Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hater. I actually was really excited for the game. But so far I am just not having fun.
For a little bit of reference, I just finished playing thru Cyberpunk 2077 and then jumped right into Starfield. Maybe that was a mistake because I kinda just want to go back to Cyberpunk (and I will in a few weeks when the DLC comes out).
But I’m noticing two really big issues with Starfield: first, the gunplay/combat is… let’s call it underwhelming. I realize it’s quite probably a skill issue and I need to just git gud, but holy crap, everything is a bullet sponge and I don’t have that many bullets! Stealth seems to be pretty worthless at early levels as I don’t have any high-alpha guns that can take advantage of it and, most of the time, I’m detected before I even see the bad guys. I’m just not enjoying this aspect of the game at all.
The second big issue for me is that there’s a loading screen every five seconds! Again, probably a me thing, but OMG, it’s driving me nuts. Get into ship, loading screen. Launch from planet, loading screen. Fly to next planet, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen. Leave ship, loading screen. I just want to go shoot things! Let me shoot things!
Okay, found some spacers, time to… oh shit, out of ammo. Let me swap to a worse gun that still has ammo. Sigh. Okay, they’re dead. Let me just heal up… oh shit, out of med packs. Sigh.
Oh and wrestling with the UI is exhausting.
Anyways, I realize that this probably isn’t the place to find a lot of like-minded people. But I really do want to like this game. Any tips on maybe at least ways to make the combat less of a chore?
It definitely feels “meh”.
The characters are flat and tropey, the story itself isn’t very compelling, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of narrative freedom in the quests and the quests themselves are fairly cookie cutter. I was told the “First Contact” quest was really cool and well done. Nonsense! I’d like to be able to go back and talk to the NPCs about the progress of the quest, take their temperature on the options available. It didn’t feel like there was much of a point in getting the opinions of the entities aboard the ship as they had zero say in the outcome.
The game feels very much like a fantasy setting wrapped in sci-fi aesthetics, especially with the way the main quest doles out powers.
I like building a ship. I wish the ship had more functionality. I like building outposts, though I have no idea what for, I can’t see much of a use for harvesting and automating the production of resources.
The gun combat feels alright, but it seems health scales up really quickly on enemies.
I dislike how so much content is gated behind perk level ups, but it does keep me playing to see if the next unlock is cool.
there doesn’t seem to be a lot of narrative freedom in the quests
I’ve been playing more since I originally posted this and I’m enjoying myself more but the game still feels pretty meh. But this point above I think is the biggest sin the game commits. It’s an RPG but it doesn’t really feel like my decisions effect anything other than my companion’s view of me. I don’t think there are branching storylines or anything like that.
Hate to do it, but gonna compare to Cyberpunk again. In Cyberpunk, there are multiple ways to solve quests and multiple endings with multiple endings! BG3, of course, also has branching quests that effect the state of the world. The lack of a feeling of agency in this game feels like the biggest fault.
I can get used to the loading screens EVERYWHERE (a loading screen to enter a tiny store? really??), the weak gunplay, the watered down mechanics and wide but shallow world. But this game is an RPG first and if the RPG mechanics are bad, what is left??
I haven’t played CP2077, but I may have been spoiled by the characters and autonomy in BG3. The writing and choices are just so stellar in that game, it set a new standard. I remember in BG3 being so appalled by one NPC that I decided to just kill them instead of taking any of the games multiple dialogue routes to handle them and there were unique consequences and dialogue lines for taking that course of action!
A lot of the story telling in Starfield just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny if you look at it too closely and you have to closely follow the set paths or else it kinda breaks. Really disappointing in that aspect. Maybe if it had released prior to BG3, it wouldn’t seem so unpolished.
My biggest issue is how disconnected the worlds feel versus Elder Scrolls. Every point of interest stands alone in a sparsely decorated world, separated from all other points of interest by fast travel, unskippable animations and layers of maps.
It’s less about the distances than the tedium of getting my character from one place to another. I fast travel everywhere as usual, but now there are so many more steps to it - Getting out of the pilot seat. Docking and undocking or landing and taking off. Finding a location by clicking through the 3-layered map. - It’s way more complex than fast traveling from Windhelm to Solitude.
You can usually fast travel from one location to another, no need to take off. Just enter the menu, navigate to your location (or use the mission tab to show on map), and fast travel. Saves those multiple steps. Only exception is when you’re docked - you need to undock first.
But I agree, space travel is more complex than land.
It’s not just you.
In the past Bethesda was innovent. With Starfield they are just stuck in the past.
The game is so close to a loading screen simulator that it kills emmersion.
It’s funny to me how many gameplay cues Bethesda took from No Man’s Sky.
And yet, they made exploration worse because there are no seamless transitions between anything and the places that you can visit have literally no reason to explore them.
I spent 20 minutes exploring an abandoned mine, killing a bunch of Spacers and got literally nothing out of it. Wasted 4 digipicks for rooms and safes that had nothing of value in them too.
This game is exactly what I expected. Its unapologetically a bethesda fps rpg.
The menus are unwieldy, the economy is annoying, the politics half thought out, gun play is eh, etcetcetc.
But that’s not why I play these games, I play them because I love the weird quest rabbit holes you find yourself going down. I love how I can just go somewhere and knock all the shit off the shelves.
I’ve been playing on normal difficulty except for 5 on 1 space battles, I set that shit down to very easy. The gun play has felt fine for me, focus on headshots and you end up with more ammo you can use, particularly caseless shotgun ammo, .50 cal, and whatever the grendel shoots. I almost always go into areas underleveled in early game so I tend to have long range extended gun fights or just barrel stuff with the old earth shotgun.
Last time I played New Vegas I walked directly to the strip at level 2, avoided all the cazadors and death claws, then started the Dead Money DLC at level 5, and finished it at level 9.
I’m ranting right now but basically what I’m trying to say is these games are games where you need to find your fun and set your goals. You have main quest lines that literally end the game, so go out and find something weird, set off in a direction and find a long winded side quest. Make your character a drunk and drink every single alcoholic drink you find. Make your character a clepto and steal relentlessly. Get addicted to every drug and refuse to wear armor and specialize in the utility knife.
if you really dont care about combat, just roll the difficulty all the way down and have fun.
I genuinely haven’t had any of these issues, menu/loading screen aside which there’s small ways to mitigate (travel in space via select vs. map menu travel).
I quite liked the gunplay, at first. Then I got strong weapons, overlevelled for the order of quests, and now I feel like I’m one hitting them with a peashooter. So I actually have the opposite problem than you on this front, as I haven’t been actually challenged in the game since the early levels. However, I prefer this for the ship combat since it’s just a little more fun.
Ammo I’ve not once been low on. Granted, I collect everything but misc. In a few days I’ve amassed 400k credits, only buying upgrades for my ship. At a certain point I began buying ammo just to give vendors money to get rid of my junk. So, maybe if you have extra credits try buying some ammo? How many guns are you carrying? Realistically your base weight is about 50-65, given the head, armor, apparel, and then I have 2 weapons with a total mass of 5 (pistol and rifle). Between some health aids and other stuff I’ve found I’m usually sitting at 75 mass, which leaves quite of bit of space for selling weapons/armors.
The stealth isn’t great in this game though. It’s just not really a major focus outside of the areas they put thought into it for - frankly you don’t need it at all for the games story from what I’ve been through so far. Obviously, there’s 3 levels with green being detected in a safe area, orange needing caution before red aggro detection. But the transition from orange to red is egregious.
In addition to that you need stealth bonuses to be able to effectively be stealthy. This game does covert quests really well though, I highly recommend following the Ryujin questline in Neon and the UC/Crimson Fleet questline. Amazing quests, IMO. I have 1 point in stealth and primarily have done persuasion stealth and it’s been great, but the most recent mission I completed I needed frostwolfs for (-50% movement noise). Which, that right there is your issue. You are loud as hell without stealth investments.
On top of that 50% reduction I also needed an apparel item that had 25% harder to detect. So I think it’s just scaled a bit awkwardly.
So, with that in mind I would say it’s a weird line between me agreeing that AI know where I am far too easily in stealth while simultaneously being able to cheese the AI by utilizing the additives the game gives you. Think about it… everyone has scanners. There’s also a lot of security cameras that are fairly well hidden in various areas.You can’t really just walk behind someone and expect to not be noticed, not unless your hopped up on combat meds and wearing chameleon or other stealth specifical items. Chameleon is a game changer, but it’s a style of its own and not totally helpful for what we’re after.
It’s funny, 2077 I really enjoyed on launch but I can’t help but see shortcomings in it as I’ve played through Starfield. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have shortcomings of its own, it definitely does what with the, for me, map menu navigation. It took a few days to get used to and still the core issue for me comes down to Missions not being categorized by Planet. It’s so painfully obvious and to be lacking it is honestly a major fault. Other than that, hotkeys not being consistent.
That aside, every menu is tab once to go back to main menu except for map which is 3.
Another is a bit regarding scale. 2077 I really enjoyed just walking around taking in the view of Night City. Walking 400m doesn’t really feel like a chore. For some reason 400m in starfield is a couple minutes, with sprint? It just feels a little too big in some spots and too small in others. Like you said, sometimes you’ll go through 3 loading screens just to talk to a person and leave the area and go through another couple loading screens. Other times you get these amazingly long quests that feel just right, and other times you get landed 1000m away.
Most of the time, not always but a lot of it, I’m just trying to get there to do the next thing. In 2077 I was enjoying the journey being in awe and happening to reach the destination. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy New Atlantis and Neons visuals, I also think the world building and liveliness is an improvement (simple things like having more named characters, somewhat varied patterns with citizens, hireables, and named characters.)
I enjoy both for what they are. 2077 does the imposed story line well enough and it gives you enough freedom in the variety of playstyles that the lack of variance in story doesn’t matter much. On the other hand, Starfield has very little imposed story (you were a miner, now you are a constellation member) giving you actual RPG freedoms. I haven’t explored differences in traits, but if starting as a Var’uun Zealot is any different than the others then it’s a big point over 2077.
And both have thoughtful quests. Neither is objectively better than the other, they both just play to various strengths and weaknesses.
As it stands, Starfield is a Bethesda game with inspirations from Elite Dangerous and futurism. 2077 is a game about a corpo-dystopian future. They have many similar and overlapping themes, and Starfield clearly has quests that are a response to 2077. Neither are perfect, but both are lots of fun once you get them rolling.
