Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater. I actually was really excited for the game. But so far I am just not having fun.
For a little bit of reference, I just finished playing thru Cyberpunk 2077 and then jumped right into Starfield. Maybe that was a mistake because I kinda just want to go back to Cyberpunk (and I will in a few weeks when the DLC comes out).
But I'm noticing two really big issues with Starfield: first, the gunplay/combat is... let's call it underwhelming. I realize it's quite probably a skill issue and I need to just git gud, but holy crap, everything is a bullet sponge and I don't have that many bullets! Stealth seems to be pretty worthless at early levels as I don't have any high-alpha guns that can take advantage of it and, most of the time, I'm detected before I even see the bad guys. I'm just not enjoying this aspect of the game at all.
The second big issue for me is that there's a loading screen every five seconds! Again, probably a me thing, but OMG, it's driving me nuts. Get into ship, loading screen. Launch from planet, loading screen. Fly to next planet, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen. Leave ship, loading screen. I just want to go shoot things! Let me shoot things!
Okay, found some spacers, time to... oh shit, out of ammo. Let me swap to a worse gun that still has ammo. Sigh. Okay, they're dead. Let me just heal up... oh shit, out of med packs. Sigh.
Oh and wrestling with the UI is exhausting.
Anyways, I realize that this probably isn't the place to find a lot of like-minded people. But I really do want to like this game. Any tips on maybe at least ways to make the combat less of a chore?
My main complaint is the writing and worldbuilding. So far I've been exploring new Atlantis and picked up exclusively fetch quests from NPCs so generic and uninteresting I don't really feel like continuing to talk to them. And the uncreative worldbuilding of authoritarian capitalists Vs libertarian capitalksts vs religious crazies. Can Bethesda not even imagine an alternative to capitalism?
There's worse out there trying to reach a similar audience (fucking Star Citizen is a staggering grift), and at least Starfield is an actual working game with a standard box price, but I personally find it boring, even at an aesthetic level. The story is a whole lot of capitalist realist nothing where even the wonders of FTL travel did nothing to remove the bleak corporate drudgery from the setting, as if today's late stage capitalism would go into space with basically no changes.
(fucking Star Citizen is a staggering grift)
You know, I kickstarted that project (not gonna call it a game at this point) back when it was first announced and I'm STILL salty about it. "Wing Commander" was my first favorite game as a kid and that whole series plus Privateer and Freelancer were huge for me. I was SO excited for another game from that guy.
The worst part about the whole thing? People are still falling for it. Like, if people learned from my mistake and the project would finally die, at least I'd feel like I accomplished some small thing with the money I wasted. But no, people are still giving that grifter money for some weird reason.
You know, I kickstarted that project (not gonna call it a game at this point) back when it was first announced and I'm STILL salty about it. "Wing Commander" was my first favorite game as a kid and that whole series plus Privateer and Freelancer were huge for me. I was SO excited for another game from that guy.
I wanted it to succeed. I came from the same background as you did there. I nearly put money into it, but barely decided against it because it was hard to afford. Looking back, I'm glad, but I truly don't blame you for putting money into it at first.
The space fascism in Star Citizen would up being glaringly terrible (and somehow worse than the fucking Confederation in the Wing Commander setting by far) and Chris Roberts putting himself directly into the lore by name was fucking cringe. And that was before the grifts really accelerated.
https://starcitizen.tools/Chris_Roberts_(lore)
star citizen
The barely functional game that inspired NFTs by making people buy worthless digital items for internet clout?
Starfield is basically the same recipe as past fallout/elder scrolls titles. Everyone loves to complain about them but everyone is still playing them. The fact is the choose your own adventure thing is still very much there. Just play it and have fun.
I'm feeling the same way. Starfield isn't a bad game, but it's very meh. I enjoy the ship building aspect, but otherwise nothing really grabs me with this game.
Combat is a good example, too. There just doesn't feel to be any impact to the weapons. Mobs just get shot but don't really react to it. I know they will flee at times which is nice, but close range SMG fire to ones torso should illicit more of a response.
Fast travel also seems to be an detractor. Being able to fast travel anywhere you've been even if that place is across the galaxy really removes a lot of the exploration vibe the game would have otherwise. I know this isn't a space sim, but a lot of the systems they have don't really mesh well with others.
Starfield is like mediocre lite-RPG / space sim crossover that doesn't do either very well.
Edit: I also want to point out that Bethesda did not come up with the "NASA-punk" aesthetic, either. I've seen articles about that. The Expanse has been doing that for years now. Even before that, I can think of at least two Matt Damon movies from 2015 and before that used it as it's setting. Point being it's not anything new.
Fast travel also seems to be an detractor.
Yeah it's kind of weird but I feel like they're too liberal with the fast travel. You really lose a lot of the sense of scale when you can just... go anywhere from anywhere.
I mean, that said, given all the loading screens, I guess more fast travel means less loading screens so it's definitely a double-edged sword.
Starfield is like mediocre lite-RPG / space sim crossover that doesn’t do either very well.
The RPG aspects seem really shallow after Cyberpunk. The space sim aspects are what I'm hoping keep me interested once I get deeper into it. Fingers crossed.
To make matters worse, the space around each planet is it's own load zone. Star systems are just collections of these zones. I don't think they can patch zone loading as it's done so much by design. It's like they took what they had in FO4 and just slapped a sticker on it that said "space sim".
Yeah, I was excited to go exploring space as soon as I got my ship, but it's such a slog with all the loading! Even flying from a planet to its moon while already in space requires a loading screen. Like, I just want to play the game but I feel like I'm mostly loading or wrestling the UI...
I can't even get to "meh" yet. I'm currently trying to get over all the steps backward from Fallout 4. Can't order companions in battle, can't swap out weapon mods, can't use/equip items on pickup without going into menus, and the local maps. Holy crap, the local maps are bad. All that is on top of having to mod the game as usual. StarUI helped a lot, and I had to grab a sound effects mod because there was painful, high-pitched tones in a lot of the interface stuff, but it needs a lot more help. Beth's games are starting to remind me of a Civilization series or Paradox Interactive situation where the base game is worse than a predecessor at release and doesn't yield incremental improvement until a robust mod scene/DLC arrives.
I've already written off the space gameplay (that was always a long shot for us space sim fans), and if I'm being honest, the loading screen pacing isn't all that different an experience from how I played Skyrim and FO4. I'm also taking the bullet-sponginess as a challenge to focus on weapon mods. I'm hoping once I get into a self-directed gameplay flow and get used to the quirks of the UI and zone arrangement it'll get better.
I gotta say though, even though it had its own share of bugs, Baldur's Gate 3 coming out a month ahead of Starfield does not invite favorable comparisons. The dialogues and quest design in BG3 run circles around what I'm seeing in Starfield so far. The "Back to Vectera" quest in particular was shockingly bad. Having multiple moments where there's no indication of what to do next until opening the mission log to find a stealth quest update is seriously rough. I'm guessing it was unfinished? I knew there were going to have to be sacrifices made at the procedural generation altar, but seeing even the bespoke elements on the main questline be this bad does not portend well for the overall quality of the game.
Yeah its a little unfair to compare anything to BG3 so bad timing there. I think when Phantom Liberty comes out and a bunch of people jump to Cyberpunk, it's not gonna help this game much either. lol
It's really not, lol. In the first hour playing this I kept thinking how dated the facial animations felt. CP2077 has the best faces I've seen yet, and it's not going to have this grey filter all over the place either.
This game is exactly what I expected. Its unapologetically a bethesda fps rpg.
The menus are unwieldy, the economy is annoying, the politics half thought out, gun play is eh, etcetcetc.
But that's not why I play these games, I play them because I love the weird quest rabbit holes you find yourself going down. I love how I can just go somewhere and knock all the shit off the shelves.
I've been playing on normal difficulty except for 5 on 1 space battles, I set that shit down to very easy. The gun play has felt fine for me, focus on headshots and you end up with more ammo you can use, particularly caseless shotgun ammo, .50 cal, and whatever the grendel shoots. I almost always go into areas underleveled in early game so I tend to have long range extended gun fights or just barrel stuff with the old earth shotgun.
Last time I played New Vegas I walked directly to the strip at level 2, avoided all the cazadors and death claws, then started the Dead Money DLC at level 5, and finished it at level 9.
I'm ranting right now but basically what I'm trying to say is these games are games where you need to find your fun and set your goals. You have main quest lines that literally end the game, so go out and find something weird, set off in a direction and find a long winded side quest. Make your character a drunk and drink every single alcoholic drink you find. Make your character a clepto and steal relentlessly. Get addicted to every drug and refuse to wear armor and specialize in the utility knife.
if you really dont care about combat, just roll the difficulty all the way down and have fun.
I have a rule about bethesda games - I don't buy them until well after the first few patches, or the GOTY edition. I am starfield curious but also, hesitant because of No Man's Sky. Allow me to elaborate:
NMS shipped and was garbage. But over the ensuing year, damned near everything players expected or wanted from it came to be with game altering updates that improved it's content range enormously. It's still not my favorite game, but every time I fire it up there's new shit for me to do and most of it's pretty well implemented.
I have absolutely zero expectations in this way for Starfield. They're not going to rework space-to-ground flight or rng generated ground plots you can't explore past; they may improve perf and qol over time, but I fundamentally doubt anything like No Man's Sky updates are in the future.
So yeah, that makes me pause, and remember to be patient.
the bullet sponge must be really bad if you're complaining about it after coming from Cyberpunk lmao
It's absolutely the most bullet-spongiest gunplay in my recent memory. As the other guy said, I can unload an entire clip with an AR an not kill a normal mob, and there are elites with multiple health bars. Ugh...
I played Cyberpunk with a Sandy and Gorilla Arms and even on the hardest difficulty I was killing most enemies in one hit. Though I think early game was pretty rough before I got chromed.
Yeah I played pistol headshot build until they nerfed it, that was the only build that worked for me, it being one shot too. I dislike the leveled enemies in general. If I play it again it will be with a mod that removes levels and gives the factions more gameplay significance (like Maelstrom needing armor piercing).
I played Tarkov before that and after that any amount of bullet sponginess is agony. I like realism.
I completely ruins the immersion in Cyberpunk's amazing worldbuilding if unarmored enemies don't die after duping an entire mag into them. And even more so if I oneshot enemies in one neighborhood and in the next neighborhood they eat all my bullets for lunch without any visual indication why they would be stronger.
It's a little known fact that if you look up "meh" in the dictionary there is a picture of Starfield.
It's not just you.
In the past Bethesda was innovent. With Starfield they are just stuck in the past.
The game is so close to a loading screen simulator that it kills emmersion.
After finding better weapons I have found enemies much less bullet spongy. Here's the assault rifle I'm currently using, it kills multiple enemies per magazine:
weapon
*removed externally hosted image*
There is also a shotgun that one-taps enemies, but it has a reload time so long that it can't be reliably reloaded during firefights.
The game mechanics and worldbuilding are underwhelming for what they were touting it as. Its going to take a few years to be good.
but question is cyberpunk actually good now?
I am one of those weirdos who enjoyed Cyberpunk when it first came out. I don't know if I'd say it was "good" back then, but it was already fun. Now with a couple years of bug fixes and QoL features under it's belt, yes, it's a very good game. I just played through the entire game, doing all the gigs and most of the side jobs, and I'm really pumped to do it all again when the DLC comes out. Using a different build will change the entire play style of the game, and there is enough choice in the role playing that I can see different stories in the same quests.
It's a very good game and anyone who avoided it before because of the bad press (but normally would like this sort of thing) should really give it a shot now.
It's WAY better than Starfiield so far... :-/
I loved Cyberpunk. I didn't pick it up until 1.3, but I ran into only one major bug. And that was only preventing progression on a sidequest.
As it stands, I don't see how I don't ditch Starfield for Phantom Liberty in a couple weeks.
I agree mostly with this. The bullet-sponginess makes me somewhat dislike the combat. During some random exploration, I found a nice weapon which allows me to one-shot most people. That actually helped a lot, which is one thing that made me realize how spongy things actually are. And yeah, I also found Cyberpunk's combat better.
I'm on the fence with the menus and loading screens. Personally I just wish it was more consistent. If I set a course while sitting in the pilot's seat, I at least get a cutscene that offers some slight immersion. If I do it from the nav table, I jump instantly to my destination regardless of where I was before. Hate that.
Personally I just wish it was more consistent.
Ha, I agree but the opposite. The cutscenes for immersion are great... the first 50 times. After that, I just want the option to SKIP IT!!!
I truly dont understand the "everything is a bullet sponge" argument.
I havent skilled any combat related skills and I am doing just fine in combat. Also I dont expect enemies in an RPG to get down in a single shot. Especially when they are armored like tanks or some weird giant alien creature. People have weird expectations tbh.
I'm holding back till more mods start coming out to improve it like all other bethesda games
