• Aside from completely redesigning the world and side quests, there’s nothing they can tack on to the game as is that would make it worth playing again. It’s boring and missing the one thing they actually did pretty well in everything else: environmental storytelling. You can’t exactly use environmental story-telling when your game’s environment is mostly randomly generated; which is what all the areas outside the main cities are. Randomly generated set-pieces that are scattered around an otherwise empty planet.

    • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I thought the one thing everyone agreed was done well in their last games was “pick any direction, you’ll find something interesting”. Which is also missing on this game

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      They’re procedurally generated, but I never got a whiff of them being randomly generated. Are you sure? And even if they were, it’s not incompatible with environmental storytelling if those things are components in their model for generating environments.

      • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        1 month ago

        The terrain isn’t but the POIs are randomly placed. When you open the scanner and see things like “man-made structure” or “cave” or whatever; those are all random and won’t be in the same place for every new game.

        • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Gotcha, I didn’t know that, but I guess it feeds into their new game plus mechanic. To be clear, I don’t believe that stuff sucks because it’s random; it sucks because it was poorly crafted. You can do good environmental storytelling even when the environment is determined by RNG (Dwarf Fortress and Shadows of Doubt both do), and you can have manual, hand-crafted content that sucks (like every non-faction quest in Starfield…why are we still doing thoughtless, boring fetch quests in 2023?!).

          • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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            1 month ago

            The side quests definitely were also lacking. Like, I know there’s only about 4 archetypes of quests (fetch, escort, kill and checkpoint) that you can really do, but you make them interesting with the story and reasons for doing the thing. Starfield really just made a majority of quests “go get this mcguffin because we need mcguffins,” with nothing really cool or interesting about it.

            DF was 100% designed around telling a story using RNG. Game is like a mad lib. Starfield didn’t go that far (most games don’t). I actually do not ever expect AAA games with procedural generation to do more than just give you endless repetition over randomness that generate compelling and unique “stories” the way DF or RimWorld do.

            • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              One of them was literally just to press 4 buttons and then talk to a guy again. I don’t know who at Bethesda thought these quests were even worth putting in the game.

              • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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                1 month ago

                “Just hit them randomly until the door opens!”

                I don’t know if they wanted to be funny or if even the designers themselves just employed the puzzle because it doesn’t need logic to be defeated if you just keep mashing buttons at random. lol

    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Strange. I have more playtime in starfield than Skyrim. And the thing that draws me in is the story.

      It’s like it got most things right that Outer Worlds got wrong.

      • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        1 month ago

        I would rather play Outer Worlds than Starfield, and I hated Outer Worlds because it was sold to me as being Fallout 4 with a better dialogue system and it’s not even remotely different. Like everyone complained that FO4 only had 3 choices “Yes, no, and funny yes” but that’s exactly how it’s done in Outer Worlds, too.

      • myersguy@lemmy.simpl.website
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        1 month ago

        As someone just finishing up a first playthrough of The Outer Worlds, I might have to watch for a Starfield sale.

  • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    My initial response is prob as sarcastic as the others but a thought just occurred to me.

    Skyrim, v1. The og release, before all the mods and bug fixes.

    Undoubtedly still a better game than Star field. But was it the Skyrim we revere today? Will Starfield be transformed into something fun over the next decade?

    What am I on about. Almost certainly not lol.

    • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Other than being super broken, it’s still the same game at its core, minus the DLC content and the graphical updates (and the paid mod store).

      I think the only non-MMO that was completely transformed over time with patches I can think of is No Man’s Sky

  • MoistBalls@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    How about they make the game fun?

    I am replaying Skyrim at the moment. When you start the game after being cut loose after Helgen, you have a quest that nudges you towards Whiterun. The typical path usually goes Helgen - > Riverwood - > Whiterun. Between any of these three steps, you can veer off the track and find some cool stuff to do. Just near Helgen, there’s a fortress near the Cyrodiil Border, Embershard Mine, random bandit encampments, and if you are brave enough at level 1, Bleak Falls Barrow. You can play all of this without ever having to pause the game.

    Starfield has none of that. When you land on a new planet, all of the caves are the same. There’s no environmental storytelling, and in order to fast travel, you must stop the flow of the game.

    • srecko@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      It’s not fair saying the game isn’t fun. Millions of people had fun trashing it over social media. It’s just passively fun.

  • 3volver@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    They had an opportunity to make Fallout 5, but instead they chose this. It’s been 9 years Bethesda, 9 YEARS.

      • BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        And at this points it’s honestly a pretty damn decent and fun game. At its core it’s fallout 4 on a server. Improved legendary system, one of if not the best map of any fallout, the best radio, some great quests and content. It’s absolutely worth trying out at this point for any fallout fan that hasn’t. Yeah it’s still not perfect and I wish I could actually pause, and it can be a bit hard at times but it’s total scratches the fallout itch even if just randomly exploring and not really doing quests. I also never really interacted with other players

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    1 month ago

    Honestly, I think you could fix that game but it involves making the jetpack the focus of exploration and combat.

    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Honestly, I think just making the forward-burst functionality work for controller users instead of as a “keyboard hack” is enough.

  • RabbitMix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 month ago

    can’t wait, i know everyone else here hates it, but Starfield was EXACTLY the kind of game I like, I still play it often and love getting lost in it.

    • Delusional@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Yeah maybe a standalone expansion that is way more fun than the original kinda like far cry 3 blood dragon. Use the core of an awful game to make something fun.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    1 month ago

    Did starfield become profitable? Did they cover their develop and marketing costs yet?

    • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Hard to say if has been profitable as it was in development for a long time. However it probably sold well on the account that people trusted Bethesda to make a Bethesda experience. They effectively traded their remaining good will for sales.