I don’t understand why they don’t ask “what can we do to make these barren planets better”, instead of “empty planets are fun!”… ironically its this that has turned me off from buying Starfield … cheers Bethesda
I honestly don’t think they put that much thought into the “vision”. I think they either ran out of time or just didn’t care and then slapped a “vision” on to try to make the emptiness make sense.
Once they revealed that it was going to be about 1000 procedurally generated planets, my hype fizzled out. Almost no game gets this right. It’s all boring unless you add a shit ton of content to the game that can scale with the procedural generation or have a solid game play loop. Which, this game doesn’t have… I wish they had like 10-20 planets that were fleshed out and had more than 1 big city in them that almost all the quests have you going back to. This game is just stale and too simple imo
Procedurally generated for me sounds like it should mean the places around the hand crafted areas we made are kind of random and not “yeah so this time the temple is green”
Noita seems like a Procedurally generated game (which it is) but there are lots of fixed areas like “gold”
Xenoblade Chronicles X is legit the best exploration experience I’ve had in a game, and it had a survey/resource building element that was fun as well. The WiiU is honestly such an underrated console.
Effectively there’s really nothing without changing the core features of the game. They might remove one of the greater offenders that keeps popping but it’ll still have all the issues and the core content won’t change.
Make them a different kind of challenge. Devoid of life and stations, but environmental challenges and weird caves with unique challenges and rewards. Random crashed ships, or you know complexes that forward the main story…
Just off the top of my head. Sad that they chose this and then doubled down when people gave them negative feedback.
I got one of those chatgpt style responses on my negative steam review that raised 5 major issues with the game. So irritating.
So many problems other than the boring planets. They are right many planets were expected to be boring waste lands one problem is it’s tricky to transition from somewhere boring to somewhere where something’s happening. Too many menu clicks or the faux flying game.
It’s even so much that you can’t have barren planets. It does make sense - even if the randomly placed POIs contradicts it to some degree. But they really needed to added more handcrafted locations on the map tiles where there is a major settlement. Put 15-20 places around New Atlantis. Give Neon the Metal Gear Solid Motherbase treatment where it’s multiple rigs connected with one another that we can shuttle to.
The space theme the game has was always going to lead to a more disconnected feeling simply because you get to jump to other planets, which doesn’t make traversal continuous. But at the very least, just make it so that we can get that feeling on the major planets of interest.
You know the thing is. Actually empty planet would be kinda neat. But they are actually filled with non-content. The same boring building. You go to a so called uncharted planet because people don’t explore in this world for lore reason but it’s filled with shit. Give me an actual empty planet
The biggest problem is that with all these barren planets, there’s no real space traversal. If the game were actually open world, meaning no load screens, and you could actually fly in space from planet to planet, it would be a lot better.
What I don’t understand Is the playtesters must have been telling them it was boring years before release and they were too arrogant to try and fix it.
I don’t understand why they don’t ask “what can we do to make these barren planets better”, instead of “empty planets are fun!”… ironically its this that has turned me off from buying Starfield … cheers Bethesda
Barren was the vision. To make the planets fun you’d have to fill them with content which goes against the vision.
Reject fun, embrace the vision.
I honestly don’t think they put that much thought into the “vision”. I think they either ran out of time or just didn’t care and then slapped a “vision” on to try to make the emptiness make sense.
Once they revealed that it was going to be about 1000 procedurally generated planets, my hype fizzled out. Almost no game gets this right. It’s all boring unless you add a shit ton of content to the game that can scale with the procedural generation or have a solid game play loop. Which, this game doesn’t have… I wish they had like 10-20 planets that were fleshed out and had more than 1 big city in them that almost all the quests have you going back to. This game is just stale and too simple imo
Honestly the only games that really did procedural world generation correct are Minecraft and Civilization.
Maybe Daggerfall, at least for its’ time.
Minecraft went through TONS of iterations before getting it right too, and arguably some of the old stuff was better than it is today
At some point they should have said, “Alright, we’re done. This game is complete.”
Hey, that’s what I said warning people about Starfield “explore these million planets” games are almost always boring. Got downvoted into oblivion.
Procedurally generated for me sounds like it should mean the places around the hand crafted areas we made are kind of random and not “yeah so this time the temple is green” Noita seems like a Procedurally generated game (which it is) but there are lots of fixed areas like “gold”
Roberts Space Industries vehemently disagrees!
No man’s sky does this much better, still not perfect though. And still slightly boring, but better. But boring… also better.
Can you imagine though if they rolled this out as a 2TB super universe game? That would be insane… cool but insane.
If they had gamified studying or surveying empty planets in some kind of immersive and interesting way, I could actually really get into it.
Xenoblade Chronicles X is legit the best exploration experience I’ve had in a game, and it had a survey/resource building element that was fun as well. The WiiU is honestly such an underrated console.
Effectively there’s really nothing without changing the core features of the game. They might remove one of the greater offenders that keeps popping but it’ll still have all the issues and the core content won’t change.
Make them a different kind of challenge. Devoid of life and stations, but environmental challenges and weird caves with unique challenges and rewards. Random crashed ships, or you know complexes that forward the main story…
Just off the top of my head. Sad that they chose this and then doubled down when people gave them negative feedback.
I got one of those chatgpt style responses on my negative steam review that raised 5 major issues with the game. So irritating.
Uh did Niel Armstrong try to make the moon better?
He put a flag there.
They also had a golf minigame there. Huge difference.
They know modders will fix it
Ego.
The problem isn’t that the game is boring, it’s that it allows players to do boring things.
There is no reason to scan lots of empty planets and build resource extractors on them…
I did this and simply thought… screw this im just gonna do quests from now on… then the game is fine.
You haven’t played Homeworld…
Honestly, this is kind of how I feel about Bethesda games in general.
They just aren’t very good. They are, however, excellent frameworks for others to build a good game on top of.
It wasn’t the uncanny valley mannequins?
Whatever floats your boat.
They don’t want the cost of updating the game. That’s why
I don’t understand why they’d say that. Be cool if maybe you could turn the whole planet into a research base and terraform etc. that’s lofty though.
I simply can’t understand why they thought we’d wanna see 1000’s of planets of nothing.
I don’t think Sony will let them spend any more money on this “project”.
I’m more worried for the future of Elder Scrolls and Fallout, if they are gonna be anything like this empty game.
I’ll no longer buy a Bethesda title on its launch again tho, wait for them reviews.
I don’t they’ll care much what Sony has to say. They’re owned by Microsoft.
So many problems other than the boring planets. They are right many planets were expected to be boring waste lands one problem is it’s tricky to transition from somewhere boring to somewhere where something’s happening. Too many menu clicks or the faux flying game.
.
No man’s sky did exactly that and now it’s loads of fun
It’s even so much that you can’t have barren planets. It does make sense - even if the randomly placed POIs contradicts it to some degree. But they really needed to added more handcrafted locations on the map tiles where there is a major settlement. Put 15-20 places around New Atlantis. Give Neon the Metal Gear Solid Motherbase treatment where it’s multiple rigs connected with one another that we can shuttle to.
The space theme the game has was always going to lead to a more disconnected feeling simply because you get to jump to other planets, which doesn’t make traversal continuous. But at the very least, just make it so that we can get that feeling on the major planets of interest.
You know the thing is. Actually empty planet would be kinda neat. But they are actually filled with non-content. The same boring building. You go to a so called uncharted planet because people don’t explore in this world for lore reason but it’s filled with shit. Give me an actual empty planet
The biggest problem is that with all these barren planets, there’s no real space traversal. If the game were actually open world, meaning no load screens, and you could actually fly in space from planet to planet, it would be a lot better.
It usually is worth it to wait on Bethesda games anyway. Probably the first Beth game where I played through the game like once lmao
I’d be willing to bet its because they know exactly who’s going to fix the problem for them for free. The modders.
because they’d be admitting that they screwed it up, and nobody has the time nor the maturity to do that.
What I don’t understand Is the playtesters must have been telling them it was boring years before release and they were too arrogant to try and fix it.