Starfield

[Adramelch]

Basically they've done well in the FPS aspects and messed up almost everything RPG-related is what the game feels like. It provides the ground for people to do some very specific roleplaying (scientist, bounty hunter, pirate and the likes), which is nice, but that's all.

[Yevrah]

I've built an outpost with the landing pad in the crater of a dormant volcano. :chief:

[Shindig]

Slow down there, Bond Villain.

[Yevrah]

That's plan, just need to find an island now.

[Raoul Duke]

I built an outpost with a couple of mining things but I can't remember where it was and haven't checked on it for ages. I probably have 85 billion aluminium there now :D

[Yevrah]

I’ve got 8 and a spreadsheet to track where the fuckers are and what they produce.

[Dark Soldier]

I can see why Yev loves this so much. Man is blatantly off his tits with OCD. I've checked in on his stream for 5/10 minutes a few times, and each and every time he's just been sorting through about 60 inventory storage boxes.

No shooting, no exploring, no flying, just pure hardcore inventory management.

Can imagine that excel spreadsheet is about 4 gig in size.

[Raoul Duke]

In space, no-one can hear you VLOOKUP :drool:

[Yevrah]

I can see why Yev loves this so much. Man is blatantly off his tits with OCD. I've checked in on his stream for 5/10 minutes a few times, and each and every time he's just been sorting through about 60 inventory storage boxes.

No shooting, no exploring, no flying, just pure hardcore inventory management.

Can imagine that excel spreadsheet is about 4 gig in size.

Haha. I've done all those things you've not seen me do since this save's been going (hence how I have all the shit to store in the first place), but when it comes to inventory management, you've gotta have a system, (particularly when you're not buying anything from traders) which does take a bit of time but is well worth it.

Disappointingly the spreadsheet is only one tab that doesn't even fill a screen. I may have to do one to track where the resources all are if Bethesda don't pull their finger out and give us some sort of index mind.

[Mike]

Off work sick so been playing this today. Got stuck into a few main story missions then did some of the undercover in the Crimson Fleet ones and am really enjoying it.
Can’t see myself ever doing the ship building or making a base on a planet. Was fun to do some bigger story stuff though and not just help bellends who’ve left stuff in shops find it for a bit.

[Cord]

A summary of my last session:

- Be sent by the cowboy lot to sort a hostage situation on a ship to prove my worth. Fight the ship, board, kill a couple of dudes, release the captain. Go back to my ship to fast travel, only to be told I can't because I'm in combat. Turns out I'm being attacked by a ship, I fight it, disable it and board, only to find it's the same one I just freed, with captain wandering around only capable of saying "thanks for your help". I leave, go to fast travel, and I'm attacked by the same ship again. I have to fight it a third time, disable it, then fast travel quickly before it repairs.

- Thought I'd do a little bit of planet exploring. Land at a random 'civilian outpost' (by which the game means plonking me 600 yards from it so I have to walk for 5 minutes). Make a detour to an unknown biological thing. Have to scan it twice. Nothing happens. Walk to the civilian outpost, meet a woman who says she was just going out to put some scanners near some gas vents but actually now would really rather I did it. So I walk 300 metres whatever in two different directions so I can press E, completely un-assailed by any gameplay or challenge. Go back to her, she gives me 2000 credits. I'm not really enjoying this press E simulator.

- Go back to quest giver to finish that hostage quest. She invited me to join the Freestar Collective militia thing, we just need to go talk to the boss first. She goes on a slow walk to his office, where she promptly freezes before initiating the dialogue and now can't progress.

- Think screw this and go do the quest for the cowboy companion fella, which involved walking straight into a bank vault unmolested, finding a note saying the thing we're after isn't there. Have to walk to Cowboy man's father's "Estate" (just a random normal sized building in the town), where they have 2 seconds of argument before he turns to me to say I should sort all this out, but there's not point in trying to talk his dad round because they have 30 years of bad blood and he'll never give me the thing we need. I talk to the dad, randomly click persuasion options and am immediately given the thing. Talk to the cowboy, he just says "OK, what's next". No dialogue to suggest he's surprised.

I'm trying really hard to like this, but I just don't see where the fun is and it keeps punching me in the face with how jankily it's put together. I think I've played about 15 hours and only genuinely enjoyed one bit (the Alien rip-off mission, if you are wondering).

[Yevrah]

I genuinely didn't like the first 10 or so hours then started again knowing what I'd learnt (which wasn't everything by any stretch) and loved it from then on in.

On the first point, you can fast travel to a different star system at any point (whether you're in combat or not), it just won't let you do it if you're in combat and you try to select a specific point on a planet in another system.

[Raoul Duke]

I finished up the UC Vanguard quests yesterday and am now a First Class Citizen, which actually gets you some cool stuff. The missions were pretty great as well, up against a load of bastard Terrormorphs, with several options to make big quest decisions.

[Adramelch]

That questline was the highlight of the game for me from a story perspective. It sort of felt more important than the main story even.

[Raoul Duke]

The ending is a bit weird:


It felt like they could have made some tangible trade-off for the different solutions?

Also I kept the old guy alive as he gives you radiant quests

[Adramelch]

The ending is a bit weird:


It felt like they could have made some tangible trade-off for the different solutions?

Also I kept the old guy alive as he gives you radiant quests


The ending does have its issues, starting from the fact that you are a miner turned soldier surrounded by scientists yet it is you that has the final say and ending with every single Constellation member telling you you made the wrong choice if you went with the Aceles solution.

[thommo]

As I've upgraded to a Series S, I can finally play this on GamePass. Set it to download today so I will give it a crack this week some time. The missus has been enjoying it but she's a real Bethesda nerd, despite their foibles and bugs.

[Yevrah]

Finished the Freestar Collective missions and the main quest for the first time yesterday. Thoughts on the former were that it was a decent, low stakes, self contained little questline. As for the main quest, it sadly went a bit JJ Abrams but I'd still say it was good overall.

I still love the game (but talking about that is boring) so....complaints from this save can chiefly be levelled at two things:

1 - The companions are the worst I can recall in a Bethesda game and by some distance. The Sam Coe arc is genuinely terrible, culminating in a quite unbelievable ending where he won't have a conversation with someone else without me staying to hold his hand and Barrett did his best to ruin the swaythes of narrative the game chucks at you towards the end of the main quest with constant requests of "hey, can we talk" while I was trying to listen to shit. They're also all completely moronic and will get in your way, actively move you off the shot, ruin your cover, refuse to understand flanking etc.

2 - The game is far far too easy. I thought Very Hard mode and some self imposed rules would help with this but I need more rules it seems. I think in the last 10 quests of the main story I died once (which came from running into a turret that was an unexpected level 92 and it killed me in two shots). Fair enough if I'd cheesed XP to level 200 or something, but I was early to mid 60s when I hit the home straight and level 68 when I finished it. I was going to do the other factions, but given the stuff the game gave me for doing the main quest it'll be far too easy, so it's time for another save.

[Adramelch]

I finished the game at around 45ish level on Very Hard and I reckon the last time I died I was in the early teens. The game is Witcher 3 levels of easy. The main issue being that the enemies have the simplest of strategies/fighting styles.

[Yevrah]

Yep. It was hard for a time as I was struggling for ammo (rule that I couldn't buy any) on my better guns for a while, but then I stumbled across an Advanced Beowulf which takes Grendel ammo (which is everywhere) and that's all you'll ever need to breeze through the game.

It's crying out for a survival mode and if they do one and make the combat damage dealt and received like F4 then I'll be fine with that. As it is I'm going to have to put some seriously restrictive rules in place (deliberately picking bad perks/milestones needed for the good ones, no extractors etc.) to extend the life of the challenge, oh and not do the main questline until right at the end of the save.

[Adramelch]

I only did the main questline at the very end of my save, so I don't think it will affect the outcome much.

[Yevrah]

I meant more that something you get, well a couple of things actually, for doing the main quest will make the rest of the game even easier. Which I why I can't face doing the other three factions now as it'll be dull as hell no matter how good they are if there's no jeopardy.

[Raoul Duke]

Did you ever actually use the Dragon Shouts? I don't think I've ever actually thought about using them while playing. It's easier to just shoot people in the head with a shotgun.

I bought a new ship the other day which is B-Tier and takes care of most enemies fairly well. I'm now interchanging perks between me and ship stuff to keep things moving forwards. The gun mods are pretty cool

[Yevrah]

I used the Oxygen replenish one a lot and the Fus ra doh a bit, but you're right, there wasn't much call for it.

[Adramelch]

Did you ever actually use the Dragon Shouts? I don't think I've ever actually thought about using them while playing. It's easier to just shoot people in the head with a shotgun.

I bought a new ship the other day which is B-Tier and takes care of most enemies fairly well. I'm now interchanging perks between me and ship stuff to keep things moving forwards. The gun mods are pretty cool

I guess I'll spoiler just to be on the safe side (it relates to the Freestar Collective questline):

The Mantis ship had already made a notable difference, but once I got the Freestar Collective ship, the space fights became a lot simpler.

As for the main questline, I am a bit interested in what actually made it good in your mind Yev. I thought it was one of the weakest parts of the game.

[Yevrah]

I thought the popular tv show style scenario wasn't great, but other bits that were revealed were pretty good and I enjoyed the flow of the last few missions. Sets things up nicely for some DLC, which they'll no doubt do if this genuinely is a 5-10 year project.

[Ian]

Bethesda devs doing rebuttals of negative Steam reviews is incredibly small time.

Assuming there's no way to show up as a dev account and it's not just fanboys doing it.

[Yevrah]

That is quite tragic and I wish they were working on more POI instead.

Post patch (which is pretty good, stops crashes and looks much better on Xbox) I've started playing this having to use Helium to grav jump. Creates a much better feeling of space actually being big.

[Raoul Duke]

Update on the updates (https://bethesda.net/en/game/starfield/article/37j5d4CbPfYlZqJKcVtGcY/starfield-end-of-the-year-update-2023)

[Shindig]

That infographic has a big air of, "I THOUGHT YOU LIKED THIS!?" energy.

[Yevrah]

I say what I'm about to before I read the update and clearly there's a laundry list of stuff that could be improved, but the single biggest problem with the game and by some margin are the points of interest. You simply can't have over 1,000 planets you can land on and only 40 or so points of interest that repeat over and over again between them. If they're not working on increasing that number at least ten-fold as we speak then they've genuinely lost the plot.

[Yevrah]

Right, read it. Survival mode is a welcome addition (as space should be hostile as fuck) and they do say there are new locations coming with the DLC but that won't be anywhere near enough alone.

EDIT: It's frustrating as it could be a genuinely brilliant game that's so far fallen well short of that.

[Adramelch]

Starfield winning "Most innovative gameplay" in the Steam Awards is all kinds of silly. :D

[Yevrah]

Yeah, even as someone who would gladly drink at the teet of the Howard I can see that that’s madness. It’s a wind up, right?

[Adramelch]

There's a limit of maximum 2 nominations per game and the big hitters were in the more relevant categories, so that would explain part of it. The rest would be down to a mix of trolling, Xbox fanboys and Bethesda fanboys if I was to guess. Innovative gameplay also tends to come mostly in indie games nowadays and since the awards are user-based, those won't ever get enough votes to be relevant.

[Raoul Duke]

I've been rattling through the main missions on this and am back into it again. The story is pretty good overall (although I've still got a bunch of it to go) and connects together nicely with a few points along the way. Am aiming to get it finished up before I go back to work next week so I can just mop up random missions/wait for the DLC.

[Ian]

Starfield winning "Most innovative gameplay" in the Steam Awards is all kinds of silly. :D

Red Dead 2 won something as well, some very dumb awards this year, whatever it is that's happened.

Starfield wouldn't have been innovative if it had come out when it looks like it did.

[Yevrah]

I've been rattling through the main missions on this and am back into it again. The story is pretty good overall (although I've still got a bunch of it to go) and connects together nicely with a few points along the way. Am aiming to get it finished up before I go back to work next week so I can just mop up random missions/wait for the DLC.

I've binned it until they put far more points of interest in it to explore when you land on a planet that isn't a copy and paste job. I know they can see how long I've played their other games for and how much I've spent on Xbox stuff over the years so if they want my time and (more) money they'll pull their fingers out. A stand needs to be made I feel, 40 repeated points of interest across over 1,000 planets just isn't acceptable.

EDIT: And the base building is dogshit too. Worse in fact, broken dogshit.

[Bishop]

Games are generally shit these days. Like all entertainment, actually.

I remember a year or so back I upgraded to my lovely, new 12gb 3080 in anticipation of getting back into gaming a bit. Couldn't find anything really that grabbed my attention after absolutely loving Last Days Gone (they should make a second one!). Most highly rated games are either very old or not in my sphere of interest. I've been playing Civ 6 for 6 years! And don't get me started on FM 24. I tried. I just can't deal with idiotic players complainging about everything every few weeks, and endless spreadsheets instead of the fun game it used to be.

[Adramelch]

I actually thought the game's main story was one of the weakest points of Starfield so it's interesting/surprising that some people enjoy it. Different strokes I guess.

[Yevrah]

The premise of it didn't really grab me that much as it's been done to death over the last 20 years, but its execution was at least half decent. Well, until you realise what it means for new game + and that Bethesda games (any Bethesda game) are probably the least suited vehicle for losing a lot of shit you've built up ten times over.

[Raoul Duke]

The bit that's lacking with it the most for me is the ability to change/affect/create the world for me - e.g. in Fallout 4 building up the settlements and making decisions about which of the factions would run the show. In Starfield there's none of that - I don't feel like I matter and only Constellation are really impacted by my choices. Everyone else just carries on regardless and the random generation stuff just gets created the same every time.

There are some good points in here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7jeT5iCcAA) if you want a long watch. A lot of it is just clearly broken systems (or shit ideas in the first place e.g. most of the perks) and then there's balance problems (kill a couple of space badgers = 200XP, complete 1/16th of the main quest line = 150XP :cab: ) but the lack of quests that he analyses at the end is a huge problem and one you don't really realise how half-arsed it is until you look at the data.

[Adramelch]

The premise of it didn't really grab me that much as it's been done to death over the last 20 years, but its execution was at least half decent. Well, until you realise what it means for new game + and that Bethesda games (any Bethesda game) are probably the least suited vehicle for losing a lot of shit you've built up ten times over.

To begin with it felt irrelevant to the whole gameworld. Its whole premise felt more like a sidestory than anything else. It was a quite uninspired interpretation of multiverses and it also comes with a lot of narrative issues, the few big ones that I still remember:


- The part where you have to either defend the Lodge or go to the Eye made no sense to me. The Hunter has already hit the Eye and is on his way to the Lodge, so what sort of choice is that really? It felt like they put it there just for some fake emotional storytelling, where you choose one of the companions you bonded with. Joke's on them, the whole Constellation cast sucks.
- The whole thing where you seemingly gather (very blatantly laid out) clues to determine the location of the Pilgrim (or whatever the name of the person that left recordings about the Unity was), only for that religious keeper guy to spell everything out for you was very amateur writing.
- The mission where you go to Neon to get an artifact with Constellation grandpa was a mess from start to finish. From the "negotiation" which was nothing but, to the very badly stealth mission that follows, where you are guided by his wife for every single step you take, to finally the ending that made no sense where the guy that was effectively trying to kill you is fine letting you go as long as you choose what happens with the traitor.
- They purposedly send you to earth where the one building you need is in excellent state yet the rest of the world bar a few monuments is endless desert. How did they think that was good writing? I am fine with the decision not to recreate earth to be honest, but surely just don't send me there for the MSQ?

In terms of MSQ-related gameplay, half the story is fetch quests, while all the temples are in walking distance from a settlement or a landing pad yet nobody knew of their existence? Then you get those powers, which in the grand scheme of things take a combat system that was already very easy and just break it even more. And finally (well not really, but it's been 4 months and most of it was forgettable), you don't fight a single memorable enemy in the whole thing, just copy pasted Starfield.

And to top all that, thigns like "visions you don't understand", "galactic travel made possible from something we unearthed on Mars" and so on are just very cheap knockoffs of the Mass Effect story.

[Raoul Duke]

https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/1745850216471752751?t=03Dfiknmma5ZsUZBWZUa2A&s=19


Next week, on January 17, we’ll be putting our biggest Starfield update yet into Steam Beta with over 100 fixes and improvements, with a planned release date for all players two weeks later. Here’s some of what you can expect!

This update contains a multitude of fixes to Quests. Eye of the Storm issues such as being unable to dock with the Legacy or data transfer not starting, and Temples not showing up in 'Into the Unknown', will no longer prevent Constellation from exploring the cosmos.

Additionally, this update brings stability improvements and numerous graphic improvements ranging from additional widescreen support to improved textures, lighting, and shadows. See the character creation before and after shots attached below.

Other fixes and improvements include sun disk geometry, planet ring shadows, bulldozed objects reappearing when returning to an Outpost, ship hatches marked inaccessible, and another fix for asteroids following ships. The full update notes will be posted next week when the Steam Beta is released!

[Raoul Duke]

Patch is out (https://bethesda.net/en/game/starfield/article/7rNcXwvJzZzHaDYkgjZclN/starfield-update-1-9-47-0-notes-january-18-2024-in-beta)

[Yevrah]

There's some good shit in here.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ObHRMHtTMY

Nothing on points of interest yet but once I'm done with Fallout 4, which will be months, I think I'll go back in again.

[Raoul Duke]

All decent-sounding stuff. Vehicle will make a lot of the tedium of just getting around disappear.

Having gone back to Fallout though, I definitely prefer contained, more-populated and customised cities. The different areas of Boston feel way more alive than any of the cities in this.

[Yevrah]

The new menu options really intrigue me. If you can make space actually dangerous, as it should be, rather than just a place to become over-encumbered then I could see myself getting balls deep in it again.

[Raoul Duke]

I'll definitely go back to it, but might just wait for the DLC. I didn't actually finish it yet but am near enough

[Yevrah]

Available now and clocking in at 24.7GB.

[Magic]

Jaysus. I don't even know if I can be arsed to go back to it, it was so fucking disappointing.

[Yevrah]

It was but depending on what floats your boat this could be the first step towards a huge improvement.

[Raoul Duke]

Are you going back in on the Survival Mode?

[Yevrah]

Yeah, I've whacked up all of the sliders to extreme (for a 75% XP gain) and we'll see how we go. I'm not sure I'll be able to manage the tutorial.

https://www.twitch.tv/chemicallocust

Plan is to add a few self imposed rules in as well, like get rid of the abundance of good shit the game gives you when you start and not buying anything from merchants. The latter might have to give if it really is that hard though. The options are the best implemented I've ever seen them do and by some distance.

[Raoul Duke]

What have you set for the graphics options?

[Yevrah]

30 and prioritise visuals seemed to be the best after a bit of a play on a save I had so I've gone with that.

[Yevrah]

Had a decent run at this last night. Kept the self imposed rules, which made what was already a challenge a lot lot harder. Some thoughts:

The combat is absolutely brutal, to the point I was nearly killed by a heatleech. :D I do no damage so can only really kill things when I get a good slug of my cutter into them, but I'm ok with that I think as it gives meaning to the combat perks which were basically pointless even on the hardest difficulty pre patch.

The gameplay options have been implemented in excellent fashion. I’ve never seen it before, but I appreciate I don’t play anywhere near as many games as some so Bethesda might have nicked the idea, but adjusting the amount of XP you earn depending on how hard or easy you make it is a masterstroke. Only slight disappointment is that I don’t know why they didn’t include one to turn fuel depletion on when grav jumping, but I guess that is coming.

So many more things have meaning. Sneaking into the Sol space station to pick up food and water with brutal enemies all around me gave an edge to what would have been an otherwise mundane trip. Only downside to this is it’s been implemented in quite a lazy fashion, in that every piece of food I eat sends me straight from malnourished to fed, be it a single orange or a full UC meal pack. The buffs and debuffs at either end of the scale are a very nice touch though.

I’ve a feeling bandages and aid items will be absolutely essential now as I’m either almost constantly wounded or sick from being shot at or picking up some filthy ailment from a planet’s atmosphere, so space is pretty deadly as it should be.

The maps are great, allowing you to pinpoint things you wouldn’t have otherwise known were there unless you stumbled upon them – unusual land masses, peaks and troughs. What is odd and bad though is that the ability to place a map marker seems to have been removed.

I haven’t played with it much yet (as restricting myself to Sol for now and having to run away from enemies is making it hard to find materials) but it looks as though internal ship decoration actually just works, in that you now have the tools to build a home on a ship.

It looks better than it ever has and I've not even pushed the graphical settings.

The elephant in the room is still very much there, in that the game simply doesn’t work with only 40-odd unique but repeating points of interest across 1,000+ planets, but putting that to one side for now it’s a very promising update that gives me some hope that they at least understand what is wrong with their game and are actively trying to fix it.

[Yevrah]

More updates on this. They've fixed melee weapons so they actually have more than one damage variant and you can now mod them. Talking of mods the creation club is here and people are losing their shit over paid mods, but if Bethesda actually release some competent content (many more points of interest please) then I'm ok with that.

Astra currency for a dice roll on a legendary is a nice touch too.

[Raoul Duke]

Was reading about one of the bounty hunter quests on Reddit last night. Sounds like a load of bollocks - 7 quid (like 15% of the entire game cost) for some shit go here/read tablet/kill baddie stuff.

The cool bit is everyone turning it into The Mandalorian though

[Raoul Duke]

New rover just released:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA1z1DbA_Io

Should remove a lot of the walking for ages across empty space.

Also: DLC coming 30th Sept

[Raoul Duke]

New DLC out today


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KpYy3Bs6E

Will give it a whirl but it's not been a big draw so far.