powers, who helps dimwits, do their dirty work, saves their sorry asses while they do nothing but sit on them etc. Skyrim was boring enough in that regard, who needs the 999 extra planets. It may be "a Bethesda game through and through", except it looks more stupid, more boring this time.

Edited September 1, 2023 by bjornk

[DDetrix]

24 minutes ago, bjornk said:

I watched about half an hour of game play yesterday, character creation, first tutorial space fight, capturing a ship, landing etc. and I honestly can't overlook the amount of stupidity I witnessed in such a short amount of time. I've posted some of it in another thread. Why should I play this game, what is fun about it? I have no interest in pretending that I'm a gender fluid interstellar garbage collector with special powers, who helps dimwits, do their dirty work, saves their sorry asses while they do nothing but sit on them etc. Skyrim was boring enough in that regard, who needs the 999 extra planets. It may be "a Bethesda game through and through", except it looks more stupid, more boring this time.

 

I upgraded my amd cpu got the game for free and I still feel disappointed. Small amount of it I actually played I was bored. Got to the character creation screen and hard exited. I'll wait for the cbbe to be released or let it die in my library. 

 

 

[Flegmenth]

I have played over 15 hours and really have to say starfield is just like mass effect:Andromeda Pro, for now, something even worse.?

No much bugs, good textures, nice bgms, sounds good. But...hey Todd, now is 2023, did you forget to add a local map in your game? When I press G to watch local map, what the hell is this? Cyberpunk 1977?

And the space battle...Well, Ubitch, is that you? I'm very sure I just played Assasin Creed: Odyssey (starfield version): laser/arrow, missile/spear. Only different is Malaka can easily defeat many ships, but Mineborn has 0% chance to win the battle when facing more than 3 ships.

[Vuulgar]

5 hours ago, Wandering_Mania said:

You, everything except for a reason to play it because there's no fun to be had. As there are already posts popping up on Steam about how boring it is. 'RPG'? Yeah, if by 'RPG' you mean 'Real Prolonged Game'. I mean if you gotta play for at least 10+ hours just for it to start to become fun; That's a waste of 10+ hours.

 

Then dont play it but oddly your opinion isnt everyones....shocking I know.

[WandererZero]

15 minutes ago, Vuulgar said:

Then dont play it but oddly your opinion isnt everyones....shocking I know.

 

I set that dude to ignore. Every single one of his posts is a word salad that, when boiled down amount to nothing but:

 

"Stop liking what I don't like."

 

It's a one dimensional argument from a mind that has clearly long been bereft of firing neurons.

 

That said: enjoying the hell out of this game. I've been wandering around New Atlantis for like, 4 hours, haven't even checked in with constellation...and there's SO MUCH content yet to be explored. I haven't even scratched the surface. Found a great underground dingy as hell market, and you can wind up side questing for like, hours just by overhearing stuff. It's pretty awesome thus far.

[Wandering_Mania]

35 minutes ago, Vuulgar said:

Then dont play it but oddly your opinion isnt everyones....shocking I know.

Yup, not everyone's, but a lot of people's; Specifically those who can face the facts that they bought a bad game, and don't feel the need to blindly defend it simply to justify dropping so much money on a turd. People like seen in this post:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1716740/discussions/0/3824173464656832461/?tscn=1693602832

 

But you go ahead and blindly defend it if you want. It's no skin off my teeth. I'm not one who got suckered into pre-ordering it.

[Gameplayer]

Downloaded a Re-Shade from Nexus, really helps the game look right away.

Objects, structures, and enviroments look quite good mesh object wise and better with a proper color palette so there is that going for it.

 

I imagine the issue will be a performance cost.

1) need a modern mid-high end CPU to get great performance

2) need a high end Nvidia GPU or

a AMD gpu <---Yes the game favors AMD its crazy

 

There is a patch for sept 6th.  No idea if this fixes up the performance issue for Nvidia GPU's, but it does need fixing.

 

There is a DLSS mod over on Nexus, have not tried it yet.

My computer is doing fine Nvidia GPU and all though so have not bothered with it yet.

 

I read some of the comments above, cant say I agree with the faces being bad, although somebody probably will say well the bodies are not bad, so opinion.

There are a lot of loading screen's but my NVME drive makes these quite short and almost a non-issue other than seeing a quick animation load through, possibly others have to wait longer with a loading bar for all I know.

 

I figured out that when you "unlock" a second tier of a skill, it costs another skill point to progress it.  Damn because I figured you only needed to unlock it the one time and then complete challenges to get higher ranks of said skill.  This will limit just how many of these skills you can get on Player, I might even just restart to concentrate skills into Bounty Hunter.

 

Hmm, so far my overall impression is that players that have not purchased may want to wait just on the fact that the performance is not doing that great and figure that they may in fact want to use a color palette enhancer sort of mod right away.

 

Story wise not a lot to really write about just yet.

[Miauzi]

Vor 20 Minuten sagte Gameplayer:

Ich habe herausgefunden, dass es einen weiteren Fertigkeitspunkt kostet, wenn man eine zweite Fertigkeitsstufe „freischaltet“. Verdammt, weil ich dachte, dass man es nur einmal freischalten und dann Herausforderungen abschließen muss, um höhere Ränge dieser Fertigkeit zu erreichen. Dadurch wird die Anzahl dieser Fertigkeiten begrenzt, die Sie für den Spieler erhalten können. Vielleicht fange ich sogar noch einmal damit an, die Fertigkeiten auf den Kopfgeldjäger zu konzentrieren.

 

 

This reminds me of Fallout NV - where the maximum number of levels you can reach -> is limited.

and

you have to think very carefully about what you skill when awarding skill points.

actually a good thing - it takes the game away from the "Eier legenden Woll-Milch-Sau" (German term) - who can do everything and is at some point a demi-god in the game.

[dlombu]

Todd lied again, but I'm still enjoying the game. It's just the good ol' Bethesda game that we all know with a space theme wrapped around it. But it's nothing like how they sold it. Just Skyrim in space. Skyrim in space is fine. And, as with all space games the fundamental problem is that space is vast.. and empty. People always talk about how awe-inspiring space is and how awesome it would be to explore it, but the reality is that 99% of it is nothingness with some big rocks orbiting around big hot balls.

 

I'm going to laser focus on the main quest and finish it so I can do new game plus, because some reviewers keep hinting that that's when the real game starts. I'm skeptical but we'll see.

[ss4142]

I have played 6 hours so far. Its a good game. Some things was a bit dissapointment for me. Especially character movements. Main character runing like she needs pee. Duck, cover, aim was a bit dull. Maybe i need to improve my skills before judge them. I must say i have smooth performance. My cpu ryzen 7600x and gpu rx6750xt. With 2k monitor everything maxed overal 150 FPS. One more thing i didnt like, your civilian outfit is whole. I mean you cant buy shoes, skirts, pants. Skyrim 12 y.o game was have this feature. I hope modders will fix this. But I dont know how. How can they add shoes when there are no shoe slot?

Edited September 2, 2023 by ss4142