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Starfield user score drops to "mostly positive" on steam
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Modern gamers are self-destructive. Nothing is good enough, and because every AAA release gets torn down and review bombed in one way or another, most and eventually all games from developers with the resources to make something of scale will become pay to win, microtransaction based garbage.
Because if they can't please their audience and lose all passion for the craft because of it, they'll just say fuck it go straight for the credit cards of those that do show up.
I've played about 70 hours so far. If you like the genre but starfield doesn't wow you, I don't think you're able to be pleased. Is it perfect? No. Is it at absolute minimum an A grade? Absolutely.
Ehh I don't know. We recently had both bg3 and elden ring. Both had near universal praise and no pay to win or micro transaction nonsense.
Hi-Fi Rush, Remnant 2 as well in the AA area. It's been a pretty good year tbh
I agree that we should appreciate well made games. But those are already beloved all around and praised at every turn, I don’t know how the people could be more supportive.
Think BG3, think Elden Ring. Even CP77, after a very rough release, is in a pretty good state now and about to receive a dlc + update that delivers many things originally promised; allowing the developer to recuperate a lot of the lost good will with the customers.
The point is, people still love good games. Just that starfield is pretty mediocre. Not a bad game by any means, but it feels like a lot of compromises, loading screens and reused assets.
One of the major disappointments imo is that space isn't interesting. You only really go there for the odd ship battle to progress the plot or whatever, but you can't really fly between planets, so you miss out on the cool side stories you get with Elder Scrolls games by walking between cities. I was hoping for Firefly the Bethesda game, but it's just Skyrim stretched across planets that you fast travel between.
I want to find ships in distress, pirate outposts among asteroid fields, scuttled ships I can scavenge, etc. In other words, space should be a mechanic, not just a setting.
I think the planets are fine, but I'd rather have fewer, more densely populated planets. I don't think space-colonizing people would only make 3-4 settlements per planet, there would be dozens if not hundreds of settlements before moving to the next planet. I'd rather buy a DLC to get access to more systems then current setup where everything is spread out. In fact, just give me Sol with Earth, Mars, and maybe one of a Jupiter's moons being inhabited with the rest working like the planets in Starfield.
But no, it's just Skyrim set it space, with fast travel between cities. That's fine, just not particularly special. I may play it at some point, but it's not what I'm looking for right now.
The scale is definitely too big. I'm pretty sure most of the systems are pretty much there just to fill in the star map. I'd rather have a setting where maybe interstellar FTL requires a sublight trip first so only the nearest few stars to Sol are accessible. Really I just want Everspace 2 where I can hop out of my ship occasionally and deal with fewer annoying "puzzles".
The problem is that they let people skip the space parts arbitrarily often (sometimes planets make me stop to get scanned, sometimes I can go from ground to ground). All of those are encounters that happen, but if you fast travel you won't see them. I have warped in and seen each of those, with ships in distress even landing near me to ask for help when I'm on the ground. Although the only actual pirate outpost in space AFAIK is the Crimson Fleet base and Everspace 2 does everything in space way better.
The fact that you can't space walk without cheats is what I'm getting at. I want to be able to leave the ship to go investigate some wreckage, get into someone's airlock to bring some needed supplies to a stranded vessel, or set up a mining outpost on an asteroid. Basically, the same feel you get when walking between towns in Elder Scrolls games, but with the unique mechanics space allows.
Starfield does a lot of things pretty well, but doesn't really stand out in any of them. There's a lot of elements of a great game there, but it just ends up being pretty good instead. That's still awesome and it'll sell well, but I am looking for that special something, and I'm basically seeing Skyrim in space. Not a lot of innovation, just a mapping of that formula into a space setting.
Try joining the FreeStar Collective, which is Wild West Scifi just like Firefly.
You'll get the same types of stories and encounters. Including distressed ships, pirate outposts among asteroid field and scuttled ships you can scavenge.
TBH, I haven't missed any of the other mechanics you mention. Yeah would be cool to do a space walk, but is it really necessary?
It would be more immersive, just like flying into and out of planets with no loading screen would. Their Elder Scrolls games nailed that immersion, yet Starfield went backward with a bunch of loading screens and limitations.
It's still a pretty good game, like an 8/10 or so, but to really get that GOTY 10/10 rating, they need to excel at something. Either have better immersion, or limit the scope in some way to improve other aspects of the game.
I dunno, I think it's a game somewhat damned by faint praise. I hear "It's good, not great" a lot and I get it. If you like Skyrim you will like Starfield. But I'd say the big achievement is to scale up a game like Skyrim into such a big playspace.
It's certainly good quality in terms of the look and what they've technically achieved. But the actual gameplay isn't that far away from what they did in Skyrim and Fallout. I get it - if it ain't broke, don't fix it - but to be honest it feels a little dated. And No Man's Sky does alot of the non-RPG elements better.
It's been a strong year for games; and look at Baldur's Gate 3 - that game actually pushed forward narrative game play.
Starfield is huge and interesting, but ultimately a bit samey. I think the "ocean wide, inch deep" is too far and unfair but the basic concept kinda applies in a crude way. Baldur's Gate 3 is smaller in scope but so much richer and varied. Time was Bethesda was the undisputed king of RPGs, but I think CDProject Red supassed them with the story telling in Witcher 3 (and then fell back with Cyberpunk 2077) and now Larian have supassed both with Baldur's Gate 3.
It's a good game, but it's impact is dimmed a bit by what else has come. It'll make a ton of money and probably be around for years, but it doesn't feel the same huge leap forward as when Skyrim came out. But hey, hard act to follow to be fair.
BG3 has very weak rpg and story telling elements.
You have not played BG3 I see.
It is actually a Role Playing Game as in you get to decide what role (aka character) you want to play, unlike some of the other "RPGs" out there (looking at you Witcher).
Played and 100% completed the game.
The Witcher series is a role-playing game. You are playing the role of the Witcher.
Your concept of what a role-playing game is very weak. From your idea of what a role playing game is I can call Battlefield 2042 a role-playing game.
Well made games get praised for being well made games and get the accolades and attention they deserve, at least on the AAA level.
If a AAA game isn't receiving that, then it's probably not a well made game.
There are so many actually good games out there, you need to branch out more if your bar for an A is that low
C is a passing grade. B is pretty decent. A implies you excelled.
I would say B is more than fair. It’s surprisingly not garbage for a bethesda title. It’s not the second coming of christ.
There's a lot of gamers out there who believe they are Bethesda fans, and this is one of the first times they've actually had to reconcile the game's quality vs the developer they think consistently puts out good games. The amount of comments displaying obvious buyers remorse masquerading as defense of the game is hilarious.
You sound like you need to play more games. Gamers generally have every right to hate AAA games these days, as they are, categorically, not A grade games.
I guess that depends on how narrowly you define "genre." It's a pretty good sandbox RPG, and it'll get even better with community mods. If that's what you're looking for, it's great and way better than pretty much anything else.
But if you broaden it a bit, it has a mediocre story, mediocre combat, and mediocre exploration. So compared to other RPGs, it's really not special.
So I'd give it a B grade. It gets Cs in many areas, but the sandbox is good enough to pull it up to a B. To get to A, it needs to excel at something, like exploration (e.g. do more with the ship in space) or economy (e.g. invest in trade routes and impact the cost of goods by flooding the market). But it doesn't really excel at anything, it's basically the same formula they've had in the past with a different setting.
It's still a good game, it just doesn't stand out in any particular way. For everything it does, another game does it better, and it really needs to be the best at something to get an A from me.
A good artist doesn't do their art to please everyone, and knows that is a fool's errand.
Stop projecting the failures of management on to the creatives.