Thoughts on starfield?
Thoughts on starfield?
The game is aggressively Bethesda but I'm enjoying the visuals and sniffing the 3d model of every insignificant bit of detritis in the world. I saw a very nice looking bowl, maybe THE bowl of all videogames. Other than that the narrative and main story has already lost my interest after about 10 minutes and I'll be off being a space menace if the game will let me.
Once i found out I can travel using the ship in scanner mode it doesn't feel like a map simulator anymore.
Also the chef having a perk for dueling tickles me.
Game also runs like shit on PC but digital foundry showed most settings being on medium yields good performance with no noticable quality loss.
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I didn't realize it was gonna be on game pass lol so I did end up downloading it even though I swore up and down I'd wait on buying until they fixed all the crap they were gonna inevitably do.
The amount of loading screens is kinda profligate, there's more than one quest where you go to a planet (loading screen) talk to a guy then to the next planet (loading screen) and talk to a guy, and just repeat. The combat is pretty bad, I can't say I was expecting super smart AI or whatever but there's been more than a few times where enemies just kinda stood somewhere far away and couldn't figure out how to path to the fight? The main storyline didn't capture my interest. There's still a lot of bugs, nothing that'll bluescreen or whatever but I've had VASCO twirling his head talking to me, the Charlie 3 guy rotating really fast, theres one quest marker that doesnt get removed during a quest in the Well which made me rely on the actual given instructions (which was a nice change of pace), just a bunch of stuff like that. Stealth needs an overhaul, it's hard to get the sneak attacks to rank up and it starts getting really useful at rank 3. Also, unarmed is very very underwhelming and hard to do - which I guess is fair but whatever.
I love the setting and aesthetic, I do like the NASApunk look. I actually gasped at New Atlantis topside and Neon city. Also, there's just so much stuff to find. The sidequests are usually pretty goos. The Well was cool. Getting UC citizenship seems to be a thing Bethesda expected people to do because it has a lot of strong writing, I didn't love UC as a faction but whatever they're obviously very lib. It feels like a lot of people are discounting gastronomy, which is understandable because it takes a lot of work to rank it up to where the buffs are really good. Oh yeah and seeing Earth all fucked up actually made me feel quite sad, I landed on it and just felt... upset I guess, which is a plus for me if a videogame can make me feel an emotion like that.
I didn't know how to feel about the religions... it was interesting to think of organized charitable Atheism as a religion or the like syncretic dialectic synthesis of ALL monotheistic religions? I didn't get to try out the Great Serpent stuff but they're interesting guess to just consider. For some reason the religious struggle in skyrim was cool for me but future humans with made-up religions aren't as cool? I'm not sure why I struggled with it. Also, a lot of the spacesuits are kinda ugly, hard to play fashion field.
I don't think I'd pay separately for this and I don't know if I'll finish it, but so long as it's on gamepass and so long as I keep having that I guess I'll keep it installed. I'm still eagerly anticipating a GOTY edition with unofficial bug fix mod at some point to actually enjoy starfield.
there's more than one quest where you go to a planet (loading screen) talk to a guy then to the next planet (loading screen) and talk to a guy, and just repeat.
Man this is really terminal fast travel game design brain, this is the kind of shit business guys did before cellphones and the internet were considered good enough, just hopping around the world on concordes to have one business meeting and then go back. Don't they have interplanetary communication in this world?
A modern game should have been able to do this all with seamless loading screens, too. I, too, hate the "There will be no cell phones/e-mail in the future". Anything that requires communication should be doable from a console in your ship unless there's a very good reason why you can't. Like if there's a nebula that does space bullshit to cellphone reception then sure, go there. But if you're just having a conversation that should be something you do from your ship or a phone booth or whatever.
Beth made a game with a space aesthetic, but they didn't drop all the crap that only makes sense in a quasi-medieval game. Why are you walking anywhere? Where's your rover or go cart or ATV or atmospheric shuttle? Why are you picking up random bullshit to sell for chump change? Why do you have to kill space rabbits for glue, why can't you just order 20 tons of glue delivered to your location? Why are you surveying for common light elements? There's no way it makes more sense financially to mine and refine your own aluminum isntead of just buying it by the ton from an established producer.
When Todd said "Skyrim in Space" he really meant it. Just tons of game elements that don't make any sense in a futuristish spaceish game.
Seemless loading should very much be possible and very necessary for this kind of game. I can only imagine its an engine limitation they're having a hard time resolving.
It doesn't even need to be seamless. We've been using the Airlock/warp space/elevator trick to hide loading screens for decades!
One of the things I found in game to be obnoxious is when you go to one settlement on mars to go into the actual part with people in it you need to cycle the airlock, so you're stuck waiting for the airlock to cycle before it opens and loads in the interior. There is no actual airlock. And then through fast traveling, you're placed right in front of that airlock meaning you're forced to wait at the airlock a bunch of times.
It's really frustrating because its such a basic narrative tool to factor in what routes of communication are available, as well as the time and space required.
I remember an early plot point in the Shadowrun SNES game is to try and get ahold of a credit card and a working phone so you can actually call people, because theres a price on your head so every time you step outside theres basically at least one assassin trying to gun you down, which makes it pretty undesirable to try and take the subway everywhere rather than making a phone call.
And then you can instead there take into account that remote communication is unsecure, so perhaps you can't call people sometimes, or you have to use more secure methods that take more time and are limited in scope, there's just a lot you can do when the default form of communication isn't just teleporting to peoples houses to personally chat with them for 1 single minute then teleporting away again.
Remember back in the 00s when everyone having a cellphone was just starting to be a thing, and movie writers had no idea what to do about it? So many plots relied on not being able to reach people at important moments, and suddenly everyone was carrying phones around and writers just had no idea.
Interplanetary, yes. Interstellar requires couriers, iirc.
Oblivion was a real mess with the reliance on magical map fast traveling- Morrowind's was perfect, they just had convenient ships and silt striders in most towns. Oblivion had no physical fast travel at all.
Side note, I actually recently discovered a small town in Morrowind with no transport to it, for the first time, after making maybe 30 characters. It's Ald Velothi, a harbor town north of Gnisis.
Anyway, I feel like Starfield couldnt really work without a reliance on fast travel. Not just interstellar/interplanetary, but even across planets. I don't know what else to do. Not even little taxis would make much sense.
If they're using the same combat AI they've been using since the 16th century their AI is capable of being much better than this. It seems like they've turned down all the parameters until they might as well be off. Speed of reaction to the player, intervals at which they fire their guns, interval for seeking cover and repositioning, it's all turned way down.
Religion works in TES because you can, and frequently do, interact with the gods. Whether Talos and Tiber Septim are the same entity has major metaphysical ramifications on the world. Like, if the Thalmor can make Talos and Tiber Septim be different entities through magical Dragon Break fuckery it might allow them to unmake hte world. Religions in space are kind of silly. Like you went to Heaven, god isn't there, why are you still doing this?
The ai is weird because its practically passive. AI in games just keeps getting worse and worse ots kinda sad. I had to up the difficulty to give them a chance to land a hit on me and even then I had to stand still
FPS ai really peaked with the original FEAR. Which is wild because most of the “smart ai” in that game is a well-crafted illusion.
Even then they actually interacted with the environment - breaching doors, knocking over furniture, improvising cover, exploding walls. Combat environments feel so static in most games, like all the objects in your surrounds are either immutable and unbreakable, or are just there to demonstrate havok physics and go flying around like they’re filled with helium
It seems like they've turned down all the parameters until they might as well be off.
There is a combat ai mod that basically proves this. Here is some of the code, it's also helpfully commented showing the vanilla number vs the changed numbers.
Personally I think the biggest issue they have with AI is that they're using one universal set of AI for all locations. The game needs different AI parameters for different locations. The cities. Interior spaceship combat. Planet exterior combat. Interior facility combat. These are all very different spaces where the player behaves very differently. Combat in them should be assumed to be different.
;---Idle Time, Reaction Time--- ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatMeleeIdleTime 0.01 setgs fCombatMeleeIdleTime 0.01 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeIdleTime 0.1 ;vanilla = 2 setgs fCombatRangedGunFireWaitTimeMax 0.3 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatEvadeReactionTime 0.15 ;vanilla = 0.15 setgs fCombatDodgeReactionTime 0.1 ;vanilla = 2.5 setgs fCombatRangedGunAnimationDrivenDelayTime 0.3 ;vanilla = 1.5 setgs fCombatAttackAnimationDrivenDelayTime 0.3 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatInitialMovementDelayTime 0.1 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatRangedGunInitialDelayTime 0.01 ;vanilla = 0.33 setgs fCombatRangedGunTargetVisibleReactionTimeMin 0.01 ;vanilla = 0.67 setgs fCombatRangedGunTargetVisibleReactionTimeMax 0.3 ;---Combat AI, Behavior--- ;vanilla = 5 setgs fCombatRangedThrowDelay 6 ;vanilla = 10 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowDelay 6 ;vanilla = 15 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeFlushTargetDelay 6 ;vanilla = 5 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowUnreachableDelay 4 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatRangedGunAttackChanceMin 0.25 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowChanceMax 0.35 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatCoverAdvanceChanceMin 0.2 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatCoverAdvanceChanceMid 0.5 ;vanilla = 0.75 setgs fCombatCoverAdvanceChanceMax 0.85 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatRangedGunAttackChanceCoverBonus 0.65 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatCoverChangePositionChance 0.4 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatFallbackChanceMax 0.6 ;vanilla = 10 setgs fCombatCoverAttackerSuppressedTimeMax 15 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowChanceMax 0.35 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatRangedGunTargetVisibleAttackThreshold 0.4 ;vanilla = 4 setgs fCombatRangedMinimumRange 4 ;vanilla = 8 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowMinimumRange 6 ;vanilla = 0.4 setgs fCombatRangedGunAccuracyMinAccuracy 0.6 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatRangedGunAccurateAccuracy 0.45 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatRangedGunEffectiveAccuracy 0.2Oh my god I can't wait for coherent combat mods.
One time I modded New Vegas to be approximately realistic and oh my god it was such a rush. Everything took 1 or maaaaybe 2 headshots to kill, other than super mutants and deathclaws and shit, but everything also killed you just as fast.
There's damage value mods and the like at the moment but I don't think "coherent" is going to be achieved until we figure out what to do about level up health increases and how to balance armour vs levelling over time. Right now the game adds 20hp to your health every level up, and does something with enemies being tougher with more skills as they get higher level too. But exactly what they do is ehhh I dunno. On top of that you have the question of how to handle armour, particularly the space suits that seem to be intended to be armoured and built for expecting combat or damage of some sort. Factoring that in and having it make sense seems worthwhile.
So yeah. I'm not sure. It can probably be done but also you generally don't just want to entirely trivialise the levelling up system as well. That takes more work and I think a pretty deep understanding of what's in the game, something most of us don't have until a good few hundred hours of gameplay and exploration. This seems a lot slower to explore too, if you're investigating stuff properly. It's taking me a long time to move location to location as I get bogged down in stuff to do.
One thing I might be interested in is expanding the pirates into something more.... Interesting. I'm finding that some of the gameplay feels a bit like sailing the ocean from island to island where you meet the locals and have an adventure on each island and then move on. This travelling loop has been heavily reminding me of One Piece but in space. An expansion to pirates along that line in a political sense could work quite well in the universe, you could even add in a new faction analogous to the Celestial Dragons/World Nobles, suddenly you have One Piece in space and you resolve a lot of the lack of coherent politics the game has.
You don't even need to add new npcs for that kind of faction addition. CEOs are present throughout the game, just add all the CEOs to the faction and make them meaner. Give them something to make the player really see them as shits. Suddenly every damn business owner in the game becomes sussy (and omg the game has you talking to A LOT of business owners).
and you resolve a lot of the lack of coherent politics the game has.
YES! You have these variously libertarian to neoliberal space capitalist societies living in incredibly close proximity to massive bands of spacers and pirates- the governments cannot even provide security, not just for independent colonists but even their own important facilities. This should be a really interesting backdrop, but they just don't seem to talk about it. It's clearly a societal meltdown and the pirates should have some kind of politics. You could have good pirates and bad pirates, and the bad pirates could be getting funded on the DL by rival governments.
Theres a really glaring thing - you have Pirates and you have Spacers, the latter of which are supposed to be just nutjobs or cults or something. But they don't actually do anything different from the pirates, in any way. It seems like something was cut, and they just wound up with two slightly different looking bad guy human types.
I should be able to join commie pirates or mobster pirates, and fight the core world NPCs to different ends.
We need to create like "THE" faction mod in the far future, with more involved factions that include ones with horrible politics too
YES! You have these variously libertarian to neoliberal space capitalist societies living in incredibly close proximity to massive bands of spacers and pirates- the governments cannot even provide security, not just for independent colonists but even their own important facilities. This should be a really interesting backdrop, but they just don't seem to talk about it. It's clearly a societal meltdown and the pirates should have some kind of politics. You could have good pirates and bad pirates, and the bad pirates could be getting funded on the DL by rival governments.
Right, and this is exactly the same as One Piece.
Theres a really glaring thing - you have Pirates and you have Spacers, the latter of which are supposed to be just nutjobs or cults or something. But they don't actually do anything different from the pirates, in any way. It seems like something was cut, and they just wound up with two slightly different looking bad guy human types.
It's pretty obvious that one group was supposed to be good pirates with a clear political basis in anarchism, whereas the other group was supposed to be bad pirates, complete and total marauders, 100% bad in every incarnation of them.
I think representing these as 2 factions was a mistake and the better idea would have been to have "pirates" and do it One Piece style with some of them being objectively good while others are clearly terrible. Create a kind of ambiguity and an understanding for the distrust people have for them, and create a tension for the player because they don't know what kind of pirates they're dealing with until after they take the risk of seeing if they're good or bad. The alternative is blasting them on sight every single time, which turns you into the same as the World Navy.
I'm not sure what you would do with the Spacers if you go down this route. They feel like they shouldn't be a clear independent faction but rather a subfaction of Pirates that do not always make it clear that they're members of that subfaction.
Ultimately this is all a bit of a mess but there is a twinkle of something good here with somewhat minor changes to structure. One Piece is absolutely the right work of fiction to look at for inspiration in repairing it though, it's very similar.
Au contraire, cultic religions make sense in a libertarian capitalist hellscape in which 50% of the population are vagrants and marauders
cultic religions make sense in a libertarian capitalist hellscape in which 50% of the population are vagrants and marauders
How many techbro billionaires right now have cult-adjacent followings?
If capitalism somehow endures another century, I would fully expect actual churches to Steve Jobs and other vampires.
Oh yeah and seeing Earth all fucked up actually made me feel quite sad, I landed on it and just felt... upset I guess, which is a plus for me if a videogame can make me feel an emotion like that.
Why are the most corpo bazinga landmarks on Earth the only ones standing, and standing alone? Are they made of some sort of The Secret powered material that can endure conditions that turned everything around them to dust?
