Starfield

Flogger23m said:
Can you really consider them to be bad if you enjoyed them? Sub-par certainly, but bad?
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I recognize my posts above with Luke were not what most wanted to read.

But the tl;dr is:
Enjoyment ≠ Quality

People like: The Kardashians, Real House Wives, The Bachor, n’Sync, Backstreet Boys, and on and on and on. There is a reason they call it “trash TV” or “guilty pleasures”. Their wide spread appeal that has millions of viewers or listeners do not make them good.

Or also:
Populism ≠ Quality
 
Flogger23m said:
Can you really consider them to be bad if you enjoyed them? Sub-par certainly, but bad?
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Bad or sub-par, that's a distinction without a difference. No one can argue that the stories Bethesda tells are meaningful or good, or that their VO quality is great. Butt that does not mean you can't still enjoy the games for other reasons. People need to let go and not take it personally when someone criticizes a game they like as long as it is valid criticism and not a value judgment. I.e. suggesting that only a stupid person would like it. I'd argue that most of the Starfield "criticism" is leaning to the latter, making value judgements without substance.
Flogger23m said:
For Starfield it has more to do with the developer replying to criticism. That is seemingly when the overall opinion of the game went from "meh" to "this sucks" and got a mostly negative collective review score on Steam. Up front the reception wasn't bad. It went south when the developers started leaving comments on reviews.
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The reception was already far more negative than Fallout 4's, or Skyrim's long before the devs started replying to reviews. It didn't help, but it was definitely not the cause.
Flogger23m said:
I don't have much interest in BG3. It looks janky to me. Top down style games are not something I have much interest in, and how it flips to a cinematic view for cutscenes feels off for that type of game. I'm sure it is okay, but I am thinking it is another Zelda BOTW situation. Very overrated.
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I agree it seems overrated, but the thing that is most offputting to me in it, is that literally everything in the game is dependent on a dice roll. Skill and strategy is meaningless if you have bad luck. And I think that can make a game exceptionally frustrating when you did everything right and still get the L due to an RNG. And I seem to have exceptionally bad luck in these RNG based things. When I see people playing on the internet getting good luck streaks multiple times in a row that I didn't get in 1000 hours of playing the same game.
 
BG3 gets a ton of love, but I found playing it to be a minute-by-minute struggle. They went overboard on making visible dice rolls responsible for everything IMO. The UI/UX for Starfield is bad, but I found BG3's to be even worse. I also encountered way more bugs in it. The story and characters are way better than Starfield, but I found playing the game to be less enjoyable. I'll take Sarah Morgan being upset with me every 30 seconds vs. huge chunks of a game being gated by random dice rolls.
 
I recently downloaded a full HD texture mod for Starfield (130GB). Started playing again since its finally out of Beta with its last patch LOL.

Running way smoother now for me. And my god does the game look great with 4k/8k textures at 4k resolution :). Uses up to 20+ gigs of video memory going to Atlantis.

Game it not perfect, but its not bad either. I gave it a 7/10. Was rough around the edges sure, but I still enjoyed the game. LOVE the ship building.
 
M76 said:
There is so little difference between Fallout 4 and Starfield that I can't fathom what makes one fun and the other boring and unfun.

I found it more fun, not less probably due to the setting.
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Established IPs get much more leeway. Again, no need to overthink it. A cabal of influencers didn't just decide to wreck this game and that was that.
 
NightReaver said:
Established IPs get much more leeway. Again, no need to overthink it. A cabal of influencers didn't just decide to wreck this game and that was that.
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What I said doesn't require collusion or conspiracy to be true. It's just how the grifting game works.
 
M76 said:
What I said doesn't require collusion or conspiracy to be true. It's just how the grifting game works.
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Believe what you want. Mediocre to meh game sank lower because devs responded in a bad way. A tale as old as time. Other "meh" games do much better because of established IPs/settings/lore that people care about. People were expecting more from a whole new IP and it didn't happen.

I was there day 1. It was mediocre on the very first day of play. There was no "game was fine until influencers said it wasn't"
 
NightReaver said:
Believe what you want. Mediocre to meh game sank lower because devs responded in a bad way. A tale as old as time. Other "meh" games do much better because of established IPs/settings/lore that people care about. People were expecting more from a whole new IP and it didn't happen.

I was there day 1. It was mediocre on the very first day of play. There was no "game was fine until influencers said it wasn't"
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If it was enough to be an existing IP then Mass Effect Andromeda should have gotten a pass too. But it didn't while Dragon Age Inqusition was praised despite exhibiting the same bugs and problems, and some other issues that didn't even exist in ME:A. It is literally a lottery. This is why I Stopped caring about the majority opinion after that,
 
M76 said:
If it was enough to be an existing IP then Mass Effect Andromeda should have gotten a pass too. But it didn't while Dragon Age Inqusition was praised despite exhibiting the same bugs and problems, and some other issues that didn't even exist in ME:A. It is literally a lottery. This is why I Stopped caring about the majority opinion after that,
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Why is everything so black and white to you?

Really all is this solved by accepting it's okay to like games that not many others do. Doesn't mean all of the dislikes are just arbitrary and only guided because of youtubers.
 
Brackle said:
I recently downloaded a full HD texture mod for Starfield (130GB).
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...wat?
Brackle said:
Running way smoother now for me. And my god does the game look great with 4k/8k textures at 4k resolution :). Uses up to 20+ gigs of video memory going to Atlantis.
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I swear modders look at Bethesda games and think "Could I make it EVEN BIGGER?" :D
 
M76 said:
Bad or sub-par, that's a distinction without a difference. No one can argue that the stories Bethesda tells are meaningful or good, or that their VO quality is great. Butt that does not mean you can't still enjoy the games for other reasons.
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I just have a hard time believing someone would call a game "bad" if they enjoyed it. There certainly is a scale. Too many people seem to say a game is bad (but enjoy it and put 100 hours into it) or say a game is GOTY. As if a game can only be bad or perfect. There is a lot of in-between, which is where most games will fall.

I liked FO3/NV/4, some parts were certainly underwhelming. But the whole experience was generally good. Even the voice acting was not bad. I've played games with worse voice acting since. Some games even omit voice acting.
 
Flogger23m said:
I just have a hard time believing someone would call a game "bad" if they enjoyed it. There certainly is a scale. Too many people seem to say a game is bad (but enjoy it and put 100 hours into it)
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People do that all the time though, for whatever reason. You see it with MMOs a lot, but also with plenty of single player games and Starfield is one that is a particular magnet for this. Someone will play it a ton, and yet lambast it as being awful. I don't know why people do this for games, if you don't like a game don't play it, but there seems to be a non-trivial contingent of people who like and want to play a game, but because the game isn't EVERYTHING they want it to be they can't just comment on the shortcomings, no instead they have to spit fire and vitriol at it and declare it to be awful... all while still playing it. You can find Starfield reviews like this where someone just lambasts the game but had 150 hours at review time and 400 hours of total playtime. So something they hated enough to play a ton, then hated it so much they played it a ton more... hmmm...

The black-and-white thinking is sadly all too common. Particularly for space games.

Also, sometimes you don't get it quite as black-and-white but still kinda dumb, rating something "not recommended" despite enjoying it. A good example is an indy game I like, Star Valor. It is your basic Diablo style loot-n-shoot in space and it fun as hell IMO. However one criticism I and others would level at it is that once you hit max level and have a good ship, there isn't a lot to do. The endgame has little progression, you basically need to roll up a new run.

Now that's not an invalid criticism, but it also doesn't mean the game is bad as you are likely to easily spend 30-40 hours of fun to get to that point which for a $25 game is quite worth it, even if you never do another run. Yet, some people are leaving "not recommended" reviews despite saying they enjoyed the game, and had quite a bit of play time, because it doesn't have that and since it isn't EVERYTHING they want, they don't like it.

Those are the issues, that people like to hate on games that they clearly enjoy just because the game isn't perfectly what they want.
 
Sycraft said:
People do that all the time though, for whatever reason. You see it with MMOs a lot, but also with plenty of single player games and Starfield is one that is a particular magnet for this. Someone will play it a ton, and yet lambast it as being awful. I don't know why people do this for games, if you don't like a game don't play it, but there seems to be a non-trivial contingent of people who like and want to play a game, but because the game isn't EVERYTHING they want it to be they can't just comment on the shortcomings, no instead they have to spit fire and vitriol at it and declare it to be awful... all while still playing it. You can find Starfield reviews like this where someone just lambasts the game but had 150 hours at review time and 400 hours of total playtime. So something they hated enough to play a ton, then hated it so much they played it a ton more... hmmm...

The black-and-white thinking is sadly all too common. Particularly for space games.

Also, sometimes you don't get it quite as black-and-white but still kinda dumb, rating something "not recommended" despite enjoying it. A good example is an indy game I like, Star Valor. It is your basic Diablo style loot-n-shoot in space and it fun as hell IMO. However one criticism I and others would level at it is that once you hit max level and have a good ship, there isn't a lot to do. The endgame has little progression, you basically need to roll up a new run.

Now that's not an invalid criticism, but it also doesn't mean the game is bad as you are likely to easily spend 30-40 hours of fun to get to that point which for a $25 game is quite worth it, even if you never do another run. Yet, some people are leaving "not recommended" reviews despite saying they enjoyed the game, and had quite a bit of play time, because it doesn't have that and since it isn't EVERYTHING they want, they don't like it.

Those are the issues, that people like to hate on games that they clearly enjoy just because the game isn't perfectly what they want.
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They're rating the game based on how they feel in the moment instead of their overall experience. If it is a multiplayer game that was updated and completely changed I can understand it, but otherwise I consider it illogical or dishonest. The people who do it will throw a fit if if you ask why they kept playing another hundred hours.
 
NightReaver said:
Why is everything so black and white to you?
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What do you mean? You cited a reason, I gave examples that doesn't fit with that reasoning. IDK what's black and white about that.
NightReaver said:
Really all is this solved by accepting it's okay to like games that not many others do. Doesn't mean all of the dislikes are just arbitrary and only guided because of youtubers.
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So the answer is to stop searching for answers? Of course it is not completely arbitrary, if a game was flawless it would be hard to find things to criticize in it. But I don't think any game can be flawless. So it all comes down to perception, and influencers can skew the perception of any game. Make it seem better or worse, simply by choosing to highlight the positives or just the negatives.
 
Flogger23m said:
I just have a hard time believing someone would call a game "bad" if they enjoyed it. There certainly is a scale. Too many people seem to say a game is bad (but enjoy it and put 100 hours into it) or say a game is GOTY. As if a game can only be bad or perfect. There is a lot of in-between, which is where most games will fall.
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I meant they are objectively bad (or sub-par if we use your term) games. I still think they were fun and would recommend them any day. As for playing a game for 100 hours then not recommending it I feel like I already gave my views a hundred times about that, including in a reply to you:

M76 said:
I find it laughable that someone spends 100 hours in a game that they don't like or enjoy. Not recommending a game after getting 100 hours of entertainment out of it, is pretty bad consumer advice.
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Flogger23m said:
I liked FO3/NV/4, some parts were certainly underwhelming. But the whole experience was generally good. Even the voice acting was not bad. I've played games with worse voice acting since. Some games even omit voice acting.
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Same, but the VO, but I disagree about the voice acting, it is not just slightly lower quality it is so bad it is cheesy.
I have not seen a game without voice acting in 20 years, and if I did I'd avoid it like the devil.
 
M76 said:
I meant they are objectively bad (or sub-par if we use your term) games. I still think they were fun and would recommend them any day.
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That just seems a bit contradictory. This is bad, but I enjoy it and recommend it. Is it really bad then? If you eat a bad meal, would you describe it as tasty and recommend it to someone else?

M76 said:
Same, but the VO, but I disagree about the voice acting, it is not just slightly lower quality it is so bad it is cheesy.
I have not seen a game without voice acting in 20 years, and if I did I'd avoid it like the devil.
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Depends. The main characters are generally average. Some of the side quest NPCs are lower quality, but that is normal. No different than games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which had some really bad voice acting for side quests. Although that extended to the main character as well come to think of it. Generally the longer the game, the worse the voice acting is as there is often a lot of small characters introduced and most of them get lower quality voice acting.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Reading is hard? I couldn't care less if a game has voice acting. In fact I prefer it doesn't as it usually makes for very long cutscenes.
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I think silent protagonists feel dated. It is always odd to have a characters talking and reacting to someone that does not react or talk back. Or just ignoring their existence. It also leads to more noticeable "volun-telling". Most games of course tell the player what to do (kill these 3 dudes to progress to the next map section, or sneak into this base and find something). But when your character has zero reaction to some type of order it becomes even more odd.

I also like long cutscenes. If they are done well, and fit the game. Not every game needs cutscenes.
 
Flogger23m said:
I think silent protagonists feel dated. It is always odd to have a characters talking and reacting to someone that does not react or talk back. Or just ignoring their existence. It also leads to more noticeable "volun-telling". Most games of course tell the player what to do (kill these 3 dudes to progress to the next map section, or sneak into this base and find something). But when your character has zero reaction to some type of order it becomes even more odd.

I also like long cutscenes. If they are done well, and fit the game. Not every game needs cutscenes.
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Oh I meant voice acting at all. I prefer text for all characters, like classic jrpg titles used to do.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Reading is hard? I couldn't care less if a game has voice acting. In fact I prefer it doesn't as it usually makes for very long cutscenes.
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I read books, but for games reading the lines distracts from following the visual storytelling, and it's immersion breaking. Even if a game has VO, I always turn off subtitles so they don't divert my attention.
 
Flogger23m said:
That just seems a bit contradictory. This is bad, but I enjoy it and recommend it. Is it really bad then? If you eat a bad meal, would you describe it as tasty and recommend it to someone else?
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I'd describe Alpha Protocol or Splinter Cell Double Agent as overall bad games, but they both had some redeeming qualities that no other game offered, so yeah I'd recommend them even if I consider them objectively bad games.
Fallout 3 had terrible shooting mechanics, sub-par graphics, a lame story with gaping plotholes, but I still enjoyed it for the exploration it offered. Whether a game is objectively bad does not define whether I enjoy it or not. There are games that I don't think are bad per se, but I still did not enjoy them or would recommend them: For example Jedi Fallen Order, Titanfall 2, Dying Light etc.
Flogger23m said:
Depends. The main characters are generally average. Some of the side quest NPCs are lower quality, but that is normal. No different than games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which had some really bad voice acting for side quests. Although that extended to the main character as well come to think of it. Generally the longer the game, the worse the voice acting is as there is often a lot of small characters introduced and most of them get lower quality voice acting.
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You kidding right? I loved the Kassandra's VO in AC:Odyssey. It's one of the best aspects of the game. It was a long time ago, but I don't remember side characters being bad either.
 
M76 said:
I read books, but for games reading the lines distracts from following the visual storytelling, and it's immersion breaking. Even if a game has VO, I always turn off subtitles so they don't divert my attention.
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If I wasn't able to multitask my attention then yeah, I guess subs would suck. People use the same reasoning why they have to use english dubs for anime/movies.
 
M76 said:
I'd describe Alpha Protocol or Splinter Cell Double Agent as overall bad games, but they both had some redeeming qualities that no other game offered, so yeah I'd recommend them even if I consider them objectively bad games.
Fallout 3 had terrible shooting mechanics, sub-par graphics, a lame story with gaping plotholes, but I still enjoyed it for the exploration it offered. Whether a game is objectively bad does not define whether I enjoy it or not. There are games that I don't think are bad per se, but I still did not enjoy them or would recommend them: For example Jedi Fallen Order, Titanfall 2, Dying Light etc.
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Fair enough. FO3 did have bad shooting and combat wasn't exactly great. But it mainly excelled in having good exploration, a world that actually feels like a world with unique locations, and decent branching dialogue options.

M76 said:
You kidding right? I loved the Kassandra's VO in AC:Odyssey. It's one of the best aspects of the game. It was a long time ago, but I don't remember side characters being bad either.
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I played with Alexios. From what I have seen in videos, Kassandra doesn't sound much better. I think the voice acting is quite bad in that game. It feels very much like people reading a line off a piece of paper. Even most of the emotional parts sound like that. Very wooden delivery, and killed my sense of immersion. It seemed more like a practice run or they took 1 take for everything and just clobbered it altogether. Conversations feel too obviously disjointed. I also think the bad character/facial animations contributed to characters feeling awkward.
 
Flogger23m said:
I played with Alexios. From what I have seen in videos, Kassandra doesn't sound much better. I think the voice acting is quite bad in that game. It feels very much like people reading a line off a piece of paper. Even most of the emotional parts sound like that. Very wooden delivery, and killed my sense of immersion. It seemed more like a practice run or they took 1 take for everything and just clobbered it altogether. Conversations feel too obviously disjointed. I also think the bad character/facial animations contributed to characters feeling awkward.
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I've tried playing Alexios after I finished the game with Kassandra and it just wasn't the same plus spoiler alert
Kassandra didn't work as the villain in turn for me either.
But when it comes to wooden delivery nobody beats Bethesda. In Starfield most of the delivery is laughable, even for main characters. I enjoyed playing it for the exploration and ship building, but there is a grand canyon between actual AAA story telling and what passes as AAA at Bethesda. Even Terminator Resistance which is a medium budget game has much more compelling VO and storytelling than any Bethesda RPG I played.
 
Sorry, but I always skip voiced dialog in games like these. I won't even suffer the time it takes for the actors to complete their lines on a first playthrough. I don't care how good the VAs are. I can read much faster, and would rather do that and get back to the game. Voice acting is fine in cutscenes, but not for progressing through a game where more than 60% of it is interacting with NPCs. With all the games I want to play I don't have the time to sit through hundreds of hours of voiceover.
 
On March 6th, the next Starfield update goes into Steam Beta...this update focuses on quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes:

-We're adding expressions to photo mode

-We're improving the scanner so you can continue to use it to monitor the world around you while harvesting resources or opening doors

-Setting course on an inactive mission will now make it active

-We also tracked down the elusive David Barron, who had mysteriously been unavailable at the SSNN for many players in "Sabotage"

-Other fixes include an issue causing the player's head to turn left while sprinting and some issues preventing Starborn Temples from appearing correctly, among many others...

https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/1763595746614427987
 
Quite aside from the fact that it's a shtty nothing burger of a game, its also tainted with sweet baby's propaganda bc they "consulted" on the game. Who on earth wants to knowingly consume that propaganda.? Unless you like games populated by unattractive girl bosses, that is.
 
I'll probably play through this again later this year after some more updates. Ended up with about 80+ hours first go at it but didn't hit many bugs.
 
I bought this at launch for $25 (was bundled with AMD GPU's and I bought a code) but not sure when I'll get to it...way too many games I want to play before this- Shadow of the Erdtree, Forbidden West PC, Dragon's Dogma 2, Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty etc
 
What mods are recommended for a first playthrough? Quality of life would be the main focus. Only about an hour in and I could see a mod for identifying junk vs collectibles vs utility items. Or possibly quicker scanning.

Played the crap out of FO3 and NV back in the day, but haven't touched any of their stuff since.
 
peppergomez said:
Best quality of life improvement for this game is not to install it at all...unless you're craving DIVERSITY!

https://twitter.com/Dezinuh/status/1764239555169775850
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The game is "diverse" like the cover of a college textbook.
It wasn't annoying but I definitely could tell they were trying to force it. All of humanity is mixed up together in space, so it makes sense you would see a little bit of everyone. ME:A did it much worse.

That tweet is dumb, though especially considering public reaction to Starfield. It's not something to brag about dude.
 
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Especially since that far in the future we are more likely to be pretty much all the same color (to be determined by science or a wild guess).
 
Nimisys said:
What mods are recommended for a first playthrough? Quality of life would be the main focus. Only about an hour in and I could see a mod for identifying junk vs collectibles vs utility items. Or possibly quicker scanning.

Played the crap out of FO3 and NV back in the day, but haven't touched any of their stuff since.
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I typically dont use mods so i can't suggest any, probably best bet would be to check nexus mods or google top 10 mods for Starfield. unfortunately you probably wont get much help here.
 
peppergomez said:
Quite aside from the fact that it's a shtty nothing burger of a game, its also tainted with sweet baby's propaganda bc they "consulted" on the game. Who on earth wants to knowingly consume that propaganda.? Unless you like games populated by unattractive girl bosses, that is.
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For bethesda that's literally no different than normal, their NPCs were ugly already and the writing always sucked.
 
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