That's not really what I'm saying, though. Bethesda's signature is always that their faction quests are deeper and cooler than their main quests. You're allowed not to like that, but it's definitely how Bethesda works.
The main line of fallout or skyrim or oblivion may get sidetracked, but its still a huge goal thats genuinely fun and satisfying to complete.
I agree, as I felt Starfield was satisfying to complete. It's just not the point. They call them Sandbox RPGs for a reason. For Skyrim, I would take the Companions, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Winterhold, etc over the main plot every day. For Fallout 4, it was different because the main plot turns into "pick a faction to wipe out the Institute (unless you pick the Institute)". Yeah, NV is similar with that. It got a lot of flak for that, but I thought it worked. Fallout 3, though... "I wanna make clean water". It's fun, but not why F3 is a masterpiece.
I could not complete CP2077 when I first put it in my PS4, but I bought it expecting that. I had a little knockaround fun in the early game and then put it aside until a big patch or two. It did, however, crash at least 1-2x per hour on me the entire first playthrough. By the time I played through a second time, it was down to 1 crash in 5 hours.
And yeah, I noticed some of the other bullet-points as well :)
Unfortunately, you're not the only person I'm discussing Starfield with here, and most are trying to tell me that Starfield is objectively bad. I am not "hiding behind" objectivity, I'm arguing that Starfield isn't "objectively bad".
Well, it seems contradictory to me and I'm just picking at that. If you care about class C ships, it's super-easy to unlock (compared to some of the skills in FO4's base builder). If you don't, the lack will never matter. You can easily take the Razorleaf through the entire game with few (if any) modifications.
So I grinded to get the money, saw that I needed to rank up piloting but I didn’t have any points. So I needed to level up 3 times and I needed to kill a few dozen ships.
I do the same in Skyrim when I want the Meteor spell :)
after I bought that ship and got the ability to fly it I couldn’t add any additional crew compared to my starting ship because that is locked behind a different perk
...so? Why exactly did you want to add more crew? I'm having trouble grokking this. More crew is kinda a win-more feature and down that page for a reason.
Take stealth for example. To even get a stealth meter I have to drop a point into stealth
Pretty typical.
To get a meter that is slightly better and on par with the default stealth meter in their other games I need to put in another point
This blew my mind, but if you're somewhere you can breathe and take off the space suit, your stealth SKYROCKETs. Walking around stealthily in a heavy space suit is tough.
Want to even use a boost pack? Point.
This one is the first one I sorta agree with. I understand thematically why there would be skill involved. But I'll give you this one. That's just not enough to sour me on an epic game like Starfield.
Pretty much. In Starfield, the game gives you a ship that can reach about 75% of the star systems, and you can literally just start finding/stealing ships to cross the entire galaxy at the 1hr mark. If you know where you're going, Starfield gets you in the action blazingly fast. If you don't, well, that's why they all (newer ones) hold your hand in the main story.
I love CP2077, but there's no way it was a 7/10 when it crashed every 30 minutes for most people and a significant percent of the quests broke. People (rightly) give flak to Bethesda on how buggy they released games in the past, but CP2077 was arguably buggier than that on release.
In fairness, I hated rdr2 and don't really like the gta games because they're a bit too much "violent life simulator" vs "game" for me.
As such, the only thing I hated about CP2077 was the bugs, crashes, and balance issues. Admittedly, I loved how cheap I got it because I bought it during the early reputation crash. It was unplayable for a few weeks, but for $17? Damn.
Yeah, I really don't think there's any substantive way that Starfield compares to "Grown Ups 2". That's naked hyperbole.
The NG+ gambit failed, it does not do what the devs wanted
Then just enjoy the game that's bigger than Skyrim and don't NG+. Bethesda games always include side-quests and mechanisms that some players want and others avoid.
When I finally do get there the house is empty, and not all that fun to be in. No special quests etc tied to it.
I can see the value in tying a few quests to it. So is your preference that they gutted the background system entirely? Other than the parents, there's very little unique content tied to them. They're just "flavor".
was visiting The Eye for the first time. There was this big pile of trash in a corridor used as the block to the door to prevent further exploration
Honestly, this feels like DLC-bait to me. I can see why you'd want to "repair the eye to full working order" and maybe we will see that in the future. But for reference, there's notes that imply the rest of the Eye is fully depressurized and needs to be repaired but time and money don't allow for it.
reviews from folks further along in the story and gameplay giving a bad impression made me move onto something new
This is what I think is happening with most people. They see reviews and they sour of an otherwise great game. I saw this happen with the Wheel of Time show as well.
I also didn’t resonate with any of the companions to a degree where I found them actively annoying to be around. I know some would say ‘just don’t loot’ but their constant calling out people who like to loot was annoying too.
This is a common Bethesda thing. If you want to be as thief, the list of companions that are ok with you stealing from everybody is fairly slim.
but what systems did you feel added more substance to Starfield
For me... to start, I'm a tES lifer. Most of what I like is the things tES does consistently. Grand-Theft-Spaceship. Low consequences. Decente stories for each faction. A good main plotline. Neat mechanics to play with, a few more than you really need. I enjoyed making ships and bases, playing around with powers.
Wide-not-deep is the Bethesda manifesto, but it works for the right gamers.
Same here. I actually expected to be disappointed from hearing the early complaints. I got an xbox subscription because there were a bunch of games I wanted to play, so I wouldn't feel bad if Starfield sucked.
What I expected wasn’t fallout in space, I expected innovation and iteration on a genre
This is what's weird to me. Bethesda basically promised "Skyrim in Space", and that's what most of the hype started to come from. And they genuinely gave us exactly that.
People who don't like Skyrim won't like Starfield. People who wanted something more "innovative" than just Skyrim in Space with Better Graphics were creating their own sort of fabricated hype.
Fair enough but it does sound very repetitive and grindy. Would you disagree?
How experienced are you with Bethesda games post-1995 or so? They all have the same grind-factor. The game is tuned so you can play and win with zero grind, but it has these "treadmill" mechanics that you can either embrace or skip.
If you want to max out your perks at level 328, it's absurdly grindy. But you can beat the game around level 30 or so. If for some reason you want to max out a skill/perk you don't really use, it's a bit grindy. But if you use the skills as you get them and get the skills you'll use, you unlock their levelups asically for free.
Maybe it is not bad but it definitely didn’t deliver what was promised
I hear this again, and again, and again, and again. But nobody has yet to cite one promise Bethesda objective broke with Starfield. You say "how could I expect that from Todd"? That means you know what kind of games Bethesda releases. And they promised a Bethesda game in space. And they delivered a Bethesda game in space.
I underestand people who hate Bethesda games. You can toss a pebble and hit one of them. But I really don't understand the level of toxicity this time around. I actually almost didn't buy Starfield, and boy am I pissed because it was a lot better than I expected.
No. I like owning a home so I opted against gamedev :)
completely blind to the massive pile of neon feedback saying that the design failed to achieve the intent
I mean, it's largely a success to me playing the game. Am I not allowed to enjoy it or struggle to understand why "Game A" might be strictly worse than "Game A plus feature B that many players really wanted"?
For some reason, Elder Scrolls is cursed. EVERY Elder Scrolls game that comes out (except Daggerfall) has a massive number of detractors about some facet of it that is "a pale shadow" of the previous.
I was around when people treated Morrowind like they are treating Starfield now. Then Oblivion had a much smaller complaint-base, but it revolved around the "disappointing lack of immersion" because Morrowind was such an opinionated game. Then Skyrim comes out and "it's like they put Training Wheels on Oblivion".
Starfield is just suffering from the same Elder Scrolls curse (but in space). To me, Starfield is a great game that might not be for everyone, but that some of those walking away from it are being told they don't like it.
And it's a bit of a problem. There's not much to change. The story is deep, so they can't add more story like NMS did. It's the most stable Bethesda game ever, so it's not about building stability. The gameplay mechanics are reasonable, so it's not about adding new systems. Bethesda might well be screwed this time - because there's nothing to change.
but no other game encourages you to spend tens of hours on tedious pointing and clicking just to throw it away
I don't really understand the NG+ complaints. The game warns several times in several ways you before you do it, and it is absolutely not necessary to enjoy the game. And people who know the reasons you'd want to NG+ because they read spoilers? They ALSO know that they're going to lose the previous playthrough well before they've gotten too deep into outpost design.
The most common Bethesda play pattern is to reach a point your'e so powerful you're "just done", so you go beat the game. You take a break, and come back to NG. The number of people who maintain all the FO4 settlements for hundreds of hours are quite rare. NG+ exists to give people of that most common play pattern the option to start over again and extra content they'll enjoy.
Starfield is technically bigger than Skyrim before accounting for NG+. So why punish them for a new feature that rewards what most gamers want to do?
I feel like this is a "this is why we can't have nice things" scenario. I have been wanting a fun NG+ mechanism in a Bethesda game for 15-20 years. I hate saying goodbye to my character, but I love rising through the ranks and completing major story quests in different ways.
That's...not really true. First, you can get to class C ships at level 4 out of 300+ if you really want to. Second, you can build some pretty decent-sized class A ships.
Honestly, is this something you've just always hated about Bethesda games, because everything about that is true to a greater extent in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games as well.
That's not really what I'm saying, though. Bethesda's signature is always that their faction quests are deeper and cooler than their main quests. You're allowed not to like that, but it's definitely how Bethesda works.
I agree, as I felt Starfield was satisfying to complete. It's just not the point. They call them Sandbox RPGs for a reason. For Skyrim, I would take the Companions, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Winterhold, etc over the main plot every day. For Fallout 4, it was different because the main plot turns into "pick a faction to wipe out the Institute (unless you pick the Institute)". Yeah, NV is similar with that. It got a lot of flak for that, but I thought it worked. Fallout 3, though... "I wanna make clean water". It's fun, but not why F3 is a masterpiece.