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Yeah I mean you can debate how many planets/systems etc would be optimal, but ultimately I think everyone would agree that 1000 planets and 120 systems or whatever is a massive downside. Skill trees are fixable Weird-rear end economy is fixable Crafting and building not fitting with gameplay is fixable But the colossal number of empty planets is just always there dragging things down.
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Apr 25, 2024 12:08
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Hyperdrive in Elite is essentially a loading screen but it's done in a pretty engaging way that feels like you're actually making the jump
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Apr 25, 2024 12:36
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The point about the game being over staffed is well taken because so many of the games problems come from one team not really understanding the other teams work. Just look at the economy; what does that touch in a Bethesda game? Items, including weapons, armor, amd ships. Quest rewards. City design (where are the merchants?), Character skills. Carrying Capacity. You can see how the elements weren't brought into some sort of cohesive whole. To a degree every Bethesda game has this problem, and mods will come along after a million collective play hours that improves things, but the starting point of the vanilla game is dire here.
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Apr 25, 2024 12:40
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I just don't know what stopped them from increasing the cash merchants have in a patch
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Apr 25, 2024 12:44
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Yeah it's one of those things that just feels absolutely bonkers - why is it there at all? Why is it so low? Why is the game apparently designed around picking up every half-eaten sandwich and desk calendar if there's nobody to sell them to?
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Apr 25, 2024 13:02
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webmeister posted:But the colossal number of empty planets is just always there dragging things down. Nah, that's fixable too. They can slot in a couple thousand new POIs and let the procgen handle the rest. Hell, they can probably tweak the procgen to increase POI density too if the 'new ways to travel' they teased turns out to be a bust. Just a question of how many years it'll take for them to churn out that many.
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Apr 25, 2024 13:19
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I think i mostly agree with Rookersh about potential of this half finished game. I hope we get to find out what people are able and willing to do with the creation kit before we all turned into funny looking skeletons in a weird pose.
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Apr 25, 2024 14:18
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webmeister posted:Yeah it's one of those things that just feels absolutely bonkers - why is it there at all? Why is it so low? Why is the game apparently designed around picking up every half-eaten sandwich and desk calendar if there's nobody to sell them to? if you want a real answer for a lot of these, aside from just Team Too Big, it likely has something to do with upper managements aversion to design documentation
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Apr 25, 2024 15:35
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webmeister posted:Yeah it's one of those things that just feels absolutely bonkers - why is it there at all? Why is it so low? Why is the game apparently designed around picking up every half-eaten sandwich and desk calendar if there's nobody to sell them to? IIRC there's an interview somewhere where they basically say it's to balance things. It's been a Beth staple since at least Morrowind, and I think that was in direct response to people breaking the Daggerfall economy over their knee. Tl;dr you can very rapidly ramp your way into being so rich you can buy anything in the world, and they've never been able to figure out if they want you to loot your upgrades off your dead enemies, buy them, or craft them. Which is kind of funny because generally speaking stores become irrelevant pretty quickly. It's bad game design and a specific issue they've failed to address for 20 years now. It's also one of the first things that is modded in any game they release.
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Apr 25, 2024 16:44
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i actually reinstalled and played starfield for the first time in 6 months and one of the things that stuck out to me is how npcs have to compliment you all the time like oh good job you opened that chest, nice shooting, wow you're so tough and cool
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Apr 25, 2024 16:49
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harrygomm posted:if you want a real answer for a lot of these, aside from just Team Too Big, it likely has something to do with upper managements aversion to design documentation It's not just design documentation, it's loving documentation at all and basic loving project management. I work in a very not-video games industry. If there's anything that's the diametric opposite of video games on some kind of job alignment chart, it's what I do. In 15 minutes I've got a meeting with my boss where we are sitting down with a couple of the guiding project management docs in our org and trying to un-gently caress some inconsistencies and contradictions in them that have been causing long term headaches. And this is for a place that is actually really successful at what it does and is functioning pretty well, all things considered. It doesn't matter if you're designing a fictional world or selling cars or manufacturing sex toys, whatever your output is needs some kind of controlling document that details your process and makes it clear what everyone's role is in producing your deliverables. None of this is profound or interesting. This is all babby's first project management type stuff. I'm not even talking fancy pants IT poo poo like agile etc I'm talking grab some random rear end in a top hat with a PMP cert and have them look at your operations. Honestly what Beth reminds me the most of is a small business that's grown big enough that the founder can't just do everything themselves any more and things are starting to groan under the combined weight of him still being too hands on, ancient cruft that worked fine when he was running this poo poo out of his garage but doesn't work with a 100 employee company, and a handful of people who were there from the beginning but have been promoted way past their competency level. edit: A lot of words to say that the problem is probably Todd. He knew how to run a much smaller team in the Skyrim days, and frankly the probably wasn't even really running them so much as being the contact point that a bunch of people who ware working well in parallel reported to. Now the teams are much bigger, the next level down isn't working shoulder to shoulder any more, and he needs to actually be a competent project manager and . . . . he's not.
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Apr 25, 2024 16:51
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In Cyberpunk 2.0 most of the guns you pick up are "broken" and give a pittance of craftables on pick up. Guns remain valuable, you don't get overloaded, and you don't break the economy with one scav den's arsenal. Similarly, in the Horizon overhaul of Fallout 4 you'll almost never loot unbroken weapons and gear, but instead of being random it's because you have to kill the enemy with a clean head shot to avoid ruining their gear. When I cleared out concord of raiders I had barely looted one full set of armor instead of dozens. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Apr 25, 2024 |
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Apr 25, 2024 17:05
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spacetoaster posted:Is there any hope? Major patches coming? When you start tugging on this loose thread you ask yourself, "so what things would need patching to make this game fun?" and if you keep tugging that thread you'll start building a list of all the things that need changing or improving, and by the time you've unraveled the whole drat sweater you'll have come to the same conclusion the rest of us have: the amount of work they'd need to put into this game to make it even adequate would be the same amount of work as just making an entirely new game, and nothing thus far suggests that they're up to the task And that's why this thread oscillates between days of navel gazing and weeks of silence - it always ends up at the same conclusion 
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Apr 25, 2024 17:31
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Jack B Nimble posted:In Cyberpunk 2.0 most of the guns you pick up are "broken" and give a pittance of craftables on pick up. Guns remain valuable, you don't get overloaded, and you don't break the economy with one scav den's arsenal. Also in Cyberpunk you can sell the guns you collected at convenient widespread kiosks, with a more than sufficient money cap in each for normal purposes. Though what I think probably also matters is that you kinda mostly want unique weapons anyway?
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Apr 25, 2024 17:33
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My hope is someone at Bethesda is pitching (or has pitched) a shift in future release strategy. Instead of the Skyrim/FO4 model of DLC, look to an expansion like Reaper of Souls or The Taken King. Go all in, be bold, make major changes. It's risky, but someone with a passionate and articulate vision (like Josh Mosqueira had with RoS) has a way of reinvigorating a problematic project. Folks who were previously disappointed are now excited, and their work will reflect that excitement. Do I think it's likely? Not at all. Historical trends say otherwise. But I didn't predict RoS's quality, either. These kinds of things are long shots up until they're not. In the meantime, I'll keep playing other stuff and not think about Starfield too much.
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Apr 25, 2024 17:47
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OddObserver posted:Also in Cyberpunk you can sell the guns you collected at convenient widespread kiosks, with a more than sufficient money cap in each for normal purposes. Also in Cyberpunk I could generally get the money for something I wanted in a single play session if I tried, but more importantly there was so many spending options I never felt like I had too much money: Apartments Cars Clothes Cybernetics Cyberware (the hacks) Various quests that want money That's a half dozen choices at least and I'd find I'd intentionally curate my play by running through them. Like, at the start of the game I'd get that shithole in Watson, in the northern industrial blight, and that wretched like chevette style car. These categories were wells I could dip into repeatedly throughout my play time. Later, I can move up to Kabuki, or get a better ride, or to vehicles that suit different themes (a vehicle for the wasteland, a bike, etc). What the hell do you spend money on in Starfield. I rarely had to buy ballistic ammo, I'd just cycle through tue various calibers. I basically COULDN'T buy armor because I couldn't find anything I wanted more than the Constellation suits. It was just ships, that was the only real sink, bleh. I never looked into player housing because that's the ship.
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Apr 25, 2024 18:51
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Jack B Nimble posted:Also in Cyberpunk I could generally get the money for something I wanted in a single play session if I tried, but more importantly there was so many spending options I never felt like I had too much money: On my first playthrough, ship parts were the largest money sink, since that was also the part of the game that was the most punishing (even if it being punishing felt more like it was because of being a bad system than being something that could be mechanically overcome with "better piloting") On NG+s I basically just ran to Neon, stole everything out of the smuggling chest in the police station, sold it to one of the vendors next door, bought the best shotgun available and that was Pretty Much That for things that needed to be purchases through to the next Unity loop
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Apr 25, 2024 19:23
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I am playing FO76 right now and I think the MFers who kept saying poo poo like "environmental storytelling is Bethesda's main strength" and "oh I don't even do quests, I've spent 500 hours just running around going into random caves!" and "teehee I just loooooooove collecting junk, I can't wait to collect more in Starfield!" really didn't do Bethesda any favors; I think the poor dumb bastards actually believed it.
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Apr 25, 2024 20:09
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:On my first playthrough, ship parts were the largest money sink, since that was also the part of the game that was the most punishing (even if it being punishing felt more like it was because of being a bad system than being something that could be mechanically overcome with "better piloting") i rushed the cycles to get to ng+10 and in all but one run, i found an Advanced Big Bang in one of the two weapon racks in the basement of the lodge. the one time i didn't, both the UC and Trade vendors in the well were selling one for less than the money you receive from shipping the main quest the ship and armor are strong enough not to have to upgrade, even on very hard. there is no demand that you upgrade or change your gear because of this. i do because i want to use other guns and stuff you can get kitted out to do all content within, no exaggeration, 3 minutes of starting a new cycle, with most of that time being unskippable animations, scan time, or load screens
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Apr 25, 2024 21:17
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Megazver posted:I am playing FO76 right now and I think the MFers who kept saying poo poo like "environmental storytelling is Bethesda's main strength" and "oh I don't even do quests, I've spent 500 hours just running around going into random caves!" and "teehee I just loooooooove collecting junk, I can't wait to collect more in Starfield!" really didn't do Bethesda any favors; I think the poor dumb bastards actually believed it. this might make sense if starfield had any of those things
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Apr 25, 2024 21:28
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hawowanlawow posted:this might make sense if starfield had any of those things 
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Apr 25, 2024 21:51
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hawowanlawow posted:this might make sense if starfield had any of those things i must admit you got me there
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Apr 25, 2024 22:03
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hawowanlawow posted:this might make sense if starfield had any of those things the couple weeks all i heard about was people collecting books, board games, plush dolls. the third was "oh i can't like hand the books to the girl who has multiple lines about wanting books" it is to their credit that they removed their terrible environmental storytelling nonsense though
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Apr 25, 2024 22:14
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harrygomm posted:
Look at this guy who didn’t pay attention in the abandoned suicide bank ship
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Apr 25, 2024 22:16
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oh no
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Apr 25, 2024 23:07
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I'm sorry but their skeleton dioramas in the last few games loving owned In starfield there's a crashed ship on a planet with no atmosphere and a suitless skeleton on a cot There's just no imagination or whimsy in starfield
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Apr 25, 2024 23:27
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There are bottles of beer and a table and lawn chairs on a planet that's 400°C. They just did whatever.
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Apr 25, 2024 23:33
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How last minute was the whole PoI thing that they didn’t have a chance to set up different spawn pools for the planets?
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Apr 25, 2024 23:36
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harrygomm posted:the couple weeks all i heard about was people collecting books, board games, plush dolls. the third was "oh i can't like hand the books to the girl who has multiple lines about wanting books" Three things made me start to turn against the game: 1. Trying to find a book for the kid, finding one I thought would be good for a kid, and having no way to give it to her. 2. That weird "Heart of Mars" quest which was so nothing I thought something glitched in the quest. 3. Another quest on Mars where you have to either hack into a police computer to lower a guy's bail/fine to a few bucks, or go find this valuable thing to bribe the cop/warden person with. So... I tried to do both! I'd hack the bail to next to nothing and then SELL the valuable thing to the warden guy since I no longer needed to use it as a bribe gift. I thought this was clever, but I guess the quest writers didn't think anyone could possibly think to do that because I couldn't do it.
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Apr 25, 2024 23:57
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FishMcCool posted:See, I hated them back then and spent most of my Daggerfall time on city missions. But having returned to it a couple months ago with Daggerfall Unity, I kind of like them a lot? They're glorious complex mazes which take some effort exploring. No, they don't tick the 5 minutes "go to this linear cave to kill mob" quest, but as long as you know what you're getting into, they're brilliant. They tick the dungeon crawl craving which later games don't even attempt, with a few exceptions (a big dwemer ruin in Morrowind iirc? some big mages guild dungeon in Skyrim?). You don't dungeon dive on a whim in Daggerfall, you prepare and commit to the effort. It's going to be long, and you're going to face poison, disease, sleep, paralysis, gravity, underwater, all of which can easily kill you if you're unprepared. Sure, there could have been more blocks, and they could have been better designed and connected for dungeons that make some kind of sense instead of being giant mazes. But I feel like they actually hold up decently considering the sequels. Good old school dungeon crawling games can be mapped (mostly) on graph paper. Daggerfall dungeons can be mapped only via blood offerings to the unquiet dead of Texas Instruments and Kenner. A good rule of thumb for me is that ordinary tasks shouldn't be harder in a game than they are in real life, e.g. basic mapping, taking notes, managing inventory, talking to people, and so on. Starfield recycles its locations endlessly, which isn't great, but is just a matter of people doing whatever the designers of the existing places did. There's even room for a few big scary dungeon crawls.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:15
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The weird thing is you've got a perfectly acceptable explanation for why there are like 20 building layouts in the settled systems. Cheap modular prefab. It's fine. Boring, but fine. But then you have the problem of every single coffee cup being in the same place and for some POI types, specific detailed notes and journal entries, in every single one of them. There's a pharmaceuticals guy who's died on like 50 different planets. Given the way their procgen ship layouts work, I can believe that didn't work for other POIs, but they couldn't generate clutter? It almost feels like they didn't actually expect players to go explore their 100 whatever star systems, because if you do the seams start showing very quickly. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 00:22
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infernal machines posted:The weird thing is you've got a perfectly acceptable explanation for why there are like 20 building layouts in the settled systems. Cheap modular prefab. It's fine. Given their engine? I wouldn't be surprised if they can't. The whole thing that everyone loves about Gamebryo is how all that poo poo is actually there and it's doing collision and physics calculations on every chair, body, discarded rifle, fork, and baguette. They already have trouble with things getting kinda wonky if something around them shifts - think how stuff placed on a table will shudder and levitate a few inches off it if you pick up a plate that a few things are resting on in Skyrim etc. As a result all that poo poo is hand placed. I'm trying to imagine the engine just generating and placing clutter and leading to crap like a geyser of office furniture, forks, and potted plants erupting from a progen building when you cause a cell to load up and the physics all turns on at once.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:25
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That's what I call "emergent gameplay" Getting murked by a plushie because you opened the locker it had been vibrating at supersonic speeds in.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:27
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Jack B Nimble posted:What the hell do you spend money on in Starfield. I rarely had to buy ballistic ammo, I'd just cycle through tue various calibers. I basically COULDN'T buy armor because I couldn't find anything I wanted more than the Constellation suits. It was just ships, that was the only real sink, bleh. Early on I bought a lot of ammo because I’m a bad shot  But yeah, after completing the story entirely using the Frontier with a couple of basic upgrades I went and built a massive kickass battle cruiser that cost a shitload of money. I had 8 seats for crew members, and that was about when I realised I’d need ~25 points into the Social tree to actually put crew into those seats. And that was when I uninstalled.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:29
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Had you actually gotten eight crew members very little would have changed except constantly having inappropriate dialogue in the background as you engage in 2-second space battles and having to dodge them all as you walk around the ship. The cowboy's daughter wrote a poem. You will hear it. A lot.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:32
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infernal machines posted:Had you actually gotten eight crew members very little would have changed except constantly having inappropriate dialogue in the background as you engage in 2-second space battles and having to dodge them all as you walk around the ship. Dad will you read me a bedtime story? *five pirate ships explode outside the window, a sixth hammers the ship with return fire as the captain is frantically shoving spare parts into wherever the gently caress those go as fast as they can to prevent the everyone from blowing up* Wow sweetie, you haven't asked me that in a long time. Sure, I'd love to!
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Apr 26, 2024 00:34
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Still trying to figure out how ship repair ended up on "O"
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Apr 26, 2024 00:36
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I had a game class in school back in the day and our group project in valve or source or whatever started crashing two days before it was due and it was because the other doofus (not me) decided to move the building down a couple inches which left all of the physics objects a couple inches above the surface and the game would freak out and crash on startup because all the cups came tumbling down at once Anyways I assume they have chaos monkeys loving up their dlcs all the time like that
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Apr 26, 2024 00:40
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infernal machines posted:Still trying to figure out how ship repair ended up on "O" loving christ, I forgot about this. Their font and my bad eye sight had me uselessly spamming 0 as my ship kept exploding. I didn’t figure it out until I googled it.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:48
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Cyrano4747 posted:I've maintained for a while that the space system, as dire as it is, could have been done pretty competently within the restrictions that they have. This post makes me want to reinstall Everspace 2
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