Starfield

[Zarathustra[H]]

Has anyone tried the new Halk Hogan Starfield HD Reworked mod?

https://www.thefpsreview.com/2023/0...1-0-improving-environmental-and-npc-textures/

Looks promising. I might try it tonight.

I tested this.

Improvements are subtle, and you'll probably miss them unless comparing screenshots side by side.

It did - however - introduce some stuttering as game assets are loaded, which weren't there before, and that's running this off of two 2TB Samsung 990 Pro's in parallel (main game data in my Steam folder on one, and mod data in my user folder on another) so we should be talking ridiculous levels of available drive bandwidth.

I think I'm going to remove it.

 

[Dan_D]

I tested this.

Improvements are subtle, and you'll probably miss them unless comparing screenshots side by side.

It did - however - introduce some stuttering as game assets are loaded, which weren't there before, and that's running this off of two 2TB Samsung 990 Pro's in parallel (main game data in my Steam folder on one, and mod data in my user folder on another) so we should be talking ridiculous levels of available drive bandwidth.

I think I'm going to remove it.

What people usually fail to understand is that the lower resolution textures are not used because a developer wanted to. It is normally about hitting certain performance targets. So the dev chooses where to make sacrifices to hit those frame rate numbers on their target hardware. Back in the day, Mass Effect 3 had worse textures than Mass Effect 2. The reason? So it could fit on two DVD's. Rather than give the PC and Playstation versions different textures, they used the same ones for all three versions of the game. In the digital distribution age we don't see it for those reasons but there are plenty of others.

Starfield also limits how many modules your ship can be made out of or how long, tall and wide it can be for similar reasons. Though on a high end rig you can get away with increasing these values same as you can for some of the textures. At some point, you will hurt performance with mods like this one.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

What people usually fail to understand is that the lower resolution textures are not used because a developer wanted to. It is normally about hitting certain performance targets. So the dev chooses where to make sacrifices to hit those frame rate numbers on their target hardware. Back in the day, Mass Effect 3 had worse textures than Mass Effect 2. The reason? So it could fit on two DVD's. Rather than give the PC and Playstation versions different textures, they used the same ones for all three versions of the game. In the digital distribution age we don't see it for those reasons but there are plenty of others.

Starfield also limits how many modules your ship can be made out of or how long, tall and wide it can be for similar reasons. Though on a high end rig you can get away with increasing these values same as you can for some of the textures. At some point, you will hurt performance with mods like this one.

In total agreement. I was hoping my system specs were sufficient to get away with it. Apparently not.

Modder claims performance is unaffected by his tweaks, and from a framerate perspective after everything is loaded, he is completely right, but at least on my system, the asset loads from the drive kill it.

Might be better if coupled with the drive cache mod. I may have to try that.

it seems absolutely insane that this game is hammering my drives like crazy nonstop, and then not keeping assets cached, using only 12GB of RAM when I have 64.

 

[Dan_D]

In total agreement. I was hoping my system specs were sufficient to get away with it. Apparently not.

Modder claims performance is unaffected by his tweaks, and from a framerate perspective after everything is loaded, he is completely right, but at least on my system, the asset loads from the drive kill it.

Might be better if coupled with the drive cache mod. I may have to try that.

it seems absolutely insane that this game is hammering my drives like crazy nonstop, and then not keeping assets cached, using only 12GB of RAM when I have 64.

Contrary to popular belief, you can't just throw more RAM at a problem. Some processes just don't need that much. However, games are designed for console I/O systems which took a huge leap forward with this generation. I/O is often overlooked in many applications.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Contrary to popular belief, you can't just throw more RAM at a problem. Some processes just don't need that much. However, games are designed for console I/O systems which took a huge leap forward with this generation. I/O is often overlooked in many applications.

In general yes, but disk caching is generally one of those things where more ram is better. It won't scale linearly, but every time you don't need to load a resource from disk is an improvement.

No idea what the ratio of cache hits would be as you crank that up, but it is notable that for some strange reason the developers opted to use disk reads that are uncached in this title. That's why someone made a disk cache mod, that changes the disk read commands to the more common style that takes advantage of windows disk caching.

I mean, it could very well be that the datasets we are talking are large enough that they just can t fit within a disk cache, and thus just thrash that cache anyway, but it is at least worth trying.

Could very well be that they eliminated the use of disk caches because the game was already memory bandwidth limited on many "older" systems, and they felt it was worthwhile to not hit the RAM any harder than they needed to to make the game run better on those systems, but with my quad channel RAM, I don't think I fall into the ram bandwidth limited bucket in this title. It's probably the reason why it is so much more playable on my Threadripper than on an otherwise contemporaneous and similarly clocked R7-3800x.

Either way, there are too many variables to predict. Going to test it and see how it works.

 

[M76]

Faction quest ranks, CF > UC > Ryujin > Rangers
Companion quest ranks, Sarah > Andreja > Sam > Barrett

I just completed my first faction questline after 50 hours according to steam. Makes me question that the game can be completed in 120 hours with all faction missions.
I'm somewhere in the middle of the Crimson Fleet, but didn't join UC, or the Rangers yet. I completed the Ryuin line, it took me at least 8 hours, and I'm not really seeing how can the CF line or what I have left of it beat this. Those stealth missions were hairy.

I didn't even realize there are companion quests, how do you trigger those?

Spoiler: high price to pay quest

I guess since Barrett is already dead I'm not doing that one in this playthrough, am I?

I'm assuming this is probably the halfway point of the main story.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Companion quests trigger when they reach a certain affinity level, they also stop and talk to you periodically leading up to the quest. I assume you gotta do all of those too.
I took each one as a follower until I completed their quest and rotated them out. It took me the entire playthrough to finish it, I literally finished up Sam's quest a few hours before the ending of the game. Also to get the achievement you have to marry someone.

I used an affinity cheat in the 2nd half of the game because they are all very picky people who get angry easily. In my experience it would be really hard to do all 4 in one playthrough.

In your case the only choice is NG+.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/2245

Not yet, but I will! I'm hvaing one of those "major work deadline" weekends where I am catching up. Not a lot of games this weekend.

So I tested this mod today. It didn't seem to do anything of note on my system, but I am also not sure if I got it installed properly.

The instructions are light to say the least, and there is no positive confirmation that it is actually doing anything once you successfully follow them.

I would up just removing all mods I've installed to date (except DLSS mod) and am now running the game vanilla. That seems to work the best for me.

 

[M76]

Companion quests trigger when they reach a certain affinity level, they also stop and talk to you periodically leading up to the quest. I assume you gotta do all of those too.
I took each one as a follower until I completed their quest and rotated them out. It took me the entire playthrough to finish it, I literally finished up Sam's quest a few hours before the ending of the game. Also to get the achievement you have to marry someone.

I used an affinity cheat in the 2nd half of the game because they are all very picky people who get angry easily. In my experience it would be really hard to do all 4 in one playthrough.

In your case the only choice is NG+.

Sam and Sarah are assigned to my ship so when the activity to talk to them pops up I do that, but no mission so far. But I never went out of my way to say the right thing every time to them, especially when they start moaning about something. I learned early on that followers tend to get in the way more than be of actual help so I'm not taking anyone with me on missions except when it is forced. I couldn't care less about achievements, just don't want to miss interesting quests.

 

[tangoseal]

I'm level what . 29. Games starting ri get boring. I'm just figuring things out and it's getting repetitious and lacking in excitement.

And I'm getting tired of loading. Why can't it be like star citizen. No loading seamless game play.

 

[KickAssCop]

I think that would be about the time I get bored as well.

 

[M76]

I'm level what . 29. Games starting ri get boring. I'm just figuring things out and it's getting repetitious and lacking in excitement.

And I'm getting tired of loading. Why can't it be like star citizen. No loading seamless game play.

Load times are less than 3 seconds for the most part, only quick loading takes a bit longer, but it's still sub 10 seconds. If I had to fly seamlessly from orbit to a landing pad every time that would really be repetitive and boring.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Load times are less than 3 seconds for the most part, only quick loading takes a bit longer, but it's still sub 10 seconds. If I had to fly seamlessly from orbit to a landing pad every time that would really be repetitive and boring.

Bethesda missed the opportunity to truly make this a spiritual successor to Skyrim, "Skyrim in space".
While it's true I fast travel between NA, Akila, and Neon the same way I fast travel between Solitude, White Run, and Riften.

But in past games you also wander around the open world sometimes, to discover new places, and you don't really do that in Starfield. You just grav jump directly to your location. This is where people make a huge mistake. "Space is big and empty, what else was Bethesda supposed to do?" Duh, space isn't the problem, the problem is the way Bethesda designed it. The entire game is flawed.

To be clear, the solar systems in Starfield are already rendered in full 3D space. You can fly from one plant to another using speed mods -- it's all there already. All they had to do was give the ship a super speed where it takes 1-2 minutes to fly between each planet, then spawn space POI's on the way. They already have a lot of that stuff in the game, it just spawns on the star map and dynamically after you grave jump... Pirate battles, derelict ships, grandma, space stations. Instead of using the star map, they just had to spawn those places in space as you fly.

Then, on planets, a pool of 100-200 POIs like Skyrim and FO4 are spawned procedurally, depending on the planet type and biome.

Could've been the perfect game. But again I find myself constantly wondering how Bethesda fucked it up this bad. All they had to do was make Skyrim in Space. Or Fallout 3 In Space. Or Fallout 4 in Space. Or Oblivion in Space.
Instead they made Mass Effect Andromeda 2.

I'm enjoying the game but it makes me mad thinking about it. I feel like I've been swindled by Bethesda, they have a 20 year history of making the same type of game. Except this time, the one time when they really needed to do it right. They went in the complete wrong direction. Todd Howard was determined to make his "dream game" and all they had was this shitty engine, so this is what we get.

 

[M76]

Bethesda missed the opportunity to truly make this a spiritual successor to Skyrim, "Skyrim in space".
While it's true I fast travel between NA, Akila, and Neon the same way I fast travel between Solitude, White Run, and Riften.

Why should it be a spiritual successor to Skyrim? That's an arbitrary expectation you attach to the game.

But in past games you also wander around the open world sometimes, to discover new places, and you don't really do that in Starfield.

You just have to come to terms with the fact that this is not skyrim in space, but more of a modern large scope Mass Effect clone. It didn't bother anyone in Mass Effect that you can't travel seamlessly between locations. So why is it a huge issue now?

You just grav jump directly to your location. This is where people make a huge mistake. "Space is big and empty, what else was Bethesda supposed to do?" Duh, space isn't the problem, the problem is the way Bethesda designed it. The entire game is flawed.

The game is not flawed, it's just not what you want it to be. The emptiness of space is kind of a given. I'd say the game would be flawed if you bumped into something every 2 minutes while flying around in the void. It would certainly break my immersion much more so than a 2 second pause during loading. There is not even a loading screen per se once you start the game. What I find kind of ironic is that almost everyone bashes the game for the walking part between pois planetside while complaining that space is not seamless. For crying out loud if it was seamless space would exactly be the same as the walking part to reach planets and space stations. This is when the saying is very true in my opinion, that players don't always know what they want.

To be clear, the solar systems in Starfield are already rendered in full 3D space. You can fly from one plant to another using speed mods -- it's all there already. All they had to do was give the ship a super speed where it takes 1-2 minutes to fly between each planet, then spawn space POI's on the way. They already have a lot of that stuff in the game, it just spawns on the star map and dynamically after you grave jump... Pirate battles, derelict ships, grandma, space stations. Instead of using the star map, they just had to spawn those places in space as you fly.

Even if flying would take two minutes I'd still opt for fast traveling every single time when I'm on a mission. And if fast travel was somehow restricted that would make the game flawed to me. Because it would increase the grind by having to deal with random encounters that don't advance the story, don't count as exploration, but takes time, when I just want to be at my destination to complete the mission I'm actually interested in.

Then, on planets, a pool of 100-200 POIs like Skyrim and FO4 are spawned procedurally, depending on the planet type and biome.

That would be absolutely insane, and not in a good way, hundreds of POIs on uninhabited planets? My immersion is not just out the door, but already on the bus halfway to Rome. The barrenness of the random landing sites gives me a feeling of awe at the emptiness and inhospitably of the universe. The fact that there are nothing much of interest at every random location I choose to land makes me feel like a real explorer, especially when I actually bump into something cool, as it becomes a reward in of itself. As opposed to being in a "dumb" videogame that showers me with participation trophies every step of the way.

Could've been the perfect game. But again I find myself constantly wondering how Bethesda fucked it up this bad. All they had to do was make Skyrim in Space. Or Fallout 3 In Space. Or Fallout 4 in Space. Or Oblivion in Space.
Instead they made Mass Effect Andromeda 2.

Because they wanted to make Mass Effect with a bethesda flavor, and that's fine. I think Starfield is almost perfect as is, I'd add or change very little about it, and the things you listed as wants would either make the game worse for me, or at best not add anything of value to the experience.

I'm enjoying the game but it makes me mad thinking about it. I feel like I've been swindled by Bethesda, they have a 20 year history of making the same type of game. Except this time, the one time when they really needed to do it right. They went in the complete wrong direction. Todd Howard was determined to make his "dream game" and all they had was this shitty engine, so this is what we get.

If they tried to make star citizen, they'd be in the same boat of feature and scope creep and we'd never have seen a finished product. It would've ended up in development hell or microsoft would've swooped in and made executive decisions, and we all know how well it works out when the publisher starts meddling with the product.

This is by far the best Bethesda RPG I played. It beats Skyrim, Fallout4, Fallout3, Oblivion, and the only reason I'm not mentioning Morrowind is because I did not play that game. If this is a fuckup then I wish for many more fuckups like this from many more developers.

 

[Comixbooks]

I just played this tonight the thing I think it's the experience that makes it rewarding but the graphically powerhous buzz most Action games try to be. It's more like a Movie the your typical AAA game I'm only level 5 just got out of the Vanguard simulation room ready to tackle my first mission.

 

[tangoseal]

Why not have a seamless experience with a choice to fast travel? And this game ain't no mass effect. Mass effect was a masterpiece in story, delivery of story, and A list voice acting. And the game felt perfectly designed to be loaded in the way things were loaded. Whereas Starfield just feels too much like fallout and gets terribly boring and with like 500 cheat codes baked in, the temptation to use cheats far surpasses the ridiculous skill point grinding that it has. And your base building mechanic means nothing more in the game than doing a quest and the most expensive ship cab be purchased by level 20 with little effort if your willing to do another grind for money.

I'm getting the vibe I get from Diablo 4. Which by the way 99.3% of gamers quit D4. It's being touted as an abysmal failure all over the internet.

Will starfield suffer the same fate? Everyone smashes out a few hundred levels, does all there is to do, and the game offers nothing else? I'm only speculative. No one can answer yet, just as D4 had to organically prove its a pure garbage game and it took a couple months, I think starfield is this way but we'll see.

Don't get me started on how completely rubbish space ship battles are in starfield. It's littlerally straight line shooting with no dynamics, no piloting skills, the ships can't translate from side to side, no "sidestep". Just fly straight and hope your guns hit harder than the cpus guns.

No multi-player, no pvp, no cooperative planetary governance, and the list goes on. It's a single player campaign that let's you remain in game and build a mundane lonely procedurally generated empire of time waste. There is no incentive to build an amazing and functionally dependable outpost because no real player is ever going to discover it and try to join or exploit you. There is no sense of importance at all, there is not even a proper disposal method for excess production. You just drop it on the ground or ship shit it into space.

Glad I got an unopened copy of the new Zelda for switch. That game doesn't suck. Time to play it soon. Also glad Starfield is basically pennies for me since it's part of gamepass sub. I wasted 80 on D4, glad not wasted on starfield as well.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

.

Will starfield suffer the same fate? Everyone smashes out a few hundred levels, does all there is to do, and the game offers nothing else? I'm only speculative. No one can answer yet, just as D4 had to organically prove its a pure garbage game and it took a couple months, I think starfield is this way but we'll see.

I don't know. I don't really believe in replayability in this type of game.

I usually play through the main story quests tagging as many of the side quests as I come across along the way, and once the main story quests are over, I never launch the game again.

That's probably how I'm going to play Starfield as well.

Like, I don't even grasp the point of continuing to play a single player story based game once you have finished the story. It's like reading a mystery novel you already know the ending to.

I know a lot of people found a lot of replayability options in Skyrim, but I never actually played the game, so I can't speak to it. I'm a juge fan of Sci-Fi, but I am completely allergic to the fantasy genre. Sci-Fi at least tried to explain things. Fantasy - to me - is just too much suspense of disbelief.

 

[M76]

Why not have a seamless experience with a choice to fast travel? And this game ain't no mass effect.

Of course it is not exactly mass effect, but the way space travel is implemented is the same in it. I'd not mind if seamless travel was possible, but just as in skyrim or any other bethesda game thus far I'd skip it and just travel to the nearest fast travel point whenever possible anyway. So I don't miss it at all.

Mass effect was a masterpiece in story, delivery of story, and A list voice acting.

Starfield might not be a masterpiece in storytelling, but I'm not exactly enjoying it for the riveting main quest either. To be fair it seems like a small step up in voice acting.

And the game felt perfectly designed to be loaded in the way things were loaded.

I really don't know what do you mean by that.

Whereas Starfield just feels too much like fallout and gets terribly boring and with like 500 cheat codes baked in, the temptation to use cheats far surpasses the ridiculous skill point grinding that it has.

And I criticized the skill point challenge mechanic, I think it is by far the biggest mistake in the game. If I wasn't so OCD about playing games vanilla for the first playthrough I'd already have modded that shit out.
But I don't know what do you mean by baked in cheat codes, you mean console commands?!

And your base building mechanic means nothing more in the game than doing a quest and the most expensive ship cab be purchased by level 20 with little effort if your willing to do another grind for money.

That sounds more like a criticism of how you play the game, not the game itself. The game does not require you to grind for money, so if you choose to do it that's entirely on you. I'm just going with the flow, whatever I feel like doing I do. And this is the great freedom given by the game, that you can just get lost in the world in the seemingly endless side quests, just ignoring the main story for dozens of hours. Try that in Mass Effect, the entire game takes 25-30 hours to complete with all optional missions and exploration included.
Buying the most expensive ship is not really maxing out the possibilities the game has to offer anyway.

I'm getting the vibe I get from Diablo 4. Which by the way 99.3% of gamers quit D4. It's being touted as an abysmal failure all over the internet.

Will starfield suffer the same fate? Everyone smashes out a few hundred levels, does all there is to do, and the game offers nothing else? I'm only speculative. No one can answer yet, just as D4 had to organically prove its a pure garbage game and it took a couple months, I think starfield is this way but we'll see.

To be honest 99.9% of games are like that to me anyway, even the ones I find absolutely brilliant. I finish it once then loose interest. The last RPG I finished twice was Cyberpunk 2077. I never even did a second run at Fallout 4 or Skyrim despite enjoying them for the first attempt.

Don't get me started on how completely rubbish space ship battles are in starfield. It's littlerally straight line shooting with no dynamics, no piloting skills, the ships can't translate from side to side, no "sidestep". Just fly straight and hope your guns hit harder than the cpus guns.

That again speaks of how you choose to play the game, not the game itself. There was no sidestepping in Tie Fighter either which is considered a legendary game. Starfield uses the exact same mechanics, yet somehow that stinks now?
If you can't get behind enemies or outmaneuver them that probably means your ship is too slow. It is entirely up to you to build a lighter smaller ship for dog fighting or a turtle with all the weapons and just take the hits and hope your shields last longer than the enemies.

No multi-player, no pvp, no cooperative planetary governance, and the list goes on.

And thank god for that. A single player game should be a single player game through and through and not waste time on tacking on multiplayer.

It's a single player campaign that let's you remain in game and build a mundane lonely procedurally generated empire of time waste. There is no incentive to build an amazing and functionally dependable outpost because no real player is ever going to discover it and try to join or exploit you. There is no sense of importance at all, there is not even a proper disposal method for excess production. You just drop it on the ground or ship shit it into space.

I play around with building stuff because I enjoy it, not because I seek validation from total strangers. In fact sharing a game world with total strangers would put me off from experimenting with the game and doing things just for fun.

Glad I got an unopened copy of the new Zelda for switch. That game doesn't suck. Time to play it soon. Also glad Starfield is basically pennies for me since it's part of gamepass sub. I wasted 80 on D4, glad not wasted on starfield as well.

That's a very strange attitude to have. How did you waste 80 hours on Diablo IV? Are you saying you didn't enjoy a single minute of it? Then why didn't you quit playing after the first 2 hours if it is really that bad?

 

[tangoseal]

That's a very strange attitude to have. How did you waste 80 hours on Diablo IV? Are you saying you didn't enjoy a single minute of it? Then why didn't you quit playing after the first 2 hours if it is really that bad?

80 bucks not hours. Diablo IV was a money rip off.

You replied with your opinion to my opinion and thats all this disucssion is - opinion. Never said anything different. I typed all that stuff above on my phone, hence the typos.

In the meantime for all those that care: This video perfectly sums up Bethesda:


View: https://youtu.be/a_lu152g5aM?si=zNxM24OHeuS7IJDw

There is literally NOTHING next gen about this game. Its cheap, poorly designed, and pure trash at this point. Prove me wrong.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeIfFSH_pWg

 

[Drexion]

I didn't even realize there are companion quests, how do you trigger those?

(1) Choose one and ask them to join you.
(2) Take them on all your missions (except stealth missions)
(3) Don't be an "evil bad guy"

Eventually they'll ask to chat, then eventually chat some more, and then eventually give you their backstory and quest. Complete the quest then go back to step (1).

 

[peppergomez]

80 bucks not hours. Diablo IV was a money rip off.

You replied with your opinion to my opinion and thats all this disucssion is - opinion. Never said anything different. I typed all that stuff above on my phone, hence the typos.

In the meantime for all those that care: This video perfectly sums up Bethesda:


View: https://youtu.be/a_lu152g5aM?si=zNxM24OHeuS7IJDw

There is literally NOTHING next gen about this game. Its cheap, poorly designed, and pure trash at this point. Prove me wrong.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeIfFSH_pWg

Those are painful to watch

 

[lagavulin]

There is literally NOTHING next gen about this game. Its cheap, poorly designed, and pure trash at this point. Prove me wrong.

And that's your opinion to have. I am not going to try and prove you wrong. As you stated in the paragraph above that, it is your opinion. I have mine, M76 has his as does everyone else here. You are entitled to feel how you feel about it. It's not going to change how I feel about the game. I guess that I don't look deep enough in games or whatever, all I want is something that will take my mind off of the craziness that's going on in my life currently, and Starfield does that for me. And this is the only chime in I have about this, as it is just my opinion.

 

[Drexion]

The game has lows and highs, and the highs make the experience worth it especially if you're on PC and can use mods to fix many of the issues it shipped with. Sure there's tedious annoying slow parts, but there's also enjoyable quests, memorable moments and the occasional awesome banger which make sludging through the weaker parts of the game worth the time. The 7-8 reviews seemed to be on point. There's moments when it feels like a 6, but also moments when it feels like a 9.5.

To some it will be worth it, to some not. It is a packed year with lots of amazing games to choose from. Any game coming out after Baldur's Gate 3 would have a tougher time in the minds of gamers and reviewers, as that was a 10/10 experience and raised the bar of what RPG gaming should be.

 

[w35t]

While I quite enjoyed my initial playthrough, I can definitely say that I was majorly disappointed with the lack of exploration. My favorite thing to do in previous Bethesda titles was just to get out there and see what I might come across, you could ignore quests entirely in those and still have a great time, definitely not in Starfield. Here the POI's on whatever planet you might land on generally have very little to offer, are always ~500-1200m away, and while getting there you get to fight the ridiculous o2 system the entire time, once you do, might just find a couple things to scan or an empty outpost or whatever. NG+ to me seems entirely worthless as well, lose EVERYTHING except your experience? Leveling up passed 40 or so is such a massive slog, might as well just start from scratch.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

While I quite enjoyed my initial playthrough, I can definitely say that I was majorly disappointed with the lack of exploration. My favorite thing to do in previous Bethesda titles was just to get out there and see what I might come across, you could ignore quests entirely in those and still have a great time, definitely not in Starfield. Here the POI's on whatever planet you might land on generally have very little to offer, are always ~500-1200m away, and while getting there you get to fight the ridiculous o2 system the entire time, once you do, might just find a couple things to scan or an empty outpost or whatever. NG+ to me seems entirely worthless as well, lose EVERYTHING except your experience? Leveling up passed 40 or so is such a massive slog, might as well just start from scratch.

NG+ spoilers

Spoiler

One of your powers gains a rank when you complete a temple in NG+. Also your Starborn armor and ship rank up each NG+.
It takes 10 loops to max everything.

Some people are maxing everything out in NG+ before even playing the rest of the game.

 

[ThatITGuy]

---

NG+ spoilers

Spoiler

One of your powers gains a rank when you complete a temple in NG+. Also your Starborn armor and ship rank up each NG+.
It takes 10 loops to max everything.

Some people are maxing everything out in NG+ before even playing the rest of the game.

Spoiler: Yup, Spoiler

I have to admit, going into the Unity and coming out to everything gone was quite defeating to me. I had done all of the side quests, built up a number of outposts, and spent tons of time building ships. I had spent time getting the apartments and decorating them. After I saw it all gone, I just focused on grinding through the 10. I did get some cool alternate universes, one where other me was a bad guy who had killed everyone, and one where there is no Constellation and Stroud tries to sell me the artifacts. I never spent much time on building ships in my grind, i just pushed through in the Starborn ship, though the last battle was always rough. Now i mostly just mess around building ships and finding people to fight while occasionally veering off to try to complete achievements.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Also one thing I forgot to mention

Spoiler

There are 10 or so unique universes that change aspects of the game, mostly just related to Constellation NPCs.
So things can play out a but differently each time.

There is also the vanilla universe that is the same as the base game.

It's better to think of it as a New Game Mode rather than a typical NG+.
Kinda sucks for people who just want to play the campaign again and keep their items.

 

[IcePickFreak]

Don't get me started on how completely rubbish space ship battles are in starfield. It's littlerally straight line shooting with no dynamics, no piloting skills, the ships can't translate from side to side, no "sidestep". Just fly straight and hope your guns hit harder than the cpus guns.

Huh? It's literally the perk for the first level of the Piloting skill, which is one of the first skills you can get in the Tech tree.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

I've been using the No Crowds mod for a couple hours now and I recommend it.
Removes all the useless "Civilian" NPCs, the only people left are named NPCs and guards. Kills immersion a little bit I guess. It makes finding quests and NPC's to talk to a lot easier. Probably helps fps too.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/4005

It's just an INI flag that loads on each start up, so it's easy to revert if something breaks. Just save often.

 

[tangoseal]

Huh? It's literally the perk for the first level of the Piloting skill, which is one of the first skills you can get in the Tech tree.

The perk is turn faster, not translation from side to side. Think sidestep like in first person shooters where you hit A and D.

 

[IcePickFreak]

The perk is turn faster, not translation from side to side. Think sidestep like in first person shooters where you hit A and D. Those are not even bindable functions in the game. Starcitizen has it, Space Engineers has it, Elite Dangerous damn sure has it, but the 25 year in the making space game doesn't have a simple mechanic such as this? Yeah space battles are laughable at best. If you cant tell I am becoming completely disenfranchised with this over hyped and underdelivered typical AAA 2020's kinda game. All about the Benjamins then move on with your hundreds of millions to the next big fluff scheme game.

No it's not, it's thrusters.

I use a controller when piloting and holding down the right bumper lets you do exactly what you're talking about and translate up/down/left/right. Holding it down also allows you to turn the ship without changing your trajectory so you can essentially go full forward speed while pointing backwards. PEBKAC is the real issue here.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Yeah it's called alternative mode or something? Should be a button prompt on the UI.
I remember people asking about it on the leaked screenshots.

 

[M76]

80 bucks not hours. Diablo IV was a money rip off.

Ah, got it. I paid $80 for Starfield and I feel it was already worth it even if I stopped playing it right now.

You replied with your opinion to my opinion and thats all this disucssion is - opinion. Never said anything different. I typed all that stuff above on my phone, hence the typos.

That's OK, I wasn't trying to prove your opinion wrong, I'm just offering a counter perspective to those willing to listen.

In the meantime for all those that care: This video perfectly sums up Bethesda:

A meme video can't sum up the game completely, the 1 second blank screens when going through some doors doesn't bother me at all.
And obviously the game is designed around them, so there is no jarring pause in the music as this video suggests.

There is literally NOTHING next gen about this game. Its cheap, poorly designed, and pure trash at this point. Prove me wrong.

I have my own experience and you have yours. My goal is not to change your mind. I just hope that others listen to me and give the game a fair shake at least and not dismiss it entirely based on some first world problem like not being "next gen" enough.

I don't even dispute that it is not next gen, it has no RT, the animations are certainly not great, and in spite of all this this is the most fun I've had with a game in years. It is so good that each night I'm struggling to stop playing it even after 1am, when I know I have to work the next day.

A video consisting of nothing but the obvious shortcomings of the game is not representative of the entire experience. Yes these are all true, NPCs don't react to waving a gun in their face or bumping into them, and most of the environment is not destructible, yet somehow the overall experience I get is like no other. A game is more than a sum of its parts. I couldn't get enjoyment out of Red Dead Redemption II. Despite it being so superior in the details, while I'm having unbridled fun with Starfield.

 

[Armenius]

Of course it is not exactly mass effect, but the way space travel is implemented is the same in it. I'd not mind if seamless travel was possible, but just as in skyrim or any other bethesda game thus far I'd skip it and just travel to the nearest fast travel point whenever possible anyway. So I don't miss it at all.

His point was that the gameplay and story of Starfield are not as good as Mass Effect, making the constant loading screens of Starfield less excusable than they were in Mass Effect.

 

[M76]

His point was that the gameplay and story of Starfield are not as good as Mass Effect, making the constant loading screens of Starfield less excusable than they were in Mass Effect.

What possible connection is there between seamless transit between areas and story? I just mentioned that games are not just the sum of their parts. A game can be enjoyable despite having many issues. There is no better example of this than Alpha Protocol. What a broken mess that is for the most part yet I'd be kicking myself if I missed it.

 

[Brackle]

What I see, and I understand why, is the "Diablo 4 syndrome" at work. Players defended diablo 4 as if it was the most amazing creation in the modern era, even more than electricity itself if there were a way to describe it. However 99% of diablo player base no longer plays and in the end the hardcore defense of the game turned out to be cognitive dissonance all along. I am seeing the same pattern with this game. People know the game sucks deep inside but refuse to acknowledge it for reasons no one can discern but we know the game is trashy, but for some reason it's the new game on the block so let's pretend it's amazing until it finally hits that "hey this thing sucked all along". Same with politics, president X is my guy, even though 100% of what he does is evil and wrong and I know it, I am going to support him regardless because president Y is 95% amazing but I don't like the way he talks so ..... anyways that kinda cognitive dissonance.

The one thing I will say in the defense of Bethesda. 90% of the people expected a buggy game with odd ball choices in the game. To me I do love playing starfield, but I know for a fact it is just fallout 4 in space with a new story and ships thrown in. Starfield imo is not the best game out this year. It isn't even close if you ask me.

After the first 5 days of playing, I gave it a solid 7.5/10. It looks like steam reviews are showing it as about a 75% game.

You will always ALWAYS have fan boys defend whatever they are passionate about. Look at Nvidia, Intel, AMD or Apple users. Even if the product sucks, overpriced, buggy etc etc. They will defend them even if the evidence doesnt support their agenda (Remind of you anything currently). This is how it will be from now on when it comes to any company or product imo.

 

[CAD4466HK]

Starfield ship duplication glitch - make infinite money after patch 1.7.33.

Duplicating a ship is very straightforward, but it requires some legwork to make sure it’s worth doing. Ship duplication works both on PC and Xbox consoles, but you need to use a controller to pull it off. It won’t work with a keyboard.
The way you use the glitch to make money requires you to have at least two ships in your inventory, ideally one big high-value ship and a small cheap one that you got for free, as the latter will disappear in the process.

https://videogames.si.com/guides/st...2779&pid=starfield-ship-technician-have-at-it

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Had an odd bug last night.

I was out in some far out system, and was extorted by a level ~50 Ecliptic ship. You know one of those, give me credits or we will attack you. I said no, and it resulted in a space battle. I brought down their shields and engines, and - while I wasn't trying to - I wound up having an opportunity to board, so I did it.

Wound up in an intense battle with security people on the ship. Picked them up off one after one. Once the battle concluded, and all the opponents on the attacking ship were dead, "Andreja hated that", accused me of being a murderer, and when I tried to fly off and claim the ship, I had a $15,000 bounty on New Atlantis.

I'm like wtf?

To be fair, the crew on the ship didn't look like they were wearing Ecliptic gear, they looked more like UC officers, but the ship was named Ecliptic III or something, and they extorted and attacked me, not the other way around.

I wonder if the game got confused and spawned the wrong NPC's on board the ship when boarding, and that resulted in a murder charge...

Has anyone else experienced this?

I had something similar happen early in the game. For no reason, UC Navy ships (not UC Vanguard, UC Secdef or UC Security) would be red and attack me on sight. I couldn't figure out what was going on, or why. There were no bounties to pay anywhere, so it was doubly confusing. In order to get the game to work right again and not constantly be at war with UC Navy, I had to use a console command to reset all bounties (and that - of course - was listed as a cheat, so it disabled all achievements, but I guess I don't care, as I don't play for achievements anyway)

This game has had a pretty good launch for the 2020's, with relatively few bugs (though there are inexplicable performance issues aplenty) but every now and then some random shit like this seems to happen.

 

[tangoseal]

Had an odd bug last night.

I was out in some far out system, and was extorted by a level ~50 Ecliptic ship. You know one of those, give me credits or we will attack you. I said no, and it resulted in a space battle. I brought down their shields and engines, and - while I wasn't trying to - I wound up having an opportunity to board, so I did it.

Wound up in an intense battle with security people on the ship. Picked them up off one after one. Once the battle concluded, and all the opponents on the attacking ship were dead, "Andreja hated that", accused me of being a murderer, and when I tried to fly off and claim the ship, I had a $15,000 bounty on New Atlantis.

I'm like wtf?

To be fair, the crew on the ship didn't look like they were wearing Ecliptic gear, they looked more like UC officers, but the ship was named Ecliptic III or something, and they extorted and attacked me, not the other way around.

I wonder if the game got confused and spawned the wrong NPC's on board the ship when boarding, and that resulted in a murder charge...

Has anyone else experienced this?

I had something similar happen early in the game. For no reason, UC Navy ships (not UC Vanguard, UC Secdef or UC Security) would be red and attack me on sight. I couldn't figure out what was going on, or why. There were no bounties to pay anywhere, so it was doubly confusing. In order to get the game to work right again and not constantly be at war with UC Navy, I had to use a console command to reset all bounties (and that - of course - was listed as a cheat, so it disabled all achievements, but I guess I don't care, as I don't play for achievements anyway)

This game has had a pretty good launch for the 2020's, with relatively few bugs (though there are inexplicable performance issues aplenty) but every now and then some random shit like this seems to happen.

There was a ship I wanted so I use player.additem f 500000, got rich bought ship. It was boring so I stopped playing but yeah there us some major baked in cheat codes and the desire to use them is astronomical because the game is not really fun grinding for no shareable experience or reward as if it were an mmo. Even in NoMansSky its worth the effort because someone might see your base due to being shareable and multi-player

 

[Seelenlos]

There was a ship I wanted so I use player.additem f 500000, got rich bought ship. It was boring so I stopped playing but yeah there us some major baked in cheat codes and the desire to use them is astronomical because the game is not really fun grinding for no shareable experience or reward as if it were an mmo. Even in NoMansSky its worth the effort because someone might see your base due to being shareable and multi-player

I really don't understand this. It sounds like you want a multiplayer game. Why would you buy this game?