The Bathesda formula has gotten pretty stale. Especially since the gameplay was always mediocre. They need to spice up the gameplay and give us a lot more to actually do in any future title, because they’ve been pumping out different reskins of the same type of game since Morrowind and the approach is really showing its age.
aomarco
This game is essentially the anti Bethesda formula, there is no exploration, no discovery along the way, it is just waypoints with nothing else sprinkled in.
Tomathan_
Bad game on ou-
*LOADING SCREEN*
… on outdated engine = low playerbase
Different_Hunter33
What do you think is Game Pass’s impact on this? Because I—and many people I know—played and are still playing this game through Game Pass
EdgedBlaze
It’s modders fault. They didn’t fix the game in time /s
LeastHornyNikkeFan
Starfield pretty much killed my hype for the next Bethesda games.
United_Grand_7901
The sad thing to me is that their Reddit sub is so heavily moderated that anything you post that’s not overly positive gets deleted by the moderators, so it looks like a bunch of bots reposting good reviews everywhere.
NotTheSun0
The first Mass Effect – Warts and all – Is still a more realized and fun game than Starfield.
SatouTheDeusMusco
I still hold onto the Joseph Anderson theory that Bethesda has been trying to automate most of their game design to make infinite content. In Skyrim and Fallout 4 it was radiant quests. In Starfield it’s also radiant level and world design (aka procedural generation). The goal is to make an infinitely playable game.
Hopefully they learned by now that this is not what people love their games.
TGB_Skeletor
currently replaying skyrim after replaying fallout 4, and i thought to myself “why on Earth didn’t i like starfield”
Installed it again. Played 20 minutes. Uninstalled it again.
It just fucking sucks, there is no way to describe how bad it feels complared to their other RPGs
vibranttoucan
I enjoyed the first few hours and following the story was fine, but exploration was too monotone. Every fourth planet felt the same and there were only like 5 caves/station’s that got copied and pasted onto every planet. Ship building was too complicated too.
KMJSmithers
This game has been on my steam Wishlist since the day it was announced and it’ll stay there until either a) they do a Cyberpunk 2.0 style update and rejig the whole game, or b) the digital deluxe edition drops to around $30. There’s no shortage of fantastic games to play, I’m in no rush to spend money and time on just an average experience.
rylandoz
All any of us wanted was a new Elder Scrolls 😭
EisigerVater
The Game was terribly designed and the unmoderated Paid Mods System where everyone can upload their Horse-Ass Retextures and ask 10€ for it finished it.
PIG20
One of the few Bethesda games that I played through just to finish and then deleted it from my Xbox.
It did nothing to pull me in whatsoever. Once I got familiar with the fast travel system, it felt like all I was doing was pressing fast forward to get through the game as quickly as possible.
CrotasScrota84
They made a catastrophic decision to make the game to big. They could have had like 5 Handcrafted planets filled with things but chose the game killer procedural generation
Willcutus_of_Borg
Stsrfield used the other Bethesda games to trick players into thinking it was good or worth it.
It was neither.
SaiyanSpandex
I liked starfield, but I totally get the criticism especially because I’m replaying vanilla Skyrim at the moment.
Fusion_haa
The DLC was so bad
Nightcall13
That first big video they put out showing things off looked so cool, too.
Spideryote
My biggest issue with starfield is it felt like nothing you did mattered outside of some extra dialog choices
I made the mistake of doing everything in my first playthrough, only to realize I had no reason to engage with NG+. Nothing changes based on your decisions, just the order in which you experience all that nothing changing
TheLibrarianOfMythos
What’s a starfield
Dry_Yogurtcloset_213
I was going to buy it for the PS5 but it wasn’t available. So i got it for the PC and it ran like shit on lowest settings. Refunded it. Fast forward and i try it again with an upgraded PC. The game itself was just really really bad. Refunded it again.
I can’t think of a single aspect within the first hour of the game that was good.
RaidersGuy85
I finished it. I’ll happily buy and play the DLC but not for full price…
zd625
Not trying to be that guy, but starfield being day one on gamepass kinda invalidates the “peak numbers” on steam.
imaloony8
The second they mentioned how many planets there would be I knew it would suck. It would be procedurally generated bullshit and it would be super repetitive.
Gray_Talon
I never played it since i have a ps5 so idk, but the fact that Microsoft was so fucking proud to release this as an exclusive after buying the Bethesda and they smeared it in Sony’s face makes me chuckle but hey….sony made Concord too HAHA.
Mr-Personality
Is 3,500 considered bad?
I play fighting games and when I see a number like 300 I’m like “damn, this game is thriving.”
TEWbrah
Yeah, I still play it. 100% on one character and I made a new one to do the new game plus ending stuff
Rossmallo
Speaking from the perspective of somebody who actually liked the game, it is absolutely one of the weakest things that Bethesda has ever done. It’s *fine*, but we expect better than “fine” from Bethesda right now.
Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of stuff to like in the game. The handcrafted environments were interesting, exploration definitely had its moments, and some of the quests were genuinely fantastic – Entangled was a particular highlight. Plus, I absolutely love what they did with the NG+ mechanic – The fact it got made into such an integral part of the story was legitimately interesting.
The thing is, they took away one of their biggest strengths from their previous games – The lovely handcrafted areas. Because of this, they had to design the game around randomisation, which ends up making it a lot more stagnant and similar, making the reliance on quest markets all the more prevalent. The aforementioned Entangled quest is a big example of what happens when you handcraft – that quest has a fantastic secret ending that you can only get if you flat out ignore the quest markers and figure things out from environmental clues. That stuff is flat out impossible with random generation.
My only hope is that they look at what they’ve done here and learn their mistakes for ES6. The thing that they must absolutely not do is go fully in on random generation again. I will say it has its place, though – If they had a whole “normal Bethesda Game’s worth” of normal dungeons, explorable areas and so on, but incorporated random infinite dungeons in the form of, say, Oblivion Gates, that would be acceptable – appreciated, even. The random stuff would be a lovely addition, but it can’t be a replacement.
Mr101722
Wasn’t my most favorite game but I still had a great time with it. Definitely a 1 and done game for me though.
Do remember a big chunk of its player base was on gamepass.
Patient-Resolve6748
Okay
humblesunbro
I built a PC especially for Skyrim..I did not regret it.
I also built a PC especially for Starfield…..well…at least Cyberpunk and Elden ring got some benefit out of it.
almostsweet
On another thread, I pointed out that the next Elder Scrolls game is going to eat shit and a lot of fanbois downvoted me. Sorry, but Bethesda doesn’t know how to make games anymore.
FMC_Speed
It’s very sterile, it’s hard to explain but the environment is very sterile yet cartoony naive and childish, and then the plot, story and characters….
Those are just horrible
36 Comments
Undercooked. By at least a couple years.
The Bathesda formula has gotten pretty stale. Especially since the gameplay was always mediocre. They need to spice up the gameplay and give us a lot more to actually do in any future title, because they’ve been pumping out different reskins of the same type of game since Morrowind and the approach is really showing its age.
This game is essentially the anti Bethesda formula, there is no exploration, no discovery along the way, it is just waypoints with nothing else sprinkled in.
Bad game on ou-
*LOADING SCREEN*
… on outdated engine = low playerbase
What do you think is Game Pass’s impact on this? Because I—and many people I know—played and are still playing this game through Game Pass
It’s modders fault. They didn’t fix the game in time /s
Starfield pretty much killed my hype for the next Bethesda games.
The sad thing to me is that their Reddit sub is so heavily moderated that anything you post that’s not overly positive gets deleted by the moderators, so it looks like a bunch of bots reposting good reviews everywhere.
The first Mass Effect – Warts and all – Is still a more realized and fun game than Starfield.
I still hold onto the Joseph Anderson theory that Bethesda has been trying to automate most of their game design to make infinite content. In Skyrim and Fallout 4 it was radiant quests. In Starfield it’s also radiant level and world design (aka procedural generation). The goal is to make an infinitely playable game.
Hopefully they learned by now that this is not what people love their games.
currently replaying skyrim after replaying fallout 4, and i thought to myself “why on Earth didn’t i like starfield”
Installed it again. Played 20 minutes. Uninstalled it again.
It just fucking sucks, there is no way to describe how bad it feels complared to their other RPGs
I enjoyed the first few hours and following the story was fine, but exploration was too monotone. Every fourth planet felt the same and there were only like 5 caves/station’s that got copied and pasted onto every planet. Ship building was too complicated too.
This game has been on my steam Wishlist since the day it was announced and it’ll stay there until either a) they do a Cyberpunk 2.0 style update and rejig the whole game, or b) the digital deluxe edition drops to around $30. There’s no shortage of fantastic games to play, I’m in no rush to spend money and time on just an average experience.
All any of us wanted was a new Elder Scrolls 😭
The Game was terribly designed and the unmoderated Paid Mods System where everyone can upload their Horse-Ass Retextures and ask 10€ for it finished it.
One of the few Bethesda games that I played through just to finish and then deleted it from my Xbox.
It did nothing to pull me in whatsoever. Once I got familiar with the fast travel system, it felt like all I was doing was pressing fast forward to get through the game as quickly as possible.
They made a catastrophic decision to make the game to big. They could have had like 5 Handcrafted planets filled with things but chose the game killer procedural generation
Stsrfield used the other Bethesda games to trick players into thinking it was good or worth it.
It was neither.
I liked starfield, but I totally get the criticism especially because I’m replaying vanilla Skyrim at the moment.
The DLC was so bad
That first big video they put out showing things off looked so cool, too.
My biggest issue with starfield is it felt like nothing you did mattered outside of some extra dialog choices
I made the mistake of doing everything in my first playthrough, only to realize I had no reason to engage with NG+. Nothing changes based on your decisions, just the order in which you experience all that nothing changing
What’s a starfield
I was going to buy it for the PS5 but it wasn’t available. So i got it for the PC and it ran like shit on lowest settings. Refunded it. Fast forward and i try it again with an upgraded PC. The game itself was just really really bad. Refunded it again.
I can’t think of a single aspect within the first hour of the game that was good.
I finished it. I’ll happily buy and play the DLC but not for full price…
Not trying to be that guy, but starfield being day one on gamepass kinda invalidates the “peak numbers” on steam.
The second they mentioned how many planets there would be I knew it would suck. It would be procedurally generated bullshit and it would be super repetitive.
I never played it since i have a ps5 so idk, but the fact that Microsoft was so fucking proud to release this as an exclusive after buying the Bethesda and they smeared it in Sony’s face makes me chuckle but hey….sony made Concord too HAHA.
Is 3,500 considered bad?
I play fighting games and when I see a number like 300 I’m like “damn, this game is thriving.”
Yeah, I still play it. 100% on one character and I made a new one to do the new game plus ending stuff
Speaking from the perspective of somebody who actually liked the game, it is absolutely one of the weakest things that Bethesda has ever done. It’s *fine*, but we expect better than “fine” from Bethesda right now.
Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of stuff to like in the game. The handcrafted environments were interesting, exploration definitely had its moments, and some of the quests were genuinely fantastic – Entangled was a particular highlight. Plus, I absolutely love what they did with the NG+ mechanic – The fact it got made into such an integral part of the story was legitimately interesting.
The thing is, they took away one of their biggest strengths from their previous games – The lovely handcrafted areas. Because of this, they had to design the game around randomisation, which ends up making it a lot more stagnant and similar, making the reliance on quest markets all the more prevalent. The aforementioned Entangled quest is a big example of what happens when you handcraft – that quest has a fantastic secret ending that you can only get if you flat out ignore the quest markers and figure things out from environmental clues. That stuff is flat out impossible with random generation.
My only hope is that they look at what they’ve done here and learn their mistakes for ES6. The thing that they must absolutely not do is go fully in on random generation again. I will say it has its place, though – If they had a whole “normal Bethesda Game’s worth” of normal dungeons, explorable areas and so on, but incorporated random infinite dungeons in the form of, say, Oblivion Gates, that would be acceptable – appreciated, even. The random stuff would be a lovely addition, but it can’t be a replacement.
Wasn’t my most favorite game but I still had a great time with it. Definitely a 1 and done game for me though.
Do remember a big chunk of its player base was on gamepass.
Okay
I built a PC especially for Skyrim..I did not regret it.
I also built a PC especially for Starfield…..well…at least Cyberpunk and Elden ring got some benefit out of it.
On another thread, I pointed out that the next Elder Scrolls game is going to eat shit and a lot of fanbois downvoted me. Sorry, but Bethesda doesn’t know how to make games anymore.
It’s very sterile, it’s hard to explain but the environment is very sterile yet cartoony naive and childish, and then the plot, story and characters….
Those are just horrible