[Request] Starfield Feature Wishlist for Bethesda

[melvinius]

• Ability to open/close bays from a control panel and summon/send away ship via the interface.  Mods have done it, Bethesda should be able to do it seamlessly and jank free.
• Ability to spacewalk from dockers/bays with use of a control panel.  Sneak onto other ships via their dockers/bays.  Mods have done the spacewalk part of this, Bethesda should be able to do it.
• Enemies can board your ship during docking and larger enemy crews.
• In ship builder, add parts for airlocks that are not bays/dockers so you can have exit door points higher on your ship if you want to build a tower or station type vessel with balconies, etc.
• Disable gravity on your ship.  Mods have done it...
• When decorating, simple snap to set angles during furniture rotation.  There's no reason I need a full 360 degrees of rotation all the time.  45/90 degree rotation increments would be fine for most builds and purposes.
• In ship builder, add plate parts for: force ladder/door placement, block ladder/door placement.  Placing windows or equipment mount panels should block doors and ladders as well.
• All star systems and enemies should level without cap.  Why can't Bethesda get the game balance right for enemy damage/health after the same issue over and over in game after game?  Tweak your formulas and get it right, please.  It's not hard.  Other titles had better locational damage.
• Lasers and laser dots that actually aim at point of impact.  See thru scopes.  These are a necessity for modern FPS gunplay games and not hard to do.  Again... mods have made these changes, why can't you, Bethsoft?
• Fix decal issues.  I have a solid gaming PC that runs everything but apparently Starfield can't display more than like 3 blood decals reliably.  I should be able to spray the environment with thousands of bullet holes and have them stay if my PC can handle it.  But Starfield's engine apparently isn't set up to handle it.  Other Bethesda games did better.
• Dismemberment should be in the game, but maybe with a settings menu toggle.  Likewise a blood toggle.  This is 2024, there are violent themes in Starfield.  Previous Bethsoft titles did better.
• Allow small arms fire to damage or even destroy ships on planet surfaces.
• Allow flying ships and ship combat on planets/in atmosphere.  I've played the game, Bethsoft, I can tell that the functionality is there, we just don't have the full feature due to laziness.  I'm not saying do away with planet landing loadscreens, but you could add controls for "local flight" and "launch to orbit" via the ship helm.
• Make the digipick minigame optional and able to be switched off in settings.  If it's off, you just succeed at lockpicking and hacks if you have the right perk level for the lock.  Mods do this... yeah
• Allow companions to be stationed at faction locations (Lodge, Mantis Base, The Eye) or owned houses and apartments.
• Companions stationed to a ship "remain with that ship" even if you change your home ship to another ship.  That way you can customize crew per ship.  Combat crew for the Razorleaf, exploration crew for the Frontier, etc.  Of course, reassigning would still be possible.
• Better combat AI.  Even just some sliders for things in the game settings like enemy aggression or shot hit chance would be a huge boon for being able to tweak the game's feel.
• Unlink combat AI.  Enemies should not be mind-linked.  If I shoot a military ship in orbit, all 40 ships, including freighters, GalBank, etc. should not all try to gank me at once.  That's insane.  Same with stealth, alerting one enemy should not alert all 40 of them in a POI.
• Fewer armed NPCs.  It's astounding that every Terrabrew employee is strapped like it's the Wild West.  And again, fewer aggressive NPCs in crowd combat scenarios.  Most people aren't Rambo.
• More destructible objects in the environment.  I know for a fact this feature was built into the engine of previous Bethsoft games but not fully implemented.  It's under implemented in Starfield too.  The best Fallout 3 mod allowed everything -- and I do mean everything -- to be destructible.  Nothing like killing a raider by blowing up an appliance on the counter beside them.  Nothing like turning off the music by blasting a radio.  Exploding vending machines.  Etc.  And make the explosive stuff that already explodes even more spectacular with bigger dust/gas clouds, etc.  Blowing up a gas canister on a ship should engulf half the ship in toxic gas.  And you don't have to worry about collision either, just allow the gas cloud to clip outside the ship since the ship's life support would be actively trying to pump it outside anyways.  Destructible environments add so much to a game for very little up front effort.

[aurreth]

Um, you are aware that Nexus isn't affiliated with Bethesda, right?

[melvinius]

On 11/18/2024 at 8:36 AM, aurreth said:

Um, you are aware that Nexus isn't affiliated with Bethesda, right?

Yes, but if I recall Bethesda shut down their forums.  I was never very active over there anyways.

The reality is that Bethsoft is pretty out of touch when it comes to true innovation in their games and in terms of what players want.  There's a near 0% chance that my post will make any kind of difference whatsoever.

But I am sure that at least a few Bethsoft employees are Nexus users, who knows, maybe someone will see this.

Every once in a while I post something like this just to be able to say that I tried to make things better.

[fraquar]

If there is a Bethesda employee that visits here - they are still powerless to act on anything you list.

You might be better off waiting for 3rd party modders to implement some of these things - because you see it in every Bethesda game.

Functionality that should be there isn't.  Some talented modder realizes they need it and they create it.   Other modders take that feature and run with it.

Added:  Remember, Bethesda still hasn't even implemented something as fundamental as being able to climb a ladder in an open world game yet.   We saw things like that in Assassin's Creed nearly 2 decades ago.

Edited 19 hours ago by fraquar