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Starfield has 'Mixed' reviews on Steam (Up: 'Recent' reviews are Mostly Negative)

Three

Gold Member
What even is this thread, what other game has this sort of "review watch". I mean I am all for it for communities, but you mofos are here and other threads are empty
What other game had a thread trying to hype it up through its steam reviews? This was yet another game hype thread but it kind of backfired this time. Go search and you'll see there are only a few games getting steam review coverage hype threads, the only other ones I can remember were Hifi Rush and BG3. Most of the time games that are actually very positively reviewed on steam don't get a thread at all, I'm willing to bet some positively reviewed steam games would probably even get shitted on. It just so happens that this overhype thread for Starfield went wrong and reviews weren't extremely positive, add the fact that it's an exclusive and you get a lot of back and forth with excessive damage control on one side and schadenfreude on the other.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
I would bit you'd have more fun here than playing the game itself.:messenger_tears_of_joy:
Well, its not like I don't agree, tho:
What other game had a thread trying to hype it up through its steam reviews? This was yet another game hype thread but it kind of backfired this time. Go search and you'll see there are only a few games getting steam review coverage hype threads, the only other ones I can remember were Hifi Rush and BG3. Most of the time games that are actually very positively reviewed on steam don't get a thread at all, I'm willing to bet some positively reviewed steam games would probably even get shitted on. It just so happens that this overhype thread for Starfield went wrong and reviews weren't extremely positive, add the fact that it's an exclusive and you get a lot of back and forth with excessive damage control on one side and schadenfreude on the other.
It is more of a, the second part which botheres me, not that there is some tracking of review from the people. I actually find that idea good.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
The discourse surrounding this game has been fascinating to witness on Steam. There are some people blaming the mythical "Sony pony" for this games' demise on the platform.


Never seen anything like it before.
I love how his attempts to building a hateful narrative backfire, and everybody just starts pointing out to him the flaws of the game -- the very things he wanted to divert attention from lol.

nNSWask.jpg
 
IGN in enjoying starfield drama.


Trying to butter the other side of the bread after that 7/10 Starfield score 😁

I love how his attempts to building a hateful narrative backfire, and everybody just starts pointing out to him the flaws of the game -- the very things he wanted to divert attention from lol.

nNSWask.jpg

Going by the performance of some of Sony's recent PC ports, you'd think there aren't nearly enough ponies in the Steam field capable of dragging the game's score down 😏

It's such a ridiculous conclusion to draw that it makes me wonder if that person is being genuine or simply attempting to spread a narrative. I'm inclined to go with the latter in many cases, but am also aware some people are that heavily invested in the "war" which can blunt their perception and understanding.

It's deflection, pure and simple. Can't accept that a first-party platform exclusive isn't getting resounding accolades following massive hype? Just pin it on fanboys of the opposition.

XboxERA already signaled the go-ahead for this in a way by insisting reviewers were going to "unfairly" judge the game due to bias. And we all know what type of biases they were suggesting, if you've ever watched how some of the people at XboxERA react towards PlayStation stuff (like Nick's ridiculous rant against PlayStation when Starfield and RedFall were initially delayed).

1m+ easily. Right now, it's 325k. Even after all these reviews and gamepass.

Hmmm....nah. Keep in mind you only need to pay a fraction of the price for the game, to play it in Game Pass. You can get a 14-day trail for like $6 in places, that's practically free.

That's how I'm gonna try it out, I'll just have to do so over a couple days this week instead of the weekend like I originally planned.
 
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Reaching new concurrent player peak on Steam.

Still curious if it can hit 370K. I took the premier day's peak CCU and gave it a 1.5x multiplier. Which I think is more than fair.

As comparison, BG3 had a 1.8x multiplier from its official day of launch to the day it saw its peak CCU on Steam. But that game had universal praise and stronger WOM than Starfield has been seeing.

So how high you guys reckon the concurrent players count could be on Steam if Starfield wasnt on gamepass? I estimate at least 700k (right now it's >300k on steam).

Now I don't really know if gamepass revenue from this could really compensate for actual sales ($70 per piece) but I personally feel that gamepass really fucks over big games in final revenue department.

550K - 650K. There is probably an influx of new Game Pass subs for the month just to play the game, but that's at most $9.99 or $10.99 (no MP in this game). Some will get it for less.

A lot of those folks would not spend $70 outright to buy the game in its launch month.
 
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poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
What other game had a thread trying to hype it up through its steam reviews? This was yet another game hype thread but it kind of backfired this time.
I think you missed the point. I am pretty sure that this thread was in response to predictions in other threads that the game would get massacred in steam reviews. Most games don't get a steam review thread because most games don't have people predicting steam reviews.
 

Three

Gold Member
I think you missed the point. I am pretty sure that this thread was in response to predictions in other threads that the game would get massacred in steam reviews. Most games don't get a steam review thread because most games don't have people predicting steam reviews.
That could be why this thread exists, I can't say I've seen these predictions of a massacre for this to be a response though. It's not like we haven't seen steam review threads just existing without predictions though, they even mention starfield in it predicting the exact opposite:

 
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feynoob

Banned
that's insane, that means around 75% of all the people currently playing already played in EA. People are either on Game Pass or just not giving much of a damn for Starfield on Steam.
It's mostly gamepass. The game cost 70$ on steam. It's no brainier that people will choose the gamepass pc version.
 

Zoloft

Banned
I had more fun downloading the preload version than actually playing this sad clunky unoptimised Bethesda garbage.

Steam review scores never lie, and quality always reflects for CCU.
After all the hype I think 350k CCU even after considering game pass players is kind of low

Steam players, in general, are the most informed gamers. we are not idiots.
Fuck this cocky developer. Your game is not done being optimized and my PC is just fine for it.

Kudos for the Digital foundry video analysis. Be ashamed of your earlier statement Bethesda.
 

demigod

Member
The discourse surrounding this game has been fascinating to witness on Steam. There are some people blaming the mythical "Sony pony" for this games' demise on the platform.


Never seen anything like it before.

I love how his attempts to building a hateful narrative backfire, and everybody just starts pointing out to him the flaws of the game -- the very things he wanted to divert attention from lol.

nNSWask.jpg
“The last game to get this level of hate was Cyberpunk 2077 which also wasn't playable on a specific console.”

What a clown.
 

Thyuda

Member
It's mostly gamepass. The game cost 70$ on steam. It's no brainier that people will choose the gamepass pc version.
I disagree. Bethesda games are huge and take a lot of time, plus they wanna be replayed, even after several months of pause.

Gamepass is 15$, so 4.6 months of active gamepass would buy you the game. For me personally the choice is simple, I'd have to buy the game. Even if I played for 2 months (30$) and wanted to continue in my third, I'd already would experience regret that I didn't just outright buy it.

Gamepass is great if you have a lot of time and want to play a lot of different games at once, but for huge, expansive RPGs... Not for me.
 
330k people are playing the game.
Let's pray for their souls.

It's dropping again. 327K now. Didn't think they'd reach peak until later in the evening.

Just realized NFL season started (really) today. That might have some impact on CCU as well. Depends on the overlap of Starfield players and football fans.

that's insane, that means around 75% of all the people currently playing already played in EA. People are either on Game Pass or just not giving much of a damn for Starfield on Steam.

Potentially. I do think since CCU has stayed somewhat consistent since launch, then there's a good chunk of CCU at any given time who are the same people over and over. But a larger chunk of the CCU would be new people, either those who started later and then stick around or just tried it out and dropped it quickly after.

Due to those reasons CCU doesn't actually give a completely stable view of potential sales. The correlation between CCU and sales isn't particularly strong unless there's more granularity (% time per day per user, for example). But at least Steam offers some transparency on its CCU and players; Microsoft does the absolute bare minimum and even then, it's quite lame.
 
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Spyxos

Member
I don't know why I should buy it again. I got it on gamepass. I am having fun. Is it 10/10? Probably not, but it is still a very good game.
 
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feynoob

Banned
I disagree. Bethesda games are huge and take a lot of time, plus they wanna be replayed, even after several months of pause.

Gamepass is 15$, so 4.6 months of active gamepass would buy you the game. For me personally the choice is simple, I'd have to buy the game. Even if I played for 2 months (30$) and wanted to continue in my third, I'd already would experience regret that I didn't just outright buy it.

Gamepass is great if you have a lot of time and want to play a lot of different games at once, but for huge, expansive RPGs... Not for me.
Gamepass pc is very cheap and you aren't only getting starfield.
While Bethesda games are large, it makes sense to use the service to test the game before fully purchasing it.

It's dropping again. 327K now. Didn't think they'd reach peak until later in the evening.

Just realized NFL season started (really) today. That might have some impact on CCU as well. Depends on the overlap of Starfield players and football fans.
For me, it will be gamepass pc and the 5 day early launch which impacted the audience perception.

We will see whether it will go higher in 2 weeks or lower.
 

Sleepwalker

Member
Went back and looked for the lols since I see people pretending there wasnt a hype campaign








There's more but those have actual tidbits of news or real announcements, these are just pure hype threads from before the game released, some of the OPs are now banned, oops.


Notice that this is in no way indicative of the quality of the game, my wife is enjoying it a lot and ill jump in sometime next week but let's not try to rewrite history.
 
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feynoob

Banned
GHG GHG the guy is lunatic. His takes are soo stupid as hell.



 

killatopak

Gold Member
Congratulations on experiencing Bethesda game.
That is very normal launch experience.

Cpdr and Bethesda are like sisters in this department. Release a buggy game and fix it later.

CDPR fixing bugs later? True. Proven by Witcher and Cyberpunk.

Bethesda? My guy, I have a laundry list of 2011 release bugs on my copy of Skyrim 10 year anniversary edition

If there's any semblance of fixes, the credit goes to modders not Bethesda.
 

feynoob

Banned
I don't think its a bad game at all, quite the contrary

I don't play games I consider bad
The issue of the game is minor and not that serious like people make it out to be.

It's just that this gen, people are too picky.

However, certain design choices are baffling and makes no sense in this age.
 
For me, it will be gamepass pc and the 5 day early launch which impacted the audience perception.

We will see whether it will go higher in 2 weeks or lower.

Why would Starfield Steam CCU shoot up two weeks from now? Is there anything in particular? From my understanding most games see their peak CCU on the first weekend after they officially release.

If anything the 5 day early access helped add to the total player count MS & Bethesda reported. MS obfuscates pretty much all Game Pass player data for things like CCU, outside of when they want to do PR statements. Even there, they don't specify Game Pass in particular, it's always lumped in with something else (the 1+ million CCU record mentioned for example was PC Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox game purchasers, and Steam buyers).

It's probably fair to say though that across all platforms Starfield's managed 1+ million CCU each day since official launch, as it seems Game Pass & console could be a 3.5x multiplier over the Steam numbers in a best-case and probable sense. So today for example, they might've hit a 1.157 million CCU across all platforms going off the Steam peak earlier today and using that multiplier.
 
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feynoob

Banned
Why would Starfield Steam CCU shoot up two weeks from now? Is there anything in particular? From my understanding most games see their peak CCU on the first weekend after they officially release.

If anything the 5 day early access helped add to the total player count MS & Bethesda reported. MS obfuscates pretty much all Game Pass player data for things like CCU, outside of when they want to do PR statements. Even there, they don't specify Game Pass in particular, it's always lumped in with something else (the 1+ million CCU record mentioned for example was PC Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox game purchasers, and Steam buyers).

It's probably fair to say though that across all platforms Starfield's managed 1+ million CCU each day since official launch, as it seems Game Pass & console could be a 3.5x multiplier over the Steam numbers in a best-case and probable sense. So today for example, they might've hit a 1.157 million CCU across all platforms going off the Steam peak earlier today and using that multiplier.
Mainly due to mods. 2nd is that it's Bethesda game. Those gamepass users will switch to steam soon in the future.

As for CCU, it doesn't show you the overall players. Just how many people played at the same time.

Considering there is 24 hour and time zone difference, it's hard to estimate those players from CCu.

MS have the data and we have to go by it.
 
Mainly due to mods. 2nd is that it's Bethesda game. Those gamepass users will switch to steam soon in the future.

As for CCU, it doesn't show you the overall players. Just how many people played at the same time.

Considering there is 24 hour and time zone difference, it's hard to estimate those players from CCu.

MS have the data and we have to go by it.

There's no way substantial mods will show up for Starfield in just two weeks; if we're talking the type that would substantially jump the CCU, those will probably take a couple of months or longer. Those types of mods are quality and that takes time.

WRT overall players yes MS have the data; the problem is they obfuscate it significantly. So effectively, it makes their claims worthless, at least to me, since I don't know what methodology they are using to make certain claims. For example I just found out thanks to others mentioning it, that Microsoft counts a "player" as device-specific, even if the same person is accessing across two or more devices with Play Anywhere.

So someone accessing Starfield from their Series S, then Series X, then PC, then tablet in the span of a day would count as four 'players' towards any metric stating total players. It's not actually four unique users being counted, at least as I've come to understand it.
 

demigod

Member
Went back and looked for the lols since I see people pretending there wasnt a hype campaign








There's more but those have actual tidbits of news or real announcements, these are just pure hype threads from before the game released, some of the OPs are now banned, oops.


Notice that this is in no way indicative of the quality of the game, my wife is enjoying it a lot and ill jump in sometime next week but let's not try to rewrite history.
DenchDeckard DenchDeckard wasn’t hyped for the game even though he said he was and even made a thread about naming his spaceship. Nope, no hype whatsoever, just fake news.
 

azertydu91

Hard to Kill
I don't think its a bad game at all, quite the contrary

I don't play games I consider bad
Why ?I think that's an area where we as gamers need to progress, there's no shame to enjoy a bad game.I have played tons of bad games and enjoyed some (even moreso with friends but to be fair even a brazillian wax is fun with friends).I wish that one day the gaming community matures enough to be able to have what's in french is called "nanards" (movies so bad that they are good.
I even think that they are more telling about your tastes than good games, they are too easy to like but liking a bad game needs a real opinion.
I wanted to make a thread about it but sadly I already know the outcome: warrior trying to subtly pissing on another comunity.
But yeah my advice play some bad games with friends (a bit of booze, pizzas) and it can lead to a great night.

Edit:We tried a retro night with some friend and tried some old batman games on ps1 ...Some were amazingly bad but we had a great night.I also brought my deck while I was in chemo a few weeks ago and believe the retro bad games had a real success.
 
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BlueLyria

Member
What does this mean? 2023 is this year so if you felt like that was a lot of time isn't it the opposite?

On a sour note, had to leave a negative review on steam for starfailed. Yeah.
It feels like the year just flew by and I totally forgot about Ori, I thought it was 2022 tbh
 

Freeman76

Member
the shills are annoying but the mental breakdown and denial is understandable.
they were uber-hyped for years to believe
game supposed to be a cultural phenomenon, repeat of skyrim, gotg etc. etc.

honestly i’d be surprised if anyone is still talking about it two months after release at this point.
People will still be enjoying this in 5 years time. These plebs review bombing it will move onto the next thing to project their hate onto soon enough, and the Starfield community will be left to enjoy this masterpiece
 

feynoob

Banned
There's no way substantial mods will show up for Starfield in just two weeks; if we're talking the type that would substantially jump the CCU, those will probably take a couple of months or longer. Those types of mods are quality and that takes time.

big ones

WRT overall players yes MS have the data; the problem is they obfuscate it significantly. So effectively, it makes their claims worthless, at least to me, since I don't know what methodology they are using to make certain claims. For example I just found out thanks to others mentioning it, that Microsoft counts a "player" as device-specific, even if the same person is accessing across two or more devices with Play Anywhere.
that is your tinfoil hat.
So someone accessing Starfield from their Series S, then Series X, then PC, then tablet in the span of a day would count as four 'players' towards any metric stating total players. It's not actually four unique users being counted, at least as I've come to understand it.

that is not how ccu works. it just a log for players playing at the same time.
here is a math if you want to find player count yourself.

24 hour a day / divide by the time played at that day, and you can find how many people played that day.

12m players (2 hour play time a day)
6m players (4 hours playtime)
4m players (6 hour playtime).

that is 1m ccu player count for 24 hour.

from sep1/6 to sep 10 is 240h/120.
if we convert it to gamer time, that is 20h/10h (2hour a day) to 60h/30h (6 hour a day).

that is a basic math for finding the player count if you dont trust MS.

CCU gets lower from time to time, so pay attention to that. best method would be average ccu.

Also keep in mind for players thar only play 10 hour or lower and never touch the game after that.
 

Red5

Member
There's no way substantial mods will show up for Starfield in just two weeks; if we're talking the type that would substantially jump the CCU, those will probably take a couple of months or longer. Those types of mods are quality and that takes time.

WRT overall players yes MS have the data; the problem is they obfuscate it significantly. So effectively, it makes their claims worthless, at least to me, since I don't know what methodology they are using to make certain claims. For example I just found out thanks to others mentioning it, that Microsoft counts a "player" as device-specific, even if the same person is accessing across two or more devices with Play Anywhere.

So someone accessing Starfield from their Series S, then Series X, then PC, then tablet in the span of a day would count as four 'players' towards any metric stating total players. It's not actually four unique users being counted, at least as I've come to understand it.

Nexus already has 1000 mods, although only a very few are noteworthy, but 1000 mods in the span of a week means a very active mod scene, can't wait to see what they do.
 

RGB'D

Member
Diablo performed better than this, Starfield is more in the realm of BG3 act 3 performance with way more bugs.....ive played 18 hours now and ive counted 30 people floating from their chairs into the sky out of a ship or half their body in the ground or them running into walls continuously - I also got stuck on small debris 5 times.
I didn't say it was the best. Diablo was also super polished. As was BG 3. Probably my top 3 performance launches
 

big ones

No not those types of mods; I mean those in terms of content. The sort of mods that basically try transplanting other IP's world into the game by some major degree. Those sort of mods would bring a lot more interest than just those adding DLSS support or better framerate or resolution options.

that is your tinfoil hat.

I've been told multiple times that is how Microsoft measures players: due to Play Anywhere, a user using multiple devices counts as a player on each device they use to access a game. So # unique users * # accessed devices, that's how MS tallies player counts.

It's probably not even exclusive to them; any company doing similar tracking by similar metrics probably uses some version of that if we're talking games. Gives the best means of providing biggest possible numbers.

that is not how ccu works. it just a log for players playing at the same time.
here is a math if you want to find player count yourself.

24 hour a day / divide by the time played at that day, and you can find how many people played that day.

12m players (2 hour play time a day)
6m players (4 hours playtime)
4m players (6 hour playtime).

that is 1m ccu player count for 24 hour.

from sep1/6 to sep 10 is 240h/120.
if we convert it to gamer time, that is 20h/10h (2hour a day) to 60h/30h (6 hour a day).

that is a basic math for finding the player count if you dont trust MS.

Is this actually how it works? Because different regions have different time zones, a part of a day in one region might overlap with part of another day in another region somewhere else in the world. So a 'day' would have to be measured as blocks of time, not a specific day. It would probably make better sense to measure it as, say, 12 million players in 24 hours. It might sound like I'm speaking semantics here, but in this case knowing the difference seems pretty important.

Keep in mind, I agree with you this is probably how the CCU is being calculated, but I was actually referring to total player statistics, not CCU. And in that case we can both be correct here; MS probably uses an averaged CCU from over some period across all devices (with rounding) and taking into account the average playtime per player per day (and that over a period of days covering some period). While at the same time, factoring "players" as any time a person, even if it's the same user, accessing the game from multiple devices to play the game. I.e they aren't differentiating between unique user and play instances, neither for CCU or total player count.


CCU gets lower from time to time, so pay attention to that. best method would be average ccu.

Agreed, and that is likely what Microsoft uses in calculations for total player count. Average CCU over a tracking period times number of days over a tracking period times average play time over a tracking period. So if its say 250K average CCU over 6 days with play time average of 4 hours, that's 6 million total players.

But a user can be multiple 'players, while any given 'player' will always only belong to one 'user'.

Also keep in mind for players thar only play 10 hour or lower and never touch the game after that.

Okay, yeah, but they would still count towards total player count since they have in fact played the game, regardless how long they stuck with it.
 
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