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?
I could forgive bethesda games because I used to be able to look at them as "greater than the sum of its parts"
Fallout 4 with mods just barely got away with it.
Starfield has too many issues for me.
The biggest one, your second issue of loading screens, I don't think mods can fix. There just will never be a seamless overworld because of the spaceship mechanic.
I have to be honest, If I could fly my ship right over a hideout and just shred it with turrets I would. The game just a bit to combat focused to have ships in the mix unless anti-air was a thing.
There's a lore note that says ships larger than 80 meters can't land on planets at all. I'd assume the war may also have made weapons a bit of a no-no.
Although when the pirates attack first thing they also land completely. They could have stayed in the air and taken all us miners out.
There gotta be a lore reason for it, but the real reason is ships are OP and this isn't Star Wars. Realistically, what is a group of Ecliptic mercs going to do against my tricked out ship? Energy and ballistic missiles? So then they just have those all the time regardless of whether I'm in a ship or not... balance just doesnt stay consistent that way.
Like, I agree, I want and it would be fun to fly out ship suborbit. I also understand why we don't have it as an option.