Starfield - Epic Shit Takes from Bethestards

[Gargaune]

Considering Bethesda Softworks has yet to release the Construction Kit, while the number of people interested in Starfield dwindles, it's quite doubtful that the game will ever receive the kind of extensive modding experienced by Skyrim 12 years earlier.

There's some really baffling decisions going on at Bethesda. Basically, six months out, they've released:
1) a Bethesda game without Bethesda's trademark exploration of a handcrafted, contiguous open world;
2) a space game where you don't get to fly freely through space;
3) a "mods will fix it" game with no mod-making tools.

And lest someone stumble into this thread by accident and think Todd's put out three games in the past half year, no, just Starfield.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

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What does the "all-time peak" mean? Were there at one point in time 330,597 people who played Starfield simultaneously?

 

[Decado]

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What does the "all-time peak" mean? Were there at one point in time 330,597 people who played Starfield simultaneously?

Also, which version of Skyrim? I would be very surprised if Starfield had more players than all of the versions of Skyrim put together. I would bet that Skyrim blows Starfield out of the water both all time and concurrent player count highs.

 

[Decado]

Okay. I appreciate it, dudes!

Play Spacebourne 2 instead

Looks interesting, but I don't play Early Access games. Elite still scratches the "fly around in space" itch for me.

 

[Atrachasis]

Also, which version of Skyrim? I would be very surprised if Starfield had more players than all of the versions of Skyrim put together. I would bet that Skyrim blows Starfield out of the water both all time and concurrent player count highs.

I presume this being on Game Pass had something to do with a high concurrent number of people checking it out immediately after launch and then dropping it like a hot potato. I do wonder, though, if the drop-off was measurably steeper than for other day-one Game Pass titles.

edit: but those are only Steam numbers, right? So they probably don't count Gamepass players, and there may be even more unfortunate souls subjected to that experience?

 

[Chimera]

Also, which version of Skyrim? I would be very surprised if Starfield had more players than all of the versions of Skyrim put together. I would bet that Skyrim blows Starfield out of the water both all time and concurrent player count highs.

Possibly worth noting that, on average, another 250 or so people are regularly playing the VR version of Skyrim, as well.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Also, which version of Skyrim? I would be very surprised if Starfield had more players than all of the versions of Skyrim put together. I would bet that Skyrim blows Starfield out of the water both all time and concurrent player count highs.

Gaming has grown in popularity a lot, since Skyrim was released in 2011. Starfield having a high concurrent player count was expected due to the popularity of Skyrim and Fallout. For instance, Fallout 4 reached a peak of 472,962 concurrent players. And has remained in the top 100 played games on Steam ever since. Fallout 4 was met with a lukewarm reception. Starfield drops out of the top 100 games played on Steam on a regular basis. If Game Pass had a consistent high number of gamers playing Starfield on a regular basis, Microsoft would be showing off those numbers regularly. Instead, they most likely had a large surge of Game Pass subscribers that first month (microsoft did let the gaming press know about that) of Starfields release, who quit playing before the month was up, haven't touched Starfield since, all the while Microsoft hoping those gamers would forgot about their Game Pass subscription and just continue being charged.

 

[General Disarray]

Piece of shit is on 33% sale at steam at the moment until Thursday.

 

[Butter]

Piece of shit is on 33% sale at steam at the moment until Thursday.

I wouldn't, even with your money.

 

[Moink]

I got it for free with my CPU and I still feel like I got ripped off.

 

[Konjad]

Is this game worth getting, at all? Serious question, from someone who loved Morrowind and legitimately had a good time in Skyrim, at least for a while.

There are fates worse than lobotomy, but does it mean you should lobotomize yourself?

If you are still uncertain, look at Vic

 

[Fedora Master]

This is probably the biggest waste of HD space since Dragon Age 2.

 

[ArchAngel]

I got it for free with my CPU and I still feel like I got ripped off.

Of course when it overheated your CPU and still had crap graphics.

 

[Rhobar121]

This is probably the biggest waste of HD space since Dragon Age 2.

Without exaggeration, DA2 wasn't even half as bad.

 

[Peachcurl]

"this turd tastes much better than this other turd"

Why do we have to do this, bros.

 

[Losus4]

Bethesda have no idea why people like their games. No one likes their main quests, their games are all about the life-sim elements, and the best thing Bethesda can do to facilite this is simply get out of the player's way. Instead they force the player into scripted, narrative-heavy scenes.

Imagine how much better Starfield would've been if the moment the player clicks "New Game" you are immediately dropped onto a random planet, in some random outpost, with some basic gear based on the class you chose. That's it. No forced dialogue or cutscenes or exposition. Just free to play and explore at your own leisure. You can choose to travel to a nearby space station or city to discover the world and main quest, or you could simply stay at the spot the game dumped you at the start and simply live out your character on that planet.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Bethesda have no idea why people like their games. No one likes their main quests, their games are all about the life-sim elements, and the best thing Bethesda can do to facilite this is simply get out of the player's way. Instead they force the player into scripted, narrative-heavy scenes.

Imagine how much better Starfield would've been if the moment the player clicks "New Game" you are immediately dropped onto a random planet, in some random outpost, with some basic gear based on the class you chose. That's it. No forced dialogue or cutscenes or exposition. Just free to play and explore at your own leisure. You can choose to travel to a nearby space station or city to discover the world and main quest, or you could simply stay at the spot the game dumped you at the start and simply live out your character on that planet.

This is so true. I've enjoyed Bethsoft games at times. I've never beaten any of the MQs. I've also barely finished any other questlines either. I think I finished a few guilds in Oblivion way back when, but that's about it. Usually I just wander around, adventuring and tooling around until I get bored.

 

[Ravielsk]

This is so true. I've enjoyed Bethsoft games at times. I've never beaten any of the MQs. I've also barely finished any other questlines either. I think I finished a few guilds in Oblivion way back when, but that's about it. Usually I just wander around, adventuring and tooling around until I get bored.

Agreed. The problem with Bethesda is that they do not understand that there has to be a meaningful difference between the player just randomly dungeon diving and the main quest(s). And that difference has to be there from start to finish, not just in some sporadic bursts at the start and end.

 

[gurugeorge]

Bethesda have no idea why people like their games. No one likes their main quests, their games are all about the life-sim elements, and the best thing Bethesda can do to facilite this is simply get out of the player's way. Instead they force the player into scripted, narrative-heavy scenes.

Imagine how much better Starfield would've been if the moment the player clicks "New Game" you are immediately dropped onto a random planet, in some random outpost, with some basic gear based on the class you chose. That's it. No forced dialogue or cutscenes or exposition. Just free to play and explore at your own leisure. You can choose to travel to a nearby space station or city to discover the world and main quest, or you could simply stay at the spot the game dumped you at the start and simply live out your character on that planet.

This is so true. I've enjoyed Bethsoft games at times. I've never beaten any of the MQs. I've also barely finished any other questlines either. I think I finished a few guilds in Oblivion way back when, but that's about it. Usually I just wander around, adventuring and tooling around until I get bored.

Has anybody ever, in the whole history of man, finished a Bethesda MQ? :D

Me neither. Even with Fallout 4, I found it to be quite enjoyable when I had the mod that made the MQ optional, and I just pottered about doing side-quests with one of those mods that put a whole lot of "interesting NPCs" into the game. The most memorable thing was escorting a sentient zombie from that mod, from one end of the map to the other, through all sorts of emergent trials and tribulations.

There's something kind of "weightless" about the MQ lines in Bethesda games. Some of the side-quests they do are great, but there's something about the way the games are set up that makes the whole idea of an MQ kind of weirdly inappropriate. You want to "make your own story" in their games, not follow some over-arching narrative. Then they work quite well as RPGs (or do, once you mod the mechanics to be more congenial).

 

[ArchAngel]

I've finished MQ in Skyrim and Starfield. I Skyrim it was on my 2nd try. On first I ragequit the game somewhere during mage guild quest when some nasty bug appeared. I've finished MQ in Starfield because they managed to make random exploring shittier than MQ and I wanted to see how the New Game+ works in Starfield

 

[Lemming42]

With Oblivion, Fo3 and Skyrim it's really especially annoying in that you're actively punished for doing the MQ - Oblivion gates and dragons both arrive after you hit a certain point in the MQ, and both of them serve to ruin immersion and waylay the player from doing whatever it is they actually wanted to do. Refusing to engage with the MQ thus results in a better game, with the world more open for freeform exploration. Fo3 has the Enclave sweep through the wasteland after a certain point in the MQ too which has some cool reactivity with a couple of locations but is otherwise just a pointless obstacle for the player to deal with.

I wonder if they'd be wise to do entirely optional main quests in future games. There's a really cool Daggerfall Unity quest mod I played in which the player goes on a long and exciting adventure after finding an abandoned baby (it's this mod), but you can also just choose to ignore the baby and then the quest will never start and you'll never get another chance, and you can just keep roleplaying.

Emil and Todd clearly like """"epic"""" quests with high stakes and plenty of cinematic action, but I think shit like Dawnguard proves that you can do that in a non-intrusive way that isn't forced on the player.

 

[Butter]

I finished the MQ in Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3, and FO4. Only in the first of those did I do it because I actually wanted to see how the story would play out. For the rest it was "Well I guess I'll do that shit now."

 

[Jvegi]

I could never find Caius Cosades (not true, but funny).

Played about 60 hours of Morrowind, 20 hours of Oblivion, 10 hours of Skyrim and 5 hours of F3. I assume there’s something I'm missing by not following the mq. I'll never know if that's true.

 

[ind33d]

I wonder what went wr...

 

[Butter]

Skyrim radicalized me by making the Nord nationalists sympathetic.