***The Official Starfield Thread*** (As endorsed by TNA)

[keyser van someone]

I'm baffled by how poor the performance is. I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 again last night; max settings, looks amazing, runs perfectly. Starfield on the other hand, looks dreadful, and runs poorly; fps drops to sub 40 in some areas. Meh, 160hrs, so at least I've got my money worth.

Yeah agreed and going to a system like Deimos is when it's worse, it's like the game is trying to render the whole universe but I'm just in the space station not even looking out of the window. Creation Engine 2 is a hot pile of garbage if this is the end result. Occasionally I get to a place where it looks really good - and those are the clips you see in the trailer! Whereas RDR2/The Divison looked amazing basically all of the time.

Half my game time has been trying to get habs and ships how I want them, downside is that I'm not leveling up while doing that. 297 hours(!), level 83 I think. It's funny that Steam reviews has players with 100+ hours but don't recommend it and I'd be the same - it's not worth £60 in its current form. But then again I have played it a lot and keep coming back to it If the game ran better that would be something. And I want full path-tracing, that'll never happen, only via mods

I wonder what are they are up to? Just seems poor from such a big and experienced team that now has M$.

Not sure how well it's been selling, I assume well, yes I've been wondering this myself. DLSS is a basic one, maybe their DLSS runs worse than the mod DLSS

 

[TNA]

Not sure how well it's been selling, I assume well, yes I've been wondering this myself. DLSS is a basic one, maybe their DLSS runs worse than the mod DLSS

I think they need to maybe hire some modders. Those guys seem more talented than the actual full time devs

 

[Apex]

I think they need to maybe hire some modders. Those guys seem more talented than the actual full time devs

This has been apparent since SKYRIM.

 

[potatolord]

I'm just finding it annoyingly complicated, nothing I can't work out but I just don't want to spend my limited gaming time learning it all ... Inventory, ships, starmaps all just seem overly faffy for no obvious reason, or am I just being lazy?

Yep. Everything is a pain and requires too much work, and it's unintuitive.

When i have to Google and watch videos to do outpost building, something is not right. I've given up on outposts, as it's so irritating.

Ship builds are also a pain. Way too fiddly.

All menus are annoying. Even getting into and out of them feels clunky.

The maps are terrible. Trying to find the sea (for those sea creatures you need for 100%) means finding a coastal biome and a very long walk to an area that looks a bit flatter than the rest on a poorly designed map.

I've stopped playing starfield and might return to it in a few months.

 

[Apex]

Yep. Everything is a pain and requires too much work, and it's unintuitive.

When i have to Google and watch videos to do outpost building, something is not right. I've given up on outposts, as it's so irritating.

Ship builds are also a pain. Way too fiddly.

All menus are annoying. Even getting into and out of them feels clunky.

The maps are terrible. Trying to find the sea (for those sea creatures you need for 100%) means finding a coastal biome and a very long walk to an area that looks a bit flatter than the rest on a poorly designed map.

I've stopped playing starfield and might return to it in a few months.

Starfield is like Star Wars, massive built in player-base because of the space setting - but the actual content is crap.

 

[Noxia]

For all its faults it has been rock solid stability wise. Shock horror the CTDs were mod related

 

[potatolord]

Starfield is like Star Wars, massive built in player-base because of the space setting - but the actual content is crap.

I disagree!

I think there is a good game in there, but the current implementation is poor. I want an easy to play game, with depth.

My wishlist would be
-Overhaul ship build mechanic entirely to simplify it
-Same for outposts
-New local planet maps, defining land/ sea alone would help a lot
-Better city/ town maps (though I could live without that)
- Something to reduce faff with menus
- Same for inventory, though I suspect I am my own worst enemy here

 

[Jay Blizzay]

I've finally got to grips with the outpost system and can categorically say it's rather pointless and messy with lots of bugs to fix. Shame.

This is the worst part of the game.

Set up inter system link, needs helium, ok i'll send it from the other system planet i want to set up link for.

Set it up, happy days, starts working, then suddenly it stops working because i'm sending beryllium, aluminium, iron etc as well and no way to limit what is sent of each item so other side it queues up in storage tanks in outgoing cargo which gets full but doesn't send the helium i need it to actually work.

It requires far too much micromanagement and better upgrades are hidden behind outpost management research which i have to sink loads of skills i don't want into to even get the levelled perk.

Theres one guy who documented every resource and how to get it via a certain number of outposts - no way i'm i'm doing that, would be hundreds of hours of work and likely needs perks to increase number of outposts you can build. This game almost invites you to open up console and spawn the things you need when you want to build them!

You assign people to outposts who just walk around...build something ffs! When i look at my outpost in build mode it just looks like a spaghetti junction. You try moving stuff around and it just randomly disappears or the workbenches become unusable.

What this game needs is a Sim Settlements mod like F4 and perk overhaul like Skyrim.

What were Bethesda thinking? The outpost system seems like an afterthought - it's set in space, were they expecting us to fast travel to a vendor every time we were short one tungsten?

 

[PitterPatter]

This is the worst part of the game.

Set up inter system link, needs helium, ok i'll send it from the other system planet i want to set up link for.

Set it up, happy days, starts working, then suddenly it stops working because i'm sending beryllium, aluminium, iron etc as well and no way to limit what is sent of each item so other side it queues up in storage tanks in outgoing cargo which gets full but doesn't send the helium i need it to actually work.

It requires far too much micromanagement and better upgrades are hidden behind outpost management research which i have to sink loads of skills i don't want into to even get the levelled perk.

Theres one guy who documented every resource and how to get it via a certain number of outposts - no way i'm i'm doing that, would be hundreds of hours of work and likely needs perks to increase number of outposts you can build. This game almost invites you to open up console and spawn the things you need when you want to build them!

You assign people to outposts who just walk around...build something ffs! When i look at my outpost in build mode it just looks like a spaghetti junction. You try moving stuff around and it just randomly disappears or the workbenches become unusable.

What this game needs is a Sim Settlements mod like F4 and perk overhaul like Skyrim.

What were Bethesda thinking? The outpost system seems like an afterthought - it's set in space, were they expecting us to fast travel to a vendor every time we were short one tungsten?

It’s similar to the whole fetch quest mechanic. Why do i need to go back to vlad every time, just WhatsApp me the next location for christ sake. Same with having to go back to folk after missions just for them to say thanks and give me 3 grand. I would happily lose the 3 grand to not have to go back to clear the damn quest.

 

[Scrutinize]

I'm just finding it annoyingly complicated, nothing I can't work out but I just don't want to spend my limited gaming time learning it all ... Inventory, ships, starmaps all just seem overly faffy for no obvious reason, or am I just being lazy?

Nope the game is a bit of a mess, the starmap thing really annoys me that I have to remember where places were rather than just type in "make it so"

The star map reminds me of Elite II (1993). That came with a large physical printed wall map and the need for a good memory & notepad.

Skyrim for its time was a great game - but unmodded it's hardly aged well.

There's not a single NPC in Skyrim that has the range of dialogue that each of the Constellation companions have (heck, there's companions you can find in entirely optional side-quests that have more dialogue than any Skyrim character) - also every Constellation companion (except Vasco) has their own quest chain and all of them are pretty good (Barrett's is the weakest IMO).

Some prominent Skyrim NPCs barely have a handful of lines of dialogue (Lydia for example, and my personal favourite, Sylgja).

I'll admit that Starfield's content is spread thin over the large amount of real estate the game has - but it's still a vast amount of content and easily more (and of a much higher quality) than Skyrim.

There was a warmth and charm to Skyrim eminating from both it's genre and setting which the coldness and vastness of space can't replicate. All the Starfield dialogue options and NPC real estate won't better an arrow to the knee.

I wonder what are they are up to? Just seems poor from such a big and experienced team that now has M$.

Distilling the biggest complaints across the net seem to deduce that Starfield is functional and empty. That's a hard barrier to overcome until mods & expansions are implemented.

@Jay Blizzay @PitterPatter

Outpost creation for production is pointless, it's not like there is a live economy which means trading automatically works and/or it makes you money.

X4 Foundations does the live space sim economy so well for example, it makes you realise how much it is simply a throwaway feature in Starfield just there for fun.

Outpost building as implemented to let you build a home base or create a farm for xp levelling makes sense though.

The xp levelling is easily done with animal husbandry Outpost on a lvl 70+ planet, then killing the creatures. It takes 10 mins to set up and really does get you thousands of XP per minute, also relatively good fun.

The massive production outposts seen in other XP levelling guides requires console commands or ridiculous game hours to build.

Fetch & fast travel questing esp the Vlad & temples one stopped me caring about getting the powers as I have NG+'d.

 

[Aegis]

There was a warmth and charm to Skyrim eminating from both it's genre and setting which the coldness and vastness of space can't replicate. All the Starfield dialogue options and NPC real estate won't better an arrow to the knee.

I would counter that Imogene's 'Great - a walking HR violation already' is but one example of a huge number of tailored responses that Starfield spoils the player with - the game builds quite impressively on its Elder Scrolls and Fallout lineage in terms of making the player feel that their playthrough was unique and impactful in Starfield's universe - and does things that I'm sure BGS wished they could've done in Oblivion and Skyrim.

I know it's not to everyone's taste though so I can only speak for myself - and, having sunk over 700 hours into Skyrim and created several mods for it purely for my love of that game, IMO Bethesda has excelled themselves with Starfield.

Right now, I'm wrapping up my playthrough (again) at around 400 hours, with some 500 quests completed - and I'm still finding new ones just meandering around Akila City.

I do find it sad that Starfield has proved to be so polarizing and understand the reasons behind that - hopefully a combination of mods and patches/DLC from Bethesda will deliver an experience more in line with what some people were hoping for as this game has an enormous amount of well-written and engaging content and it's a shame that there are genuine barriers to people enjoying it.

 

[BUDFORCE]

@Aegis

I think you are a bit of an outlier though. Don't get me wrong I'm glad you are getting so much out of the game, but most people are not for many of the reasons in this thread.

I thought the game was mediocre at best, a shadow of Fallot 4, Skyrim and even Fallout 76.

The outpost building is horrendous.

The story is dull.

The characters are completely dull.

Functionality is terms of armour, weapon modding and character customisation is worse then previous games.

The skill system is over lengthy.

The inventory system is awful and backwards from previous games.

The games economy and resource system is a complete joke.

The game is mostly empty areas, there are a few nice asset but nothing like either of the previous Fallout games, you end up with the same underground research facility over and over again or walking across empty areas that are basically the same.

They ****** this up pretty badly if I'm honest.

 

[Mint8]

Some of the quests are so BORING - what were they thinking ?

Doing the Crimson Pirate quest line. Went to the conference on the star liner - talk to a lot of npcs about boring stuff - walk backwards and forwards through the ship for no apparent reason - fly back to the pirates and tell them what happened - fly to the navy ship and tell them - fly to New Atlantis and have another conversation - fly back to the Pirates and tell them what happened - fly back to New Atlantis etc etc etc

Yawn - and of course by "fly" I mean watch several loading screens.

 

[Apex]

Some of the quests are so BORING - what were they thinking ?

Doing the Crimson Pirate quest line. Went to the conference on the star liner - talk to a lot of npcs about boring stuff - walk backwards and forwards through the ship for no apparent reason - fly back to the pirates and tell them what happened - fly to the navy ship and tell them - fly to New Atlantis and have another conversation - fly back to the Pirates and tell them what happened - fly back to New Atlantis etc etc etc

Yawn - and of course by "fly" I mean watch several loading screens.

For a supposed space exploration game, this is quite incredible.

 

[Scrutinize]

@Aegis @BUDFORCE @Mint8 it shows how polarising the game is.

Skyrim never had such lengthy and intensity of fetch return rinse repeat quest lines. This really does detract from Starfield especially with them resulting in frequent loading screens.

Overall though I've enjoyed Starfield, especially the ship builder and outpost creator (for home bases).

Hopefully great scope for mods and content expansion over the next few years.

The game is far from perfect but had enough playable from the start to feel like good value.

 

[Aegis]

I thought the game was mediocre at best, a shadow of Fallot 4, Skyrim and even Fallout 76.

I can only speak from my own experiences and I haven't played Fallout 4 or '76 (and I never played FO4 specifically because it was criticised for a lack of genuine player choice due to the voiced protagonist and for the damage it did to the Fallout lore, specifically The Institute and The Brotherhood of Steel - also, the main quest was widely criticised for being easy to ignore when you're supposed to finding your missing child). I *have* picked it up out of curiosity to see for myself - I'll be playing it unmodded sometime soon to see if it's actually any good.

The outpost building is horrendous.

I'd describe it as pointless (and again, I haven't played FO4 or '76 so I can't compare) - I enjoyed the time I spent tinkering with Starfield's outposts but I wouldn't recommend anyone sink a ton of skill points into it unless they've literally nothing left to do. It's definitely a wasted opportunity.

The story is dull.

Obviously this is a subjective thing - the only companion quest I found 'dull' was Barrett's. I think the artifacts and the temples are very underwhelming but they represent such a tiny amount of gameplay that they're largely insignificant. I thought the main quest was fine and better/more imaginative than either Skyrim or Fallout 3 - the NG+ is a nice twist too, both gameplay and story-wise. Crimson Fleet, Ryujin and Freestar Rangers were all great with some memorable locations and lots of branching choices where you can choose alternate outcomes (havne't done UC Vanguard yet). A bunch of the side-quests were excellent too, again, with bespoke locations, a lot of dialogue and genuine consequences for your choices. Skyrim and FO3 has some of this but it's positively primitive compared to what Starfield offers (and that's not a criticism of those games, they're both getting on a bit now).

The characters are completely dull.

Compared to..? Starfield's characters at least have personalities - as I mentioned above, most Skyrim characters have a handful of lines of dialogue and can barely be called characters - personally, I found plenty of Starfield's characters interesting but even 'dull' is an improvement over mannequins which is what most of Skyrim and FO3's characters are.

Functionality is terms of armour, weapon modding and character customisation is worse then previous games.

FO3's weapons/armour crafting was irrelevant 'cause you found better stuff from looting - the only real 'crafting' in FO3 was combining items to stop your weapons/armour from breaking. Skyrim had a horrific grind requiring making hundreds of iron daggers as I recall to make weapons that basically just hit harder - I spent hours and hours crafting the best Daedric weapons and Dragonbone armour and it was just - more DPS/more protection (yeah, there was elemental stuff but it was hardly game-changing).

Starfield actually allows you to add mods you can't find on in-game loot and allows you to add expanded storage, regen, new weapon effects (Hornets Nest and Annihilator Rounds) - also, you can level it up pretty quick - even with the awful skill tree.

The skill system is over lengthy.

Yep - no arguments there.

The inventory system is awful and backwards from previous games.

Is anything worse than the PipBoy UI? I'd say Starfield's UI is similar to (unmodded) Skyrim - and yeah - it's bad. Still, I expect modders to fix this as they've done in the past.

The games economy and resource system is a complete joke.

It's tuned around ship-building which is the only money-sink. I'd say it's fine since I've never run out of cash for tinkering with my ships but neither have I been 'rolling in it' - at 400 hours in I have 270k in the bank (which ain't much) and I've spent around 3.5 million on ships.

The game is mostly empty areas, there are a few nice asset but nothing like either of the previous Fallout games, you end up with the same underground research facility over and over again or walking across empty areas that are basically the same.

See here I hard disagree - all of the game's quests (and side quests) are found either in major cities (by wandering around and listening to conversations) or by checking out the system map for ships and anomalies. Very occasionally on a planet map I'll find a marker for something I haven't seen before (Safe House Gamma for example) but if you keep landing at random Science Outposts expecting to find something new - you're gonna see a lot of identical Science Outposts.

Also, planetary scans are entirely optional - the only time I've wandered around the surface of an empty planet for an annoying length of time was to find the perfect spot to set up an outpost - I could've just set up two outposts though so that's entirely on me.

I do think the bounty terminals are somewhat to blame here though - if you take ground missions (kill the Spacer/Ecliptic/Va'ruun whatever) you'll quickly start getting missions in structures you've visited before (I prefer either space or delivery missions as they're much quicker to complete and offer comparable XP).

 

[Aegis]

Some of the quests are so BORING - what were they thinking ?

Doing the Crimson Pirate quest line. Went to the conference on the star liner - talk to a lot of npcs about boring stuff - walk backwards and forwards through the ship for no apparent reason - fly back to the pirates and tell them what happened - fly to the navy ship and tell them - fly to New Atlantis and have another conversation - fly back to the Pirates and tell them what happened - fly back to New Atlantis etc etc etc

Yawn - and of course by "fly" I mean watch several loading screens.

I spent that whole mission breaking into the cabins of the passengers, stealing all their stuff and finding dirt I could blackmail them with

I do agree that the loading is egregious though - I suspect that's due to the Series S only having 10GB total RAM. It's wild to me that they couldn't even fit in the whole of New Atlantis given the size of the overworld maps we've had in previous Bethesda games. I think some of the loads are also to compensate for the bad pathfinding AI - Starfield's environments are far more complex than previous Bethesda games and the AI frequently gets stuck in them.

 

[opethdisciple]

DLSS coming next week in beta.

 

[Aegis]

DLSS coming next week in beta.

Also HDR support (finally!)

"This update will feature Nvidia DLSS support with frame generation, display and HDR controls for supported systems, and other optimizations and improvements. You'll be able to opt-in to try it via the Steam Beta options. We’d love your feedback before it goes live for all PC and Xbox players after that."

 

[cyber69]

I’ve switched up the difficulty level to very hard to provide a challenging gameplay. Once you get to level 50+ and start getting advanced weaponry the enemies pose no real problem. Ship combat is more difficult i’ve found on very hard level.

Also not really got any outstanding legendarys in my game but not needed them as the standard weapons are just fine. The legendarys that vendors sell are all weaker than refined/advanced. Only legendary i’ve found useful so far is the Revenant from the Crimson quest.

Spoiler: Spoiler

And when you are approaching the end of the main quest it all just seems pointless collecting anything because it will all be gone when you NG+.