this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Starfield

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submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.

While it was not a Cyberpunk-grade overhype, I think it must still have been overhyped. Because if you see it as Skyrim with better graphics, it is pretty much what you'd expect.

Some of the common criticism seems to be intrinsic to the sci-fi genre. In Skyrim, you walk 100 meters and then you find some cave or camp or something that a game designer has placed there manually with some story or meaning behind it. And as a player, you notice that, because most locations in Skyrim feel somehow unique. Even though for example the dungeons have rooms that repeat a lot. Having a designer place them manually with some thought gives them something unique.

In interstellar sci-fi, a dense world like this is simply impossible. Planets are extremely large so filling them manually with content is simply not possible. And using procedural generation makes things feel meaningless. Players notice that fast. So instead, Starfield opted for having a few manually constructed locations that are placed randomly on planets, unfortunately with a lot of repetition. But that is a sound compromise, given the constraints of today's game development technology. The dense worlds that we are used to from other genres simply don't scale up to planetary scale, and as players, we have to get used to that.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes modders will fix it probably, but they shouldn’t have to and there will likely not be as much interest in doing so since the game isn’t as majestic and awe inspiring as skyrim (IMO).

I agree.

Game isnt a big expansive game like TES, or Fallout.

Its a series of tiny rooms, Most of which are just randomly generated, separated by half a dozen menus and loading loading screens. Theres no place to really stretch your legs, because more than likely you are going to be spending most of your game time running around on a randomly generated map looking for some PoI your quest requires, or the last flora/fauna/mineral your survey requires, so you can leave and never come back to this particular and specific tiny room again.

and even that wouldnt have been so bad, if there was some variety to the PoIs. But outside of the presumably handmade maps, like New Atlantis, It just feels like you are running into the same handful of PoI's over and over again, with the exact same layout, the exact same loot (just leveled and with a fancy new descriptor infront of its name) in the exact same places, and encountering the exact same miniquests on these randomly generated maps, like "Oh no, I'm sick, I hope you have the med.icine skill to fix me without cost" and "Oh no, there are pirates in the same PoI you've cleared out 37 times previously, go clear them out"

I have no problem with randomly generated segments, but Whats the point in randomly generating maps if its just gonna have the same handful of PoIs in it with absolutely zero change in them? I'd rather have a handful of map types and randomly generated PoI's, at least that would provide some compelling and playable variety.. and if not completely randomly genned, at least randomly change some things in the PoI so I know not to enter, take the first right, pick the blue door just to get a freaking AA rifle, like the 37 other previous times I did this PoI.