r/XboxSeriesX • u/Turbostrider27 • Dec 04 '23

Xbox wants Starfield to have the 12-year staying power of Skyrim Discussion

https://www.pcgamesn.com/starfield/popular-like-skyrim
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111

u/YesOrNah Dec 04 '23

Ya, the amount of loading is just wild. Completely kills all immersion for me. Especially coming from cyberpunk where there was virtually no loading.

102

u/SociallyAwarePiano Dec 04 '23

The thing that killed it for me is that everything takes way too long to get to. The beauty of Skyrim was that you could go 30 seconds in any direction and would've stumbled upon a new thing to do. Starfield feels like they didn't realize that's what people liked.

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u/Live_Supermarket6328 Dec 04 '23

The advantages of a small but dense world building. Like Bethesda didn't listen what people complained about for a very long time.

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u/PraiseThePun81 Dec 04 '23

Bethesda: If we ignore the problem for long enough a Modder will fix it for us.

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u/Nimpa45 Dec 04 '23

But they did listened, one of the main complaints of Fallout 4 was that it was too dense and that you couldn't walk 30 seconds without finding another raider outpost

The problem with the emptiness of starfield is that is in space, where everything is empty. They should have made the main plates more densely populated but the other planets are how it's supposed to be.

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u/BababooeyHTJ Dec 05 '23

Imo FO4 felt empty compared to previous games. Too much emphasis on settlement building. I want an interesting hand crafted world to explore. That’s what Bethesda does well

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u/TheSovereignGrave Dec 04 '23

They heard people call their games "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" and failed to realize this was a bad thing.

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u/Multifaceted-Simp Dec 04 '23

Baldurs gate >>>>>>>>

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u/TobiasKM Dec 04 '23

Absolutely agree. I liked Starfield at first, I’m guessing I played 40-50 hours, and enjoyed a lot of it. But the constant loading and fast travelling just inevitably took its toll on my patience. I found myself often wondering “what if I just venture out into the wild on this planet?”, but every time I did, it was just dreary. Nothing particularly interesting. And then you’d just get caught out in nowhere and either had a long ass track back, or you’d once again have to fast travel.

In Skyrim, Fallout and other games like AC and The Witcher, you’d just go in any one direction, and you’d find something interesting. Starfield is huge, but exploring is a waste of time, unfortunately.

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u/Sad-Willingness4605 Dec 05 '23

I loaded up vanilla Skyrim today, and man is the world beautiful. It's unreal seeing Bethesda go from creating their Magnum Opus with Skyrim to Starfield. I know old Bethesda is dead but it is still crazy that Bethesda was once highly regarded as a second to none developer.

1

u/Useful_You_8045 Dec 07 '23

I was done after I saw my play time totaled 100 hrs and I couldn't recall a single memorable moment like they found ways to ruin everything I enjoyed about previous titles. All the "unique weapons" are useless past ~lvl 25 cause they added qualities along with rarity. Making actual functioning outposts needs a whole a$$ web chart and constant buying of resources or trecking between outposts that you are required to slowly navigate towards. No qol for home decor. They made trading "realistic" but restricted almost every trader to 5,000 except the ship f#cker that takes an 80% deduction when selling ships because you gotta register it beforehand for some reason.

Like WHO TESTED THESE?! WHO LIED TO THEM SAYING IT WAS FUN?! they apparently took 7 years to get to a "playable state" backtracking on more survival mechanics like constant ship fueling. TF are they on? I thought they were all about fun games?

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u/vaporking23 Dec 04 '23

It should have been way smaller. Ten galaxies with ten planets and assorted moons. A smaller universe would have allowed them to add more unique stuff. They could have expanded with dlc in the future with more galaxies and quest lines if they wanted it so big. But how do you add more stuff now when people have played dozens of hours of the game already.

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u/-NotEnoughMinerals Dec 04 '23

They made the right call with the PG planets. "hundreds (or was it thousands?) Of planets!" That's all reddit could repeat. How it wasn't obvious that that was going to mean the majority of the exploration was going to be absolute shit is beyond me, but here we are.

Should have just fleshed out half a dozen planets. Really, there isn't even a point to do any exploring on any planet unless there is a reason to be there.

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u/Sad-Willingness4605 Dec 05 '23

It's absolute shit for sure, and how Todd Howard and company thought players were going love this empty canvas is mind boggling, specially because handcrafted world is what they are best at. I would have put them up there with Rockstar prior to Fallout 76 and Starfield. Well, actually, 76 still had a great fucking map just wasted on multiplayer.

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u/Useful_You_8045 Dec 07 '23

It bothers me that each planet has pre loaded "poi" landing points yet they're mostly the same pre gen pool crap. I enjoyed exploring in the mako and planetary mining in masseffect, more than this.

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u/jokerevo Dec 04 '23

No, the real reason Starfield came out the way it did was MS's insistence that the game had to run on the Series S. Beth have NEVER been technically adept.......the challenge to squeeze this game into 8 gigs of ram...was D U M B.

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u/SociallyAwarePiano Dec 04 '23

I am going to have to disagree.

The issues I have with Starfield are design issues, not technical limitations. Spacing things out and creating dead space where all you do is run is antithetical to good game design.

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u/TobiasKM Dec 04 '23

Ridiculous take. What exactly do you think they would have done differently if the S didn’t exist? It’s not like you’d be flying across planets in your starship if they only had the X to design for, their software just isn’t capable enough.

Starfield just has inherent design flaws that has nothing to do with the technical limitations of the Series S.

1

u/jokerevo Dec 08 '23

It's not the fact that there is technical limitations, it's the fact it's Bethesda and their engine isn't exactly the most scalable thing. The limitations are with their team. Proof of this is the loading screen fest we see even on XsX and PC. it's the same game across the spectrum.... make sense now?

2

u/TitledSquire Founder Dec 04 '23

This take is just hilarious at this point. As if it takes so much resources to optimize a game….stop defending lazy (or overworked) devs.

1

u/McEuen78 Dec 05 '23

rdr2 has entered the chat.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '23

Yeah I was a pretty big starfield apologist and have definitely had a ton of fun with the game…but I replayed Fallout 4 this weekend for the first time in like 3-4 years and the world is so much more alive and interesting.

Just roaming around the city and seeing mutants fighting raiders independently of what I am doing, and seeing the unique locations crafted with care makes starfield seem lifeless

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u/Multifaceted-Simp Dec 04 '23

The bigger problem is why are you going through so much loading?

It's because the quests are ASS and the game is ASS. It's like no one ever played this thing. What the fuck man how many boring ass quests can they possibly put in. How many useless planets. It's got some of the worst game design and direction I've ever seen in a game. Like FF16 is also bad but this is something else.

A hundred years in the making and they couldn't even give you an interesting start or wow moment like they've done previously successfully back to back to back to back.

2

u/Sinpathie Dec 04 '23

Ikr its so boring,how does a game about exploring planets make it so lame

1

u/DocArmada Dec 04 '23

This blows my mind to be honest. We can probably both agree that parts of this game are similar, if not molded after No Mans Sky. One of the bigger complaints about NMS was all the loading animations.

If only Bethesda had talked to at least one NMS player to uncover some of the already existing annoyances with space travel games.

We got MORE loading screens and docking animations!

I just cant wrap my head around that.

1

u/myshon Founder Dec 05 '23

I don't think they can do anything about the loading. It's core to how the game is designed.

And IMO it's just bad game design. They should've reject design of Starfield years ago and come up with something else.