Setsuna Mudou
Member
I think it's more memeing on the overhype some people tried to pull for this bland ass game, especially how some of them doubled down after everyone could see the painful mediocrity this game was. That shit is never not funny
Starfield has 'Mixed' reviews on Steam (Up: 'Recent' reviews are Mostly Negative)
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
The Xbox community is as much to blame. Bethesdas arrogance towards the criticisms have done them no favors though.
Astray
Member
Even the game's description on Steam only invites comparisons without actually telling people about the game. They can't even market the game without coasting on past successes.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
The game had a lot of positive reviews on launch from (1) hardcore of fans of Bethesda games and (2) folks who hadn't really played a substantial amount of the game.
Once more gamers got their hand on the game, the average rating kept coming down. So, apart from that initial burst from hardcore BGS fans, the game almost always had mostly negative reviews.
It started at almost 85-90% positive ratings if I'm not mistaken (when this thread was first created), and now the ratings are 63%. For the average to come down from 90% to 63% within 3 months, you can imagine that most of the reviews had to be negative.
winjer
Member
It started at 86% user score and it was downhill from that.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Checked the 1st post of this thread, and it started at 89%. But yeah, that was the peak score, and it only went downhill.
Sybrix
Member
God damn, Bethesda/Xbox has got to be looking at Starfield now to damage control surely?
This game was so over-hyped for the last 5 years, 1000s planets to explore etc..... and we get maybe 10 different planet types in total, the space travel sucks, the story is weak, the characters are bland and there is nothing magical about this game like Skyrim was.
Fuck, it's so annoying how badly this game has ended up.
Skyrim was and is one of my most favourite games, the way that game let you explore and discover so much, the music, the setting, everything was so perfect.
I was so expecting Starfield to be the same but 10x more given it's a space RPG, fans must have thought, i know i did, that we we're going to get 'Skyrim' on 100s of planets................................................. and all we got was meh.
I really hope a few mega updates can fix this game.
winjer
Member
I saw the 86% in this article:
Starfield becomes Bethesda’s third biggest Steam launch, peaking at 250k concurrent players and getting 86% user rating | Game World Observer
Starfield is the first new IP created by Bethesda in nearly 30 years. The game has finally launched globally on PC and Xbox, receiving generally favorable reviews from players and showing some great numbers.
gameworldobserver.com
I wonder if this is a case where some filters and regions, result in different scores.
diffusionx
Gold Member
I think a lot of people decided to post their negative reviews once Bethesda started telling people that they just were too stupid to understand their game and how it was made. Like, I've made no secret of how let down I was by FFXVI but if the designer at Square started saying that people who didn't like the game just didn't get it I would find any place I could to let the world know how I feel.
It's a hugely disappointing game and everyone except for Xbox shills understand this, but nothing gets people on Steam riled up like devs and publishers treating their customers like idiots.
It's a hugely disappointing game and everyone except for Xbox shills understand this, but nothing gets people on Steam riled up like devs and publishers treating their customers like idiots.
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Fess
Member
I don't think the writing is worse than Skyrim, it's standard Bethesda stiff conversations, and as always there is lots of lore included for those who want to read.
Problem is Skyrim is 12 years old and it does feel old today. And the size and procedural nature of it all means that there is a huge amount of copy paste content. Clean out a pirate nest, go get a miner back to the outpost, go to a cave and collect resources etc. They could've done better no doubt. Plus the easy fast travel make it feel more like a collectathon than other games. You can fast travel from inside a cave on one planet into the center of a city on another planet without having taken a single step inside your carefully crafted spaceship. Odd.
Some quests are cool storywise though. They had an interesting thing cooking with a colony ship…
…which had been traveling in isolation for 200 years and had no way to communicate and thought modern day people were aliens when looking down from orbit at the planetary colonies. The setup was great. They could've done so much with the art and loot and tech.
Anyhow for me personally the writing is no big deal since my main reason for liking it is the game mechanics. I hammer through many dialogues, thankful that it's not a slow cutscene. As said earlier, for me it's a AAA No Man's Sky RPG, slimmed down to a more manageble amount of game mechanics and with great combat. And as with No Man's Sky I can't relate to the widespread negativity. It has issues but I still think it's phenomenal. The ship building is super fun since it's not just another spaceship to fly but internals to walk around in. And the outpost building, while insanely time-consuming, is surprisingly advanced with auto cargo links between multiple outposts and crew and robots and green houses and alien farms etc. And I absolutely love the combat. It's great. Punchy weapons and good variety. More enemy types is needed though and as said before release I think they should've had intelligent alien races. Maybe it comes with the expansion.
I miss the fleet and freighter ship and alien races from NMS. And being able to build with walls and floor instead of just boxes. And land vehicles! Bethesda has lots of work to do but for me it's still a great game, I just hope they're serious when they talk about future updates.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Maybe. I think it may just have been a matter of timing.I saw the 86% in this article:
Starfield becomes Bethesda’s third biggest Steam launch, peaking at 250k concurrent players and getting 86% user rating | Game World Observer
Starfield is the first new IP created by Bethesda in nearly 30 years. The game has finally launched globally on PC and Xbox, receiving generally favorable reviews from players and showing some great numbers.
I wonder if this is a case where some filters and regions, result in different scores.
OP likely created the thread earlier, when the rating was 89%. The website must have taken some more time to write and publish the article. And by then, the score could already have decreased to 86%.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Topher
Identifies as young
Yep. Between that dipshit on twitter, Todd Howard telling PC gamers they should upgrade their PC in response to poor performance and Bethesda direct responses to negative Steam reviews basically telling them their opinions were wrong.......post-launch has been a shitshow for Bethesda. Combine all of that with pre-launch keeping the game under wraps which in retrospect tells us Bethesda knew all along what was wrong with the game.
And all of it was needless. Just let the damn game stand on its own and cut out all the bullshit. None of this shit did Starfield or the game's fans any favors. You are not going to gaslight folks into liking a game they don't like.
geary
Member
Even if all of that was missing, having no real patch to date is outlandish...One Larian hotfix (hotfix, not patch) is putting to shame the post-launch care...This happens when you think you are untouchable....
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
SJRB
Gold Member
I honestly think Todd got blindsided by that question during the livestream and he had to come up with an answer in a split second but at that moment he made the worst possible choice. Instead of saying the sensible "we are working hard on optimization, stuff coming asap blablabla" he did the dumbest fucking thing anyone could do and said the game was running great and perhaps the users' hardware was dogshit and in need of replacement.
No doubt 21 marketing and PR-people spoke to Todd afterwards about this.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
People used to think calling this Skyrim in space is tempering expectations/trashing its potential but things turned out so much worse, how does this even happen, this should have been the pinnacle of Bethesda's prior formula and the game to play for the next x years until the next TES comes along.
Fess
Member
Hello Games kept quiet for a year when they kick started their redemption story. Quick patches isn't important, unless it's broken, what's important is that the future big updates are actually meaningful.
But the biggest blunder is hyping up modding and then not have the modding tools available. That's just plain dumb. And on console there is no backup plan, you're stuck playing it unmodded for like half a year. On PC you can at least do the normal modding but even that is annoying when it was hyped up as being a modders dream come true.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Topher
Identifies as young
If these are the same marketing and PR people who are directing all the gaslighting going on in Steam reviews then I seriously doubt it. When I see the same attitude from top to bottom of the organization in responding to criticism then that tells me this is a concerted strategy. Not saying there is no way you are right, but giving Todd Howard the benefit of the doubt in the face of all the rest of it......hard for me to do.
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SEGAvangelist
Member
I think a part of it is the pile-on effect. The game has its issues, but for whatever reason, negative Starfield videos on YouTube seem to drive a lot of traffic, and they are constantly be pushed to my feed, so I think it's partially a perception/narrative-based thing.
Also, performance, a lack of mod support and quality of life updates are probably hurting user reviews too. Games traditionally recover after that stuff (see The Last of Us).
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SJRB
Gold Member
Fair enough. It is a never-ending pile of bullshit with this guy, so who knows.
diffusionx
Gold Member
The bad thing for Bethesda was that Phantom Liberty came out a few weeks later, and it was also the first time many people were playing Cyberpunk 2077 (including myself). And that game feels 12 years beyond Starfield. Lots of stuff like this came out:
You can just see the difference here, in character design, animation, lighting, presentation, etc. And that quest they showed in this video was an early one in the base game, PL and later quests are a LOT better. And while I know there is a natural tendency to defend your game, if Bethesda is a studio worth a damn they'lll do some soul searching after this and think about why this game landed the way it did. It's just not good enough in 2023.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Are you comparing The Last of Us, one of the most critically acclaimed and highest-rated games ever in history, with Starfield?
You're pretending as if Starfield is a fantastic 10/10 game, and its only issue is performance, like TLOU on PC. That's not the case at all, though.
JTCx
Member
The only thing starfield was good at was being an ad for phantom liberty.
Spitfire098
Member
Scores befitting a mid game 
Topher
Identifies as young
I don't think that is what he is saying at all. I believe he is saying TLOU had to recover from negative Steam reviews due to horrible bugs and performance. He didn't say that was the "only issue" with Starfield though.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
If the negative reviews are primarily because of performance issues, sure. But if the negative reviews are primarily because of the quality of the game itself, fixing those issues will not turn the tide.
Considering that the overwhelming majority of negative Starfield reviews on Steam talk about the game quality and not any performance issues, I do not believe that is the case with Starfield.
SEGAvangelist
Member
That really triggered you for some reason. It's clear that The Last of Us was hit really hard for performance issues and recovered. I'm pointing out that game reviews tend to go back up after performance issues are corrected. I think we could see the same with Starfield, as once all the QoL, performance, and mod stuff is figured out (plus some time out of the spotlight), people will be less harsh on the game. Fallout 76 and Cyberpunk went through the same thing too.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
But the foundation of the game must be super strong in that case, and the negative reviews must be primarily due to performance issues - which is not the case with Starfield.
The overwhelming majority of the negative reviews are mad about the core of Starfield - not the missing QoL or performance issues.
bender
What time is it?
I'd say it's more on games media and fans for continually overlooking and excusing the many faults in Bethesda's titles. Why put the money and effort into improving when you can regurgitate the same flaws ad nauseum. It's nice to see the masses catch up to how I felt when I played Oblivion and maybe with descent being the majority voice this time around, Bethesda will take the criticism to heart and work on very fixable things (animation, character modeling, writing, etc.).
Topher
Identifies as young
We don't have a way of gauging the primary reasons for the negative reviews outside of just scanning them individually. So "overwhelming majority"? Not sure where that comes from considering there are 133k reviews. I've seen several negative reviews that were due to Bethesda's bullshit responses. I did notice a lot of references to performance early on in reviews, but seems that is not longer a big factor, thankfully. Yeah....plenty of folks complain about empty boring worlds as well. So yeah, there are some aspects of Starfield that can be fixed and some cannot.
Topher
Identifies as young
Well....that's your opinion on Bethesda games but others not sharing that opinion isn't necessarily "overlooking and excusing" anything. Starfield has many issues that are unique to Starfield as a space game. I don't think folks are suddenly having revelations that they have always hated Bethesda games now that Starfield exists. I still enjoy Oblivion and Skyrim today. If I had to guess I'm sure that's the case for many Bethesda fans who don't like Starfield. Having said that, yes Bethesda does need to update much of what they do to fit more with the times and newer tech. Starting with that engine.....
I hate to be that guy, but quite honestly from the very beginning, i had serious doubts about "Skyrim in space" mainly because I personally find space themed games kind of boring in the first place. But I always held out hope that bethesda would find some way to make it into another skyrim that pulls you in and has you thinking about the game when you're not playing it, etc.
But at the same time part of my logical brain was stuck on the state of the industry and how when studios get that big, it becomes just a huge industrial machine with tons of people raising families and maintaining jobs on the back of that, and the primary mission becomes lost amongst people just getting hired and happy to have jobs for their career and feeding their families. at that point it worries me that cookie cutter games like this are the result because everyone does what they're told and checks off all the boxes for what's supposed to be a "good" game just so theg keep getting paid and can keep supporting their families. Which is good for the general economy I guess but it does t necessarily make games people actually want to play.
bender
What time is it?
The flaws in Bethesda titles really aren't an opinion and not calling them out is absolutely excusing them. As much as I love Morrowind, I was never oblivious to its' flaws and when those flaws get repeated with every new game afterwards, I just don't feel as charitable with every subsequent release. One's tolerance for the flaws can vary, but eventually there will be a tipping point and hopefully we are at that point. Bethesda's greatest strength is creating massive worlds with interesting environmental storytelling (probably the biggest reason why Starfield has such a negative reception). They always feel like they are 10+ years behind when it comes to things like combat, animations, and character modeling. While writing has never been their strongest suit, they somehow are getting worse at it. And with them trying to grab larger audiences, which I don't really fault them for, they continually strip out the RPG elements from their games.
Topher
Identifies as young
What are Bethesda's factual flaws then?
bender
What time is it?
That they continue to be far behind industry standards when it comes to things like combat systems, character animations and modeling, and release games that are plagued with bugs that will largely go unfixed, even when they've released a title for the umpteenth time.
Topher
Identifies as young
I'll agree on the bugs but beyond that we are just going to have to disagree on what is factual and what is opinion.
bender
What time is it?
I'll agree that you are wrong, human.
geary
Member
What are the industry standards? Are the industry standards the ones imposed by 3-4 developers? Then 99% of the games in this industry are below standards.
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
They screwed themselves making Starfield grounded instead of going the fantastical route. (Which is funny since they pivoted to multiverse space magic anyway)
Realism is boring. Fantasy and absudity is fun. If you're opting for the former then you've already given yourself a massive handicap
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bender
What time is it?
Industry standards are what we should expect from games at any given time. 3-4 developers might be exceptional, but that doesn't mean the rest are below standards unless of course what is being presented feels dated.
Topher
Identifies as young
Bethesda actually attempted to add some fantasy to Starfield with the powers obtained from the temples. Kind of half-assed it though. Either way, I've always been a bit of a spaceship nerd so this kind of game was right up my alley. Having said that, how Bethesda implemented the space travel aspect of it was one of my many early gripes about the game. Plenty of other space games have done it better than Starfield, including Everspace 2 which came out earlier in the year. I'm guessing those guys didn't tie themselves to a decade+ old engine though.
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geary
Member
A standard is established by having a point of reference and personal preference is not a standard. I dont try to defend Stafield, but the term "industry standards" is overused and never clarified of what represents.
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bender
What time is it?
No shit.
PisswasserYellow
Member
This is what really did it for me. I put about 30 hours into Starfield and thought it was OK, but I booted up Cyberpunk to compare and there really is no comparison. Cyberpunk makes Starfield look like an old ass game wrapped in a new package, which is essentially what it is.
Mortisfacio
Member
Pretty much. I went from BG3 > Phantom Liberty > Starfield. I don't know if I'd dislike Starfield enough to drop it if I didn't come fresh out of two better RPG's that I spent a combined 200+ hours on. The start of burnout + a lesser experience, I've sidelined it. Will try again whenever the city map update comes out in 2024.