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Think I said earlier in the thread that it’s a game you either dislike immediately, or you enjoy it for a few dozen hours and ultimately end up disliking anyway - because even after dozens of hours enjoying it, the flaws get harder and harder to ignore.
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Dec 19, 2023 05:52
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webmeister posted:this might sound weird, but I think one of the issues is that BG3 came out just prior, and absolutely stuck the landing on a whole bunch of RPG stuff to an astonishing degree. I know they're focused on different things, but going from BG3 where the world reacts in an insane number of ways to your choices and actions, to Starfield where literally nothing changes the entire game is like night and day. Not to mention stuff like the awkward camera angles, odd dialogue choices (Yes, Yes with sarcasm, No but I'll do it anyway), and the hilarious persuasion minigame which ultimately boils down to "please? pleeease? pleeeeeease?" Doesn't sound weird at all. I think this game would be recognized as a mediocre, kinda lovely but playable mess in a universe without BG3 — but that it coming out right before really showcased just how bland Bethesda has become, and how this game feels dated in terms if narrative structure and all around experience. Most of all though it kind of showcases two theories of design, one with a rich bespoke world and another with soulless procgen. Can procgen work? Sure, not my thing, but it's worked before and people like it. Can procgen with no effort and variety work? No. Meaningful variety is fundamental to pulling it off.
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Dec 19, 2023 06:24
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Starfield's procgen only applies to the terrain and POI placement - in some sense unfortunately, because having procgen applied to the placement of coffee cups would have been an improvement. I do wonder why there's so little of the handcrafted stuff.
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Dec 19, 2023 06:50
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webmeister posted:Think I said earlier in the thread that it’s a game you either dislike immediately, or you enjoy it for a few dozen hours and ultimately end up disliking anyway - because even after dozens of hours enjoying it, the flaws get harder and harder to ignore. its less that the flaws get harder to ignore its that you realize that the potential the game shows you at the beginning is never going to be realized in the game as shipped, and i think different people come to that conclusion at different speeds
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Dec 19, 2023 07:01
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Al! posted:its less that the flaws get harder to ignore its that you realize that the potential the game shows you at the beginning is never going to be realized in the game as shipped, and i think different people come to that conclusion at different speeds Maybe it's the seemingly infinite loading screens but I kind of stopped playing after about 30 hours and I'm not really sure if I care to hunker down and finish the main story.
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Dec 19, 2023 07:44
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Al! posted:its less that the flaws get harder to ignore its that you realize that the potential the game shows you at the beginning is never going to be realized in the game as shipped, and i think different people come to that conclusion at different speeds That started kicking in at hour 20 or so and ramped up from there. I dropped it 75 or so hours in after trying to find the highs I had early on and realizing that I had seen behind the curtain and those really couldn’t happen again. Part of why I dislike this game so much now is because I enjoyed it so much in the beginning. There’s plenty of games out there that aren’t for me or are straight up bad but I don’t dislike them on nearly the same level as Starfield. It’s both the wasted potential and all the time I spent playing where I could see the flaws clearly that make it stand out in that regard, and it also makes it easier to engage with its badness coherently because I didn’t just bounce off it in a few hours, I played this poo poo for 3 days. I know exactly what I didn’t like and why in a way that goes beyond simple mockery. It’s a pretty common thing with this game and I think it’s why there’s a lot of online discussion from people that didn’t like it even three months after it came out vs something like Forspoken that was gone like a fart in the wind.
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Dec 19, 2023 13:39
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Ugly In The Morning posted:That started kicking in at hour 20 or so and ramped up from there. I dropped it 75 or so hours in after trying to find the highs I had early on and realizing that I had seen behind the curtain and those really couldn’t happen again. Agreed, I also put 75 hours in. I beat it. The chat about BG3 eating its lunch isn’t totally accurate because I bought BG3 first. I was so excited about SF that I set aside my BG3 campaign for an entire month or so and only played Starfield. They scratch different itches - BG3 requires you to pay attention and stay engaged, Starfield honestly lets you tune out. I kept waiting for the moment of gameplay where Starfield would demand more of me and would have an interesting story beat, quest dilemma, tough gun battle, or tough ship fight. Never saw it. I don’t think I ever died in combat. My ship got blown up a couple times, I remember one random event where 3 level 50 ships demanded my money and I casually clicked “No” and they just instantly wasted me. Not sure how that’s balanced when that ship completed all end game content without taking hull damage but whatever. Starfield is disappointing because I wanted to like it so bad. It has some fun ideas, it has some fun gameplay, it could have been a contender.
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Dec 19, 2023 15:28
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space uncle posted:I like how we originally had two Starfield threads: At this point, the people who played the game through once and enjoyed it have moved on. Most of the people who continue to enjoy the game have clustered together away from people who seem to spend a whole lot of time playing or following a game they claim to hate. I'm sure traffic will pick up whenever Bethesda announces whatever "big update" they've hinted at is released.
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Dec 19, 2023 15:39
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there's also a more sinister thought i'm having that simply delivering enough content to keep people satisfied wouldn't satisfy their DLC model and they didn't or were restricted from creating too many POIs or unique planets. seems like it backfired if so, because now there's an entire galaxy with about as much content packed into it as the first 10 hours of skyrim and no more
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Dec 19, 2023 15:42
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Sandepande posted:Starfield's procgen only applies to the terrain and POI placement - in some sense unfortunately, because having procgen applied to the placement of coffee cups would have been an improvement. Weirdly the game Starfield reminds me the most of is Planetary Annihilation. A Total Annihilation spiritual successor but with land/sea/air/orbital combat on a solar system of full spherical planets. They spent ages on the engine and built a technical masterpiece, but it turned out the actual basic idea wasn’t fun. What do you do then, after sinking years of dev time into discovering the premise was bad?
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Dec 19, 2023 16:14
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I think where the game really lost me, everything about it is ‘tell and don’t show’. For example, the game constantly shove down our throats, that part of the game lore is that they used to have giant robots fighting giant alien monsters…does you ever get to see or use them? gently caress no, but game constantly peppers npc and quests who do nothing but remind you they existed once. Another example is Akita city, we’re constantly told that it’s super dangerous outside the walls and anyone who ventures outside is dead man walking, but we’re never shown this in any capacity.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:17
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Yeah, I think the backstory just makes Starfield feel worse because it never pulls the trigger on any of the cool things except maybe Terrormorphs and there's a genuine sense of "Okay, so... you have a setting with giant robots where nobody can pilot giant robots and of course despite the insane amount of space pirates, cultists and crazy people there is never a pilotable giant robot" or like the fact that one of the major loving factions is just Off In Space Somewhere and you barely interact with them. And the fact that the response is "Oh well it will probably be in DLC" is crazy.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:19
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Back Hack posted:I think where the game really lost me, everything about it is ‘tell and don’t show’. The way that so much of the lore is dumped in a museum in a faction quest and then honestly doesn’t seem to inform the way the factions relate to each other (in large part because they really don’t interact anyway) was mind boggling. Like, the UC and Freestar had been in huge wars but it doesn’t seem to matter in the slightest. There’s a religious cult that invaded in a war of extermination and they’re just random enemies 98 percent of the time, and as random enemies they’re basically just spacers with different costumes and sometimes better loot. It ends up feeding into one of the huge problems the game has, where outside of the Vanguard quest line there’s basically zero stakes. You have these factions that should have a lot of tension between them but it’s never truly engaged with. Have the appearance of the starborn make the UC or Freestar think that their opponent has developed some kind of super weapon that’s upsetting a fragile peace or something, anything to make the setting something besides a lore dump and window dressing.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:36
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If you just stopped collecting artifacts and handed the ones you have over to the dude, absolutely nothing would happen. Your universe would arguably be better off if he just went along on his way.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:41
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The way that so much of the lore is dumped in a museum in a faction quest and then honestly doesn’t seem to inform the way the factions relate to each other (in large part because they really don’t interact anyway) was mind boggling. Like, the UC and Freestar had been in huge wars but it doesn’t seem to matter in the slightest. There’s a religious cult that invaded in a war of extermination and they’re just random enemies 98 percent of the time, and as random enemies they’re basically just spacers with different costumes and sometimes better loot. everyone thinks you just have a neat looking ship. nobody from any of the factions care
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Dec 19, 2023 16:42
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VostokProgram posted:If you just stopped collecting artifacts and handed the ones you have over to the dude, absolutely nothing would happen. Your universe would arguably be better off if he just went along on his way. I don’t even think it would stop your guy from going on to be a starborn anyway, since the impression I get is that the artifacts reset or something anyway. There isn’t a one starborn per universe policy or anything. And even if there was, being a starborn seems kinda lovely and it’s not like it feels like my character is losing anything… mostly because they’re not even a character. You have like no goals outside of a quest log and connections to anything besides maybe a companion who you said “[Flirt] Wanna gently caress?” to.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:44
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i feel like they must have changed the plot function of the unity late in development because the starborn all act like it's a battle royale contest, but once the unity is open, it's open to everyone???
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Dec 19, 2023 16:46
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Al! posted:i feel like they must have changed the plot function of the unity late in development because the starborn all act like it's a battle royale contest, but once the unity is open, it's open to everyone??? I think the idea is that they want to kill off their competition because each Starborn who goes through a loop gets more and more powerful. So it's less a requirement and more a "I don't want the superpowered dude getting in my way in another timeline." Still dumb though.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:48
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ImpAtom posted:I think the idea is that they want to kill off their competition because each Starborn who goes through a loop gets more and more powerful. So it's less a requirement and more a "I don't want the superpowered dude getting in my way in another timeline." Even that doesn’t make sense because I don’t see any reason they’d even get in each other’s way because the unity isn’t a finite resource.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:49
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There's an infinite number of other dudes unfortunately. Even killing off one of your rivals doesn't actually matter in the long run. It's just a pointless rat race. It is a capitalism analogy
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Dec 19, 2023 16:50
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Even that doesn’t make sense because I don’t see any reason they’d even get in each other’s way because the unity isn’t a finite resource. The way it was described in-game, it isn't a finite resource but your morality and ability to empathize with the worlds are, so eventually as a side effect of going through loop after loop people get bored and start doing some atrocities to keep busy. Which could be an interesting thing if it was played out in-game instead of kind of tacked onto lovely NG+s
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Dec 19, 2023 16:58
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ImpAtom posted:The way it was described in-game, it isn't a finite resource but your morality and ability to empathize with the worlds are, so eventually as a side effect of going through loop after loop people get bored and start doing some atrocities to keep busy. That also opens up another can of worms, where the unity is mostly drawbacks. “Step through this, it’ll take all your stuff away and make you kind of an rear end in a top hat, but in return it’ll let you maybe use your very underwhelming powers more”.
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Dec 19, 2023 17:06
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Ugly In The Morning posted:That also opens up another can of worms, where the unity is mostly drawbacks. The Unity really does not make sense as a 'win state' for this kind of game, no. "Ditch all the things you've built, the world you've changed, the person you married, the people you've befriended, and go to another universe where you do the exact same thing again, except instead of starting a new game it is literally text." Techically you can choose to leave but I feel like that ends up being more of a "and you'll eventually come back" thing.
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Dec 19, 2023 17:12
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You step through the unity, and while at first you're blinded by the white light, in a few moments your eyes adjust. You are in a forest. "Hey, you, you're finally awake." Roll credits
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Dec 19, 2023 17:17
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VostokProgram posted:You step through the unity, and while at first you're blinded by the white light, in a few moments your eyes adjust. You are in a forest. You're in Outer Wilds, a much better space game. This song starts playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOrygf_iLhw
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Dec 19, 2023 17:29
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webmeister posted:And while I'm ranting - it's a game supposedly about exploration and discovery. Why is there no encyclopedia? "Oh I need 200 sealant to level my weapon? Cool, I've found a few creatures that drop sealant, let me just figure out where they were ..... gently caress" They copied all the worst parts of No Man's Sky, without copying QOL features, or copying the good parts of NMS.
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Dec 19, 2023 17:31
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Talkie Toaster posted:I guess working on ... TES:O? I know this is a total aside but the BGS team has little involvement with ESO; ESO is Zenimax Online, another studio entirely.
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Dec 19, 2023 17:55
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, I think the backstory just makes Starfield feel worse because it never pulls the trigger on any of the cool things except maybe Terrormorphs and there's a genuine sense of "Okay, so... you have a setting with giant robots where nobody can pilot giant robots and of course despite the insane amount of space pirates, cultists and crazy people there is never a pilotable giant robot" or like the fact that one of the major loving factions is just Off In Space Somewhere and you barely interact with them. You find out b]their secret outposts are the abandoned space stations you find occasionally, but there's no way to do the secret knock to reveal them except that one mission e lol
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Dec 19, 2023 19:44
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Inspector Hound posted:You find out b]their secret outposts are the abandoned space stations you find occasionally, but there's no way to do the secret knock to reveal them except that one mission That "secret" was really dumb because that room was as big as the rest of the station, how is any of that supposed to be hidden when you can see the exterior of the station is twice as big while on approach?
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Dec 19, 2023 19:57
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Trillhouse posted:You're in Outer Wilds, a much better space game. It's a shame that Outer Wilds wasn't much fun.
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Dec 19, 2023 20:01
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Regarding chatter about BG3 and Starfield - I played and loved Baldur's Gate 3 this year prior to Starfield but what really sapped most of my motivation to play more Starfield for the foreseeable future was Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 and Phantom Liberty.
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Dec 19, 2023 20:08
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Ugly In The Morning posted:There’s a religious cult that invaded in a war of extermination and they’re just random enemies 98 percent of the time, and as random enemies they’re basically just spacers with different costumes and sometimes better loot. I was cleaning out the mine where Barrett found the first artifact, it was taken over by Va'run, and the whole time Andreja keeps repeating random lines about Spacers and how we've found a Spacer nest and how she doesn't want to deal with Spacers. And it's like, lady, these are your Snake Church bros we're slaughtering here.
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Dec 19, 2023 20:35
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Maybe they did the actual content during the year MS told them to take. Seems like it.
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Dec 19, 2023 20:37
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infernal machines posted:I was cleaning out the mine where Barrett found the first artifact, it was taken over by Va'run, and the whole time Andreja keeps repeating random lines about Spacers and how we've found a Spacer nest and how she doesn't want to deal with Spacers. And it's like, lady, these are your Snake Church bros we're slaughtering here. *steps over corpse of colleague* "always feels good to get back on your own ship" *shields down, hull at 20%, missile lock alarm blaring* "dad, will you read me a story tonight?"
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Dec 20, 2023 05:57
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tadashi posted:At this point, the people who played the game through once and enjoyed it have moved on. Hey I just picked up this game and I'm having fun with it, how's it going in-- ah I wonder if this is what it felt like to be a fan of launch-day No Man's Sky
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Dec 20, 2023 06:39
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space uncle posted:I like how we originally had two Starfield threads: So, to put this post into a less-gbs-y mood: I had some fun posting about SF and reading posts about SF, so this kinda counts as "playing or enjoying SF".
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Dec 20, 2023 06:58
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Just booted this up again after hearing they had fixed the asteroid buddy issue. I still have asteroid buddies, 5 or 6 of them. I guess this was more to fix stuff actually stuck onto your ship (which is a thing apparently?). Just to echo what many of you are saying, Starfield is a stunningly unambitious game. It's funny how it reminds me a bit of Elder Scrolls: Arena, which had endless proc-gen dungeons that were extremely simplistic and shallow. Of course that game came out THIRTY years ago.
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Dec 20, 2023 09:20
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hawowanlawow posted:*steps over corpse of colleague* *stands up from only bunk on Frontier, with no door, in front of the entire crew * “Last night was amazing, my dear”
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Dec 20, 2023 12:05
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hawowanlawow posted:*steps over corpse of colleague* Yeah, the crew/companion dialogue is amazing. Specifically because there's no real context sensitivity, it's just the most bizarre non sequiturs 24/7 *enters a ship full of corpses* "I find this ship to be comforting" e: To say something positive, I appreciate that in the MSQ, you're given the choice of siding with one of two assholes, but you also have the option to say "No, gently caress you" to both. You don't really have dialogue choices with your companions that reflect choosing that option, compared to the other two, but it's still there for the rest of the narrative. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 14:36
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I think they must have changed Unity sometime late in development because that non-ending ending is some lazy bullshit that means you don't need art assets, voice acting, or even writing for whoever or whatever made the artifacts. Just have someone say it doesn't matter and give a wink, plenty of people ate it up. Blows my mind.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:51
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