• Vespair@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    71
    ·
    10 months ago

    Hey, Starfield is actually a great framework for a video game; I can’t wait until they write and make an actual game to go inside of it

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      38
      ·
      10 months ago

      I think they betted on modders to do that but after a month or two when the excitement wore off and reality hit in even the most hardcore bethesda fanboys, most of the ambitious projects got cancelled and everyone went back to modding skyrim lmao

      • Vespair@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        As somebody who put over 200 hours into the game before dropping it all at once and never looking back, yeah, I agree.

        There really genuinely is a great framework here, enough to keep me interested and hopeful for the future for awhile, but the glaring issues are just too huge and, as you said, you have to keep people’s interest if you want the modding community to pick up the slack, and the main gameplay loop is just so goddamn boring.

        edit: And yes, since I got 200+ hours out of it, tbh I still feel like I got my money’s worth from the game even if I can conclude that on the whole it’s a very mid experience.

        • shneancy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          10 months ago

          I paid for skyrim on different platforms solid 3 times so I decided to uh, DIY myself a demo of Starfield, and after 2 weeks the charm wore off, after a month I just rushed to see what’s at the end, and uninstalled it

          • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
            cake
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            10 months ago

            I didn’t even get to the end. About the time I found out that you basically just NG+ and start over I dropped my ‘demo’ like a sack of rocks.

            • Vespair@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              edit-2
              10 months ago

              I think they wanted to do a wacky Rick & Morty multiverse thing with it but failed spectacularly at it because they didn’t really add enough meaningful variety (and nothing of consequence; this is a huge issue) to their cycle and also because they decided to try and be weird and coy about how they were going about it so frankly a lot of the player base doesn’t even really realize there are wacky alternative universes you can end up in. And again, importantly, nothing ever feels like it has any meaningful consequence the moment you buy into the whole Unity thing. Like I get if they want to make some kind of commentary on the futility of existence and the meaninglessness of life or cycles of violence, but if so then like… do that. It feels like they are approaching some kind of meaning or commentary that they never actually reach, so instead you just have this awful cycle where to progress you have to discard all of the things which typically make progression worthwhile in this kind of experience. It’s just full of these kind of weird fucking choices, man.

              edit: typos

              • shneancy@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                10 months ago

                soon after Starfield I finally got around to playing Outer Wilds, and despite the fact the cycle in that game is 20min instead of like 50h+, it actually serves a vital purpose to the narrative. I’m desperately resisting devolving into a cult like worship for the next 20 paragraphs praising Outer Wilds but like - go play it if you haven’t already, it’s spectacular.

                • SuddenlyMelissa
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  10 months ago

                  There is no piece of media I’d like to be able to experience for the first time again more than Outer Wilds.

          • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            10 months ago

            Yeah.

            I got Starfield free with my video card, and I still feel like I should be entitled to a refund for the game, lol.

        • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          10 months ago

          I might be inclined to agree with you, if it wasnt for the absolutely atrocious amount of loading screens.

          Its definitely a game where it feels like they put all their dev team effort into the first parts of the game, on the assumption that you’d be hooked enough to ignore all the rest of the bullshit, poor decisions, and bad mechanics that come later.

          I think making anything of Starfield, for modders, would be such a monumentally huge task… That they could probably just do it in skyrim/fallout 4 with just a portion of the effort/stress/hassle.

        • Korne127@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          10 months ago

          I’ve never played the game and well… don’t really know the issues about it.
          Can someone explain what you mean with that it’s a great framework but not really a good game in itself and has issues?

          • Vespair@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            It’s… kind of a lot to explain, but I’ll try to give you a bit. And fair warning, while I have a lot of complaints about the game, I also think a lot of the common complaints about the game are often overblown or are down-right wrong.

            So first off, in terms of gameplay, it plays like Skyrim or Fallout but with more polish, which makes sense since it’s built in and running on the newer released update version of the same engine as those games. Personally I like the core gameplay of those games, so for me that’s a win but a lot of people were upset that there wasn’t some enormous leap and bound in terms of what the engine can do, as if studios like EA haven’t been pumping out cookie-cutter formulaic entries of FPS or sports games with no innovation but I digress… The motion feels vastly smoother than Skyrim and the gunplay is an enormous upgrade over Fallout’s; although there are some things to complain about in the combat, the actual physics, motion, and aiming are all solid. The perpetual nature of Bethesda universes at the scale and scope which they maintain the consistency continues to be impressive as hell, to me at least. If you haven’t played Skyrim or one of the newer Fallouts, it’s hard to articulate what sets them apart from other first-person RPGs, unfortunately, but in general I don’t have many major complaints with the core gameplay.

            The story and setting are really where my comment applies. So one common problem people mention a lot is that “Starfield is empty,” which it is, but they almost always mean it the wrong way. People complain about how nearly every planet and moon is empty save for maybe a point of interest or two… but space is almost completely empty. That’s one of the the things Starfield does right, and the lonely empty feeling of walking across a barren alien planet just to be welcomed with the cold expanse of nothingness is one of the best parts of Starfield. But Starfield is way too empty, the problem is that’s actually empty at the content-heavy parts. Due to story reasons Earth is uninhabited, so humanity has settled other planets… but each of the “main planets” has one city one it. ONE. Imagine if the whole of humanity’s settlement of Earth was just New York City. That’s absolute insanity. The idea that at least one or two of these planets wouldn’t have developed into sprawling developing countries across the globe instantly shatters a lot of the logic of the universe, and it’s this kind of big-picture-with-no-details thinking that seeps into everything in this game.

            Another example is the shipbuilding, arguably one of the best and most well-received parts of the game. Without modding, you can’t turn any ship component 90 degrees, and you can’t even flip or invert many pieces. And when you build your ship, how the pieces actually connect (in terms of doors and hallways) is basically entirely by chance rather than being controllable or having logical rules. So you might think you’ve put together a great simple ship with a central hallway with doors along the walls on each side, only to find out that instead your ship is actually an snake-like disaster which requires you to go through every single room to get from the cockpit to the door.

            There’s just a lot of lack of attention to detail stuff like that, and lot of seemingly half-filled (if even that) space for content as mentioned above with the main planets. Beyond those flaws though, there are some really great concepts to play with, such as the need for physical information couriering because technology has figured out physical faster-than-light travel via the gravity drive but not how to transmit data faster than light without a physical ship with gravity drive to do it.

            Also for Fallout to have an excellent in-game radio and for Starfield to not have a ship radio is an absolutely criminal omission.

            Hopefully that answers it some? I dunno, ask me if you wanna know more I guess.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        10 months ago

        If they wanted modders to save their game they shouldn’t have set half of it in vacuum so you can’t have s l o o t y armor without breaking the precious i m m e r s i o n

        On the other hand, it’s pretty funny to see the cope modders are adding to explain it away.

        “Uuuummmm AKSHUALLY my boob window space suit totally works because of magnetic fields” 😎

      • XTornado@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        I mean the modding tools are not even out…that feels a bit of over exaggeration, like of course there is less modding going towards it.

      • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        10 months ago

        they did not bet on modders to do that in a month or 2, they havent even released the creation kit thing yet

    • excitingburp@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      10 months ago

      Starfield is actually a great framework for a video game

      It really isn’t, that’s 99% of the problem. It’s basically a mod for Skyrim with some additional tech.

        • excitingburp@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          10 months ago

          Not at all. Skyrim was a groundbreaking game, for 2012, that occurred in a few small regions from several planets/planes. The praise ends there, though. If Skyrim came out as a new release in 2024, even with the remaster work and all the DLCs, I wouldn’t have nice words to say about it either. It has been more than a decade.

        • businessfish
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          10 months ago

          well skyrim was good in 2012, kinda hard to say it can stand toe to toe with modern titles (without mods obviously)

          • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            I mean… It can in the fun department. It can’t compete on looks, technical stability, or smoothness of feel as modern shit… But it still has a certain something that nothing else captures and keeps me coming back every couple years to play through again.

            • businessfish
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              10 months ago

              well, different strokes for different folks. could just be i like different kinds of games now - it has been a long time and my tastes have definitely changed. most of the appeal of skyrim for me is just that i love games you can mod the shit out of lol

              • BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                10 months ago

                Video games are definitely a different strokes, different folks type thing. I “play through” (never done the main quest) of vanilla skyrim ever few years. I wouldn’t even know how to download a mod for it and I still love it all these years later.

    • Khrux@ttrpg.network
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      10 months ago

      They did make a great game with that framework :) In may 2002, we got Morrowind, and not just that, they even iterated uponcthat framework slightly in the 22 years since! If you look at it today you could almost believe that the framework would be great in the late 2000s!

    • Donebrach@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 months ago

      As someone who put 120 hrs in I can honestly say it isn’t. No Man’s Sky basically did it all and better beforehand.

  • Korne127@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    10 months ago

    Calling Palworld a furry simulator is the most intriguing argument to buy it I’ve heard yet

  • Laser@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    10 months ago

    Why would you install that door chain thing like that, it makes no sense

    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      10 months ago

      Door chains are a funny concept to me. They look flimsy and not really suitable to keep anyone out.

      • Laser@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        10 months ago

        They aren’t really designed to stop people from breaking in but rather to stop intrusive people that you talk to first before deciding to not let them in. With the chain, you can open the door a bit without allowing the person outside to force himself in without too much force, e.g. by blocking the door with your foot as the door can only be opened fully after closing it.

        Advanced versions exist where if you put strain on the chain (mostly trying to push the door open from the outside) an alarm goes off.

        • Patches@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          LPT for ya: If you feel the need to protect yourself with a chain. Just don’t answer the door.

          I don’t answer the door a lot. It’s works out just fine for me.

            • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              10 months ago

              just make sure there’s no light immediately in front of the door, you don’t want people to know you’re standing there when you’re blocking the light.

      • cannedtuna@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        10 months ago

        There’s a version that’s more of a sliding bar that’s a lot more common nowadays. You see them in updated hotels.