Starfield Dev's getting a little petty on social media

[UnknownSouljer]

All opinions are subjective, but you are trying to frame the opinion that Starfield is horrrible as objective.

I highlighted the fact that this is a contention you're explicitly making. I'm explicitly stating that objective critique exists.

What? I even responded to it. People who eat MCD food don't think it's bad, they think it tastes great. Some know they shouldn't because it's bad for your health, but that doesn't mean they think it is bad in general.

No, they think both. McDonald's is primarily about cost and food addiction.
I work with youth kids, and also when they've moved up into college age. The reason any of them go is because of money. It's never out of enjoyment of the food. It's specifically dealing with bad food to take care of an immediate need. It's purely utilitarian, not out of enjoyment.

But the thing is that many steam reviewers are apparently happily eating Starfield and then claim it is a turd. I'm sorry, but if someone spends 100 hours in a game and then turns around and tells me it is a turd, I don't believe they are being genuine.
To reference your world famous MCD analogy. It's as if someone eats McDonalds every day but when asked to review it says: "food is terrible, don't eat there"

This was brought up specifically in the Starfield thread; a big criticism that fanboys make is: "oh, you only played it for 20 hours, you can't make an accurate critique."
Now when people play a game for 150 hours to go through every aspect and then call it bad, the turn around response is: "well there is no way for you to say you didn't enjoy a game that you invested all that time into"?

Play time is NOT a reflection of enjoyment, only thoroughness. If anything it shows that those players gave the game more of a chance, played past the point in which others could argue "you haven't reached the good part" and then still said: "no it's still bad".

You can't have it both ways. This is especially in light of the fact that the game is heavily padded. If you want to "explore" every aspect of the games systems (that is to say ship building, exploration, combat, base building, marriage, companions, main story + universe changes, etc), the game by its nature requires a lot of time to do all of that. And the only way to accurately critique all of those things is to play this heavily padded game. I think Dan_D 's criticism highlights all of this rather well. And he is arguably more of a fan of this game than not.

Oh and about McDonald's, watch "Supersize Me". Another demonstration of thoroughness; eating McDonald's everyday for 30 days 3 meals a day to get to the point that was already known at the beginning: that McDonald's is bad (yes, including the taste of the food, Which Morgan Spurlock had trouble keeping down during the film). Or would you try and make the argument that he must have liked it to spend all that time thoroughly researching a topic? Because if the answer here is: "yes", then we really are done. There is no place to meet eye to eye.

It started with me not understanding why they hate it so much and why is it considered much worse than Skyrim, "It's bad M'kay" is not a meaningful answer to that question.

Which is what? All opinions are subjective, I want to know the objective reasons through which people arrive at the opinion that it is trash.

That's been done repeatedly in this thread, and no reason will satisfy you. If you want a full 8 hour breakdown that will piece by piece discuss why the game is bad, here you go:

View: https://youtu.be/-UOhCjB0AEI?si=3I6vQ2ulf9F1yrnh

However, I doubt you'll watch it, not because of it's length, but because your interest in figuring out why people think it's a bad game isn't that deep. You're upset that people don't like what you like, while not wanting to register the "opinions" levied against it. You're spending more time defending the game than you are listening.

The game has no design document, is a mishmash of systems, doesn't allow for any for any actual RPG mechanics (everything is false choice, yes, sarcastic yes, bad choice that the game will deny you, or do this quest later), doesn't have a worthwhile story, doesn't have meaningful quest design, doesn't have good mechanics. It's an empty world with nothing to do in it. There is no characterization. There is nothing that you can do inside the game world that matters (I'm referring to meaningful choice, not the hero's journey as it's presented in this game). All morality is a binary choice. Even the exploration serves no purpose passed: collect the stuff and look at the pretty vista.

It feeds you down the pipe that Todd Howard and team want to force you down, which fine, fair enough. But then it has nothing of any remote interest to say.

The fact that the engine sucks and more or less forces the player through often 3 loading screens at a time is just the frosting on this bad game. But in terms of engine and mechanics those are both fair criticisms to be levied against it. As much as you try and compare that to ME1 or Outer Worlds, the frequency of loading screens is nowhere near as oppressive as Starfield. Especially when paired with the very frequent, unskippable cut-scenes for every one of those actions.

And this is also again to say nothing about optimization or level of bugs (which for a Bethesda game is pretty good. Thanks to Microsoft forcing a year of bug fixing). Everything I've talked about up to this point is just the content of the game itself.

View attachment 623160

Or also: "Stop hating what I like".

 

[Flogger23m]

Immersive sim is a genre of games, it has nothing to do with being exact simulations of reality like a flight sim for example.

"An immersive sim is a video game genre that emphasizes player choice. Its core, defining trait is the use of simulated systems that respond to a variety of player actions which, combined with a comparatively broad array of player abilities, allow the game to support varied and creative solutions to problems"

And that is more or less what I am talking about. It is a loose term that doesn't define anything. "A defining trait is the use of simulated systems that respond to a variety of player actions" describes almost every video game out there. All games simulate some type of system, and most games offer some type of alternative solution. Varied outcomes again defines probably 80% or more of all games out there. Only the most linear games, like most Call of Duty campaigns, would not fall under this definition.

Yes, this is a trend and not just in videogames, people listen to their favorite "influencer" and pass on their second hand opinion as if it was their own. So one person missing the mark (or deliberately going for hate bait) can skew the entire perception of a product. Of course you could argue that the steam reviewers must have played the game so it is not second hand opinion, but how many of those negative reviews are by those with 100+ hours in the game? I find it laughable that someone spends 100 hours in a game that they don't like or enjoy. Not recommending a game after getting 100 hours of entertainment out of it, is pretty bad consumer advice. And also how many of those reviews are just pettyness because it's trendy now to dogpile on Bethesda? Or written after 10 minutes in the game based in confirmation bias? Of course there must be some people who genuinely dislike the game, but I doubt anyone who enjoyed previous Bethesda RPGs would fall into that category. And if you are giving a "not recommended" to a game after spending 150 hours in it, just what are you doing? You are either lying and enjoyed the game, or a mazochist for playing a terrible game for that long.

Adding onto this, I think it is getting some extra disdain because it is not on Sony consoles. While they are probably not writing Steam reviews, they are probably dropping lots of negative comments on Youtube, dislikes and whatnot.

 

[alxlwson]

I loved Starfield. 240hrs before walking through the light. Didn't touch outpost building.
Decided not to NG+ until the xpack.
Have a few side quests that are broken because NPC is off the map. I keep checking in to see if they are back where they are supposed to be but not yet.
I'm excited to see what is to come.

 

[M76]

And that is more or less what I am talking about. It is a loose term that doesn't define anything. "A defining trait is the use of simulated systems that respond to a variety of player actions" describes almost every video game out there. All games simulate some type of system, and most games offer some type of alternative solution. Varied outcomes again defines probably 80% or more of all games out there. Only the most linear games, like most Call of Duty campaigns, would not fall under this definition.

The core concept of immersive sims is that problems don't have a defined solution instead you have a variety of tools at your disposal to solve problems, and most problems will have multiple solutions. For example Tomb Raider or Senua's Sacrifice are not immersive sims because every puzzle relies on you guessing the exact solution the level designer had in mind. Even if you can come up with an alternative that should logically work, it won't.

Adding onto this, I think it is getting some extra disdain because it is not on Sony consoles. While they are probably not writing Steam reviews, they are probably dropping lots of negative comments on Youtube, dislikes and whatnot.

Even back in the day when console exclusives were very common it never occured to me to negatively review games just because they are on the "wrong" platform.

 

[Flogger23m]

But the thing is that many steam reviewers are apparently happily eating Starfield and then claim it is a turd. I'm sorry, but if someone spends 100 hours in a game and then turns around and tells me it is a turd, I don't believe they are being genuine.

I've played plenty of underwhelming or bad games to completion. That is how I know they're bad. Some games are so bad that I can't finish them, largely due to bugs. Otherwise I finish most games.

Even back in the day when console exclusives were very common it never occured to me to negatively review games just because they are on the "wrong" platform.

Console fanboys can be crazy. Even Nvidia/AMD fanboys can.

 

[Lakados]

Listen everybody the point of the thread was more about the canned and tired comments the developers were making in response to bad reviews.

Even a shitty game will have people that love it, and it’s been how many years and I’m still butthurt over Anthem 2.0 I loved that game but terrible management and piss poor communication skills killed it before it had a chance, it was just a baby…

Starfield isn’t bad, it’s sold stupidly well, and is my all financial measures an overwhelming success. The game just isn’t great and in a year of great games being pretty good just doesn’t cut it.

But the thread was intended to showcase the developers response and lack there of. Not a we’ll take that under advisement, no we’ll try to fix that in the next patch, not even some empty promises of fixing some issues in a future content patch or DLC.
Just some hired PR firm to reply to every reasonable post with some canned nonsense that had little to no grounding in reality.

Any middle of the road review that summed up the game as Skyrim in Space take it or leave it. Bethesda basically took any score and knocked it down a full 2/10 with just their comments, 7/10 from the reviewer became a 5/10 because somebody decided to spend money on imaginary damage control instead of approving overtime for a weekend and banging out some patches.

Example:
We noticed during our gameplay many of the generated conversation trees go nowhere and do nothing, it’s like the generator was told to cut itself short before it could finish a conversation.

Helpful response:
Yes we’ve noticed some of the auto generated content feels incomplete. It’s a new system and we’re fine tuning it, we hope to address this in a future patch.
(It acknowledges the issue exists, validates the complaint, and lets the person know their issue has been heard without actually promising anything.)

The responses we got:
Depending on your play style you don’t need to talk to them at all, if you don’t like the conversation trees have you tried a different play style that avoids them.
(Doesn’t acknowledge the issue, provides no indication the players complaint was heard, and attacks the players chosen play style in the process)

 

[M76]

I've played plenty of underwhelming or bad games to completion. That is how I know they're bad. Some games are so bad that I can't finish them, largely due to bugs. Otherwise I finish most games.

The only games I ever play to completion are the ones that give me at least some enjoyment. Why would I play a game I don't find enjoyable? And if I enjoyed a game I'm not going to turn around and not recommend it. I might rate it a 4/10 or in extreme cases 3/10. But if I'm outright going to say "don't play this, it's trash" then you can be sure I didn't finish it. Unless it was super short.

Some say you can only judge a game if you completed it, I think that's nonsense. You don't have to eat an entire bowl of poo soup to tell it tastes like shit.

Console fanboys can be crazy. Even Nvidia/AMD fanboys can.

Yes I could actually see them review bombing for not including DLSS OOB.

 

[M76]

Listen everybody the point of the thread was more about the canned and tired comments the developers were making in response to bad reviews.

We moved away from discussing the responses because there is nothing really to discuss there. I think everybody agrees that it is stupid and misguided from bethesda to try and explain away any criticism.

I enjoyed the crap out of Starfield, but it has a lot of issues, some of which I could fix by tinkering. That's not how a game should work that I need to fix it with mods, script editing and using console commands. But I also don't want them to abandon the game like bioware abandoned Mass Effect Andromeda. I think all the unfiltered negativity without acknowledging that Starfield is not a bad game is not helpful at all and we risk pushing Bethesda to abandoning it. While also discouraging other devs from making anything similar.

 

[Bowman15]

The developer's will not listen to anyone because they are able to make a shit ton of money releasing a buggy mess of a game with decades old graphics, while gamers like in this thread swallow it whole and then go on defensive rants. The don't discourage developers angle is a weak threat as they have been doing it forever or you have no clue who Bethesda is.

 

[silentcircuit]

None of those games were awesome. Todd Howard is a fraud and they never made anything great under him.

New Vegas was... And they didn't make it.

 

[Lakados]

We moved away from discussing the responses because there is nothing really to discuss there. I think everybody agrees that it is stupid and misguided from bethesda to try and explain away any criticism.

I enjoyed the crap out of Starfield, but it has a lot of issues, some of which I could fix by tinkering. That's not how a game should work that I need to fix it with mods, script editing and using console commands. But I also don't want them to abandon the game like bioware abandoned Mass Effect Andromeda. I think all the unfiltered negativity without acknowledging that Starfield is not a bad game is not helpful at all and we risk pushing Bethesda to abandoning it. While also discouraging other devs from making anything similar.

Sad thing with Andromeda, it was a pretty good game a good 6+ months later by the time I got around to it. But between its poor reception and how terribly Anthem went that was a kick to the dick for the whole BioWare department.

BioWare is a classic tale of a great team and company who lacked the ability to scale up.

Anthem was such an expensive boondoggle that it forced EA to scrap all their “live service” plans and bring everything back to the drawing board. It’s also going to need heavy restructuring, their teams are too spread out globally and their inter team communication is dog shit bad.

I had a colleague who was working on Anthem, and before the game even launched the bad communication caused them to basically build the game twice. Because different teams had very different ideas of what they thought they were building and in one case he swore they paid to have the games entire map done by two different teams at the same time because both thought it had been assigned to them and they both got it to near completion (like 6 months of work) before anybody in management realized what the hell was happening.

EA gets a lot of deserved shit for buying and killing franchises, but it’s not for meddling, it’s from a lack there of. BioWare died because they couldn’t scale up from their small team that built us the things we loved to the large multi-team monster that kept fumbling over its own feet.

I’m really hoping that Microsoft follows through on their plans for smaller first party titles built by smaller teams. And focusing their talent internally.

They were talking about bringing their studios inward, so building a big art department that could be building assets for multiple games at any point, building an audio studio for music and voice again for multiple studios at once, their own in house Engines, etc… The hope is they can leverage their size and do away with the hire, contract, fire development cycle and instead build specialized departments they could just keep busy all year under a larger Microsoft Games banner. How much of that is real and how much was managerial dream work is well beyond my paygrade.

 

[horrorshow]

Finally went and uninstalled Starfield (Needed the space for Outer Worlds OG and Sekiro)....

Shame really, hopefully in a year or so most of the glaring issues will be remedied and the mod scene will have matured

 

[Vegas P11]

Listen everybody the point of the thread was more about the canned and tired comments the developers were making in response to bad reviews.

Even a shitty game will have people that love it, and it’s been how many years and I’m still butthurt over Anthem 2.0 I loved that game but terrible management and piss poor communication skills killed it before it had a chance, it was just a baby…

Starfield isn’t bad, it’s sold stupidly well, and is my all financial measures an overwhelming success. The game just isn’t great and in a year of great games being pretty good just doesn’t cut it.

But the thread was intended to showcase the developers response and lack there of. Not a we’ll take that under advisement, no we’ll try to fix that in the next patch, not even some empty promises of fixing some issues in a future content patch or DLC.
Just some hired PR firm to reply to every reasonable post with some canned nonsense that had little to no grounding in reality.

Any middle of the road review that summed up the game as Skyrim in Space take it or leave it. Bethesda basically took any score and knocked it down a full 2/10 with just their comments, 7/10 from the reviewer became a 5/10 because somebody decided to spend money on imaginary damage control instead of approving overtime for a weekend and banging out some patches.

Example:
We noticed during our gameplay many of the generated conversation trees go nowhere and do nothing, it’s like the generator was told to cut itself short before it could finish a conversation.

Helpful response:
Yes we’ve noticed some of the auto generated content feels incomplete. It’s a new system and we’re fine tuning it, we hope to address this in a future patch.
(It acknowledges the issue exists, validates the complaint, and lets the person know their issue has been heard without actually promising anything.)

The responses we got:
Depending on your play style you don’t need to talk to them at all, if you don’t like the conversation trees have you tried a different play style that avoids them.
(Doesn’t acknowledge the issue, provides no indication the players complaint was heard, and attacks the players chosen play style in the process)

Thanks for trying to get the thread back on track.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Listen everybody the point of the thread was more about the canned and tired comments the developers were making in response to bad reviews.

Even a shitty game will have people that love it, and it’s been how many years and I’m still butthurt over Anthem 2.0 I loved that game but terrible management and piss poor communication skills killed it before it had a chance, it was just a baby…

Starfield isn’t bad, it’s sold stupidly well, and is my all financial measures an overwhelming success. The game just isn’t great and in a year of great games being pretty good just doesn’t cut it.

I agree we're far from the original thread topic, but the issues with Starfield go far beyond generated content and load screens. None of the criticisms that I think are most valid or most interesting care about the terrible performance issues (lack of optimization), how old the engine is, or anything like that. Those are issues to be sure, but not the central problem(s) with the game.

And I don't think Bethesda has ever had it in them to go in and fix all of their systems to make them cohesive as well as give their stories a rewrite (as well as just simply having more content in their very sparse hubs). We may be able to expect less bugs, maybe even some performance enhancements, but not much else going forward. The only way the game is going to "get gud" going forward is likely the mod community doing all the work that Bethesda refuses to, either from inability (skill, vision, money), arrogance ("this is already the best game that this can be!"), or laziness.

Still, I expect most of the community doesn't care either way. As you noted Bethesda sold a million-bazillion copies. Negative opinion of actual players (as opposed to people just trying to review bomb) is likely in the minority and sad to say the player base is okay with mediocre if it's pretty and relatively bug free. It's basically the Star Wars sequels of games (critically reviled, but average people think it's "fine" to "meh" and don't strongly care one way or the other). The negative impact from this game will mostly be from the future, where people will look back and it will be either not-memorable or memorable in a 'meh' way (fitting under most peoples: "it was fine" category). Whether that will affect future Bethesda sales or not... well it likely will not.

I expect that TES 6 will drop and people will also buy a million-bazillion copies and won't even think about Starfield or Fallout 76.

 

[M76]

Sad thing with Andromeda, it was a pretty good game a good 6+ months later by the time I got around to it. But between its poor reception and how terribly Anthem went that was a kick to the dick for the whole BioWare department.

Andromeda was a pretty good game even at release, I pre-ordered it and played it right away, just as Starfield the occasional glitch was presented in compilation videos and made into memes. But MEA did a great many things right, while it had a few issues. Again, very similar to Starfield.

The difference with Anthem is that they absolutely deserved the kick in the groin for that. It was ill advised to chase the live service looter shooter trend with a studio that only ever made single player story focused games. Everybody not blinded by $ signs could've seen that it will end in disaster.

BioWare is a classic tale of a great team and company who lacked the ability to scale up.

I don't think Bioware was a small team when they put out 5 successful AAA games in 6 years. It was sitting on their ivory thrones thinking they made it after ME3 that did them in. From what I've read that they were so confident in Anthem being a sure fire hit that the internal codename for the game was "Dylan". Such arrogance. Apparently ME:A was also made twice, the original team put on it basically wasted 4 years on pre-production doing nothing of worth, that's when they brought in the B team who basically made the game in 2 years from scratch. Considering that it is even more amazing that it turned out as good as it was.

They were talking about bringing their studios inward, so building a big art department that could be building assets for multiple games at any point, building an audio studio for music and voice again for multiple studios at once, their own in house Engines, etc… The hope is they can leverage their size and do away with the hire, contract, fire development cycle and instead build specialized departments they could just keep busy all year under a larger Microsoft Games banner. How much of that is real and how much was managerial dream work is well beyond my paygrade.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Bringing different teams under one umbrella to work together with shared resources. It's a backstabber's paradise. Having ready made assets is good, but not in house. There is a stigma attached to using assets from libraries now, that needs to end. What game developers doing is not sustainable. When you need a chair you don't design and manufacture one, you go to ikea. So why on earth would you want to design and make virtual chairs from the grounds up? Just go to the asset store and buy them. This could apply to almost all common assets. A huge chunk of resources are wasted here, on nothing else but ego.

 

[M76]

I agree we're far from the original thread topic, but the issues with Starfield go far beyond generated content and load screens. None of the criticisms that I think are most valid or most interesting care about the terrible performance issues (lack of optimization), how old the engine is, or anything like that. Those are issues to be sure, but not the central problem(s) with the game.

I think going forward generated content is not just unavoidable, but a good thing. I don't want 10 year long development cycles for games offering 15 hours of escapism. The only way to make bigger games with modern graphics fidelity is by incorporating generated content. I for one can't wait for the generative AI revolution in gaming. It can't happen soon enough. Sure there will be bad ones using the tech, just as with every tool, you can use it poorly or use it well. But I wasn't this hopeful about the future of gaming in a long time as with the potential on tap with generative AI.

And I don't think Bethesda has ever had it in them to go in and fix all of their systems to make them cohesive as well as give their stories a rewrite (as well as just simply having more content in their very sparse hubs). We may be able to expect less bugs, maybe even some performance enhancements, but not much else going forward. The only way the game is going to "get gud" going forward is likely the mod community doing all the work that Bethesda refuses to, either from inability (skill, vision, money), arrogance ("this is already the best game that this can be!"), or laziness.

What I don't understand is why would anyone buy a Bethesda game expecting it to be completely different from the 5 previous games they put out. I think not switching engines is absolutely laziness on their part, I said as much when F76 was about to drop.
But since I enjoyed all their previous games (F76 being the exception) I had no reason to doubt this one either. And I still got my money's worth of fun, even if I'm disappointed at the lack of progress.

Still, I expect most of the community doesn't care either way. As you noted Bethesda sold a million-bazillion copies. Negative opinion of actual players (as opposed to people just trying to review bomb) is likely in the minority and sad to say the player base is okay with mediocre if it's pretty and relatively bug free. It's basically the Star Wars sequels of games (critically reviled, but average people think it's "fine" to "meh" and don't strongly care one way or the other). The negative impact from this game will mostly be from the future, where people will look back and it will be either not-memorable or memorable in a 'meh' way (fitting under most peoples: "it was fine" category). Whether that will affect future Bethesda sales or not... well it likely will not.

I think the sequel trilogy is not a good example. Because Bethesda never had an original trilogy. There was no jump from being brilliant to being garbage, their game engine was always crap, their main stories always boring and uninteresting. If anything what we see here is the exact opposite. As if Star Wars started with the sequel trilogy, and people expected original trilogy quality after that for some reason.

I expect that TES 6 will drop and people will also buy a million-bazillion copies and won't even think about Starfield or Fallout 76.

I absolutely will buy it, why wouldn't I? I got 150 hours of fun from Starfield already, I wish more games offered that much value.

 

[MaZa]

I still don't get all the hate Starfield is getting. Blanket statements like "it is trash and boring" are meaningless to me. How is it worse than Fallout 4 or Skyrim? To me it seems to be an improvement on almost all fronts compared to those games.

I think it plays great as an FPS and as an immersive sim also. For a game to be immersive it doesn't have to allow the player to alter the story or kill quest giving NPCs. I think Alien Isolation is one of the best immersive sims out there even though you can't influence the story in it at all.

I'd understand all the upturned noses if we had a plethora of games that already exist that are better open world space games than Starfield. But compared to nothing Starfield is a helluva lot better. I take it with open arms and want more like it. Sure it has things that could be much improved, but which game hasn't? Is it buggy? No more than Skyrim was. So why is Skyrim adored almost universally while this gets so much hate? I see no reasonable explanation outside of gamers becoming spoiled brats who sperg out at the slightest inconvenience or when reality doesn't meet their often unrealistic expectations exactly on the head.

The game feels EMPTY. In Fallout and Skyrim, despite the dated engine issues, it had an interesting world for you to immerse yourself in and filled to the brim with stuff. When you receive a quest in either game what usually happens is that while traveling to the end of that quest you see new interesting stuff all the time. Whats that? A cave? Well since I am here... This times 10. And what results is nifty new loot, some interesting piece of lore, perhaps completely new line of quests and so on. There is always something new to find and explore that you sometimes forget why you were traveling this way in the first place. This feeling of adventure doesn't really happen with Starfield, not to this extent. Bethesda RPG's games have been described as "wide as on ocean, deep as a puddle". Personally I thought that was bit unfair but for Starfield that description is spot on.

 

[M76]

The game feels EMPTY. In Fallout and Skyrim, despite the dated engine issues, it had an interesting world for you to immerse yourself in and filled to the brim with stuff. When you receive a quest in either game what usually happens is that while traveling to the end of that quest you see new interesting stuff all the time. Whats that? A cave? Well since I am here... This times 10. And what results is nifty new loot, some interesting piece of lore, perhaps completely new line of quests and so on. There is always something new to find and explore that you sometimes forget why you were traveling this way in the first place. This feeling of adventure doesn't really happen with Starfield, not to this extent. Bethesda RPG's games have been described as "wide as on ocean, deep as a puddle". Personally I thought that was bit unfair but for Starfield that description is spot on.

I actually feel the exact opposite. In Oblivion and Skyrim and to some extent even if Fallout, the endless fields of caves and ruins got repetitive very fast. The same design re-purposed with slightly different layout for the tenth time, with the same or similar puzzles inside. It felt like check boxes to clear instead of actual exploration. There was rarely anything unexpected in these.

If my only motivation to explore something is "since I'm here" that's not very interesting is it? I'm not invested at that point, it is just grind. In Starfield even before landing on planets, I took a gander at their scans to see if it is worth my time, and even if I landed and saw nothing that immediately stood then out I took off again, without bothering to explore on foot. Just as I would IRL. But when I've seen an interesting structure from the distance then I was already invested. I did not encounter any repetition this way.

I already mentioned before, that wanting to explore every last corner of every planet is based on the thinking that everything is put there for your benefit and it is not possible to just have a planet with nothing noteworthy on it. I approach games with an expectation of realism, and try to immerse myself in them. If I'd approach it with the presumption that it is just a game therefore everything must have a purpose for the player, then I'm already less immersed. I want to emphasize that I didn't adopt this approach specifically for Starfield, this is what I always do, in every game. Do and act as if it was real. Nobody in reality would land on every planet and walk from pole to pole, to see what god has put there for them to find. Then write negative reviews because a barren rock planet was just a barren rock planet.

I very much prefer this more realistic design where not everything has my name written on it. Even if it is unintentional and just a side effect of generated content. I think the game would be much more bland and boring if we removed all the generated planets from it and only allowed the player to land at tailor made quest locations.

 

[ManofGod]

I actually feel the exact opposite. In Oblivion and Skyrim and to some extent even if Fallout, the endless fields of caves and ruins got repetitive very fast. The same design re-purposed with slightly different layout for the tenth time, with the same or similar puzzles inside. It felt like check boxes to clear instead of actual exploration. There was rarely anything unexpected in these.

If my only motivation to explore something is "since I'm here" that's not very interesting is it? I'm not invested at that point, it is just grind. In Starfield even before landing on planets, I took a gander at their scans to see if it is worth my time, and even if I landed and saw nothing that immediately stood then out I took off again, without bothering to explore on foot. Just as I would IRL. But when I've seen an interesting structure from the distance then I was already invested. I did not encounter any repetition this way.

I already mentioned before, that wanting to explore every last corner of every planet is based on the thinking that everything is put there for your benefit and it is not possible to just have a planet with nothing noteworthy on it. I approach games with an expectation of realism, and try to immerse myself in them. If I'd approach it with the presumption that it is just a game therefore everything must have a purpose for the player, then I'm already less immersed. I want to emphasize that I didn't adopt this approach specifically for Starfield, this is what I always do, in every game. Do and act as if it was real. Nobody in reality would land on every planet and walk from pole to pole, to see what god has put there for them to find. Then write negative reviews because a barren rock planet was just a barren rock planet.

I very much prefer this more realistic design where not everything has my name written on it. Even if it is unintentional and just a side effect of generated content. I think the game would be much more bland and boring if we removed all the generated planets from it and only allowed the player to land at tailor made quest locations.

I much prefer Red Dead Redemption 2 because of the immersive story line as well as the interactive day to day sort of mundane life choices. I have never really finished a Bethesda RPG and to be honest, I tried, briefly, Starfield but lost interest pretty quickly. In fact, I think I have played through the entire RDR2 story line at least 5 times.

 

[Flogger23m]

Andromeda was a pretty good game even at release, I pre-ordered it and played it right away, just as Starfield the occasional glitch was presented in compilation videos and made into memes. But MEA did a great many things right, while it had a few issues. Again, very similar to Starfield.

Not quite. There were parts of the ship that would drop my frame rate to around 15 or so. I particularly remember a ladder that would kill frame rates. Absolute slide show. I would consider that to be more than a minor issue. Part way through my play through they did release a patch and that did a good job fixing a number of those slide show sections although did not entirely fix all performance related issues.

Once patched I didn't see too many bugs either. Yeah there were some small ones, but not atypical of most games.

 

[mvmiller12]

Mass Effect Andromeda was alright. I enjoyed playing it, and was looking forward to more stories in that series. I did not feel as involved in the story of it as I had felt in the prior Mass Effect games, but it was still a worthy purchase and play. I thought NiER: Automata, which was out at about the same time, was a superior game to it, though.

I hate replaying my RPGs. I got the story and would like to import my choices into the sequel if that's a thing. I hate doing the same quests over again, and I have no interest in creating new characters and making different choices. I even had no interest in exploring the different origin stories for Dragon Age: Origins -- My human Circle mage warden was fine. That being said, NiER: Automata made me play it to the credits as 2B... play it again (doing mostly the same quests) as 9S... and then play it yet again as 2A (though thankfully in mostly new scenarios for this 3rd one). I found parts of it very annoying to play, but I was very invested in the story and it is to this day the only game that has ever made me cry. Parts of the soundtrack still make me tear up a bit.

 

[Flogger23m]

I hate replaying my RPGs.

I wouldn't say hate, but I rarely replay games so I agree. For the Fallout games I liked quick saving, would make a choice, and if I was interested enough in seeing alternative actions would reload and view the different outcome. Then reload to my original choice. I just don't have enough time to replay 70-90% of the same game again. I almost always prefer to play something new. The longer your game is, the more down time there is in the game, and the less likely I will replay it.

Mass Effect games were different because they were shorter and generally had less filler. But I only went through ME3 once, have yet to play ME1 Remastered. I may never, as I went through the original at least 4 or so times.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

This feeling of adventure doesn't really happen with Starfield, not to this extent. Bethesda RPG's games have been described as "wide as on ocean, deep as a puddle". Personally I thought that was bit unfair but for Starfield that description is spot on.

Bethesda games earned this reputation because "you can do anything" but also "everything you do has no consequence". In Skyrim as an example, you can join every faction, and kill every person. It changes nothing in the story (even murdering every person in the factions you've joined doesn't make them dislike you or be hostile to you on sight). There are no real moral decisions past either the "good option" (both gameplay wise and choice wise) and the "hilariously evil, absurd bad option".

In other words it's binary without real choice between two decisions that individuals would struggle with because no one IRL would detonate a nuke and kill everyone in a town for no good reason. Other than insanity of course. I mean a rational person... basically the choice to do this in FO3 was an option no one ever picked other than just to see it, and then reload another save. Because why would you? It doesn't benefit the player at all and it serves no actual story design purpose.
There isn't even a tacked on reason like: killing people in this town with a nuke will save some other group of people; which then actually could've been an interesting moral choice about trying to decide which group of people to save. But no, just set off this nuke and kill a town to farm kekw's.

So as it has been said, you can splash around in their big sandbox but there is no depth. And for the most part Bethesda fans have greatly enjoyed just putting in mods and doing random nonsense in the game engine. Or in other words things unrelated to the games' story, choices, etc.

 

[Flogger23m]

In other words it's binary without real choice between two decisions that individuals would struggle with because no one IRL would detonate a nuke and kill everyone in a town for no good reason. Other than insanity of course. I mean a rational person... basically the choice to do this in FO3 was an option no one ever picked other than just to see it, and then reload another save. Because why would you? It doesn't benefit the player at all and it serves no actual story design purpose.
There isn't even a tacked on reason like: killing people in this town with a nuke will save some other group of people; which then actually could've been an interesting moral choice about trying to decide which group of people to save. But no, just set off this nuke and kill a town to farm kekw's.

So as it has been said, you can splash around in their big sandbox but there is no depth. And for the most part Bethesda fans have greatly enjoyed just putting in mods and doing random nonsense in the game engine. Or in other words things unrelated to the games' story, choices, etc.

Well that is a noteworthy difference. Yes, few people would do it but it does give you the option and it does have some impact. A lot of players like myself obviously grow attached to Megaton over the course of the game, so setting it off will have an impact on players. It served as a launching point for much of the story and erasing that from the map severs that connection some people built with it. Not all choices need to be 100% rational or beneficial in every possibly way.

No every decision needs to have a draw back or result in a cost benefit assessment. It actually becomes cliche if every decision falls onto that. Going in a different direction just because you can is often enough reason. It is best to balance both though. Mass Effect 1-3 typically had some type of moral cost to some bigger decisions. Others were more meaningless, like punching a reporter. Both types of decisions were a nice touch.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Well that is a noteworthy difference. Yes, few people would do it but it does give you the option and it does have some impact. A lot of players like myself obviously grow attached to Megaton over the course of the game, so setting it off will have an impact on players. It served as a launching point for much of the story and erasing that from the map severs that connection some people built with it. Not all choices need to be 100% rational or beneficial in every possibly way.

I think you missed what I'm saying.
Destroying or not destroying Megaton in Fallout 3 is a false choice. There is no reason to ever do it, it may as well have never been an option in the first place.
That is the nature of literally all decisions in Bethesda games. There is the "best option" and there is the "comically bad/evil option" and that's it.

No every decision needs to have a draw back or result in a cost benefit assessment. It actually becomes cliche if every decision falls onto that. Going in a different direction just because you can is often enough reason. It is best to balance both though. Mass Effect 1-3 typically had some type of moral cost to some bigger decisions. Others were more meaningless, like punching a reporter. Both types of decisions were a nice touch.

Mass Effect, sad to say is also similar. Though I like ME's story, there were also not really any "true" choices.

There is no exploration of morality either in Bethesda titles or ME titles. An actual moral decision would be something like "The Trolley Problem". But in both ME and Bethesda titles, it's literally: "do you kill a whole city for no reason or not?". That isn't really a choice. It's being evil to be evil, that's the level of depth of morality in those titles.

Even if you do choose the evil choice in an ME series game, it has zero repercussions. If you for whatever reason choose to kill off the council in ME1, they don't have any bearing in the plot in ME2. And in ME3, they're essentially a carbon copy of the council from ME1, but with slightly different character boxes (they aren't even named either way!). If you kill the Rachni Queen just to be a dick, then the same thing also happens where you magically have a Cerberus built one in ME3. Even if you want to be a comically evil character in the ME series, it's all a false choice anyway. Bioware didn't even bother to attempt to write an actual 'evil' outcome. You basically get to run around being a dick, but no one in universe even accounts for you or your bad choices or treats you different. Meanwhile the outcome is literally the same either way.

The other choices that do have some level of bearing again aren't really choices. Similar to the megaton example, It doesn't benefit the player at all to kill off characters. Doing so just lets you explore less of the story. And being a dick and refusing quests is basically the same. I found when I even tried to be an evil character, and denied the plight of random NPC's, all that meant is I was doing less quests and therefore experiencing less of the game. And while some people might say "good enough to role play doing less", that isn't good design in terms of playing an actual game. There isn't really any other way to play Shepherd other than the way Bioware intended.

So to say again: morality goes beyond just "being a good guy or a bad guy". It's about having to make a decision where the answer isn't clear cut and doing what you're doing based around your, or your character's that you're RPGing's, principles. And a good game has real consequences that affect the game world for those actions and not just "you were a dick to those people lololol". In short: ethical dilemmas.

It could be those simple philosophical questions that always get asked like: "do you steal in order to feed your family?" Some very principled people would always say "no", but some who value their family above all would say "yes". It isn't an question in which you can simply say: "this is always clearly the right answer and this other things is clearly always the wrong answer". That would be an actual exploration of morals and morality. Bethesda and ME both lacked that.

If you want to see the difference in action, play Disco Elysium.

 

[Flogger23m]

I think you missed what I'm saying.
Destroying or not destroying Megaton in Fallout 3 is a false choice. There is no reason to ever do it, it may as well have never been an option in the first place.

No reason for you, but there is reason for other players. Attachment, or lack of, or resentment of the place and never wanting to go back are impactful reasons to do so.

But in both ME and Bethesda titles, it's literally: "do you kill a whole city for no reason or not?". That isn't really a choice.

That isn't quite correct. In Mass Effect there are points where you can juggle the morality of certain decisions. Example, Geth vs Quarians. You have to decided whether you consider non-organic life to have the same value of organic life. The organic life forms in this scenario are the "bad" faction, but if you consider organic life forms inherently more valuable than synthetic you will side with the "bad" faction.

It's being evil to be evil, that's the level of depth of morality.

Which is again my point. Pure good/evil isn't realistic and is cliche. Bad decisions often go unpunished in the real world. Likewise if every decision had an exact opposite effect, it would be predictable and cliche.

I agree with you about the lack of lasting impact in ME1 to ME2 and Witcher 2 to Witcher 3. The decisions you made in those games didn't carry over in any meaningful way to their respective sequels.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

No reason for you, but there is reason for other players. Attachment, or lack of, or resentment of the place and never wanting to go back are impactful reasons to do so.

It serves no narrative purpose or morality purpose. It's just for kekw's. Bethesda also intentionally made zero important plot-lines in/for Megaton specifically because they didn't want to waste time putting in effort on a city that could/would just be blown up anyway.

The city itself literally doesn't matter in the game world or for the player. They could've not even had Megaton on the map at all to begin with and it wouldn't have changed any of the story in Fallout 3. Megaton is a city that exists because some dev put in the Bethesda suggestions box: "wouldn't it be cool if some city had an unexploded nuke in it?". And then they put it in the game for lols.

That isn't quite correct. In Mass Effect there are points where you can juggle the morality of certain decisions. Example, Geth vs Quarians. You have to decided whether you consider non-organic life to have the same value of organic life. The organic life forms in this scenario are the "bad" faction, but if you consider organic life forms inherently more valuable than synthetic you will side with the "bad" faction.

For the player the "correct" answer is basically always the answer that preserves the life of your team members. To "side with the Quarians" means to kill off Legion.

Anytime a player could possibly have agency over an actual morality choice: Bioware made the results of either of those choices the most meaningless they possibly could. Because they didn't want to have to actually write meaningful results of those choices.

The reality is that whole thing is also a false choice as well. The only correct answer is to magically save both. Have your cake and eat it too.

Spoiler: The actual solution to ME3

Which I'm 100% sure you know is the real option everyone picked, figuring out how to be diplomatic to save both, and Bioware put it in there to appease their fans. Get the Geth consensus to side with you. Convince Tali it's for the good of the galaxy, and high-five yourself for getting the best ending. There's other parts in there too, which is getting a good outcome in both Tali's and Legion's loyalty missions, but that goes without saying. The point is, the game makes it possible for "ultra-mega-happy-ending with no bad stuff happening".

If Bioware actually had the balls to force the player to choose either the death of Tali or the death of Legion, you'd be right. But even doing that in ME1 with Kaiden/Ashley was also just barely a choice. And the way it was rectified was by essentially having both characters in ME1 be unimportant. Have both characters not be playable in 2. And have the least to do in 3.

Which is again my point. Pure good/evil isn't realistic and is cliche.

That's also what I'm saying. Every choice in ME/Bethesda games is absurd binary morality. It's play johnny good two shoes, or Mr bad man.
The only real choice is to play the game as Bioware/Bethesda wrote the games, the other choice isn't really a choice.

Bad decisions often go unpunished in the real world. Likewise if every decision had an exact opposite effect, it would be predictable and cliche.

Consequences don't mean "punishment". It simply means that there is a reaction from your action. And that is meant in the most neutral way. It could be positive or negative, but not necessarily either or both.

If any action has zero consequence, then it means that action is meaningless. (You did an action, and nothing happens as a result).
What can be said about a game where "nothing happens" when you destroy a whole city with a nuke or kill a bunch of people?

Spoiler: How consequence in a well designed game works

I brought up the trolley problem. In that, either someone you love dies or a bunch of other people you may not know die.
The consequences of that choice isn't about you getting punished or not, it's about totally different people existing or not due to your choice.

Then the consequences of how each faction plays out affects the game-world and your character indirectly. Not because everything centers around the player character in the game-world, but because people are alive or dead. And the people that are living are making their choices, their way of justice, their way they see things part of the environment. This is what consequence for player action means. Player action should cause reaction, that is if your actions actually 'matter'.

Here's the difference in a game example: in all of the Fallout games, often the player has to choose between two factions for some kind of McGuffin. Water, power, whatever. If the player has a vested interest in both factions and/or both factions are trying to do something good on behalf of the wasteland, losing one of them should feel painful to the player no matter what choice is selected and in the outcome the player doesn't know if they even made the right choice. That would actually be how real life works. We make the best decisions we can and the reality is chips fall where they may.

If it's particularly well written than no matter which faction survives, there will be good consequences and bad ones simultaneously. Maybe law and order reigns in the land now, but they also happen to be a bit fascist. Maybe scientists are preserved and they create new tech that helps everyone, but they also start doing immoral experiments on mutants. I'm just coming up with these ideas off the dome, which is sad, because these ideas, in terms of consequence, are better than anything found in Bethesda Fallout. To go back to earlier examples that I gave, this is what I meant about "killing everyone not mattering or creating consequence." It wasn't about punishment per se, though that could be a consequence of those actions. But certainly all those people from factions you killed should "care".

"Even if they don't know who did it", it should still have massive consequences in the game world. Every faction in the game just some how just overlooks a city disappearing via an atomic blast that would be seen for miles? It doesn't affect their trade, resources, or anyone anyone else even knows (let alone cares about)? The wasteland has few settled places that are "safe", one of them disappears and there is zero reaction? No one even says a comment about it? Setting off the bomb and killing a whole town isn't a choice, it's you getting to be hilariously evil in a totally meaningless and inconsequential way.

In good games with good game design: that means that neither in the choices you make or in their outcome that it's clear cut "good" or "bad". If any choice or outcome is clear cut, then it's not a real choice. It's just a false choice presented by the game.

In Fallout, the way it is is there is a "good boy" faction and a "bad boy" one.
In Skyrim it doesn't matter who is alive or dead. You can join all factions. And have every happy outcome.
In Starfield again there literally may as well not be dialog options because you cannot make any decisions in this game that Bethesda doesn't want you to. Even the bad options this game will prevent you from doing, whereas at least in FO3, you could see the bad option for kekw's before reloading a previous save and doing the "choice" you're forced into. It has to protect its precious story so much that it simply doesn't let you choose bad choices and doesn't let you kill "important NPCs".

Every Bethesda game doesn't have real choices. It's all binary morality.

I agree with you about the lack of lasting impact in ME1 to ME2 and Witcher 2 to Witcher 3. The decisions you made in those games didn't carry over in any meaningful way to their respective sequels.

They could've removed the ability to choose your dialog in the game and in terms of choices actually made by players: it would likely be 90%+ the same player to player. The only consistent Renegade choice was to punch the reporter in the face, because she's being terrible, but other than that... most people Paragoned it up for the entire game. Wonder why? And if every person read guides for every dialog choice (which lets be honest, a ton of people did because all of the bad dialog choice options were "just bad" and didn't offer anything actually interesting to say, just a bad outcome that people would likely just reload a save from anyway) then 100% of the dialog choices would be the same. I would actually bet that that other 10% is just players seeing the bad choice play out before choosing the good one, because there is literally no in-game reason for the player to choose the "bad choice".

They may as well have just had the player select "good boy mode" or "bad boy mode" at the beginning of the game and let all the accompanying dialog play out, because it didn't make a difference anyway. The statistics even bear this out: there aren't real choices in the ME Trilogy.

 

[PeaKr]

and Starfield wins.... most innovative gameplay award. Not sure what was so innovative about it but can't think of another game this year that was.

 

[Dan_D]

and Starfield wins.... most innovative gameplay award. Not sure what was so innovative about it but can't think of another game this year that was.

View attachment 624397

Maybe the ship builder? Nothing else in the game is all that unique or well done. For the most part its just like every other Bethesda game.

 

[socK]

It got troll voted, there is no other logical explanation

Insert guarantee it meme

 

[Flogger23m]

Maybe the ship builder? Nothing else in the game is all that unique or well done. For the most part its just like every other Bethesda game.

Popularity contest. Probably out of the 3-6 or whatever options there were, it was the most innovative/largest player base. That isn't saying much. The Steam categories more or less suck most of the time, and again it is a popularity/whatever has a lot of sales contest. How could it not be? Hard to rate something if you haven't played it.

 

[M76]

and Starfield wins.... most innovative gameplay award. Not sure what was so innovative about it but can't think of another game this year that was.

View attachment 624397

I like Starfield but I have no clue whatsoever what is innovative in its gameplay. It is the same Bethesda formula that hasn't changed since oblivion.

 

[M76]

It got troll voted, there is no other logical explanation

Insert guarantee it meme

Well, the way devs interact with criticism is innovative for sure.

 

[socK]

I like Starfield but I have no clue whatsoever what is innovative in its gameplay. It is the same Bethesda formula that hasn't changed since oblivion.

At least they improved the amount of load screens they could cram in

 

[Lakados]

and Starfield wins.... most innovative gameplay award. Not sure what was so innovative about it but can't think of another game this year that was.

View attachment 624397

It was given to them ironically in the same way that Red Dead Redemption 2 was given the award for “Labour of Love” which is awarded to a game that developers have gone above and beyond to patch and support.

Which for those who don’t know RDR2 is famous for being all but abandoned by Rock Star.

 

[1_rick]

Well, the way devs interact with criticism is innovative for sure.

Hey hey hey now, what are you trying to do, wrench this thread back on topic?

 

[GoldenTiger]

Well, the way devs interact with criticism is innovative for sure.

New and improved salty dev flavor!

 

[Armenius]

They seem to disagree with you as well. Of course it is not the most authoritative source, but if you want agree to disagree.

Wikipedia editors and admins tend to disagree a lot with objective reality in plenty of subjects, so forgive me if I ignore it.

 

[Droc]

At least they improved the amount of load screens they could cram in

Holy fuck this

The fact that the cruise ship mission.....quite a small area to play, is divided up into 3 levels that all require loading screens is a fucking joke.

 

[M76]

Wikipedia editors and admins tend to disagree a lot with objective reality in plenty of subjects, so forgive me if I ignore it.

Yes, in controversial highly debated political issues. Not in what genre a game belongs to. Why is it so hard to admit that Alien Isolation is an immersive sim? As well as a horror survival game. Those are not mutually exclusive.