The latest Starfield update is now available for all players! This update brings several fixes and adjustments, including improvements to lighting, quality-of-life, and quest fixes.
I don’t think I’ll be returning to Starfield until they fix the underlying issue: the infinite pond of shallow exploration that yields no rewards for exploring the next point of interest other than random generic loot.
I assume it’s possible, but will BGS commit the time and resources to overhauling their Point of Interest system?
The issue comes down to environmental storytelling. I can travel to any planet in the galaxy and have a good chance of encountering a Science Tower filled with Space Pirates, and in that tower, there will be the same 5 terminals with 2 or 3 slice of life emails. And I can do this multiple times. The only thing that changes is the loot tables and the enemy levels.
How can we fix that? Can you create multiple engaging storylines that populate in the terminals and in the environment at random? Can you create a storyline that spans multiple locations on a planet and as you uncover more and more it leads you to a handcrafted POI with a unique reward?
Fallout 3 did this in a more basic way with its A/B random encounters. And that mechanic added excitement and unpredictability to the world.
Or can you create procedurally generated locations and dungeons? As it stands, a landscape is just populated with a bunch of POIs that never deviate from their blueprint.
The outpost building system would, from a layman’s perspective, lend itself to procedurally generated locations.
I don’t think we’ll see any of that patched in since there’s no money in it.
I don’t think I’ll be returning to Starfield until they fix the underlying issue: the infinite pond of shallow exploration that yields no rewards for exploring the next point of interest other than random generic loot.
Yeah. It would be nice to have a game included with my game. It’s asking a lot, I know.
Bethesda obviously count on modders to do that for free…
Is that a patchable problem?
That feels like an issue that is caused by the games core gameplay loop.
I assume it’s possible, but will BGS commit the time and resources to overhauling their Point of Interest system?
The issue comes down to environmental storytelling. I can travel to any planet in the galaxy and have a good chance of encountering a Science Tower filled with Space Pirates, and in that tower, there will be the same 5 terminals with 2 or 3 slice of life emails. And I can do this multiple times. The only thing that changes is the loot tables and the enemy levels.
How can we fix that? Can you create multiple engaging storylines that populate in the terminals and in the environment at random? Can you create a storyline that spans multiple locations on a planet and as you uncover more and more it leads you to a handcrafted POI with a unique reward?
Fallout 3 did this in a more basic way with its A/B random encounters. And that mechanic added excitement and unpredictability to the world.
Or can you create procedurally generated locations and dungeons? As it stands, a landscape is just populated with a bunch of POIs that never deviate from their blueprint.
The outpost building system would, from a layman’s perspective, lend itself to procedurally generated locations.
I don’t think we’ll see any of that patched in since there’s no money in it.
I don’t know that they can fix that at this point. Modders aren’t interested in it either considering the core issues.