this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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I think the fundamental problem is that people had different expectations for a game set in space, both because Bethesda stoked them (all of that talk of having the idea decades ago / first new franchise in however many years / Microsoft bought the company just to get it as an exclusive / etc) and because after No Man's Sky people kind of expected that with their budget / resources they would manage to fix that game's problems and create something richer + more seamless.
In retrospect, if they'd simply sold it as "Skyrim in Space," admitted to the limitations up front - same underlying engine, limited amount of variety to procedurally-generated content, loading screens instead of seamless takeoff/landing, etc - and not pretended that it was something new, the response would have probably been much more uniformly positive.
But they kind of already did say most of that stuff.
They said long before the game came out that there was no seamless takeoff/landing. They said they upgraded their Creation Engine for Starfield, AFAIK they never said it was entirely new.
Either way, I like it. Its fun.
And that's great! I think we're mostly talking about the people who are whinging about it. People who are enjoying it, let em enjoy it.
The only people I have seen complaining about it are here on Lemmy. Which honestly, the more time I spend here, I almost feel like its more negative than Reddit was. Maybe its the low population, maybe its bot astroturfing, I dont know. But its really unfortunate this place has really gone downhill.
Top front page post on reddit right now is complaining that people are misrepresenting why people are disappointed with the game. Basically, arguing that the game is disappointing and that people should be accepting critiques of it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/168s84i/people_are_dishonestly_misrepresenting_why_people/
This is the third post on the front page of reddit. Lots of people are complaining.
Yo, your old.reddit link is now redirecting to reddit.com. Did those dirty bastards remove old.reddit?
Hmm, I missed that about seamless takeoff/landing. But as @dingus mentions, you can use cutscenes and animations and other things to make that feel more immersive / continuous even if they are temporarily dropping you out of the engine.
The setting lowered my expectations. Modern sci-fi has this weird obsession with being sterile and boring. Compared to the magical fantasy of Elder Scrolls and the zany retro-futurism of Fallout, it was guaranteed to be boring.
I think you're on the right track, but I think it's also because recent games did better with similar ideas. People shat all over Mass Effect Andromeda, but it hid loading screens behind interplanetary and FTL travel that was actually visualized. In my brain, I know they're cutscenes to cover for loading data, but it's enough to take you out of it being a "game" and allowing you to suspend your disbelief. It's hard to suspend disbelief when there's a loading screen constantly in front of you.
That was basically what I hoped for. NMS type game, but with Skyrim/ fallout level modding, stories, quests and deeper meaning to it.
And with better procgen. They have the manpower and expertise to do that.
I haven't bought the game yet, waiting to see the initial responses. Now.. I'll probably pick it up on sale sometime, when bugs are fixed and there's solid mods.
I mean, it is extremely polished. I have encountered a total of 2 bugs over my entire playtime. By this time in fallout 4 I lost track of the number of bugs I saw, things jittering atound, people's faces acting wonky, nome of that here.
Honestly I still think waiting to buy a Bethesda game is smart if you aren't a huge fan or something. Skyrim was pretty crap at launch and all the praise it gets now is mostly referring to Skyrim well after launch when patches and mods turned it into something good.
I played Skyrim at launch and it was great.
Mods added another level to the game but I can happily play the game without.
I just want Spacerim tho
Closest I can get you is "Spacerimming: An Anal Odyssey", will that do?
No but I'll hold on to that for now thanks
Skyrim mods to the rescue?
Everyone recalls, but they also recall Hello Games spending the next several years fixing the game and fleshing out to be closer to their original vision, which is what they were selling to people: their vision. They should have been selling the game, not the vision, but they took their fuckup on the chin and risked a lot. There was no gaurantee they would appease gamers and they essentially had no income except for continued sales of No Mans Sky.
Also NMS was Hello Games' first real big game ever, so you can give them a little slack for having no idea what they're doing.
Bethesda is a 30+ year old juggernaut who waits for modders to fix their games and has been re-releasing their last successful game for a full decade now.
Hello Games made NMS better because they felt bad. Bethesda made Skyrim better to re-release it and get more money.
Also, Hello Games is just 26 people and Bethesda is 420 people and owned by Microsoft.
I think the difference here is Hello Games took a big risk taking 2-3 years to fix it while asking for nothing more in exchange. What they did is basically unheard of because its hard to pay people without known future income.
Do you think Bethesda will take 2-3 years to "fix" this? I don't.
So what you're saying is that they smoke a lot of weed? Would explain a few things tbh 🤔