Starfield is missing a lot.

[GLITCHEDMATRIX]

Armor

weapons

creatures

being able to dress your followers

evil followers

squadrons

black holes

underwater...

alien intelligence

land vehicles

use for junk (the material the junk is made of should be a resource) otherwise I will remove all misc junk except digipicks once I get the ability to/ They could have saved months of labor by just leaving it out.

more base structures and functionality

occasional base attacks that aren't from feral animals

own or build a space station

more diverse planets

variation

Introvert perk should eliminate most dialogue or deliver it via text description. Some people just talk too damn much in this game.

air drop delivery to cut down the fetch quest repetitiveness

how about air strikes?

wars?

planet domination?

how about linking base storage to crafting tables?

 

I have 95 hours and I am not even going to play this game any further until we can get some serious rework done and I will gladly help once the right tools are in my grasp. Let's f*#@ing go guys.

 

I fear for Elder Scrolls 6

Edited September 25, 2023 by GLITCHEDMATRIX

[zanity]

For a game with a budget vastly higher than even the recent Indiana Jones movie (one of the greatest money losing flops in Hollywood history), we get a game that offers us about the same level of quality and entertainment- just about none. The Agenda destroyed the once successful business and artistic models of both, and both released in hacked and reworked states vs the original design vision/shooting script.

 

Indy 5 suffered from a script that failed with test audiences again and again and again, causing the budget to more than double with reshoots. Starfield, on the other hand, suffered from agenda hiring practices that meant no-one on the team was competent enough to implement the original design ideas. For heaven's sake, the Beth script coders couldn't even handle the vector and state issues of the follower code, leading to followers that don't follow, and followers who, in the vicinity of the player, stand stock still facing a blank wall.

 

And, let me remind everyone, these script coders only had to port the mostly working follower code from FO4. They couldn't even do that- couldn't get such simple code right when an earlier Beth implementation was available to study.

 

Take Valheim (for heaven's sake, play this wonder if you haven't yet- it works great in single-player). I think the (original) dev team was 3 people (that's around ONE THOUSAND times smaller than peak Starfield). It generates a random spherical (sort of) continuous world of astonishing procedural quality. Fantastic gameplay. Brilliant coding. Interesting, fun, and awe-inspiring.

 

What does Starfield bring to the table. At first it at least seems better than FO4 (a very very very low bar), but then the lack of meaningful exploration or decent lore hits one in the face. The rubbish identical artifact caves that are literally bolted, last minute, randomly to the side of dungeons clearly crafted for other purposes. I don't know what the original plan was, but it certainly wasn't something as conceptually rubbish as this. This is what you get when the original idea goes wrong, just as the story in the cinema version of Indy 5 bares little resemblance to the movie they originally shot.

 

Technical incompetence meant one Starfield was worked on the the majority of the dev period, and then another vastly 'simplified' Starfield plan was switched to when it became apparent no-one on the team could code to save their lives. What we get is the simplest and most trivial use of the existing Creation Engine, and its existing tools.

 

But what about 'imagination'- there are obviously forms of imaginative content that don't need clever (or even basic) coding. I'd suggest that if Team Todd knew just how primitive and basic Starfield would end up being, they might have tried to lessen the disappointment with more emphasis on world building. Worked harder on the story and SF concepts. Included some of the things mentioned on your list. But when you are a lousy dev, all you have time for is the desperate need to get any old rubbish onto the shelves (so to speak). And let's face it, MS wouldn't know quality if it hit them in the face. Any old rubbish is MS's highest standard- witness the recent Halo fiasco.

 

What Starfield has going for it is PEAK MODDING. The game might have mostly flopped as a gaming event of 2023, but the interest in modding has never been higher. And it is so apparent that the only thing that can 'save' Starfield (or actually rebuild it from the game up as the game it always should have been) is modding.

 

For The Nexus, this is a dream made reality. After FO76 (no meaningful modding allowed) and Todd's love of whale hunting (hitting the vulnerable with methods designed by rogue industrial psychologists to get them to keep spending on a game after the initial purchase), it seemed for a time that Starfield might only have monetised mods. If Todd could have delivered the game that existed in his imagination, that would certainly have been the case. Instead, all Todd could tell his MS bosses is "the modders will love it".

 

You say you'll wait for a serious rework, and I think that should be the same response of everyone, after their fill of the underwhelming vanilla experience. The Sim Settlements Team will be one of the early major players, but 'early' still means at least TWO YEARS out. The 'overhauls' come first, but they'll still sit mostly on the vanilla game, merely making it a whole less amateur and irritating. New frameworks need to be developed for just about every mechanism.

 

The one good thing about 'space' is that new planets, spacestations etc can be their own thing without worrying about how to integrate them in the base game, or base map. Being their own instance, they don't even have the performance issues of complex assets inserted into older Beth games. I know such ambitious separate world mods for Skyrim or Fallout never seem to leave 'alpha' despite endless years of promotion by the mod teams, but I feel it is going to be very different with Starfield. The only fly in the ointment will be if the same kind of culture war that destroyed Fallout: The Frontier mod rages against anyone who attempts to 'spice up' Starfield in the 'wrong' way, or mods while holding the 'wrong' types of 'political position'.

 

We would never have had the genre of SF in the first place if 'wrong-think' rules had been allowed to cancel the authors. And believe me, with each new generation of authors, there were forces that would have loved to have them silenced- and tried. SF is the ultimate imaginative "what if?" form of writing. Yet Starfield is the po-faced actual representation of today's society from the POV of one side.

[StackEmHigh]

For a game with a budget vastly higher than even the recent Indiana Jones movie (one of the greatest money losing flops in Hollywood history), we get a game that offers us about the same level of quality and entertainment- just about none. The Agenda destroyed the once successful business and artistic models of both, and both released in hacked and reworked states vs the original design vision/shooting script.

 

Indy 5 suffered from a script that failed with test audiences again and again and again, causing the budget to more than double with reshoots. Starfield, on the other hand, suffered from agenda hiring practices that meant no-one on the team was competent enough to implement the original design ideas. For heaven's sake, the Beth script coders couldn't even handle the vector and state issues of the follower code, leading to followers that don't follow, and followers who, in the vicinity of the player, stand stock still facing a blank wall.

 

And, let me remind everyone, these script coders only had to port the mostly working follower code from FO4. They couldn't even do that- couldn't get such simple code right when an earlier Beth implementation was available to study.

 

Take Valheim (for heaven's sake, play this wonder if you haven't yet- it works great in single-player). I think the (original) dev team was 3 people (that's around ONE THOUSAND times smaller than peak Starfield). It generates a random spherical (sort of) continuous world of astonishing procedural quality. Fantastic gameplay. Brilliant coding. Interesting, fun, and awe-inspiring.

 

What does Starfield bring to the table. At first it at least seems better than FO4 (a very very very low bar), but then the lack of meaningful exploration or decent lore hits one in the face. The rubbish identical artifact caves that are literally bolted, last minute, randomly to the side of dungeons clearly crafted for other purposes. I don't know what the original plan was, but it certainly wasn't something as conceptually rubbish as this. This is what you get when the original idea goes wrong, just as the story in the cinema version of Indy 5 bares little resemblance to the movie they originally shot.

 

Technical incompetence meant one Starfield was worked on the the majority of the dev period, and then another vastly 'simplified' Starfield plan was switched to when it became apparent no-one on the team could code to save their lives. What we get is the simplest and most trivial use of the existing Creation Engine, and its existing tools.

 

But what about 'imagination'- there are obviously forms of imaginative content that don't need clever (or even basic) coding. I'd suggest that if Team Todd knew just how primitive and basic Starfield would end up being, they might have tried to lessen the disappointment with more emphasis on world building. Worked harder on the story and SF concepts. Included some of the things mentioned on your list. But when you are a lousy dev, all you have time for is the desperate need to get any old rubbish onto the shelves (so to speak). And let's face it, MS wouldn't know quality if it hit them in the face. Any old rubbish is MS's highest standard- witness the recent Halo fiasco.

 

What Starfield has going for it is PEAK MODDING. The game might have mostly flopped as a gaming event of 2023, but the interest in modding has never been higher. And it is so apparent that the only thing that can 'save' Starfield (or actually rebuild it from the game up as the game it always should have been) is modding.

 

For The Nexus, this is a dream made reality. After FO76 (no meaningful modding allowed) and Todd's love of whale hunting (hitting the vulnerable with methods designed by rogue industrial psychologists to get them to keep spending on a game after the initial purchase), it seemed for a time that Starfield might only have monetised mods. If Todd could have delivered the game that existed in his imagination, that would certainly have been the case. Instead, all Todd could tell his MS bosses is "the modders will love it".

 

You say you'll wait for a serious rework, and I think that should be the same response of everyone, after their fill of the underwhelming vanilla experience. The Sim Settlements Team will be one of the early major players, but 'early' still means at least TWO YEARS out. The 'overhauls' come first, but they'll still sit mostly on the vanilla game, merely making it a whole less amateur and irritating. New frameworks need to be developed for just about every mechanism.

 

The one good thing about 'space' is that new planets, spacestations etc can be their own thing without worrying about how to integrate them in the base game, or base map. Being their own instance, they don't even have the performance issues of complex assets inserted into older Beth games. I know such ambitious separate world mods for Skyrim or Fallout never seem to leave 'alpha' despite endless years of promotion by the mod teams, but I feel it is going to be very different with Starfield. The only fly in the ointment will be if the same kind of culture war that destroyed Fallout: The Frontier mod rages against anyone who attempts to 'spice up' Starfield in the 'wrong' way, or mods while holding the 'wrong' types of 'political position'.

 

We would never have had the genre of SF in the first place if 'wrong-think' rules had been allowed to cancel the authors. And believe me, with each new generation of authors, there were forces that would have loved to have them silenced- and tried. SF is the ultimate imaginative "what if?" form of writing. Yet Starfield is the po-faced actual representation of today's society from the POV of one side.

 

HEAR, HEAR!!! (loudly and repeatedly pounds the table)

[GLITCHEDMATRIX]

Armor

weapons

creatures

being able to dress your followers

evil followers

squadrons

black holes

underwater...

alien intelligence

land vehicles

use for junk (the material the junk is made of should be a resource) otherwise I will remove all misc junk except digipicks once I get the ability to/ They could have saved months of labor by just leaving it out.

more base structures and functionality

occasional base attacks that aren't from feral animals

own or build a space station

more diverse planets

variation

Introvert perk should eliminate most dialogue or deliver it via text description. Some people just talk too damn much in this game.

air drop delivery to cut down the fetch quest repetitiveness

how about air strikes?

wars?

planet domination?

how about linking base storage to crafting tables?

 

I have 95 hours and I am not even going to play this game any further until we can get some serious rework done and I will gladly help once the right tools are in my grasp. Let's f*#@ing go guys.

 

I fear for Elder Scrolls 6

Also the abilities in SF, it feels like they made them and forgot to put quests to obtain them so they are basically 2 fast travels, walk, float, and repeat. I like some of them, some can be pretty OP so Imo they should have been earned and not just given right away. Its bare bones, they had modding in mind but if it was for modding it should have been a cheaper game. We are paying to do their work.

[dicere]

Armor

weapons

creatures

being able to dress your followers

evil followers

squadrons

black holes

underwater...

alien intelligence

land vehicles

use for junk (the material the junk is made of should be a resource) otherwise I will remove all misc junk except digipicks once I get the ability to/ They could have saved months of labor by just leaving it out.

more base structures and functionality

occasional base attacks that aren't from feral animals

own or build a space station

more diverse planets

variation

Introvert perk should eliminate most dialogue or deliver it via text description. Some people just talk too damn much in this game.

air drop delivery to cut down the fetch quest repetitiveness

how about air strikes?

wars?

planet domination?

how about linking base storage to crafting tables?

 

I have 95 hours and I am not even going to play this game any further until we can get some serious rework done and I will gladly help once the right tools are in my grasp. Let's f*#@ing go guys.

 

I fear for Elder Scrolls 6

Me too. Makes me wonder what the heck was going on behind the scenes during the last 10 years, this doesn't feel like a finished, polished product. It certainly doesn't hold a candle to skyrim.

[Solid8Beard]

Wait until some group of modders makes a Standalone Expansion with the same approach of Enderal or any Fallout Fan Made Expansions. So, wait for 5 to 7 years to play it.

[GLITCHEDMATRIX]

Wait until some group of modders makes a Standalone Expansion with the same approach of Enderal or any Fallout Fan Made Expansions. So, wait for 5 to 7 years to play it.

I would love to contribute to it. I really see the potential in this game, I am thankful it exists. There is a lot we can do with it and it will be fun.

[fraquar]

I think the sad reality is Bethesda knows they can make 100's of millions of dollars with minimal effort knowing the modding community will pick up the torch.

Just do a PR blitz and people will eat it like candy.

Nothing has changed, even the engine they use to develop the game will be the same engine they use for ES:VI.

 

They build little more than a sandbox and know that is all they need to build. They know the modders will bridge the gap to do the real work to make the game anywhere near the promises they made.

 

FTR, the whole space genre isn't my cup of tea.

I just followed this to get a glimpse of what to expect for ES:VI.

Just more of the same they have been doing for the last decade.

[gtouch0817]

Starfield isnt bad game. It is wonderfully designed and offer a lot of different activities which all other Bethesda game are well known for. However after playing over 70 hours I still have this feeling that I play game which was made just for the purpose of selling. No heart, passion there. Just a bunch of features which are proven to be welcomed by target group. Like majority of recent movies. And its quite an outdated bunch btw. Why Bethesda left only stairs as an option? Why not making something conceptual and futuristic in a futuristic game? They already have Telvanni lift mechanics, why not implementing it here? Why not having alien race to fight against? Why we do courier job, bringing diskettes to someone on another planet? Seriously? I stacked those whys in my brain untill I saw dancing goofies in Neon. Ahh! Thats what going on! They didnt bother hire professional dancers and simply recorded their own awkward moves back from 70s. Because who cares! People will buy it anyways but we have more coffee time.

To keep it constructive, Id say it still a very well done platform for a future awesome game, for which I suggest list of things to change:

-make planet scan findings matching to the real situation;

-add new ship design parts, both interior (doors, lifts, elevators) and exterior (winglets, make attachment spots universal, more roundish and triangle structures);

-Make reasonable explanation of necessity of building outposts and working as a courier. For example, after attack of aliens all planets become isolated and have difficulties communicating, because of some jammers being installed. In Fo4 we did an important mission of restoring community, in Starfield whats the reason of farming? We need idea behind it.

[platocarrieme]

I just posted the first part of my soundtrack re-work, so there's that :)

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/962