I'm fatigued by BAD games. Length doesn't matter. Content does. These lazy boardroom checklist games with no soul made to appeal to everybody and catering to nobody just aren't cutting it anymore.

Xeth Nyrrow wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 20:36:
I never played Starfield but had it wishlisted for a long time only to remove it after researching the game for a while after release.

Best way to play Starfield is with a Game Pass trial, that way you get to check it out for 1-2 weeks for free (depending on the trial) and can form your own opinion instead of purely going off of what others have complained about and praised.

For me it was decent enough, along with the other Game Pass games in the rotation at the time, to get Game Pass for a couple of months. I don't feel the need to go back to the game, but I am also not unhappy that i spent time with it either.

gsilver wrote on Jan 8, 2025, 00:07:
Just look at the achievements list of basically any game, and no matter how good, a large majority of players will usually have dropped it before the end. That right there is a pretty good indication that games in general are too long, even disregarding any problems that Starfield had in particular.

I've shifted my playing patterns to shorter games, since I *do* want to see the end of them, but I also don't want to spend a huge amount of time with them.
But I've noticed that even the shorter ones have huge player drop-offs. Sometimes as early as the first achievement-granting action in the game. This kind of suggests that there are far too many of them, too.

Eh. People have different tastes and different reasons for playing games. I have never bought a game with the intent of finishing it. Not even short ones. I generally just do not care enough about most games to bother. My interest is in seeing a new world, experiencing it for a bit. Trying out new mechanics and finding different ways to enjoy myself within that world. Very rarely does that involve actually playing through whatever sub-par story the game creators have half-baked into it. I spent hours in Skyrim robbing a woman blind and tossing all of her belongings into a nearby lake because she insulted me when I accidentally bumped into her one day. That had nothing to do with the story, advanced nothing in the game and provided no achievements, but the very fact that I could was a testament to the world they had created. To this day I've never bothered finishing the story in Skyrim because I simply don't care enough to bother. I have however started multiple characters, working with multiple different builds and experienced the stories of various guilds and various cities and towns.

I think, by and large I just don't give a damn any time someone tries to tell me that I'm some superhero that needs to save the universe or alter the course of humanity or whatever other nonsensical thing they came up with. I'd rather just be joe the half-assed blacksmith stumbling from town to town getting into whatever trouble I happen upon. I swear any time a game tries to make me the chosen one or whatever nomenclature it has decided to use for that exact same worn out tired-assed trope, it just makes me want to stop playing.

I enjoyed the worlds they created in previous Bethesda games. I did not enjoy any of them in Starfield as all the "worlds" were one tiny settlement and a ton of emptiness or a giant city only ever experienced in several parts separated by loading screens. By the third time I ran into the exact same outpost with the exact same notes from the exact same dead scientists on three different worlds, I uninstalled it and never looked back. There was zero reward for exploring and nothing interesting to ever be found that the game didn't already lead you by the nose to.

Just look at the achievements list of basically any game, and no matter how good, a large majority of players will usually have dropped it before the end. That right there is a pretty good indication that games in general are too long, even disregarding any problems that Starfield had in particular.

I've shifted my playing patterns to shorter games, since I *do* want to see the end of them, but I also don't want to spend a huge amount of time with them.
But I've noticed that even the shorter ones have huge player drop-offs. Sometimes as early as the first achievement-granting action in the game. This kind of suggests that there are far too many of them, too.

I never played Starfield but had it wishlisted for a long time only to remove it after researching the game for a while after release. The major turn off/deciding factor for me wasn't that some people thought it was terrible or even just mediocre, but that no one was able to say it was a great or even very good game with reasonable articulation. There are some good parts that I know I would like but too many OK, lacking, or even bad things to make me not want to bother. The modding community, the last salvation that could have changed my mind, seems to be lacking a necessary level of enthusiasm to make up for the deficiencies like was done with Skyrim.

There was so many problems with Starfield, but the biggest issue was that they got rid of one of the biggest draws of their games: exploring a handcrafted world. Procedural generation can work for some things, but not for creating compelling landscapes and points of interest.

And lets face it, it WAS a terrible game. Even Skyrim when it released was pretty mediocre compared to other RPGs. The only reason it has the lasting power it does is because of mods.

PHJF wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 17:20:

Beamer wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 14:24:
In my year end post, I pointed out a few games I loved but felt overstayed their welcome and I was dying to have end sooner, so this makes sense to me

This is how I felt about Ghost of Tsushima. Fantastic game but by the half way mark I was kind of done with it.

A seemingly impossible balance to strike with open world games is how do you cater the game to the guy that wants to 100% the game as well as the guy that is just bee-lining the story?

This strikes me as a problem with the individual game and it's design and not a sign that single player video games in general need to be shorter. There are many games I could have kept single player story missioning along if I had been given that opportunity.....instead I either have a meaningless "endgame grind" or DLC that I would have to purchase additionally and probably isn't meaningful to the story. It's subjective, but the base game being too long in any game is not something I would have had on my bingo card of industry complaints from consumers. Particularly in this world of 80 dollar games.

I thought Starfield was mostly OK and I played it for about 150 hours including the 'Shattered Space' DLC (100% completion/achievements on both). It was surprisingly stable and bug free. All I ever encountered were glitches which were mostly pretty funny when my companion would jump on furniture or endlessly run against a wall... stuff like that.

I didn't think that Starfield felt "endless". If you would ignore the side quests then it could probably be done in 30 hours or so(?). The DLC was crap though.

That said, this guy is not wrong. I have been trying to play/finish Horizon Forbidden West (HFW) over many months now but can not really get myself to make much progress due to fatigue. I actually felt my first real open world burnout last year when I arrived in the open world of HFW (the intro is taking place in a more confined area) and opened the map for the first time. I lol'ed and quit to desktop.

That game's world is insanely large and there are sooo many POIs and icons for collectibles/activities on the map, it is simply crazy, exacerbated by the fact that the game now has diving (huge underwater worlds as well) and even flying.

I never felt the same with Starfield which seems natural because Starfield is way more segregated. There isn't a singular huge game world. There are many planets and they have a lot of terrain but everyone knows that the game is structured in a way that you don't really have to go to any POIs unless a mission leads you there so you can safely ignore all the copy & paste, or even auto-generated/procedurally generated, content.

General huge game fatigue is nothing new though. I have quite a few huge/long games in my backlog and I definitely tip-toe around them when deciding on a new game to play. Most of the time I go for something more easily digestible because even just the thought of tackling a 200 hour game feels exhausting already.

At the end of the day, the simple formula quality > quantity remains a universal truth imo. Starfield did have some quality quest lines like the infiltration of the Crimson Fleet as a UCSysDef agent but it also had a lot of filler and the DLC was just plain garbage. Like all devs, Bethesda should put more emphasis on quality content instead of filler content. As a bonus, games will require less budget if they are smaller. Just do it and don't try to make a game "epic" by filling it with junk.

Armengar wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 16:08:
Starfield wasnt shitty. Not by a long shot. People just wanted the game to be different, it wasnt what they were expecting.

The game was released relatively bug free and had hours of enjoyment, wasnt too grindy and had quite a bit of fun elements. Easily worth the money.

Exhibit A in "tastes in entertainment are 100% subjective"

Just because YOU found it entertaining doesn't mean everyone "wanted the game to be different" (tho, if you mean "wanted the game to be good" then yes, yes they did, but I suspect that's not what you meant.)

Some things can be quantified of course. And honestly, a lot of the Bethesda magic was quantifiably NOT in Starfield. The star of Bethesda games, especially the further away you get from Morrowind, is the world. Not the writing, the quests, and all of that. The magic happened on the way as you discover 37 things between Step 1 and Step 2.

"I was on my way to do this quest and I stumbled upon this awesome thing and it wasn't until the following week that I finally got to finish the quest cuz I was just so distracted by all the awesome"

Starfield removed a lot of that. That's quantifiable. And, presuming you agree about the Bethesda magic part, it's a lesser game because of it.

Quboid wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 12:50:

Xeth Nyrrow wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 11:43:
LOL, yeah ok, sure. Sound slike another person who worked on Starfield who is upset that it wasn't heralded as the second coming of Christ. Heaping some blame on to Skyrim which he also worked on it just pathetic and frankly unprofessional. Players want quality over quantity in most cases and Bethesda games are an ocean wide but a puddle deep in many aspects is the real problem (and I like their games). They are saved because of the immense replayability, primarily due to their character creation, but even that keeps getting dumbed down each game.

Isn't that what he's saying? Players are getting tired of games like his ones and quantity isn't so much what players want any more. I think it would be pathetic to not mention Skyrim, I'd rather he said that than try to pretend his games/company aren't a part of this.

That's his point yes, I disagree with it. It's that the games being made are bad or at least not good enough that is the issue, not how many are on the market. I doubt anyone really believes that having too many good games to choose to buy cannibalizes the market or is a bad thing. The real issue is that there's just a ton of shit games out there, at least in the AAA gaming space, not that people are burned out on expansive games.

Beamer wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 15:49:

Pr()ZaC wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 15:24:
I'm not fadigued after dozens of hours of BG3.

That's a bit of his point. You have a game you really enjoy sinking a lot of time into. Do you need another, or would you prefer a shorter game at the moment

I need another. Now. As zee Germans would say, gib!

Beamer wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 14:24:
In my year end post, I pointed out a few games I loved but felt overstayed their welcome and I was dying to have end sooner, so this makes sense to me

This is how I felt about Ghost of Tsushima. Fantastic game but by the half way mark I was kind of done with it.

A seemingly impossible balance to strike with open world games is how do you cater the game to the guy that wants to 100% the game as well as the guy that is just bee-lining the story?

Armengar wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 16:08:
Starfield wasnt shitty. Not by a long shot. People just wanted the game to be different, it wasnt what they were expecting.

The game was released relatively bug free and had hours of enjoyment, wasnt too grindy and had quite a bit of fun elements. Easily worth the money.

Comparing Starfield to previous Bethesda games, some of it was definitely shitty. The pirate missions had to be the worst storyline I have ever played in one of Bethesda's games. The main characters are obnoxious, and in several parts the writing and mission design were terrible.

There's the copy/paste temples, to unlock powers, that have you doing the exact same action, with the same enemy spawn in the same area, every time. Incredibly low effort design and development.

The whole space travel gameplay and procedurally generated barren and boring planets are failed game design. Space travel is tedious menu navigating and nearly all of the planets aren't even worth visiting.

Despite eight years of development, it felt like they ran out of time and rushed parts of the game. It was relatively bug free, compared to their previous games, but in the end it doesn't matter because it's overwhelmingly regarded as one of their worst games.

Armengar wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 16:08:
Starfield wasnt shitty. Not by a long shot. People just wanted the game to be different, it wasnt what they were expecting.

The game was released relatively bug free and had hours of enjoyment, wasnt too grindy and had quite a bit of fun elements. Easily worth the money.

While opinions on the enjoyment of any game are subjective, and I am happy for you if you were happy with this game....factual history is just factual history. The release bugs were big and game breaking. From broken gameplay and quests to random CTD and savgame corruption.
Congratulations if you were one of the people they didn't effect. Not all of us were so lucky and yes, that is damn well disappointing. Particularly with the money Bethesda charges for anything. It is revisionist history to say that this game was anywhere close to bug free. here is a link with a publish date from 2023 as a refresher: https://starfieldportal.com/article/starfield-bugs

Starfield wasnt shitty. Not by a long shot. People just wanted the game to be different, it wasnt what they were expecting.

The game was released relatively bug free and had hours of enjoyment, wasnt too grindy and had quite a bit of fun elements. Easily worth the money.

Pr()ZaC wrote on Jan 7, 2025, 15:24:
I'm not fadigued after dozens of hours of BG3.

That's a bit of his point. You have a game you really enjoy sinking a lot of time into. Do you need another, or would you prefer a shorter game at the moment?

For me, games like Dave the Diver, even, we're just too long. The back third of that game felt like more of the same with nothing really new.

I'm not fadigued after dozens of hours of BG3.

Or maybe they're seriously disinclined to pay $100 for a new game when most people are barely scraping by for food and rent, never mind luxuries. Price your games at $20 and then we'll see if they're actually "fatigued" or not.

In my year end post, I pointed out a few games I loved but felt overstayed their welcome and I was dying to have end sooner, so this makes sense to me

Yeah buddy, more gamers on the planet and a higher percentage of the population actually playing games.....and NOW.......now is when they are all "fatigued" by spending too long on a single game. It couldn't just be that with more video game players there are more playing preferences and styles. The self-serving priciple in this opinion here is outstanding. Dude who makes games thinks they should be shorter so people have to buy games more often....thus increasing demand for workers who make games. Not because any customer is actually verbalizing this, because "he thinks so". The dude worked for a company that primarily makes single player games that people enjoy for 10+ years. Now because Starfield was disappointing single player epic games are not wanted by the players? Larian seems to be doing fine.....hey Will....could it possibly be the players expect those "endless games" to actually be worth their money and time? I think, Will, you see a bigger potential money bag making a diffferent kind of game that appeals to a different kind of gamer.....and instead of saying that you want to make it sound like an obligation driven by customer needs. How noble. /s

Sometimes the voices that get amplified in this industry leave me scratching my head. It's a reminder that you can be a genius in your profession and still be a short sighted idiot in your industry. There are hot takes, and then there is whatver drug-induced drivel this dude's brain is leaking.