Starfield - Bethesda's new space IP: will probably be full of fun and easily trackable bugs

[Jasper2K]

I've noticed that all the people discussing Starfield sound like one of those woke 'struggle session' things where you have to preface everything by admitting the game is a masterpiece or something. I checked the Starfield Reddit while looking for this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16ewupt/major_programming_faults_discovered_in_starfields/

Which has since been buried by this mess of struggle session sounding people listing all the issues they have with the game prefaced with their undying love of Bethesda and Starfield.

Spoiler: Examples

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It's bad in the comments, but I can't be bothered to go digging through them, its all just the same.

It's just a massive cope. It's going to be really interesting seeing how this game will hold up in the months/years to come. My bet is not well.

 

[Sniperwoof]

Has anyone else noticed that on top of 75% of the generic NPCs being black or brown a lot of the male ones have the stereotypical lispy San Francisco gay voice?

They sound like Shore Leave from The Venture Brothers only played straight instead of for comedy.

 

[Mega Black]

I've had a few lapses in lucidity lately where I've considered actually buying this game. Then I start reading more posts about it and think about it and holy shit I don't even think I'll pirate it.

I played about ten hours with a friend's copy and my current plan is to just wait three or four years when I can have a fully upgraded PC and a suite of mods to download that will make playing the game actually pleasant.

It astounds me how little conversation there is about the setting or the factions outside of people going 'I like this one it's okay.' Even Fallout 4 had people talking about things, even if just a little.

I guess the issue with the setting isn't there being no aliens or whatever it's just that Bethesda didn't put any effort into crafting a galaxy that felt appropriately lived in. None of the factions, from what I've seen, feel... fun? Interesting? Have a unique political structure or unique visual design? It's just a mess of half baked ideas.

It feels post apocalyptic and half-empty. I understand that you can't expect Bethesda to make more than four or five major cities but even some clever sleight of hand on the part of the devs could have made the world feel like there was more going on.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Rate me autistic or whatever but fuck, simple things like that are a thousand times more immersive than modelling bitten sandwiches and regular sandwiches so that fat useless broad can do an interview about how she collected 20k sandwiches on the USS Sandwich Stealer or 100 varieties of food chunk.

Your autism hints at something current Bethesda lacks: understanding of human experiences. How ironic that both autists and normies can understand it, but the midwits at the middle of the bell curve at Bethesda can't.

They are blindly worshiping "immersion" without actually UNDERSTANDING what it is. It's like a cargo cult. They don't understand the reason people were excited about mods which added more clothes and NPCs and better furnished homes in Oblivion and Fallout 3 isn't because people like those details directly but because those extras improved the original experience. They are skipping the parts that made Skyrim a good game by doing stuff that is window dressing mistaking it for quality. Like a cake that is all frosting.

Yeah no that's emil, he's barely good at this retared CoD-lite plot. And het lucked out on specifically building the UC plotline on what he always builds milsperg plotlines to be, just look at BoS plot in FO3.
If you want to see how bad his sperging is, go do the ranger questline. You get to kill DRUMPF if you do btw.

Did Emil do both FO3 and 4? Cause if so he managed to make 4 BoS so much worse it is kind of amazing you can even downgrade so badly.

Also please tell me how they managed to stick Orange Man on space game I wanna hear this.

Has anyone else noticed that on top of 75% of the generic NPCs being black or brown a lot of them have the stereotypical lispy San Francisco gay voice?

Lowest bidder Voice Actors from CA out of one of the dozens of sub contractors hired, they get paid and won't even bother trying different voices. Then cry when A.I. threatens their jobs.

 

[derpherp2]

Did Emil do both FO3 and 4? Cause if so he managed to make 4 BoS so much worse it is kind of amazing you can even downgrade so badly.

Also please tell me how they managed to stick Orange Man on space game I wanna hear this.

He is the guy that tried to turn "war never changes" into a thing yes.

Also DRUMPF = Bob Hope, of hopetech. You'll figure it out when you do the ranger questline.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

"War never changes" is a pretty good quote but he couldn't quite pull it off, the intro of Fallout 4 almost made me physically cringe with how forced it felt the newscaster saying it.

I am not playing the game, but someone mentioned that quest already here on the thread. And it sounds painfully, absurdly retarded. So it makes sense it is also a Orange Man expy to put the cherry on top.

 

[Hector Hamsteak]

It astounds me how little conversation there is about the setting or the factions outside of people going 'I like this one it's okay.' Even Fallout 4 had people talking about things, even if just a little.

I mean, when you can actually discuss it I've seen people having conversations about whether United Colonies vs Freestar Collective is just Imperials vs Stormcloaks all over again. That and everyone thinking Constellation are a bunch of Melvins.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I've noticed that all the people discussing Starfield sound like one of those woke 'struggle session' things where you have to preface everything by admitting the game is a masterpiece or something.

I don't know if it's just the "shit sandwich" type of criticism becoming too commonplace (open with compliment/criticism/close with compliment), but it's pretty funny to read a bunch of user reviews that all seem to boil down to:

• "Overall, I actually liked this game, unlike a lot of the complaining I see on the internet!"
• [Long, bulletpoint list of all the things they didn't like about the game/want to see changed/hope get modded to be better]
• "I'd give the game about a 7.5 or 8 out of 10, I enjoyed it."

They never say what they actually view as positive in the game, or talk about features that they enjoyed! It's just discussion about bland story or performance issues or how shipbuilding/ship combat could be a lot better. The closest you'll get is "I think the gunplay was alright/better than Fallout 4's," which is about the most flaccid praise I think you could give an FPS.

 

[The Noticer]

Why are there so many gay niggers in outer space?

 

[Zero0]

Why are there so many gay niggers in outer space?

 

[AeroGavin Rossdale]

human experiences

It's a weird thing I've noticed in media, specifically sci-fi. It's like writers have never worked outside a writers room in their life. Engineers talk different than soldiers who talk different than mechanics. It's like no one understands being part of a team in a hierarchical structure. There's one fun side quest with the space popo that actually rings true though. You have to investigate a drunken brawl turned robbery and

Spoiler

it's two rich faggots having a break up and fighting over the engagement rings. As soon as you find out you have the option to tell them you don't care and won't get involved. Your boss pays you anyway and apologizes for wasting your time, but that's the beat.

Bob Hope

Why the fuck would you do that to Funny USO Man?

Have a unique political structure or unique visual design?

UC does, at least. I doubt they'll do anything with it but there's definitely a structure in there. And some.. interesting visual language, particularly in the museums. I quite enjoyed the Terrormorph quest line (I ignored the family connection part of it and went all in).



Also there's a black NPC who's supposed to be a 'space homesteader' but has a Waynes Brothers voice and it's cracking me up.

 

[Yonjuichi]

It's just a massive cope. It's going to be really interesting seeing how this game will hold up in the months/years to come. My bet is not well.

I'm skeptical about this too. Historically it's been The Elder Scrolls games which have gotten massive modder followings. Fallout 3 was basically ignored by modders because New Vegas released so soon after the creation kit was released for 3. New Vegas modding scene was super light for years and only really got a resurgence in the last few years. Fallout 4 is a joke.

Starfield is really just alt-history fallout. It's more moddable than 4 (not confined to a small map, no voiced protagonist, easier to create stories completely independent of the shallow world bethesda built), but has the least amount of soul of any bethesda game. I've always wanted fallout 3 and 4 to get the love that skyrim got, but they didn't and I'm not sure this game will fair much better.

The truth is, starfield needs a lot of love. Like entire development studios of love. The UI is awful, the stories and companions are awful, the looting system is awful, the combat is generic, there's basically no space sim aspect, the outpost system is buggy asf and weirdly shallow. We need way more cosmetic items both for ships and players, stealth is a joke, melee combat shouldn't even be in this game, there isn't enough variety to the worlds. What needs work? In a word, everything.

At the very least we'll probably get a 'survival' mode from bethesda, if not then definitely from modders. It's insane to me they spent all this time modeling food items but didn't include some survival mechanics to make the food necessary (for feeding yourself, your crew (and change their morale for performance buffs), and settlers on your outposts (are there even settlers? The outpost system seems like amazon warehouses.))

 

[General Emílio Médici]

I wouldn't say FO3 was "basically ignored", it had a pretty decent modding scene going but the release of FNV and the fact it was such a better game story-wise with needed gameplay enhancements (gun modding for example) meant once it released most modders moved over. Though the rest of it is pretty much 100% on point.

Fallout 4 kneecapped modders hard with the leaning on voiced protag pretty much killing entry level quest modding, not to mention the complete massacre of a dialog system making anything more than 3 dialog options a complete chore to put in even if you get away from the voice elephant in the room.

 

[brocktherock]

if you are writing a game and not account for player inputs you have failed in your job retard. Yes gamers are fucking morons, but so are most people.

It's weird because this is what Pagliarulo should be good at, AFAIK he's a designer at heart first, not a writer like Kirkbride is. I haven't ever seen him sperg about storywriting like the KF thread for it does. But his actions look as if he was the lorefag ideas guy (not a great one but still) who doesn't get how gaming works.
Idk how Todd let this happen when he was there when Bethesda nearly went under, I can't tell if he's gotten greedy and complacent or if he really is that uwu spokesperson taking the hits for corporate Zenimax or anything in between. This is his IP but there's no way he's proud of it in its current state.

 

[Jasper2K]

I'm skeptical about this too. Historically it's been The Elder Scrolls games which have gotten massive modder followings. Fallout 3 was basically ignored by modders because New Vegas released so soon after the creation kit was released for 3. New Vegas modding scene was super light for years and only really got a resurgence in the last few years. Fallout 4 is a joke.

Starfield is really just alt-history fallout. It's more moddable than 4 (not confined to a small map, no voiced protagonist, easier to create stories completely independent of the shallow world bethesda built), but has the least amount of soul of any bethesda game. I've always wanted fallout 3 and 4 to get the love that skyrim got, but they didn't and I'm not sure this game will fair much better.

The truth is, starfield needs a lot of love. Like entire development studios of love. The UI is awful, the stories and companions are awful, the looting system is awful, the combat is generic, there's basically no space sim aspect, the outpost system is buggy asf and weirdly shallow. We need way more cosmetic items both for ships and players, stealth is a joke, melee combat shouldn't even be in this game, there isn't enough variety to the worlds. What needs work? In a word, everything.

At the very least we'll probably get a 'survival' mode from bethesda, if not then definitely from modders. It's insane to me they spent all this time modeling food items but didn't include some survival mechanics to make the food necessary (for feeding yourself, your crew (and change their morale for performance buffs), and settlers on your outposts (are there even settlers? The outpost system seems like amazon warehouses.))

Yeah exactly. I don't think Mod support will compare to elder scrolls even fallout 4. The base game has to be interesting enough to hold modders long term attention. Fallout 4 modding community is noticeably smaller than Skyrim. I think Starfields will be even smaller.

 

[Asian tech support]

It's weird because this is what Pagliarulo should be good at, AFAIK he's a designer at heart first, not a writer like Kirkbride is.

He's a retarded wannabe journalist. Maybe now that he's spent almost twenty years shitting up Bethesda, he can get that cushy Atlantic tech editor position he's always dreamed of.

This is his IP but there's no way he's proud of it in its current state.

I don't really believe him when he talks about it being the game he's always wanted to make but never had the leverage to. There's probably some truth but this ain't it. He seemed much more excited for Skyrim and FO4.
Imagine a reality where there is no Starfield and instead we've got TES6. Before the MS buyout, creatively bankrupt Bethesda has no choice but to shit out something as bland, jank, and soulless as the Starfield we've got because that's the extent of what they can do. This fictitious TES6 needs to wow buyers and hype consoomers but it can't because there are expectations attached to TES that aren't the same for anything Fallout and certainly not for some random space game. The choice is clear: let people's imaginations run wild for a whopping five years all while showing as little as possible and avoiding the heightened expectations associated with TES.
If I had to guess, Zenimax knew that there's no way in hell current Bethesda could make anything that would meet expectations and thus Starfield was conceived.

 

[blablabla]

just starded bs3. bethesda really has no excuse for art direction and dogshit looking characters

 

[derpherp2]

Okay I tried making an outpost.

The build limit is actually laughably low. Like you can only conceivably make one fucking hab cluster, literally only 6 turrets, and 3 robots. I'm honestly insulted they think people would make enough outposts for there to be enough memory issues that they had to gimp base building. Oh also buildings are worth fucking nothing, surprise. Your actual "outpost" is a literal pump five domes for "crops" and 2 barns. Oh joy.

And again, THEY'RE ALL PREBUILT. And the furniture you have to make are insanely scant AND count towards your build limit some fucking how.
CP2077 update is in 2 weeks btw. And creation kit for this game is coming out in 3 months? Next year apparently. Idk the source of the info why even bother looking for it honestly. This game is barely worth the seeding i did.

Also all this "immersion" like that one guy earlier said but we're literally only stuck doing the same five fucking things they couldn't add slots/etc from NV? Or robot crafting from 4? Or better fucking yet, AN ACTUAL OUTPOST SYSTEM?

Like I thought the draw of constantly updating your engine was that you can transfer systems to the next iteration. How in the fuck do you have less to do in this game than fucking FO4. Or even FO76. FO76 didn't even HAVE NPCs.

 

[>IMPLYING]

 

[Epoch]

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I doubt there is any actual procedural generation going on at all. Procedural generation means that the objects (outposts, POIs, rocks, anything) would be placed based on artist defined rules and using a random seed, so for example don't place chairs unless they are close to a table, don't place a table unless its in a room, etc etc.

What I've seen from Starfield is that the wilderness cells place objects based on a biome using a blue noise distribution, for those who don't know, blue noise is a type of random noise that is used for its ability to generate uniformly, where as fully random ends up clumping together due to the bell curve of probability.

Blue noise is pretty useful for random things that need a uniform coverage, its used for raytracing sampling due to this, and I've seen it used for basic forest tree distribution, but it needs a high enough density or else it looks very fake, but it seems like Bethesda just used it without any thought and as a result all the distributed random rocks and trees are very artificially assembled because they are low density. Probably because the engine would throw a fit if it has too many references in a cell.

I don't see any procedural rules at play here, you can see a few different assembly types being spread evenly, close up its ok, but at a distance it becomes very obvious. It seems like the POIs that get distributed are poorly blended onto the heightmap with a basic blur or something, probably 1 per cell and thats why they are so far apart. A proper procedural game would have layers to each POI, for example, Star Citizen generates the layout of a station using artist defined parameters and hand placed layouts, then they run another generator on that basic layout and it fills in kitbash details based on defined rules and shapes, like place doorways in doorways, add supports to overhangs, etc, then they run another detail pass on top of that and can then do hand placed details if required. Because its all systems layered non destructively they can change the random seed for each one and get different results but still keep the same underlying level. I think there are videos on the Star Citizen channel that cover this stuff, and its a major part of Houdini, Horizon Zero Dawn's entire world was built with artist driven systems like this, and Death Stranding by extension. This is a very standard workflow these days with how detailed games and CGI are, its not possible for an artist to assemble that much by hand. Blender added this sort of workflow with Geometry nodes a few years ago, Unreal just got tools for it in 5.3, Houdini has been around for years.

Starfield does not do any of this, probably because the engine would throw a fit, just look at the hacked together system for the Skyrim Hearthfire houses, and the dungeons are not assembled on a grid like Fallout 4, so they can't use the settlement stuff for it. So they are probably incapable of any of these layered random systems and just drop premade cells into noise heightmaps and call that procedural generation. This is further proven by the placement of everything being the exact same between the same POIs.

I see a lot of people saying to stop blaming the engine, and that Bethesda upgraded it and that 'gamers dont know how engines work', but all of this, the lack of procedural generation, the world size limits, the loading cutscenes, the awful space cells, the cell loading entirely, its all because the engine literally cannot do any of these things, so Bethesda cheats and half asses everything. The entire game was held back by the engine, so much of what they wanted to do is just impossible, but they will never actually change anything because they are complacent.