jacobvandy wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 02:35:

Razumen wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 01:19:
because there IS no purpose to spending time on your ship, or even spending time in the so called "Starfield"

Disagree. I've found that plunking a few points into the appropriate perks had me both leveling up and making money faster from the comfort of my pilot's seat than running around completing quests on foot. I set out to unlock the achievement for visiting every system, but it's also really come in handy for progressing toward level 100 without doing something completely asinine like crafting 12 billion adaptive frames. I jump into a system, maybe encounter some enemies or eccentric friendlies, scan all the planets and moons within it from one spot (usually hundreds of XP and thousands of creds right there, just a minute or two), stop off at any SOS signals or derelict ships/stations in orbit or maybe a POI on the ground if I wanna stretch my legs, then move on to the next. Seen loads of new space encounters while doing this, including recruiting a companion I never met before who was floating up there, so... Dunno what you're doing with your virtual life, but I feel very much like a Captain Reynolds today.

You missed my point. Encounters all happen as soon as you drop out of grav jump, there's literally no reason to stick around or explore after that, because there's no where else to go in each area: you just click on the map and fast travel to the next spot where something may or may not happen. That's not exploration, it's just RNG.

Moreover, you're only talking about time spent in the cockpit seat, I'm talking about the entire experience. Besides the few times you are fighting pirates, or flying around, there is NO reason to hang around on your ship in space - you know, the very place it's supposedly designed to be. 90% of the hab modules are pointless to even include in your ship, and both trading and crafting is better done on a planet so you have access to a trader for mats you might be missing. For something that's supposedly exploring the frontier of space, your spaceship is one of the most dull places in the universe.

Meanwhile, back at the farm ...

Another day, another score point down: 76% yesterday to 75% now on Steam.
Will update hourly.

Whoops, should have posted in this thread.

I am at around 100 hours, I've experienced very few bugs, nothing major. One bug I have encountered though, with currently no resolution, is the "asteroid fragments follow you" bug.

Whenever you blow up asteroids for mining or in combat by accident, they spawn small asteroid fragments that usually despawn after 30 seconds or so, maybe even faster. However if you are in combat, boosting, blow up some asteroids and maybe Grav Jump, they will start following you in formation and never expire. I'm not sure of the exact sequence to make it happen, but it's something close to that. I have close to a dozen following me now, regardless if I change ships or not.

It's a pretty fun game, but obviously the writing is weaker than BG3 for example, but I'll continue to play and amass starships and turn them into heavily armed cargo haulers, and do the quests, and acquire space magic powers, etc. etc. Definitely money well spent for me, for the regular version.

My build has evolved from my planned stealth/FPS combat build, into almost an engineering build. Most of my skill points are in Tech and Engineering, or whatever the weapon/suit/scanning tree is. I cannot recommend getting max piloting and 3+ shields enough, and if you do that, might as well get some points in Particle Beams, which are hands down the best thing in the game. There's a huge increase in damage and flexibility with weapon and suit upgrades, so I did those too. Unfortunately that means the rest of the skill trees are largely untouched for me so far, at level 35-36.. a smattering of weapon skills, some social buffs, a bit of stealth. Every skill seems to be at least somewhat useful, but I consider my points in pickpocketing to be largely wasted at this point. The game quickly scales way away from having the money/items you can pick pocket be worth the time to steal.

I'd love to see somebody who maxed out Gastronomy and Geology playing this game, lol. I have a point in Geology, when I thought I was going to be building a ton of outposts and doing a lot of mining, and surprisingly it gives me some dialogue options sometimes.

Also, Wanted is one of the best Traits, for adding more combat on foot and in space, and giving you more loot after you slaughter the bounty hunters. It also seems to have a ton of dialogue options.

ZeroPike1 wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 05:53:
It’s flawed for sure, but I know I am having fun. That’s all I give a shit about in the end.

Same here. I played it via a 3-month Game Pass gift, which ran out yesterday, so now I'm contemplating whether to actually subscribe or buy the game.

And as far as achievements go, several console commands disable them, so it's not unreasonable to think that some people didn't get whichever is used to check player retention while having played for 100+ hours.

140+ hours racked up on steam for me. Only started modding after I got full achievements. NG+ has some unique dialogue which makes it almost worth a second playthrough for me.

It’s flawed for sure, but I know I am having fun. That’s all I give a shit about in the end.

Looking forward to the modding scene on it.

playing it on gamepass, i wasnt going to buy it as I expected a bugfest. My expectations were low. Coming as a fan of the old privateer, wing commander, iwar, elite, ED etc I was always going to make comparions.

First, i was very surprised by the initial polish and bug free nature (for a bethesda title). I soon downloaded some mods for inventory management but apart from the poor UI I was pleasantly surprised.

Content seems fine so far. im level 25 after 20 hours. Ive run the main quest till i got my voodoo, now im building outposts and dipping my toe in faction quests. Sarah wants me badly so im helping her out. Then benching her so I can go full pirate without annoying her.

I had some captain land near my outpost and beg me for water. so i stole his ship. That made me giggle.

Space exploration is no ED and that was initially a bad thing, till i remembered that exploration in ED was just a pain. Sure I could supercruise from star to outpost, but after the thousandth time this was just a pain. I got randomly interdicted sure but it added nothing to the game for me. I much preferred the surface traffic, population centers and ground work. Also walking about your ship with the ability to make it a flying base complete with crew is good.

space combat is better in ED for me, the density is better and flight model better. Ground combat is vastly superior in SF. It is fun. The missions are ok, not just go her, kill, come back. there are arcs. You can also murder hobo if you so wish and even keep a pirate base too.

The grind is not really there. Sure if you want to do everything then of course there is grind. But you can get a good set of armour and a ship early enough (Mantis), a decent early reactor for credits (warhorse) and ive had a number of epic weapons that are perfectly usable (running a semi auto 144 damage beowulf that uses 7.7, its a beast that two/three shots everything and can fire as fast as you click). Vendors run out of money quickly, but there is a mod for that!

I like the idea of choices. want to fast travel? go for it, but you can slow time it there if you want. Want to juat go build? sure, find a moon and away you go. Feel free to manufacture and sell too as you can set up rudimentary links. Wanna murder everything but still have a base? sure! companion arcs and crew that have a purpose? yep. Plus you dont need to endlessly log on/off to grind resources for hours. choice is good.

So far SF is a decent game, not perfect no but there is ample content to keep you busy for hours.

Razumen wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 01:19:
because there IS no purpose to spending time on your ship, or even spending time in the so called "Starfield"

Disagree. I've found that plunking a few points into the appropriate perks had me both leveling up and making money faster from the comfort of my pilot's seat than running around completing quests on foot. I set out to unlock the achievement for visiting every system, but it's also really come in handy for progressing toward level 100 without doing something completely asinine like crafting 12 billion adaptive frames. I jump into a system, maybe encounter some enemies or eccentric friendlies, scan all the planets and moons within it from one spot (usually hundreds of XP and thousands of creds right there, just a minute or two), stop off at any SOS signals or derelict ships/stations in orbit or maybe a POI on the ground if I wanna stretch my legs, then move on to the next. Seen loads of new space encounters while doing this, including recruiting a companion I never met before who was floating up there, so... Dunno what you're doing with your virtual life, but I feel very much like a Captain Reynolds today.

The game has so many issues, but I'm just going to address one here: the space part. For a game that's marketed as on where you explore space, there's basically zero exploration of..space. Every location is just a small predetermined box, where 99% of the action is either predetermined or RNG as soon as you jump in.

They really missed the chance to capitalize on the space element. Your ship itself should be your home base, with you actually flying around systems and discovering things. There should be reasons to go to a location in space, get out of your pilot seat and do something, like go on a EVA to fix a satelite (not just pressing a frakking button), explore a derelict hulk, or even just parking your ship in an asteroid to wait out an intense solar flare storm. Fuel should mean something and have atual game mechanics around it, and not just a checklist that needs to be filled out during ship building and then forgotten afterwards.

And then there's the space combat, which, IMHO, is just terrible. It wants to be a space dogfighter, but with ships the size of frigates or bigger. It just doesn't work, and instead of elaborate dogfights, the only way to win harder fights is to simple have a ship that can delete the enemies quicker than their perfect aim whittles down your shields.

The game should be Firefly meets Bethesda, but instead we got Skyrim with vaguely space-themed fast travel..

As it stands, they have a this really cool ship builder, but most of the parts serve no real purpose, because there IS no purpose to spending time on your ship, or even spending time in the so called "Starfield"

Baristan wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 23:06:
The game is pretty easy even when you are 10+ levels lower than the enemies. Do levels do anything other than giving one skill point and determining what loot you get?

Your HP increases with every level, as it does for enemies. I believe it affects the scaling of damage they do to you, as well (while your own damage is just the stats of your weapon + any bonuses from perks, etc.). I do agree that level designations in this game are much more of a suggestion than a hard requirement, and as long as you're upgrading gear and have decent aim, you'll be taking down enemies of a much higher level than yourself. Which makes sense with how massive the scale is (no cap on the player, and system level recs range from 1-75) and considering that most of the choices in the massive perk tree are not directly increasing your combat effectiveness. I was expecting more of a bump to enemy levels in NG+, though.

The game is pretty easy even when you are 10+ levels lower than the enemies. Do levels do anything other than giving one skill point and determining what loot you get?

Sheik Rattle Enroll wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 22:01:
25% of all players haven't even left the tutorial world yet.

FWIW this is likely due to bugged achievements as I finished a playthrough on steam, but apparently never left the starting planet.

Sheik Rattle Enroll wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 22:01:
25% of all players haven't even left the tutorial world yet.

That story was citing Xbox achievements, where some of that is probably the GamePass effect of giving a game a shot just because it's 'free' and immediately bouncing off because clicking a button is the extent of your investment. Steam achievement stats show about 12% of people don't have the achievement for launching into space, which I actually think is extraordinarily high considering how easy it is to disable achievements for yourself by installing mods beforehand or using console commands... Or maybe the game is just bugging out on either platform and not unlocking an achievement when it otherwise should have. I know my achievement for producing 500 resources in outposts is glitched on my current character, as I've done a lot of building and certainly produced many thousands by now.

With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if a decent chunk of people start the game and then get bored because they immediately roam off into the wilderness, something they've been doing in other Bethesda games for years. That's an easy mistake to make in Starfield, where there's been a significant shift in how the game world is designed to accommodate the space exploration fantasy. You really should stick with the main quest at least until you're shown the capitol city and Constellation HQ, to have a better idea of what to do and where to find the meat of the game. The same thing happens when people ignore the tutorial portion of No Man's Sky their first time playing and never make it to a space station.

I'm enjoying it. It's old-fart friendly, in that it doesn't require normal twitch skills and a methodical approach is possible in most situations. The questlines I've done so far have been well written and presented. I do wish they would allow you to set up a merchant at your main outpost though, at least later in the game. Even a bartender like Fallout 4 would be nice. Space combat is still a little rough on those with either neuropathies or arthritus in their hands, but it does get better with better ships. Overall, the game is good for the growing older demographic, if they have the machines to run it.

This comment was edited on Sep 20, 2023, 22:50.

1badmf wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 21:45:

PHJF wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 21:29:

If you think there isn't a substantial amount of content, you aren't looking.

I ran out of content at ~lvl 45. Half the star systems are lvl40+ and you fly there and there are no cities, no quests, nothing. Just random horse shit.

you gotta be looking in all the wrong places then, cuz i'm 50 hrs in and i've barely touched the main quest, haven't done any faction or companion quests at all. haven't even gotten to the powers everyone's talking about. i keep getting sidetracked by phenomenal side quests that takes multiple hours on their own. this game is not lacking for content, and it's really good.

seems to me a lot of you guys went in looking for reasons to dismiss it and did just that without really giving it a chance. honestly top ten game of all time for me.

I'll play anything that's fun for me, not sure why I wouldn't want to.
I've tried every Bethesda game since Daggerfall.
Every time one comes out everyone says it's the best game ever.
I play them and I feel like I'm slogging through the worst writing dealing with the most 1d characters in a land of neverending repetition.

25% of all players haven't even left the tutorial world yet.
Reviews all point out how dull and empty the game is while praising the graphics and the fact that it's in space.

I've disliked earlier games by other developers or earlier games in a series before and turned around and loved a later entry.
I've loved a game series and then hated later games in it.

People also really like lots of stuff that I think is awful.
Usually they haven't been exposed to better stuff.

PHJF wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 21:29:

If you think there isn't a substantial amount of content, you aren't looking.

I ran out of content at ~lvl 45. Half the star systems are lvl40+ and you fly there and there are no cities, no quests, nothing. Just random horse shit.

you gotta be looking in all the wrong places then, cuz i'm 50 hrs in and i've barely touched the main quest, haven't done any faction or companion quests at all. haven't even gotten to the powers everyone's talking about. i keep getting sidetracked by phenomenal side quests that takes multiple hours on their own. this game is not lacking for content, and it's really good.

seems to me a lot of you guys went in looking for reasons to dismiss it and did just that without really giving it a chance. honestly top ten game of all time for me.

If you think there isn't a substantial amount of content, you aren't looking.

I ran out of content at ~lvl 45. Half the star systems are lvl40+ and you fly there and there are no cities, no quests, nothing. Just random horse shit.

I'm 80 hours in, probably only 1/3 of the way through the faction quests and haven't touched the main quests after unlocking the dragon shouts. If you think there isn't a substantial amount of content, you aren't looking. Was hoping for more NMS style game play, but Starfield has become my favorite Fallout game. Haven't experienced many bugs(4 in 80h), and all but one were fixed by exiting/re-entering the area. The other bug was a quest completing too early. My tour of Constellation was just talking to one person then nothing. Loaded a quicksave and it worked the second time. Glad they took an extra year to polish the game, but how does anyone release a game without FOV sliders. Did they omit it so they would have something to add in an early patch to silence upset players? It's the same game engine they've used since Morrowind, you'd think they would have found time to add a FOV slider sometime during the last two decades. Tod insists on reusing the same old game engine, and the game engine still sucks. This time I get Cyberpunk levels of performance with slightly better than Fallout 4 graphics. Same horrible character animation since Morrowind and other oddities. It was time to ditch the engine long ago. zero-g combat was fun at first, then I found you can't look 100% down, and shooting people below you in an elevator shaft is impossible.
Overall I'm enjoying the game more than I thought I would. Did find secret locations from reading random books sitting on peoples shelves like I was hoping the game would have, but otherwise haven't bothered exploring much. Will have to play the latest NMS update after finishing Starfield. I appreciate the typical Bethesda quests, and the laid back atmosphere in the game. It's what I'm in the mood for right now.

Still trying to wrap my head around not being able to invite my parents to my wedding...

jacobvandy wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 17:38:

Hardline Mike wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 17:16:
It honestly feels like the shell of a game. I'm sure modders will liven it up eventually but I think this is the weakest Bethesda title ever in terms of an unmodded experience. What little hand-crafted content there is, is spread way too thin. The main story is a predictable bore. The "feel" of exploration is ruined by so much fast traveling and when you aren't fast traveling, its mostly just empty procedurally generated landscape.

All these years and people still expect a good main story from a Bethesda game? I'm just glad we finally got NG+ and that there's an integrated option to skip the main quest (or even companion storylines) on subsequent playthroughs. There's a decent amount of easter-egg-like post-game modification throughout, as well.

As for the amount of content, yes it's spread thin across 1000 fucking planets, but you cannot honestly say there's little of it... That's just factually incorrect, especially in comparison to their past games. Each faction quest line is practically another main quest in itself (with some branching choices that leave lasting impressions on the rest of the game), then you have several meaty side quest lines, dozens of one-off side quests, and a ridiculous variety of endlessly repeatable tasks. Nevermind all the checklist-ticking surveying/exploration and creative outlets of modular ship-building and outpost management... Most people will easily spend 100 hours in the game and still not have done everything. Since when is that not enough?

I do look forward to seeing more added to this galaxy, by Bethesda and modders alike -- but of all the complaints people have with the game, not finding enough to do has to be the most flimsy.

I've played games that lasted 10 hours and every hour felt better than a Bethesda game.
I've played games that lasted 100 hours and every hour felt better than a Bethesda game.

The problem isn't the number of hours, it's the amount of padding they do.

jacobvandy wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 17:38:

Hardline Mike wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 17:16:
It honestly feels like the shell of a game. I'm sure modders will liven it up eventually but I think this is the weakest Bethesda title ever in terms of an unmodded experience. What little hand-crafted content there is, is spread way too thin. The main story is a predictable bore. The "feel" of exploration is ruined by so much fast traveling and when you aren't fast traveling, its mostly just empty procedurally generated landscape.

All these years and people still expect a good main story from a Bethesda game? I'm just glad we finally got NG+ and that there's an integrated option to skip the main quest (or even companion storylines) on subsequent playthroughs. There's a decent amount of easter-egg-like post-game modification throughout, as well.

As for the amount of content, yes it's spread thin across 1000 fucking planets, but you cannot honestly say there's little of it... That's just factually incorrect, especially in comparison to their past games. Each faction quest line is practically another main quest in itself (with some branching choices that leave lasting impressions on the rest of the game), then you have several meaty side quest lines, dozens of one-off side quests, and a ridiculous variety of endlessly repeatable tasks. Nevermind all the checklist-ticking surveying/exploration and creative outlets of modular ship-building and outpost management... Most people will easily spend 100 hours in the game and still not have done everything. Since when is that not enough?

I do look forward to seeing more added to this galaxy, by Bethesda and modders alike -- but of all the complaints people have with the game, not finding enough to do has to be the most flimsy.

Dunno what to tell you bud, I got bored a lot faster than I did with Skyrim or FO4. Just sharing my experience.

jacobvandy wrote on Sep 20, 2023, 17:38:
As for the amount of content, yes it's spread thin across 1000 fucking planets, but you cannot honestly say there's little of it... That's just factually incorrect, especially in comparison to their past games. Each faction quest line is practically another main quest in itself (with some branching choices that leave lasting impressions on the rest of the game), then you have several meaty side quest lines, dozens of one-off side quests, and a ridiculous variety of endlessly repeatable tasks. Nevermind all the checklist-ticking surveying/exploration and creative outlets of modular ship-building and outpost management... Most people will easily spend 100 hours in the game and still not have done everything. Since when is that not enough?

I agree. And some of the content is really well done. I've said it before and I will say it again: The UCSysDef vs. Crimson Fleet quest line is exceptionally well done. Your task is to infiltrate the Crimson Fleet by joining them and it is a long ass quest line with tons and tons of choices & consequences.

I also found it to be pretty well written. There are a lot of really funny and witty dialogue options and since you kind of have to roleplay a pirate (or actually become one by turning your back on the UC... your choice), you can make plenty use of them. The pirates actually enjoy being insulted and yelled at a little .

Like any huge RPG, Starfield has poor quests or quest lines and really memorable, exceptionally well done quests or quest lines. One should not judge too soon but actually play through most of those quest lines before declaring the game to be shit.

In this way, Starfield reminds me a bit of Oblivion. Oblivion had some rather bleak quest lines like the fighters and mages guild but then also really awesome stuff like the Dark Brotherhood, the Thieves Guild and some of the individual quests (painting, dream world, schizo elf etc.). You have to head out there and find the good stuff though. Or, if you are too lazy for that, refund the game if it's not too late.