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.