• Bademantel@feddit.de
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    10 months ago

    I had no idea that the game is that bad. Now I really have no interest in playing it anymore.

    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      There’s this weird anti-hype going on. Realistically, for people not loving it, it’s defensibly a 7 or so. There’s PLENTY of us who put it a lot closer to a 10.

      It’s a lot of things, but it’s definitely not a “bad” game.

      • Bademantel@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        Fair enough but it does sound very repetitive and grindy. Would you disagree?

        Maybe it is not bad but it definitely didn’t deliver what was promised. I know, I know, how could I expect that from Todd?

        • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          Fair enough but it does sound very repetitive and grindy. Would you disagree?

          How experienced are you with Bethesda games post-1995 or so? They all have the same grind-factor. The game is tuned so you can play and win with zero grind, but it has these “treadmill” mechanics that you can either embrace or skip.

          If you want to max out your perks at level 328, it’s absurdly grindy. But you can beat the game around level 30 or so. If for some reason you want to max out a skill/perk you don’t really use, it’s a bit grindy. But if you use the skills as you get them and get the skills you’ll use, you unlock their levelups asically for free.

          Maybe it is not bad but it definitely didn’t deliver what was promised

          I hear this again, and again, and again, and again. But nobody has yet to cite one promise Bethesda objective broke with Starfield. You say “how could I expect that from Todd”? That means you know what kind of games Bethesda releases. And they promised a Bethesda game in space. And they delivered a Bethesda game in space.

          I underestand people who hate Bethesda games. You can toss a pebble and hit one of them. But I really don’t understand the level of toxicity this time around. I actually almost didn’t buy Starfield, and boy am I pissed because it was a lot better than I expected.

          • joenforcer@midwest.social
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            10 months ago

            Keep in mind that I haven’t played Starfield despite getting excited by the hype, and then tempering my expectations after remembering getting burned by the hype and purchase of the Collector’s Edition of Fallout 76. My opinions are more of a collective skepticism bolstered by post-hype reactions. The unfortunate reality of the game is that it is a “Bethesda game” with a lot of the magic stripped out.

            The promise of 1000 planets rings pretty hollow when a vast majority of them are desolate chucks of rock, and procedural generation is just an exceedingly lazy way to achieve a bullet point on the hype sheet. The only reason I know it’s 1000 planets is because Todd would not shut up about it like it was some type of huge achievement.

            The fun of “discovery by exploration” – going to continue on a quest and getting stopped by a dozen different interesting things along the way – is completely broken by “fast travel”. A “Bethesda game” that requires you to skip a lot of the in-between and not lose focus on a singular objective does not feel like a “Bethesda game” to me.

            Some of the Bethesda charm comes from the jank of the 20-year-old Frankenstein “not Gamebryo” engine their games are built on. We give them a pass on a lot of this because it can add to the fun. Unfortunately, they spent a lot of time hyping their pride on being their “least buggy” game on release. For a game that cooked as long as Starfield did, they should’ve spent that time rebuilding something modern from the ground up instead of cramming their ambition into their aging platform. Given the time it took, this may be my biggest disappointment.

            • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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              10 months ago

              The unfortunate reality of the game is that it is a “Bethesda game” with a lot of the magic stripped out.

              Interesting. I don’t find “Bethesda game” to be unfortunate, and I don’t agree that a lot of the magic is stripped out. No, we do not get the Iconic fallout Vault Boy attitude, but tES never managed to brand itself like that anyway. What “magic” should I be seeing missing from Starfield? It seems pretty magical to me. I’m REALLY holding my breath for a Ve’ruun expansion, maybe some “Legacy of the Starborn” style expansion that leans into the Artifacts and the cycle. And I KNOW space stations are coming (data leaks confirmed there’s code for them), and I’m so excited for when they finally do.

              The promise of 1000 planets rings pretty hollow when a vast majority of them are desolate chucks of rock, and procedural generation is just an exceedingly lazy way to achieve a bullet point on the hype sheet.

              But isn’t that what you’d expect? What do people expect from this? 1000 full-size planets all lovingly hand-crafted on a $1T budget? Micro-planets like some other games did? Taking a step back, remember that Starfield has more hand-crafted content than Skyrim… THEN adds 1000 planets to explore so you have a Daggerfall-like procedural exploration game on top of it. Because a lot of us missed procedural exploration.

              The fun of “discovery by exploration” – going to continue on a quest and getting stopped by a dozen different interesting things along the way – is completely broken by “fast travel”. A “Bethesda game” that requires you to skip a lot of the in-between and not lose focus on a singular objective does not feel like a “Bethesda game” to me.

              Are you that guy who does no-fast-travel runs in Skyrim? Quite literally, Starfield feels like the exact same amount of fast-travel as any tES game to me. FT to this city, kill this person. FT back, report what you did. FT to this area, and go find a dungeon.

              Unfortunately, they spent a lot of time hyping their pride on being their “least buggy” game on release

              For the record, that’s true. Starfield was largely downright stable from day 1.

              they should’ve spent that time rebuilding something modern from the ground up instead of cramming their ambition into their aging platform

              “Should” is a hard point. They’re clearly trying to stay Iconic Bethesda. As far as I’ve heard, Creation Engine 2 is largely a from-scratch engine. The thing is, the goal was for it to still work like a Bethesda game. Largely that goal succeeded. Many of us were craving Exactly Skyrim in Space for 10-15 years now. It’s weird how many people are complaining after they gave us what we asked for.

              I’m IT. I get it. Sometimes you asks for things you don’t really want and it’s my job to say “no” to you. But I actually really wanted Skyrim in space!!!

      • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz
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        10 months ago

        I loved it. The reality of this game is so distorted. Yes, it’s far from perfect. But in no way is it bad. Everyone has a right to their own opinion, and not everyone will enjoy it. But so many people would have you believe it’s an objectively bad game, and it isn’t.

        • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          I would say life is too short to play games you don’t enjoy. The 1-10 scale is trying to measure overall quality, not enjoyability to an individual.

          I hate Witcher 3. Its 92 on metacritic doesn’t mean I have to force myself to play it more than I already have. But there’s a line after which I usually will not touch a game because its objective failings make it highly unlikely I will enjoy it. Starfield’s 83 in metacritic (not sure why the toxicity hasn’t dragged it down more yet, perhaps because it’s an echo chamber) puts it cleanly in a “give it a chance” level for me.

      • SeatBeeSate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 months ago

        It just seems terribly mediocre for a AAA game this decade. Definitely not worth $70, and not something to rush out and play. Maybe something we can enjoy a few years from now with proper updates, maybe some fixes mods.

      • Drbreen@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Yeah same here. Around the 40 hour mark. I found I moved onto something else. People spending time and resources on building big and different ship designs and building a base seemed pointless to me given the gameplay loop.

      • XanXic@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I’m sure too people will be like “oh but you played 40 hours! It can’t be that bad” but the first 10-15 are misery from a gameplay perspective, like you’re just trying to level up to get more carrying capacity and get more combat options.

        • Bongles@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          There’s too many basic things locked behind perk points before you can even begin doing whatever it is. Like, I spent most of a day to grind to get to be able to buy and fly a bigger ship only to then not be able to put any extra crew on the ship because that is also a perk.

          • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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            10 months ago

            That’s…not really true. First, you can get to class C ships at level 4 out of 300+ if you really want to. Second, you can build some pretty decent-sized class A ships.

            Honestly, is this something you’ve just always hated about Bethesda games, because everything about that is true to a greater extent in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games as well.

            • Bongles@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              Some of it’s an opinion but nothing I said isn’t true. Sure, if I started the game with the goal of flying class C ships I could get there by level 4, but I didn’t. I played the game for a time doing other things and then came to a point where I saw an NPC selling a ship I wanted. So I grinded to get the money, saw that I needed to rank up piloting but I didn’t have any points. So I needed to level up 3 times and I needed to kill a few dozen ships. So I grinded that out and bought the ship which, with getting the money, took me the better part of a day.

              Then, after I bought that ship and got the ability to fly it I couldn’t add any additional crew compared to my starting ship because that is locked behind a different perk, which would mean 4 more levels (which take time now), and many more destroyed ships with X number of crew on board, to get the most crew on my ship; EXCEPT that it’s a master tier perk so I would first have to sink many more points into that tree to even get there. So I guess screw whatever build I was going for, if I want more crew I have to go deep into the Social tree.

              Take stealth for example. To even get a stealth meter I have to drop a point into stealth. To get a meter that is slightly better and on par with the default stealth meter in their other games I need to put in another point. Want to pickpocket an enemy? Takes a point to even unlock the ability. Want to even use a boost pack? Point.

              It’s fine to unlock abilities through the trees, there’s more of these that I didn’t mention that I’m fine with, but this does not compare with their previous games. In Skyrim, if I want to pickpocket I just try to do it. It sucks for a while but it levels up and gets better by doing it. I don’t need to go grind enemies to level up so that I can get a little better at pickpocketing. If I want to be stealthy I just need to sneak around to work on leveling up the skill and I get the UI from the beginning. If I want to work on the heavy armor skill I don’t first have to get through light armor.

              • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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                10 months ago

                Well, it seems contradictory to me and I’m just picking at that. If you care about class C ships, it’s super-easy to unlock (compared to some of the skills in FO4’s base builder). If you don’t, the lack will never matter. You can easily take the Razorleaf through the entire game with few (if any) modifications.

                So I grinded to get the money, saw that I needed to rank up piloting but I didn’t have any points. So I needed to level up 3 times and I needed to kill a few dozen ships.

                I do the same in Skyrim when I want the Meteor spell :)

                after I bought that ship and got the ability to fly it I couldn’t add any additional crew compared to my starting ship because that is locked behind a different perk

                …so? Why exactly did you want to add more crew? I’m having trouble grokking this. More crew is kinda a win-more feature and down that page for a reason.

                Take stealth for example. To even get a stealth meter I have to drop a point into stealth

                Pretty typical.

                To get a meter that is slightly better and on par with the default stealth meter in their other games I need to put in another point

                This blew my mind, but if you’re somewhere you can breathe and take off the space suit, your stealth SKYROCKETs. Walking around stealthily in a heavy space suit is tough.

                Want to even use a boost pack? Point.

                This one is the first one I sorta agree with. I understand thematically why there would be skill involved. But I’ll give you this one. That’s just not enough to sour me on an epic game like Starfield.

                • Bongles@lemm.ee
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                  10 months ago

                  Take stealth for example. To even get a stealth meter I have to drop a point into stealth

                  Pretty typical.

                  I disagree here. It’s a UI element that is often there by default in other games from Bethesda. It’s the little eye in Skyrim, it’s the hidden/caution/danger bar in fallout 4.

                  This blew my mind, but if you’re somewhere you can breathe and take off the space suit, your stealth SKYROCKETs. Walking around stealthily in a heavy space suit is tough.

                  You know I did read that and I think that’s a neat touch, i wish it was explained somewhere in game (if it was I missed it) but it makes sense. I was referring to the UI again, where you upgrade the stealth meter itself slightly.

                  …so? Why exactly did you want to add more crew? I’m having trouble grokking this. More crew is kinda a win-more feature and down that page for a reason.

                  I bought a ship with 7 chairs, why can’t 7 people sit in it. I understand to a point that it could be for balancing the game, but to me getting the ship with 7 slots should be balancing enough.

        • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          I mean, at the 1-hour mark I was starting with space piracy and having a blast.

          The first 10-15 are misery if you follow the breadcrumb trail and don’t leave it. But the same is (more) true of Skyrim.

    • Cowbee@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      It really isn’t, which is funny. It does many things far better than Skyrim or Fallout 4, such as quest design and role playing, it just can’t rely on fantastic lore written by people that either no longer work for the company or never did. Now that they are given the opportunity to be wholly original, the issues they’ve been having ever since Morrowind are shown at full force.

      • Bademantel@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        Interesting. As I haven’t played the game, I have to rely on other opinions. Have you seen the video? He gave examples of quests that were in the game. Simple fetch quests (go to A, return to B, sometimes go back to A). They seemed to be designed in a very uninspiring way. Combined with the fact that you basically have to fast travel everywhere there’s little to catch your attention during such quests. In Skyrim, for example, you might stumble across a cave or some ruins. To me, those are the really enjoyable moments. You just explore and start to wonder what you might find next. Is that even possible in Starfield to a similar degree? Because without that im not sure I can enjoy a Bethesda game. It’s not a good shooter, the mechanics are wonky and the UI sucks. Would you disagree?

        • Cowbee@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Fallout 4 was even worse, that’s kind of a point I raise, that Bethesda has been riding the coattails of better lore. There are dumb fetch quests in every Bethesda game.