Starfield has lost 97% of players.

[Reigor]

2 hours ago, cornbreadtm said:

Honestly, and this isn't me forcing words into your mouth, it sounds like you don't like the game but want mods to fix it. I'm not saying "you hate the game" like people in this thread seem to like shouting. I simply mean, in it's current state the game pulls you out of your immersion. Most of the RP YTers I watch ended their Starfield RPs for the same reason. Rycon was probably the biggest one for me since he usually just looks for a solution and keeps trucking. His solution this time was to end the series till Bethesda fixed the game. These kinds of games are fun because they suck you into the world. If all of your problems with the game are immersion break, then that is compromised.

 

I can honestly say I have a love/hate relationship with Starfield after 320 hours of playing. Otherwise, why play it for that long?

 

There are aspects of the game which I love. Some of the missions and storylines were fun. Kudos to those Devs that got realistic microgravity to work, much better than Prey 2017 (different company I know). I loved building my own spaceship and flying it. 

 

I feel like Starfield needed about 1-2 years more of development time. Not polish, but actual development where they could implement all of the systems, add to instead of walking back from previous games, and integrate them better into the stories and missions. And also expand their proc gen model to make it more immersive and able to change details about the POI, such as furniture placement, final loot types, lore, etc...so its not the same copy and paste everywhere.

 

I've been feeling an itch to play Starfield again. There are a lot of good mods that have come out that address QoL and player/npc appearance. None that add content or fix quests that are bad because of poor writing, but that will come with the CK. Also, with Newgame+ I don't have to grind out needed skills for QoL (faster running, boostpack, etc...) AND I can ignore Constellation and have less annoying, if more generic, companions. 

 

What I am really hoping for in the future (but know its likely a pipe dream) is that BGS will wake the fuck up and realize their old method of relying on quest designers to do all the writing isn't going to work for a new IP and they hire a team of dedicated writers going forward to expand on (and maybe retcon) the game's lore and history to provide a richer and more consistent environment for the quest designers to create their stuff in, which in turn will add to the player immersion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DocClox]

 

 

5 hours ago, Orpheaned said:

I'm just asking that the devs fix the game and actually finish it. But there is very little chance of this happening

 

Have you seen the number of fixes in the current beta release? It's not a small number.

[Orpheaned]

51 minutes ago, DocClox said:

 

 

 

Have you seen the number of fixes in the current beta release? It's not a small number.

 

Oui, j'ai vu.

Corriger les bugs est une chose, corriger les limitations du moteur en est une autre.

Au vue du nombre de choses corriger ça ne fait que démontrer que le jeu n'est clairement pas fini. Mais je ne vais pas me répéter la dessus

 

Mais a tu lu complètement mon post ?

 

"Ils publieront des MaJ pour corriger les bugs mais je ne m'attend pas à ce qu'ils corrigent les limitations du moteur graphique."

 

Je voit bien qu'ils font des Màj, Je n'ai jamais dit qu'ils n'en feraient pas, ils y a beaucoup de bugs a corriger. Alors que Starfield devait être le jeu le moins bugger de Bethesda, après le blabla de Todd Howard n'a plus de valeur.

 

Je parle surtout des limitations de leur moteur. Faut pas s'attendre a ce qu'ils corrige ça.

 

---------------------------------

 

Yes I saw.

Fixing bugs is one thing, fixing engine limitations is another.

Considering the number of things corrected, this only shows that the game is clearly not finished. But I'm not going to repeat myself

 

But have you read my post completely?

 

"They will release updates to fix the bugs but I don't expect them to fix the graphics engine limitations."

 

I can see that they are making updates, I never said they wouldn't do it, there are a lot of bugs to correct. While Starfield should have been Bethesda's least buggy game, after Todd Howard's blabbering it no longer has any value. 

 

I'm mainly talking about the limitations of their engine. Don't expect them to fix that.

 

[Kraven12]

1 hour ago, DocClox said:

 

 

 

Have you seen the number of fixes in the current beta release? It's not a small number.

 

 

I posted on this, myself and MrMatty pointed out is what people want is content as well as "fixes". Keeping the base engaged. 

[CaptainSmash]

Yes I agree Starfield is buggy and there is a lot of them and should of been a lot less buggy from start. but we are talking about 40-60 million lines of code compared to 30 - 35+ million lines of code for fallout 4 which is now easy task. Bye no means am I defending the lack of main story or lack of good side quest's. but at least give the game a year for the first expansion's and CK to be released before we kick the game to the curb.

Edited March 14 by CaptainSmash

[DocClox]

11 hours ago, Orpheaned said:

Considering the number of things corrected, this only shows that the game is clearly not finished. But I'm not going to repeat myself

 

So, on the one hand, you're complaining that the devs need to fix the game. On the other you're saying that the fact they are fixing it just proves how broken it is? Cute.

 

11 hours ago, Orpheaned said:

Fixing bugs is one thing, fixing engine limitations is another.

 

But, I guess if you're list of perceived flaws in the game includes not being implemented in Unreal or Unity, well then you're never going to be happy, no matter what they do.

 

11 hours ago, Orpheaned said:

But I'm not going to repeat myself

 

I think we understand one another.

 

11 hours ago, Kraven12 said:

I posted on this, myself and MrMatty pointed out is what people want is content as well as "fixes". Keeping the base engaged. 

 

Fair enough, but it's a separate argument. I'm expecting any major new content to come with the DLC rather than bugfix patches.

 

That said, the game really isn't as empty as a few youtubers would have you think. Although I'm a little disappointed in MrMatty if he's jumped on that particular bandwagon.

[Gray User]

I've played a lot of BGS games for a long time.

 

No BGS game is the same as the first one you played. If you first play Morrowind in 2003, the writing for Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallouts, seems dumb. If you first play Fallout 3, the writing for Fallout 4, Skyrim seems dumb. Why: because all BGS game are a framework. BGS staff suck at writing and they always have. The vanilla assets are always bad (griege and bulky in skyrim/fo4, shiny and bulky in oblivion, etc). But the first time you play their games, you ignore that because of everything else.

 

Always there are incels complaining about wokeness. Always there are users complaining that the new game is worse then the one they lost their virginity to. Fallout intro is wrong: war changes. Humanity never changes. 

 

If the CK works, and the community can make content, the game will be what modders make of it. If the CK never happens, or is crippled, BGS doesn't need to bother making ES6, they are done. They do not make bestselling games. They make bestselling frameworks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Orpheaned]

8 hours ago, DocClox said:

But, I guess if you're list of perceived flaws in the game includes not being implemented in Unreal or Unity, well then you're never going to be happy, no matter what they do.

 

Exactement. Comme la plupart des moddeurs qui avaient beaucoup d'espérance et de projets pour Starfield et qui ont du tout mettre à la poubelle car c'était irréalisable dû aux limitations. Comment être content d'une chose que l'on ne peut et ne pourra pas améliorer comme l'on le souhaitait ?

 

Plus les 97% de joueurs qui sont partis a cause de l'ennui, du vide omnipresent, du scénario de série Z, ...et le reste de la longue liste de truc qui ne va pas dans Starfield. Les chiffres et évaluation parlent d'eux-mêmes. (Les évaluations constructives pas les trucs du genre: "le jeu c'est de la merde." Bien que les évaluations du genre: "le jeu est bien." ne sont pas plus constructives à mon gout.)

 

Donc le "nouveau Skyrim" de Bethesda commence très mal et n'aura surement pas la même longévité et le même support de la communauté vu qu'il n'a pas le même amour. Le jeu n'est pas mort, mais contrairement aux autres au lieu de marcher il se contentera de ramper.

 

Triste fin mais triste vérité.

 

Merci à tous et bon jeux.

 

--------------------------------------------------------

 

Exactly. Like most modders who had a lot of hopes and projects for Starfield and who had to throw everything in the trash because it was unrealizable due to the limitations. How can you be happy with something that you cannot and will not be able to improve as you wish?

 

Plus the 97% of players who left because of boredom, the omnipresent emptiness, the Z series scenario, ... and the rest of the long list of things that are wrong in Starfield. The numbers and evaluation speak for themselves. (Constructive evaluations not things like: "the game is shit." Although evaluations like: "the game is good." are not more constructive for my taste.)

 

So Bethesda's "new Skyrim" starts very badly and will probably not have the same longevity and the same support from the community since it does not have the same love. The game is not dead, but unlike the others instead of walking it will just crawl.

 

Sad ending but sad truth.

 

Thank you all and good games.

[Kashked]

I'm just going to inject myself into this discussion as someone who haven't even played the game. I just saw the title of this thread as the "newest post" in this forum, which I don't usually check, and my first though was... "Oh, right, yeah. They released Starfield. I had forgotten about that."

 

Again, speaking as someone who haven't played it myself, where are the Starfield memes? I hang around online gaming spaces, I haven't seen any. What's the story? I have no idea. I've heard some people say it's bad, but I don't even know what it's about. 

 

I'm not going to criticice the game, because I haven't even managed to gather enough interest to read a review. All I can say is... as an outsider to this game, is has left 0 cultural impact. Didn't matter if you didn't care about RPG's in 2011, if you hung around any kind of gaming space you knew Skyrim was about killing dragons. You heard the "arrow to the knee"- and "I am sword to carry your burdens"-jokes. You recognised the main theme. Heck, I haven't played Baldurs Gate 3 either, but I know it's about mindflayers, I know about Bear-sex and people dropping coins or something on dragons to kill them. Starfield seems to just have passed by, by comparison. Because Google knows me more intimatly than my own mother it constantly fed me articles about BG3 in my feed for months. It did pop a couple of articles into my feed about Starfield too. For about a week.

 

As a longtime fan, started with Morrowind in 2002, it's just sad seeing a Bethesda game fall off like that. After F76 my expectations were low, I thought Starfield was going to be bad, but I never thought it would end up irrelevant.

[DocClox]

46 minutes ago, Kashked said:

What's the story?

 

There's actually a couple of decent surprises in there. I won't spoil anything for you.

 

46 minutes ago, Kashked said:

if you hung around any kind of gaming space you knew Skyrim was about killing dragons

 

I can fix that. If Skyrim is about killing dragons, Starfield is about Spaceships and exploring new star systems.  Easy peasy.

 

47 minutes ago, Orpheaned said:

How can you be happy with something that you cannot and will not be able to improve as you wish?

 

If the choice of engine matters more than the implementation of the game, then I guess you can't.  Too bad really. If you can get past game engine tribalism, it's rather a fun game.

 

47 minutes ago, Orpheaned said:

Plus the 97% of players who left because of boredom

 

Yeah. I'm fairly sure you haven't got the data to back that up. SF's player numbers are fluctuating the same way Syrim's did after release. It's clocking in about a third of Skyrim's players, which isn't too surprising since (as I'm sure we can agree) there was a certain amount of negative publicity at the time of its launch. Still, those aren't negligible numbers, and a lot of that 96% will be back once Shattered Space and the CK drop. Plus probably a few more who were put off by the trolls shouting down anyone who tried to say anything nice about the game, but who will probably find themselves curious now that the brigades have moved on to fresher pastures.

 

But, hey! Feel free to come back here in six months and tell me "I told you so". If in fact there is anything to tell...

Edited March 15 by DocClox

[MadMansGun]

2 hours ago, Kashked said:

What's the story

space macguffin gives you weak dragonborn "starborn" shouts, collecting all of them lets you travel to the center of the galaxy to "go to an alternate reality" (reset the game but keep your unlocked skills)

basically rendering everything you do completely pointless.

[DocClox]

  

1 hour ago, MadMansGun said:

basically rendering everything you do completely pointless.

 

Which inevitable leads you to see the world as the Hunter sees it, ultimately leading the player to make a choice: do you surrender to the Hunter's cynicism and nihilism, viewing everyone you meet as replaceable ciphers of no real significance, or do you embrace the philosophy of the Pilgrim and take the Keeper's route, retiring from the Unity rat-race and cultivating the best life you can in the world you have? Or maybe just take the Emissary's path of trying to retain your humanity and be a force for good across multiple realities, despite the repeating patterns of events in your life?

 

It's also interesting how the Hunter's perspective mirrors the usual Murderhobo mentality that most us fall into at one time or another, not engaging with the characters in the game but treating them as cyphers to be coldly manipulated to minimax your personal effectiveness.

 

And you get some cool creepy lines where you can use your Starborn foreknowledge to say things to NPCs that you couldn't possibly know (at least from their limited perspective) often short-cutting or changing the course of events in the process.

 

Personally, I find the meta-narrative aspects of the game quite fascinating. To say nothing the way it led  me to re-evaluate some of my gaming habits.For my money, that makes it the best story Bethesda have come up with since Morrowind.

 

It's also worth considering that, for once, the game avoids the Chosen One trope that people usually complain of in Bethesda games. You don't start out magically able to do almost everything in the game - a lot of skills need to be unlocked, and some effort invested in them before you get good with them. On the other hand, by the time you get to NG+5 or so, those skills and powers start to ramp up, and suddenly you re-enter the narrative with skills and powers developed. In effect you get the Chosen One power fantasy, but you have to earn that power.

 

None of which really impacts you if you give up five minutes after Unity. Buy hey, you don't want to engage with the game's most interesting feature, no one is going to force you.

Edited March 15 by DocClox

[Kashked]

48 minutes ago, DocClox said:

  And you get some cool creepy lines where you can use your Starborn foreknowledge to say things to NPCs that you couldn't possibly know (at least from their limited perspective) often short-cutting or changing the course of events in the process.

 

Not gonna lie, that is actually pretty cool. Had no idea about that. I'll probably buy it at some point, if it's 75% off or so, and the mods have been developed. Like I said, the game is kind of a blank book to me, so I'm not actually negative towards it, even though I haven't heard anything positive about it. I just found Bethesda untrustworthy after the F76 fiasco and when the game then kind of faded into obscurity straight after release I kind of just forgot it existed. 

[travelmedic]

1 hour ago, Kashked said:

so I'm not actually negative towards it, even though I haven't heard anything positive about it

 

There are positive commenters out there, @DocClox for one has been very eloquent in promoting the game.  Even though there are some shortcomings, I too think the game is a net positive, and that's after about 400 hours played without ever reaching Unity even once (so far).

 

Even though I agree with a few of the objective constructive criticisms that I've read here and elsewhere, I still think it's a good game, and I think it will continue to improve as the Creation Kit and DLC start to come out.  There is precedent for my opinion too, consider how poorly Cyberpunk 2077 was received at launch, vs how it was regarded 2 years later after fixes and improvements from CDPR.

 

To the people waiting for DLC or a good sale before buying it, maybe that's prudent, but don't write it off because it's seemingly so fashionable to pile onto Bethesda right now.

[Kashked]

45 minutes ago, travelmedic said:

There is precedent for my opinion too, consider how poorly Cyberpunk 2077 was received at launch, vs how it was regarded 2 years later after fixes and improvements from CDPR.

 

True. I didn't play Cyberpunk until 1.5, and found it a wonderful game. Wont speak to how it was at release, but I know the feeling. I'm a big fan of Imperator: Rome since day 1 over in the grand strategy genre, which is held up by most players as a fiasco and a terrible game which many people are now slowly starting to look at in a different light a couple of years later, so I know the feeling of being on that side as well.

 

I do also love the concept of game mechanics being integrated in the story as a concept, so it's nice to see someone speaking well of the game. It's 20% off right now, but I think I won't go higher than 50% still. 😅 The thing about single-player games is that it'll be just as good in 3 years as it is now and I'll get around to it someday.

[Miauzi]

Vor 10 Minuten sagte Kashked:

 

WAHR. Ich habe Cyberpunk erst mit 1.5 gespielt und fand es ein wunderbares Spiel. Ich möchte nicht darüber sprechen, wie es bei der Veröffentlichung war, aber ich kenne das Gefühl. Ich bin seit dem ersten Tag ein großer Fan von Imperator: Rome im Grand-Strategy-Genre, das von den meisten Spielern als Fiasko und schreckliches Spiel angesehen wird, das viele Leute jetzt langsam in einem anderen Licht betrachten Jahre später, also kenne ich auch das Gefühl, auf dieser Seite zu stehen.

 

Mir gefällt auch das Konzept, dass Spielmechaniken als Konzept in die Geschichte integriert werden, daher ist es schön zu sehen, dass jemand gut über das Spiel spricht. Im Moment gibt es 20 % Rabatt, aber ich denke, ich werde trotzdem nicht mehr als 50 % bekommen. 😅 Die Sache mit Einzelspieler-Spielen ist, dass sie in 3 Jahren genauso gut sein werden wie jetzt und ich werde es eines Tages schaffen.

 

Why do you play through games like Skyrim or Fallout multiple times after finishing the main story?

At least they do it based on the vanilla game and start another run with a new character... but instead you install good mods to change the story to be played - which has become more and more interesting over the years thanks to good quest mods .

You can even integrate a restart directly into a mod - I'll mention the following mod here

(please read the description - so it's clear what I mean here!)

In contrast, StarField "shines" with a mega-boring and totally meaningless future world - the "Jedi" forces bring it close to space fairy tales like "StarWars" ... it basically tries to steal ideas from all parts of the SFi genre - but definitely can't put these together into a viable framework story.

In the last 20-30 years, very good SFi worlds have been added - in addition to those that were already created in the 100-150 years before.

But "StarField" plays in the "league of dregs"... so why should you play through it all again??

In one (intensively played) month I got my character so far that he can start this "journey" to the core of the multiverse (??) - but why should I do that??

The worlds of TES or Fallout thrive on the fact that they have an extensively developed "lore" - which is based on a broad cultural tradition... the dragons from "Skyrim" appear in many European chivalric sagas - stories that often go back more than 1000 years are.

The dysotrophic world of Fallout, for example, has accompanied me since my early childhood in the 1060s - I grew up "in the shadow" of the Cold War. If you think of the film "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" by "Stanley Kubrick" - you have the perfect scenario for the vaults - this is even explicitly stated as a "solution" at the end of the film mentioned.

It's completely clear that the original creators of Fallout (game studio "Interplay") were inspired by this film.

What inspired the world of “StarField” anyway? A maximum of cheap "penny" novels... you can see that in the game all the time!

[Trykz]

This:

 

On 3/15/2024 at 1:39 AM, Gray User said:

If the CK works, and the community can make content, the game will be what modders make of it.

 

And this:

 

On 3/15/2024 at 1:39 AM, Gray User said:

They do not make bestselling games. They make bestselling frameworks. 

 

Admittedly, I was less than impressed with the overall state of the game at launch. But do I regret buying it?

 

No.

 

The story was a bit boring. And the NG+ was quite disappointing after finishing the story. Travelling

back in time just to start all over again, knowing all that happened before while everyone else acted

like we never met, was rather unimpressive. I did quite enjoy all the little side quests scattered

throughout. Enough that I restarted the game with a fresh character to run through again. The

shipbuilder is a lot of fun to play with as well. I've built a fair few from ships that I stole from

spacers, Va'Ruun zealots, and the Crimson Fleet. Probably close to half of my playtime is spent in

the shipbuilder.

 

The potential of this game's foundation is immeasurable. A lot of "adult oriented" content is already in

place. From bounties to shipboard brigs, seedy cities with sketchy backstories, to "goody-two-shoes" actors

and religious cult factions/figures who don't need any reason to nefariously harrass you, because your mere

existence offends them. All this in the "native", unmodded game.

 

All it needs is a CK, and scripting and animation tools to exploit it all. All of this WILL come. Just as it did for

all of the most popular BGS games. In a few years (or less) we'll likely see an Enderal-esque total overhaul

of Starfield's main story.

 

All the naysaying around the possibilities surrounding this game have been heard before. In 2006 when

Oblivion released. In 2011 with the release of Skyrim. In 2015 when Fallout 4 released. 

 

How many times has the doom-and-gloom crowd peddled this bullshit, and how many times have

modders proven them wrong? EVERY time. Full stop.

 

97%? What depths of who's ass does this bullshit come from? 🤣

 

I suspect it's more impatience than disappointment, but we're barely 6 months in. So people

need to settle down and let BGS get their shit together. They will. Because they always do.

 

History is the greatest teacher.

Edited March 18 by Trykz

[t.ara]

....."In a few years (or less) we'll likely see an Enderal-esque total overhaul

of Starfield's main story."

 

This, to me is sounding a little like a fairytale. Doubt. When SKYRIM became in focus, there have been lot of really powerful creators for that game-focussed. In between this people all spreat into different directions and work on other stuff-and most of them simply stopped to work for other personal reasons. It would be great to see a next new generation doing the same again on starfield or whatever other game,..but in this depth and without a suiting platform like loverslab  (also nexus) , such a serious and concentrated and euphorical teamwork is simply not possible. Comparing this with Conan Exiles, which is also highly modded but only supported by the DC-chat, which has not the depth of speed for fast learning, imo and(caused by also the quite opened engine via UE4), skyrim is and stays simply the most and deepest modded game of all time. The gamebryo-system is in compare more faster to handle and it offers great results under the creation engine, coming with high quality graphics, even one time more inside of SSE. Based on the close together working teams and based on the share of knowledge and the overviews for workarounds and guides, has skyrim won this race-from my point of view for all future times...FO4 has a best technical engine and options, but that game simply is not bethesda-typical to me, same like all this other sci-fi-stuff. Best games of bethesda are the early years: morrowind-oblivion-skyrim-and this has been their reason, why bethesda became shining. Bethesda sadly did not find a serious concept for online gameplay and I have no idea why that all happened-skyrim should in this early years have been made a professional online game-but i guess they have been not ready for such a concept and missing technology.

[Trykz]

3 hours ago, t.ara said:

This, to me is sounding a little like a fairytale.

 

And 6 months in, I could have said the same thing about Skyrim. Or Fallout 4.

 

Yet here we are. Enderal is a reality, and Fallout: London is literal days from release.

 

But speaking of Conan Exiles, Funcom proved one thing:

 

It is unwise to follow up an MMORPG with an RPG. I played Age of Conan online for a fair few years.

It was a great game, and I enjoyed it immensely. Couldn't really get into Exiles.

Conversely, it is unwise to follow up an RPG with an MMORPG. Hence, Skyrim's wild popularity when

compared to Elder Scrolls: Online.

 

Bethesda proved it again with Fallout: 76.

 

NEVER has there been a truly successful follow-up of either.

 

RPG's and MMORPG's are beasts in immensely differing veins. And it is unwise to try to follow up

one with the other. I attribute this to their playerbases being so vastly different. YMMV.

 

So I say again:

 

History is the greatest teacher.

 

For me, the biggest problem with Starfield was the choice to start the game in the mine on Vectera.

Because it drops you into the game waaaaaay beyond the rich backstory it tries to feed you later.

It would have been far better to start the player learning about the Earth being doomed to

destruction, and then sending them through Constellation to the moonbase to discover the origins

of grav-tech space travel, the Artifacts, the Starborn, and how it all relates to round out the MQ.

 

But, as is typical BGS, they decided to go the ass-backward route 🤣

[divingmedic]

I put 523 hours into this game. Did NG+ 3 times. Bethesda has never been that great at story telling. Skyrim's main story was pretty meh. FO4 was better but still lacking in several areas. In FO4 they made what should have been the best faction (Minutemen) the weakest faction of all them. At lest in Skyrim and Fallout 4 there were conflicts to resolve in the main story. Starfield there is are not any conflicts in the main story. Only faction that you can kill off in Starfield is the Crimson Fleet. Starfield companions are the worst I have seen in a Bethesda game. Their stories are boring and bland.

[Gergar12]

I hope the DLC adds more fightable factions. 

[Djlegends]

2 hours ago, Gergar12 said:

I hope the DLC adds more fightable factions. 

well yea the Varuun but fullly fledge