this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Sure Todd, lol

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[–] Otome-chan@kbin.social 97 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"1000+ planets are dull on purpose"

No, they're dull because no human team could make 1000 planets worth of interesting content in a single game development cycle.

[–] Starshader@lemmy.ml 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Chris Roberts : Hold my beer, for another 50 years.

[–] Rinox@feddit.it 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's already stale and expired by now

[–] Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You know someone is gonna make a mod that generates random and unique bases from hab complex assets.

And thats exactly why Bethesda doesnt put the effort in. cause they make the game, then the modders make it good for free.. Or it used to be that, now they want to charge for mods and take a cut of the profits for shit they didnt make.

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[–] Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They could at least make the random PoI's interesting if there was some..randomness to them.

Like, I walk into a PoI, I already know where the chests are, the locked doors, are, where the stupid fucking corpse in the shower is, etc etc. cause I've ran through this PoI 20 times.

I dont know why at least the locations of chests and locked doors cant be randomized. Make things at least marginally interesting, instead of cookie cuttered to extreme.

[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

While I agree, I've been saying that about NMS for years. Not that we want to be comparing Starfield to NMS, of course.

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[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 75 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most of the planets are dull on purpose because my graphics card catches fire if there's too much excitement on screen. Thanks for looking out for me, Todd!

[–] RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Didn't know anyone was still using Fermis.

[–] sylverstream@lemmy.nz 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I really don't understand all the negative comments. It feels like a very fun game and I can't wait to play it again.

[–] TauriWarrior@aussie.zone 26 points 1 year ago

If your enjoying it then don't worry about the negative comments. Unlike some other space games you dont do much travel yourself, you fast travel everywhere which means seeing the same non-skippable cutscenes again and again, i fast travel to the system, then fast travel to the planet, then fast travel to the surface; then if i want to go elsewhere on the planet i have to fast travel back to orbit then back down to the planet. Its "fast travel:the video game" Given that similar games have managed to let you fly your ship from space down and around the planet for years now I dont why you cant in this, im constantly pulled out of playing for a loading screen

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

For me, the criticism is more directed toward the PR and hype. There's still lots to like about the game, it's just frustrating how they spin it.

I'm glad you're enjoying it!

[–] Zacryon@feddit.de 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Disclaimer: My comment is a reaction to the stuff Todd and his minions said in the article, not necessarily about the game itself. I haven't played Starfield yet. I just find the statements really weak and want to express why I see it that way.

Yeaaahh that's nice for maybe a couple of hours, but then it starts to get boring. That's not how you keep players engaged, although there are of course those who don't find that boring at all.

We're not astronauts, we're not there. Astronauts had the thrill of the voyage through space, stepping on the moon and feeling with ones own body how it is to walk on the moon's dust in low gravity. Also astronauts had and have a shitload of scientific equipment and experiments to carry out, i.e., a purpose beyond the mere jolly walking.

If they were just there for walking and that for days, weeks, months, they would get bored pretty fast as well.

Take a look at No Man's Sky. Similar problem. The procedural generation algorithm made planets look familiar after you've seen a couple. There is nothing new. Exploration became unrewarded. But Hello Games has massively improved on that over the years and produced a game where you can sink dozens of hours without getting bored so easily.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I have played Starfield.

The planets being mostly empty is fine. In fact, I think they're too full if anything. You're not meant to travel on the planet's surface for long. You explore a bit if you think you want to build an outpost there, but otherwise you just move on. Most of the "content" is in pre-built areas. Enemy encounters almost always take place in hand crafted facilities, and usually it'll be for some kind of quest so you land right near it.

The outpost system is where the procedural planets come in. You need to explore some to find the right spot to build with the resources you want. The content there is the building, not the planet. The landscape will effect it some, but mostly it's whatever you make of it.

That said, the outpost system fucking sucks right now. You have to send resources between outposts with "links", which take goods into a container and store them in linked containers. All solid goods go in one type, and the same for liquid, gas, and manufactured. I have all of my resources trickling into a main base, so I have all resources available there. This has caused my storage to back up and there's no way to filter out items you don't want. Then no resources can come in so you have to go to your storage and clear whatever is clogging it. There's also no way to delete items as far as I'm aware, so you just dump the excess resources on the ground where they'll remain forever. It's really stupid. This is my storage solution for now.

All the crates flow into the next one, so it's functionally one massive storage container, but with 15 seperate inventories I have to go through to get anything out. There's also no stairs object you can build, or anything like it, so I stacked cabinets into a sort of access staircase. It's really bad, but it's what works for now.

Just a tip if you start playing and build a main base, build it on a low gravity planet so you don't have as much of a problem if you stack stuff like this.

[–] Quentinp@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does it eventually give you a purpose or guide you to making an outpost, I haven't felt much of a need yet.

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[–] mojo@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago

Why don't they just have Skyrim level of detail on all 1000 planets, smh!

[–] infamous_trade@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago

nice argument lol

[–] banana_meccanica@feddit.it 20 points 1 year ago

They thought they had a brilliant idea, but it's not. It's a classic. The space is beautiful, of course, but it's the interactions that make a game unique. No interaction, no party.

[–] jsdz@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The moon is boring, so every planet in the universe must be boring. Earth is mostly capitalist right now, so every planet with humans must be one form or another of late capitalist dystopia. A whole galaxy made of inert rocks, fast travel, and people eager to exchange gunfire with you.

I haven't played it yet, but from what I've seen the setting looks even more bleak and depressing than Bethesda Fallout.

[–] TechnoBabble@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

For all the problems the game has, the major thing they get right is the environment.

Almost every area looks more than great, some are industrial, luxurious, barren, creepy, outright hostile, or cozy, but they are usually always gorgeous.

The environments are what pushed me to keep giving the game a chance after the initial shock of not having a cohesive overworld.

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[–] DeathWearsANecktie@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

I really like the game so far but it really needs some kind of vehicle for travelling around planets. Like the exocraft from No Man's Sky.

[–] totallymojo@ttrpg.network 18 points 1 year ago

Yeah. I failed math on purpose too.

[–] mayo@lemmy.today 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

~~Did this game focus on anything in particular and do that well? Exploring isn't it.~~

I'm tired of being negative gamer. This game looks fun even if it isn't mind blowing, but seeing as I've never played a Bethesda game I think I'm just as likely to play one of the older games because they look about as good.

[–] NuPNuA@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There does seem to be some people out there who are just radiating negativity about this game even more so than most.

I played a good few hours last night and it's Skyrim in Space which is what I wanted.

I don't know if it's the Xbox console exclusivity that's bringing fanboys out the woodwork or just that people like to attack a big, hyped up release like they did with Cyberpunk, but it's brought out the worst in people.

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wasn't Cyberpunk actually catastrophically bad at release, and then got fixed later?

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[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

Having tried a bit of it, this game is fun. It plays a bit like outer world but bigger and with a more mature tone.

But i am really glad that after getting hyped in spring i actually forgot it was coming out. My gpu was not prepared.

[–] Yepthatsme@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I have no clue what people are talking about? I have beaten it twice and surveyed an entire solar system and there was plenty. You can fly around to any point in most planets and moons and have stuff generate at each landing, within hiking distance.

I feel like the game is so big and good, the haters are just hating and being stupidly immature about it.

[–] vitriolix@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

I think here we are reacting to the colossally dumb reasoning in the quote from the article. Astronauts had a few things to be excited about that gamers... won't

[–] CraigeryTheKid 6 points 1 year ago

Beaten it twice? like the main story? Honestly I forgot Skyrim had a story too. I always wandered for so long I forgot what I was doing.

[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

Everything in the game is "within hiking distance" because that's how the game generates planets. You don't just "land on a planet". You go through several hidden loading screens and arrive in a 1km x 1km square of planet.

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If there's more going on outside my window than in the $90 game I just bought, there's a problem.

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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Bethesda, are you high?

[–] Quentinp@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

I've been enjoying Starfield - but the empty planets suck, especially without vehicles. The scanning thing is boring and dumb, worse than trying to get 100% on a NMS world. It's a shame that fast travel disconnects you from the space feel of the game, but it makes the rest of the game playable. I like the game overall, but they have definitely dropped the ball on space travel. In theory it'd be cool to come across different "dungeons" etc, as in Skyrim when wandering around, but doesn't happen in Starfield because you're generally not going to happen upon them. It's not interesting to drop down to random planets.

[–] variants@possumpat.io 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I still haven't found a completely empty planet, there is always outposts, abandoned mines or caves with space pirates or other factions. Every time I walk to a point there is like 3 more points you can just explore endlessly

[–] Endorkend@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's false as moving away from your ship a certain distance (I think 6 or 7 km), it'll literally tell you you've reached the boundary of the area and you need to land somewhere else to get a new stretch of land.

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[–] ace@lemmy.ananace.dev 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This particular point really annoys me, I'd love to have somewhere that actually feels remote, where I don't have four more copies of the same mining and science outposts in visual range. No matter how large humanity has become it just doesn't make any sense that you can't find a single ~15km square without anything man made on it.

The best remote places I've found so far has been in some quest-specific areas, but even then there's usually a facility somewhere within a kilometer of the quest location.

[–] variants@possumpat.io 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I had the same thought, the caves and stuff are cool but finding so many abandoned outposts full of people is kind of weird

[–] Endorkend@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Especially on planets supposedly never surveyed by anyone ever.

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[–] Treczoks@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Just wait then DLCs start to populate the void...

Apart from that, what I've seen on some YT videos is impressive - When they populate a planet, they really mean it.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 8 points 1 year ago

That maybe so, but if Earth had 1000 moons, we'd have likely gone to one with something interesting on it.

[–] dan1101@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'm an Elite Dangerous veteran and have no problem with that. I think it's more realistic.

I'm about 18 hours in and the illusion of variety hasn't worn off yet. Plenty of things to find, with some travel time though. Unlock/upgrade your backpack boosters and it's almost like Tribes though, as you go flying across the landscape in short bursts to keep moving forward in the air.

[–] ipha@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

"It's almost like Tribes" are the four magic words to get me interested in any game.

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[–] reverendsteveii 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The thing about video games is that they're a multivariate equation. Fun is a variable, and so is realism. Depending on how much realism there already is, and the nature of it, adding more can also increase the fun but it can also take away from the fun. There's a reason that even the hardcore simmers who do things like drive pretend trucks across Europe in real time or run pretend air traffic control at pretend airports pay to pretend to do those things instead of getting paid to do them for real.

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[–] Joyboy@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Why are they selling it as a fantasy action adventure game when it was a moon simulator all along.

[–] AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Crazy amount of spin

[–] BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Looking at a boring planet on a screen and slgetting into a rocket and blast to a boring planet is obviously the same.

[–] Roundcat@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Glad I went with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk over this.

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