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I just thought "no way" as soon as they said "1000 planets" in the first reveal.
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Dec 10, 2023 12:34
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A lot of the game feels like someone was visited by the Good Idea Fairy late in development and had the idea for NG+. The essential NPCs are still everywhere and nothing reacts to your choices, which tracks with Bethsoft’s “The player must not be able to lock themselves out of content” thing before implementing an NG+. Most of the main quest is proc-gen as hell compared to the faction quests, and then the NG+ makes part of the game that does work (the ship building) feel pointless. I get nuking the ship but seriously, let me keep the design. Those take waaay too much time and effort for me to ever want to do an NG+ again. Well, if I ever play the game again.
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Dec 10, 2023 12:38
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Ugly In The Morning posted:A lot of the game feels like someone was visited by the Good Idea Fairy late in development and had the idea for NG+. The essential NPCs are still everywhere and nothing reacts to your choices, which tracks with Bethsoft’s “The player must not be able to lock themselves out of content” thing before implementing an NG+. According to this rather extensive review/analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UOhCjB0AEI The NG+ stuff was some of the first stuff conceived.
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Dec 10, 2023 13:15
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It's clearly the most innovative part of the game--explore in time, don't sweat story decisions or even money or ships or guns, keep moving to the next universe and see how things can be different and what stays the same. Maybe that leads you to the "real" universe, and you've been in all the bad timelines the whole time, or something else that might, you know, surprise the player. Well, maybe let me keep the money and guns. And let me change my perks when I start over.
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Dec 10, 2023 13:28
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LostRook posted:According to this rather extensive review/analysis: That makes the overall half-bakedness even worse. They have all of the downsides and none of the upsides, and the variations you can run into in an NG+ are so rare and so  that doing another one to see what changed doesn’t feel remotely worth it.
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Dec 10, 2023 16:27
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I'm about 60 hours into the game and still happily chugging along, visiting systems for the first time and blowing away pirates with the solid & satisfying combat mechanics. There's a lot of flaws that I believe can/will be fixed in the future, but for now it's a solid 8/10 game with a lot of potential.
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Dec 10, 2023 16:54
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Someone up thread mentioned the "down-to-earth sci fi aesthetic" and I think that might be one of the big, metaphysical things about the game that I struggled to articulate but really stuck in my craw. The worldbuilding screams at you that space is really dangerous, space travel is really hard, fuel and power monitoring are as essential as breathing, encountering the supernatural is an existential crisis for the average human, etc etc etc. And then you're playing what feels like an arcade game where you have to take none of those things seriously, because the gameplay certainly doesn't, and neither does the nitty-gritty of the story and writing. The dissonance bugged me
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Dec 10, 2023 17:23
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And the vestigial survival elements make little sense and apply inconsistently. Like i think the system might just be broken.
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Dec 10, 2023 17:28
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The environmental protection levels for space suits makes no sense to me. I have no idea what the arbitrary numbers are supposed to map to at all besides “bigger is better”
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Dec 10, 2023 17:37
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Yeah the environmental protection and status effects need to be fixed. I can hang out in hard vacuum and near absolute zero all day long, but if I walk around in snow or cold rain for a few minutes I get hypothermia. Or if I walk through a cloud of inert gas I burn my lungs inside my spacesuit.
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Dec 10, 2023 18:00
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FistEnergy posted:Yeah the environmental protection and status effects need to be fixed. I can hang out in hard vacuum and near absolute zero all day long or you go to a different planet that's less cold but there you very quickly begin freezing to death. i think the actual hazard level might be a combination of the conditions and the planet level.
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Dec 10, 2023 18:07
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Rinkles posted:i think the actual hazard level might be a combination of the conditions and the planet level.
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Dec 10, 2023 19:25
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You can get frostbite standing inside the farm habs on New Homestead, because unless you pass through a loading zone the game doesn't differentiate between indoors and outdoors. poo poo is just loving broken, and in really obvious ways that should never have made it past playtesting. FistEnergy posted:Or if I walk through a cloud of inert gas I burn my lungs inside my spacesuit. Love to get air quality hazards on Mars e: I still have no idea how O2 became a stamina mechanic rather than a consumable infernal machines fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Dec 10, 2023 |
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Dec 10, 2023 19:28
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ya it seems like my suit protection is instantly overwhelmed whether I invest in it or not, so gently caress it
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Dec 10, 2023 19:47
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My first playthrough it always said "inclement weather warning" no matter where I was. Get rid of them and replace it with armor rating and EM resistance.
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Dec 10, 2023 20:05
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Cryptozoology posted:Someone up thread mentioned the "down-to-earth sci fi aesthetic" and I think that might be one of the big, metaphysical things about the game that I struggled to articulate but really stuck in my craw. The worldbuilding screams at you that space is really dangerous, space travel is really hard, fuel and power monitoring are as essential as breathing, encountering the supernatural is an existential crisis for the average human, etc etc etc. And then you're playing what feels like an arcade game where you have to take none of those things seriously, because the gameplay certainly doesn't, and neither does the nitty-gritty of the story and writing. The dissonance bugged me I have hope the survival mode owns.
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Dec 10, 2023 21:23
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ImpAtom posted:Starfield absolutely had a hilariously cartoonish amount of hype prior to coming out. Both Microsoft and Sony were looking to get it exclusive on their systems. People were hyping it as the easy GotY this year. It was insane how much buildup was around it. People were buying $100 bundles to play the game early. It's kind of rewriting history to pretend people weren't expecting it to be great. Don't get me wrong, I was expecting it to be a good game. An interesting space sandbox that would be fun to explore, with a terrible main story that you'd just ignore. Like every Bethesda game ever, minus the space part. But I wasn't expecting it to be the best game of the year, or anywhere close really. Looking back, though, a lot of people were convinced it would be No Man's Sky or Elite Dangerous as developed by Bethesda, with Bethesda worldbuilding and Fallout 4 combat and base building (but improved). And a sprinkling of Mass Effect on top. And if someone was expecting that, I can see why they'd be certain it'd win all the GOTYs by default. But it's Bethesda we're talking here. Even at their best they've struggled to implement new mechanics. And they'd be using the same janky engine they've used for 20 years. No way were they ever going to pull off seamless space travel in an engine that can't handle non-instanced dungeons. Scherloch fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 00:08
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infernal machines posted:l I went into the game blind and when character creation talked about O2 usage/CO2 generation and all that I thought for sure that it was referring to a survival type mechanic. Instead it’s “stamina and stamina plus”.
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Dec 11, 2023 02:59
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I went into the game blind and when character creation talked about O2 usage/CO2 generation and all that I thought for sure that it was referring to a survival type mechanic. Instead it’s “stamina and stamina plus”. It probably was before all the survival mechanics got cut back to minor nuisances. Starfield: a graveyard of cool ideas.
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Dec 11, 2023 04:24
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Scherloch posted:But it's Bethesda we're talking here. Even at their best they've struggled to implement new mechanics. And they'd be using the same janky engine they've used for 20 years. No way were they ever going to pull off seamless space travel in an engine that can't handle non-instanced dungeons. I wonder if they’ll use the lack of interest from the modding community for Starfield to internally justify a move to another engine for their next game.
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Dec 11, 2023 04:41
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lunar detritus posted:I wonder if they’ll use the lack of interest from the modding community for Starfield to internally justify a move to another engine for their next game. Why would modder reaction be the impetus for an engine change? If modders want to mod a different engine they can just go do that right now, no waiting necessary.
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Dec 11, 2023 05:42
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Scherloch posted:But it's Bethesda we're talking here. Even at their best they've struggled to implement new mechanics. And they'd be using the same janky engine they've used for 20 years. No way were they ever going to pull off seamless space travel in an engine that can't handle non-instanced dungeons. I didn't expect them to do seamless space travel (in fact, they could have skipped space travel altogether, and have your ship just be a mobile base), but I also didn't expect them.to make bases as irrelevant as they are, or decide to go crazy with the copypasted dungeons. The need to have places to "find" no matter where you land is, well, stupid. Why not make it a scan from orbit, possibly tied to a skill level/equipment on what you can detect to both lessen the amount of planets/biomes they need, and to make it more straightforward to build handcrafted content. As it is now, SF is far from the continuous open worlds BGS is known for, anyway.
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Dec 11, 2023 06:39
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isndl posted:It probably was before all the survival mechanics got cut back to minor nuisances. I have a theory that they ripped out all the survival stuff in the last 12 months because they realised late in playtesting that they'd spent years re-creating No Man's Sky.
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Dec 11, 2023 12:17
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isndl posted:Why would modder reaction be the impetus for an engine change? If modders want to mod a different engine they can just go do that right now, no waiting necessary. My thought process is that Creation engine is uniquely moddable and it's probably the main reason they haven't switched to a mainstream engine besides internal inertia. If the community is not interested in modding to the extent of Skyrim and the engine is not capable to deliver the scope they want for their games, why keep it? I'm sure it has its internal champions in Bethesda but at some point the cost/value is not going to make sense, especially if they (or Microsoft) are looking for things to blame.
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Dec 11, 2023 12:43
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lunar detritus posted:I wonder if they’ll use the lack of interest from the modding community for Starfield to internally justify a move to another engine for their next game. yes, what this unique sort of game needs is an engine that struggles to half the things CE2 does. People are already making unique NPCs and quests before the mod tools have come out. The biggest problem with the game is the POI system that directly leads to a sense of fatigue - an overly complex resource system that doesn't give good rewards and complete lack of a survival mode (the latter of which people have hacked together with a bunch of SFSE mods already.) lunar detritus posted:My thought process is that Creation engine is uniquely moddable and it's probably the main reason they haven't switched to a mainstream engine besides internal inertia. If the community is not interested in modding to the extent of Skyrim and the engine is not capable to deliver the scope they want for their games, why keep it? I'm sure it has its internal champions in Bethesda but at some point the cost/value is not going to make sense, especially if they (or Microsoft) are looking for things to blame. What do they have to blame? So far every microsoft press release/visible metric has shown that the game has a gentler retention curve than the average multiplat Singleplayer game. At most they might take todd's Fallout shaped toy away and give it to obsidian - nerds will rejoice and squee that they will get a good RPG on a good engine. Bethesda will focus more on elder scrolls and the only losers will be people who want to mod fallout.
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Dec 11, 2023 13:05
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lunar detritus posted:My thought process is that Creation engine is uniquely moddable and it's probably the main reason they haven't switched to a mainstream engine besides internal inertia. If the community is not interested in modding to the extent of Skyrim and the engine is not capable to deliver the scope they want for their games, why keep it? I'm sure it has its internal champions in Bethesda but at some point the cost/value is not going to make sense, especially if they (or Microsoft) are looking for things to blame. They aren't making the engine for modders, they're making an engine for their own game and sharing the tools they used during development afterwards. If they cared about what modders wanted they would be baking every script extender feature into the engine. They've shown themselves as having zero qualms with regards to making changes that are hell on modders as it is, just look at the weirdness that is Starfield's body meshes. The only people blaming the engine are the people who have no idea what game development entails and blindly regurgitate the old engine meme. There are areas where the engine could be improved, but the tepid gameplay loop and insufficient content for scope are project management failures, not technology failures. If Starfield was released using Unreal instead they would have still hit the same problems.
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Dec 11, 2023 13:12
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Yeah, Creation Engine is not the problem with Starfield, the problem is they released 2/3rds of a game, for some reason.
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Dec 11, 2023 15:22
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Starfield's lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, has said he doesn't believe in design documents because there's too much time spent updating him. Todd Howard, like Gabe Newell, doesn't like to think that he's the bottleneck through which all ideas pass, but he is; furthermore, he used to have an open door and was easily reachable on a day to day basis but now he manages three different branches and there aren't enough hours in the day for him to maintain that level of openess. So you have a design process that worked on smaller scale games (up to Skyrim, which really did have a small team), and those practices haven't worked as the company grows. No design document is why things feel so disconnected. Everyone isn't just silo'd off, they're also fundamentally unsure what the game is like - how should we use zero g combat? How many Starborn powers will you have by the end of the UC Vanguard questline? What are the Vahrun? And if Todd used to be the single nexus for the whole game and now you're not having lunch with hik every day, or playing table tennis at three or whatever, that's a problem. (And I say that as someone that loves working from home and would never admit to management that physically cohabitating with other teams does increase synergy.)
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Dec 11, 2023 15:46
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Jack B Nimble posted:Starfield's lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, has said he doesn't believe in design documents because there's too much time spent updating him. lmao, Emil is the real life Garth Merenghi
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Dec 11, 2023 16:38
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Jack B Nimble posted:Starfield's lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, has said he doesn't believe in design documents because there's too much time spent updating him. Todd Howard, like Gabe Newell, doesn't like to think that he's the bottleneck through which all ideas pass, but he is; furthermore, he used to have an open door and was easily reachable on a day to day basis but now he manages three different branches and there aren't enough hours in the day for him to maintain that level of openess. As much as I've enjoyed just loving around in Fallout 4 and in Starfield, what you're saying makes sense. It feels like their entire approach is outdated. Bethesda games feel stuck in the past, but not in a good way. I'm not excited about a new Fallout game right now. Ugly In The Morning posted:I went into the game blind and when character creation talked about O2 usage/CO2 generation and all that I thought for sure that it was referring to a survival type mechanic. Instead it’s “stamina and stamina plus”. Same. I thought O2 meant I could survive longer without recharging something, similar to Dead Space. Boy do I regret the hell out of that choice. tadashi fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 19:39
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Pinely posted:lmao, Emil is the real life Garth Merenghi I know developers who use design documents and they're all cowards
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Dec 11, 2023 20:27
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Jack B Nimble posted:Starfield's lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, has said he doesn't believe in design documents because there's too much time spent updating him. Todd Howard, like Gabe Newell, doesn't like to think that he's the bottleneck through which all ideas pass, but he is; furthermore, he used to have an open door and was easily reachable on a day to day basis but now he manages three different branches and there aren't enough hours in the day for him to maintain that level of openess. well someone has just watched that 8 hour long video, haha Megazver fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 21:10
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Megazver posted:well someone has just watched that 8 hour long video, haha A quick retrospective lol
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Dec 11, 2023 21:25
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i find video game criticism to be an interesting topic as much as the next goon but how the hell is there a market for 8 hour breakdowns of this stuff. i dont think i could watch an 8 hour documentary on any topic in the world no matter how much i cared about it. that thing has over 400k views! thats probably more people than there are playing the game personally i figured out that it was a pretty bad game in like, 20 minutes. that video feels like going to mcdonalds and they gave you a lovely meal with cold fries and then spending a bunch of time and energy picking up every single individual fry and measuring the temperature and determining that it, too, is cold instead of just like... throwing them away. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 21:28
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Bethesda games have the best bugs https://bethesda.net/en/game/starfield/article/vmILDnzhDHV83T0vt8MXU/starfield-update-1-8-88-notes-december-11-2023 quote:GAMEPLAY: 
Fart of Presto fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 21:41
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Earwicker posted:i find video game criticism to be an interesting topic as much as the next goon but how the hell is there a market for 8 hour breakdowns of this stuff. i dont think i could watch an 8 hour documentary on any topic in the world no matter how much i cared about it. that thing has over 400k views! thats probably more people than there are playing the game I mostly half-listen to stuff like this in the background as I do my dailies in Legends of Runeterra or whatever
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Dec 11, 2023 21:59
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Earwicker posted:i find video game criticism to be an interesting topic as much as the next goon but how the hell is there a market for 8 hour breakdowns of this stuff. i dont think i could watch an 8 hour documentary on any topic in the world no matter how much i cared about it. that thing has over 400k views! thats probably more people than there are playing the game You half pay attention as you do something else on your computer.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:03
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Jack B Nimble posted:Starfield's lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, has said he doesn't believe in design documents because there's too much time spent updating him. Todd Howard, like Gabe Newell, doesn't like to think that he's the bottleneck through which all ideas pass, but he is; furthermore, he used to have an open door and was easily reachable on a day to day basis but now he manages three different branches and there aren't enough hours in the day for him to maintain that level of openess. I find the name and blame thing people do with devs to be really weird. We've got no idea why things are hosed, but saying it's totally this guys fault because I heard from my brothers ex's favorite youtuber that used to work at Bethesda doesn't inspire confidence. It reminds me of the Rob Bartholomew stuff with Total War. Guy was the front facing marketing guy for the games, came up frequently, and there were always rumors that he was a dipshit from the Youtube rumor mill. People ran with it and memed on the dude, and when the recent DLC sucked and he came out to defend his team a torrent of outright hostility got poured onto him by capital G Gamers. His family got threatened, the school his kids were going to needed to get closed, his wife got threatened at work. The whole nine yards went down for this dude, because he was the name people could attach their angst to. Whoops, bunch of ex CA guys have now came out and said no. He was awesome. He was the guy who greenlit the bigger monsters for 2 by sidestepping marketing. He's the one who always gave the teams more time and encouraged them to make cool poo poo. He's the one who lied to corporate because he trusted whatever his team was making would wow people. He was the good one, and spent most of his time getting his teams what they needed. He had nothing to do with why the recent DLC stunk or any of that. But he got all the poo poo for it, and it sounds like he got fired as a scapegoat for it potentially. Emil falls into the same category. Kirkbride has come out a few times and said Emil was an excellent writer who always pushed people and wrote some of the most unique stuff in Oblivion and Skyrim. He's the guy who made the DB questchain in both, he's the guy who wrote the weird Danse Synth stuff. His stuff has always been pretty solid/weird, but he said "keep it simple stupid" once and now he's also the one who personally made sure Starfield was terrible. Because of course he would, he's this mystical gremlin figure that exists to make Bethesda games more casual. All this poo poo does is encourage folks to go harass the person off weird rumors and hearsay. It's not helpful.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:17
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Rookersh posted:All this poo poo does is encourage folks to go harass the person off weird rumors and hearsay. i mean sort of. but i feel like that's less a problem with analyzing a situation or even discussing individual people who might have caused x or y problem, and more a problem with the extremely entitled attitude among consumers and especially among gamers. i didn't watch the whole video and have no idea if one person is truly responsible for ruining the game or not but even if that were 100% objectively the case, simply saying so shouldn't cause death threats and family harassment, and the fact that people are motivated to do such things because of being disappointed in a video game seems like kind of a whole separate issue, and one that isn't going to be solved from refraining to do this kind of criticism. like yea spending $60 on something that turns out to suck is a lovely experience, but its clearly no longer about that -if it ever was, people make this poo poo into their whole identity and build up all these crazy expectations around it. no one outside of these companies should take it personally when they release a bad product but i feel like there's like a whole level of cultural change that needs to happen to shift away from that mentality. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 22:54
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Flowing Thot posted:You half pay attention as you do something else on your computer. I watch these type of videos while I work out, to distract myself from how much I hate working out. They're not really meant to be watched all at once.
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Dec 11, 2023 23:05
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