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STARFIELD celebrates its second anniversary, Bethesda posted a cryptic teaser
- Thread starter Superposition
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Fess
Member
Longest load is when you travel between systems, on PC around 7-10 seconds. There you get to watch your photos. Take some great photos and you won't suffer as much.
But you normally don't travel like that over and over. Enter/exit buildings is the common load sequence and it's mostly a fade out fade in transition. I don't see it as an interruption.
For me the whole thing is an exaggeration, it's a flaw that most won't even care about. The game has many other real flaws that people could've talked about instead, if they actually played the game and didn't just parrot social media noise. The OT here had lots of good talks about it's real problems. Some have been corrected now, others are still there, some won't likely ever get fixed.
The game is entertaining but just wasn't what most of us expected. The expectations were sky high and Bethesda left too many blank spots when talking about it that left room for our imaginations to run wild.
For me it turned out like a more compact No Man's Sky with less gameplay systems and better roleplaying and ship building and better combat. Was still my GOTY that year but I wanted so much more from it. Loading times were it's most insignificant problem.
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Hero of Spielberg
Gold Member
I've been holding off finishing the game in hope they improve space travel. Please be true!
calico
Member
The vision for the game was sound and incredibly ambitious, but tech isn't ready for it yet. I think if you could have shown them how compromised that vision would have to become by the end of development, they wouldn't have started.
One day someone will deliver on that vision. They will need to figure out how to attain seamlessness, and AI integration will probably be required to generate worthwhile content on the fly.
One day someone will deliver on that vision. They will need to figure out how to attain seamlessness, and AI integration will probably be required to generate worthwhile content on the fly.
bbeach123
Member
The tech is there , just not bethesda's tech .
vaibhavpisal
Member
Agree.
Fade in-out loading is hardly bothersome. People do tend to fixate too much on it, which could be causing trouble, instead of being something manageable.
Negotiator101
Member
It's good it's just not great unfortunately.
calico
Member
The difference in experience between seamless and regular micro-interruptions for loading is night and day imo. And actually not just for loading, but for similar micro-interruptions too.
It does seem to be something which affects different people to very different degrees though, and the type of game matters too.
It does seem to be something which affects different people to very different degrees though, and the type of game matters too.
PlayStaytion
Member
I really can't distinguish between Fallout arguments and Starfield arguments even though I liked Fallout so much. Same thing with Dragon Age The Veilguard. You guys are arguing with the things that defined it's creator. The only difference is a few lines that made the things that hasn't changed spiked and amped in an unpleasant way that destroys the entire team's credible work. I'm pretty much certain that's how they feel when they visit sites and read the comments.
Fess
Member
Yeah it's like people search for things to complain about, then exaggerate whatever they find to make it seem like some game breaking thing. Many complaints aren't fully thoughtout, it's mostly negative noise.
People complained about the squared planet zones too. But I think if Bethesda tried to do seamless traversal over whole planets then the zones would be more similar instead. It would be incredibly difficult to get solid variety of jungles and deserts and stone and water and forests etc without the planets becoming blocky like Minecraft with odd transitions. No Man's Sky have samey planets for a reason.
Most of my personal complaints are about game systems. They've included so many ideas but some of it aren't properly fleshed out. And I'm not a fan of how you can skip going into your ship and meet your crew almost completely through easy fast travel taking you from a wilderness cave into the middle of a city. I want the Mass Effect ship and crew experience.
Vehicles was an important addition post launch, but that's also not properly fleshed out. Should've made more vehicles, and maybe some cut down trees mechanic like in NMS. A jeep getting stopped by trees only really work on certain planets, good luck driving around here…
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Too many and interrupting gameplay too much. Not enough to discover and do in each planet either…No more loading screens pls, that's all I wish for
vaibhavpisal
Member
I have one complaint, make random space exploration interesting.Yeah it's like people search for things to complain about, then exaggerate whatever they find to make it seem like some game breaking thing. Many complaints aren't fully thoughtout, it's mostly negative noise.
People complained about the squared planet zones too. But I think if Bethesda tried to do seamless traversal over whole planets then the zones would be more similar instead. It would be incredibly difficult to get solid variety of jungles and deserts and stone and water and forests etc without the planets becoming blocky like Minecraft with odd transitions. No Man's Sky have samey planets for a reason.
Most of my personal complaints are about game systems. They've included so many ideas but some of it aren't properly fleshed out. And I'm not a fan of how you can skip going into your ship and meet your crew almost completely through easy fast travel taking you from a wilderness cave into the middle of a city. I want the Mass Effect ship and crew experience.
Vehicles was an important addition post launch, but that's also not properly fleshed out. Should've made more vehicles, and maybe some cut down trees mechanic like in NMS. A jeep getting stopped by trees only really work on certain planets, good luck driving around here…
Seems like a pretty hard thing to do, but only that will make it worth having different planets imo.
Even some hazards in deep space that I have to overcome would be fine for me.
Type of game is the key here.
If I climb in space ship and move to a different planet, that cannot be made seamless.
No Mans Sky is seamless but I use fast travel there as well which adds loading.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I hope it is, they are excessive in number more than just duration. Getting inside your ship and lifting off should not have a loading screen let alone two or more.
vaibhavpisal
Member
If you go to a new planet, that will have loading screens.
Or do you want to fly everywhere?
Thats not fun.
Fess
Member
Yeah I agree on that.
I like the different planets though but there are simply too few variants of points of interest. Just like in Oblivion you shouldn't feel like you've already visited a place when you know it's the first time.
And I like having static game world maps, and static legendary loot. I want to be able to tell a friend to visit a specific place on a planet and look in a loot crate to find a badass weapon.
"The best weapon in the game can be found on planet X inside the enemy base near the pear-shaped big water in the desert zone, it's in a crate in the room on the second floor. Don't miss it!"
I want that.
They already have the random placement mechanic in place. Don't have to place things by hand. Make it go through a list of static variables instead of having it randomized at every playthrough so you can't talk about the game or make a map or a guide or anything.
I would also want my old creations to stay. Going through the Unity and realize all my stuff is gone was a major hype killer for me. I realize things change at every run and I guess it could be interesting storywise but I don't think that aspect go well with creative mechanics. There should be a way to reacclaim your creations somehow, make the bases pop up as points of interests and have your ships flying in space, or something like that.
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Chukhopops
Member
Believe what you want to believe, the data I put is from Circana's 2023 report. What's your source?
This is an actual problem yeah, the game encourages you to do the rebirth thing but you lose way too much doing so and you can't even respec your character.
Sacrificing all your outposts and production lines is way too much for the benefit of rebirth.
calico
Member
I would argue that take off and landing from a planet is such a core part of the fantasy they are trying to capture, that this in particular should be seamless.
Ofc, if you choose instead to fast travel from the surface of one planet to the surface of another, that creates a seam of sorts (though with sufficient technical capability even this could be reduced to nothing, and even made a teleport instead of a fast travel if desired), but it is one of your own choosing rather than an interruption forced upon you. It's the difference between deciding you want to skip ahead in a video, and having your video interrupted for an ad/buffering.
I'm reminded of Todd's Starfield anecdote: "I had landed on one of the early planets and this sandstorm blew through and I went to run away from it. And ships can randomly... Once in a while, they can randomly land. Enemy ships can land. So I'm going through the sandstorm, the ship landed and I get in this firefight and I got on the ship. And while I'm shooting the guys on the surface of the planet in the ship, the ship took off into space. So now I'm in outer space on the ship..."
I think this is a much slicker encounter as he describes it, than it becomes with two loading screens inserted into it.
Reizo Ryuu
Member
That's basically what does happen though, yes there's a brief, not even 2 seconds of loading when it hits the space loading point, but I think it's still very slick how you can keep fighting on the ship while it's taking off.
Fess
Member
In a way it's like a roguelike. You keep your powers from the first cycle and some story bits are kept track of and then you can keep finding more powers in future cycles.
I have no problem with that if you keep what you've collected, but it shouldn't be done when there is user creation mechanics. They should've saved the creations.
And it's also strange to expect replaying as if it's a roguelike when it's such a long game. How many cycles will people do before they're tired of the whole thing? How many will ever see all the powers? How many will see the odd story changes?
Someone said you could have a cycle where the constellation were a bunch of kids. Would've been fun to see but a playthrough can be 50+ hours even if you rush it. I've never even finished it under 100 hours…
mitch1971
Member
No more loading screens pls, that's all I wish for
Chukhopops
Member
I did three cycles because I wanted as many max level powers as possible but yeah there's little incentive to do so, you get the Starborn dialogue options in the second cycle.
It would be a fine system if you could a) respec between cycles b) have more universe variations and c) have some form of level scaling, but as it is it feels a bit half-baked. I see no reason for not allowing you to respec when you lose all your gear, outposts, crew, companions etc between cycles.
Fess
Member
There is so much they could've done to improve the end game and unity loop.
I actually had the most fun in a playthrough where I skipped the main quests and just did side quests and factions and fiddled with outposts and spaceship creation. The faction quests in general were fantastic.
CrimsonTide
Banned
I think this was a sidequest, but it was about a generational ship, they did not have the tech like others to go into hyperdrive. So that quest led into it's own thing full of stories and such and I enjoyed it.
Game is not bad to me, it's just no Skyrim in space which is what everyone wanted. I finished it at launch on gamepass. It was fine.
Fess
Member
Yeah that was great!
I just wish the tech on the actual ship showed that it was 300 or whatever years old. There were some old trinkets on shelves but the computers all had the same modern day OS and door mechanisms were the same etc. It's all in the details and the art team were slacking on that quest.
I liked the AI ship too.
And don't remember if it were part of a faction or a side quest but there was a huge mech battlefield junk yard that looked amazing. Missed opportunity to not throw in a cool boss fight though.
LordCBH
Member
The faction quests were great, and the ship building was awesome. The rest just disappointed me really bad
CrimsonTide
Banned
Agreed on that part, but man that ship was giant as I recall. Had to be for a generational one. Just a super fun quest and I wanted MORE of those things.
Sooner
Gold Member
They'd have to remake the entire game.No more loading screens pls, that's all I wish for
Darchaos
Gold Member
Awsome, make it good this time.
Fess
Member
You actually have to search to find empty planets. What it lacks is big cities. Mankind has infested most planets like a virus with small outposts and enemy bases and mining operations sprinkled over the planet surface but there are like 5-10 cities in this part of the universe and never more than one city on an inhabited planet.
Jemison:
1 city
Earth:
"around 37 cities with over 10 million inhabitants (megacities) as of 2025 and 548 cities with at least 1 million inhabitants as of 2018"
Fess
Member
Yeah I agree and the whole setup storywise was fantastic. Loved it.
They could(should!) add quests like that monthly. There is nothing that would stop them in how it's structured. Would be perfect to get more people to pop back in to play some more.
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Pagusas
Elden Member
This is where their story telling/back story failed them. They really should have hammered home how few of humanity survived the evacuation and destruction of earth. Made the game more of a "humanity is struggling to survive in these colonies". Instead they make it like Star Trek utopia type society but layered on top of that tragedy.
Fess
Member
I don't think the story telling could save that part of the game. Humanity has lived for generations in this part of the universe. I don't think it shows.
The city building is great, Neon, Akila are both great cities with a lived in look. Arguably the best cities Bethesda has created.
But there is a clash between the wild outdoors and the populated big cities that I don't quite understand. There should be more cities per planet, smaller cities as well as big cities, it's not realistic that everybody wants to live in the same place. And there should be more villages, in general more lived in planets, showing farm work, roads. And you should see more life when you're getting close to a city, more people, low class slum areas, traces of war, palisades. Etc. (Neon is great though and can be explained)
As it is you're walking in an uninhabited jungle and then you're suddenly standing outside this giant megacity.
I know GAF don't like Avowed but there is a slum area outside one of the big cities there and it's just phenomenal from a world building perspective. People are literally living in barely standing houses or shacks in the mud and dream about a life inside the big city.
There is nothing like that in Starfield. You just have wilderness and one big city per planet and then a bunch of modern outposts and mining operations and enemy bases. The world building is simply lacking.
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Zannegan
Member
Kills me that it took so long to make and took up what would presumably have been an Elder Scrolls slot in their development rotation only to be so incredibly lifeless and medeocre. Who liked No Man's Sky so much that they thought an equally lifeless but slightly less procedurally generated version was what everyone was waiting for? Todd, apparently. And for this, we haven't gotten a new ES since the PS3/360 gen.
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Punished Miku
Banned
Stsrfield has slums in lower New Atlantis and as a district in Akila City. But your point is valid. The biggest issue really is just sprinkling in more variety in the random generated outpost stuff. There are a few small housing settlements you do find and research bases but I can't imagine it really takes that much effort to have a level designer make like 50 variants of it. At some point you do have to accept the fantasy and suspend your disbelief to just enjoy the space fantasy and I'm fine with that. Im not expecting perfection.
My main requests for the game:
1) expand variety on random outposts
2) science log with all your scanned content presented in a cool way. Animals, plants, journal entries.
3) make each shrine a dungeon before you get to the rings. There's like 20. Make 20 dungeons.
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vaibhavpisal
Member
I think Starfield needs to lean more into difficulties of living in space. Not having a lived in world in space is fine.
But it needs to showcase better how mankind is so much dependent on machines for basic necessities, food, air water etc.
That would do good world building for that universe.
Fess
Member
Good point about the Well slums. I think there should be more signs of human colonization outside of the city though.
Yeah number 3 is good. They could've hade Horizon cauldron-like high tech levels before you reach the rings and fight for the power. With big variations. Would've made it feel less like a collectathon.
Ribi
Member
There's already a mod for thatNo more loading screens pls, that's all I wish for
I don't think they can do much to "save" the game for me. To me it is one of the biggest disappointmets of this generation. Was looking forward to it since the E3 2018 teaser and it ended up being one of the blandest RPGs I have ever played - zero meaningful exploration, pointless space flight, procedurally generated planets with repeating POIs and to top it all off, I don't even properly remember what the main quest was about. At least some side quests were interesting.
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JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
This is probably true. This game was the absolute last hurrah for Xbox to get Gamepass subscribers. Even I was shocked at how little it moved the needle.
Game was so ass that it forced Microsoft to be a third party publisher
They absolutely should have released it day and date on PS5 at full price. They would likely have another 5M sales at least.
Now I honestly doubt it will surpass 3M sales on PS5 when it's finally released.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I felt the game has legit GREAT faction quests. The Crimson Fleet sidequest was truly great. The only disappointment is that it had no effect on any other quests.
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