I asked Game Devs how to fix 'Starfield'...

[@sekroz896]

I was going through a divorce when Starfield was released. I was so distraught that I bought the $100 Early access edition because I'm a Bethesda fan and desperately needed the distraction. I can safely say it helped because I was more pissed about Starfield than the divorce.

[@ninja1man4u]

Savage 💯

[@joshuabenton3785]

damn

[@cdmarshall7448]

I get it, that's how I felt when I bought Cyberpunk.

[@TimvanderLeeuw]

@@cdmarshall7448 I get it that is how you felt about Cyberpunk at release, I was also severely disappointed then. But after all the fixes, how do you feel about that game now? I'm just curious, I still did not play it myself but planning to play it probably later this year (after I'm done with BG3, in the very limited time I can spend on actually playing games). About Cyberpunk 2077, I do hear a lot of positive press about it now but it still did not implement some of the stuff that was hyped up and promised before launch. At least most people now seem to like the game though which is what matters. And I doubt that Starfield will ever get such a comeback because its problems are not just technical, they are also in the writing and levelling systems etc.

[@TheGreatestJediOfAllTime]

I had the same experience, but a break up of a 5 year long relationship. But luckily I got Baldurs Gate 3 early instead of Starfield😂

[@death-to-dogma6142]

The biggest issue for me with Starfield is a lot of it just feels pointless. It's fun to build and upgrade your ship, but there's not a lot to do with your ship other than fly from loading screen to loading screen. There's no shortage of places to explore, but nothing worthwhile to find. You can build cool outposts to farm resources, but nothing really to do with said resources. It's a lot of content, but very little of it is inspiring.

[@SIPEROTH]

EXACTLY! hit the nail on the head. And even other games with big open worlds and exploration and recourse gathering etc suffer from this at a certain point but in Starfield it is in an all time high. When you ask a gamer to waste time on things and grind etc you have to offer the reward for it otherwise the gamer will feel that he simply wasted time of his life. Things should be rewarding, especially when they can waste a lot of time. Why should i gather recourses if those recourses don't allow me to do great stuff with them and smart ways to use them. Sure building a ship might be fun by itself to a certain point but a reason you are building it is because you want to see it out there doing cool stuff and the way you designed it have an impact. Is like asking an architect to build a great building, sure he might enjoy designing a cool awesome building but if you tell him afterwards that his amazing creation will be built in the middle of the desert where no human will ever step in it or see it then no matter how enjoyable he thought designing a cool building was he will feel disappointed. The guy probably put a lot of effort in ways his building will be great to live in and now he realises no one is gonna live in anyway.

[@KevinJDildonik]

This. I never got the hype, and will not bother even getting a goty edition, because why? There's nothing. Like I'm sorry, but No Man's Sky getting Rust mechanics doesn't fix the game being pointless. I wants NMS for the mystery and the central story. There isn't one. Just like in Starfield the central story is a nothing burger.

[@carrasco3001]

Thx to summarize my exact feelings

[@Ministry_Of_Silly_Walks]

You hit the nail on the head

[@andreholsve1787]

So very true, this is why we need the official modding tools. First thing im gonna do is scatter custom furniture and weapon blueprints all over these places, so there is a reason to go there lol

[@jasonhare8540]

Wait a minute. Are you telling me you guys don't enjoy chasing the same three pirates / eclipse / outlaw spacer captain through the same three outposts over and over and over and over ..... *Falls asleep

[@leeloodog]

I quit long before that.

[@enviritas9498]

Starfield is a 70 dollar hamster wheel

[@pnut3844able]

​@@leeloodog I quit within the first few hours

[@thejimd]

The "sandwich" thing was exciting at the time because of what it implied about the rest of the game. "If they simulate something as dumb as 1000 sandwiches, imagine what that means for the more cool stuff!" Little did we know, the sandwiches were the cool stuff.

[@UnityAgainstJewishEvil]

It’s not even that cool. Yes, all objects have physics, but they all behave exactly the same, (unless they can roll, naturally). A sandwich and a brick essentially behave identically in a Bethesda game.

[@daizenmarcurio]

Its funny how they hype up the most useless shit that adds nothing to the gameplay. Remember how todd hyped up button panels in FO4? and used it as a way to drive how they cared about details? Its stupid how we fall for this shit at first thinking its awesome only to find out how little it matters in the grand scheme of things

[@canadianbeef1958]

​@@UnityAgainstJewishEvilthank you! Finally somebody gets it.

[@vast634]

should have called it "Sandwich Field" then

[@-tera-3345]

But "I spawned 1000 cheese wheels in Skyrim" and "I spawned 1000 watermelons on the top of a mountain in Oblivion" have both been viral videos for over a decade, so I'm not even sure what was supposedly novel about it.

[@astoldbyethan]

Missed opportunity to have Todd slowly get closer and closer behind you between cuts

[@stevbe1723]

Todd Howard the eldritch horror

[@JustBuyTheWaywardsRealms]

@@stevbe1723 yeah each new bethesda game since todd howard appeared became worst and worst in terme of sandbox

[@TheGraveyarder]

hes not getting closer, youre getting closer...he is pulling you in to buy another copy of skyrim 😂😂

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

I've been heavily modding my Bethesda games since Morrowind, both as a mod consumer and mod author and i what's stuck out for me is that the modding kit Bethesda released is exactly the same as it always has been whereas the kits supplies for other game engines, such as Unreal are constantly updated and offer vastly superior end user convivences. For example, if you notice you messed up the placement of something you're adding to the game such as a piece of armor in Skyrim you have to add the model, texture, and .esp/.esl files to the games main files then load up the creation kit along side your mod which in turn loads *all* of the games files (which can take a couple of minutes) then find _your_ game files in the creation kit then load up the cell you have the object placed in inside the creation kits render window (something that can take up to a minute depending on the size of the cell) then make the changes you wanted before saving the changes and exiting the creation kit. *Then* you have to load up the game itself and check to see if the changes you wanted to make actually worked. In some cases you can leave the creation kit running in the background so you can go back and make more changes if need be but 95% of the time if you tab out/down of the creation kit to load your game it will hard crash to the point you have to restart your PC. So in other words doing something as simple as moving a piece of armor on a table can take up to 30 minutes if everything works correctly and hours if something goes wrong. With Unreal you can hotkey the dev toolkit in the game itself so if you notice you misplaced something while playing the game you can hit one key which paused the game and brings up the toolkit in the game itself, then you grab the item with the mouse and move it manually. It takes seconds.

[@pcjpeh0f9wh]

As a fellow modder, it's actually worse than this, that USED to be a creation kit feature, but they axed it when it came time to release it for modders. Come Oblivion, the CK the devs used was objectively superior to the ones people like us got their hands on, and for whatever reason Bethesda decided to cut loads of extremely useful features and they kept trimming more and more with each game to the point that New Vegas' GECK doesn't even have debug messages in the message window. It is absolutely criminal how little Bethesda cares about the modding scene that keeps them afloat, and they've always been this way.

[@Furzkampfbomber]

@@pcjpeh0f9wh Well, maybe they'll actually learn something this time. When it comes to Bethesda games, it were always the modders who brought them into an actually playable condition and then kept them relevant way, way beyond their shelf life. Now Bethesda decided to kick both modders and gamers into the teeth with their arrogance and it will hurt them dearly. FFS, modders managed to introduce working cars and motorbikes to Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but SF is so utterly broken and everything that made the game really modable ripped out of its engine apparently, modders who tried this with this game all threw the towel. Can't have players with hooverbikes realising how small your 'planets' actually are, can we, Todd? I am an older gamer, I have even played Bethesda's ice hockey manager on the Amiga 500 and their (for that time really great) Terminator game and Starfield is the very first Bethesda game ever that I could not even be bothered to finish. Gave up after 60 hours or so, then I got sick of this boring and convoluted mess. Damn, I got the game for free as part of an AMD promo and I _still_ feel ripped off somehow and after the utter disappointment that Fallout 4 was already, I am not seeing me buying and Bethesda games in the foreseeable future.

[@coolmcdude]

If the physics of items are so good then they should do more with it. If you grab a dart in a bar and try to throw it at a dart board you will get accused of stealing and aggro the guards. The guards will then proceed to murder you.

[@ethanwasme4307]

i thought they would improve upon morrowind, we should be living an interactive life at this point.

[@DaemonJax]

That's a very easy bug to fix regarding object ownership. That's an example of things that can be fixed by a modders using the creation kit (preferably within a community bugfix mod that is just a curated compilation of bugfixes). The creation kit was released in June 2024 -- problem is the GAME was released in Sep 2023. BIG MISTAKE imo.

[@ingrimmschboindil1302]

There was a point in Starfield were i realised that all those 1000 planets are actually just shallow mapseeds and there is no map for you to explore. You just get those random spots that have nothing to do with each other. And i was like what the hell, were is the world i can explore. As if i played skyrim because the story was so awesome. It was the world that was so good. And now there is no world.

[@canadianbeef1958]

One of the biggest moments for me was when I found a free Vanguard ship on the moon, just sitting there for the taking right beside where my ship landed. It was right after I just happened to join the Vanguard and thought "hey this is cool, I have a new ship to match my new faction!" I was a bit excited at first, then it really sunk in that what ship I use is completely pointless. I can go to other planets without getting inside it at all, the game doesn't recognize it as being any different than any other ship, and it serves no real purpose in the game at all.

[@joehynes2964]

THIS is the singular problem with Starfield. It is lacking a map (or maps) where you are free to stumble into all the little things they have hidden within it. Skyrim works because of it. Fallout works because of it.

[@arlisongbird9386]

I'm sure I saw a video or comment on that the actually seeds are also not fixed, meaning you can go to another planet then back to where you just was and that same spot will now be different because its loaded a new seed. Unless there's a base.

[@christopherbrooksoregonboy]

Starfield could have been a much better game if the story had taken place in our solar system. Spreading out quest and exploration across 1000+ planets dilutes the gameplay into something that feels far too empty and troublesome to even bother with IMO

[@EhurtAfy]

It was obvious before release just saying, Bethesda aren't wizards who make the impossible, possible. In another console generation or so, it might be possible. I enjoyed Starfield for what it was, but the problem with gamers nowadays is creating unrealistic expectations in their heads

[@Jupa]

I like how it's April 2024, and they still haven't even brought the city maps let alone the Creation Kit at all. Those poor guys at r/Starfield are starving.

[@SobeCrunkMonster]

anyone frequenting reddit in general is a “poor guy” lol

[@daizenmarcurio]

@@SobeCrunkMonster Comments like this makes me cringe

[@akatsukicloak]

Makes me wonder what they're even doing at Bethesda all day

[@adventurous_soles9899]

Especially when games like BG3 and helldivers are just dropping content and patches left and right. It's an embarrassing look for Bethesda.

[@cosmicdragon9237]

​@@daizenmarcurioReddit moment(?

[@ficklebud3507]

There's barely 2k more people playing Starfield than are playing New Vegas right now. Pretty telling if you ask me. To compare to one of their more recent games, on steamDB Fallout 4 has 21K players whereas Starfield has 7K.

[@speedingpullet7400]

Not to mention that Fo:NV is a much better game, in pretty much every aspect, and it came out almost 14 years ago.

[@sorryshiina6264]

I was setting up my next Fo4 modlist with this video playing in the background lol

[@Ronuk1996]

​@speedingpullet7400 Gameplay is better in Starfield but as an over game New vegas hands down.

[@Trent110000]

Fallout 76 has 11k lol that says a lot about Star Field

[@fssstyuniaf]

Fallout 76 having more players is the ultimate meme

[@UESCBattleDroid]

Your assumption on why CDPR switched from RedEngine to Unreal is wrong. It's not because Unreal is better, its because after the crunch and launch of CP77 they lost most of everyone that knew how to use RedEngine. The new hires weren't trained on RedEngine, they were trained on Unreal. So if CDPR doesn't want to spend at least a year retraining people to use a proprietary engine, they have to switch to one they already know.

[@kaielwyn]

This is interesting. Do you know of somewhere I could learn more about this?

[@UESCBattleDroid]

@@kaielwyn it's something that was reported just after the launch of cyberpunk 2077. I don't remember where though.

[@SparklingWalrus]

Gee I wonder why most of them left

[@ShinGallon]

I can't believe mistreating employees to the level CDPR did has negative consequences! Next you'll tell me game studios being shut down and everyone who knows how to make games being laid off will negatively affect games too.

[@OsamaBinKevo]

That's a very bad sign for the future.

[@brombombadil]

Being able to drop 1000 cheese wheels into the environment and watch them roll down the mountain was hilarious and novel in Oblivion, but it really added nothing to the core experience, and prioritizing physics interactions over fewer loading screens is a really stupid justification. It's obviously not that simple and probably not the primary reason they kept the engine, but come on BGS, pick your battles.

[@5226-p1e]

the main reason is the modding capability, that's the short answer, because they want to make money off of the modding scene, and they now have this now, it's just most people don't like that system when in the past it was all free. but it's not just the thousand static objects, it's the engine can manage thousands more NPC AI packages all at once in real time, no engine that i have even known about use can do this as well as the creation engine. is the engine perfect? no, is the engine capable of much more? yes and no, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. like for example they are capable of doing the hidden load screens which is what they used in FO4 for elevator's, but in starfield they didn't attempt to bother doing this for some reason. like for example i knew starfield wouldn't really involve actual space travel and that it was going to be a limited box environment game and i knew you wouldn't really fly your ship on any of these planets, why bethesda thought it would be a good idea going this route after figuring out their engine was simply incapable of this? well that's something that i doubt they would really admit to, it's probably an embarrassing reason to be honest, which means they will likely never tell us the real reason.

[@Nico78Not]

@@5226-p1e but mods are free, and mods only bring back the people that already bought the game. Noone will buy a game just for a few mods.

[@REDDEADANDGTACLUB]

The loading screen problem could have been fixed if they simply hide it behind animations THEY ALREADY HAVE IN THE GAME... There is no need for a loading screen for each elevator, when a loading screen only takes 5 seconds to 10 seconds at most. You could simply add in an elevator ride. There shouldn't be a loading screen to enter Cydonia (you should be able to enter and wait in an air lock just like every other building in that are generated). The loading screen problem just doesn't make sense. There should be no loading screens because they literally have the animations needed to hide them.

[@SpartanArmy117]

@@5226-p1e That's a great point about the loading screens. I will agree with Luke that this is pretty much a worst case scenario for the Creation engine. If they had made another TES game with how this engine looks right now and a decent story, I guarantee it would've been universally praised as a solid entry. From what I understand, this was a game Todd wanted to make for a long time and unfortunately he was going to make it regardless of whether production was panning out or not.

[@5226-p1e]

@@REDDEADANDGTACLUB your totally correct on this, hell they did this very thing in FO4, so we know they know how to do it without issue. it might just come down to laziness at the end of the day, because again they have already proven they know how it's done when they did this very thing in FO4, now that was back when the loading took literal minutes on the vanilla game, it didn't matter you had an SSD or not, it loaded slow as fuck every time. but now it seems they fixed their slow as ass load screen issue to only a few seconds, well i agree, they could easily get rid of them to make the whole experience feel seamless, they could also make space flight feel somewhat real as well, instead of instantly getting to the destination, i mean it is a space game right, one would expect it to ya know, feel like a space game right? i know they can't do NMS level of flight, but they can simulate a sort of star trek level of flight in this engine, what the player doesn't see doesn't hurt them, all they got to do is simulate flight out of the player control after the destination has been chosen, and simulate stars passing your ship as it fly's passed objects in space, no load screen no skipping to destination immediately. for Todd Sake they can easily do the star trek model without issue.

[@Kringerel]

Starfield feels like a project that you procrastinate on and you have to make extreme compromises and fall flat because of how late you actually started

[@PeterBee911]

It's always a facepalm moment for me when I see someone saying: "They say Starfield is bad, but name another game that can do that" And then proceed to show a thousands potatoes aboard their ship... I could have been impressed by that when I was 8 years old maybe, but you don't have to be that bright to understand that it brings nothing to the actual experience.

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

It does bring something to the experience.

[@PeterBee911]

@@sagearmaggedon7307 😅

[@LaZd-]

@@sagearmaggedon7307 Yea it brings 10 seconds of boring stupidity when I can play another game and get 10 hours of fun stupidity. Try again.

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

@@LaZd- yet another person who misses the point. Like you said, just play another game, because you dont like Starfield. The issue with naysayers is they are casting the net of distaste too far and making too big of a deal about a simple concept. Interaction with clutter is apart of what makes their games and has been since at least Morrowind. Dismissing a features existence because you dont like it is foolish. Try again.

[@Ghorda9]

@@sagearmaggedon7307 it takes a lot more than just that to make a good game

[@trucid2]

I didn't care one bit about the technical limitations of Starfield. The loading screens didn't bother me--I have a very fast SSD. The worst part about Starfield is its mediocrity when it comes to quests. Barring a few good ones, most are just a dead weight and their presence doesn't make the game better.

[@fireice27]

Agreed. That being said, I did enjoy the time spent playing. It is a good game, not a great game.

[@billbillinger2117]

Same here. So much just seemed so lazily implemented. Between the story/plot, the characters, and a vast majority of the quests you would think they rushed this thing out asap...

[@andrzejwysocki609]

which is a shock cuz morrowind and oblivion had some great quests, where did those writers go?

[@ZeallustImmortal]

"The constant loading screens didnt bother me because they werent long" is such a hilarious way to think. Bethesda pilled af

[@cassianodesign]

Yeah, my main issue is the writing. It feels like they went too safe and ended up with no depth and creativity, “meh” is how I describe it, although there are glimpses of good writing. The whole thing seems to have been written for 10 years old, including cringe/cheesy characters like Barrett and a pirate faction that feels menacing as a kid’s cartoon. My opinion is based on comparisons with other AAA games I played. The maelstrom from Cyberpunk 2077 feel really crazy and menacing, they have gore and behave violently.

[@cluckendip]

i genuinely believe they released Starfield as it is because they thought, "i mean modders already fix our buggy-ass games and add entirely new companions and questlines anyway, so why wouldn't they do that for Starfield as well?"

[@bogatyr2473]

I think Bethesda has leaned on their modding community hard over the years. They've never fixed so much of Skyrim specifically because the community patches exist. Why bother since the community did it.

[@pyro111100]

@@bogatyr2473 It's not just that they don't fix current games, their new releases will have the *exact* same bugs with the *exact* same fix. Bethesda is so lazy that they can't even be bothered to literally copy and paste community made fixes.

[@scorpion07070]

The base game has to have enough charm to warrant someone spending a hundred hours making a mod. Oblivion and Skyrim had that kind of charm and people still mod and play those games 13 and 18 years later. Unless they do a major overhaul of the game like cyberpunk did (which also had it's own inherent charm), there's no reason to mod a game that you don't really like playing as is. I played cyberpunk at launch and even with it's bugs, on pc anyway, the story and characters kept me playing and when they dropped the major update and then the DLC, I came back and played again. I don't think a lot of people are really going to give starfield another try just to play the DLC.

[@cluckendip]

@@scorpion07070 I completely agree and I hope this is the lesson Bethesda takes away from this game. People only mod games they would still enjoy if it didn't have any mods. At least, I hope that's true.

[@guetinandderfertige]

The writing, worldbuilding and characters are something that can't be fixed.

[@Whippets]

Exactly, worst companions ever ... after 10 hours I wanted to kill them all. The "universe" seemed boring, and the cities seemed smaller than in Skyrim.

[@RocketRenton]

@@Whippets Betty Howser is the best, in Heinlein 1, Adrienne Bardeau, she's the only one I could stand with me every time I played as she isn't woke, is proper old school, doesn't judge and let's you be evil if you wish. The rest are just a bunch of hypocrites, Constipation more like and aren't worth using and just are a general annoyance, it's best to just go with Isolation perk for the damage buffs.

[@Whippets]

@@RocketRenton Haha, instead of Constellation the group should be called Constipation.

[@hihihi1q23]

@@RocketRenton "as she isn't woke" - My brother in Christ, I beg you to touch grass and stop trying to inject your culture war BS into gaming discussion.

[@MMMNemesis]

Yeah, people say stuff like "But Cyberpunk fixed everything?" Ok, but in Cyberpunk, the writing, worldbuilding and characters are already in place, what needed to be fixed was other less important things. Starfield is a much more stable game than Cyberpunk was at launch, but the high school grade writing will never be fixed, it just won't happen.

[@himenomagnum248]

0:33 waiting for Luke to find out I have a cardboard-cutout of him

[@shadowminor]

I bet it has a couple well placed holes.

[@himenomagnum248]

@@shadowminor the eyes

[@bagelbomb1887]

Don't pretend you wouldn't sleep with a cardboard cut out Tod Howard if you had one 👀

[@Vifnis]

@@bagelbomb1887 it's Todd... TODD....

[@burntninja450]

Todd Howard knows he's a meme. I heard a story once about him going to a college to give a talk. OP bumped something and it fell over, and immediately says "damn it Todd!" Just as Todd Howard was walking passed him, he hears him and responded with "really, that's what we're doing now?" And keeps walking. He knows.

[@Jonderlei]

The lack of Aliens is mind boggling to me. Youre telling you the same company that made the Elder Scrolls games puts out a space game and not only are there no playable alien races but not even any intelligent aliens at all? I just dont understand. Ive thought about that type of game ever since playing Mass Effect and then Bethesda of all makes a space game and theres no playable aliens .... what was even the point?

[@thisisaname5589]

Think of Morrowind. A genuinely alien landscape in every way with an incredible story and imnovative gameplay for its time, and.... oh, none of the people who made it still work at Bethesda.

[@curlyfordoge4366]

To be honest I actually prefer sci-fi without aliens. It at least forces the writers to not just make mono-ethnic superempires and actually have to work to make different political entities without defaulting to "these are the strong aliens so they have the war empire" (...granted, Starfield's factions are the most milquetoast generic sci-fi factions ever but still)

[@thisisaname5589]

@@curlyfordoge4366 The Foundation series did it well. Rimworld does it well. Bethesda are too greedy, shortsighted and incompetent to ever do it well.

[@zimriel]

@@curlyfordoge4366 I tend to agree, without aliens allows the SF to be harder. Because as far as we know there are no aliens. See also: Asimov "Foundation", Herbert "Dune", Reynolds "Revelation Space"

[@samexoldx]

Bethesda needs to cut loose all the people bringing the studio's quality down. They can start with the horrid writing.

[@axelhopfinger533]

All their experienced and semi-capable senior devs have already cashed out with the Microsoft aquisition and left. If they purge the company roster any further, they won't have any experienced talent left. Bethesda is a dying studio which can only attract mediocre (aka. woke) talent anymore if at all. And any exceptional developers avoid any explicitly woke company like the plague. It's over.

[@mateuscristianschannelen961]

Not gonna happen. For some God forsaken reason, Bitchthesda has no writting team, writting is let to quest designers, who are lead by Emil, who's a close friend of Todd, so Hodd Toward will never fire him, no matter how many times he shits the bed

[@exnozgaming5657]

Bruh, just like starfield , the people bringing the studio's quality down is core to the company 🤣🤣.Cannot be fixed Its a scam company disguised as a AAA studio. Now that we know everything abut starfield just go and watch the "Starfield Direct" video again, you will realize just how shameless they are.

[@chilbiyito]

They need to bring in programmers or just switch engines but thats another ordeal of getting people accustomed to another engine

[@axelhopfinger533]

@@chilbiyito They don't want to switch engines because both their devs and the modders are accustomed to working with Creation Engine for decades now. It's practically Bethesda's exclusive inhouse engine and switching engines would mean both significant effort and cost upfront. Besides, few engines are (or rather were) more modder friendly than Creation Engine and Bethesda completely relies on modders to finish their games and give them longevity. So instead they opted to update and improve the engine, like they have done for two decades now. But you can only put so much makeup on an old workhorse.

[@donovanmarks1865]

I've described a problem with Starfield as being a Fallout/Elder Scrolls game that's had the things that make those games unique and interesting removed. There's no magic, no "wasteland", no VATS, etc. Starfield needed to have more than vestigial systems to make it stand out and be fun and interesting to play. It needed to do something that really took advantage of being a sci-fi/space setting, or else it would always just be less than their other properties.

[@lucienmontandon8003]

But there is the super cool constellation!!!! 🥴

[@masonmurphy2679]

If you take Starfield and remove all the features that were ripped straight from previous BGS games, what is left? Ship building, ship combat, and slightly reworked lockpicking/speechcraft mini games? That's all (I think) For a "new" IP there isn't very much new stuff

[@zombieranger3410]

But it does have space magic… done in a very poor fashion.

[@ethanwasme4307]

star field is nothing like those other games

[@canadiangaming5139]

@@zombieranger3410 that is just straight up a redone version of dragon shouts, down to the fact you have to press RB and LB at the same time to activate them, even has blue bar that has to recharge to use them again like dragon shouts.

[@brnm973]

Honestly, its the loading screens for me that killed it. Everything else I can deal with but the loading screens make it impossible to deal with.

[@rewpertcone8243]

I would take a handcrafted open world over no loading screens, regardless starfield needed BOTH as a game that released in 2023 under the MOST VALUABLE COMPANY IN THE WORLD

[@EastyyBlogspot]

People defended it by saying use an ssd...but it is still bad its just less bad than an hdd lol

[@shagaru1234]

the glory of the gamebryo engine only using cells to load the world

[@Dahellraider]

but most of those loading screens are lit like 3 seconds. i never viewed it as a big problem like everyone here does.

[@venosaur121212]

@@EastyyBlogspot yepp, especially since the game loads even when it doesn!t have to. Instead of taking the elevator, wich grants you a loading screen, you can just jump down sometimes WITHOUT it. So why is it there in the first place???

[@TheArtist441]

I won't easily forget how Luke kept such a level head during all the crazy Starfield hype. I thought he was a bit of a debby downer about the game until I started playing it for a little while and the reality of a second bad Bethesda game finally set in for me. Now I have a heck of a lot of respect for him and will continue to come here to get realistic and based views on games

[@agentbrown5542]

It can't be fixed without a complete rewrite. Add maps, lose loading screens, whatever. If the characters and story are mind numbingly dull you've fixed nothing.

[@NeverUseAnApostrophe]

Yeah, especially in a game attempting to call itself an RPG.

[@ModuliOfRiemannSurfaces]

In fairness, Fallout 4 can be made pretty fun while also having abysmal storytelling. The basic world design in Starfield really is the worst part.

[@mcmarkmarkson7115]

@@ModuliOfRiemannSurfaces F4 at least had SOME good dialogue, even if the options weren't great. And they had some interesting characters as well. Not to mention the world was fun to explore. Base building was a lot more important, and clunky as it was, I had more fun. Nothing is fun in starfield, absolutely nothing. Not even the "improved" combat.

[@ModuliOfRiemannSurfaces]

@@mcmarkmarkson7115 Yeah I think we’re mostly in agreement. I just didn’t really like *any* of the FO4 storytelling with the exception of a couple small characters like Danse, Cait, etc

[@abrahambobst4602]

Yep, in the previous games they had Lore writers that helped bring cohension to their games. As far as I know they had no Lore writers to tie the universe of Starfield together.

[@eugkra33]

This channel is keeping Starfield alive. Without it we'd all have forgotten about it already.

[@cyborgchimpy]

because its "content", it makes him money and people keep clicking it. welcome to modern internet. its a stinking pile of sh*t.

[@s3nate22]

​@@cyborgchimpy r/Starfield users detected

[@Mr.MasterOfTheMonsters]

@@cyborgchimpy "a stinking pile of sh*t", like most AAA games nowadays.

[@cyborgchimpy]

@@s3nate22 eh? me? not even close. I never bought this game or have a sub to gamepass or anything. I watch a video or 2 about it on youtube and thats it. if you have more than half your brain left you could see this disaster coming from the moment they announced it. but unfortunately most people have less than half a brain.

[@cyborgchimpy]

@@Mr.MasterOfTheMonsters unfortunately yes. I miss the days that games weren't technological marvels and money machines and were just created by a bunch of nerds with a passion. now the focus is maximising profit.

[@MN-vz8qm]

To me it seems that Bethesda, nowadays a big company under scrutiny by investors, has chosen an extremely conservative route when making this game, playing as safe as possible, probably making all their decisions by comitee. As a result, this game is the same kind of soulless mess as for example the new star wars trilogy. They really have not tried to inovate in any way, reusing the very same ropes they used in their previous games: For example, the dialog camera is the same Oblivion used in 2006. An other example, the laser gun looks like the Fallout4 laser gun (they also copy terms from their previous games, for example callind drugs "chems" like in fallout). They even have regressed, multiplying the loading screens compared to their previous products. This can also be seen in the quests, companions and dialogs; They have played as safe and bland as possible. The universe itself looks like it has been made by a comitee, just grabbing from everywhere anything that looked cool and pushing it into the game into an incoherent mess. Hence we end up with an inconsistent universe first trying to be "NASApunk" (with the city on Mars being at least consistent here), but also with a high tech futuristic city, a firefly cowboy city, and a cyberpunk city. An other example is the nightclub in said cyberpunk city. Or more precisely, the exotic dancers in the nightclub. I am sure someone wanted to do something a bit spicy, but the PC police replaced the exotic dancers by dudes wearing ridiculous spantex alien costumes. And BTW in this city a drug is supposed to do some ravages, but where are the addicts sleeping in the street and what not?...

[@floof_ch]

The loading screen issue could've been fixed with smoke and mirrors. Simply make traveling an interactive loading screen that doesn't unload the aircraft. The menus could've been integrated into the ship. In the load screen, the world origin can be reset, physics objects can be unloaded and reloaded. This isn't a solution for interiors however, and full culling of navigation, physics and rendering is only really ever possible with fully static environments.

[@rattled6732]

Truly the most Bethesda game of all time

[@Xsetsu]

It feels like this flew over people's head far too much. I mean what did people expect. It is Bethesda being Bethesda and making a Bethesda game.

[@frogdeity]

@@Xsetsu I kept telling my friends it wasn't going to be good. They were shocked when it turned out I was correct. Just go play Morrowind if you want a good Bethesda game.

[@tiopatinhas55]

Indeed

[@Gadamlu]

remember that clip of Squidward when he gets to the squid town and he goes through his daily life over and over while slowly getting more bored and depressed? thats Starfield

[@ItsChuckShirley]

Oh god that and this playing this game is quickly become depressing at this point

[@mcmarkmarkson7115]

There is no fixing that mess. What they gonna do? Rewrite all the terrible dialogue? Fill up all the empty planets? Every system is broken from the ground up. They gonna leave that up to the modders and move on to the next project.

[@axelhopfinger533]

And most veteran modders won't even touch this hot mess with a ten foot pole. Knowing full well it's not even worth the effort because the substance just isn't there. And neither is the player base to actually use and appreciate good mods.

[@mcmarkmarkson7115]

@@axelhopfinger533 Nexus even banned a mod for removing the gender ideology stuff

[@axelhopfinger533]

@@mcmarkmarkson7115 Yeah and i outright refuse to even touch the game without such mods. Because any vision of humanity's future that diverse and progressive is simply a dystopian nightmare. And not of the entertaining kind.

[@MelAncholynus]

Yes, obviously fixing a game into working as intended doesn't help much if that working state was bad from the beginning.

[@kristoffer3000]

@@axelhopfinger533 Fash, go visit the Barbara pit for about 1 eternity

[@JimUK]

People would be more willing to overlook the technical shortcomings if the game had a compelling story and interesting characters, sadly it has neither.

[@verios44]

This. I played Starfield at launch. By hour 20 I was already putting it down to go play other things saying "ill come back later". I did, built an outpost, realized how useless it was and said f it uninstall time.

[@pugnome]

Tale as old as time People will put up with a lot of jank and crap as long as it has good overall storytelling and such is good, even in cases where the gameplay is that met (drakengard comes to mind)

[@ryansarafin12]

Yeeep, as much as I had a problem with the loading screens, weak exploration, and shit AI, I could deal with all of it, but the writing for some of the quest lines (specifically Ryugen) was so mind numbingly boring I couldn't force myself to play it anymore, uninstalled and have no intentions of going back

[@keystrix3704]

I think the best videos out there that really highlight this are the ones comparing Starfield to Cyberpunk 2077. It's not even a competition. Starfield is just... uhg... it's simultaneously hilarious and sad to see Bethesda's new baby get absolutely clowned on by an old game that many people hated on release.

[@verios44]

@@keystrix3704 Agreed! And CDPR has had a stroke of master level genius with Phantom Liberty. There are certain moments in there... well spoiling it should be heresy and punishable by the inquisition.

[@4tdaz]

This will feel off topic but stay with me: Star Wars was just a re-skin of an Akira Kurosawa film. You might be tempted to think that it became the most successful movie of all time because of the exotic skin that he put on it. Lightsabers, the force, starfighters, etc. However, the thing that made all that work was the screen chemistry of the 3 main characters in Han, Luke and Leia and that the world felt plausible and familiar. There was dirt in space. You have to nail the familiar and then then exotic becomes thrilling. In Starfield, they did not nail the familiar. They focused on the wow, but neglected the mundane. The world did NOT feel lived in or full. The plot and characters are simple caricatures. What is more, it was as if you could see that the Death Star was only a model- so to speak. You always feel the fishbowl when you can't walk across a VERY small town without a loading screen. You can build a ship but will have no idea how it will feel on the inside before spending credits. You can't modify the inside. Its insane. To add to the metaphors its like they went to the store to buy milk and cereal but forgot spoons and bowls. Forking cereal out of a cup is weird and soggy. Starfield is a weird and soggy model of a Death Star. You know what I mean?

[@mysteryman4013]

It’s REAL simple boys. To me, the big problem with starfield is the factions, quests and random encounters. Compared to previous Bethesda games this doesn’t even compare. Quests aren’t as immersive or engaging; writing is less than I’d hope for it to be and I have a perfect example. Relating to random encounters, there just isn’t significant encounters that link to quests or environmental storytelling. I remember going to a planet and hearing enemies talking about an interesting storyline, wanting to see more of this I followed the encounter and finished it. Thought ok cool, went to another planet and ran into the same random encounter with EXACT same writing. That’s when I was done and hopped back into cyberpunk and older Bethesda games xD

[@mysteryman4013]

I wanna say more about this. Another thing they just didn’t have well is exploring to find quests. I really loved in fallout or elder scrolls where you could just get lost exploring find someone’s little house and perhaps they have a whole quest line associated with them that you wouldn’t of found out unless you explored. Starfield does not have this, and when it does, the quests are horrible, like finding a random guy comic books throughout the galaxy. The content is just too shallow. Remember killing greltle the kind and then getting an invitation to db. Or in fallout finding the cabbot house and seeing that whole quest line which even has a random encounter associated with it. Starfield just has none of this.😢

[@RocketRenton]

Even the Ships have been nerfed or bugged out, you got 2 land every time on a moon or planet, now you see none, and now see people trying to make workarounds for an issue that wasn't there, but it because of the way they are handling the patch process, which by the looks of it isn't being done at all with an QA in mind, and you get more bugs, ones fixed then return and new ones. It's just an never ending nightmare from patch to patch to see what will happen with your character, even NG+ doesn't fix the issues at hand, being on Xbox as well with no console commands also puts a spanner in the works. It's reminding me of Warzone all the time and all the issues and ones still in the game 2 years on that haven't been patched and are still there.

[@mysteryman4013]

@@RocketRenton that is horrible to hear.. especially given how cool the ship building was. These companies leaving broken mechanics in their game needs to stop. It’s especially sad because starfield could’ve been great.

[@Ronuk1996]

As far as random space encounters I came across the same ecounter 5 times in short time frame.

[@mysteryman4013]

@@Ronuk1996 damn bro.. that’s so sad😭 they really dropped the ball on random encounters and glad other people feel the same way

[@aeternosolus52]

Red's casino (I think it's called that) is a great example of the entire game, lots of things you should be able to do in a casino, poker, slots etc, however in reality, there is sod-all to do.

[@GlassesAndCoffeeMugs]

I think the biggest issue with Starfield's design is that the starting point for the entire premise of the game was "What if we made a Bethesda game, but in space?" instead of it being "Hey we have a good idea for a really unique game that's different from our previous games that mandates a new setting. Now how do we fit that in with the types of games we make?" In other words, Starfield suffers from a lack of identity. "It would be cool to make a sci fi game" isn't a recipe for success, you should have very very good reasons for why you want to create a new IP rather than just "we want to try making a sci fi game because we can"

[@garbearfar1394]

Yeah it wasn’t “let’s have this cool sci fi world with aliens and factions and space pirates that do this and we’ll have this cool city that’s a crime den and dangerous.” It was “okay we got the green light for a sci fi game everyone break up into groups and come up with one sci fi trope and will fit it in where we can. 1 alien quest line entirely removed from the rest of the game? Sure why not. Space pirates? Hell yeah, but to maintain our ESRB rating you won’t be able to join them necessarily. A grimy slum world full of corruption? Nice grab one other guy and both of you build that by yourselves, also ESRB rating so don’t make it to grimy and slummy, although players liked the strip club in GTAV so do something similar.”

[@GlassesAndCoffeeMugs]

@@garbearfar1394 Well put. Starfield was like a test game. It answered the question "What could a Bethesda game in space look like?" And to that end it succeeded frankly. It succeeded at being proof of concept. It's an idea of a game, not a game.

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

Bethesdas identity has always been in “lacking identity”. They make a bunch of different things and patchwork it together. This is not new.

[@GlassesAndCoffeeMugs]

@@sagearmaggedon7307 Skyrim had identity out the wazoo. Solid consistent art design, interconnected world, developed systems that interacted well in conjunction with each other. It didn't feel like a "generic fantasy game" that Oblivion for instance was accused of being on launch. Starfield on the other hand feels like a generic sci fi game that was a bunch of ideas strewn together to produce a minimum viable product.

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

@@GlassesAndCoffeeMugs It is a game, just one that people are not the most interested in. Most people still dont even realize the changes they have made in their design approach. The perspective in which one approaches a game will impact how it plays and what a player gets from it. I learned this lesson well with tears of the kingdom and breath of the wild.

[@lowkeymanifestingdestiny5480]

My worry about every game company going over to the Unreal Engine is that all the games I played on the Unreal Engine have the same feel to them you don't get any of that charm you get from back in the day when everybody had their own in-house engine.

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

I feel nobody is talking about this issue, yet

[@unicyclepeon]

Most of the problems you listed at the beginning aren't part of the problems I had. My problems were all related to the story (boring), side quests (mostly boring) and characters (predictable and boring). They would have to throw all that out and get better writers and character designers.

[@rpgadventurer32]

Yea, but all these issues come from a rotten core that is related to the game's engine which directly effects the overall game design. The problem is and has always been the outdated engine.

[@masonmurphy2679]

Fallout ​New Vegas used the same engine as Fallout 3, yet it's story, writing, and world building was leagues above Fallout 3 in terms of quality. Yeah the engine is still terrible, but a good enough writer/quest designer can work around that to make something truly entertaining

[@adrfercho]

I found what you listed too, but I also found pretty interesting characters and conflicts, for example I tried to play one more time sticking to one side character this time been Sarah, I found her your type annoying character, super clear moral compass driven by making good, a model citizen etc., but the more time I spent with her I found her very complex, she has some real conflicts, for example her perfeccionism leading her to make bad desicions for other, her resentment with MAST and even her mission and place in constellation been flawed trough this things, I predicted her to be boring but she is not and really changed my mind, I then tried to invest in some of the side quests, and I found the same they had a lot more depth when I tried to ignore since of the flaws. Since side quests introduce you to very interesting moments like the loop time quest or the computer AI in charge of a place, or the fleet of humans in Paradiso that have spent centuries traveling not knowing the humans had conquered the known space. This is really difficult to find due to immersion been broke every time I have to wait for a loading screen or just go to map and jump from one place to another instead of traveling to one place to another. This little things made fallout great, you got to travel to a new place and maybe find si many things and new quests or factions that makes the experience of a playthrough unique, the snapping to one place to another breaks this totally. Another thing is that the different places don't feel they have a connection, yeah the different factions time over this place, but the main quest don't explore this, some side quests do like for example joining the UC vanguards and the terror morphs conflicts but the main quest ignores this completely. They could use so much more the connection through all the factions in the main quest line to make more sense than only "on the past we had a great conflict and now humanity is divided" And it still exists into the game but very very very very hidden from most of players. I think the traveling trough space could be fixed by making a screen like fallout 1 with random encounters, you might not be driving all the way through space but just watching a loading screen but a ship traveling trough it could be more interesting and aliviate the loading times. Also making some places nearer each other could have fixed this a lot. Developing more the outskirts of a few places that can lead you to find even more lore and more verticality for the places... But it's just done ideas. Fallout4 did a worse job in this sense, options to resolve quests are near 0 and most quests are going to solve place to retrieve some thing or someone. But the world felt as 1 and conflicts were inevitable. Hope the creation kit give the modders time and desire to address all of this, because this game has a lot of potencial in it.

[@Mediquette]

My biggest issue with Creation Engine, besides it being really old and limited, is the handling and interaction with the game. For example, the Fallout franchise. I used to LOVE Fallout, and still do mostly (even though the story of 4 was *horrible*), I'd play Fallout all the time back in the day and got used to the interfacing. Now and days, after playing newer stuff, going back to Fallout games feels sooo clunky. I try to go back to Fallout 4, and find I have to reteach myself what each button does, how to bring up Pipboy, etc. Even with Fallout 76; I keep trying to get back into it, and it's a chore figuring out how to draw weapon, then change weapons, then VATS, Pipboy, etc. They're all great systems, but interfacing could be so streamlined and easier to access. Other games are so easy to go back to, pick them up, and gameplay is fluent and controls are self-explanatory. While again, returning to Bethesda/creation-engine games require an almost 5-10 minute rundown tutorial to recall how everything functions. 🤔

[@ShimonDanilov]

If they’d tried to do the same with UE, they’d have had an even worse game. UE is not a silver bullet, there are things in Creation Engine that are done specifically for Bethesda games and other engines won’t be able to handle it without a massive rewrite

[@andrewshandle]

Entity Persistence is almost _never_ worth it, it makes for a some cool gimmicks, but in the long run it really hurts the game. Star Citizen introduced the same issue with their PES system and within days were working on culling persistent entities. You just don't need to persist an empty bottle a player drops in the woods if it hurts the rest of the game.

[@DevNug]

So I’m a developer but not game dev so I have a question. Are they persisting the state of all physical game entities to disk?

[@andrewshandle]

@@DevNug yes. That's why the dev mentions the load times, it needs to load all the items onto a level. I don't know all the details of how SF does it, but because you can fly to any planet at random it would need to pull it from disk most times, although if you left a planet then returned to it immediately hopefully it'll still be in memory but I have no idea. This has been a problem in gaming forever, I remember coding text based MUDs in College in the 1990s and we added "slime monsters" that would roam around consuming items players didn't loot from mobs, because having too many objects would cause massive lag. This was our in-universe PE Culling system. Even modern games like WoW do this, instead they just put a timer on a corpse, and they'll despawn after a set length of time destroying all items (although some items will be mailed to you). Tracking 5,000 wheels of cheese between visits to an area, not to mention all the other items that are there is intensive. The juice is rarely worth the squeeze when it comes to PES.

[@vairoalexnder]

but it worked in star citizen star citizen

[@andrewshandle]

@@vairoalexnder no, it doesn't at all. They added aggressive culling within days. There is no real persistence in their persistence entity system. They're trying to throw more and more server virtual hardware at the problem, something a game like SF can't do because they need to run on consoles or an individual PC. The combination of static meshing and PES is a massive cost sink on the back end in a game still in Alpha after spending 700M on development. If you think it "works" you are sadly mistaken.

[@dkindig]

@@andrewshandle IKR, I remember when all the hangar areas just about anywhere you went were clogged with debris. There were many times I had to 'thread the needle' just to get my ship out of the hangar without blowing up...

[@NeverUseAnApostrophe]

It'll be interesting to see the state of Starfield and BGS around the time ES6 is coming out. I'm not optimistic, just intrigued.

[@FredericoASousa]

I wonder if we will still be alive in 15 years

[@jimmyv3170]

The real question is if we'll see the PS6 release of Skyrim come out before Elder Scrolls 6.

[@fairyboy444]

@@jimmyv3170lol, imagine xbox fully dies before Es6 comes out 💀

[@B_Machine]

After seeing the success of Zelda TotK on Nintendo, I don't think the creation engine is the problem. The possibilities are endless with yesterday's tech so to speak. I think the problem is Todd. He's inspired whole generations of gamers into pursuing passionate careers in gaming. I think it's high time he passes the torch to someone who can bring Bethesda's stagnant franchises forward. It would be beneficial to him too, because he can go make whatever kind of game he wants.

[@DavidCookeZ80]

As a developer of 40+ years I can honestly say that all the myriad of technical issues *are* the paper cuts. With my game master's hat on I see the missing limb as the lack of world-building, basic game design, quests, characters and the shoddy dialog as the real issue with Starfield. It could be as pretty as Phantom Liberty and it *still* wouldn't be worth the time to play as there nothing makes sense and there are zero consequences to the player's choices (inevitable for "groundhog day in space"). In short for an RPG there is no "game" (it kinda works as an FPS, sort of, and a walking simulator, sort of). I clocked up hundreds of hours (waiting for dinner to cook) on my housemate's game-pass account, and I still felt short changed. There is no exploration when everywhere is explored and abandoned already.

[@ScytheNoire]

You either leave the game development industry a hero, or stay long enough to become a meme.

[@StrengthScholar0]

Unless you're id software

[@TimSedai]

Lord British is OFFENDED lol

[@krogan3760]

@@StrengthScholar0 Carmack is a meme after his time at Facebook though

[@nullvoid244]

Todd's a meme because he lies and overhypes what turn out to be mediocre or outright bad games, he deserves to be ridiculed for that

[@gownerjones]

I saw an article earlier that said "Starfield now has fewer players than Dave the Diver" and I found it so funny because I don't even know what Dave the diver is 😂

[@PorkChopXpress4385]

I sure hope not! The bigger the crash, the sooner the build back by independent devs.

[@RocketRenton]

I feel a crash is on it's way just like 1983 all over again, only it will be copies of Starfield in the desert, not E.T lol.

[@yamasaa]

18:00 I suspect CDPR left behind the RedEngine because they lost / fired a lot of devs during the development of Cyberpunk 2077, and it's a lot easier to onboard new devs with a licensed engine like UE5 than a proprietary engine.

[@yamasaa]

On the other hand, BGS has a relatively low turnover rate and it makes sense for them to keep using the Creation Engine because it's what all their veterans have been using for decades now. So I think it's just a business decision rather than being related to how bad or good people think an engine is :)

[@ainzu4062]

they are only using UE5 for witcher games and Red engine for Cyberpunk games

[@ANGRYWOLVERINE2060-ft2nc]

nah. Red Engine 3 is very unstable. The tools CDPR used for TW3 Red Engine 2 didn't work on RE3. So they had to make new tools. RE3 is a lot like EA's Frostbite 3. It s just so unstable that going to another engine makes alot of sense..

[@zuriyel5368]

@@yamasaa Well, it helps that they've had a fanbase to develop the most important parts of their games for them for a good while now.

[@CanIHasThisName]

@@ainzu4062 Nope, it's over for Red Engine completely. Next Cyberpunk will be on UE as well.

[@tezwoacz]

the problem is that 20 or so year ago game engines had "simple" enough tech that a billion $ company could justify developing and maintaining its own game engine, problem is that in todays gaming world we have so many complicated technologies that any corporation willing to keep their own game engine updated would have to hire a small army of engineers for updating and maintaining that said engine, so more and more corporations discover that it is more economical to give 20% or so of their profits to a 3rd party game engine developer than have their own staff develop one. Bethesda is just "holding up" probably out of greed and refusing to let it go.

[@shanehaney6040]

To me, Starfield kinda cemented something I’d been thinking for a while now - Todd Howard is the single greatest person to sell people on a Bethesda game, and if/when he retires Bethesda is Fucked. Like, we know he’s overhyping whatever it is that Bethesda is trying to sell us on, but he’s the right person for that job, sweet little lies and all. If anyone else at BGS tried to sell us on a Bethesda game, where at this point we know we’re getting a technically outdated sandbox held together by tape and modders, I don’t think it’d work. Hell, Starfield now makes 2 BGS games that ran into the problem of Modders being unable to do their thing (they may have changed that in a Fallout 76 update, idk I don’t follow that game), and I get this sinking feeling they’re just going to try and double and triple down on Paid Mods again come ES6.

[@GoodfellasX21]

Eh it's not so much him being a salesman as it is people legitimately loving older games they made and hoping newer ones will hit the same notes. In my opinion, at least.

[@akatsukicloak]

He's a clown, I don't know who is actually listening to him on their decision to buy a game, certainly not people who know he lied as far back as TESIV oblivion. I myself wanted to try starfield because of peer hype and modding potential not because of some conman.

[@jimmyv3170]

Todd, like Phil Spencer for Xbox, is a professional gaslighter. They'll hype up a turd calling it gold. People buy into the personas these people portray whether it's Todd, Phil, or even Kojima.

[@jayg.2066]

Well, he's more than just the salesman, he's literally been the lead game designer at Bethesda since the start and he pretty much has the final say on anything and everything that has gone into any of the games. This time he was just out of his depth, but with him, ES6 will at least be as good as Skyrim. Though Bethesda would probably abandon the engine and crumble after he leaves

[@canadianbeef1958]

​@@GoodfellasX21I think you're exactly right. Oblivion hit me harder than any other game I've played having never played a game like that before. I really hoped Starfield would bring out that same immersive and atmospheric feeling again, but it doesn't. It sucks. It's boring. And worst of all it feels like it's trying to be immersive but just falls short in every single way.

[@payton7000]

Other BGS games: Go to town. Recieve quest. Leave town. Find cool things to sidetrack. Starfield: Go to town. Recieve quest. Go to other side of town. Complete quest. Recieve new quest to travel to next town. Nothing to explore along the way. Go to new town. Repeat.

[@6e756c6c]

I can live with the creation engine and loading screens. Boring exploration, characters, story/quests and annoying game mechanics not so much. Don't blame the tools. Blame the bad workmen.

[@wkadalie]

So true...good workmen would have updated their tools....they wouldn't use a wrench as a screw driver. I also think we gamers enabled them for too long. We should have boycotted 4 games ago and forced to adapt. Now it's too late......they won't be able to change for Elder Scroll...or the next Fallout.

[@nyyfandan]

Having hundreds of sandwiches in your ship is cool, I agree. The problem is, it's only cool once or twice. It's not some great feature people are asking for

[@jordank5328]

Regarding sample size, i do survey based market research full time so i can comfortably say that while n=90 isnt huge and might not generate statistically significant hypothesis tests, in an expert population like this its enough people to get a directional idea of the trends. So it should be a fairly reliable cross section for the purposes of a non academic video

[@blazingnomad]

Starfield needs no fixing. Starfield needs to remain a big black spot on Bethesda's resume to remind them that they need to improve. They've been using the same engine since Oblivion. They've been having the same bugs for decades and relying on modders to do theur jobs. It's unfathomable that every Bethesda game has an unofficial patch to make it stable and playable. It's an insult to their fans.

[@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917]

As a game dev, I'd say it's too big and complicated to fix right now. There's just too much, so it would take years to fix for very little reward. But, you could easily go the New Vegas route and make individual games with the engine and mechanics focusing on individual planets. So, start with Starfield: New York Planet, and then just keep putting out new 'planets' until eventually you pretty much have a full solar system of planets that all feel unique and full of life while profiting with every 'planet' sold. As for the main story, it really just needs to be overhauled entirely, which can't happen, but you could hire some KZbinrs who are very aware of the source material and community's expectations to punch up the dialogue to satisfy the core audience. You could probably have that done in about a month.

[@rpgadventurer32]

They need to replace the engine! That's the only solution, even if it means no games in the near future! They are already significantly behind current industry standards due to this horribly outdated engine, and there's no update that can fix its issues.

[@cristoelmago]

Starfield cannot be "fixed" because it is not a game, it's a demonstration of CE2. They didn't do a thing in 2-3 years and released this DEMO that was mounted on 3 months and tested 1 more month

[@themukster1]

Personally I'm sad that CDPR is dropping redEngine, and I think BGS should drop creation engine but replace it with in house tech. The fact that unreal is gaining so much ground sucks for diversity in games. UE4 is the number cause for shader stutter on PC games, and its something they never fixed. So if everyone uses the same engine, then all games will have the same problems, and one big company will have all the money. I applaud the Japanese companies who for the most part are sticking with their in house engines, and the big boys like Bethesda have the money to develop in house tech.

[@bigbalticbox]

I'm sure the Unreal bubble will burst sooner rather than later

[@elixwhitetail]

They have the money but what matters is the time. Building a new engine from scratch up to the point that it's ready for a Starfield-level game is a 5-10 year effort. If they started now they might produce a brand new game on it sometime after Fallout 5 comes out.

[@raemont1328]

Starfield is such a splash in the pan. It existed, got trashed and now it is barely even remembered anymore.

[@Ondar007]

I spent about 250h in Starfield doing all the quests I was able to find and it was quite fun. But there is like no point in going back after the handcrafted content is all consumed.

[@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo]

Explain that to those of us who have 1000 hours in the game

[@tomstar1800]

@@UmmerFarooq-wx4yoyou are smooth brained, try going outside

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

@@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo lol

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

Yeah, unfortunately the game doesn’t have the same staying power as there previous games… unless you like building stuff

[@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo]

@@sagearmaggedon7307 not if you're role playing like panning for gold.

[@DaemonJax]

I don't own the game and haven't played the game, but I'd imagine loading screens could be hidden and with the speed of modern NVME M.2 drives, the time it takes to load data should be inconsequential -- so the "loading problem" must be in how much processing is needed to convert that data into the stuff you need to see on your screen just to get past the loading screen. Even when considering that, I'd still think it could be effectively hidden where it really matters. Maybe they devoted next to zero dev time to it for some reason? Or maybe the loading screen issue is being overblown (maybe by people with potato PCs). From past experience, the problem with Betheda games (after Morrowind) is that they're not actually good GAMES.

[@metallboy25]

"They were trying to do something different, something novel" They were literally trying to make No Mans Sky with a different graphical style. 😂

[@Matthew-McCallister]

When it comes to ANY project, the worst feeling is the slow realization you need to rewrite everything.

[@RockyRoadRage]

They introduce us to the Starfield lore by having you walk through a frigging museum in game, then as you complete your playthrough they set up another little museum scenario based on your gameplay which worked alright 9 years ago as part of the Fallout 4 quest that followed Kellog's life but as an ending to their current day triple A game "25 years in the making" just no. When I finished Dragons Dogma 2 recently and they rolled the cutscenes showing the results of my gameplay I was blown away by how emotional and satisfying they ended the story.

[@tomfrien]

I can’t believe the same team that gave us the blood, the guts and the gore of fallout 3. Gave us literally a G for general audiences mature game. And just the huge decline in the writing quality.

[@CNM3]

Games are much more heavily influenced by internal and external politics nowadays. A lot of games even games like Gears of War now called Gears lost their weight and Intensity. Starfields gunplay is bad because enemies are bullet sponges and there's barely any punch to the weapons.

[@delighted2849]

Fallout 3 was a shit game compared to Fallout new vegas, with 3x the dev time and resources. Bethesda has always been bad

[@Praetoreon]

I still love how Baulders Gate just pulled the rug out from under everyone’s Starfield hype and rocked the industry by moving the launch date earlier in order to launch right before Starfield dropped. It made the failure of Starfield so much worse because we had a fresh AAA rpg to show us that it’s still possible to make amazing RPGs in today’s environment. Bethesda has no excuse anymore.

[@evilkep7390]

Here's the thing, if a game sucks when it comes out a lot of people are never coming back.. so anything "fixed " or added larer is too little too late

[@thientuongnguyen2564]

And if a game relies solely on modders to fix what the devs should have, buyers are to blame as well.

[@jarivuorinen3878]

Not necessarily, marketing is what makes a difference here. Cyberpunk 2077 was buggy as f when it launched, and it took CDPR over a year to get the game to stable playable form. 1.6 was very playable and immersive, but didn't bring lots of people back yet. True renaissance happened as a result of CDPR marketing 2.0 patch and Phantom Liberty with big money, and media hopped to that bandwagon once again. As a result they effectively fixed a game and player interest was revived, and new customers bought the game and DLC. Personally I think that CDPR should have delivered working game to start with, but their damage mitigation strategy paid off, and I can applaud them for that. Bethesda games have also had something similar, but community modders have been largely involved in reviving player interest. Many bugs and lack of content, and boring content, can be fixed by mods in Creation engine. Technical aspects like loading screens or how the engine handles memory unfortunately can not, these are for Bethesda to fix, but I doubt they can nor will do that for Starfield.

[@giuuig]

One thing that I didn't see anyone mention is the fact that Starfield has the worst color grading I've seen lately, it's literally impossible to have the game use the entire dynamic range of a monitor, both in sdr and hdr, black levels are always ridiculously high, while whites are too dark in sdr and too bright in hdr, a complete mess

[@rrc3]

Got it: Starfield is Indiana Jones in a Lead-Lined Refrigerator called Creation Engine.

[@RikiRaccoon]

I would have said they were a 5 or 6 even with Skyrim being first released. There was a game breaking bug in Skyrim's launch, main quest could not be completed because of it (a guy would not come to open a locked door). The door could not be picked. The trifecta of Leakers, Hackers, and Pirates managed to not only FIX the day 1 bug, but fixed the bug BEFORE the game was even OFFICIALLY RELEASED. Which means they had to also FIND the bug to fix it, and fix it without official modding tools! Bethesda had the excuse of being a relatively small lesser known dev team with Morrowind. They coasted on that excuse with Fallout 3 and Oblivion, by the time of Skyrim? they had already gotten lazy and relied on modders to fix everything they couldn't be bothered to.

[@MitchCyan]

I sometimes think about how different the world and my life have become since Fallout 4 came out.

[@aymandonia9710]

I thought Starfield was like Star Citizen but with a story line, advanced rpg system, and a higher budget, but my dreams were much bigger than reality.

[@ralaxgaming]

Star Citizen solved all of the problems Luke mentioned but at the cost of 12 years and a game still in alpha with most of the actual content left to develop.

[@alpsalish]

Both suck.

[@MartinOReilly-mb4um]

I really did think no way would Starfield have load screen for flying straight to and landing on a planet after No Man's Sky showed it could be done 7 years ago. Little did I know...

[@BalthazarB2]

​@@ralaxgamingIndeed. The developers behind Star Citizen have been making their own tools to deliver the vision they have on the game, and they refuse to compromise.

[@alpsalish]

@@BalthazarB2 Sure. Even if they do...

[@TheBHAitken]

Starfield was Bethesda's "Minimal Contractual Obligation" before the senior staff could cash out their retirements and it shows. They had eight years, a proverbial army of programmers, unlimited budget and most of their R&D already done for them by the modding community. Really, there was no excuse.

[@blaze595]

From what I understand, sticking with the same in-house engine isn’t that rare in big studios; under the assumption that it’s constantly updated and overhauled up to modern standards over the years… …the problem is Bethesda just hasn’t kept up anywhere near enough with the Creation engine.

[@boowiebear]

This video reminded me how disappointing Starfield is. I waited in line for previous Bethesda midnight opens. Likely hundreds of hours spent in their games. I played Starfield for 15 hours and have no plans to ever play again. Awful game.

[@ProbablyCheddar]

Creation engine is the blackberry phone of game engines. Can’t wait for the Biopic “Bethesda” with Glenn Howerton as Todd Howard.

[@kanaria-cu3uv]

if DD2 was made by bethesda, you would go through 5 different loading screens just to get to an inn from out of town

[@garbearfar1394]

Atleast fast traveling would be easier 😭😭 never enough ferry stones

[@RicJangles]

sure, and perhaps that way NPC's wouldn't have to load 5 meters away from you 💀

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

Guys, stop. The loading screens are a result of the game having multiple locations and areas of play, that are separated by large swaths of space. Want proof? Bethesdas older games, even Morrowind(which ran on a much older engine) didn’t have loading screens in the world unless you went through a door. This was in 2002. Stop talking pointless trash about the game already and play something that doesn’t load if it bothers you so much.

[@ignskeletons]

As consumers I think we simply have so many options with long open world games, that the risk of playing a known buggy game with tons of loading screens is painful enough to switch to other competing games without these issues. Especially given the time sink, why would I commit myself to something like Starfield when I can start a more fulfilling journey? First impressions are everything and I think they dropped the ball HARD.

[@manlyastronaut6984]

I think it's in part why Star Citizen is taking this long to develop. They are solving the issues Starfield had (64bit coordinates system, persistent entity streaming, replication layer, server meshing, etc.)

[@charles2703]

Star Citizen is a scam.

[@max1mus540]

Been gaming nearly 40 years (all but the last 9 months on console). I have nearly 400 hours in Starfield and even started over after it broke 200 hours in. Have never played any game more than this one. Truth is, I’m more in love with the idea of the game than the game itself. Lots of really good ideas and I love the genre. I love a lot of the customization but the ultimate lack of depth and significant repetition can’t be ignored. This was my first BGS game. Might move to Fallout 4 or something. Will keep playing off and on but it’s time to just admit that it is what it is. This was a really thoughtful survey and video. Appreciate it.

[@garbearfar1394]

Fallout 4, Skyrim and New Vegas are gonna become your best friends soon and you’ll see what everyone is talking about.

[@AnonymousAnonposter]

Sad!

[@somethingbrite8484]

There are those that disagree but even though my introduction to Fallout was with the original games "way back in the day" i actually like Fallout 4 and keep coming back to it. (Heavily modded of course) The story isn't particularly great. It wouldn't win any graphical beauty contests (even on release day it looked a bit dated) but it's a fun world to inhabit because the world building is all there and exploring the map just by walking from one place to another felt organic and I liked that adventure. I still do, even though I now know that world map like the back of my hand and even know exactly where all the random encounter triggers are... I'll probably continue to revisit Fallout 4. But for me Bethesda seem to have lost touch with what actually makes their games work.

[@zipforth]

Honestly, even if they could fix 100% of the technical issues, the lackluster story, mission design, and emergent storytelling make me question if it would even be worth trying to fix it. Then it would just be a well-optimized mediocre game

[@fatrobin72]

For the survey is this an American scale 1-10 where 9 is "ok", 8 and below is panic, or a English scale 1-10 where 5 is "ok" and a 3 or below is panic...

[@samoria7530]

I’m American and I had no idea there was any other way of measuring something than by 5 being middle of the road

[@Foxador]

Those polls mostly make me wonder who are the die-hard stick ups for Bethesda that kept giving it 10/10 for everything. Like there's no way they honestly believe that, they musta have voted that way for other reasons

[@andrewshandle]

Same with the 1/10s, I mean say what you want but a person thinks BGS is a 1/10 they aren't being rational. Anywhere from 4 to 7, sure I can buy, but not a 1 or 10.

[@Foxador]

@@andrewshandle I agree 👍🏻 Say what you will but it's not the absolute worst. It just feels like the wrong engine for this dream game or it didn't have enough time in the oven

[@MrWorshipMe]

I'm not a game developer, but as a software engineer, I don't see why they can't dynamically load and unload zones in the background as the player gets closer or further to those zones... there's plenty of RAM to hold a big enough area so that before the player gets to its edge, it could be loaded... all whilst holding an approximate low detailed version of distant places as a placeholder so that things don't just pop into existence. It could require a rewrite of the engine, but an engine that cares about every object and its physical properties can still stream a huge world. It's not a fundamental impossibility.

[@AndrewBrownK]

Maybe Todd is playing 5D chess and trying to reproduce the dire financial conditions that were the crucible for imbuing Morrowind with love and passion, so that ES6 can be all that it’s meant to be

[@jimmyv3170]

Nah they're backed by a trillion dollar company in Microsoft. At worst, they'll just make Bethesda into Rare, 343, etc just some studio that makes content.

[@gigakubica8793]

Big brain time

[@JordanMarshDev]

Procedural engineer here. The procedural and “repetitive” environments and fishbowl issues are very fixable. For starters they generate landscapes on a seed (probably where you choose to land) but in reality should be using the same seed for everywhere on a planet which would be a literal single variable change when they generate an environment where you chose to land. The invisible walls is harder. They should be unloaded landscape behind you and generating new in front of you like Minecraft but they don’t have that tech it seems. So it is easier to solve design wise with say tethering to the ship or something similar.

[@Nuka-Quantum646]

For me cyberpunk has revealed what games should be, yes I know it had issues for a ling time. But it's current state is the ultimate thankyou to gamers worldwide. A truly immersive, risk taking open world with some of the best characters in gaming for the past decade. Ubisoft, Activision and of course bethesda take notes.

[@sagearmaggedon7307]

They are different games with a different focus. Gamers should take notes: Games are different.

[@nullvoid244]

​ But quality is quality and the lack of it is obvious@@sagearmaggedon7307

[@DrizzyEmin3m]

Seems like Starfield Being bad gave luke more content than it would have if it was good lmaoo

[@patwilson2546]

Been writing software for nearly 40 years. Starfield absolutely can be fixed if ... Heavy duty rewrite of the AI Rewrite the dialogue and provide more quest options. Massive performance overhaul of the engine. It's all software. Of course it can be rewritten. Look at the list above, which is far from a complete list. That is some seriously heavy lifting. Does anybody really believe it's going to happen?

[@gloaming4247]

For me the game would need almost a total re-write. The whole setting is uninspired and incoherent and really doesn't fit the engine (or at the very least the way that Bethesda usually make their games). They didn't build on ANY of the strengths of their previous games and the result is pretty much a masterclass in how not to make a video game.

[@buruzn09]

Starfield was so busy trying to LOOK ambitious that it forgot to actually BE ambitious. It strung me along long enough to exceed the Steam refund policy, but this is one game that I really wish I could just get my money back for. I’m more convinced than ever that Bethesda got lucky with Skyrim and they’ve just been high on their own supply ever since.

[@coregod109]

I don't think engine limitations had anything to do with the state of starfield. What's never talked about is how the movement code and how it feels essentially hasn't changed from morrow wind on. You still have the same janky movement that's 22 years old by now the same goes for the gun play it's essentially fallout 4 and when they released that it wasn't up to par either just less egregious than fallout 3. This is a studio that puts 500 developers to work for 7 years and spends $400M in the process and then the end product has worse game feel than the first person shooter template you can download for free of the unreal store. Realizing that babies first asset flip game in unreal has better game feel than the average Bethesda title should tell you everything you need to know about their "engine limitations" there are no limitations they could get engineers to rework the engine but the studio thinks that using the same player controller from 22 years ago is acceptable and that's why Bethesda hasn't made a decent game in years. It's a mentality problem and the only thing them seem to learn are the wrong lessons they keep dumbing down their RPG mechanics even thought their most popular games feature those more etc.

[@darkdragonsoul99]

I swear some people expected starfield to be Elite Dangerous but with Bethesda quests and on foot combat. You were never going to get that.

[@Thordrel]

Why would you want to fix something when the core of product is corrupted? It's the same situation when you have a rotten apple and you search carefully for a place to bite in.

[@Flip86x]

I don't like the idea of every game using unreal engine. I like having different engines for games with their own quirks. As dated as the creation engine is, I really enjoy the games that have been made with it. With the exception of Starfield. All the Fallout games are great. 4 has the better gameplay but 3 and New Vegas are great in their own ways. Plus, I loved TES Oblivion. Much more than Skyrim. Oblivion was the first Bethesda game I played and I couldn't get enough of it back in the day. Everyone acts like Skyrim was groundbreaking. It really wasn't. Oblivion had already done everything Skyrim did years before it.

[@dior5454]

I haven’t played at all just watched gameplay. It seems like it just suffers from a tired and outdated formula. This isn’t 2010 anymore. “Go do this thing because…you just should” isn’t cutting it in 2023/24

[@clintkarklus5523]

Todd Howard is one of those rare folks that I like, in spite of his missteps... Maybe even because of them at this point. All the suspect embellishments, re-releasing the same game a dozen times, using Noclip as a marketing arm for a busted product, etc. It's just funny. You could say... "It just works".

[@UNYEILDING]

Showing off the sandwiches should have been a red flag. Oblivion could have a hundred cheese wheels rolling down a staircase.

[@EastyyBlogspot]

Is the creation engine based on the even older gamebryo engine ?

[@Grimmm233]

I believe so

[@vata105]

Yes, an engine thats 27 year old. Gamebryo was created in 1997 and the creation engine its evolution (or upgraded version), and was released in 2011.

[@smolpener7430]

You think game devs are just gonna say "Oh yeah, that's trivial as hell, you should definitely expect more of us"? They want their meal ticket, and they don't want to work for it.