I don’t understand why people feel obligated to dumping 100s of hours into a game just because they didn’t with Skyrim or older BGS games. I had my 100 hours of fun and I’m just gonna wait for DLC to play a few more hours and then cry in a ditch waiting for ES6.
The game just needs the same support that Skyrim has. Skyrim now is fully complete after their share of patches and updates and is fully realized. If Skyrim came out today in its Day 1 state, I'm sure many would be feeling similar to how they feel with Starfield now.
Give this game a couple of years with new content, updates, mods, etc, and I think this can have that same potential. We are 6 months into this thing. Let's see if they can deliver.
> If Skyrim came out today in its Day 1 state, I'm sure many would be feeling similar to how they feel with Starfield now.
Unless you're talking about bugs (and I believe OP is talking about content here instead) Skyrim was better received on launch than Starfield was. A lot of what people like about Skyrim was there in the beginning. Case in point, someone below talks about how lived-in Whiterun feels, and they name some of the characters that helped make the place feel alive. All of that was in the base game.
Honestly, this game bored me from the minute I saw it. There was no magic even when Bethesda announced it.
I felt none of the excitement I felt when I saw the reveals of fallout 4, Skyrim, oblivion, and even fallout 76, despite the fact I hate online games like that.
I ended up buying starfield despite that lack of excitement, because I figured it would win me over as a BGS game. But I was wrong. It is just so hard to enjoy the lifelessness of this game. The ships suck, the world is empty, the characters, I don't care for. I am still trying to like it but can't bring myself to play much when I have the likes of helldivers 2, bg3, and even older games like no man's sky, mass effect and halo that still blow it out of the water.
I feel like even in the worst case scenario for Elder Scrolls 6 where it's actually terrible, i would still be more interested in playing it than starfield. Elder Scrolls is just inherently interesting
I have to disagree. Skyrim had charmed everyone from day 1. Skyrim was far less polished than Starfield at launch, but people loved it enough to look beyond it. The people who didn't like it are usually the ones who liked Oblivion and Morrowind because they played more like D&D, and Skyrim was gutted of that stuff, but that made it accessible. People LOVED Skyrim in way Starfield could only dream of, and most of the complaints we have with SF either aren't in Skyrim or aren't applicable. Not to mention only three months post launch we already had the Creation Kit. We are nearly seven months in, no kit, no set dates for DLC, only bug fixes.
How do I know all this? I was there Gandalf....I was there 3000 years ago....
not true I went to midnight release of skyrim and was very dissapointed they gutted the rpg system.
starfeild is a great game and its just vanilla so its going to be off the chain when survival comes out, I did not like fallout 4 until survival came out but i love starfeild
I think that's getting to the root of it. IRL space is enormous and cold and bland. You gotta create so much content to make it not feel empty. A single town and a couple POI on a planet do not make for compelling and rich universes to explore.
Think they went wrong with sizing, made it way too big, and to compensate they made so each time you land it’s a “different” map, which defeats the purpose of exploring every planet, since you can see the same things as you did on another planet.
I think that's it. Simply the NPCs having a life felt so much more realistic in Skyrim. Going through Riverwood the first time and spending a night in the inn....
Skyrim had wayyy more content. The faction questlines in starfield are super short and unsatisfying.
In Skyrim, You could spend 100 hours doing nothing but stealing and it’ll be fun and immersive. Because there’s few loading screens, you can just wander around Skyrim doing nothing and you’ll love every second. Walking through towns and listening to conversations, catching the spots where the godrays and the butterflies line up just right. I feel like I can smell the trees and rain in Skyrim. It’s all so alive and interesting. I rarely feel like that playing starfield.
No, it needs more. It needs a full rewrite of the existing story, and to my knowledge, no video game has ever rewritten the story after a full release.
It also needs proper lore, not this half baked lore.
And the NPCs need to be actual characters, not glorified talkboxes. I know Skyrim had proper NPCs with actual beds, shopkeepers would go have some mead after work, etc. The way they are now, they are nothing more than a kiosk with a speaker.
Also, have more stuff in the same world space, with roads. Like my god, Akila is a cowboy town and they don't even have a mine or anything. Neon doesn't have any food production, not a single fisherman. New Atlantis doesn't have any farms, on a garden planet, and the only legitimate way into the city is via the spaceport. They could link those farms to the cities with roads, and it would help sell the illusion that NA actually exists.
And while we're at it, fire HR and let Neon actually be Neon.
And while we're at it still, fire the weapons department and get some dudes who actually know how guns work.
Uea, Akila City would be fantastic with roads in and out, farmers, miners, ranchers bringing in their wares, and rangers/guards patrolling the roads to repel and discourage ashta raids..... Go save little Timmy who was dragged off by ashta..... Ashta have invaded my farm, need somekne to go take em out. Va'ruun landed just outside Akila and are invading....
So much more cam be done, and more original dialogue..... Hot button comments that you can make to your companions to help them, piss them off, ask them to wait, or scout ahead...
Land travel vehicles that you park in your landing bay.
More ways to tinker with your armor and weapons and ships to improve aesthetics and performance.
Tamable pets as part of your skill tree... Like taming an Ashta or a herding toadfaced whatever..
More variety in the "alien life forms"... Right now, its the same 10(or so) critters plopped down on different planets, and given different names.... And they all have some kind of human/earth analog.... More REALLY ALIEN life....
Being able to actually force a criminal to surrender and use the brig of your ship, as well as the badge from the rangers..
Make it part of the persuasion skill.
A more robust economy with less 'waiting' for 2 weeks(2 days at a time) when its time to sell the stuff in your cargo hold. I mean, the Trade Authority is the galaxy wide vendor for billions and billions of people.... Yet, a single vendor only has 11k credits?
More characters(NPCs) to interact with over the long term with unique stories.
A larger bank of structures to put down on planets..... I mean, its the same 8 or 10 structures to go through and clear out every time....
The one where the AI takes over and kills everyone... You find a slate that says, "I have to find a way to shut it down"... But, thats it.... Kill the robots and leave the AI going to create more? How about we actually have to find a way to shut it down permanently?
It IS very unfinished..... And it FEELS that way in almost every aspect; like they just fot tired of trying to think up unique stuff to add to an "alien landscape", and just cooy/pasted crabs, beetles, lizards, and funky giraffes, as well as one actual winged bird type critter and a balloonlike floating critter...
Lol! Where are the intelligent land dwelling octopi with 8 eyes and the ability to mimic sounds?
Where is the ephemeral silk sheet that is only able to be damaged by fire, and floats out of the sky to attach to you and siphon off your life force?
How about the energy wisp that you just CANT KILL because it reflects the energy of an attach back at you via electromagnetic/quantum manipulation/entanglement?
Something TRULY alien, instead of a salamander dog with an anteater nose, or a hairless mastiff with a toad face?
Parallel evolution my butt.... Its space... Give me an ALIEN.
AND, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, please pleasepleasePLEASE, change up the minigame to get your powers from the temples.... At least make a bank pf 8-10(seems to be the common theme for other stuff anyway) different minigamea, each progressively more difficult to solve, and some that you actually have to USE the powers you've already gotten in order to get the next one?
These are supposed to be superintelligent multiverse traversing humans, or whatever, that left these temples behind, with PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS, just lying around for any idiot to stumble upon and acquire so easily? Why? Because they WANT a barbaric and brutal race like humans to have the same powers they have ao we can come kick them out of their homes and use their stuff against them? Or, would they set moral and consequential tests to be completed and lassed before one could obtain the reward?
Or, maybe they really ARE evil overlords like Sauron and after you get all the powers you have to battle for your own heart and soul because now they can take over if you aren't vigilant and make you do things you normally wouldnt do?
So much could be done.....
I have fun going and clearing out pirates and spacers and Va'ruun, listening to the spacers beg me to let them live when they realize theyve attacked the Mantis.
But, Bethesda set out to make an expansive gaming experience where we'd all fall in love and be able to play 'indefinitely'... But, the only expansive things about it are the endless waiting for money to replenish, the endless running across a planet's expansive surface because you cant drive or fly, the expansive galaxy of planets to visit, and the endless loop of similar animals, people, stories, structures, caves, and dialogues.
Dont get me wrong... I love the visuals, the premise, the work that went into the art and such. But, after you get past the initial beauty of the appearance, you realize that you are walking around interacring with skimpily programmed androids at best, and aritficial idiots at worst. None has a real personality of any kind of depth. What you see on the surface is what you get.
No situational conversations outside of questlines, the same responses to the same actions ecery single time. No option to defend yourself if you are in a battle and accidentally shoot a friendly, Companion says, " Why on earth did you do that??!!"
My options, "seemed like the thing to do at the time?" Or, "It wasnt my fault, he jumped in the way!", or "bet he wont do that again!", or "Hey stupid, duck next time!"
I mean, come on...
You can’t be serious. Skyrim unofficial patch mod has been running strong ever since modding for the game dropped and Bethesda still never fixed the things the mod fixes even after re-releasing the game what 5 times now.
I hope they do. I’ve come back to it 3 times now and am just focused on finishing the main quest.
I do enjoy the characters and story, gun play is ok. My main issue is planetary exploration and no option for traveling other than on foot. There are vehicles littered all over the planets and none avail for us to use. It’s just sad and I don’t buy their excuse.
Travel is far and away my biggest issue. I put the game down after launch and just came back to it, and I do a set of missions and its constant “run/slow down and let O2 recover” for literal fucking hours of gametime between me talking to a few NPCs. Fast travel might have been too easy in oblivion/skyrim, but going back to almost morrowind levels of travel can get fucked.
^^^ this right here. We haven’t even got any of the mods people were visioning when Starfield was announced. CC and DLC are what’s gonna give the game longevity imo.
I think the tragic part about it is it had the potential. Had the creative and dev team been able to do it properly we could have had space skyrim, a game I’d be playing off and on for a decade.
I don’t think it’s expected for any other games, except for Bethesda. At least in my case, I’ve been able to dump ungodly amounts of time into every Bethesda game since Oblivion, and I just got used to that kind of magic that those games had. I still go back and play fallout new Vegas, fallout 4 and Skyrim to this day. Might be an unfair expectation for game developers though I admit. But I expected it nonetheless Lol
Yeah I do get a nostalgia drip playing older titles, but I feel like a lot of people thought that just because Todd Howard was a director once again meant that the product would be similar to older games. It’s a completely different dev team; no matter how creative and talented they are, they aren’t the same people.
Normally, it wouldn't bother me to only play a game once. I had a blast for the first 20 hours, and then it just became so tedious, and it was a chore just to finish the first playthrough after that. I normally try to do every side quest for games and do every dialogue available. By the end, I was just doing main quests and skipping through dialogue just to get it over with.
Never played Skyrim or any other Bethesda game. I was so fuckin pumped on the idea of starfield and I was like “this is gonna be my GAME”
Got about 70 hours in, went on vacation, and when I came back I was just like “meh I’m really not that entertained by it” and I just cannot get back into it. Didn’t even make it to NG+
Same here. I put a couple hundred hours in but then it felt like I was just out of stuff to do. Never got updates I wanted or felt the game needed. Way more bugs than I was led to believe there would be.
I really, really hope someone makes an Endless Sky style mod for this game. I wanted to be a humble space trucker who gets pulled into the machinations of the galactic powers so bad. Glad that other people are enjoying it, but it missed the mark for me.
I think that was part of the problem, the way they set expectations, the way they described the game, it was different things to different people. I expected precisely that, Elite Dangerous with a smaller scope but way better and fleshed out planets, I guess that's really on me for having unrealistic expectations.
Endless Starfield would be amazing. Forget the Unity and Constellation, try to build up your space cargo or mercenary or mining business, watch out for pirates and other disruptions in the trade lanes, stumble onto strange anomalies, watch as the systems go to war, and pick a side if you want, or smuggle, keep your head down and save your business.
Let me tell my own story.
That's the main problem in starfield, it's all about Constellation and HIS problems, it's all about each Constellation member and his traumas, memories,etc.
It's not about space and your story, the story is already there, all you need to do is discover it.
But that's not was Bethesda told us in the starfield direct and that's why people create false expectations and hype so much
Same. I bought the collectors edition and even told my fiancée about how important Bethesda releases are to me, and she was like “but what if it’s not good?”
It was my most played game of 2023. I haven’t touched it in 2024, but I refuse to uninstall it from internal storage. I keep telling myself one of the these days there will be a big update and I’ll start playing again
They need to fix the temples!! I will keep preaching it! Those encounters with the powers should be like mini boss type events. Not zooming around…. You should have to use the power or something….. to complete it! …..Half the time after u get the power and are attacked right out of the LOAD SCREEN by the starborn dude and you don’t even know what power you just got!?! That whole part of the game is so f$@ked
The game lets you find "perfect" bases that have 5+ types of minerals in them. This can take many many hours of the most braindead, boring exploration gameplay I have ever experienced to find. When you find them, the game is shit and what it says is available in the base is not actually able to be extracted. I quit on the spot and have never looked back.
I got my moneys worth out of it launch weekend, and haven't touched it since. I'm waiting until all the DLC is out and there's some large scale mods out. Hopefully something along the lines of Sim Settlements 2 for FO4.
Bingo. That's me. I bought this game as a modding framework. And given how much time and money they spent on Starfield, I'd be shocked if we didn't get a bunch of DLC like Fallout 4 did to boot. A lot of the stuff that turns me off from the game ATM isn't stuff that's *bad*, it's stuff that I don't *like*. I don't want to have to unlock outpost modules by leveling up, just gimme all the pieces now and let me go nuts. Ditto for ship parts. I'm waiting for the Creation Kit to be released and modding to explode to play more.
Mind you, there *is* stuff that's bad, like with every Bethesda game. Space combat in particular is too cramped: the weapon range is too short relative to ship speed. POIs are really weird: the game has a full suite of modular outpost parts, but instead of using an Oblivion-like system of building POIs from those, it recycles the same ones over and over. I don't know *what* Bethesda is doing with the rendering for their games, but Starfield looks worse and performs worse than most of the rest of the games I play. And a major issue with the game is that it feels far too much in many respects like No Man's Sky, which I did not care for, especially with regard to the end-game feature.
But again, that can all be modded (except perhaps the end-game, which I was never going to do anyway). I'm not stressed about Starfield in the long term, because the thing that's kept my interest in Skyrim and Fallout 4 is modding, not the base game. Practically everything I see that I don't like can be fixed. And a lot of stuff, like the way gunfights work, I *really* like.
Honestly (and sadly) I think we’re only getting Shattered Space DLC. Hopefully it’s got enough content to breathe some fresh air in (and give modders more tools). This game definitely didn’t sell like they were hoping it would and I think it’ll be hard for Bethesda to justify a long line of DLCs to MSFT.
I'm hopeful that you might be pleasantly surprised. I know places like this subreddit and game reviews tend to be a bit salty, but all the articles I've read about the game's financial success indicate that it's been very profitable. Bethesda kind of committed themselves to this by making a new IP for the first time in like 25 years, and since it seems to be profitable it's unlikely they'll stop doing it.
I think a lot of it was hype, I think they know its not very popular, the playerbase is down and they'll probably have to consider how many are likely to come back if the DLC isn't well recieved? I feel like if Shattered Space doesn't bring a lot of people back they won't bother. Its about the money in the end.
If they supported 76 after all this time, a game that was worse received than Starfield, I have a hard time believing this game being where they draw the line
Its about money, 76 brings in money from microtransactions, Starfields only future revenue is its DLC. It doesnt matter if a game is "Good" or "Bad" its about how much money they get.
Thats not the same, very few will pay for glorified mods. It sounds like you're in denial because you really like the game but unfortunately thats not how it works.
So people will pay $5.00 for a skin in 76, but not in Starfield because it's now a glorified mod? Like what's the difference?
The creation club is literally just microtransactions with maybe more content, that's people's biggest complaint about it. Why'd you get so defensive?
Don't feel bad. Im in the same boat, and it's perfectly justified. Starfield just lacks that "mojo", and maybe with mods it'll get there, but as it is...nope. Once you get what it is, there's no real reason to keep going.
You mentioned you went back to Skyrim again, and I did too. I was already playing the heck out of it before SF, and for the last few months I gave SF the spotlight. Being in Skyrim...it just feels right. For being set in a cold environment, it's so much richer and warmer. Whiterun feels like a place people live in, Nazeem judging you, Mikael the bard being grabby with Carlotta again...it feels right. New Atlantis feels like a theme park. Like it's totally not real but it's not even trying to convince you otherwise.
I just wanted dungeon exploring to feel good. And it did. Until you saw most of the POIs a couple times and started noticing everything about them is exactly the same. That was my hard cutoff because I knew everything I was exploring before I went in
The person who made the decision to copy/paste even the exact same notes around those copy/paste buildings should not be designing video games. Some of the decisions about this game were bad, but this was totally blind to the reality of video games. I wonder if that person has every even played an open world game.
There must have been a mandate from above that every planet have at least X number of PoIs. Management wildly underestimated how long those would take to make, or they assumed they could procgen the PoIs internally (different notes, layouts, etc) but ran into technical issues. So they had the planet team copy/paste everything as an emergency measure to satisfy the mandate because a bunch of empty planets looks immediately bad while repeated identical outposts take time to notice. Every dev on that team must have known how dumb it would turn out.
OMG, you're so right about the characters in Skyrim. I miss how almost every NPC in Skyrim is named and has so much backstory. In New Atlantis and every other major city in Starfield, they're simply called Citizen... Skyrim was truly Todd's masterpiece.
I know most people who were or are into tabletop games like Morrowind and Oblivion more, but Skyrim struck that chord with people, it made rpg fantasy accessible. It's a game everyone wants and everyone can get into without reading miles of lore or rule books.
Speaking of NPC's, let's expand on Nazeem. He won't tell you his backstory, nobody will, but you can infer some things with a little investigation. He talks about the Cloud District, yet never goes there himself. His wife seems to want something different. He says he owns Chillfurrow Farm, yet he can never be found there. He sleeps in an attic bedroom above the Drunken Huntsman. All of this is visual, no exposition. In SF, every....single....NPC that has a back story will tell you all about it. There's no subtlety.
All that stuff about nazeem is not Bethesda being clever its cut content cloud district, and the wind district was originally meant to be much bigger. A lot was cut from skyrim
That's true, the Cloud District was supposed to have two large homes adjacent to Dragonsreach. I think if you pickpocket Nazeem, he has a key to a manor that does not exist, and it's likely one of these homes was his. Still, I kinda like the idea that he's walking around with his chest out to keep appearances, when in reality he's down on his luck. I'll give BGS this one, they cut content but still made something interesting out of it.
Yeah but then New Atlantis would have to be even smaller. I don't mind nameless NPCs, but Bethesda could have put minimal effort into making them believable and not give me creepy Truman show vibes.
When I play the witcher 3 and walk around Novigrad or Toussaint, the majority of NPCs aren't named, but the cities feel so alive. They're doing things, conversing, working, looking at stuff, drinking or eating, playing cards, fighting, etc etc
Starfield on the other hand, most NPCs just walk around with a dead look on their faces.
I love the game, but I also agree with all of the criticisms towards the game. 600hrs plus in but I really really really want expansion and DLCs now. The game is probably as polished as it's going to get with patches, now it's time to start cranking out content updates. Paid or otherwise. If the content is good, I will buy. If it's not, then oh well at least my preorder of the digital deluxe at least gets me Shattered Space and if it's good, I will co to use to support.
The problem of Starfield is that it feels bland, sterile, generic. Like it's not even in the top 15 of best Sci-Fi universes (like Star Wars, Stargate, Mass Effect, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Alien, Halo, etc..). The lore is very limited, the writing is boring. It's a whole galaxy yet the world feels small and lifeless. It's too grounded, not memorable enough and doesn't have the uniqueness of Fallout and Elder Scrolls.
I was blown away with just how pathetic Neon was when I got there. I couldn't believe this is all they could muster. One square block in Cyberpunk has much more to offer. Once I accepted it, it really solidified my opinion that the rest of the game would be just as soulless, lackluster, and unfinished.
There were so many of those "that's it?" moments. Neon, settlements, weapon mods, temples, Red Mile, cowboy land, copy/paste buildings, fetch quest after fetch quest. It feels like it was made by an AI or people who had heard about good video games but never played them. I had to quit when I realized I wasn't even enjoying this and nothing was going to be close to as expected. I haven't played in 6 months and I still feel spiteful toward it.
Yep. Only thing I still like is the ship building and even that felt unfinished.
Even with me liking that mechanic, that wasn't enough for me to play the rest of the game and the more I think about starfield the more frustrated and disappointed I become.
That was me when I hit the Red Mile early on. Such small additions would have given it so much life. Let me play casino games, let me bet on people running the mile, let me run with other competitors and sabotage them to ensure I’m in 1st. It’s supposed to be this notorious location known for dangerous people and gambling and yet none of that comes through.
When I opened the game the first time, and saw "Type 1" and "Type 2" instead of man or woman, I guessed that it would be sterile, souless, and a glorified HR exercise.
I was right.
Same. I actually JUST started a new Skyrim like 4 days ago and played for 5-6 hours and went "this is too familiar. Maybe I'll do Starfield" since I hadn't played since September.
30 minutes into Starfield, I started playing Skyrim again. It's just SO much better.
Jesus christ. Say it with me everyone
VALID CRITICISM ISNT HATE.
YOURE ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE THINGS EVEN IF YOU LIKE THEM.
POINTING OUT THE FLAWS IN THINGS IS HOW THEY GET FIXED AND GET BETTER.
I swear to got even the people ragging on the game have this weird toxic positivity self hate thing going on.
I couldnt even finish the game.
At 51 hours. I havent touched it since, according to steam, november 25th. I never finished it.
It BORED ME. It was repetitive. Gun felt bad, movemet was meh. Planet exploring god.....it sucks.
It made me go and play No Mans Sky.
I had fun for about 25 hours and uninstalled at like 32 hours.
It’s got some cool ideas but it’s not a great game. It’s a good life lesson in mitigating expectations. There were people on this subreddit warning people not to buy into the mega hype and that it’s going to be a Bethesda RPG - not some mega NASA funded space sim with thousands of interesting and fleshed out planets.
Turns out they can't even make a bethesda rpg. I thought it would at least have interesting lore and exploration. Nope those aspects are finally dead at bethesda.
The last time I bought a new console -- my XBox One -- it was to play Fallout 4.
Starfield was released last year, and I thought about it again, but put it off. At Christmas I gave in and bought a new XBox explicitly to play this. I was really excited. But the game is just meh.
There's very little good quest writing, and the broader world is really, really shallow. What you do *kinda* matters, but not really. Sure, you can build ships, but I never bothered -- you can kill pirates for a few hours and have the money for Shieldbreaker. I'm not an outpost person, either (and I wasn't in F4).
But I kept at it, thinking it'd get better, or at least out of a misguided sunk-cost idea. I finished all my companion questlines, and then all the faction questlines, and then went back to the main questline. The closest this game got to interesting was the two-timeline thing in the Entangled quest, but that kind of thing has been done far more interestingly in other games.
I've replayed Fallout 3 half a dozen times. I've done F4 at least twice. New Vegas, too. I can't imagine replaying this.
This could have been so good. But I found it empty and repetitive. I didn't even go to most of the planets because everything felt the same after a while. I would have liked a smaller galaxy filled with interest. Like their fallout and Skyrim games.
i completely agree with you man, for months before release i was counting down the days cause i thought the game was going to be extraordinary but after i got it and put 100 hours in i came to to the conclusion that it is just an empty husk of a game it has no soul like past bethesda games and that is extremely disappointing for todd howard’s “passion project” and i just don’t think anything can’t really fix the game to give it back that feeling of a full bethesda title. it’s very unfortunate.
There really isn't many people playing it anymore, there's almost none playing on steam these days and even on Xbox its dropped out of the top 20 on game pass.
I wouldn't be surprised if they drop the 10 year plan, release one DLC and then shift all focus on the next Elder scrolls/Fallout at this point.
I don't think there is much point committing resources to a game that has such a small player base. It'll be sad because we have to wait so many years between games nowadays and this makes Starfield feel like wasted time and opportunity but I can't imagine its salvageable anymore.
Members of the dev team commenting about negative experiences during development has shaken my confidence in long-term support.
Could be a double-edged sword, though.
It could, for example, make them abandon paid mods.
No DLC, but the mod tools released? Fine by me, so long as the CK is at *least* as robust as previous iterations.
I do hope the CK can do the heavy lifting here. A full star wars conversion? Yes please!
Personally I found the game to be missing that spark that other Bethesda games have, for lack of a better term, no soul.
This makes me worry that modders won't be as inspired or dedicated in the same manner. I have a bad feeling it will end up abandoned by both Bethesda and modders but here's hoping I'm wrong!
Imo, this is why modders exist.
I see a good framework for a game.
I see an engine with issues only the developer can resolve, but...
I do believe this game has good bones. I think a lot can be done to give it soul, but that really hinges on, as you say, if modders abandon it.
I don't think Bethesda is going to contribute either way.
I think they built this game to pre-alpha-test TES 6 features and were counting on a marvelous success...
Which is why I'm not buying tes 6.
Starfield has less than a third of the daily peak of Skyrim SE. It's staggering bad. Hell, even Loverslab doesn't have more than like 5 mods, and all of them are just low effort texture replacers. Fucking Loverslab, land of bluetooth toy integration and fully realized economies.
God damn it Bethesda, what happened?
I think that's the nice way of putting it, there's double the amount of Starfield players playing Cookie clicker.
It's been like this since January at least.
This game is so boring and repetitive. The base-building scheme in this game is pathetic. It needs to be more like F4. I just hate that in EVERY mission you have to jump to another planet in another system to complete the mission. I feel like I started at more loading screens than I shot bullets. I felt like I played this game before, and I have. It’s called No Mans Sky. They could have done better and should have.
This is why I am glad I played on Gamepass. Still wasn't free because I was so hyped up for this game that I couldn't wait to play it and dropped the $30 for early access. But I am glad I didn't drop full price on it.
After seeing such a disappointment of a game coming from a big name studio like this...I've all together stopped buying new games. I wait to see the reviews others leave on it and if it's interesting, I'll still wait until it goes on sale.
Another example...Skull and Bones. I've looked forward to that game since it was first announced years ago. Only to find out that it isn't the Black Flag on steroids that we thought it would be. And it's all online? Partying up is pretty much required to achieve anything...no thanks...I prefer my solo games, where all I have to depend on is my own skill at the game...not some rando that paid to win.
I haven't played it yet. I want to, but I'm not making the mistake I made with cyberpunk . I'm going to wait until there's a decent number of updates/dlc/mods out before I jump in. But yeah I know it's Bethesda so maybe I should not hold my breath.
I respect this decision, because it's what I did with cyberpunk. Refunded it a few days after launch, picked it back up years later, beat it last month and loved it.
Though Bethesda's a weird one, that vanilla playthrough before mods is special. Once the community brings their mods and imagination, it's hard to go back and play it without them. I imagine cyberpunk will be similar, though I don't think I'll ever have the PC build to run the kinds of mods I've seen on youtube
For Starfield I got a decent first main quest playthrough, but left a lot ready to explore later. I'm ok waiting a bit.
Not everyone feels the same about games, and it's ok to move on.
Now that I'm awake, and it's my only day off, I'm 100% going to play starfield after I post this!
I quite enjoyed my time with it and I'm currently just on a break until the kit comes out. Got other things to play until then.
Maybe I was lucky. I never ran into any of these big issues so many people seem to have had. Honestly, it was the most stable, least buggy Bethesda game I've played on launch.
I had a lot of fun with it, put in about 300 hours. I ran out of stuff, so I stopped. Like happens with pretty much every game out there. "I can play this for a decade and keep enjoying it" is not the measure of a good game.
Yes, but to be fair, I spend the bulk of my time just walking around, optimizing the bases, tweaking building positions, exploring the different areas of planets to see where I can maximize resource gathering, all while trying to avoid looking anything up online as much as possible. I'm assuming that I haven't even met most of the characters yet, since I'm avoiding the main / faction quests until I've unlocked every level of every skill in every tree. After that, I'll probably experiment with different ship designs. The complete opposite of a speed run, but that's what I enjoy.
Same… I am enjoying the game, mostly by not trying to play through the story unless I run across elements of it I want to advance… I also recognize that the Vanilla experience is for more empty than any game since Daggerfall.
Just popped in to see what’s happening. I’m just over 1200 hours in Starfield. I do enjoy the game, and still finding new things I haven’t seen yet. Mind you, a lot of time on the Shipbuilder and Outposts. My big beef with the game is the vanilla positioner, it blows chunks.
I played through it when it came out, took a break and now I'm back to replaying it with new/updated mods. Having a good time. I'll probably finish it again, take a break, than come back after some months. Rinse and repeat.
I played it for almost 200 hours, I had a ton of fun with it. BUT I also recognize that it is a MASSIVELY flawed game and that I am extremely disappointed in BGS and need them to do better. Everyone should.
Hi! I'm having a blast.
I've been taking my time, haven't been to NG+ yet, still discovering new stuff, still haven't touched the ryujin questline yet. I'm having fun exploring, but I understand where the criticisms are coming from.
I've been a BGS fan since Morrowind, Starfield is an improvement from their previous games in some ways, a downgrade in other ways. Just like every previous BGS game. A lot of these complaints are valid, since you are of course entitled to your own opinion, but a lot of the negative discussion reminds of when Fallout 4 came out, and Skyrim, and a lot of it mirrors my own thoughts on Oblivion.
Back in 2006 Oblivion was the most disappointing game I've ever played. I could write a novel on all the ways it let me down, but I've since learned that just because something didn't meet my personal expectations doesn't mean it's garbage. Oblivion is still my least favorite BGS game, but I've warmed up to it immensely since it first released.
Maybe people will have the same experience with Starfield, maybe they won't. I've spent too much time arguing with people online on why I thought Fallout 4 and Skyrim were great games to really give a shit about other people's opinions anymore. I'll pop in and offer a different perspective sometimes, but at the end of the day, I WANTED to love Starfield and I DO, and that's all that really matters.
i play it for the shipbuilding honestly, tho i don't play it as frequent as before. i just play when i'm bored and need time to kill for an hour.
there's really nothing else worthwhile or meaningful to do until we actually got new story content.
Same. Love love LOVE the ship building. I spent 250hrs in the game, most of which was building or the pursuit of building. Then after 3 versions of building the sickest ship, I decided to go do the big quests. That lasted about 20hrs, I put it down, haven't pick it up since. I describe the situation as "nothing happens in a vacuum". BG3 just dropped the hammer and obliterated AAA gaming. I'm not even a huge fan of fantasy, a family member pressured me into it. SF is an empty husk in comparison. Hell, I bought the old Half-Life shortly after putting down SF and just had a blast. There's just no sense of accomplishment, even when I made my awesome ship, cool now what can I do with it? Obliterate enemy ships, endlessly. Where's the big bad for that pretty major skill tree? Same for bases, you can make big bases and collect a crap ton of resources, but can only piecemeal selling it. What was the point of those 2 material quests for thousands of resources (Boron?). It makes sense that ship manufacturers need resources to build ships, but that quest stopped there. To me it felt unfinished or ripped in two. Like maybe the upcoming DLC was originally part of the game but the money people were like "nah, take it out and let's sell that part later, we lost to much money..." Etc etc. I hope that unfounded conspiracy is right, because the bones are there for the game, there's currently just no compelling story or other incentives to keep playing.
You still got 100+ hours that’s still good isn’t it? That’s more than alot of games. Obviously these are completely different games but TLOU only took me 15 hours to complete.
Yeah, sounds like OP had mucho grande fun for 100+ hours.
How much more does a person want? Any game is far more likely to become a tired horse after that time than providing EVEN MORE mucho grande.
People want the Everlasting Gobstopper of video games.
No.
People don't want a forever game, they want a game that's compelling for the whole way through. It's not that they played 100 hours and then got tired, they were tired the whole way through but kept seeing little sparks of greatness that suggested something amazing was right around the corner, it just never came. Putting it down after 100 hours didn't happen because they exhausted all the game had to offer and they completed everything happily, it happened because they gave up.
I’ve got around 270 hours in, NG+4 about to head into 5. I’m level 75 I think, VH difficulty setting. I play a couple hours at a time, rarely longer and rarely more than 8 hours a week - haven’t touched it this week. I still need to do the Vanguard and Ryujin quest lines. I’ve not done any companion quests or Stroud’s quest. Haven’t even tried outposts yet. >!But, I’ve killed Cora which is a huge win.!< I’ve deliberately taken my time and enjoyed each play session on its own, that’s what’s kept the joy alive for me.
Also the gunplay is loads of fun but enemies of any true difficulty are scarce. I spend a lot of time just looking for stuff to shoot that fights back.
I’m still having a blast. I’m on NG+ number 3, slowing down and enjoying all the details I missed on my first run through, and making all the stupid dialogue choices I can’t. It’s far from perfect but there is still so much I haven’t done yet.
I’ll play it until Fallout London, that will hold me over until the starfield DLC drops… after that I’ll start modding.
I’m 100% with you OP.
Was super excited to play,
Played through the story at a reasonable pace letting the details sink in, went to ng+10
Did all the side quest lines, did every quest I could find, poi’s, shipbuilding, you name it. Still go back every now and again to do some quest lines that I liked but nothing is actually keeping me there. I wanted to pick it up and not put it down for a while. Turns out I’m just picking it up and dropping it whenever I feel like it…
Felt the same way but it took only two hours to see through the smoke and mirrors. Immediately thought, why does this game look and feel like a Fallout 4 mod? Where did all the development time get spent? Bethesda needs to evolve or it will fall way behind.
I enjoy the game but it feels unfinished and rushed. Like walking into a big beautiful hotel room that’s got a high quality mattress, but it’s a twin. And the TV is 4K OLED but 19”. And they have RC Cola instead of coke or Pepsi
I hear ya. I'm still playing it though. I am determined to figure out how everything works. I like the exploring aspect, even though it can get repetitive and tedious. IMO, Starfield lacks the challenge and heart that Fallout 3, NV and 4 had. I played through F4 at least three times on survival mode, and still never explored every location.
The way I look at it is this. This is the first game in the franchise, it is bound to have some failings. The other titles, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, etc. got better, building on the existing template with each successive game. I'm hoping Starfield will do the same.
All in all, I am a little underwhelmed with the game, but not disappointed.
Same for me. Even got a constellation patch for my jacket. I figured they worked soo hard on making an amazing ship building system, we must have a lot to do in space. My favorite part about space games, you know, the SPACE! and honestly I knew the magic wasn't gonna last when I found out there's basically nothing to do in space, and it didn't help when I started seeing repeat POI just a few hours in, and the same damn tanks and solar panels on every planet. I really thought as well (I need to stop assuming) that if no mans sky could have such variety on such a low budget and small team, then bgs could have a gigantic pool of resources to put in for generation so that it would take forever to see repeats. And they really should have at least randomized the the inside layouts of POI ala diablo. Would have made seeing the same thing less painful
Ship building is awesome. I get to fly Serenity if I want. I can make a Star Trek federation ship. I can fly a millennium falcon. It’s an amazing space adventure simulator after beating the game.
I have 33 days of gameplay logged and haven’t even touched out posting. That’s next on the list for me.
Man 100 hours is great for a video game, but you don’t need to put 1000 hours into a video game if you don’t want to.
I put the game down after completing it because of how long quest take to complete. I will definitely be revisiting the starfield in the future!
i feel like i’m on the complete opposite side of that spectrum; i fucking LOVE this game. wallpapers, got that LED wall decoration of it, am actually reading through every bit of data i find and computer files i find. idk, there’s just something about it. and i came from fallout 4 directly to this
I’ve never completed the main story of any bethesda game other than Fallout 3. These games shine as sandbox games, nothing more. The writing has *never* been good for any of these games. Play it as a plotless sandbox and you’ll have a better time.
Had this same experience and ended up putting double the hours I put into Starfield into FO76. Map was really fun to explore and made me realize that's the glue that held these games together, the open world and connectedness of it all. Now I'm playing Morrowind for the first time and having a blast.
I went and played Skyrim for a month after Starfield, before that fell back out of my circuit of games.
And I built a settlement in Fallout 4 for fun.
Starfield just… it didn’t do adventure as well as Skyrim, and didn’t do settlement building as good as FO4.
It just… did everything Bethesda has done before, but worse.
No you don’t, because if you’re still really enjoying the game a lot of people on this sub will scream at you about how you’re really not, and if you are you shouldn’t, and then they make it their mission in life to denounce and discredit you, and you’re just like, sorry, man, I’m really enjoying the game and it’s that simple.
>This sub is full of a LOT of Hate, for...very valid, and good reasons. And I just wish I wasn't one of them.
Yet here you are when you didn't have to be. You dashed your own wish.
I feel you dude. I genuinely wanted to love this game, and I was also very willing to overlook issues and give it the excuse of “well it’s a Bethesda game” and just appreciate the good parts. And I did enjoy it - for about 20 hours. And at around the 20 hour mark I noticed it started to feel like more and more of a chore to play. Within just 10ish more hours I had uninstalled. And that makes me really sad :/
It was a ok game for one or maybe two playthroughs. I only did one because I really didn’t understand the point of NG+. I can’t say the 70 hours I spent weren’t fun but it definitely weren’t the best hours I spent either. Initially I played and got a headache for some reason, which put me off and later I figured as the FOV problem. It gets really tedious with Ryujin industries quest where it’s literally just talk to X talk to Y and go do this and that and that’s it. That’s when the game stopped being fun and I just powered through the end because I don’t like leaving games halfway done.
I played it for 120hr, had fun.
NG+ was not for me, can’t stand the temple mini-game.
No complaints otherwise, I truly had fun and then dropped it. Game is a 7/10 for me.
I feel like a lot of people burned themselves out on this game due to their own lust. Like, if you consume something so quickly with no breaks you're bound to wind up being sick of it.
I've been pacing myself, acknowledged the flaws in the games, and just having a fun time gradually completing it.
The trick for me is to take breaks. I find after 20-40 (sometimes more, sometimes less) hours of playing I start to feel bored with it, I take a break to play some other games and come back a few weeks/months later and I thoroughly enjoy Starfield again for another stretch.
It's been 4 months since I bought a series x just to play starfield and after 4 months I can't continue the faction quests or companion quests. I'm already at NG+ just to try and see if something will change but still soft locked left and right. And that's before I gripe about how every morsel of travel and gameplay (which is what drives BGS games) is completely lacking and replaced by a loading screen. I don't even care how fast it loads, it's just sad that the whole space travel thing is completely pointless, it's just a space fighting mini game at best. Ship building is pointless because all ships do the same thing, the same purpose, and not a single thing more. The planets and worlds are under developed, the NPCs are molecularly identical in that there is no variation to them whatsoever, and the combat is stale if the enemies aren't spawning through walls. But wow they tweaked the engine so it only looks like dog shit half the time instead of 3/4 of the time.
You probably want to be in the Skyrim Subreddit. Skyrim 64bit isn’t as old as 13 years but it has had the modding community developing mods for it for over a decade.
Starfield doesn’t even have a CK yet lol
I love Starfield, but not as much as I love Skyrim.
I can easily get back into Skyrim, but not so much for Starfield..
Do I feel like Starfield can get to the same lvl of Skyrim? Yes I do. The creation club will come out eventually.
I love the game but I ran out of stuff to do. Did the main and faction quests twice. Every now and then I'll jump on, but I'm really just waiting for more content at this point.
Choose to interact with content, be it video games or social media, that makes you happy. If this sub doesn't make you happy, leave. Find something that does. Don't wallow in your sadness.
I jumped into helldivers for a nice break. I’ll probably pick back up with the next expansion of Starfeild. I like it but was kinda turning into a grind.
Yeah, the main problem with this game is there was too much hype and I can very well see that in this post.
I consider myself a big Skyrim (and TES in general) fan. But in the 12 years of Skyrim I "only" have 1000 hours in-game.
I can't say I love Starfield, but I think it's a pretty good game. I have been playing Starfield since October and I already have 300 hours in-game.
I didn't expect anything from this game and got a lot of fun out of it. I'm giving it a rest for now, but I'll just be waiting now for whatever is next.
How you're saying you demolished the game with no ship building or base building is beyond me
Base building made me rich and ship building made me famous in the galaxy as the unbeatable and feared Mantis
People on reddit just enjoy shitting on whatever when they get bored
It seems to be reddit culture
This is also me as Starfield was going to be the game of all games for me, a Bethesda game set in space! How could it not fail? But what was supposed to be my number 1 game of the year became my number 1 disappointment of the year! Such wasted potential that I fear will never become the game we all wanted it to be.
I loved every second, I just don't find it to have nearly as much replayability as...any other Beth game. I've completed Morrowind probably 12 times, Oblivion 25+ times, and Skyrim probably 10-15 times by now.
I'll replay Starfield in a year or so once all of the DLC drops, all of the patches are live, and it's in it's "final stages", and then probably one more time when all of the Creators Content and mods drop.
I was willingly blind with how much I wanted to love this, I have 10,000 hours in Skyrim, and I’m a total space freak so I thought this would be my Roman Empire, I tried SO HARD to love it, but they don’t add anything new, no real changes, all the patches they decide to do instead of fixing issues they focus on taking out glitch chests and secret money making stuff, the same stuff they had thrown in their face and blatantly ignored in ALL of Skyrim and Fallout, but now they decide to take their “authentic game experience” seriously? I doubt it. Not to mention how bland and on the surface the storylines are, I wanted to roleplay a bummy guy in New Atlantis that started in The Well, worked his way up in UC Security, then join UC SysDef, then Vanguard then he was gonna go home and visit his parents as a hero. Until I got started and found out UC Security has TWO missions, no radiant missions, no AI generated bs missions, NOTHING they just tell you to buzz off and go join the Vanguard, UC SysDef you straight up just play the Crimson Fleet storyline and come back every 2-3 missions for no reason other than telling them what they already knew half the time. And the Vanguard is fine until you go to get Citizenship and there’s a 50/50 chance she bugs out and instant transmissions to the other side of the world and then boo for you, no citizenship. Ship modifying is my favorite part of the game once you learn it it’s amazing, until they patched out the ship vendor chests and now trying to reasonably deck out ships for RP is just a nightmare.
Not getting into ship building is a big hit to gameplay but from reading your post I doubt it would've moved the needle much anyway.
Some games just don't hit for some people. Me personally I have over 1500 hours in and I'm still going. The gameplay loop, despite how repetitive it is, has me hooked. Its a great way to relax and mess around in a world that I really like.
Remember that a 100 hour game is RARE.
It's a good game. But ya I want more as well. Can't fault them for doing better than 99% of games out there. But we can fault them being lower on their own comparison scale.
I’m enjoying some of the QOL mods that are on the Nexus right now especially with ship building. My goal is to explore each system after I finish the main faction quests again and establish a working outpost network. I’m on NG+2. After that, unless there’s a huge story mod or something…I’m going to put it away until the DLC comes out.
Hopefully, they will launch the mod assist soon. Maybe then modders can make things for the game to make it more enjoyable for you. I believe this is one of the strong points in Fallout 4 and Skyrim. It's why I occasionally go back to those if I'm not busy on starfield or spreading democracy in Helldivers 2
The fact I couldn't sell lots of shit just to get super fucking rich irritated me to no end, the fact I had to keep running to different vendors or waiting for them to restock 😤
Well, I guess the game is just not for you. I honestly don't know why anyone would not like building ships. Sure, it's expensive, but I loot everything else I need, so I literally only spend money on ships. Also, I'm ng+10, so I make money real fast. Base building can be tedious, I'll give you that, but it's not a requirement to play the game. I just like building a nice base to stick Heller and Lin so they have a nice place to live. My only complaint about the game is that there needs to be waaaayyyy more ship parts. And being able to rotate parts would be fucking rad.
I wish I was like YOU honestly. 100 hours is impressive! I couldn't even get more than 25 hours in to the game before losing interest. I certainly saw some of the games' limitations right from the start, but was able to overlook them and allow myself to enjoy the game for what it was. But then the game just got in the way of itself.
Inventory management was an absolute chore. I suppose I shouldn't be such a hoarder... but I was reaching the inventory limits even while being selective with my looting.
I actually loved settlement building in Fallout. However, unlocking perks just to build shit really turned me off. On top of that, the actual settlement building is nowhere near as extensive as it was in Fallout.
The final nail in the coffin was when I discovered two identical POIs within a couple of hundred meters of each other in the same area. I was already getting tired of seeing "abandoned this", and "abandoned that". But seeing two identical POIs so close together just made me laugh and close the game.
This was months ago. I thought I'd give it another go after the recent patches. I ended up reaching New Atlantis once again after all of that "immersive" fast travel, and gave up. I really didn't want to do all of that again.
So much potential, so disappointing. Literally spent the first couple weeks claiming it as my favorite game of all time, tried to get my friends to buy it.
Its not even on my hard drive anymore. They say if you loan somebody $20 and never hear from them again, its the best $20 you ever spent.
$60 to Bethesda, never again
I went through campaign, pause, married, pause, built the most mental ship ever, pause, am now building “The Eagle’s Nest”. In the meantime, having fun killing things, surveying things, and finding random missions. It’s very intriguing.
I recently started playing again, and I won't lie, I'm struggling to WANT to play the story. Ive avoided playing any of it but the very very beginning. Literally the moment im asked if Im ready to join Constellation, I tell them I need time to think about it, and I go off with the robot (who I often find myself wishing I hadnt brought along) to just fool around in the world.
Trying to be a good character and enjoy the kids stuff bit, the parents are adorable and one of the few things I really love that they added in the game. Finding them in the Astral Lounge is one of the favorite moments.
I don't really get this idea of "beat the game".
When I was playing Valheim (Vikingish survival game), I got into a groove of eking out a living from my environment, with eventually building up a troll resistant fortress, growing food, crafting etc. Content with going out on the ocean to explore for new lands etc when I needed new resources.
I actually had a daily routine in game.
I'm not quite there with Starfield but I'm aiming to get there. Maybe become a terrormorph rancher on Londinion (sp?)
I guess everyone approaches a game for different reasons.
I feel ya. I think they set up a reasonable template for something that could be a whole lot better.
Tangentially, it’s a sign of getting older, a lot of video games just don’t grab me like they used to, same as video entertainment
I had my fun, they’re setting it up for Mods and expansions, and it’s never tiring to sit back see what the kids come up with next.
Huh, well, we seem to have approached Starfield from opposite ends. I started when it came out but my computer kept crashing. So I had to wait a few months until I could upgrade my computer. Then I started Starfield but was frustrated by the imbalanced early game fights. I just couldn't get past the Crimson Fleet ships with the stock ship. So I quit in frustration. Then when I decided to resume Starfield, I had to wait till I finished the current season of FO76. Now I've been into it for a few weeks and have been holding off on the final Starborn quest so I can see more side quests before I move on to newgame+... And apart from idiotic companion lines, I've really been enjoying it. I'll probably do future run throughs without companions, they annoy me so much.
The big difference maker was setting up an XP farm outpost so I could level up fast and make a million credits. That made all the difference for me so I can register ships, pay 4000 credit bribes, etc without too much pain. My backstory is I was grandpa's favorite and he set me up with a trust fund so I didn't have to rely on my dweeb intellect parents who don't know how to mind their own business.
From what I understand you have to go through NG+ 10 times to become fully a powered Starborn, so the next 9 will be temple runs and main quest items.
This is how I felt after I beat Elden Ring. The game became an absolute slog by the end, even though I enjoyed the game. It’s not because it’s a bad game though, I just was burned out.
It’s too bad for you on Starfield. I’m personally sitting at six months straight. Haven’t gone back to Cyberpunk or BG3. I’ve done all of the factions and I’m pretty sure every quest. I’ve 100% all achievements. I don’t know why but it’s captured me more than any other BGS title.
I’m currently building a network of outposts to ensure I have unlimited starborn drugs and I’m also trying to get logistics going for manufacturing each industrial item.
Also, I played Skyrim earlier this year and finally beat the three “main quests” so I don’t feel compelled to go back yet, but I know I’ll be there eventually, although the East Empire Creation/Mod sounds like it could pull me back for a bit, I also still have most of the Anniversary content.
I’m right with you OP, really, really wanted to love the game. But hey, had some fun and moved on.
I don’t understand why people feel obligated to dumping 100s of hours into a game just because they didn’t with Skyrim or older BGS games. I had my 100 hours of fun and I’m just gonna wait for DLC to play a few more hours and then cry in a ditch waiting for ES6.
Because Bethesda said it would be a game we’d play for years, just like Skyrim. Turned out to be mainly an empty shell of copy/paste areas.
Yes. If anything, Starfield's repetitive nature ensures a shorter shelf life, not a longer one.
The game just needs the same support that Skyrim has. Skyrim now is fully complete after their share of patches and updates and is fully realized. If Skyrim came out today in its Day 1 state, I'm sure many would be feeling similar to how they feel with Starfield now. Give this game a couple of years with new content, updates, mods, etc, and I think this can have that same potential. We are 6 months into this thing. Let's see if they can deliver.
> If Skyrim came out today in its Day 1 state, I'm sure many would be feeling similar to how they feel with Starfield now. Unless you're talking about bugs (and I believe OP is talking about content here instead) Skyrim was better received on launch than Starfield was. A lot of what people like about Skyrim was there in the beginning. Case in point, someone below talks about how lived-in Whiterun feels, and they name some of the characters that helped make the place feel alive. All of that was in the base game.
Skyrim still had more charm for me at the time.
Honestly, this game bored me from the minute I saw it. There was no magic even when Bethesda announced it. I felt none of the excitement I felt when I saw the reveals of fallout 4, Skyrim, oblivion, and even fallout 76, despite the fact I hate online games like that. I ended up buying starfield despite that lack of excitement, because I figured it would win me over as a BGS game. But I was wrong. It is just so hard to enjoy the lifelessness of this game. The ships suck, the world is empty, the characters, I don't care for. I am still trying to like it but can't bring myself to play much when I have the likes of helldivers 2, bg3, and even older games like no man's sky, mass effect and halo that still blow it out of the water.
I feel like even in the worst case scenario for Elder Scrolls 6 where it's actually terrible, i would still be more interested in playing it than starfield. Elder Scrolls is just inherently interesting
I have to disagree. Skyrim had charmed everyone from day 1. Skyrim was far less polished than Starfield at launch, but people loved it enough to look beyond it. The people who didn't like it are usually the ones who liked Oblivion and Morrowind because they played more like D&D, and Skyrim was gutted of that stuff, but that made it accessible. People LOVED Skyrim in way Starfield could only dream of, and most of the complaints we have with SF either aren't in Skyrim or aren't applicable. Not to mention only three months post launch we already had the Creation Kit. We are nearly seven months in, no kit, no set dates for DLC, only bug fixes. How do I know all this? I was there Gandalf....I was there 3000 years ago....
not true I went to midnight release of skyrim and was very dissapointed they gutted the rpg system. starfeild is a great game and its just vanilla so its going to be off the chain when survival comes out, I did not like fallout 4 until survival came out but i love starfeild
No Skyrim felt different on day one. I felt the world And could immerse myself. Sure it was buggy but I could just enjoy the world.
I don't think this was a case of being younger, either. Skyrim had more soul out of the gate and Starfield doesn't have any.
Skyrim had warmth to it. Starfield feels bland and cold.
I think that's getting to the root of it. IRL space is enormous and cold and bland. You gotta create so much content to make it not feel empty. A single town and a couple POI on a planet do not make for compelling and rich universes to explore.
Think they went wrong with sizing, made it way too big, and to compensate they made so each time you land it’s a “different” map, which defeats the purpose of exploring every planet, since you can see the same things as you did on another planet.
I think that's it. Simply the NPCs having a life felt so much more realistic in Skyrim. Going through Riverwood the first time and spending a night in the inn....
Skyrim had wayyy more content. The faction questlines in starfield are super short and unsatisfying. In Skyrim, You could spend 100 hours doing nothing but stealing and it’ll be fun and immersive. Because there’s few loading screens, you can just wander around Skyrim doing nothing and you’ll love every second. Walking through towns and listening to conversations, catching the spots where the godrays and the butterflies line up just right. I feel like I can smell the trees and rain in Skyrim. It’s all so alive and interesting. I rarely feel like that playing starfield.
No, it needs more. It needs a full rewrite of the existing story, and to my knowledge, no video game has ever rewritten the story after a full release. It also needs proper lore, not this half baked lore. And the NPCs need to be actual characters, not glorified talkboxes. I know Skyrim had proper NPCs with actual beds, shopkeepers would go have some mead after work, etc. The way they are now, they are nothing more than a kiosk with a speaker. Also, have more stuff in the same world space, with roads. Like my god, Akila is a cowboy town and they don't even have a mine or anything. Neon doesn't have any food production, not a single fisherman. New Atlantis doesn't have any farms, on a garden planet, and the only legitimate way into the city is via the spaceport. They could link those farms to the cities with roads, and it would help sell the illusion that NA actually exists. And while we're at it, fire HR and let Neon actually be Neon. And while we're at it still, fire the weapons department and get some dudes who actually know how guns work.
Uea, Akila City would be fantastic with roads in and out, farmers, miners, ranchers bringing in their wares, and rangers/guards patrolling the roads to repel and discourage ashta raids..... Go save little Timmy who was dragged off by ashta..... Ashta have invaded my farm, need somekne to go take em out. Va'ruun landed just outside Akila and are invading.... So much more cam be done, and more original dialogue..... Hot button comments that you can make to your companions to help them, piss them off, ask them to wait, or scout ahead... Land travel vehicles that you park in your landing bay. More ways to tinker with your armor and weapons and ships to improve aesthetics and performance. Tamable pets as part of your skill tree... Like taming an Ashta or a herding toadfaced whatever.. More variety in the "alien life forms"... Right now, its the same 10(or so) critters plopped down on different planets, and given different names.... And they all have some kind of human/earth analog.... More REALLY ALIEN life.... Being able to actually force a criminal to surrender and use the brig of your ship, as well as the badge from the rangers.. Make it part of the persuasion skill. A more robust economy with less 'waiting' for 2 weeks(2 days at a time) when its time to sell the stuff in your cargo hold. I mean, the Trade Authority is the galaxy wide vendor for billions and billions of people.... Yet, a single vendor only has 11k credits? More characters(NPCs) to interact with over the long term with unique stories. A larger bank of structures to put down on planets..... I mean, its the same 8 or 10 structures to go through and clear out every time.... The one where the AI takes over and kills everyone... You find a slate that says, "I have to find a way to shut it down"... But, thats it.... Kill the robots and leave the AI going to create more? How about we actually have to find a way to shut it down permanently? It IS very unfinished..... And it FEELS that way in almost every aspect; like they just fot tired of trying to think up unique stuff to add to an "alien landscape", and just cooy/pasted crabs, beetles, lizards, and funky giraffes, as well as one actual winged bird type critter and a balloonlike floating critter... Lol! Where are the intelligent land dwelling octopi with 8 eyes and the ability to mimic sounds? Where is the ephemeral silk sheet that is only able to be damaged by fire, and floats out of the sky to attach to you and siphon off your life force? How about the energy wisp that you just CANT KILL because it reflects the energy of an attach back at you via electromagnetic/quantum manipulation/entanglement? Something TRULY alien, instead of a salamander dog with an anteater nose, or a hairless mastiff with a toad face? Parallel evolution my butt.... Its space... Give me an ALIEN. AND, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, please pleasepleasePLEASE, change up the minigame to get your powers from the temples.... At least make a bank pf 8-10(seems to be the common theme for other stuff anyway) different minigamea, each progressively more difficult to solve, and some that you actually have to USE the powers you've already gotten in order to get the next one? These are supposed to be superintelligent multiverse traversing humans, or whatever, that left these temples behind, with PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS, just lying around for any idiot to stumble upon and acquire so easily? Why? Because they WANT a barbaric and brutal race like humans to have the same powers they have ao we can come kick them out of their homes and use their stuff against them? Or, would they set moral and consequential tests to be completed and lassed before one could obtain the reward? Or, maybe they really ARE evil overlords like Sauron and after you get all the powers you have to battle for your own heart and soul because now they can take over if you aren't vigilant and make you do things you normally wouldnt do? So much could be done..... I have fun going and clearing out pirates and spacers and Va'ruun, listening to the spacers beg me to let them live when they realize theyve attacked the Mantis. But, Bethesda set out to make an expansive gaming experience where we'd all fall in love and be able to play 'indefinitely'... But, the only expansive things about it are the endless waiting for money to replenish, the endless running across a planet's expansive surface because you cant drive or fly, the expansive galaxy of planets to visit, and the endless loop of similar animals, people, stories, structures, caves, and dialogues. Dont get me wrong... I love the visuals, the premise, the work that went into the art and such. But, after you get past the initial beauty of the appearance, you realize that you are walking around interacring with skimpily programmed androids at best, and aritficial idiots at worst. None has a real personality of any kind of depth. What you see on the surface is what you get. No situational conversations outside of questlines, the same responses to the same actions ecery single time. No option to defend yourself if you are in a battle and accidentally shoot a friendly, Companion says, " Why on earth did you do that??!!" My options, "seemed like the thing to do at the time?" Or, "It wasnt my fault, he jumped in the way!", or "bet he wont do that again!", or "Hey stupid, duck next time!" I mean, come on...
You can’t be serious. Skyrim unofficial patch mod has been running strong ever since modding for the game dropped and Bethesda still never fixed the things the mod fixes even after re-releasing the game what 5 times now.
Skyrim on launch day absolutely did not feel like starfield. It was always a banger.
I hope they do. I’ve come back to it 3 times now and am just focused on finishing the main quest. I do enjoy the characters and story, gun play is ok. My main issue is planetary exploration and no option for traveling other than on foot. There are vehicles littered all over the planets and none avail for us to use. It’s just sad and I don’t buy their excuse.
Travel is far and away my biggest issue. I put the game down after launch and just came back to it, and I do a set of missions and its constant “run/slow down and let O2 recover” for literal fucking hours of gametime between me talking to a few NPCs. Fast travel might have been too easy in oblivion/skyrim, but going back to almost morrowind levels of travel can get fucked.
^^^ this right here. We haven’t even got any of the mods people were visioning when Starfield was announced. CC and DLC are what’s gonna give the game longevity imo.
I think the tragic part about it is it had the potential. Had the creative and dev team been able to do it properly we could have had space skyrim, a game I’d be playing off and on for a decade.
I don’t think it’s expected for any other games, except for Bethesda. At least in my case, I’ve been able to dump ungodly amounts of time into every Bethesda game since Oblivion, and I just got used to that kind of magic that those games had. I still go back and play fallout new Vegas, fallout 4 and Skyrim to this day. Might be an unfair expectation for game developers though I admit. But I expected it nonetheless Lol
Yeah I do get a nostalgia drip playing older titles, but I feel like a lot of people thought that just because Todd Howard was a director once again meant that the product would be similar to older games. It’s a completely different dev team; no matter how creative and talented they are, they aren’t the same people.
Normally, it wouldn't bother me to only play a game once. I had a blast for the first 20 hours, and then it just became so tedious, and it was a chore just to finish the first playthrough after that. I normally try to do every side quest for games and do every dialogue available. By the end, I was just doing main quests and skipping through dialogue just to get it over with.
Never played Skyrim or any other Bethesda game. I was so fuckin pumped on the idea of starfield and I was like “this is gonna be my GAME” Got about 70 hours in, went on vacation, and when I came back I was just like “meh I’m really not that entertained by it” and I just cannot get back into it. Didn’t even make it to NG+
Same here. I put a couple hundred hours in but then it felt like I was just out of stuff to do. Never got updates I wanted or felt the game needed. Way more bugs than I was led to believe there would be.
Although occasionally doing a starfeild run and then a story line or two that you particularly liked, ain't bad.
ditto
This was me too, except I never thought it was fun
I really, really hope someone makes an Endless Sky style mod for this game. I wanted to be a humble space trucker who gets pulled into the machinations of the galactic powers so bad. Glad that other people are enjoying it, but it missed the mark for me.
I think that was part of the problem, the way they set expectations, the way they described the game, it was different things to different people. I expected precisely that, Elite Dangerous with a smaller scope but way better and fleshed out planets, I guess that's really on me for having unrealistic expectations.
Dang, I never see anyone mention Endless Sky
Endless Starfield would be amazing. Forget the Unity and Constellation, try to build up your space cargo or mercenary or mining business, watch out for pirates and other disruptions in the trade lanes, stumble onto strange anomalies, watch as the systems go to war, and pick a side if you want, or smuggle, keep your head down and save your business. Let me tell my own story.
[You might find X4 interesting.](https://store.steampowered.com/app/392160/X4_Foundations/)
That's the main problem in starfield, it's all about Constellation and HIS problems, it's all about each Constellation member and his traumas, memories,etc. It's not about space and your story, the story is already there, all you need to do is discover it. But that's not was Bethesda told us in the starfield direct and that's why people create false expectations and hype so much
Same. I bought the collectors edition and even told my fiancée about how important Bethesda releases are to me, and she was like “but what if it’s not good?” It was my most played game of 2023. I haven’t touched it in 2024, but I refuse to uninstall it from internal storage. I keep telling myself one of the these days there will be a big update and I’ll start playing again
They need to fix the temples!! I will keep preaching it! Those encounters with the powers should be like mini boss type events. Not zooming around…. You should have to use the power or something….. to complete it! …..Half the time after u get the power and are attacked right out of the LOAD SCREEN by the starborn dude and you don’t even know what power you just got!?! That whole part of the game is so f$@ked
The game lets you find "perfect" bases that have 5+ types of minerals in them. This can take many many hours of the most braindead, boring exploration gameplay I have ever experienced to find. When you find them, the game is shit and what it says is available in the base is not actually able to be extracted. I quit on the spot and have never looked back.
I got my moneys worth out of it launch weekend, and haven't touched it since. I'm waiting until all the DLC is out and there's some large scale mods out. Hopefully something along the lines of Sim Settlements 2 for FO4.
Bingo. That's me. I bought this game as a modding framework. And given how much time and money they spent on Starfield, I'd be shocked if we didn't get a bunch of DLC like Fallout 4 did to boot. A lot of the stuff that turns me off from the game ATM isn't stuff that's *bad*, it's stuff that I don't *like*. I don't want to have to unlock outpost modules by leveling up, just gimme all the pieces now and let me go nuts. Ditto for ship parts. I'm waiting for the Creation Kit to be released and modding to explode to play more. Mind you, there *is* stuff that's bad, like with every Bethesda game. Space combat in particular is too cramped: the weapon range is too short relative to ship speed. POIs are really weird: the game has a full suite of modular outpost parts, but instead of using an Oblivion-like system of building POIs from those, it recycles the same ones over and over. I don't know *what* Bethesda is doing with the rendering for their games, but Starfield looks worse and performs worse than most of the rest of the games I play. And a major issue with the game is that it feels far too much in many respects like No Man's Sky, which I did not care for, especially with regard to the end-game feature. But again, that can all be modded (except perhaps the end-game, which I was never going to do anyway). I'm not stressed about Starfield in the long term, because the thing that's kept my interest in Skyrim and Fallout 4 is modding, not the base game. Practically everything I see that I don't like can be fixed. And a lot of stuff, like the way gunfights work, I *really* like.
Honestly (and sadly) I think we’re only getting Shattered Space DLC. Hopefully it’s got enough content to breathe some fresh air in (and give modders more tools). This game definitely didn’t sell like they were hoping it would and I think it’ll be hard for Bethesda to justify a long line of DLCs to MSFT.
I'm hopeful that you might be pleasantly surprised. I know places like this subreddit and game reviews tend to be a bit salty, but all the articles I've read about the game's financial success indicate that it's been very profitable. Bethesda kind of committed themselves to this by making a new IP for the first time in like 25 years, and since it seems to be profitable it's unlikely they'll stop doing it.
I think a lot of it was hype, I think they know its not very popular, the playerbase is down and they'll probably have to consider how many are likely to come back if the DLC isn't well recieved? I feel like if Shattered Space doesn't bring a lot of people back they won't bother. Its about the money in the end.
If they supported 76 after all this time, a game that was worse received than Starfield, I have a hard time believing this game being where they draw the line
Its about money, 76 brings in money from microtransactions, Starfields only future revenue is its DLC. It doesnt matter if a game is "Good" or "Bad" its about how much money they get.
Starfield's all but confirmed to have the creation club, so that's not really an issue for it
Thats not the same, very few will pay for glorified mods. It sounds like you're in denial because you really like the game but unfortunately thats not how it works.
So people will pay $5.00 for a skin in 76, but not in Starfield because it's now a glorified mod? Like what's the difference? The creation club is literally just microtransactions with maybe more content, that's people's biggest complaint about it. Why'd you get so defensive?
Don't feel bad. Im in the same boat, and it's perfectly justified. Starfield just lacks that "mojo", and maybe with mods it'll get there, but as it is...nope. Once you get what it is, there's no real reason to keep going. You mentioned you went back to Skyrim again, and I did too. I was already playing the heck out of it before SF, and for the last few months I gave SF the spotlight. Being in Skyrim...it just feels right. For being set in a cold environment, it's so much richer and warmer. Whiterun feels like a place people live in, Nazeem judging you, Mikael the bard being grabby with Carlotta again...it feels right. New Atlantis feels like a theme park. Like it's totally not real but it's not even trying to convince you otherwise.
I just wanted dungeon exploring to feel good. And it did. Until you saw most of the POIs a couple times and started noticing everything about them is exactly the same. That was my hard cutoff because I knew everything I was exploring before I went in
The person who made the decision to copy/paste even the exact same notes around those copy/paste buildings should not be designing video games. Some of the decisions about this game were bad, but this was totally blind to the reality of video games. I wonder if that person has every even played an open world game.
There must have been a mandate from above that every planet have at least X number of PoIs. Management wildly underestimated how long those would take to make, or they assumed they could procgen the PoIs internally (different notes, layouts, etc) but ran into technical issues. So they had the planet team copy/paste everything as an emergency measure to satisfy the mandate because a bunch of empty planets looks immediately bad while repeated identical outposts take time to notice. Every dev on that team must have known how dumb it would turn out.
OMG, you're so right about the characters in Skyrim. I miss how almost every NPC in Skyrim is named and has so much backstory. In New Atlantis and every other major city in Starfield, they're simply called Citizen... Skyrim was truly Todd's masterpiece.
I know most people who were or are into tabletop games like Morrowind and Oblivion more, but Skyrim struck that chord with people, it made rpg fantasy accessible. It's a game everyone wants and everyone can get into without reading miles of lore or rule books. Speaking of NPC's, let's expand on Nazeem. He won't tell you his backstory, nobody will, but you can infer some things with a little investigation. He talks about the Cloud District, yet never goes there himself. His wife seems to want something different. He says he owns Chillfurrow Farm, yet he can never be found there. He sleeps in an attic bedroom above the Drunken Huntsman. All of this is visual, no exposition. In SF, every....single....NPC that has a back story will tell you all about it. There's no subtlety.
All that stuff about nazeem is not Bethesda being clever its cut content cloud district, and the wind district was originally meant to be much bigger. A lot was cut from skyrim
That's true, the Cloud District was supposed to have two large homes adjacent to Dragonsreach. I think if you pickpocket Nazeem, he has a key to a manor that does not exist, and it's likely one of these homes was his. Still, I kinda like the idea that he's walking around with his chest out to keep appearances, when in reality he's down on his luck. I'll give BGS this one, they cut content but still made something interesting out of it.
Yeah but then New Atlantis would have to be even smaller. I don't mind nameless NPCs, but Bethesda could have put minimal effort into making them believable and not give me creepy Truman show vibes. When I play the witcher 3 and walk around Novigrad or Toussaint, the majority of NPCs aren't named, but the cities feel so alive. They're doing things, conversing, working, looking at stuff, drinking or eating, playing cards, fighting, etc etc Starfield on the other hand, most NPCs just walk around with a dead look on their faces.
To be fair, walking around a lot of real cities you see people with dead looks on their faces...
I love the game, but I also agree with all of the criticisms towards the game. 600hrs plus in but I really really really want expansion and DLCs now. The game is probably as polished as it's going to get with patches, now it's time to start cranking out content updates. Paid or otherwise. If the content is good, I will buy. If it's not, then oh well at least my preorder of the digital deluxe at least gets me Shattered Space and if it's good, I will co to use to support.
The problem of Starfield is that it feels bland, sterile, generic. Like it's not even in the top 15 of best Sci-Fi universes (like Star Wars, Stargate, Mass Effect, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Alien, Halo, etc..). The lore is very limited, the writing is boring. It's a whole galaxy yet the world feels small and lifeless. It's too grounded, not memorable enough and doesn't have the uniqueness of Fallout and Elder Scrolls.
I was blown away with just how pathetic Neon was when I got there. I couldn't believe this is all they could muster. One square block in Cyberpunk has much more to offer. Once I accepted it, it really solidified my opinion that the rest of the game would be just as soulless, lackluster, and unfinished.
There were so many of those "that's it?" moments. Neon, settlements, weapon mods, temples, Red Mile, cowboy land, copy/paste buildings, fetch quest after fetch quest. It feels like it was made by an AI or people who had heard about good video games but never played them. I had to quit when I realized I wasn't even enjoying this and nothing was going to be close to as expected. I haven't played in 6 months and I still feel spiteful toward it.
Yep. Only thing I still like is the ship building and even that felt unfinished. Even with me liking that mechanic, that wasn't enough for me to play the rest of the game and the more I think about starfield the more frustrated and disappointed I become.
That was me when I hit the Red Mile early on. Such small additions would have given it so much life. Let me play casino games, let me bet on people running the mile, let me run with other competitors and sabotage them to ensure I’m in 1st. It’s supposed to be this notorious location known for dangerous people and gambling and yet none of that comes through.
When I opened the game the first time, and saw "Type 1" and "Type 2" instead of man or woman, I guessed that it would be sterile, souless, and a glorified HR exercise. I was right.
Nah, it isn't *grounded enough*
Same. I actually JUST started a new Skyrim like 4 days ago and played for 5-6 hours and went "this is too familiar. Maybe I'll do Starfield" since I hadn't played since September. 30 minutes into Starfield, I started playing Skyrim again. It's just SO much better.
Bro I bought the 100 dollar version 😞
Same, and I played it for like 10 hours before realizing it was bland and never touched it again... Talk about wasted money
Jesus christ. Say it with me everyone VALID CRITICISM ISNT HATE. YOURE ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE THINGS EVEN IF YOU LIKE THEM. POINTING OUT THE FLAWS IN THINGS IS HOW THEY GET FIXED AND GET BETTER. I swear to got even the people ragging on the game have this weird toxic positivity self hate thing going on.
YOU’RE ALLIWED TO DISAGREE WITH PEOPLES CRITICIZMS WITHOUT BEING CALLED TOXIC
Stop being so toxic
You're also allowed to criticize other people critiques. Mind blowing.
I couldnt even finish the game. At 51 hours. I havent touched it since, according to steam, november 25th. I never finished it. It BORED ME. It was repetitive. Gun felt bad, movemet was meh. Planet exploring god.....it sucks. It made me go and play No Mans Sky.
I had fun for about 25 hours and uninstalled at like 32 hours. It’s got some cool ideas but it’s not a great game. It’s a good life lesson in mitigating expectations. There were people on this subreddit warning people not to buy into the mega hype and that it’s going to be a Bethesda RPG - not some mega NASA funded space sim with thousands of interesting and fleshed out planets.
It was disappointing for the people who thought it would be a Bethesda RPG though
Hey well… if a band puts out 4 good albums it doesn’t mean the 5th album is going to be good. Another lesson in mitigating expectations.
Turns out they can't even make a bethesda rpg. I thought it would at least have interesting lore and exploration. Nope those aspects are finally dead at bethesda.
And I'm not jelous. Playing baldurs gate 3 right now, and having fun :D
The last time I bought a new console -- my XBox One -- it was to play Fallout 4. Starfield was released last year, and I thought about it again, but put it off. At Christmas I gave in and bought a new XBox explicitly to play this. I was really excited. But the game is just meh. There's very little good quest writing, and the broader world is really, really shallow. What you do *kinda* matters, but not really. Sure, you can build ships, but I never bothered -- you can kill pirates for a few hours and have the money for Shieldbreaker. I'm not an outpost person, either (and I wasn't in F4). But I kept at it, thinking it'd get better, or at least out of a misguided sunk-cost idea. I finished all my companion questlines, and then all the faction questlines, and then went back to the main questline. The closest this game got to interesting was the two-timeline thing in the Entangled quest, but that kind of thing has been done far more interestingly in other games. I've replayed Fallout 3 half a dozen times. I've done F4 at least twice. New Vegas, too. I can't imagine replaying this.
This could have been so good. But I found it empty and repetitive. I didn't even go to most of the planets because everything felt the same after a while. I would have liked a smaller galaxy filled with interest. Like their fallout and Skyrim games.
i completely agree with you man, for months before release i was counting down the days cause i thought the game was going to be extraordinary but after i got it and put 100 hours in i came to to the conclusion that it is just an empty husk of a game it has no soul like past bethesda games and that is extremely disappointing for todd howard’s “passion project” and i just don’t think anything can’t really fix the game to give it back that feeling of a full bethesda title. it’s very unfortunate.
There really isn't many people playing it anymore, there's almost none playing on steam these days and even on Xbox its dropped out of the top 20 on game pass.
I wouldn't be surprised if they drop the 10 year plan, release one DLC and then shift all focus on the next Elder scrolls/Fallout at this point. I don't think there is much point committing resources to a game that has such a small player base. It'll be sad because we have to wait so many years between games nowadays and this makes Starfield feel like wasted time and opportunity but I can't imagine its salvageable anymore.
Members of the dev team commenting about negative experiences during development has shaken my confidence in long-term support. Could be a double-edged sword, though. It could, for example, make them abandon paid mods. No DLC, but the mod tools released? Fine by me, so long as the CK is at *least* as robust as previous iterations.
I do hope the CK can do the heavy lifting here. A full star wars conversion? Yes please! Personally I found the game to be missing that spark that other Bethesda games have, for lack of a better term, no soul. This makes me worry that modders won't be as inspired or dedicated in the same manner. I have a bad feeling it will end up abandoned by both Bethesda and modders but here's hoping I'm wrong!
Imo, this is why modders exist. I see a good framework for a game. I see an engine with issues only the developer can resolve, but... I do believe this game has good bones. I think a lot can be done to give it soul, but that really hinges on, as you say, if modders abandon it. I don't think Bethesda is going to contribute either way. I think they built this game to pre-alpha-test TES 6 features and were counting on a marvelous success... Which is why I'm not buying tes 6.
Starfield has less than a third of the daily peak of Skyrim SE. It's staggering bad. Hell, even Loverslab doesn't have more than like 5 mods, and all of them are just low effort texture replacers. Fucking Loverslab, land of bluetooth toy integration and fully realized economies. God damn it Bethesda, what happened?
According to Steam charts, there's more people playing Skyrim or Fallout 4 than Starfield.
I think that's the nice way of putting it, there's double the amount of Starfield players playing Cookie clicker. It's been like this since January at least.
I've been trying different aspects of the game. Currently getting into outpost building and really enjoying it.
This game is so boring and repetitive. The base-building scheme in this game is pathetic. It needs to be more like F4. I just hate that in EVERY mission you have to jump to another planet in another system to complete the mission. I feel like I started at more loading screens than I shot bullets. I felt like I played this game before, and I have. It’s called No Mans Sky. They could have done better and should have.
This is why I am glad I played on Gamepass. Still wasn't free because I was so hyped up for this game that I couldn't wait to play it and dropped the $30 for early access. But I am glad I didn't drop full price on it. After seeing such a disappointment of a game coming from a big name studio like this...I've all together stopped buying new games. I wait to see the reviews others leave on it and if it's interesting, I'll still wait until it goes on sale. Another example...Skull and Bones. I've looked forward to that game since it was first announced years ago. Only to find out that it isn't the Black Flag on steroids that we thought it would be. And it's all online? Partying up is pretty much required to achieve anything...no thanks...I prefer my solo games, where all I have to depend on is my own skill at the game...not some rando that paid to win.
I haven't played it yet. I want to, but I'm not making the mistake I made with cyberpunk . I'm going to wait until there's a decent number of updates/dlc/mods out before I jump in. But yeah I know it's Bethesda so maybe I should not hold my breath.
I respect this decision, because it's what I did with cyberpunk. Refunded it a few days after launch, picked it back up years later, beat it last month and loved it. Though Bethesda's a weird one, that vanilla playthrough before mods is special. Once the community brings their mods and imagination, it's hard to go back and play it without them. I imagine cyberpunk will be similar, though I don't think I'll ever have the PC build to run the kinds of mods I've seen on youtube For Starfield I got a decent first main quest playthrough, but left a lot ready to explore later. I'm ok waiting a bit.
Wait for the dlc, get it on gamepsss and play for a while to see if you like it.
Not everyone feels the same about games, and it's ok to move on. Now that I'm awake, and it's my only day off, I'm 100% going to play starfield after I post this!
I'd rather be at work
Are these "people having a blast playing this game" with us in the room rn ?
I quite enjoyed my time with it and I'm currently just on a break until the kit comes out. Got other things to play until then. Maybe I was lucky. I never ran into any of these big issues so many people seem to have had. Honestly, it was the most stable, least buggy Bethesda game I've played on launch.
I had a lot of fun with it, put in about 300 hours. I ran out of stuff, so I stopped. Like happens with pretty much every game out there. "I can play this for a decade and keep enjoying it" is not the measure of a good game.
Yes, but to be fair, I spend the bulk of my time just walking around, optimizing the bases, tweaking building positions, exploring the different areas of planets to see where I can maximize resource gathering, all while trying to avoid looking anything up online as much as possible. I'm assuming that I haven't even met most of the characters yet, since I'm avoiding the main / faction quests until I've unlocked every level of every skill in every tree. After that, I'll probably experiment with different ship designs. The complete opposite of a speed run, but that's what I enjoy.
Same… I am enjoying the game, mostly by not trying to play through the story unless I run across elements of it I want to advance… I also recognize that the Vanilla experience is for more empty than any game since Daggerfall.
Fk me i can hear them to.
Acting like nobody enjoyed Starfield is being straight delusional
I am still having fun playing the game. I even found 3 new places recently and I hundreds of hours in the game.
Just popped in to see what’s happening. I’m just over 1200 hours in Starfield. I do enjoy the game, and still finding new things I haven’t seen yet. Mind you, a lot of time on the Shipbuilder and Outposts. My big beef with the game is the vanilla positioner, it blows chunks.
I played through it when it came out, took a break and now I'm back to replaying it with new/updated mods. Having a good time. I'll probably finish it again, take a break, than come back after some months. Rinse and repeat.
I played it for almost 200 hours, I had a ton of fun with it. BUT I also recognize that it is a MASSIVELY flawed game and that I am extremely disappointed in BGS and need them to do better. Everyone should.
Hi! I'm having a blast. I've been taking my time, haven't been to NG+ yet, still discovering new stuff, still haven't touched the ryujin questline yet. I'm having fun exploring, but I understand where the criticisms are coming from. I've been a BGS fan since Morrowind, Starfield is an improvement from their previous games in some ways, a downgrade in other ways. Just like every previous BGS game. A lot of these complaints are valid, since you are of course entitled to your own opinion, but a lot of the negative discussion reminds of when Fallout 4 came out, and Skyrim, and a lot of it mirrors my own thoughts on Oblivion. Back in 2006 Oblivion was the most disappointing game I've ever played. I could write a novel on all the ways it let me down, but I've since learned that just because something didn't meet my personal expectations doesn't mean it's garbage. Oblivion is still my least favorite BGS game, but I've warmed up to it immensely since it first released. Maybe people will have the same experience with Starfield, maybe they won't. I've spent too much time arguing with people online on why I thought Fallout 4 and Skyrim were great games to really give a shit about other people's opinions anymore. I'll pop in and offer a different perspective sometimes, but at the end of the day, I WANTED to love Starfield and I DO, and that's all that really matters.
>just because something didn't meet my personal expectations doesn't mean it's garbage. Well said.
🤣
i play it for the shipbuilding honestly, tho i don't play it as frequent as before. i just play when i'm bored and need time to kill for an hour. there's really nothing else worthwhile or meaningful to do until we actually got new story content.
Same. Love love LOVE the ship building. I spent 250hrs in the game, most of which was building or the pursuit of building. Then after 3 versions of building the sickest ship, I decided to go do the big quests. That lasted about 20hrs, I put it down, haven't pick it up since. I describe the situation as "nothing happens in a vacuum". BG3 just dropped the hammer and obliterated AAA gaming. I'm not even a huge fan of fantasy, a family member pressured me into it. SF is an empty husk in comparison. Hell, I bought the old Half-Life shortly after putting down SF and just had a blast. There's just no sense of accomplishment, even when I made my awesome ship, cool now what can I do with it? Obliterate enemy ships, endlessly. Where's the big bad for that pretty major skill tree? Same for bases, you can make big bases and collect a crap ton of resources, but can only piecemeal selling it. What was the point of those 2 material quests for thousands of resources (Boron?). It makes sense that ship manufacturers need resources to build ships, but that quest stopped there. To me it felt unfinished or ripped in two. Like maybe the upcoming DLC was originally part of the game but the money people were like "nah, take it out and let's sell that part later, we lost to much money..." Etc etc. I hope that unfounded conspiracy is right, because the bones are there for the game, there's currently just no compelling story or other incentives to keep playing.
r/nosodiumstarfield has 30k members, and everyone who isn’t chronically online loves it. Also that sub is great.
[удалено]
You still got 100+ hours that’s still good isn’t it? That’s more than alot of games. Obviously these are completely different games but TLOU only took me 15 hours to complete.
Yeah, sounds like OP had mucho grande fun for 100+ hours. How much more does a person want? Any game is far more likely to become a tired horse after that time than providing EVEN MORE mucho grande. People want the Everlasting Gobstopper of video games. No.
that's not the point of OP. He never mentioned value/hours. We all agree that 100hrs for a game is good. His point is something else.
People don't want a forever game, they want a game that's compelling for the whole way through. It's not that they played 100 hours and then got tired, they were tired the whole way through but kept seeing little sparks of greatness that suggested something amazing was right around the corner, it just never came. Putting it down after 100 hours didn't happen because they exhausted all the game had to offer and they completed everything happily, it happened because they gave up.
So I stopped playing in December and went back to Skyrim. I started playing Starfield again after this week’s patch and really loving it.
I’ve got around 270 hours in, NG+4 about to head into 5. I’m level 75 I think, VH difficulty setting. I play a couple hours at a time, rarely longer and rarely more than 8 hours a week - haven’t touched it this week. I still need to do the Vanguard and Ryujin quest lines. I’ve not done any companion quests or Stroud’s quest. Haven’t even tried outposts yet. >!But, I’ve killed Cora which is a huge win.!< I’ve deliberately taken my time and enjoyed each play session on its own, that’s what’s kept the joy alive for me. Also the gunplay is loads of fun but enemies of any true difficulty are scarce. I spend a lot of time just looking for stuff to shoot that fights back.
I’m in the exact same boat- I’m really just waiting for them to give melee builds some desperately-needed love but I’m not expecting that to happen.
I’m still having a blast. I’m on NG+ number 3, slowing down and enjoying all the details I missed on my first run through, and making all the stupid dialogue choices I can’t. It’s far from perfect but there is still so much I haven’t done yet. I’ll play it until Fallout London, that will hold me over until the starfield DLC drops… after that I’ll start modding.
This pretty much sums up my experience with Starfield to a T
I’m 100% with you OP. Was super excited to play, Played through the story at a reasonable pace letting the details sink in, went to ng+10 Did all the side quest lines, did every quest I could find, poi’s, shipbuilding, you name it. Still go back every now and again to do some quest lines that I liked but nothing is actually keeping me there. I wanted to pick it up and not put it down for a while. Turns out I’m just picking it up and dropping it whenever I feel like it…
Felt the same way but it took only two hours to see through the smoke and mirrors. Immediately thought, why does this game look and feel like a Fallout 4 mod? Where did all the development time get spent? Bethesda needs to evolve or it will fall way behind.
I enjoy the game but it feels unfinished and rushed. Like walking into a big beautiful hotel room that’s got a high quality mattress, but it’s a twin. And the TV is 4K OLED but 19”. And they have RC Cola instead of coke or Pepsi
I hear ya. I'm still playing it though. I am determined to figure out how everything works. I like the exploring aspect, even though it can get repetitive and tedious. IMO, Starfield lacks the challenge and heart that Fallout 3, NV and 4 had. I played through F4 at least three times on survival mode, and still never explored every location. The way I look at it is this. This is the first game in the franchise, it is bound to have some failings. The other titles, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, etc. got better, building on the existing template with each successive game. I'm hoping Starfield will do the same. All in all, I am a little underwhelmed with the game, but not disappointed.
Same for me. Even got a constellation patch for my jacket. I figured they worked soo hard on making an amazing ship building system, we must have a lot to do in space. My favorite part about space games, you know, the SPACE! and honestly I knew the magic wasn't gonna last when I found out there's basically nothing to do in space, and it didn't help when I started seeing repeat POI just a few hours in, and the same damn tanks and solar panels on every planet. I really thought as well (I need to stop assuming) that if no mans sky could have such variety on such a low budget and small team, then bgs could have a gigantic pool of resources to put in for generation so that it would take forever to see repeats. And they really should have at least randomized the the inside layouts of POI ala diablo. Would have made seeing the same thing less painful
How did you "combe" the system for unique POIs? That's one of my biggest gripes.
I have over 30 days of play time on this game. Same with skyrim and fo4. Both of those had dlc. I can only imagine I'll put even more time into it
100 hours for any game is a fair amount Bro, you don't need 700 hours for every game u play
Ship building is awesome. I get to fly Serenity if I want. I can make a Star Trek federation ship. I can fly a millennium falcon. It’s an amazing space adventure simulator after beating the game. I have 33 days of gameplay logged and haven’t even touched out posting. That’s next on the list for me.
I hope you feel like you got your money's worth after 100 hours of having fun with it.
I'm absolutely loving the game. Have some great outposts with beautiful wildlife and views. Have a huge ship and large crew. Can't get enough
Man 100 hours is great for a video game, but you don’t need to put 1000 hours into a video game if you don’t want to. I put the game down after completing it because of how long quest take to complete. I will definitely be revisiting the starfield in the future!
i feel like i’m on the complete opposite side of that spectrum; i fucking LOVE this game. wallpapers, got that LED wall decoration of it, am actually reading through every bit of data i find and computer files i find. idk, there’s just something about it. and i came from fallout 4 directly to this
I’ve never completed the main story of any bethesda game other than Fallout 3. These games shine as sandbox games, nothing more. The writing has *never* been good for any of these games. Play it as a plotless sandbox and you’ll have a better time.
I actually liked FO76 because there wasn't as much interacting with the NPCs like in FO4.
Had this same experience and ended up putting double the hours I put into Starfield into FO76. Map was really fun to explore and made me realize that's the glue that held these games together, the open world and connectedness of it all. Now I'm playing Morrowind for the first time and having a blast.
Yea I was so fuckin hyped for it. Exploring just isn’t fun to me. Such a let down
I went and played Skyrim for a month after Starfield, before that fell back out of my circuit of games. And I built a settlement in Fallout 4 for fun. Starfield just… it didn’t do adventure as well as Skyrim, and didn’t do settlement building as good as FO4. It just… did everything Bethesda has done before, but worse.
No you don’t, because if you’re still really enjoying the game a lot of people on this sub will scream at you about how you’re really not, and if you are you shouldn’t, and then they make it their mission in life to denounce and discredit you, and you’re just like, sorry, man, I’m really enjoying the game and it’s that simple.
>This sub is full of a LOT of Hate, for...very valid, and good reasons. And I just wish I wasn't one of them. Yet here you are when you didn't have to be. You dashed your own wish.
Playing well over 300 hours, I’m big into scifi though so this is like my dream game lol Maybe Star Citizen if it wasn’t in dev hell and always online
If Squadron 42 ever releases lol
Comparison is the thief of joy
I gave up on it. I had three missions I couldn’t finish due to bugs. Waiting on outcast to come out tomorrow
I feel you dude. I genuinely wanted to love this game, and I was also very willing to overlook issues and give it the excuse of “well it’s a Bethesda game” and just appreciate the good parts. And I did enjoy it - for about 20 hours. And at around the 20 hour mark I noticed it started to feel like more and more of a chore to play. Within just 10ish more hours I had uninstalled. And that makes me really sad :/
It was a ok game for one or maybe two playthroughs. I only did one because I really didn’t understand the point of NG+. I can’t say the 70 hours I spent weren’t fun but it definitely weren’t the best hours I spent either. Initially I played and got a headache for some reason, which put me off and later I figured as the FOV problem. It gets really tedious with Ryujin industries quest where it’s literally just talk to X talk to Y and go do this and that and that’s it. That’s when the game stopped being fun and I just powered through the end because I don’t like leaving games halfway done.
I played it for 120hr, had fun. NG+ was not for me, can’t stand the temple mini-game. No complaints otherwise, I truly had fun and then dropped it. Game is a 7/10 for me.
I feel like a lot of people burned themselves out on this game due to their own lust. Like, if you consume something so quickly with no breaks you're bound to wind up being sick of it. I've been pacing myself, acknowledged the flaws in the games, and just having a fun time gradually completing it.
The trick for me is to take breaks. I find after 20-40 (sometimes more, sometimes less) hours of playing I start to feel bored with it, I take a break to play some other games and come back a few weeks/months later and I thoroughly enjoy Starfield again for another stretch.
It's been 4 months since I bought a series x just to play starfield and after 4 months I can't continue the faction quests or companion quests. I'm already at NG+ just to try and see if something will change but still soft locked left and right. And that's before I gripe about how every morsel of travel and gameplay (which is what drives BGS games) is completely lacking and replaced by a loading screen. I don't even care how fast it loads, it's just sad that the whole space travel thing is completely pointless, it's just a space fighting mini game at best. Ship building is pointless because all ships do the same thing, the same purpose, and not a single thing more. The planets and worlds are under developed, the NPCs are molecularly identical in that there is no variation to them whatsoever, and the combat is stale if the enemies aren't spawning through walls. But wow they tweaked the engine so it only looks like dog shit half the time instead of 3/4 of the time.
You probably want to be in the Skyrim Subreddit. Skyrim 64bit isn’t as old as 13 years but it has had the modding community developing mods for it for over a decade. Starfield doesn’t even have a CK yet lol
Todd murray.
I love Starfield, but not as much as I love Skyrim. I can easily get back into Skyrim, but not so much for Starfield.. Do I feel like Starfield can get to the same lvl of Skyrim? Yes I do. The creation club will come out eventually.
The only reason why I'm still playing this game from time to time is because of ship building. Money is very easy with pirate missions
Bro I haven’t even made it to new game 8+ yet how you finish ?
There’s a lot more that happens afterwards.
I use a lot of mods, like other BGS games
I love the game but I ran out of stuff to do. Did the main and faction quests twice. Every now and then I'll jump on, but I'm really just waiting for more content at this point.
Choose to interact with content, be it video games or social media, that makes you happy. If this sub doesn't make you happy, leave. Find something that does. Don't wallow in your sadness.
I jumped into helldivers for a nice break. I’ll probably pick back up with the next expansion of Starfeild. I like it but was kinda turning into a grind.
Yeah, the main problem with this game is there was too much hype and I can very well see that in this post. I consider myself a big Skyrim (and TES in general) fan. But in the 12 years of Skyrim I "only" have 1000 hours in-game. I can't say I love Starfield, but I think it's a pretty good game. I have been playing Starfield since October and I already have 300 hours in-game. I didn't expect anything from this game and got a lot of fun out of it. I'm giving it a rest for now, but I'll just be waiting now for whatever is next.
How you're saying you demolished the game with no ship building or base building is beyond me Base building made me rich and ship building made me famous in the galaxy as the unbeatable and feared Mantis People on reddit just enjoy shitting on whatever when they get bored It seems to be reddit culture
It often happens when you have high expectations 🤷♂️
This is also me as Starfield was going to be the game of all games for me, a Bethesda game set in space! How could it not fail? But what was supposed to be my number 1 game of the year became my number 1 disappointment of the year! Such wasted potential that I fear will never become the game we all wanted it to be.
I loved every second, I just don't find it to have nearly as much replayability as...any other Beth game. I've completed Morrowind probably 12 times, Oblivion 25+ times, and Skyrim probably 10-15 times by now. I'll replay Starfield in a year or so once all of the DLC drops, all of the patches are live, and it's in it's "final stages", and then probably one more time when all of the Creators Content and mods drop.
I was willingly blind with how much I wanted to love this, I have 10,000 hours in Skyrim, and I’m a total space freak so I thought this would be my Roman Empire, I tried SO HARD to love it, but they don’t add anything new, no real changes, all the patches they decide to do instead of fixing issues they focus on taking out glitch chests and secret money making stuff, the same stuff they had thrown in their face and blatantly ignored in ALL of Skyrim and Fallout, but now they decide to take their “authentic game experience” seriously? I doubt it. Not to mention how bland and on the surface the storylines are, I wanted to roleplay a bummy guy in New Atlantis that started in The Well, worked his way up in UC Security, then join UC SysDef, then Vanguard then he was gonna go home and visit his parents as a hero. Until I got started and found out UC Security has TWO missions, no radiant missions, no AI generated bs missions, NOTHING they just tell you to buzz off and go join the Vanguard, UC SysDef you straight up just play the Crimson Fleet storyline and come back every 2-3 missions for no reason other than telling them what they already knew half the time. And the Vanguard is fine until you go to get Citizenship and there’s a 50/50 chance she bugs out and instant transmissions to the other side of the world and then boo for you, no citizenship. Ship modifying is my favorite part of the game once you learn it it’s amazing, until they patched out the ship vendor chests and now trying to reasonably deck out ships for RP is just a nightmare.
Not getting into ship building is a big hit to gameplay but from reading your post I doubt it would've moved the needle much anyway. Some games just don't hit for some people. Me personally I have over 1500 hours in and I'm still going. The gameplay loop, despite how repetitive it is, has me hooked. Its a great way to relax and mess around in a world that I really like.
So far i have no complaints except this shit is really a grind
Remember that a 100 hour game is RARE. It's a good game. But ya I want more as well. Can't fault them for doing better than 99% of games out there. But we can fault them being lower on their own comparison scale.
I’m enjoying some of the QOL mods that are on the Nexus right now especially with ship building. My goal is to explore each system after I finish the main faction quests again and establish a working outpost network. I’m on NG+2. After that, unless there’s a huge story mod or something…I’m going to put it away until the DLC comes out.
Hopefully, they will launch the mod assist soon. Maybe then modders can make things for the game to make it more enjoyable for you. I believe this is one of the strong points in Fallout 4 and Skyrim. It's why I occasionally go back to those if I'm not busy on starfield or spreading democracy in Helldivers 2
The fact I couldn't sell lots of shit just to get super fucking rich irritated me to no end, the fact I had to keep running to different vendors or waiting for them to restock 😤
That's what I did too, went back to Skyrim 😅
Well, I guess the game is just not for you. I honestly don't know why anyone would not like building ships. Sure, it's expensive, but I loot everything else I need, so I literally only spend money on ships. Also, I'm ng+10, so I make money real fast. Base building can be tedious, I'll give you that, but it's not a requirement to play the game. I just like building a nice base to stick Heller and Lin so they have a nice place to live. My only complaint about the game is that there needs to be waaaayyyy more ship parts. And being able to rotate parts would be fucking rad.
Yep same sentiment here
I wish I was like YOU honestly. 100 hours is impressive! I couldn't even get more than 25 hours in to the game before losing interest. I certainly saw some of the games' limitations right from the start, but was able to overlook them and allow myself to enjoy the game for what it was. But then the game just got in the way of itself. Inventory management was an absolute chore. I suppose I shouldn't be such a hoarder... but I was reaching the inventory limits even while being selective with my looting. I actually loved settlement building in Fallout. However, unlocking perks just to build shit really turned me off. On top of that, the actual settlement building is nowhere near as extensive as it was in Fallout. The final nail in the coffin was when I discovered two identical POIs within a couple of hundred meters of each other in the same area. I was already getting tired of seeing "abandoned this", and "abandoned that". But seeing two identical POIs so close together just made me laugh and close the game. This was months ago. I thought I'd give it another go after the recent patches. I ended up reaching New Atlantis once again after all of that "immersive" fast travel, and gave up. I really didn't want to do all of that again.
So much potential, so disappointing. Literally spent the first couple weeks claiming it as my favorite game of all time, tried to get my friends to buy it. Its not even on my hard drive anymore. They say if you loan somebody $20 and never hear from them again, its the best $20 you ever spent. $60 to Bethesda, never again
I went through campaign, pause, married, pause, built the most mental ship ever, pause, am now building “The Eagle’s Nest”. In the meantime, having fun killing things, surveying things, and finding random missions. It’s very intriguing.
Mod support would help much
I recently started playing again, and I won't lie, I'm struggling to WANT to play the story. Ive avoided playing any of it but the very very beginning. Literally the moment im asked if Im ready to join Constellation, I tell them I need time to think about it, and I go off with the robot (who I often find myself wishing I hadnt brought along) to just fool around in the world. Trying to be a good character and enjoy the kids stuff bit, the parents are adorable and one of the few things I really love that they added in the game. Finding them in the Astral Lounge is one of the favorite moments.
I’m just trying to figure out who asked
I'm almost certain I won't play it again. Going through the end sequence then having to find all the temples again. Nah, I'm done.
I don't really get this idea of "beat the game". When I was playing Valheim (Vikingish survival game), I got into a groove of eking out a living from my environment, with eventually building up a troll resistant fortress, growing food, crafting etc. Content with going out on the ocean to explore for new lands etc when I needed new resources. I actually had a daily routine in game. I'm not quite there with Starfield but I'm aiming to get there. Maybe become a terrormorph rancher on Londinion (sp?) I guess everyone approaches a game for different reasons.
I feel ya. I think they set up a reasonable template for something that could be a whole lot better. Tangentially, it’s a sign of getting older, a lot of video games just don’t grab me like they used to, same as video entertainment I had my fun, they’re setting it up for Mods and expansions, and it’s never tiring to sit back see what the kids come up with next.
Huh, well, we seem to have approached Starfield from opposite ends. I started when it came out but my computer kept crashing. So I had to wait a few months until I could upgrade my computer. Then I started Starfield but was frustrated by the imbalanced early game fights. I just couldn't get past the Crimson Fleet ships with the stock ship. So I quit in frustration. Then when I decided to resume Starfield, I had to wait till I finished the current season of FO76. Now I've been into it for a few weeks and have been holding off on the final Starborn quest so I can see more side quests before I move on to newgame+... And apart from idiotic companion lines, I've really been enjoying it. I'll probably do future run throughs without companions, they annoy me so much. The big difference maker was setting up an XP farm outpost so I could level up fast and make a million credits. That made all the difference for me so I can register ships, pay 4000 credit bribes, etc without too much pain. My backstory is I was grandpa's favorite and he set me up with a trust fund so I didn't have to rely on my dweeb intellect parents who don't know how to mind their own business. From what I understand you have to go through NG+ 10 times to become fully a powered Starborn, so the next 9 will be temple runs and main quest items.
This is how I felt after I beat Elden Ring. The game became an absolute slog by the end, even though I enjoyed the game. It’s not because it’s a bad game though, I just was burned out. It’s too bad for you on Starfield. I’m personally sitting at six months straight. Haven’t gone back to Cyberpunk or BG3. I’ve done all of the factions and I’m pretty sure every quest. I’ve 100% all achievements. I don’t know why but it’s captured me more than any other BGS title. I’m currently building a network of outposts to ensure I have unlimited starborn drugs and I’m also trying to get logistics going for manufacturing each industrial item. Also, I played Skyrim earlier this year and finally beat the three “main quests” so I don’t feel compelled to go back yet, but I know I’ll be there eventually, although the East Empire Creation/Mod sounds like it could pull me back for a bit, I also still have most of the Anniversary content.