I doubt much can or will be done with this game.

[dw420]

On 12/24/2023 at 2:14 PM, HeyYou said:

How do you propose folks that 'don't have access to mods' get access to patches? All either needs is an internet connection....... So far as I know, NO mod site restricts users from any specific region. Granted, if you have crappy internet, that makes things a bit more difficult, but, if you are downloading a 125GB game, your internet can't be THAT bad.

(This is not an attempt to attack you, but the point of view you and many others have chosen.)

I do not propose anything besides a change in what people perceive as excusable when talking about the state of the game. 

My point was that an active modding community is not an excuse for Bethesda being lazy, time and again. People should judge the game Beth sold to us, not the game they dream 3rd parties can turn Starfield into.

Would you accept buying a car with a broken axis under the pretence that it was brand new and 100% functional as intended by design?
Would it make it ok to sell you said car broken, if your neighbour could fix the engine?
How about if the neighbour could only do it in a years time when the proper tools are out in the market?
You wouldn't, none of us would.. You'd be raging over social media/in the face of the car dealer,  you'd be talking s#*! about the car manufacturer etc etc.

Yet somehow.. here you are talking about a 3rd party garage being just down the road...and how it should be expected for the buyer to take it from the dealer straight to a 3rd party garage just to get it rolling.

"The gaming industry is different" , because the consumers allowed it to be..We draw the line of what is acceptable or not. 
 

On 12/24/2023 at 2:14 PM, HeyYou said:

That said, yep, the game has bugs, and those need to be fixed. The number of loading screens though? Not sure it is possible to fix that..... We shall see what Beth does in their next update......

They can be reduced as some of them are only there to make sure assets have loaded in.
eg. Certain small interior cells do not require them at all...other interior cells would require a much shorter version of the "1size fits all" loading screen used atm.

If i were a dreamer, i'd dream about Beth coming up with some sort of NMS-like space travel...but i'm not, so i expect them to just allow us to quick travel from all those interior cells that we were previously not allowed to. (i'm keeping the bar low, in hopes Beth manages to clear it for a change)

Ps. Happy holidays to everyone.

 

[HeyYou]

4 hours ago, dw420 said:

(This is not an attempt to attack you, but the point of view you and many others have chosen.)

I do not propose anything besides a change in what people perceive as excusable when talking about the state of the game. 

My point was that an active modding community is not an excuse for Bethesda being lazy, time and again. People should judge the game Beth sold to us, not the game they dream 3rd parties can turn Starfield into.

Would you accept buying a car with a broken axis under the pretence that it was brand new and 100% functional as intended by design?
Would it make it ok to sell you said car broken, if your neighbour could fix the engine?
How about if the neighbour could only do it in a years time when the proper tools are out in the market?
You wouldn't, none of us would.. You'd be raging over social media/in the face of the car dealer,  you'd be talking s#*! about the car manufacturer etc etc.

Yet somehow.. here you are talking about a 3rd party garage being just down the road...and how it should be expected for the buyer to take it from the dealer straight to a 3rd party garage just to get it rolling.

"The gaming industry is different" , because the consumers allowed it to be..We draw the line of what is acceptable or not. 
 

They can be reduced as some of them are only there to make sure assets have loaded in.
eg. Certain small interior cells do not require them at all...other interior cells would require a much shorter version of the "1size fits all" loading screen used atm.

If i were a dreamer, i'd dream about Beth coming up with some sort of NMS-like space travel...but i'm not, so i expect them to just allow us to quick travel from all those interior cells that we were previously not allowed to. (i'm keeping the bar low, in hopes Beth manages to clear it for a change)

Ps. Happy holidays to everyone.

 

Beth is absolutely notorious for their games being rather buggy at release. This isn't anything new. What disturbs me about the whole thing though, is they supposedly took the better part of a year to 'polish' the game.  Yet some of the bugs were glaringly obvious.... Missing Ship technicians, etc.... How they could NOT encounter these bugs is beyond me.

At this point, we have mods that address a fair few of them, mainly because modders don't have to go thru the QA process that beth does to release a patch.... and modders are fixing them piecemeal.  One mod, one bug. I would like to think that Beth will fix a bunch of 'em in any forthcoming patch..... but, I have been disappointed before. There were game-breaking bugs in Morrowind that Beth NEVER fixed....

That said, the game actually worked, right out of the gate. Yes, there were some issues, however, I don't recall any that were actually game breaking. (quest breaking, yeah, but, not the whole game.) Auto manufacturers have been doing the same thing for decades. Most of their products work as advertised, however, there are always some underlying issues..... and the more complicated the product becomes, the more issues are seen. Chevrolet recently stopped selling its Blazer cute-ute, because of those issues......

[JaeDL]

So much has been done with this game already.

I guarantee you, half your problems are already fixed by mods.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/6397

[tedbash]

Gotta love all these random mod lists with a bunch of mods thrown together.

Edited December 29, 2023 by tedbash

[dw420]

  

On 12/26/2023 at 12:37 PM, HeyYou said:

Beth is absolutely notorious for their games being rather buggy at release. This isn't anything new. What disturbs me about the whole thing though, is they supposedly took the better part of a year to 'polish' the game.  Yet some of the bugs were glaringly obvious.... Missing Ship technicians, etc.... How they could NOT encounter these bugs is beyond me.

  They were forced by Microsoft to take a year and polish the game...Microsoft had to move people from other departments to help them do Quality Control [QC - bug test]  ... I'm honestly starting to think that QC for Beth is giving the janitor an early copy of the game and asking them what they made of it the very next morning.
 

On 12/26/2023 at 12:37 PM, HeyYou said:

Auto manufacturers have been doing the same thing for decades. 

So has Bethesda. The game engine at its core is 20 years old. 
Minor bugs/product flaws will always slip through QC...but Beth does f-all QC. 
I'm not a hater...I'm the dope that fell for their bs, every single time since fallout 3, and has had enough.

Edited December 30, 2023 by dw420

[HeyYou]

8 hours ago, dw420 said:

  

  They were forced by Microsoft to take a year and polish the game...Microsoft had to move people from other departments to help them do Quality Control [QC - bug test]  ... I'm honestly starting to think that QC for Beth is giving the janitor an early copy of the game and asking them what they made of it the very next morning.
 

So has Bethesda. The game engine at its core is 20 years old. 
Minor bugs/product flaws will always slip through QC...but Beth does f-all QC. 
I'm not a hater...I'm the dope that fell for their bs, every single time since fallout 3, and has had enough.

Even MS QC seems to leave a LOT to be desired.....

Just like every previous beth game, this one too will get mostly fixed, if not by official patches, then by modders.

[dw420]

16 hours ago, HeyYou said:

Even MS QC seems to leave a LOT to be desired.....

Just like every previous beth game, this one too will get mostly fixed, if not by official patches, then by modders.

"Even MS QC seems to leave a LOT to be desired....."

Agreed, but at the same time...that staff had no idea what they where looking at on day 1 ..or what to expect.
There's a reason why dev companies have in-house testers...and that's cause the tester needs to be familiar with the product they are testing...or they resort to pure luck when it comes to finding bugs etc.
It's also abundantly clear from past Beth games that Beth keeps no records of known issues...and if they do, its more of a "s#*! we got away with" list than a "what we'll look to fix come next dev cycle" list.

God knows what abomination of a game Beth intended to release before MS told them to take an extra year for QC.
--------------
..." if not by official patches"
Meanwhile back in the real world, there are bugs that have been carried over since Fallout 3...because Beth doesn't fix stuff (unless absolutely forced to) . 
What Beth does is sell overpriced DLCs which introduce features that should have been in Vanilla to begin with.
--------------
.."then by modders."
And here we are back to "Beth apologist" square no.1 ....aka "3rd parties will fix it".

No, modders won't fix it*  (....or at the very least should not be expected to.) 

How many of you are part of the group of "modders that will fix it" ?
How many of you have been to the Beth forums telling them that what they sold you is not a good product?
Why is it, that instead of "demanding" that those that got paid to work on the game sit down and fix it, you expect unpaid people to do it?

*More and more modders (the kind that introduces new code etc...not xedit mods like the average NexusJoe ) have already "washed their hands" when it comes to Starfield.
Why is that? Because every Beth game is buggier than the last one..
Why is that? Because people buy their buggy games and never accost Beth for s#*!.. they will moan for a bit , then rush to buy the next overpriced and undercooked Beth game.
It happened with every TES and Fallout game after Morrowind and it will happen again.

Beth exists with the sole purpose to make profit. When you pull down your pants and turn around...they will dryf*ck you with no second thoughts, just like any other "for profit organisation".
If you want Beth to stop doing what is described above...you need to pull your trousers up. Expecting modders to stitch you up afterwards does nothing to alleviate the unpleasant experience you've been through nor will it make Beth put some lube on, come next time.

Ps. AGAIN , no issue with the person...it's the stance/attitude that i am attacking.
A stance/attitude that is akin to letting a cancer  tumour grow uncontrollably whilst expecting w/e deity it is you believe in to cure it. 

Edited December 31, 2023 by dw420

[HeyYou]

6 hours ago, dw420 said:

"Even MS QC seems to leave a LOT to be desired....."

Agreed, but at the same time...that staff had no idea what they where looking at on day 1 ..or what to expect.
There's a reason why dev companies have in-house testers...and that's cause the tester needs to be familiar with the product they are testing...or they resort to pure luck when it comes to finding bugs etc.
It's also abundantly clear from past Beth games that Beth keeps no records of known issues...and if they do, its more of a "s#*! we got away with" list than a "what we'll look to fix come next dev cycle" list.

God knows what abomination of a game Beth intended to release before MS told them to take an extra year for QC.
--------------
..." if not by official patches"
Meanwhile back in the real world, there are bugs that have been carried over since Fallout 3...because Beth doesn't fix stuff (unless absolutely forced to) . 
What Beth does is sell overpriced DLCs which introduce features that should have been in Vanilla to begin with.
--------------
.."then by modders."
And here we are back to "Beth apologist" square no.1 ....aka "3rd parties will fix it".

No, modders won't fix it*  (....or at the very least should not be expected to.) 

How many of you are part of the group of "modders that will fix it" ?
How many of you have been to the Beth forums telling them that what they sold you is not a good product?
Why is it, that instead of "demanding" that those that got paid to work on the game sit down and fix it, you expect unpaid people to do it?

*More and more modders (the kind that introduces new code etc...not xedit mods like the average NexusJoe ) have already "washed their hands" when it comes to Starfield.
Why is that? Because every Beth game is buggier than the last one..
Why is that? Because people buy their buggy games and never accost Beth for s#*!.. they will moan for a bit , then rush to buy the next overpriced and undercooked Beth game.
It happened with every TES and Fallout game after Morrowind and it will happen again.

Beth exists with the sole purpose to make profit. When you pull down your pants and turn around...they will dryf*ck you with no second thoughts, just like any other "for profit organisation".
If you want Beth to stop doing what is described above...you need to pull your trousers up. Expecting modders to stitch you up afterwards does nothing to alleviate the unpleasant experience you've been through nor will it make Beth put some lube on, come next time.

Ps. AGAIN , no issue with the person...it's the stance/attitude that i am attacking.
A stance/attitude that is akin to letting a cancer  tumour grow uncontrollably whilst expecting w/e deity it is you believe in to cure it. 

Well, it seems the public beta testers were able to discern what was a bug, and what was a feature..... A ship tech that is kilometers away from his post, (swimming in the ocean, or floating in the sky....) is most certainly a 'bug'. One that folks would encounter in even a casual playthru. And that is just ONE example of the patently obvious bugs that made it thru QC......

What bugs are carried over from FO3??

Beth apologist? Hardly. Would I like to see beth fix ALL the bugs that are found? You bet. Do I think that is gonna happen? Nope. They don't exactly have a stellar reputation for bug fixing.... even when they are well documented, and the cause for them is published on various sites. We already see this happening with Starfield. There are NUMEROUS bug fixes on Nexus, script errors, math errors, etc, that modders have solved, even WITHOUT the dev tools. Beth has released a couple patches, and fixed SOME bugs.... but they still have a long list they haven't even mentioned. We have seen several patches come out, but only ONE with significant bug fixes. (and I am not sure that their fixes actually FIXED them, the Akila ship tech still goes missing regularly in my game.)

And yes, modders WILL fix a fair bit of it, that beth neglects. History shows that is the case. Should they be 'expected' to? Nope. In an ideal world, Beth would fix the bugs. But, got news for ya, we don't live in an ideal world.

Name the modders that have 'washed their hands' of this game. I am only aware of one, and he was on the team working on co-op mods for various beth games. Not a project I care about at all. I keep seeing people bringing this up, yet, when pressed, they can't name a single mod author that has flatly stated they won't mod for starfield, due to the problems with the game. Sure, some of them won't, because it isn't their style of game. Imagine that.

At this point, I don't think anything productive will come from this convo. All I see from you are the same arguments that have been hashed, re-hashed, re-re-hashed, etc, over on the steam forums, by folks that freely admit they haven't even played the game. They bring up a lot of the same points you do, neglecting to mention that Beth is not the first game company (nor will it be the last) to release buggy games. And the claim that starfield is buggier than their last game? Really? What evidence do you have for that? Can you show me a list of bugs for both games for comparison? And don't start with the 'well x company actually FIXED their game' nonsense. Starfield has been out for less than four months. Patches are a process, and now that MS owns Beth, that process likely got a lot more complicated.....

Does the game have issues? You bet. But, in it's current state, it is eminently playable, I can run the game for hours with zero crashes. I have yet to encounter a bug that I couldn't overcome, and yes, I use mods. It's a beth game, beth games and mod go together like eggs and bacon. Would I like to see beth fix the issues? Yep. How effective they are at that remains to be seen though. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt at this point. If they disappoint me, they will be a LOT less likely to get my money when ESVI comes out.

[dw420]

The problem is not whether you or I are indeed Beth apologists when saying "modders will fix it".
The problem is that this idea has been propagated to the extent where game reviews give Beth games high scores because "modders will fix it" ..and Beth puts less and less effort into QC (compared to the money/time spent for each game) than what any other company would.

I don't blame the people reviewing, that are essentially telling the reader to buy broken games because captain modder will come to the rescue, because after 20 years of "the modders will fix it" , there's a generation of gamers that thinks that it's normal practice. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. The "meh" that nowadays comes before "modders will fix it".  

Bug that has carried over from FO3 to Stafield ? Here's 2 off the top of my head:
Dead bodies can get catapulted on Kill because ...reasons. 
Loading in a cell can result in all "junk" to bounce off its intended placement position because...reasons.

Ps. when i said "no, modders won't fix it" i was using exaggeration in order to drive the point home, not trying to make a statement of fact...
After all...I am AverageJoe making xedit mods on Nexus and to a certain degree I am fixing Beths game. 

Pps. I don't use the Steam forums, but if the same arguments have been hashed and re-hashed over there as you say...that should give you a hint that there is foundation to them. 

What i do know for sure is that your (or mine for that matter) personal experience and rig performance is not the average experience /rig performance. This isn't Xbox or Playstation. Your mileage is your mileage ONLY and when a sea of people complains about an issue, what happened to you (or me) is 100% IRRELEVANT. I'm glad you've had no issues but that doesn't negate all the issues other people have had.

The game runs better than any other Beth game on day 1..sure. But Beth isn't as inexperienced as when they released those games...nor did they have MS force them to do QC back then or the same budget and as much staff. So excuse me if i don't compare lists of bugs...its because it proves absolutely nothing.

4 months in and Beth hasn't fixed the broken Engine recipes in the ShipBuilderMenu ...the kind of 0 effort stuff other AAA companies fix on their day 1 patch.  And you want to sit here and argue about me needing to post proof that things are going downhill in terms of how Beth essentially sees us. Funny stuff.

I have no issue about you dismissing anything i say unless i prove it as fact...but bare in mind that the same goes for everything you've claimed that is based on anecdotes, feelings , premonitions and hunches of yours..it works both ways. You can't sit here and demand proof when you can provide none that things will go as you predict/wish.

Edited January 1, 2024 by dw420
Syntax.

[HeyYou]

8 hours ago, dw420 said:

The problem is not whether you or I are indeed Beth apologists when saying "modders will fix it".
The problem is that this idea has been propagated to the extent where game reviews give Beth games high scores because "modders will fix it" ..and Beth puts less and less effort into QC (compared to the money/time spent for each game) than what any other company would.

I don't blame the people reviewing, that are essentially telling the reader to buy broken games because captain modder will come to the rescue, because after 20 years of "the modders will fix it" , there's a generation of gamers that thinks that it's normal practice. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. The "meh" that nowadays comes before "modders will fix it".  

Bug that has carried over from FO3 to Stafield ? Here's 2 off the top of my head:
Dead bodies can get catapulted on Kill because ...reasons. 
Loading in a cell can result in all "junk" to bounce off its intended placement position because...reasons.

Ps. when i said "no, modders won't fix it" i was using exaggeration in order to drive the point home, not trying to make a statement of fact...
After all...I am AverageJoe making xedit mods on Nexus and to a certain degree I am fixing Beths game. 

Pps. I don't use the Steam forums, but if the same arguments have been hashed and re-hashed over there as you say...that should give you a hint that there is foundation to them. 

What i do know for sure is that your (or mine for that matter) personal experience and rig performance is not the average experience /rig performance. This isn't Xbox or Playstation. Your mileage is your mileage ONLY and when a sea of people complains about an issue, what happened to you (or me) is 100% IRRELEVANT. I'm glad you've had no issues but that doesn't negate all the issues other people have had.

The game runs better than any other Beth game on day 1..sure. But Beth isn't as inexperienced as when they released those games...nor did they have MS force them to do QC back then or the same budget and as much staff. So excuse me if i don't compare lists of bugs...its because it proves absolutely nothing.

4 months in and Beth hasn't fixed the broken Engine recipes in the ShipBuilderMenu ...the kind of 0 effort stuff other AAA companies fix on their day 1 patch.  And you want to sit here and argue about me needing to post proof that things are going downhill in terms of how Beth essentially sees us. Funny stuff.

I have no issue about you dismissing anything i say unless i prove it as fact...but bare in mind that the same goes for everything you've claimed that is based on anecdotes, feelings , premonitions and hunches of yours..it works both ways. You can't sit here and demand proof when you can provide none that things will go as you predict/wish.

There are minor bugs in previous beth games they never bothered to fix as well. Starfield isn't any better, or worse, than any of those. Now, the fact that they took an additional year to 'polish' the game, yet we still see bugs of this nature? Yeah, I really don't think much of their QC..... I am sure the one guy trying to play the game on his windows 98 machine genuinely tried to document bugs.... but, Word crashed, and he lost that document.

Physics issues in a beth game... Yep. That one has been there forever. But, that is Havoc.... and I am not entirely sure Beth even has the ABILITY to fix that.....

Some of the issues that folks are having are self-inflicted. (note: SOME of them, yes, the game does seem to choke on some hardware combinations.) Trying to play the game on below spec machines, running it off a mechanical HDD, tons of Windows startup programs, etc.  A frequent complaint I see at work is "The machine is slow." on hardware that shouldn't be..... only to find three different A/V programs running, along with a selection of 'driver updater' apps, etc etc. One customer had no less than SIX instances of "One Launch" starting with windows...... Some of the stuff I see at work, just makes me shake my head...

And some of the "free" A/V packages? (and some of the subscription fellers too....) They have more processes starting with windows, than HP does with their bloatware. It's insane. How often do drivers need updated? (a lot of 'em check every 15 friggin minutes) How often do drives need to be cleaned/defragged? Etc. Software updated. And a whole host of other crap, that "looks" like a good idea, but, in actual practice, does more harm than good. A fair bit of the time, users are their own worst enemy.

But, that's the problem with PC gaming. No two systems, even with the EXACT same hardware, will have the same configuration. (one of the reasons I have a minimalist approach to what's running on my machine.)

I tend to take what folks are saying on forums, Especially Steam forums.... with bit (lot) of salt. Steam forums for Starfield are downright toxic. the trolls outnumber the gamers by a good margin..... and the sentiment there is reflected in the reviews the game is getting. Most of what they whine about are things that didn't meet their own (unrealistic) expectations. There are some folks with genuine issues, but, on Steam forums, they are the tiny minority, amongst the huge crowds of 'haters' for lack of a better term. Look at the forums here.... Nexus has almost as many members as steam at this point, yet you rarely see a thread he seeking help with the game. (aside from installing mods, and making them work..... ) I don't go to beth forums anymore, as they don't exist..... and I also do not visit the beth discord, as that just isn't my scene. I like forums. Not chat. So I have no idea what all is going on over there.....

But anyway... Yep, beth released what is widely viewed as a real stinker of a game..... and so far, they really don't seem to be doing much about it. And folks are pissed. Its too late to change course on Starfield, but, are folks going to be as willing to fork out money for their NEXT game? Their strategy there is likely something to the effect of "It'll be several years before we come out with another game, and this will all be forgotten, and the sheep will still flock to us with their pre-orders."

And THAT is why I don't really expect anything to change.