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I hope Starfield's reception marks the end of all huge empty open worlds in gaming.

MarkMe2525

Banned
Not everyone treats Reddit as an accurate representation of what a gaming fanbase feels.

8,168 upvotes doesn’t signify or corroborate anything in the grand scheme of people playing Starfield.
It's what happens when people get stuck in echo chambers. They start believing everyone thinks like them.
 
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Katajx

Member
Marketing and expectations are both problems, and it’s okay to have a problem with those. Borderlands sounded cool with the 1 billion guns. To me it felt like there was a handful and the tiny changes weren’t significantly meaningful.

Filling space with randomly or procedurally generated content is never going to be the same as the handcrafted planets. Quality is going to be better than quantity.

I enjoyed Morrowind. through Fallout 4, but I can’t understand some of the design decisions. As a melee player I appreciated the iterations and improvements in Skyrim and Fallout 4.

Not having the slow mo kills or seemingly melee finishers really hurts the experience for me. They were nice flourishes that expanded upon relatively simple mechanics. It helps on breaking up the monotony of seeings a few punches or blade slashes.

I don’t think Cyberpunk really excels in that area, but it’s disappointing for a Bethesda game to do even less than that after all of their experience in the genre.
 

sainraja

Member
As an adult, I value my time. As a gamer, I also have a huge-ass backlog of titles ready to be played. So keeping it shorter and up to the point when designing your games is always appreciated.
This probably applies to a lot of us, BUT given that you are the one ranting and mentioning your backlog of titles that are ready to be played, maybe you should play those?

Why are they in your backlog, unplayed?
 

Madflavor

Member
Which you can do if your focus on the main story/faction stuff...🤔

Yes but in Skyrim and Fallout 4, if you're not focusing on the main story or faction stuff, you could just go explore that one world, and run into all sorts of wonders and interesting things. That seems to be to a lesser extent in Starfield. Both Skyrim and Fallout had one handcrafted world. The procedurally generate planets have created limitations to what they can do when you leave the cities, hop on to your ship, and just go explore and see what's out there.
 

BlackTron

Member
I don't call walking/running for 10 minutes in one direction to find a small hut with one scientist sitting at table really compelling. Inventory management is also a huge turn off. I'm spending more time in menus than playing. Big meh.

This is exactly what I had a worried feeling the game was gonna end up being when you strip away all the hype. Checkbox point A to point B, menus, transition screens. Not sure it's worth the HD space and time to try it myself, especially when every review says you need to give it enough time to click. Ehh probably will just to have my own informed opinion but damn
 

Gambit2483

Member
Yes but in Skyrim and Fallout 4, if you're not focusing on the main story or faction stuff, you could just go explore that one world, and run into all sorts of wonders and interesting things. That seems to be to a lesser extent in Starfield. Both Skyrim and Fallout had one handcrafted world. The procedurally generate planets have created limitations to what they can do when you leave the cities, hop on to your ship, and just go explore and see what's out there.
See your point. The Exploration at its basis is weak, sure, but the storylines and substories seem to make up for that.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I prefer this to every world having something on it

I haven't gotten near this far yet but I am the type who would find an out of the way hidden moon cave to build an outpost and stash shit
I enjoy ES and Fallout games a lot, but lets face it. Not every plain, mountain or swamp needs shit every 30 second jog. And this even excludes all the fights, unmarked locations, and random shit that isn't big enough to get a location marker.

I dont play UBI games, but I've seen similar maps and it's the same kind of thing. So much stuff shotgunned look at all the icons that overlap.

Imagine having 100s of worlds as densely filled with this kind of stuff. Overload and unrealistic. Not every planet in a space game has to be like below.

skyrim-map-2.jpg
 
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Madflavor

Member
See your point. The Exploration at its basis is weak, sure, but the storylines and substories seem to make up for that.

So that's pretty much where whatever's left of my optimism lies. I'm hoping that the faction storylines, cities, and companions make up for the lackluster exploration.
 

MMaRsu

Member
Yes but in Skyrim and Fallout 4, if you're not focusing on the main story or faction stuff, you could just go explore that one world, and run into all sorts of wonders and interesting things. That seems to be to a lesser extent in Starfield. Both Skyrim and Fallout had one handcrafted world. The procedurally generate planets have created limitations to what they can do when you leave the cities, hop on to your ship, and just go explore and see what's out there.

You can still do that here, everytime you land somewhere it generates handcrafted points of interest lmao.

From caves to expansive facilities.

The content placed on planets is not prodecural.
 
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Robb

Gold Member
Not sure about that. I’ve gone through quite a lot of reviews and being empty has not been a very big complaint from what I can tell. It’s more about being locked to menus, having a lot of loading screens, things not being seamless etc.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
You know there's a user reception on those site too right ? How is that different from this thread ?
The Metacritic user reviews don't unlock until scheduled release date. And at that time people who have never played the game will make the Metacritic user score as useless as it is for every other popular game. Steam user reviews don't unlock until then, either.
 

Lupin25

Member
Using OC/MC can have its oversights in modern gaming.

AC Valhalla - 83-84 on OC/MC
Diablo IV - 88/91 on OC/MC

Great scores, but do they really deserve them?

That’s subjective, but in my opinion when comparing them to their predecessors, they’re worse. Diablo IV fell off a cliff with its online model and AC Valhalla is the GOAT of BLOAT and repetitive content.

Again, 87-88 means a damn good game (though I must admit, review scores are pretttyyy exaggerated these days), but my expectations for Starfield were a bit higher.

Was definitely hoping for its GOTY contention, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be very good.
 

darrylgorn

Member
My first experience with a Bethesda open world game was Oblivion and I thought it was shit when I first played it. Then, people kept pressing about the open world experience, so I gave it another shot and kind of forgot about it as other games pried my attention away around that time.

Then there was fallout 3, and everybody raved about it and after an hour or so of that, I was falling out of consciousness real quick. Still had no idea why people were so accepting of such bland experiences.

Then came Skyrim. This was it. This was the one, right? Granted, this held my attention a little better than the other two, but still, a very shallow experience that put me to sleep after a while.

After that, I would occasionally pop into streams where people played these games and realized one of the critical things I was doing 'wrong'. People loved looting in these games. They would just collect every damn fucking thing and I didn't care to spend my time doing that at all.

So when Fallout 4 came along, I thought, okay, this is finally going to be the one that grabs my attention all the way through. I know how to properly play these games now and even the aesthetic for this one speaks to me much better than the apocalyptic wasteland in Fallout 3.

And unsurprisingly, a few hours into the game, and it was just nope, nope, nope. That's it. Done with these. Never again.

I will say, I have been on and off with No Man's Sky, but even that ended with a disdain for these calorieless, flavourless experiences.

To a lesser degree, I would even throw BOTW/TOTK and Assassin's Creed games in the pile for good measure.

Freedom gets boring, real quick. Thank god for BG3.
 
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Idk WTH y’all problem. It’s a space game and I’m having fun. I don’t expect every planet to have something. Like I’m confused what ppl complaining about
 

RayHell

Member
The Metacritic user reviews don't unlock until scheduled release date. And at that time people who have never played the game will make the Metacritic user score as useless as it is for every other popular game. Steam user reviews don't unlock until then, either.
You're missing the point. Stating that you shouldn't have a user opinion on the game because the media outlet review said it's good is kinda dumb . If it was the case they wouldn't bother to make a user review section. And most of the time in retrospective I find myself leaning more on the user review score than the media one.
 

sendit

Member
My first experience with a Bethesda open world game was Oblivion and I thought it was shit when I first played it. Then, people kept pressing about the open world experience, so I gave it another shot and kind of forgot about it as other games pried my attention away around that time.

Then there was fallout 3, and everybody raved about it and after an hour or so of that, I was falling out of consciousness real quick. Still had no idea why people were so accepting of such bland experiences.

Then came Skyrim. This was it. This was the one, right? Granted, this held my attention a little better than the other two, but still, a very shallow experience that put me to sleep after a while.

After that, I would occasionally pop into streams where people played these games and realized one of the critical things I was doing 'wrong'. People loved looting in these games. They would just collect every damn fucking thing and I didn't care to spend my time doing that at all.

So when Fallout 4 came along, I thought, okay, this is finally going to be the one that grabs my attention all the way through. I know how to properly play these games now and even the aesthetic for this one speaks to me much better than the apocalyptic wasteland in Fallout 3.

And unsurprisingly, a few hours into the game, and it was just nope, nope, nope. That's it. Done with these. Never again.

I will say, I have been on and off with No Man's Sky, but even that ended with a disdain for these calorieless, flavourless experiences.

To a lesser degree, I would even throw BOTW/TOTK and Assassin's Creed games in the pile for good measure.

Freedom gets boring, real quick. Thank god for BG3.
The irony.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
I mean... it's going to sell really well and however boring the actual review text makes the game sound, it's still sitting at a solid MC score. It's not going to do a damn thing to improve game design. Prohibitive costs to develop this scale of game is the only thing that could reign it in.
 

darrylgorn

Member
The irony.

Lol, true. Though with BG3, you can play it very conventionally, if that makes any sense.

The world itself is handcrafted and it feels like you are more directed by a meaningful narrative instead of simply existing in the world.
 
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sendit

Member
Lol, true. Though with BG3, you can play it very conventionally, if that makes any sense.
That's an option for any open world game. Going from main story mission to main story mission. I don't recall a open world game where the game forces the player to do side missions (at that point, it isn't a side mission). It's just nice to have the option to do so, instead of feeling constrained to the main story line.
 

Loomy

Banned
This is a pretty stupid take.
We need to stop hyping these things up. How many Starfield hype threads popped up on here in the week prior to launch?
 
i don't even really like open world games either but Elden Ring was just too damn good. I liked Mass Effect 1's exploring of planets even though it was mostly basic. No Man's Sky also seemed cool when it was originally announced, but we know how that went. I don't know too much about Star Field but if they planet exploration is good and mysterious with surprises, that is awesome.
 

darrylgorn

Member
That's an option for any open world game. Going from main story mission to main story mission. I don't recall a open world game where the game forces the player to do side missions (at that point, it isn't a side mission). It's just nice to have the option to do so, instead of feeling constrained to the main story line.

For sure, but I think with the Bethesda variants, they spread that idea out so much that it seems the point of the games is to simply exist in the world.

It's become this 'in the moment' experience that many people crave, but I find can get boring. The main narrative usually needs to be compelling for me to care to play the game.

Additionally for Bethesda games, it's the robotic NPCs and their face to face perspective during dialogue. The muddled way they speak (they sound distant). They tend to appear very boilerplate and cloned. The nauseating inventory management and looting. And finally, the combat and your character movement -- though it seems this is the one thing that Starfield fixed.
 
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EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
Maybe....... maybe not.

I don't think this is a situation based on the publisher overhyping the game because in Bethesda's defense and Microsoft's defense they were really fucking transparent really about a lot of this

I know people want to bring up how empty the worlds are but Todd literally gave an exact logical and rational reason why that is. Of course you're gonna come across barren planets that have nothing but that's technically how real life is every single place you're gonna go to is not going to be some entire world is that just doesn't make sense, He's trying to create a sense of wonder in which you're rewarded for a searching really hard and finally finding something interesting... I think he's trying to replicate a feeling of you spending the entire night searching worlds and you magically find something very random.


How the fuck can he do that whenever planet you come across this beaming with life? Our own Solar System isn't like that but you guys are sort of demanding something may be a bit unrealistic.

So I know this is going to sound pretty crazy but I'm actually okay with this design choice because it goes against the norm and tries to do something different even with knowing that people will disagree.

So I'm not gonna lie I can feel 100% I would be one of the people actually questioning why the fuck is it that almost every planet we go to is beaming with life it would at some point become a turn off because you have this setting that is trying to remain grounded while trying Gameify every single fucking planet

So I don't think the empty world is some design issue I think it is a choice they made to make it feel realistic to show you what those odds really are and actually searching worlds it's so that way you can get the cool effect of finding something.

So if you guys are able to accept the soul series for being difficult because you'll inevitably end up getting something that's rewarding I'm pretty sure you can respect this idea of them purposely making the world like this to enforce the feeling of finding something unique by purposely creating lots of barren planets to make it something special when you do find the interesting one.....

So I get what Todd was going for and I don't think anything is wrong with it because it's not like he wasn't telling you this before release, no one was tricked into buying this.
 

draliko

Member
I'm sure a couple hundreds of millions of dollars in sales before official release will surely teach other studios not to try this shit at home... Don't change gaf, doom and gloom, doom and gloom.
Super League Money GIF by Anderson .Paak
 
What’s with these threads? Are people not seeing the reviews? What the fuck is going on here with this game. It’s like I’m in la la land where Im the only one seeing the reviews while everyone else’s is seeing 50s or 60s. It’s fuckin crazy…
Fuck the reviews, have you played it? I have, it's not good
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
You can't win. There is no reasonable way to build and populate hundreds or thousands of planets, but if you don't they slam the game with "narrow scope" and too small.
It didn't matter what they chose to do, you would be here complaining about one or the other. And that doesn't even touch the idea that planets should be barren sometimes if you want it to be realistic at all.
 
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Dr.D00p

Member
If the aim of these games is to replicate a real life scenario, in fantastical settings, then they succeed.

...I mean, Real life is boring 90% of the time with the other 10% being filled with everything that makes it worthwhile.
 

Tsaki

Member
You know there's a user reception on those site too right ? How is that different from this thread ?
User scores are not open yet. And even if they were I've learned to always ignore them since you can post a score/review without proof of playing the game.
 

DavidGzz

Gold Member
Some are loving it. Maybe there are games not made for everyone? It's not for me, but I also didn't like Fallout very much. I am going to try it eventually on Game Pass. Obviously people also love No Man's Sky so there is a market for this kind of thing. There are plenty of games for all types of gamers. Move on and don't act like there is a Starfield every year lol!
 

Elysion

Banned
What Starfield desperately needs are vehicles. Buggys, hoverbikes, mechs, boats, submersibles, you name it. Anything to cover large distances quickly, which would make exploration more fun and make the planets feel less empty. I don’t understand why they left this out of the game. Imagine if RDR2 or Witcher 3 didn’t have horses. Just bizarre.
 

UnNamed

Banned
I don't know what people expected in a game settled in space.

I also don't know why, after years and years of boring and empty open world games, they realized just now with Starfield they have enough of OW games.
 

Braag

Member
Aye, empty open worlds are terrible. But when you buy a game about exploring the galaxy, it's kinda given that 99% of the planets are uninhabited and untouched.
 
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