You’ll probably find that a lot of planets in Starfield are pretty boring, but Bethesda says that’s kind of the point.

  • Mojo@ttrpg.network
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    1 year ago

    Did they pay you to write this?
    Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much?

    Or am I insane?
    I feel like im in Truman Show, noticing the facade crumble and all the streamers and reviewers acts like the game is fine.
    I see streamers encounter serveral game breaking bugs and then instantly praise the game again.
    The game is basically Bethesda trying to mask the limitations of their game engine.

    I mean good for you that you like it but I spent 10hrs and then refunded (Thank god for Steam). Im not paying 100 bucks for Fallout 4 with space skin. I can not fathom how people accept this quality in 2023.
    And for that price.

    If someone is interested in my “shallow complaints”:

    • It’s not as open and “huge scale” as people seem to think it is. It’s kind of “fake open” if that makes sense. You cannot get into your ship and fly 800m east to your mission. If you do that, a new instance is loaded and your mission is not there. You have to run those 800m.

    • The ships are cool but you don’t need it. You just fast travel with a loadingscreen everywhere anyway. I saw the inside of my ship twice in 10hrs (not counting the cockpit view).

    • Navigating the menus are a nightmare. Inventory management is difficult.

    • Laziest intro I’ve ever seen. “Hello stranger, take my ship. No reason. Ok cool. Bye.”

    • Very little improvement graphics-wise. The explosions are 2D sprites lmao. In 2023. For real. New Atlantis looks horrible.

    • Performance is shit. I get 40fps in towns with a “UFO rated” computer on userbenchmark. Nvidia card.

    • NPC’s teleporting around, getting stuck everywhere halfway through floor, corpses flopping around, ships clipping through stations.

    • bermuda@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much?

      Or am I insane?

      Please for the love of god can we not turn beehaw (and lemmy as a whole) into YET ANOTHER space where people enjoying a game to whatever degree they please is somehow truly impossible to believe that you question your sanity??? Just learn how to have a conversation for crying out loud!

        • lemillionsocks@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Naw man you’re being needlessly abrasive and theyre right to call you out on it. No need to take people in bad faith and call them shills or act like someone having a different opinion than you is CRAZY!

          • Mojo@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            People seem sensitive here.
            Getting their panties in a bunch because I asked myself if I was insane.
            Never heard of that before.

            • Erk@cdda.social
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              1 year ago

              People aren’t annoyed at you for asking if you’re insane, they’re annoyed at you because you apparently don’t know that it’s possible to do that without insulting everyone who disagrees with you.

              • Mojo@ttrpg.network
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                1 year ago

                Why did you think that was an insult?
                Well, I guess everything can be insulting you try hard enough.

                • ahal@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Protip, if you ask someone a question, and then follow that up with “Or am I insane?”. You’re heavily implying that they in fact are the ones who are insane.

                  Maybe you legitimately didn’t know that. In case you didn’t, now you know.

                • Erk@cdda.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Seriously? On the very slim chance you’re actually just this clueless about polite communication,

                  Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much? Or am I insane?

                  It’s not the third line of that that people object to, it’s what is implied by the entire statement. We assume you don’t consider yourself insane, because that’s obviously hyperbole, which means you do seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you is either a shill or stuck in a sunk cost fallacy.

                  Consider the alternate phrasing of that entire statement, eg. “I’m just not seeing it. Am I insane or something?” And then the rest of your post. Nobody would be nearly so irritated with you in that context.

                  • Mojo@ttrpg.network
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                    1 year ago

                    Alright. In text maybe you are right.
                    Im a firm believer that if we like, sat in a bar discussing over a beer, and you could hear the tone of my voice and read my face, no-one would be offended.

    • averyminya@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Gotta love how anyone who has a good time with a game is either a shill or has stockholm.

      I pirated the game and won’t have the funds to buy it any time remotely soon. I 100% agree with the commenter you responded to. It’s a fun game, there’s a lot to do and I’ve often been feeling like this game has the guts that 2077 was missing (and I had a mostly bug-free 100% playthrough before a lot of major patches. For me, patches have just been mod-breakers lol). I only bring up 2077 because of just how often over the last few days I’ve thought “they’re accidentally delivering the promises 2077’s marketing made”. I remember when Night City was promised to have fully scheduled NPC routines (which doesn’t really exist) but it’s actually somewhat present and there’s a quest that introduces it as a “necessary” mechanic.

      I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with the faction and trait interactions. I classed as a space scoundrel who is wanted and I have parents - my parents show up in random pleasant places like the zoo, my space scoundrel or wanted trait I believe got me captured and now I’m undercover working to infiltrate and take down a space pirate faction. In my own time I became a space ranger who started working for a corp in Neon doing espionage. Oh and like the previous commenter said, I’d followed a secret moon base and became a notorious pirate hunter which I’ve decided to take up the mantle of, so I’m technically double undercover lol.

      Last little thing on interactions, it’s been cool that the news has minor reportings on the important things you do. After I found said legend and lived up to it I’ve been hearing about attacks on space pirates that I’ve done. Smaller questlines have meaningful NPC changes.

      I have some counter-points to yours, but I do have gripes of my own with the game I’ll list after.

      “not open”

      What you’re trying to say is there’s no sub-orbit flight. You only fly your ship in orbit or in deep space. As a byproduct there is no way to manually fly your ship 800m. What you can do for 90% of quests is go to the planet map, click a new landing zone and land closer, skipping any exploration the game is trying to encourage. (The 10% of quests I’ve encountered are gas-detection on colonies. Rescue quests I can fast travel, unsure about flight). They didn’t really market that you could, and frankly while the idea of flying my ship above colonist settlements and open firing on them sounds awesome I see why it’s not possible. They took Elite Dangerous and dropped the interactive transitions for docking and landing. We’ve been aware of this since it was announced so I don’t really see the issue here.

      Also there may be a lore reason they came up with, as there have been mentions of ships larger than certain sizes straight up just can’t land on planets at all.

      “ship aren’t needed”

      I’m going to say no, subjectively. You can fly quite a bit if you want to, it’s just faster to plot courses and for less populated galaxies there’s not much reason to stick around. For actual gameplay, ships to make a difference though. The default ship is a good start and moderately upgradeable, but it’s nothing compared to fighting in a dogfighting ship. Dogfighting ships are quite useless for cargo transport though, so if you are trying to ship people you’d be hard pressed doing it with the default ship. In a galaxy you can travel to any waypoint you see, bypassing the map menu. There is a lot of menu-diving, and I’ll list some issues I have with that in a bit.

      “lazy intro”

      I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the intro. To be honest, I don’t agree. So you’re a miner that finds a mystical space rock that makes you feel things, then some people happen to show up looking for a large dozen of them to unlock the secrets of the universe. Cheesy? I guess. I appreciated that it was much faster getting started and out into the open world than their other games (still a little on rails slow). If anything, I’d argue that it gives much more player freedom for imagination. In Fallout you’re searching for a person and you have a dedicated goal. In Skyrim it’s the same as the chosen one.

      In Starfield you’re vision from the magic rock could be entirely meaningless if you wanted it to be and never deal with it again. The fact that you were just a space miner with no background fits perfectly with the RPG genre and solves the issue that people have been complaining about for Bethesda for years (that they’re not “true” RPG’s). Meanwhile we get an actual blank slate with a decent story premise and it gets called lazy and boring. Fuck that man, the concept was fine and you can be whatever you want to be for once.

      “graphics/performance”

      Seems kinda odd complaining about graphics? Unless I’m tweaking for gains I don’t FPS meter, just visual smoothness as a reference. 5800x3D and a 10gb 3080 on ultra save motion blur with RT, on medium. No DLSS mod or FSR. I haven’t felt the need, as performance has been solid and stable - at least it’s consistently the same in the same areas. It’s a pretty game, but I wouldn’t say crisp. Better than RDR2’s TAA but worse than 2077’s current state. Some spots have some fuzzing/film grain of some kind, might be an atmosphere effect since it doesn’t seem present on all planets. Some areas are definitely lower FPS but on a variable refresh rate monitor it’s not been noticeable in any negative extents. Low FPS has only ever been on planets/settlements, space and dogfights have been pristine. Performance hasn’t ever gotten worse than 2077, which for me was ~25fps prepatches (sub the x3D back then). Neon and New Atlantis are generally lower fps than an indoor smaller map but no poor frametimes, no chugging or stuttering. It’s just the difference between 165hz and 60hz. The only actual “lag” I have seen is NPC scripts, which sometimes after longer play sessions hang and can get a few seconds of desync. For one line, then it’s fine again.

      That said, I shouldn’t have to need high end hardware to have a good experience with the game. I feel like that’s a separate issue, though. The game has been stable, completely crash free, and performance is consistent across how it performs - small maps are consistently smooth and heavier areas are noticeably lower FPS but not in a bad way. I did mention this is a pirated copy, right? I’d expect to have an abysmal experience with performance and yet…

      “clipping”

      One barista started levitating up to the ceiling when I was ordering a coffee, stopped at the ceiling. Once or twice an NPC has been facing a different direction during conversation. Once in a while an NPC will be walking into a wall, when I’ve wanted to steal I’ve “pushed” NPC’s and they just repath themselves and its fixed - though rescue missions do suffer from this a bit. With some 30+ hours of playtime (on save at least), I’ve not seen any ship clipping or hitting stations. I’ve been to some heavy fleet areas like UCS and pirate bases and they are all just normal?

      Like overall, I have some issues in similar ways but I have been enjoying my time with the game a lot. Pleasantly surprised compared to what I had been reading online.

      Comment to long, responding to myself below

      • Mojo@ttrpg.network
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        1 year ago

        What you can do for 90% of quests is go to the planet map, click a new landing zone and land closer, skipping any exploration the game is trying to encourage.

        This didn’t work for me. If you do this, a new instance is loaded and my mission does not show up.

        • averyminya@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          For which quests? Colonist quests I believe you can’t leave for, everything else is a permanent quest until completiom

          • Mojo@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            It’s kind of difficult to explain this without telling you the whole thing.

            Here goes…
            Build outpost randomly.
            Meet Bounty Hunter in close-by container.
            Bounty Hunter asks for help with bandits, and to meet 1km east.
            I get a marker on my map and on HUD.
            I think “fuck, im not running 1km.”
            I go back to my ship and open map.
            I put my landing marker close to mission marker.
            Click to fast travel.
            Loading Screen.
            Ship lands.
            Get out of ship.
            Look around. It’s a whole different map.
            No marker on HUD.
            Think “wtf”.
            Fast travel back to my outpost.
            My mission is there again.

            • averyminya@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              Ah I see, I understand! Yeah that’s essentially a version of the colonist bug I encountered. It seems certain parts of the game want you to play through it. Mine “works” a little more than yours though, since I was rescuing someone fast traveling would defeat the point. But showing up somewhere is definitely something you’d expect to work for a bounty.

              For what it’s worth I often find myself feeling like I don’t want to run 1km, but it’s only 5 minutes and I get there before I know it. The distances of the POI’s feel so far, but most are around 400m and it seems to go by in about 2 minutes. For moons it’s full cause you can complete the surveys quickly, but for planets it’s a good opportunity to finish them up without feeling like I’m wasting time I could be spending on quests.

              Anyway, sorry you had to question your sanity and thank you for indulging my curiosity!

    • SirSauceLordtheThird@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      To comment on a few of your points,

      1. IMO that really does not effect the scale of the game, it’s not limiting the amount of places you can go at all, just hop somewhere else on the planet and you’re gonna find similar things. You arent really meant to use the ship for such a small distance aswell, and the instanced wall to wall distance is really quite far for being on foot.
      2. Eh, it was your choice to fast travel. They included a ton of fast travel options cause not everyone either has the time for the game otherwise or they just does not care about the flying around in space part as much. But the option to not fast travel, and to instead use your ship is there 100% of the time so I don’t understand complaining about it, it’s just a matter of choice.
      3. I personally found the menus really easy to use and get used to, but I was on controller and not kbm, cant speak to how kbm feels.
      4. What you are describing as a lazy intro is the exact intro that bethesda fans want in these games, quick and over with so you are quickly released into the world to figure things out on your own, it’s what bethesda does every time.

      But yeah agreed on the technical aspects, except for new atlantis looking horrible. If anything looks borderline horrible for me, it’s the borderline uncanny valley faces everyone has.

    • fox_the_apprentice@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much? Or am I insane?

      No need to go for insults just because you disagree with someone. I love this game so far, it’s been a great deal of joy. For full disclosure: I paid for the $30 USD upgrade package from the gamepass version of the game to get the early access and have not paid full price yet. If script extender mods don’t work on the gamepass version of the game, I expect to purchase he game on Steam for whatever price it is at that time.

      I don’t disagree with you on several points, but that doesn’t mean a it’s bad game. As I already stated, I recommend the game and I feel it’s a good game.

      Here are some of my thoughts:

      The ships are cool but you don’t need it. You just fast travel with a loadingscreen everywhere anyway. I saw the inside of my ship twice in 10hrs (not counting the cockpit view).

      One of the things they said repeatedly during pre-release media is that the game has so many aspects to it that you can ignore entire parts of the game by design.

      Don’t care about ship combat? Then don’t take ship combat missions, that’s OK.

      Don’t care about outpost management? Then don’t make outposts, that’s OK.

      Not having to use your ship very often is a feature, not a bad thing. I’ve taken several combat missions and transport missions. I’ve messed around with smuggling a bit. I’ve explored around in my ship and gotten several random encounters. It’s a fun part of the game, but anyone who doesn’t enjoy it isn’t forced to go through it.

      Navigating the menus are a nightmare. Inventory management is difficult.

      This is probably my 2nd biggest complaint about the game. The UI design is, in my opinion, just not great to use on PC. It seems everything I want quick access to is about 2 menu levels deeper in than it should be…

      Laziest intro I’ve ever seen. “Hello stranger, take my ship. No reason. Ok cool. Bye.”

      Yeah, but this doesn’t represent the entirety of the game. Many of the quest lines have me very interested in them.

      Performance is shit. I get 40fps in towns with a “UFO rated” computer on userbenchmark. Nvidia card.

      This is probably my biggest complaint about the game. That said: I agree that the graphics/performance is not great, but please do not ever use nor support UserBenchmark. They are a joke, and cannot be trusted to actually review anything.

      Hardware Unboxed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaWZKPUidUY

      https://www.tomshardware.com/news/userbenchmark-benchmark-change-criticism-amd-intel,40032.html

      NPC’s teleporting around, getting stuck everywhere halfway through floor, corpses flopping around, ships clipping through stations.

      I expect many people will tell you “It’s a Bethesda game and it’s to be expected,” and they’ll be right. But you’re also in the right to keep calling Bethesda out on it. Giving massive companies a free pass on these things isn’t ok.

      That said, none of these glitches have broken the game for me. I’ve yet to had any game experience ruined by it. Most of them I chuckle at and then move on. If anything, I think it adds charm to the game. One of my favorite things to do in Skyrim was put pots on people’s heads and watch them walk around, or to shout at them and watch their plates get stuck in a chair and vibrate around. (I’ll refrain from commenting about certain Starfield-related shenanigans for spoiler reasons.)