Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
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People like to claim any big ticket game that doesn’t get like 8/10 or higher is being review bombed. Seems as if people have legit criticisms of the game and it’s pretty fairly reviewed.
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Metacritic’s user rating system is just shit. You see the game rated higher than deserved and you can either
- give it an honest rating resulting in the total score dropping by 0.01
- give it a zero rating and have the score drop by 0.1
Of course most people chose to rate it in a way that has more impact on the total score, so it’s no wonder we see 0/10 and 10/10 more than anything else.
This phenomenon will be even more exaggerated if critics ratings are undeservedly high, as is the case with Starfield.
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The reason it’s lower on metacritic is mainly due to the fact that the critics rating is too high, imo. This leads to disappointed players leaving extra bad scores (i.e. 0/10) to offset the total score. In a way that’s review bombing, but only as a reaction to the inflated critics’ reviews (which I often suspect to be bought or bribed).
Usually the Steam reviews are a lot more reliable. As I said, metacritic’s system is shit and encourages rating manipulation.
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Because my initial comment was about metacritic and my argument is that metacritic is a bad indicator of review bombing because it actually encourages it
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This game is just ridiculous. Overhyped advertising, terrible optimalization, 10 years old graphics, so many loadscreens, plain story, no real space exploration, perk wall to do anything, horrible UI and they call it next gen open world space exploration RPG. I stopped playing after 10 hours so I can make a good assumption but it got only worse and worse. I don’t have time to waste it on this. Even if it starts being more enjoyable later it doesn’t excuse all the issues.
I feel you. The first 10-15 hours did feel like kind of a slog. I will say, I hit a point where I’m legitimately enjoying the game and things seem to have coalesced in a way they just don’t in earlier game. I’m 20 hours in though. That’s a slow starter if there ever was one.
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Mostly yes.
You’re a patient man. If you enjoy it, that’s good. But that game is not for me. Last game I enjoyed from Bethesda was Oblivion so I’m not much surprised. I’m quite picky…
From Metacritic
Metacritic user ratings have literally never mattered and never been an indicator for anything. I’m pretty sure every relatively popular game on it gets “review bombed”, because anyone who actually wanted to review it wouldn’t review it there. This is non-news.
Doesn’t metacritic aggregate reviews from other sources on their review scores as well? I havent really considered any of the big name review places a reasonable source for a long time anyway…
Everyone expects the next big game every game. How often can a studio really live up to the hype people create?
Everytime if they just listened to a guy on the internet who has no clue what it takes to create a game.
Why? It’s a pretty bad game in many ways. Also good in other ways. I can totally see why it’s polarising
To me it was a disaster because I expected it to be way more next gen after all these years. And it was very expensive compared to the quality I got.
Meanwhile my friend was all like “Eh, it’s fine. Pretty much what I expected.”
So I think people had very different expectations.What I absolutely cannot comprehend is those who say “10/10, game of the century!”
Come on… No way. If you really think that, you have really low standards or haven’t played a new game in 8 years.I expected it to be way more next gen after all these years
It is “next generation”:
- It’s the next generation of huge.
- It’s also the next generation of empty.
- It’s the next generation of pretty.
- It’s also the next generation of soulless.
I mean, it basically heightens all previous design parameters for open world games, does it not?
It is absolutely NOT the next generation of “pretty”. Can’t even sign up for the qualifiers for that competition.
I watched some streams of Starfield, and I just can’t understand how they made a game that looks so dull and boring. Skyrim had some soul to it, I remember being wowed by the trailer. The world and music in Skyrim are really beautiful too. Yeah it’s a janky Bethesda game in many ways, but it is also more than that.
I think you can’t see starfield the same way you saw skyrim is because several years past and this level of dullness and jankiness is unacceptable
My thoughts exactly. Whatever issues were in Morrowind, Oblivion, New Vegas, Skyrim etc there was still a uniquely engaging game there.
I’ve been poking around and their lead concept artist died before he got to work on Fo4, and the two main writer producer guys Emil & Pete(?) have basically admitted on game dev talks that they’re no longer trying to tell a coherent story or create a world anymore, just keep a player playing. Maybe this is why?
For all the Bethesda games I’ve played (barring Starfield), I’ve been instantly hooked and wanting to play more. There’s always been something to keep me playing. But in Starfield I feel like there’s just nothing there, I’m not feeling any sense of wanting to explore and find out more. I’m glad I didn’t pay for my copy, would have been a waste of money imo
Man some people just can’t be pleased. I’ve been playing the game all week, and it’s fantastic. It delivered exactly what I thought it was going to be.
Sure there are some bugs, and some complaints about a few minor things, but as a whole this game is spot on.
I’m just not sure what people are expecting. It’s Fallout/Skyrim in space, and it’s exactly what I thought it was going to be.
I agree that it’s a fun game – about what I expected as well (no bugs for me, though) – but my major issue with the game is that the lore is so damn boring. Unlike in past titles like New Vegas and Oblivion, I find myself skipping through the dialogue in this one so that I can go back to enjoying the game. The game doesn’t give me any reason to care about these various factions and their internal drama. Nobody ever has anything interesting or funny to say in Starfield ever. I never once felt the need to dig deeper into the lore like I do with Fallout, reading timelines and listening to developer insight and whatnot. I just skip skip skip.
Also there’s the fact that space travel is done almost entirely through menus. The only time you actually have to fly your ship is during dogfights.
If it weren’t for those two things, this would be a 9/10 game for me. I love the massive cities, how many mods there are already, and gunplay is satisfying once you tweak the damage values to make everyone less of a bullet sponge (Including yourself). Can’t wait to see what the future holds for this game once we start getting DLC and story mods.
tbf this is pretty par for the course with Bethesda, the writing just isn’t good. The people that wrote Morrowind and most of Oblivion left half way through Oblivion, from what I remember Todd Howard did not get along with the writers at all.
Everything ever since has been just, well it’s been there. Todd is more interested in spectacle and exploration than writing. And unfortunately that’s been incredibly successful for him
I just did a quest where the New Frontier and the UC put aside their differences in war to fight a common enemy. The dialog was all touching and mused on the equality of each soldier in a war.
Meanwhile I’m over here like “Dude, I have no honest idea what dumb reason there is that you two idiots are even at war with each other, and you’re writing the dumbest WW1 Christmas story I’ve heard.”
I can’t tell if I don’t like Starfield, or playing games anymore. I got it on September 1st, and played it for a few hours that night. I played it for a couple hours the night after that, and then I played it for like 30 minutes yesterday. I haven’t really been hardcore about any game since before the pandemic. It’s not the same now that my gaming machine lives at the desk that is also my home office. I’ve typically wanted to just get out of this room when work is done, so a game has to be really good to keep me sitting here.
I can’t tell you how much I need a separate office space to separate work from play.
I’m with you. The intro was pretty lackluster, the main campaign doesn’t interest me at all, and new Atlantis kinda sucks imo
Then I joined the crimson fleet and suddenly 50 hours was gone.
Huh. I was just watching a review for No Man’s Sky that made virtually the same point about that game, down to the 50 hours. The review said that the first couple hours were very boring, but once the intro and early game was out of the way, it got way more interesting. His pinned comment reads "I have now sunk in 50+ hours into this game. It keeps showing new stuff. Please help me. My family hasn’t seen me in days. "
Maybe open-world game developers need to see if they can streamline the intros somehow. Even if the intro isn’t a large percentage of the time you play the game, it does make the first impression.
I made a post like this sentiment elsewhere in this thread but I agree 100%. I was kinda forcing my way through some parts because I was just barely interested enough to continue. Then I had a few ohhh shit moments like taking over my first varuhn great serpent fanatic pirate ship and some of the UC Vanguard missions. I don’t know how they could improve/streamline it but they should work on it for sure.
Not that buying more stuff is ever the answer but… As someone who also spends way too much time at the same desk, getting a Steam Deck has totally revamped my love for gaming. Most of the time I’m not bringing it out with me (although I have traveled with it), but just being able to play PC games from bed, on the couch, or even outside in the back yard has been a ton of fun for me.
I’m considering moving my PC to the living room for this exact reason.
I did, and it’s great. Really helped to have it somewhere I don’t also work.
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It’s a good idea, but my eyes aren’t good enough to read my screen if I park my ass on the couch and need to view the TV to read dialogue text :(
Easy. Get glasses and a bigger TV
No see… I have glasses and an 65" TV… I really can’t get better.
Sounds like maybe you need a new eye exam… Are you unable to get to 20/20 with corrective lenses?
I have glasses and I game on a 46" TV from about 12 to 14 feet away and I can read most (if not all) in game dialogue…
I did struggle a bit with Pentament but that was part of what helped me realize I needed a new eye exam.
It seems like my eyes are just deteriorating quickly now. I end up getting a new prescription each year in December.
Fair enough
That’s how mine are these days. I just noticed that my prescription expires after a year (the paper one), so if I’m tempted to get an updated pair of frames, it’s going to mean an eye exam for me.
I can’t tell if I don’t like Starfield, or playing games anymore.
I don’t know your tastes, but it’s probably the latter if you only stick to the AAA realm of games. I sure as hell have burned on them - the indie and mid-budget space is where you’ll find games focused on simply being fun. Hi-Fi Rush, Pizza Tower, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to name a few that came out this year.
I feel you. I just started spending my work day in bed then playing games at night.
No, it’s just an overhyped game that doesn’t deliver.
I’m enjoying the game and having fun but I also have a long list of complaints. #1 for me right now is not having the right dialogue options. First bethesda rpg where a character can ask me if something is a good idea and there is no option to tell them no!
Damn even the outer worlds had that.
I got Outer Worlds because of all the talk about it having more choice than Fallout 4 and didn’t find that to be true at all. It was largely the same with nothing but Yes, No, and Not Now options.
I disagree, every potential option for betrayal or aligning with one cause versus another in any given scenario was just as good as any other Bethesda game.
The narrative was tighter and not as open world, but I liked the art design a lot and gameplay well enough.
I disagree, every potential option for betrayal or aligning with one cause versus another in any given scenario was just as good as any other Bethesda game.
That’s what I was saying tho. It was only just as good as any other Bethesda game; but it was being praised for being so much better than that.
I don’t like it, so many loading screens, the faction bounties are copy/paste, the space combat is awkward, neon was a huge disappointment to me being just one long corridor with neon signs, the main quest railroads you like no other Bethesda game before it and it’s just not fun to me. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s just not for me and moved back over to baldurs gate 3 and recently started another new run in the outer worlds.
I’ll keep plying the low atmo worlds in Elite until the game for me comes out, I guess.
I mean, my opinion is anecdotal I suppose. I have friends that like it and some that think it’s just okay. For me, I just wasn’t having fun and that’s the point of games, to have fun. I also don’t really think their whole “NASApunk” style is very good. It doesn’t feel like it has any unique style or identity. It’s honestly baffling to me how it’s gotten some 9’s and 10’s for scores. It’s easily a 7 out of 10 for me, maybe even a 6. It’s definitely not the game Bethesda sold everyone on with marketing IMO.
Are you on an HDD? new PC, new SSD, haven’t sat in a loading screen for more than 3 seconds but usually less than 1.
Nope, running off a series s which uses internal nvme SSD storage.
Ya it seems to load much faster on a PC. 1-3 seconds on a PCIE 4X4 drive.
I don’t even notice losing screen. They are almost instant for me.
It’s not that loading screens are slow (I run on SSD), it’s that it’s loading screens everywhere. Want to enter a building? There’s a loading screen for that. Enter your ship? Loading screen. Launch to orbit? Loading. Travel to another planet’s orbit? Loading. Land on a planet? Oh loading, again.
At least in Skyrim and Fallout 4, you can have a seamless overworld experience. In Starfield, it’s all loading screens.
But those last like one second or less for me, so I don’t even notice them. The only one that annoys me is the take-off and landing ones because those are cutscenes.
Plus, you can do all of those actions you just mentioned with only one loading screen. You just go to your map and click where you want to go on any planet in any system, and as long as you aren’t in a cave or anything, you will fast travel from wherever you are to the location on the new planet with only one loading screen.
I also hate the ship launch and landing loading screens. The exiting and entering loading for ships are justifiable as ship interiors are customizable and are unloaded for performance. The problem is, loading screens still adds up. For example:
spoiler
The rescue Barrett quest is a recent quest I did that illustrates this. From the lodge, you can probably fast travel to the mining outpost directly? (Haven’t tested fast travel in interiors), so that’s +1 loading screen. Then you exit your ship (+1 loading screen). Talk to Lin, and enter one of the buildings to check the comms relay thingy (+1 loading screen). Find three power cells, one inside the comms relay building, one outside (+1), and the last one in another building (+1). You exit that other building, (+1), enter the comms relay building (+1), fix the relay, exit the comms relay building (+1), talk to Lin. At this point we’ve had 8 loading screens, and this is like 1/3rd into the quest.
All in all, it feels like a series of interiors and set pieces connected by loading screens, not a series of interiors and set pieces connected by a seamless world. Again, previous titles also had a lot of loading screens, but at least they had a seamless overworld that you can explore without experiencing one loading screen.
Yes, from the lodge, you can fast travel to the mining outpost directly. About a 1 second load time for me, and I’m there. I wouldn’t even notice the load time.
Honestly not sure why they’re there since those areas are already loaded anyway.
Skip the loading screens and just jump the walls or off balconies. Duh.
I thought the main quest lines were pretty great.
All the side content is pretty bland though.
The loading screens aren’t bad if you’re properly using fast travel.
The loading screens are atrocious even for a Bethesda game. Walk up a ladder, loading screen, open a door, loading screen, dock with another ship, loading screen, travel to another planet in the same system, loading screen, land on a planet that’s already loaded, loading screen, exit the ship, loading screen. Maybe it’s different on PC, but I’m playing on a series S that has pretty fast read/write speeds and that’s just absurd. Pretty sure if my character could use the toilet there would be a loading screen for the bathroom.
You don’t need to do all that stuff though. Use your missions tab and the map to travel directly where you need to go.
It’s a massive open world game, there are going to be loading screens. But you can limit them by fast traveling directly.
So your suggestion is to not play the open-world part of the open-world game?
It’s still open world in the sense that there are plenty of places you can go to and in any order without being gated through a linear story line.
Even if you were to ignore my advice, it wouldn’t be any more open world because travelling between these areas is always gated by loading screens.
My suggestion is merely to reduce the amount of loading screens between zones.
Instead of leaving constellation, loading Jameisom, getting on the train, loading the shipyard, entering your ship, loading the ship interior, taking off, loading space, going to your map, selecting warp to sol, loading sol, selecting a landing site on Cydonia, loading your ship interior on cydonia, leaving your ship, and loading cydonia.
I’m suggesting you fast travel straight from the lodge to cydonia. Cutting 7 loading screens down to 1.
Of course, I also recommend that you take time to explore the areas you’re in.
You’re right that the loading screens can be minimized with fast travel, but also, some of the best parts of a game like this is the immersion, which doesn’t really work well with loading directly from point to point on your to-do list. I think Starfield is fine, tbh, but I do agree that the amount of loading screens is excessive. Games like NMS and Elite Dangerous have been doing seamless space travel for a long time now. There’s really no excuse.
The excuse is the engine they refuse to let die. It’s not a good excuse, but that’s a lot of the trademark Bethesda wonk.
Yeah, that tracks. I get that as a company, they’re gonna wring every resource dry before ponying up the money to redevelop, but that engine’s been showing its age for a while now, and Starfield is a great concept that deserved better.
I get what you’re saying, but eliminating loading screens in a game like this just isn’t feasible.
NMS or Elite Dangerous style space travel might be, but then it would have a similarly cartoonist reduced scale. I wouldn’t mind that personally, but I get why they didn’t do it.
My primary complaint is that the cities themselves are split up into multiple zones. If Skyrim can be entirely open, so to should Jameison.
I’m not saying they need to eliminate them entirely, just agreeing that there are way too many, and “fast travel to the plot” isn’t a reasonable solution in a game like this. I do think (mostly) seamless space travel would go a very long way to helping the overall experience.
I was so prepared to love this game today. Woke up early and fired it up almost two hours ago. It’s crashed 5 times and I’ve only made about twenty minutes worth of progress into the intro.
I’m playing on a Series X. There’s no reason for this type of bullshit.
Sure, it’s a first world problem, but this has really set a bad tone for the day and this game in general.
I might try again later, but I’m probably already over it.
I’ve been running it on my series S for hours without a single crash - sounds like that might be something to do with your console
Where did it crash? I’ve been playing for 5 hours on a SX and it’s been rock solid (of course usual Bethesda visual glitches slightly happen).
It sounds like your xbox is overheating or needs to be cleaned
But the Xbox OS isn’t crashing. I just suddenly go back to the home screen, but trying to go back into Starfield relaunches the game. My kid said it was happening to him when he played earlier this week, but I thought he was just exaggerating because he’s like that.
Here’s where it crashed: #1: Saying goodbye to Lin. #2: Space pirates land (no combat yet) (I decided to quicksave after talking to Barrett) #3: Conversation after the pirate fight #4: Spaceship combat tutorial (2 ships)
And that’s as far as I got in 2 hours.
I get the same crashes in the same places. On a windows 10 pc with less than current parts. I thought it was my aging machine.i have 82 minutes in game and may just refund.
I wouldn’t even say anything if I was on PC, I’d just assume I wasn’t up to spec (I’ve never had a high end machine, I’m used to it) but theres not much I can do to improve my series x.
It’s janky as hell, but the game I’ve played the most this year. Take that for what you will.
I mean… Have you played many others?
They played some minesweeper for 10 minutes.
It’s crack for my brain
Somehow they made a shittier NoMansSky.
I have tried to play NMS four separate times now. I just cannot get past a certain point where it feels like repitition towards some kind of story line that is always one stept away of “something interesting”. The mechanics of the gameloop are maybe a bit too obvious, which takes away form the immersion. I end up shelfing it because something else catches my goldfish like attention. Then a year later a major update comes out, and I think “maybe it’s good now”?
Am I doing it wrong?
Starfield has fantastic art direction and ambience. The gunplay is really good, perhaps the best gunplay of any RPG, and a surprise coming from Bethesda. Story hits some good beats, and exploration is rewarding, though repetitive about 50% of the time in the typical Bethesda fashion (remember Draugr crypts?).
That being said, the game has some shortfalls, primarily in the roleplay aspect. The ship building and crew management is good, but it doesn’t feel great, and is sometimes just frustrating, so you never feel truly immersed in your own ship. Lack of low earth orbital and terrestrial flight is immersion breaking (even if players might opt to skip it if it were present) along with the fact that the ship is relegated to being a flying mule and most transportation is basically instant teleportation via menus, which IMO hurts the isolation and exploration RP and challenge. Ship combat is straight up mediocre for a space game in 2023. Gun selection and modding is decent, but far from top tier. I would describe the apparel as a bit on the bland side, few of the clothes and armor pickups made me go: I want to put this on, I’ll look badass (Cyberpunk 2077 syndrome).
In fact I think starfield shares a lot with Cyberpunk 2077: massive budget, AAA art direction with gameplay spread across so many systems and features that a lot of them leave you wanting more.
The gunplay is really good
Is it really though…?
I was just thinking this. The gunplay is serviceable.
There’s something I’d like to call “the Bethesda” bar. It’s basically an industrial bar lower than most. Let’s define what that means:
- releasing the same game over and over
- make games so buggy that a release with only a couple hundred of glitches is deemed "polished*
- ignore progressive development for things like NPC AI
- put all the money in marketing and hype
- make the user think they’re getting something new, rather than just another boilerplate game
I’m sure the story writers did some characters justice, but I won’t be playing this game - especially since Bethesda claims it “can’t run on older hardware”, despite the fact that modders are proving them wrong.
The Betheada bar is a cancer upon the industry and I view it as consumer facing psy-ops, relying on brain-dead fanboys with nothing going on in their lives to squeal with glee as a new AAA-title is released to fill that void.
Ah yes the “everyone who likes something I don’t like is a brainless zombie” argument, coming from someone who doesn’t like Bethesda and hasn’t even played the game.
It’s the same game as the last several Bethesda games, no need to play it to criticize it.
But even watching a few streams and videos is really enough to see even the harsh criticisms are putting it mildly.
It’s obviously vastly different in so many aspects. You realize that Fallout 4, their last mainline game, was 8 years ago?
