Sure Todd, lol

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    Most of the planets are dull on purpose because my graphics card catches fire if there’s too much excitement on screen. Thanks for looking out for me, Todd!

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    Ah yes “…Bethesda’s managing director, and Todd Howard, who is Todd Howard.”

    Thanks for clearing that up AI writer.

    Also how is it thrilling to “blast off” and “set foot on a new planet” when the game is more clicking through menus and fast traveling.

    In No man’s sky you actually land. In star field you fast travel.

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      In No Mans Sky, you’ve seen five planets, you’ve seen them all.

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        Not necessarily but yea it trades the bespoke environments for generated ones that aren’t so dissimilar.

        I think it makes for interesting comparison. Both space traveling games, one comprised of specially designed levels navigated by menus, the other less variety but you actually journey to them and given the sheer number you can actually discover and name a planet no one’s ever been to.

        Both valid but I think starfield shouldn’t really advertise in exploration. Unlike NMS it’s far more narrative based.

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          Both valid but I think starfield shouldn’t advertise really advertise in exploration. Unlike NMS it’s far more narrative based.

          Yep. There are three space games on the market that are not too far apart: NMS, Elite: Dangerous, and Starfield. They have similarities, they have differences, and they have different target audiences.

    • terwn43lp@lemmy.world
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      coming from elite dangerous, flying in NMS feels incredibly simplified. landing is literally “push a button to land”. either way, they both beat starfield in that department

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        Totally it is but that’s the style. The game isn’t trying to simulate complexity, it’s more a kick back and relax game masquerading as a prog-rock album cover. Pressing X to let your ship land itself gives you just enough time to hit a joint and make a plan.

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            Landing or taking off isn’t interrupted with a loading screen in either game. You also have freedom of pointing ship to a direction and go there.

            Those two things combine to make you feel like you are moving around the game world as opposed to game world moving around you.

            • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
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              that may be true, but starfield has some fun quests and interesting characters, which makes the world feel real and not like im the last human being in the universe

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      I told my buddy the other day that it was Bethesda Menu Simulator 2023, and I wasn’t wrong. I was working on my outpost, so I’d place some stuff, go to star map, select the planet with the material, pick a landing spot, land, get up, mine ore for 5 minutes, fast travel to ship, repeat 2-3 more planets, choose the outpost, land, place some more stuff. Then repeat.

      • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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        You could skip fast traveling to your ship, or do any of the plethera of quests instead of what you’re doing

      • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml
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        i find it less headache to just sit in UC distrobution and fast forward 24 hours to keep reseting inventory to get all the mats I need to build, at least my starter shit.

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      RockPaperShotgun’s review is out now, and I could not agree more. The game is so meaningless.

      It’s crazy impressive. Especially on a technical level. But it feels like a tech demo more than a game almost. It’s still fun to idle time away in, but it’s not engaging. At all. It’s brain idle time. In a positive way, but also no more than that.

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        In this case I’d call that a positive statement. That’s what I was looking for when I decided to get the game… I’m not going to shell out my dimes to Bethesda hoping for disco elysium, I basically want something that makes demands of my brain just a little more than solitaire or minesweeper.

        I don’t really agree with it not being ‘engaging’ though, I guess depending on what you mean. I’m not staying up at night wondering what’s gonna happen next, but I’m staying up past my bedtime designing space ships and then running out of cash and going and doing a fun loot-and-shoot mission to get more money to build more space ships. That ain’t bad.

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    To give an impression of what it’s been like for me:

    I had a quest where I needed Iron. I found a random planet that had it, and picked a spot in the middle of the scan readouts. Arrive, looks like a barren rock - but that’s fine because I only wanted rocks. However, I see something in the distance, and check it out. On the way, I find a wandering trader taking her alien dog for a walk, and sell some stuff weighing me down. I find a cave, where a colonist is hiding out with a respiratory infection - and am able to help them get out as a little mini-quest, though the infection spreads to me.

    I come past a little mining installation, where I find a bounty hunter that tells me of a bounty nearby she’s offering to split with me. We do so, fighting a base full of raiders to get to their captain, and I finally decide to leave.

    The key here is, I don’t think any of those quests are amazing - they’re likely very dynamically generated. But they’re also not fun to “seek them out” - just to come across them in some other mission, like trying to make an outpost or mining for stuff.

      • Fraylor@lemm.ee
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        Yeah I literally do all of this stuff near daily in my 9-5 bounty hunting job.

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        I mean, I can’t even argue against that. Some people find some forms of work fulfilling, and even switch to games because their own jobs don’t actually give them that feeling of fulfillment.

        Monster Hunter is a prime example of a game that sets such elongated goals that it’s regarded as a “grind-heavy” game - but its players like the grind. Heck, the entire space simulator genre often involves quite a lot of “Space Truck Simulator” gameplay, where you’re just engineering good ways to ferry cargo around.

        Which is not to say that’s what Starfield aims for. From what I’ve played, it’s closer to Sea of Thieves, having adventurous interruptions - where you start a boring, routine mission to bring Sugar from one merchant post to another, but then get ambushed by a skeleton ship, then a giant shark, then find a map to a buried treasure nearby.

        • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Half the reason I play Elite is space trucking. I’m only raising my empire rank to get the largest ship… in order to space truck better. The Fed Corvette I plan to make a combat vessel, but the Cutter will be my space truck.

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            I found that flow of the game works a little bit better if you just don’t fast travel at all. I played a lot of Elite and it gave me a little bit of Elite vibes when I just walk to my ship, go thru inside it and sit down. Then I take off “manually” using the button and jump to the target system by manually targeting it and press the jump button.

            What Bethesda can do better is to just mask the loading with a flight animation, for example when you’re taking off from a planet the loading should be replaced by an animation where you’re going out of the atmosphere. And when you’re jumping between star systems, the loading should be replaced by something similar to Elite when we’re jumping through the witch space.

            All in all, my experience with Starfield has been fine. I loved the weird stuff happening when you’re just fucking around. Although the main quest has taken a step back with their sense of urgency, compare it to previous Bethesda games, where there’s a big stake going on that pushes you to at least complete the main quest once. In Starfield there’s no such sense of urgency.

            It seems like Bethesda is leaning heavy on their sandbox side, just letting people go around and do stuff.

            With optimized settings from the HUB YouTube channel, my FPS never went below 60.

  • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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    Exploring is supposed to be a reward in itself

    Oh yes, exploring 6 levels of nested menus is incredibly rewarding

  • MysticKetchup@lemmy.world
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    Starfield sounds like an okay game but all the PR responding to complaints sounds like an absolute disaster. Stop letting Todd answer these things directly

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      I’ve flipped flopped my consensus about the game a couple times, but my conclusion is this…

      Starfield is not going to be what you expected from Skyrim in space, at first. It will seem weird and claustrophobic and broken.

      But if you give yourself a bit to acclimate to the world they’ve built, there is a surprisingly engaging game underneath.

      I believe they’ve left most planets barren on purpose, so they can easily shove DLC wherever they want for the next 10 years.

      “New facehugger planet, 20 hours of exciting quests and valuable loot! - $29.99”

      That’s 100% going to happen.

      • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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        So far, Starfield is exactly like Skyrim in space to me. There’s as many carefully crafted cities, and quite a few carefully crafted locales. There’s just a lot more space in Starfield (estimated about 500x more. Skyrim is 15sq miles, and those 1000 planets are each a couple square miles ingame). Sounds like there may be less hand-crafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, but that’s hard to tell.

        I’m definitely not finding Starfield to be claustrophic. On the contrary, a bit agoraphobic.

        • 100@lemm.ee
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          I think there’s definitely more handcrafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, there’s also tons tons more dead space with nothing at all.

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            Some folks say there’s only about 25 hours of handcrafted stuff. I’m not late enough in to know for sure.

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              Yeah no way. I’ve played longer than that and I haven’t even done the main quest.

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                I’m approaching that, but I have to admit I take my time and revisit towns a lot.

                I’ve only gone to a dozen dungeons so far that were hand-crafted. There were literally hundreds of them in Skyrim. I’d love to get real numbers.

                So far, I am enjoying the hell out of the game, if my lack of twitch reflexes is hurting that a lot. I keep having to juggle between ship upgrades (my Mantis keeps dying to small fleets more than 10 levels lower than me) and face-to-face. Usually by now in other Bethesda games, dying is rare. I’m too stubborn to drop the difficulty, though, so I suppose that’s on me.

                There’s a pirate fleet in orbit around the planet I want to build my first output. Last 5 times I tried to go there, fleet keeps showing up and killing me. That’s somewhat annoying.

                • 100@lemm.ee
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                  Save in space often. There’s a semi common bug I’ve just run into that will cause your ship to vanish and it somehow retroactively removes it from all previous saves. No recreateable way to get it back. The only thing that saved me was a previous save where I was in orbit, still lost a few hours of progress.

          • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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            I had agoraphobia growing up. I know exactly what it is. And I had moments of it exploring the planets. I found myself hugging to keep buildings in range and not wanting to stray out into the great wide open. For some odd reason, I got more of that in Starfield than in NMS.

            I’m also still fairly early into the game, so perhaps I’ll spend more time indoors than I have so far.

            EDIT, also, it kinda is the opposite of claustrophobia in some ways. There are some overlaps and nuances (both fears sometimes include fear of crowds). I had a grandparent with really bad claustrophobia who never used an elevator in her life. Ironically, we could relate on a lot. But they were still opposite issues.

            • dmrzl@programming.dev
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              I don’t know, been agoraphobic for quite some time. Never had problems in elevators (alone), but trains or tunnels are the worst. Guess that’s why it’s hard for me to imagine how a game could ever transport that.

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    Disclaimer: My comment is a reaction to the stuff Todd and his minions said in the article, not necessarily about the game itself. I haven’t played Starfield yet. I just find the statements really weak and want to express why I see it that way.

    Yeaaahh that’s nice for maybe a couple of hours, but then it starts to get boring. That’s not how you keep players engaged, although there are of course those who don’t find that boring at all.

    We’re not astronauts, we’re not there. Astronauts had the thrill of the voyage through space, stepping on the moon and feeling with ones own body how it is to walk on the moon’s dust in low gravity. Also astronauts had and have a shitload of scientific equipment and experiments to carry out, i.e., a purpose beyond the mere jolly walking.

    If they were just there for walking and that for days, weeks, months, they would get bored pretty fast as well.

    Take a look at No Man’s Sky. Similar problem. The procedural generation algorithm made planets look familiar after you’ve seen a couple. There is nothing new. Exploration became unrewarded. But Hello Games has massively improved on that over the years and produced a game where you can sink dozens of hours without getting bored so easily.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      I have played Starfield.

      The planets being mostly empty is fine. In fact, I think they’re too full if anything. You’re not meant to travel on the planet’s surface for long. You explore a bit if you think you want to build an outpost there, but otherwise you just move on. Most of the “content” is in pre-built areas. Enemy encounters almost always take place in hand crafted facilities, and usually it’ll be for some kind of quest so you land right near it.

      The outpost system is where the procedural planets come in. You need to explore some to find the right spot to build with the resources you want. The content there is the building, not the planet. The landscape will effect it some, but mostly it’s whatever you make of it.

      That said, the outpost system fucking sucks right now. You have to send resources between outposts with “links”, which take goods into a container and store them in linked containers. All solid goods go in one type, and the same for liquid, gas, and manufactured. I have all of my resources trickling into a main base, so I have all resources available there. This has caused my storage to back up and there’s no way to filter out items you don’t want. Then no resources can come in so you have to go to your storage and clear whatever is clogging it. There’s also no way to delete items as far as I’m aware, so you just dump the excess resources on the ground where they’ll remain forever. It’s really stupid. This is my storage solution for now.

      All the crates flow into the next one, so it’s functionally one massive storage container, but with 15 seperate inventories I have to go through to get anything out. There’s also no stairs object you can build, or anything like it, so I stacked cabinets into a sort of access staircase. It’s really bad, but it’s what works for now.

      Just a tip if you start playing and build a main base, build it on a low gravity planet so you don’t have as much of a problem if you stack stuff like this.

      • packersinthefarm@lemmy.world
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        How the fuck did Beth have stairs in FO4/76 but forgot to add them in a game set hundreds of years in the future? What the seventy-dollar fuck?

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            At least if the Telvanni got their way I’d be able to levitate up to my crates! (I just realized, I may TCL to use the crates because there isn’t a good alternative built into the game systems.)

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          Yeah, outposts seemed to me to be the thing that Starfield was designed and marketed around, but it’s so jank. So many basic things missing and so many quality of life failures. It’s like they didn’t even test it themselves first.

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        Does it eventually give you a purpose or guide you to making an outpost, I haven’t felt much of a need yet.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          There’s one part in the story that you need to build a thing in a shop or an outpost, but it doesn’t require you to really build an outpost. I did it so I can have any supplies for upgrading things without too much effort. I think that was a mistake, but now I’m too invested. Lol.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          That reminds me of how annoyed I get with Satisfactory as well…

          As a Factorio player, this could all be handled so much better in both games, but Starfield is particularly bad. It’s like they never even tried building outposts before launch. So many basic functions are missing.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          Yeah, and without any way to actually manage the resources. I want to like it, but I see so many issues that should be easy to solve that they just didn’t. Sure, it’ll be fixed with mods and maybe DLC, but that shouldn’t be required for basic UX.

          Another one of my big gripes with outposts is that there is no way to view your existing outposts. There’s not a list, and definitely no way to view what an outpost is producing. Hell, you can’t even view what an outpost is producing when you’re there. It’ll tell you the total quantity produced of everything combined, but not of what. It’s bad.

    • Chailles@lemmy.world
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      No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.

      No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets. At least in Starfield, there’s some magic in seeing actual fauna. You don’t get that feeling in No Man’s Sky because you’ve seen fauna and flora on the last 30 planets you’ve been to. You need those empty planets to make the planets with life actually feel special.

      • Zacryon@feddit.de
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        No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.

        Regarding the variety and interesting features of the bare planets, I tend to agree. My point was rather that there is more to do now and the fun with - even familiar planets - lasts longer.

        No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets.

        This is not correct. The amount of more dead planets immensely depends on - spoiler alert -

        spoiler

        the galaxy you’re in. NMS has different galaxies with different distributions for lush or dead planets. This also has some effects on the difficulty.

          • Zacryon@feddit.de
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            You don’t need to. There are different possibilities for switching galaxies. The simplest ones would be to use portals which is accessible very early in the game.

            • Chailles@lemmy.world
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              Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.

              For someone whose put in a few hours into the game multiple times as the game has been steadily updated, I didn’t know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. So telling me I’m incorrect because it’s NG+ COULD have fixed it for me is pretty disingenuous. How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?

              • Zacryon@feddit.de
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                Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.

                As soon as you can use the space anomaly (which happens very early) you already have a possibility. But apart from that, sure, it still takes a bit of effort and is not an option available when starting the game. The latter would be a nice idea though.

                I didn’t know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. […] How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?

                By using an internet search engine of your choice.

                https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Galaxy_Centre#Travelling_to_other_galaxies

                But I get what you mean as this is not clearly communicated right from the beginning in the game and something to be discovered. So your best chance to know this, besides doing the story missions, is to talk to other players or by curiously clicking on some suitable links in the NMS wiki.

    • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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      I’ve played Starfield and it’s fantastic. There’s so much story. The world-bulding is different because there’s literally 1000+ worlds and they’re mostly uninhabited. I’m not sure what else you would expect. There are some huge, in-depth cities and some beautiful landscapes. But there’s also empty deserts and plains, just like we see everywhere in space.

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      Yeah, the first thing I did when getting to the core was to generate an ancestral galaxy so that there would be more dead worlds. Didn’t like having every place overrun with life.

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    I really don’t understand all the negative comments. It feels like a very fun game and I can’t wait to play it again.

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      If your enjoying it then don’t worry about the negative comments. Unlike some other space games you dont do much travel yourself, you fast travel everywhere which means seeing the same non-skippable cutscenes again and again, i fast travel to the system, then fast travel to the planet, then fast travel to the surface; then if i want to go elsewhere on the planet i have to fast travel back to orbit then back down to the planet. Its “fast travel:the video game” Given that similar games have managed to let you fly your ship from space down and around the planet for years now I dont why you cant in this, im constantly pulled out of playing for a loading screen

      • DangerDubhain@sh.itjust.works
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        Not arguing with the crux of your argument here, but most fast traveling I’ve done is way more direct than that. New planet, sure there’s a few stages, but anywhere you’ve been before you can pretty much fast travel to directly from anywhere.

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          How often are you just hopping between places you’ve already been?

          As to the people saying you can fast travel back to cities, last time (which was about 5 mins ago) i went to go back to New Atlantis i had to faat travel to the system first before i could even select the city, but other times ive been able to directly select the landing spot and fast travel there from another system so I dunno.

          I just went and did stuff in Sol, i fast travelled to the system, fast travelled to the city, ran to the bar close to the landing pad, ran back to the ship, fast travelled to orbit, fast travelled to Venus, killed 3 ships, interacted with satellite, fast travelled to staryard, fought a decent amount of people which was good, fast travelled to Neptune, short fight, board, kill 3 or 4 peeps, fast travel to lodge. Then fast travel to mining planet system, fast travel to planet, talk, fast travel to different system, fast travel to planet run to ship, no bad guys just a quick convo, then fast travel back to ship, fast travel to orbit, and now fast travel to different planet.

          Also fuel auto refills after every jump just seems to mean more fast travelling if you need to go further

          If your enjoying it then im happy for you not trying to detract, just sharing my experience, i just wish they pushed what could be done more

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            I think if there’s a patrol scanning your cargo you have to hit the system before landing, otherwise you’d fast travel your way past contraband scans. I’m having a lot of fun in the game, I agree there’s too much fast traveling though.

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        You can’t because the engine is bad, and they need a lot of loading screens to connect the small-sized playable areas. Other Bethesda titles pull the same trick, but you don’t realize it, because there’s no loading screen. Instead it’s doors that handle that (which is quick because rooms are small) and pre-loading of neighbouring grids when you are outdoors (which is why sometimes you’ll see creatures popping out of thin air, or walking out from behind walls/trees/rocks to hide the popping.

        Bethesda always advertises their “new engine”, but really it’s exactly the same engine they’ve been using since Morrowind, with minor logic improvements and updates to the graphical assets. It’s to the point where a lot of bugs have ancestry trees.

        • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml
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          Bethesda always advertises their “new engine”, but really it’s exactly the same engine they’ve been using since Morrowind, with minor logic improvements and updates to the graphical assets. It’s to the point where a lot of bugs have ancestry trees.

          Yep. Call it Gamebryo, Call it Creation Engine, Call it what the fuck ever.

          Its still NetImmerse.

          They can keep slapping fresh makeup on it, and keep wraping new ducttape around it when the old stuff wears out and fails, but it’ll always be the same engine, regardless of the name changes.

          They dont want to invest in making a whole new engine (which, given Bethesda, would be just as bad or worse than what they use now), and they don’t seem to want to license anyone elses engine. Which is weird, cause subsidiary studios don’t seem to have the same issue… Like, Ghostwire Tokyo is built on Unreal Engine 4.

              • Dreyns@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Oh yeah things were that simple, just change it ! Man who would have thought ! Hey we need your help on other issue what can we do about the economic crisis, world hunger or civils wars ?

      • Xiaz@lemmy.world
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        taking the other side of the argument, planetary landings in E:D are just loading screens at 10x the length. Travelling to a planet at .3 C is neat the first time but then you look at trade routes as “how long do I sit paying attention in case of an interdiction?” StarCitizen falls into the same trap. QD is neat but then it takes you 5 minutes and a fuel stop to go from one side of a system to another. Its mundane trudging for reality rather than getting the boring monotony out of the way of the player.

        Just because the tech exists doesn’t mean it makes for compelling gameplay.

        • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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          I can agree with this but I do wish it involved fewer loading screens and clicking through each time. If you’re gonna skip the “realism” to make it more convenient then make it actually convenient.

          With that said despite that and the fact I’d love to fly the ship over the planets manually, I’m really liking it so far (2h in).

          • Erk@cdda.social
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            1 year ago

            Yeah I can’t really disagree with people’s assessment of how much travel-by-loading-screen there can be, but like… while it’s there, I just mostly haven’t noticed it. Thirty hours in now and I find I’m mixing up fast travelling wide distances with “manually” travelling by launching into orbit and jumping place to place fairly regularly, I don’t think I’d even have thought to criticize it without coming here.

            I like how immersive travel can be in a game like NMS, but it’s not like it’s all that exciting or fun to pull into the atmosphere for the 500th time and maneuver to your landing pad, or spend longer than a loading screen amount of time to boost out of atmosphere to hit the jump button. We’re exchanging one form of slightly tedious load for a different one.

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            The best answer I have to minimizing the interaction is setting routes from your mission list. On PC this cuts down to L > click mission > R > hold X.

            It is still 4 discrete inputs, which sucks, but it is substantially better than navigating by the star map which is how my brain defaulted to fast travel for most of my first play through.

    • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.caOP
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      For me, the criticism is more directed toward the PR and hype. There’s still lots to like about the game, it’s just frustrating how they spin it.

      I’m glad you’re enjoying it!

    • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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      I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. Moving and still have to get through BG3. But I’m actually excited for it. Like I see posts over and over and over and over and over and over about the the fact that it’s not NMS. Sure, kind of disappointing. And I will agree that if you keep running into the same exact structures over and over, maybe they could have done something different. Have some sort of procedurally generated structures.

      But that seems to mostly be it. Every review I’ve watched talks pretty positively about the other aspects. It’s got some bugs, which is to he expected, and apperantly the melee combat isn’t clunky and awkward. But those seem to be the biggest complaints outside of not being able to land.

      So I’m gonna do what I’ve seen a lot of people said to do. I’m gonna go into the Bethesda game and play it largely like it’s a Bethesda game. Gonna go through the main story, the different factions, do some side quests, etc.

      It’s not No Man’s Sky. Cool. Call of Duty isn’t Escape From Tarkov. I have played both of those and loved them both for completely different reasons, and I don’t expect them both to be the same. If anything I got bored of No Man’s Sky after a bit. Partially because I’m just not into the base building, and itnfelt like that was the main thing to do outside of explore. Little to no stories. Last I heard we still don’t have the faction system they talked about when the game was first launching. Starfield has things going for it over NMS.

    • Afrazzle@sh.itjust.works
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      I think people had their expectations too high. People are expecting it to be as good as skyrim was for 2011 but in 2023, but I went in expecting it to be as good as (vanilla) skyrim is now and so far that’s what I feel like I got.

      • sylverstream@lemmy.nz
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        Yeah, I had no expectations and I like it. I always get disappointed when I have high expectations.

        Tbh I’m mainly disappointed in the graphics of the surroundings.

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    I really like the game so far but it really needs some kind of vehicle for travelling around planets. Like the exocraft from No Man’s Sky.

    • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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      You can’t even traverse the whole thing, right? Don’t you hit a barrier and are forced to backtrack and take off/land somewhere else?

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      Game engine limitations, apparently. Say a thread on exactly this earlier today.

      Agree it is much poorer for lacking them. It’s immersion breaking being in the far future, zipping around on an interstellar craft, yet being forced to explore slowly on foot. I really can’t even use the ship? Cmon.

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    They thought they had a brilliant idea, but it’s not. It’s a classic. The space is beautiful, of course, but it’s the interactions that make a game unique. No interaction, no party.

    • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
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      Who needs logic and rhetoric when you have 💰

      Lord knows there’s enough content creators now to self sustain shit games and businesses for all of time regardless of what genpop is interested in

    • Erk@cdda.social
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      The ship builder is just tons of fun. I wish the controls were a little bit more obvious but once you get the hang of it, I think it’s my favourite in genre. I love building something neat and then going to check out the interior walkthrough, particularly. I think I need a save where I just cheat in millions of credits so i can experiment for a while

      • cyanarchy@sh.itjust.works
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        Your ship is kinda like a player home you bring around with you. Having one that uniquely suits your needs and preferences is cool, and also I want a damn weapon workbench.

          • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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            Is it? I find it pretty fun, sure games like everspace did it better, but that is literally a space dogfighting game lol.

            NMS space combat is noticably worse in comparison, and some of the upgrade paths and the ability to adjust your reactor usage (very reminiscent of FTL) make it interesting enough for me.

    • jcit878@lemmy.world
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      I have MSFS2020 and enjoy completing long haul flights. literally a whole workday spent where I see nothing but cockpit controls and the sky through the window, with no interaction needed due to autopilot. then I bring her in to land 10 hours later.

      and that’s fun.

      fun is what you make it man

      • Koffiato@lemmy.ml
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        Very different games and very different expectations of effort spent. I’ve space trucked a lot in Elite, spending hours going back and fort. But it was never dull, more of a relaxing experience.

        That comment stems from games failure to live up to its promises.

        This game was marketed as an explorers game with 1000 planets to see, for example.

        None of those planets have even the half of the content Skyrim/Fallout has. None of those planets are barren as Elite’s planets, either. You can’t traverse them more than 30 minutes, so it doesn’t even scratch NMS itch. People that liked the exploration of any of those four games would dislike this games exploration very much.

        The person above was probably expecting a more lively game, like any other Bethesda game and got whatever this is instead. It’s completely justified to be disappointed.

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    I’ve been enjoying Starfield - but the empty planets suck, especially without vehicles. The scanning thing is boring and dumb, worse than trying to get 100% on a NMS world. It’s a shame that fast travel disconnects you from the space feel of the game, but it makes the rest of the game playable. I like the game overall, but they have definitely dropped the ball on space travel. In theory it’d be cool to come across different “dungeons” etc, as in Skyrim when wandering around, but doesn’t happen in Starfield because you’re generally not going to happen upon them. It’s not interesting to drop down to random planets.

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        Yeah started finding some neat stuff as I go further out. It’s not that it’s not there, it’s just that you don’t tend to stumble upon it. Like I’ll go to a planet do a mission open up and scan and see some POI like 1200m away. Now do I really want to tedious run over empty nothingness to see if it’s like a space hut or another pirate base etc? I definitely check out nearby POI especially if they are on the way to where i need to go. (Still having fun in the game though and I guess later having options to at least poke around in new places will be fun and i’m curious if the critters are fixed or procedural, like will there be variants all over or just the same few species)