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Old Doggy Bastard posted:it launching without maps will go down for me as one of the biggest "huh, but that sounds odd" tells of all time They've been automatically generating maps since Morrowind, so I can only assume the reason they stopped using that functionality is that something they changed with their renderer broke it. Someone must have made the call that maps weren't important enough to devote resources into fixing that, and evidently they were wrong.
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Dec 14, 2023 15:22
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It does bother me that the main solution to make the game better is to get rid of the one thing that makes it unique... On another note, I will actually defend the no map solution as it actually makes me look around and try to navigate. The only help it jeeds would be a custom marker you could get from an information terminal and conveniently there is already a mod for that.
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Dec 14, 2023 15:47
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The Stroud Eklund ship design quests are perfect. No notes. It's exactly how this would play out in real life.
The lead designer doesn't want to be bothered with anyone else's opinions The "senior" engineer is bitching about how the designers create designs with no thought of how anyone's going to build them (even though that's why he's been assigned to the team). The senior engineer also bitching about not wanting to be in management, and clearly isn't a manger, but he's in a management position anyway The marketing person might have the best pitch but nobody wants to hear from her If this isn't the most accurate thing in the entire game, I don't know what is. isndl posted:They've been automatically generating maps since Morrowind, so I can only assume the reason they stopped using that functionality is that something they changed with their renderer broke it. Someone must have made the call that maps weren't important enough to devote resources into fixing that, and evidently they were wrong. Does anyone here know mapping works in video games? Real life mapping software can involve a lot of storage space if you are hosting the map files. tadashi fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 16:08
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tadashi posted:Does anyone here know mapping works in video games? To my knowledge it’s usually just a static-ish texture with some overlays for dynamic elements. They could have hand-drawn New Atlantis’s map texture in a rough style even, and it would have been better, if they for whatever reason couldn’t get a good version automatically generated. (I didn’t get very far into the game so if something catastrophic happens to the city later then they would need more than one version.)
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Dec 14, 2023 16:28
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tadashi posted:Does anyone here know mapping works in video games? Varies from game to game of course, Bethesda's previous games used automatically generated local maps (top-down view, later versions using a more stylized appearance) with bespoke world maps (Oblivion with a paper map, Skyrim with the 3D model, Fallout with the digital outlines). The automatically generated ones don't use much space because they're made on the fly, I believe they even update to reflect changes in real time if meshes are getting enabled/disabled.
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Dec 14, 2023 16:39
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Old Doggy Bastard posted:it launching without maps will go down for me as one of the biggest "huh, but that sounds odd" tells of all time This has to be one of the greatest pieces of evidence for “huh they slapped most of this together in 18 months didn’t they”
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Dec 14, 2023 16:44
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tadashi posted:The Stroud Eklund ship design quests are perfect. No notes. You forgot sending in a clueless consultant the boss is friends with to "fix" everything!
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Dec 14, 2023 17:19
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big lmao at this game making Outer Worlds look good by comparison
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Dec 14, 2023 18:14
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Tankbuster posted:yeah but that would turn into the same problem as well. Any other year it would be fine but this came out directly a month after BG3 and the worst parts of bethesda's writing in this stood out in direct contrast with full on immensely fun characters. My personal highlight of the story of course was the the closest the game came to morrowind levels at pilgrim's rest - which dovetails neatly with the NG+ fluff. It just can't compete with sexual vampire elf. i think you would be pretty hard pressed to find anything in the whole of starfield that is even 1/10 as funny or well done as this single bit of dialogue that 1% of players will see in bg 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbwBEhhHQTU
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Dec 14, 2023 18:20
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babypolis posted:big lmao at this game making Outer Worlds look good by comparison I think Outer Worlds is better than it got credit for at launch, like an extremely 7/10 game, but compared to this it’s a masterpiece.
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Dec 14, 2023 18:21
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Content-wise is Starfield even bigger than Skyrim? It has less big towns, less faction questlines, less small towns with multiple quests and absolutely nothing crafted that you can accidentally stumble upon out in the wild except radiant quests to kill local pirates or something.
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Dec 14, 2023 18:44
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Bholder posted:On another note, I will actually defend the no map solution as it actually makes me look around and try to navigate. The only help it jeeds would be a custom marker you could get from an information terminal and conveniently there is already a mod for that. Counterpoint: outside of the very few handcrafted cities, there's never any need to "navigate". Once you're out in the open you can just boost over nearly any terrain that would have required navigating around in Skyrim or Fallout, and unlike any of those there's nothing to see between wherever you are and wherever you're trying to go.
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Dec 14, 2023 19:03
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1glitch0 posted:Content-wise is Starfield even bigger than Skyrim? It has less big towns, less faction questlines, less small towns with multiple quests and absolutely nothing crafted that you can accidentally stumble upon out in the wild except radiant quests to kill local pirates or something. I think I saw someone do the math and point out that in terms of quests and named relevant NPCs it has maybe half as many and if you exclude the quests that have no meaningful content at all it's an outrageous gap
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Dec 14, 2023 19:07
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Subjunctive posted:(I didn’t get very far into the game so if something catastrophic happens to the city later then they would need more than one version.) I promise you, nothing even remotely interesting happens to New Atlantis
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Dec 14, 2023 19:09
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wow, been a long time since I met someone who cares about anyone but themselves I don't know how to say this, but thank you
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Dec 14, 2023 19:11
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infernal machines posted:I promise you, nothing even remotely interesting happens to New Atlantis They do shut down the spaceport a couple times which I think is technically a separate worldspace. Wouldn't make a map useless though.
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Dec 14, 2023 19:44
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I think Outer Worlds is better than it got credit for at launch, like an extremely 7/10 game, but compared to this it’s a masterpiece. I'd go with 7/10 for Starfield and Outer Worlds just barely scraping by to a weak 8/10. It's flawed, but I enjoyed it and look forward to OW2.
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Dec 14, 2023 20:25
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1glitch0 posted:Content-wise is Starfield even bigger than Skyrim? It has less big towns, less faction questlines, less small towns with multiple quests and absolutely nothing crafted that you can accidentally stumble upon out in the wild except radiant quests to kill local pirates or something. It has the same number of major cities (5) as Skyrim. Here's an incomplete list of all the cities/settlements/ships/stations https://www.xboxachievements.com/game/starfield/guide/all-major-cities-settlements-locations Here's what I found for Skyrim https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim/Cities Based on just what's compiled above: Skyrim has 5 minor cities and 7 villages. Starfield has 10 "major settlements and POIs" as well as 14 Space Stations and ships in space. There are also random encounter "quests" like when you stumble on your grandma's ship. (Or maybe she's just someone's grandma - I jumped away before I could accept her incoming hail). I think the reason people are so mad is because they were promised a space opera but Starfield is trying to be too many things for too many people and everyone ends up feeling shortchanged. The choices in the game also feel a bit like Mass Effect 3's endings where there are no serious consequences to most of your decisions as long as you don't go directly attacking the "good" factions. There are also gaps in logic, like I can shoot an innocent person and my companions don't care as long as I've parked them around the corner. They know if you finish a factional questline, though, like Ryujn Industries, even without any companionship. Outer Worlds was fun because it was exactly what it aspired to be, imo. Starfield and Mass Effect Andromeda fall short because they set you up to think you're getting some procedurally generated life sim in outer space and, as mentioned, the games aren't better at any one specific thing than other games out there. The one thing FO4 and Starfield provide that other games don't provide an equivalent for is settlement/shipbuilding but that appeals to like .001% of gamers, or less. infernal machines posted:I promise you, nothing even remotely interesting happens to New Atlantis Just don't buy any real estate in New Atlantis. If you do, don't leave anything there, based on what I've read... tadashi fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 20:47
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I was so hyped for this game. Played for a couple of days and would give it an 8/10 because a few of the mechanics had me confused, but I was having fun. Finished up the UC and some companion quests and bumped it to a 9/10. Made it to NG+ and did a bunch of other quests, but there was pretty much nothing special added, other than skipping some dialog with some mediocre "just trust me, I know things". Just zero interest in exploring, ship building, outposts, so now it's a 7/10. After that NakeyJakey video and reading this thread again, I'm leaving it at a 6/10, which makes me sad. I stopped playing a while after the DLSS update when I realized it could be No Man's Sky number of years before it improved, but now I don't see any possible way to improve this game. Each inhabited world would need a Skyrim sized and populated area to make exploring worth it. Akila should be an outpost not a capital city. Anyway, been playing BG3 for a week now. Holy poo poo it deserves all the praise it's getting. I'm waking up early to get an hour in before logging in for work, and then staying up late. Feels like 20 years since I've done that.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:03
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tadashi posted:Starfield has 600 marked locations. ugh at them putting Red Mile or Hopetown under "major settlements and POIs", it's a bar and an office. New Homestead was decent. I guess looking at the Minor Cities and Villages in Skyrim those were pretty small too.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:17
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I thought Starfield was gonna be pretty much what it turned out to be so I'm not really disappointed but I was still hoping that they would prove me wrong this time. I will say that even after Starfield I stand by the opinion that Outer Worlds was total rear end
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Dec 14, 2023 22:03
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Today I ran into two things that I found interesting and immediately disappointed me. The first was the Elite Eclipse ship, you know one of the three elite ship encounters you can have. It's the eclipse capital ship. It was insofar mildly interesting as it was my first ever elite ship encounter. However it was just not very difficult. You take out the escorts and then just do flybys and pounce on it. Well at least I had to use some of my hundreds of ship parts, but ultimately it's just a bullet sponge and not challenging and you don't get any loot from it, just a somewhat large amount of exp. Enough that it got me from somewhere around 70%? at level 124 to level 125. In the same system I found a Trade Authority space station POI. At the docking port you find a single a injured UC soldier telling you that the station is overrun by Ecplise, that you should kill them all and he gives you the key to a safe that is somewhere in the middle of the station with "valuable" loot that you can keep. You are warned that it will involve zero G combat which got me hyped. Because the zero G combat is one of the few mechanics in the game that is really well made. It was probably difficult as gently caress to program, and I really enjoy it, unfortunately it is very underused. However, in total there were only maybe 10? low level Eclipse mercs on that station who died in 1-2 shots and the "valuable" loot turned out be a useless non-legendary standard gun and some ammo????? WTF? When I made it back to the docking port, I talked to the guy, he thanked me and told me that the Trade Authority owes me one (which obviously will never lead to anything in the future). So, I immediately put a bullet in his head. At least he didn't have the essential flag set, so I was actually able to execute him. Lollerich fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 22:12
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isndl posted:They do shut down the spaceport a couple times which I think is technically a separate worldspace. Wouldn't make a map useless though. Yeah, in vague terms something happens at the spaceport a couple of times, but once the quest is over everything immediately goes back to normal. And yes, it completely resets New Atlantis to default, so you will lose literally everything in your house if you’ve bought and customised one.
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Dec 14, 2023 22:54
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None of that matters for automatic map generation. In Skyrim, you could change or add whatever to the world in the creation kit and it would show up in the game map if you set the correct flags for it (which were obvious by the way, this wasn't rocket science). The only reason Starfield doesn't have automatic map creation is because they either chose to not implement it in the game or it broke at some point and it wasn't deemed an essential component to fix. By the way: IF the things that happen to New Atlantis happen the way they did in the old games, then they probably are separate "worlds" when you look at them in the creation kit, and they each are activated / deactivated by a quest stage. That would also explain why your items disappear and it looks like New Atlantis is reset, because that is exactly what is happening and if my intuition about how that is handled by the engine is correct, then there will NEVER be a patch or fix for this, because New Atlantis gets in fact completely respawned when the things that we don't want to spoil happen. This is just another of many examples showing that the teams working on the various parts of the game never communicated with each other properly what they were doing. The level designers MUST have known that a player apartment that is not a separate "world" in the engine, in other words a room that is actually a part of the New Atlantis "world" will obviously reset if you switch different versions of the New Atlantis "world" on and off. It is simply not possible for anyone working with the creation kit to not know this. It is possible that this was discussed and ignored by some team lead or whatever, but it shouldn't have been ignored because it will rightfully piss everyone off who went out of their way to decorate their apartment. This is a symptom of the things that are wrong with this game. Lollerich fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 23:05
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tadashi posted:Starfield has 600 marked locations. Skyrim has 200-ish dungeons, Starfield has 25-30-ish. Even the settlement number feels very misleading, because I can only think of 3 "major" settlements in Starfield.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:18
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webmeister posted:. And yes, it completely resets New Atlantis to default, so you will lose literally everything in your house if you’ve bought and customised one. Whaaat lmao
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Dec 15, 2023 00:29
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Inspector Hound posted:Whaaat lmao https://www.gamesradar.com/starfield-penthouse-owner-loses-couple-of-thousand-pieces-of-armor-as-new-atlantis-quests-reset-the-whole-planet/ There’s about a billion reddit posts on the topic too
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Dec 15, 2023 00:53
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Yeah how do they not fix that and the ship editor dumping all your notebooks into cargo before they fix the asteroid buddy "problem"
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Dec 15, 2023 00:58
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Phenotype posted:See, I don't think it's necessarily a problem with the quality of the writers (although that's possible!). It feels more like a company culture thing. Every quest in the game, every companion, every bit of background just feels designed by committee. All the edges filed off, nothing that might be offensive, nothing sexual, even the bad guys aren't allowed to get up to anything more evil than blowing up spaceships. It's like a Marvel movie without the charm, where everything has to be carefully triangulated to be as acceptable to as many people as possible, so nothing can be as dark as, say, tracking down Evelyn in Cyberpunk 2077, and even in the "crime" planet Neon they're not willing to do anything besides allude to drug use (but you certainly aren't going to see any bombed-out junkies laying around). As an extremely specific instance of this, I still assert that the "generation ship stumbles upon a corporate-owned paradise world" quest had sections that felt like there was an extreme amount of executive interference (that is to say, Microsoft executive interference) at some point in development; especially once you get to the part that involves confronting the rich owners of the resort planet, the choices feel pointedly constrained, and the written script of the quest feels like it skips some steps or was rearranged very hastily, with no opportunity given for rewrites or refocusing. The quest begins with a suggestion you'll be going back and forth between the captain and the execs a lot, and logically you should have the option to just shoot the fuckers in the face (especially when one openly suggests genocide) but Someone said no, you have to do what the rich man says, and a lot of the quest got awkwardly cut up to make that work, leaving the quest at large extremely unsatisfying. Starfield absoluely suffered from the transition from Zenimax ownership to Microsoft ownership.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:23
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SpaceDrake posted:As an extremely specific instance of this, I still assert that the "generation ship stumbles upon a corporate-owned paradise world" quest had sections that felt like there was an extreme amount of executive interference (that is to say, Microsoft executive interference) at some point in development; especially once you get to the part that involves confronting the rich owners of the resort planet, the choices feel pointedly constrained, and the written script of the quest feels like it skips some steps or was rearranged very hastily, with no opportunity given for rewrites or refocusing. The quest begins with a suggestion you'll be going back and forth between the captain and the execs a lot, and logically you should have the option to just shoot the fuckers in the face (especially when one openly suggests genocide) but Someone said no, you have to do what the rich man says, and a lot of the quest got awkwardly cut up to make that work, leaving the quest at large extremely unsatisfying. This feels like something that needs some sources.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:32
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Inspector Hound posted:Yeah how do they not fix that and the ship editor dumping all your notebooks into cargo before they fix the asteroid buddy "problem"
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Dec 15, 2023 01:50
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SpaceDrake posted:As an extremely specific instance of this, I still assert that the "generation ship stumbles upon a corporate-owned paradise world" quest had sections that felt like there was an extreme amount of executive interference (that is to say, Microsoft executive interference) at some point in development; especially once you get to the part that involves confronting the rich owners of the resort planet, the choices feel pointedly constrained, and the written script of the quest feels like it skips some steps or was rearranged very hastily, with no opportunity given for rewrites or refocusing. The quest begins with a suggestion you'll be going back and forth between the captain and the execs a lot, and logically you should have the option to just shoot the fuckers in the face (especially when one openly suggests genocide) but Someone said no, you have to do what the rich man says, and a lot of the quest got awkwardly cut up to make that work, leaving the quest at large extremely unsatisfying. I think it's more likely that it is another instance of a team just running wild with no proper quality control in place. It's just half assed. I think there must have been a condition in place for the quest design teams that all quest npcs are set to essential and the rest just followed from that.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:53
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Ships dumping all your notebooks into cargo is precisely for that reason - the game can't save where they were and rebuilding the ship replaces/resets it completely, so the loose stuff gets thrown into cargo because otherwise you lose it like the stuff in the NA apartment.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:56
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Lollerich posted:As I said, if it works like it did in previous Bethesda games, it is not fixable. That apartment should have been a separate world space like the one in Akila for example instead it is part of the New Atlantis world space and is has to reset. How else would you get those gorgeous views from your balconies that very clearly demonstrate the boundaries of the world and the LOD system? I found myself wishing to be able to place a map marker via the scanner, you know, like you could in the 2017 hit Breath of the Wild. Sadly, such technology has been lost to time. It would be fairly niche though, because AFAIK that apartment and the MAST balcony are the only places in the entire universe you can get up that high. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 02:04
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orcane posted:Ships dumping all your notebooks into cargo is precisely for that reason - the game can't save where they were and rebuilding the ship replaces/resets it completely, so the loose stuff gets thrown into cargo because otherwise you lose it like the stuff in the NA apartment. My gut tells me that there is an error in the script that is supposed to dump your poo poo into your cargo hold. My prediction is, that at least the ship armory bug will be fixable with the creation kit, once we have full access to the scripting. Specifically, I suspect that the script that does this ignores certain categories of items or placements in specific locations like say a display box or mannequin in the armory. For example I lost that Riujin stealth armor and my Starborn suit one time when I changed something on my ship, because they were on mannequins in the ship's armory. I should take bets on these predictions... Edit: Thinking of resetting. I wouldn't be surprised if the new Atlantis apartment also resets after a certain time without those quests, especially considering that it is technically "outside". There are many systems in Bethesda games that reset if enough time passes. For example you can get rid of that permanent inclement weather warning if you rest or play long enough. I had that bug in multiple NG+ and it just disappeared in my current NG+ which I've been playing longer than any of the ones before. You can reset some POI AND broken quests if you rest for 600 hours, like the Agalmest station and Vulture's Roost. Someone with too much time on their hands should try that for the apartment. Lollerich fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 02:13
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isndl posted:They do shut down the spaceport a couple times which I think is technically a separate worldspace. Wouldn't make a map useless though. What's impressive enough is that you can actually still access the rest of the city. I climbed up through the outer waterfall area during one lockdown, that's when I first found the cross-district sky bridge. There were even two shady NPCs having a deal there, and a few guards roaming the near-empty city to warn people about the ongoing incident. It's close to being very well executed but then they drop the ball with the cell reset fuckery.
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Dec 15, 2023 02:29
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Chronojam posted:What's impressive enough is that you can actually still access the rest of the city. I climbed up through the outer waterfall area during one lockdown, that's when I first found the cross-district sky bridge. There were even two shady NPCs having a deal there, and a few guards roaming the near-empty city to warn people about the ongoing incident.
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Dec 15, 2023 03:13
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Cant you do a fix that they probably don’t want to do by making the apartment its own interior cell instead.
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Dec 15, 2023 03:52
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Sure, but then you can't have those exterior windows and the seamless exit to the balconies. Unless, you load an entire Potemkin New Atlantis around the apartment cell, I guess.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:45
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infernal machines posted:Sure, but then you can't have those exterior windows and the seamless exit to the balconies. tbh that seems like the ideal solution given their engine limitations
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Dec 15, 2023 05:17
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