Starfield - Fallout fallout that isn't ES6

Hateyou

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Aaron said:
This thread made me think of how game development seems to have peaked or to have at best plateaued about 10-15 years ago depending on how you look at it. Look at how small teams of dedicated developers made some of the awesome games of the late 90s, early 2000s, and how sequels a few years later were better and better, until they stopped being better, they became in many ways worse. You could say that graphics got better, and in some ways that is true, but then you have to ask, what is the point of better graphics if you have less talented 3D artists (looking at those weird ass stare faces I've seen countless examples of in this thread here).

Stories have ceased to inspire, but become bland. UI clunky. We laugh at cut corners, such as ships with no "centre" being immune to enemy fire. The list goes on, and it's true for most games now (BG3 seems to have been an exception, though it has it's issues too).

We point to things such as diversity hires, outsourcing and such as the reason, yet that also only goes "so far". At some point there seems to have simple been made a decision - at least amongst a great many studios - to simply not really give a shit any more. They churn through a mix of god knows what, publish the junk, pay the gaming press to praise it, and hope enough people buy the product and don't bother to refund it to recoup the costs and maybe a bit more on the side. Creating a quality product that fans will love for decades seems to have left the industry, with the exception of a few small indy devs.

Or am I just old and jaded?
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There are good games being released constantly. You’re posting this in a Bethesda thread which is a bloated company that outsources everything then cobbles it all together. Instead of preordering games just because it’s the next shiny thing by a big company that all the paid off journalists give 10/10 scores, you pick up games that have 90-95% ratings on steam by the gamers who actually pay for and play the games, you’ll find there are still great games being released by small studios all the time.

BG 3 is only an exception in that they are a bloated company with tons of resources but still actually made a good game. Now those circumstances are rare and are beating the odds.
 
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krismunich

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Tell me what you want but they ordered this "Creation Engine 2.0" on Wish. Or worse.
 
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Utnayan

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Aaron said:
Or am I just old and jaded?
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You aren't. We expected advancement in product and services/creative content / product and all of humanity has been dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. It's infiltrated everything. From news, gaming, movies. And as long as people keep buying it, the market conditioning will continue. IE: We landed people on the moon on the compute of a smart toaster in 1969, yet are now celebrating landing a rover on the moon (while 90% still fail) or having a decade long debate over whether to classify Pluto as a planet.

Was listening to the news while making breakfast and they now have consultants who will help you name your kid or just how much should you water your plants? Stay tuned and we will teach you how to breath and chew bubble gum at the same time. Zoomers are taking a college course in how to act in an office for fucks sake. The complete dumbification of the human race is in full force, and there is literally no denying that - and that will impact products and services across the board especially as Gen X starts to reach retirement.

Along with diversity hiring which is course correcting now at least, falling work ethic, financial goals being turned into having everything handed to people on a silver platter or expecting to make $200k a year flipping burgers for a "Livable wage" rather than getting off their sorry ass and bettering themselves over time to reach that status; quite honestly about 300 other independent variables - humanity has taken a giant leap back due to woke liberalism and feeding the bears.

I wouldn't call you old and jaded. I would call you intelligent for seeing what is happening to the world around us and passionate about why it would need to change before societal collapse and a giant reset button gets hit - which the latter will most likely be the final outcome before anything gets better.

Edit: To keep it on topic for Tuco Tuco - Still having fun with the game - however I think we all know now Bethesda is not going to pioneer any huge creative gaming shift. We will continue to see variations of Fallout, Skyrim, and maybe an off chance they work with a new engine at SOME point to keep up with the joneses. But why they would do that when everyone is buying it anyway as is, isn't going to happen any time in the near future. Point is, the folks talked about that made creativity and fun and reached for different avenues of making a mark, those folks are reaching retirement or have already sold out and living their dream on a tropical island. The replacements are exactly why we will not see anything but a decline in future games with a few Japanese developers doing something amazing (IE: Elden Ring)
 
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Gravel

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Utnayan said:
You aren't. We expected advancement in product and services/creative content / product and all of humanity has been dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. It's infiltrated everything. From news, gaming, movies. And as long as people keep buying it, the market conditioning will continue. IE: We landed people on the moon on the compute of a smart toaster in 1969, yet are now celebrating landing a rover on the moon (while 90% still fail) or having a decade long debate over whether to classify Pluto as a planet.

Was listening to the news while making breakfast and they now have consultants who will help you name your kid or just how much should you water your plants? Stay tuned and we will teach you how to breath and chew bubble gum at the same time. Zoomers are taking a college course in how to act in an office for fucks sake. The complete dumbification of the human race is in full force, and there is literally no denying that - and that will impact products and services across the board especially as Gen X starts to reach retirement.

Along with diversity hiring which is course correcting now at least, falling work ethic, financial goals being turned into having everything handed to people on a silver platter or expecting to make $200k a year flipping burgers for a "Livable wage" rather than getting off their sorry ass and bettering themselves over time to reach that status; quite honestly about 300 other independent variables - humanity has taken a giant leap back due to woke liberalism and feeding the bears.

I wouldn't call you old and jaded. I would call you intelligent for seeing what is happening to the world around us and passionate about why it would need to change before societal collapse and a giant reset button gets hit - which the latter will most likely be the final outcome before anything gets better.

Edit: To keep it on topic for Tuco Tuco - Still having fun with the game - however I think we all know now Bethesda is not going to pioneer any huge creative gaming shift. We will continue to see variations of Fallout, Skyrim, and maybe an off chance they work with a new engine at SOME point to keep up with the joneses. But why they would do that when everyone is buying it anyway as is, isn't going to happen any time in the near future. Point is, the folks talked about that made creativity and fun and reached for different avenues of making a mark, those folks are reaching retirement or have already sold out and living their dream on a tropical island. The replacements are exactly why we will not see anything but a decline in future games with a few Japanese developers doing something amazing (IE: Elden Ring)
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This is why I kept bringing up games developed 5-10 years ago that did space better than this. And that's constantly being met with "that's not this game." Yeah, no shit. But why did they release a lazy rehash of the same shit they did 20 years ago? Well, look no further than the people who demand literally no innovation.

I'm not even saying they needed to develop something new. Literally just borrow from other games and incorporate it into this. I guess that's just too much to ask from this tiny indie crew.
 
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Cybsled

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Aaron said:
(looking at those weird ass stare faces I've seen countless examples of in this thread here).
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Those faces aren't great, but for context those are the "we need 50 random NPCs walking around to make the city feel alive" faces. Any named NPC has a normal looking face.
 
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Bandwagon

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Just started playing this last night and made it about 3 hours in. It's.....fine, I guess. But my 30th time riding a wagon to my own execution in Helgen was still more fun. Maybe Starfield needs more nords.
 
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Void

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I was a little on the fence on this game for a while, but last night seems to have proven that I'm hooked.

I saw the video about stealing ships that land on a planet, specifically the one near the Abandoned Bionics Lab, and I literally spent from 6PM to 1AM last night trying to get it. Ended up stealing 2 different ships, one legit pirate ship (Ecliptic is the name maybe?) and one good guy ship (UNC or whatever their letters are), and also found a smuggler looking to hand off some cargo that I pretended I was there for and got free loot and credits. I'm actually hoping that comes up again later in the story since I obviously took someone else's shit and never delivered it, but I kind of doubt it will.

Never got the actual ship I wanted, but I think I know why now, and I also just got a ton of loot and had fun exploring all the procedurally generated buildings. Even watched some bad guys get dropped off by a ship that immediately took off again (to my sorrow), and I followed those guys in stealth for over 2000 (insert distance unit here) thinking they might be headed for something specific, as I've seen others get dropped off and immediately fight with an outpost, but nope, they literally just walked in a straight line forever until I murdered them from boredom.

I did find out that at least Andreja will leave me if I just blast a smuggler captain in the face without being attacked first. I'm assuming other companions would too, but not positive.

I literally accomplished nothing quest-wise, but it was a fucking blast and I completely lost track of time. And now that I looked into it more, I'll probably do the same thing tonight.
 
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Cybsled

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Companions leaving you gets a bit wonky sometimes. I wandered into a place with robots saying they will kill you if you get close. I got close and they attacked me. I destroyed the robots and then got a UC Bounty on my head and Andreja got pissed and left me lol
 
Tuco

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I got a 500 credit UC bounty for God knows why last night. I entered UC space and was challenged, I hit the "Get Up" button and watched my character get out of their chair like a three toed sloth while the UC ships were sending me increasingly threatening warnings. By the time I could sit back in my chair and respond to their hail they opened fire.
 
Cybsled

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That is another annoying UI feature - the button for answer hail and leave your seat is the same.
 
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Tuco

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Gravel said:
This is why I kept bringing up games developed 5-10 years ago that did space better than this. And that's constantly being met with "that's not this game." Yeah, no shit. But why did they release a lazy rehash of the same shit they did 20 years ago? Well, look no further than the people who demand literally no innovation.

I'm not even saying they needed to develop something new. Literally just borrow from other games and incorporate it into this. I guess that's just too much to ask from this tiny indie crew.
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The ship combat and space exploration is my #1 disappointment with the game. What's promising is that the ship combat mechanics aren't terrible once you git gud, it's just the design of the space parts don't support the kind of "Space Combat/Exploration: Bethesda Edition" gameplay mode we expected. There's a lot of really obvious ways that could be helped but from my perspective the biggest ones are:

* Requiring some in-ship navigation to get to new stars/planets/moons
* Creating space areas with real exploration in a classic Bethesda sense
* Gating access to star systems on being able to defeat opponents


I expected something like, a quest needs you to go to Procyon II in the Procyon A star system that is level 30. You haven't been there yet, and need to travel to two star systems to get there. You jumped to the first one and get a random event, then jump to the next star system and get a fixed combat event (ex: pirate blockade) that you need to defeat to unlock the Procyon A star system. That fixed event is too tough, so you need to reload or respawn and spend some time increasing your ship combat lethality before you can make it to Procyon II. You level up Pilot, unlock Class B ship, farm some creds, then come back with a battleship and roll the pirate blockade and unlock a new star system.

Starfield doesn't have this kind of encounter system (since everything is random and you can just grav warp away from combat), so the space combat is more like a minigame you have to deal with in certain quests or one you can pursue in side missions rather than being a core gameplay mode.

"Mods will fix it" is probably true in this case, but I guess I don't really care since I'm getting enough space combat anyway, even if it's not well organized.
 
Utnayan

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Tuco said:
What's promising is that the ship combat mechanics aren't terrible once you git gud
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I do not think there is really anything here to git gud at really though. It's a classic arcade space shooter at that point. Slow down, turn to acquire target, speed up half way and fire.

Now the cool aspect of space combat that I think should have been leveraged more in Starfield is the ability to target the engines, cripple the ship, and board it. Aside from a few instances so far (At least in my initial playthrough of which I am getting side-tracked on Bounty's and Faction quests) there could have been a ton more done here. Invading large capital ships (Unless this happens and I have not gotten to it yet) with some really good creative stories for this aspect once on the ship and mix/match some feature sets when on the ship.

But this is Bethesda. Community creates that, they found a way to monetize it, and then come out with 4 remasters.
 
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Vorph

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There are legendary ships, but you cannot board them even if you disable all their systems. Just don't even try when you come across one, they do huge damage if you get close enough to target systems. Much easier to just reverse thrusters and wreck them with 4000m range particle cannons.

Loot from them is shit too but they give almost 2k xp so at least there's that.
 
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