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Starfield - there’s something I can’t quite wrap my head around…

Vox Machina

Banned
I'm hoping it still feels somewhat skyrim-y somehow or I'll be hugely disappointed.

I love that feeling of it being just one big map or some reason, but maybe it won't feel too different.

There is one big map that encompasses all the different star systems and other interstellar unique points that will be available to you. But, unlike Skyrim you can't just "walk" to any point on the map from level 1. You need to upgrade your ship's Grav Drive to do interstellar jumps of longer distances.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Planets made barren of life are resource heavy. What a great way to incentivize exploring the planets with life and reward exploration.

This fucking game.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
There is one big map that encompasses all the different star systems and other interstellar unique points that will be available to you. But, unlike Skyrim you can't just "walk" to any point on the map from level 1. You need to upgrade your ship's Grav Drive to do interstellar jumps of longer distances.
Which is exactly the "feel" I think will be missing.

It'll be more like maps where you are required to fast travel to go between places, and I think it might lose some of that Bethesda RPG "magic".

The fact you have to upgrade your drive is already telling me I won't like it..boo urnns.
 
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FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Which is exactly the "feel" I think will be missing.

It'll be more like maps where you are required to fast travel to go between places, and I think it might lose some of that Bethesda RPG "magic".

The fact you have to upgrade your drive is already telling me I won't like it..boo urnns.
They mentioned there will be a lot of environmental story telling across the universe, not to mention the random encounters in space, or the quest givers in the big named cities.
 

Vox Machina

Banned
Planets made barren of life are resource heavy. What a great way to incentivize exploring the planets with life and reward exploration.

This fucking game.

You can also sell research data for individual planets or entire systems if you fully explore them. So if you find an unsettled and unexplored system and like an individual planet or the entire system enough you can turn your curiosity into cold hard cash! So good!
 

Vox Machina

Banned
Which is exactly the "feel" I think will be missing.

It'll be more like maps where you are required to fast travel to go between places, and I think it might lose some of that Bethesda RPG "magic".

The fact you have to upgrade your drive is already telling me I won't like it..boo urnns.

I definitely think the "top-level" exploration feel will be unique but once you land on a planet or dock with a large ship/Star Yard the feel of exploration will feel similar to something like Skyrim or Fallout mixed with some NMS vibes.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
You can also sell research data for individual planets or entire systems if you fully explore them. So if you find an unsettled and unexplored system and like an individual planet or the entire system enough you can turn your curiosity into cold hard cash! So good!
Money has to be hard to come by in this game, or costs of cool things needs to be high.

But like I said in another thread, I’m looking forward to the “GET RICH QUICK BY DOING THIS” videos on YouTube.
 

Gambit2483

Member
With no land vehicles I suspect you will either be able to fast travel back to the ship or the planet "maps" aren't going to be exactly gigantic. Otherwise it would be an absolute slog to actually play this game
 
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Fuz

Banned
From this thread it started to sound like an Elite 3 game, somehow. Which would be great.
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
I don't think you can land anywhere considering it goes to a loading screen in and out of planets,

Sounds like most planets will be procedurally generated for resource gathering.

I may be wrong I guess.
Yes you are wrong.. These notions have been corrected numerous times the last couple of weeks, but for some reason they keep coming back.

1. You can land anywhere, and it makes perfect sense considering the technology being used to create the game.

2. All planets, including those with life are procedurally generated, and includes spawning of assets/content. The notion that it's impossible to have anything else than just resources on planet without current life is an odd one. I'd say it's a sign of limited imagination. ..I bet you'll even see hand crafted content on some of these planets.

With no land vehicles I suspect you will either be able to fast travel back to the ship or the planet "maps" aren't going to be exactly gigantic. Otherwise it would be an absolute slog to actually play this game

Fast travel to ship was literally confirmed in the beginning of the Starfield direct.

Again with the "limited maps".. I don't understand why after so many games with procedurally generated worlds people can't understand that planet/map size is not a technical challenge per se. Edit: I suddenly understood your point now, my bad..

Anyway, in my 200+ hours in No Man's Sky I rarely used land vehicles. Might be just me.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
1. You can land anywhere, and it makes perfect sense considering the technology being used to create the game.
This part confuses me a bit, from the showcase i remember you drag a cursor around a planet and choose where to land? The scale here feels weird, since dragging the cursor even a few millimeters would be hundreds of killometers within the planet, not to mention possible obstacles like terrain and buildings. Maybe the planet is actually divided into 'sectors' each with its own 'landing spot'?
 
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93xfan

Banned
This part confuses me a bit, from the showcase i remember you drag a cursor around a planet and choose where to land? The scale here feels weird, since dragging the cursor even a few millimeters would be hundreds of killometers within the planet, not to mention possible obstacles like terrain and buildings. Maybe the planet is actually divided into 'sectors' each with its own 'landing spot'?
That’s what I was thinking.
 
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nemiroff

Gold Member
This part confuses me a bit, from the showcase i remember you drag a cursor around a planet and choose where to land? The scale here feels weird, since dragging the cursor even a few millimeters would be hundreds of killometers within the planet, not to mention possible obstacles like terrain and buildings. Maybe the planet is actually divided into 'sectors' each with its own 'landing spot'?
I think that's a smart guess (probably even better than mine). The the way Howard presented it it appears more free roam to me. Maybe like Google Earth with zoom restrictions. The space map assets and the space flight planets assets might be the same source, and if so you'll have some room for zooming in with decent granularity. But of course that's just a wild guess on my part.
 
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EDMIX

Member
They mentioned there will be a lot of environmental story telling across the universe, not to mention the random encounters in space, or the quest givers in the big named cities.

Agreed.

This also means its better controlled to tell a proper story.

So you can't just MISS some massive thing, by having it set up like this, simply going to a location can properly trigger some story where you find some missing space station or something.
 

simpatico

Member
You can land anywhere on any planet that has solid ground.
How tiny are these planets then? The entire Red Dead 2 would on be a couple small counties at best. Can we expected 100,000x that at minimum? What would the quality density be like in a game that big?
 

Gambit2483

Member
Fast travel to ship was literally confirmed in the beginning of the Starfield direct.

Again with the "limited maps".. I don't understand why after so many games with procedurally generated worlds people can't understand that planet/map size is not a technical challenge per se. Edit: I suddenly understood your point now, my bad..

Anyway, in my 200+ hours in No Man's Sky I rarely used land vehicles. Might be just me.

Yeah, in No Man's Sky you can summon your ship no matter how far you travel away from it. Or with a vehicle you can quickly travel to and from it.

These kind of games where your stay on the map is not indefinite (by design) requires a way to quickly get back to your ship. I didn't watch much of the direct so I probably missed that part but it's good to hear they thought about it.
 
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chlorate

Member
The planets are obviously going to be big, procedurally generated outdoor dungeons, a few square miles in size. The surface area of Earth is 196 million square miles: it would be unrealistic to expect traversable planets 1/1000000 of that size, on average given the size of previous Bethesda games.
 
So how does exploration and discovery work in this game, compared to say, Skyrim?

In Skyrim, once you’ve completed the prologue, you can basically explore the entire map, discovering all sorts of things along the way. You can’t fast travel to anywhere you haven’t been before, meaning exploration is a must.

From my limited knowledge, I understand that in Starfield you can only land on certain parts of a planet. Does that mean that the only places worth exploring are within those areas?

Do you think all of the available landing spots will be there from the outset, or will new ones be opened up following a conversation, or mission, etc.,?

Are there other ways to travel on planets other than by walking/running/jet-pack? Is there any point in exploring the planets outside of the landing points? Do you think there will be substantial areas on planets with tons to discover?

What do you guys think/know/envisage?

Its No Man's Sky on crack.

So yeah you'd be able to land anywhere.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
The real question is how big is planet to explore on foot.........

My hope was each planet was at a minimum the real size of Earth, so walking around the full planet would take months in real time. Not sure if that's going to be the case.
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
How tiny are these planets then? The entire Red Dead 2 would on be a couple small counties at best. Can we expected 100,000x that at minimum? What would the quality density be like in a game that big?

They can make them any size they want. It’s just an algorithm that tiles together assets.
 

Pallas

Member
From my understanding, planets will have key locations, like say New Atlantis, but that you could land anywhere on that planet and when you do, random procedural generation happens.

So normally if two players land on the same spot on the same planet, their surroundings will not be the same excluding key locations.

But I’m wondering how many planets have marked, static key locations. Is it just a handful? Maybe the planets that only support life? Which is 10%, that may seem small but that’s 10% of a thousand planets, that’s 100 planets.

Though personally I think only a handful will have only a key location and even smaller, multiple key locations but I could be wrong.

Still excited and hyped though.
 
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GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
Planets made barren of life are resource heavy. What a great way to incentivize exploring the planets with life and reward exploration.

This fucking game.
Basicalies like the depths only tings I wanna know is how you going to walks around a whole planet with no vehicle and then bunch of loading screens every times you wanna move your ships around??

chris-farley.gif
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
From my understanding, planets will have key locations, like say New Atlantis, but that you could land anywhere on that planet and when you do, random procedural generation happens.

So normally if two players land on the same spot on the same planet, their surroundings will not be the same excluding key locations.

But I’m wondering how many planets have marked, static key locations. Is it just a handful? Maybe the planets that only support life? Which is 10%, that may seem small but that’s 10% of a thousand planets, that’s 100 planets.

Though personally I think only a handful will have only a key location and even smaller, multiple key locations but I could be wrong.

Still excited and hyped though.

Surroundings will be the same: terrain etc. What will be randomised is the actual points of interest. I might find an enemy outpost, you might find an abandoned mine in the exactly same spot. That sort of thing.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Surroundings will be the same: terrain etc. What will be randomised is the actual points of interest. I might find an enemy outpost, you might find an abandoned mine in the exactly same spot. That sort of thing.
Really? Is this something they said? Because the impression i got is everything will be the exact same, much like NMS.
 

Pallas

Member
Surroundings will be the same: terrain etc. What will be randomised is the actual points of interest. I might find an enemy outpost, you might find an abandoned mine in the exactly same spot. That sort of thing.
That makes a bit more sense then. I am curious how they are going to handle oceans and other large bodies of water. It would be pretty cool if there was a planet like the one in the movie Interstellar that was just water but deeper.


Like I know we aren’t gonna get submersible vehicles, but your space suit could double as a scuba diver suit, or something that would allow you to explore stuff beyond regular means.
 
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