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

[30+GameOvers]

I feel like an entire subplot related to not-jet/meth was removed at some point. It's everywhere and worthless. The mech parts marginally make sense and pretty sure it was part of something to put mechs together in a faction questline or just minor one. The contraband just being high value loot stuck behind skill checks or exploring feels off.

Funny that you mention that, because Outer Worlds(superior game) also had a sub-useless item(Adrena Time) that was everywhere and was worthless...before the first DLC, Peril at Gorgon, gave it context and explained why every single planet you come across has generic Borderlands bandits on it. Something tells me that they're going to do the same thing with Mechs ala Automatron from Fallout 4 with their first DLC. We already know that Space Station construction will be a part of it from leaked files.

remove the 85% cap on environmental protection which is entirely arbitrary. What is the point of upgrading your protective clothing at all if you can never be fully protected? Currently you will always take HP damage outside after a certain amount of time in "bad weather" so why bother breaking it down into four little categories, even?

Am I missing something here? If you got a Space Suit, shouldn't that protect you from all hazards? Acid and corrosion are one thing, but I've seen footage of GAS that makes you take damage and even makes you sick. With a spacesuit on that has it's own supply of oxygen, how does it work? As a matter of fact, why are diseases from Survival mode of Fallout 4 here if the survival mechanics themselves, such as food and water consumption, are not? I hope there is a mod that lets you remove the 85% resistance limit(there is one in Fallout NV) and removes all diseases, maybe replaces them with combat-only statuses like "bleeding" or "broken limbs"

Todd has said that most of their games don't "come together" until the final months.

But in this case, I feel like Starfield just never came together.

There's a good possibility that the "Bethesda" style of game development simply doesn't work with more than 100 people working on the game. That's kind of what I took away from some of the comments Bruce Nesmith has said about the size of the Starfield team before he left.

Don't forget that Emil never had a design draft for the game, so literally everything was done on the fly. Good games go thru several of these, sometimes dozens, Starfield never even had one. Try to think about that for a second.

 

[indigoisviolet]

Ah ha haa~ I've found a console code to boost EM Damage exploiting the way Starfield applies weapon mod bonuses as Actor Values...

Spoiler: Bullshit nobody cares about in a game nobody plays...

This code alters the damage output from the Level 2 Barrel Mod Focus Nozzle...

player.modav 001F565E 5340

...and numbers in that sort of range produce effects like this (with all the appropriate skills maxed out):



Now I can LARP as a Star Trek Away Team, scanning rocks and shooting to stun. The effect can also be achieved by boosting the Level 2 Internal Mod Amplifier...

player.modav 001F50AA 5340

... which allows you to use an Equinox as a longer ranged stun rifle. I usually Overclock in that slot, though, and would prefer a hand phaser.

If you are confident you won't want to put a Focus Nozzle/Amplifier onto anything else doing regular damage, use player.setav instead, and the effect is permanent.

Fancy Novalight edition with same Focus Nozzle console hacking value 5340, oh, but look at that...



... a much stronger weapon, same output! EM Damage is absolutely capped by its own script, overlaying on top of everything else, which I believe was a very late decision in terms of game development. Maybe because you have to kill the dipshit Dragon Priests guarding the Word Walls, and they don't want you pick pocketing their stuff? Since going Stunning I have encountered several missions where sudden unexpected murder was required to proceed, the corpo Artifact exchange on Neon, for example. Surprising, that one, given that we are in the wrong and opening up on civilian employees! Make your mind up, Starfield, do pacifist companions give a shit or not? Why do I have to murder the CEO, why can't we, oh I dunno, come to mutually beneficial agreement at the end of a Negotiation, or him be impressed by my Leadership or be scared by my Intimidation, have a similar taste in Gastronomy and we go out to a fancy space restaurant instead, and so on and so forth. Skill tree, Starfield, you have one, with very specific point allocations that are functionally useless, it seems.

I feel like an entire subplot related to not-jet/meth was removed at some point. It's everywhere and worthless. The mech parts marginally make sense and pretty sure it was part of something to put mechs together in a faction questline or just minor one. The contraband just being high value loot stuck behind skill checks or exploring feels off.

Oh, you know what? You're right. The game makes such a big deal out of scanning your ship every time you jump into the core systems, there is a dedicated skill to evading it, and an credit-expensive, Research & Skill point guarded little box of tricks you can stick into a weapons slot that tips the odds in your favor... You can recruit Mathis from the Crimson Fleet... there are four pirate factions... one named crew member from each faction leaving two seats spare on a Class A starship for the Adoring Fan and one Main Quest companion...

They were going to allow us to play as pirates at one point uniting the factions and maybe even over-running LIST, the third, smaller, non-main quest faction. LIST is occasionally name-checked by settlers, and has its own splash screen which emphasizes how vulnerable they are.

Well, shit. That could have been great!

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Don't forget that Emil never had a design draft for the game, so literally everything was done on the fly.

When was this said? Wouldn't Todd have been the one to have a design draft?

 

[30+GameOvers]

When was this said? Wouldn't Todd have been the one to have a design draft?

It was said earlier this thread, Emil was in charge of design to some capacity and he didn't make a single draft for the game, citing that it will "come together" by the end. Bioware magic and what have you, except it never did come together. Fucking retard, no wonder the game has so many systems that are either barely or not finished at all and do not interact with one another

 

[indigoisviolet]

If you got a Space Suit, shouldn't that protect you from all hazards?

It doesn't make much sense. Space suits are Skyrim armor without the distinction between Heavy and Light, and none of the associated pros and cons either. The only thing that changes in Starfield is how heavy your suit is, using up to 30 points or so of Carry Weight if you want to stroll about looking like (a copyright distinct for legal reasons but we all know it's) Boba Fett at the heavy end. It doesn't even effect movement speed in areas with normal gravity. Upgrades to armor are currently limited, boring, and not worth the Skill Points or Research time, put both into weapon modding instead.

As for the way the game handles Environmental Effects, they are treated as Skyrim enchantments that apply when the game detects you are first outside, and can be turned off with...

player.dispel 281ed2
player.dispel 163fe0
player.dispel 1639ee
player.dispel 281ecf
player.dispel 281ed2

The 85% resistance cap is probably an oversight of rolling forward a magic system through several unrelated games, the devs might not even have known it was there.

Combat on planets with limited atmospheres should really be one hit kills outside; puncture their suit and that person is fucked. It would keep you on your toes, though: imagine some of the main missions where now you have to avoid getting damaged at all outside. "You have 16 seconds of suit pressure left... 15... 14..." would certainly make cycling the airlocks more tense.

 

[30+GameOvers]

As for the way the game handles Environmental Effects, they are treated as Skyrim enchantments that apply when the game detects you are first outside, and can be turned off with...

player.dispel 281ed2
player.dispel 163fe0
player.dispel 1639ee
player.dispel 281ecf
player.dispel 281ed2

Considering that they don't make sense in the first place, and that we got Skyrim's dragon shouts with Dragonborn in the game already, they might be magical hazards for all we know. The reason they cut out swimming and diving was also because they probably were going to give you an oxygen meter underwater despite you wearing a spacesuit and someone had to point out how that makes zero sense .


Can we talk about Barrett? From what little I've seen of him, he's not actually a bad companion, at least compared to the other goody two-shoes urbanites from the Constellation...that is, until he actually becomes your companion. I know he's a faggot and he goes boo-hoo for his dead husband, so I assume everything goes downhill from there, much like with Parvatti in Outer Worlds once she starts her personal quest and you find out she's some sort of an asexual lesbian. It should be noted that the original writer left early on to work on something else, so he only wrote her basic character and interactions for when you're on Edgewater, the asexual lesbian date and everything else was written by a woman.
I'm saying this because I can sense something similar happened with Barrett: There was a general draft of his character written and his basic interactions with his character before he became a companion done by one person, and then the rest(ie him being an annoying faggot) written by someone else, or shoehorned much later on to meet the ESG score guidelines. I would be surprised, but not by much, if he always was going to be an annoying gay nigger, considering Starfield as we know it started development sometime around 2016 and Bethesda wasn't completely taken over by the woke mind virus back then.


Speaking of companions, are there any good ones if one is planning to play as a pirate? I'm hearing you will be stuck with the robot and Adoring Fan, but I know there are many minor characters that are meant to be stuck in an outpost somewhere and have less written dialogue that you can tag along with you. Do any of them care if you kill innocent people, shakedown people or destroy random ships in space? I've had high hopes for Andrea, but apparently she hates it when you attack random ships or people and goes into passive-aggressive "you know what you did!" mode like every other Constellation member if you do.

 

[Sniperwoof]

Speaking of companions, are there any good ones if one is planning to play as a pirate? I'm hearing you will be stuck with the robot and Adoring Fan, but I know there are many minor characters that are meant to be stuck in an outpost somewhere and have less written dialogue that you can tag along with you. Do any of them care if you kill innocent people, shakedown people or destroy random ships in space? I've had high hopes for Andrea, but apparently she hates it when you attack random ships or people and goes into passive-aggressive "you know what you did!" mode like every other Constellation member if you do.

Adoring fan and robot are probably the only ones that aren't incredibly annoying. One thing you should know going in is that every companion except robot who is neutral morality is of the lawful good alignment.

That means that every companion except robot will disapprove and rapidly lose affinity if any murder/theft/assault is done. Because Bethesda is extremely incompetent this even applies to quest fights or even ones where you are attacked first.

For example if you plan on doing the Crimson Fleet quest take robot and leave Barret or Andrea behind unless you want to zero out their affinity because they will fucking hate any action you take during that quest line.

There are also zero evil or evil aligned companions so if you expect someone who enjoys being an asshole like Cait or Strong you won't find them here.

Even space snake worshipping cultist lady who is supposedly morally grey according to the lore and dialogue will lose affinity if she sees you stealing a bottle of space Coke. What a joke.

 

[30+GameOvers]

There are also zero evil or evil aligned companions so if you expect someone who enjoys being an asshole like Cait or Strong you won't find them here.

lol, lmao even
You can tell they didn't want to let you even become a space pirate, but I guess Crimson Fleet were too far along the development pipeline so they gave them a token quest line and simply didn't make any companions for them. What a joke.
There is a place in the game where you get historical figures cloned and they just live in a cushy hotel. There is a plot twist to that, but I know you get a companion out of the place, point is that if someone makes a Hitler companion mod it would be 100% canon, and frankly, that seems like the best alternative when you consider every other companion is a goody two shoes.
How did a studio that brought us Jericho and Gage stoop so low?

 

[The handsome tard]

While space sci-fi settings can work without bringing aliens to the equation, this is one of the cases where I think it was a mistake to not do so. TES and Fallout both have rich lores that are aided by the presence of different species of creatures beyond just humans. I know some said this would make it too similar to Mass Effect but...in retrospect, is that really a bad thing? The first three games (well, some parts of 3) are still held in high regard and its rather obvious that Bioware is trying to replicate an experience that could have only come at that specific time with a specific team.

All they had to do was to create enjoyable alien races with engaging companions and I guaradamntee it that there would be people prefering to stick with them than with boring ass humans.

Starfield is such a boring setting.

 

[Sniperwoof]

While space sci-fi settings can work without bringing aliens to the equation, this is one of the cases where I think it was a mistake to not do so. TES and Fallout both have rich lores that are aided by the presence of different species of creatures beyond just humans. I know some said this would make it too similar to Mass Effect but...in retrospect, is that really a bad thing? The first three games (well, some parts of 3) are still held in high regard and its rather obvious that Bioware is trying to replicate an experience that could have only come at that specific time with a specific team.

All they had to do was to create enjoyable alien races with engaging companions and I guaradamntee it that there would be people prefering to stick with them than with boring ass humans.

Starfield is such a boring setting.

NASApunk or realistic scifi is extremely boring and there's a reason most there's very few successful examples of this sub genre.

Most popular sci fi franchise tend to be high concept rather than realistic ie Mass Effect, Star Trek ect.

 

[indigoisviolet]

play as a pirate?

Named NPCS who are "evil" are far and few between. Mathis is like Chief O'Brien in his Cardie killing days, and he comes armed with a killbox rifle which makes him combat viable, but no spaceship skills. There's also a lady pirate called Jessamine who has top skill rank with spaceship mounted machine guns and totally worth hiring. You need to do the UC SysDef mission to infiltrate the Crimson Fleet to meet either.

Beyond that there's a shady dude called Mickey Caviar who'd fit right in with a pirate ship, he hangs out in the nightclub in Neon. He doesn't have any spaceship or fighting skills that I can recall, but he claims he can be ships cook, which opens up the possibility that Starfield was going to have all manner of crew with non-combat skills applying bonuses whilst on board, but then never got around to programing it. There's a Medical Bay prefab that does nothing but provide a chems table, for example, and you can definitely recruit medics, but they don't seem to actually do anything. Same for the Research prefab and scientists. In bigger Class C ships you get bars and kitchens, too.

And, yeah, the robot doesn't give a shit what you do, is massively overpowered in combat, and can be assigned to guard the ship landing ramp, which admittedly doesn't do much, but feels right, if you know what I mean?

So that's a small crew of four, and you can recruit another two redshirt no-names from the Crimson Fleet pub, maxing out a Class A ship with all systems, then do a bunch of radiant quests from the pirate mission board, or just play the game normally without a greek chorus of disapproval every time you do anything. Mathis also makes the game feel more like Star Trek, which is great.

As for Constellation, I did Andreja's full quest and found it wasn't worth it beyond a bit of well-delivered voice acting to be honest, so never bothered with anyone else. Everyone ends up back in The Lodge no matter what, there isn't room for their personal sidequest to have meaningful consequences. Starfield has this annoying tendency to demand a binary answer from you in dialogue unexpectedly, and really stresses how vitally important your reply will be, and then... it's nothing, nothing happens, nothing changes, what the fuck was all that about, and why did you ask me, anyway? With Andreja I had no idea what the Hell she wanted me to say regarding information I'd just that very moment been given, "Yeah? No? I don't know?" It's like the terrormorph eradication quest, they suddenly get all serious about me choosing from two options, and talk about it over and over and over, then a committee talks it over and over and over, when really... they could have done both, frankly. Or do whatever? Why are you asking me, you're the Head Of Space Science. If you need something hip fired at from 100m and hitting five times out of six, call me.

 

[30+GameOvers]

Between the fuel being made useless, all the various types of food available and now the cooks/kitchens doing nothing but being available for the player's ship guarantees they had some sort of survival mode planned but they just didn't bother finishing it. That would actually make sense, imagine hiring a cook or crafting a kitchen to keep your food and water meter from going down as quickly(being sated from good quality food?), combine that with the ever present threat of running out of fuel and possibly being stranded in the middle of nowhere to wait for a tow ship and/or having to hunt for food and water on a nearby planet and you got yourself a good time. This actually sounds nuanced and like something that would require some planning later on in the game, so obviously the mode had to axed because "this isn't fun for the casual player!"
God I hate modern Bethesda

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

I'm 90% sure playtesters (mentally retarded lowest common denominators) botched their saves after running out of fuel on a jump and saving constantly afterwards so that got axed.

 

[Snekposter]

Between the fuel being made useless, all the various types of food available and now the cooks/kitchens doing nothing but being available for the player's ship guarantees they had some sort of survival mode planned but they just didn't bother finishing it. That would actually make sense, imagine hiring a cook or crafting a kitchen to keep your food and water meter from going down as quickly(being sated from good quality food?), combine that with the ever present threat of running out of fuel and possibly being stranded in the middle of nowhere to wait for a tow ship and/or having to hunt for food and water on a nearby planet and you got yourself a good time. This actually sounds nuanced and like something that would require some planning later on in the game, so obviously the mode had to axed because "this isn't fun for the casual player!"
God I hate modern Bethesda

The whole game feels a lot less like "What could have been..." and more like "Was never meant to be..." when you start looking at everything actually buried inside of it. Its sad, and best we all move on.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I'm 90% sure playtesters (mentally retarded lowest common denominators) botched their saves after running out of fuel on a jump and saving constantly afterwards so that got axed.

Why not just put it in as a survival mode, though?

It sounds like it was made, and then they axed it. Didn't New Vegas and Fallout 4 launch with survival modes?

It's just baffling that they would remove content that was, seemingly, finished.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Why not just put it in as a survival mode, though?

It sounds like it was made, and then they axed it. Didn't New Vegas and Fallout 4 launch with survival modes?

It's just baffling that they would remove content that was, seemingly, finished.

If I remember right, NV launched with Hardcore, but F4 didn't get Survival Mode until a later patch. Don't remember how long it took. A couple months, I think. Maybe it'll get tossed into Starfield alongside some DLC or the mod tools or whatever. But I don't have my hopes up.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

If I remember right, NV launched with Hardcore, but F4 didn't get Survival Mode until a later patch. Don't remember how long it took. A couple months, I think. Maybe it'll get tossed into Starfield alongside some DLC or the mod tools or whatever. But I don't have my hopes up.

I think in the Lex Friedman interview Todd mentioned that he thought modders would do it fairly quick, which leads me to think he knows all the shit is there for them to do it and Bethesda has no intention of fucking with it.

But I might be remembering exactly what he said wrong.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

Why not just put it in as a survival mode, though?

It sounds like it was made, and then they axed it. Didn't New Vegas and Fallout 4 launch with survival modes?

It's just baffling that they would remove content that was, seemingly, finished.

With how much more integrated the groundwork for survival is with base game systems related to food/water and protection from the elements, I think it wasn't just supposed to launch with a mode for it but it was a core gameplay thing that ended up being removed somewhere in the middle of development. My guess it is caused too much strain on stability or internal playtesters complained and they never found a balance they liked. It just sounds like copium but a lot of the bones of those systems were too developed for it to be cut early or never intended to be a gameplay mechanic.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

With how much more integrated the groundwork for survival is with base game systems related to food/water and protection from the elements, I think it wasn't just supposed to launch with a mode for it but it was a core gameplay thing that ended up being removed somewhere in the middle of development. My guess it is caused too much strain on stability or internal playtesters complained and they never found a balance they liked. It just sounds like copium but a lot of the bones of those systems were too developed for it to be cut early or never intended to be a gameplay mechanic.

Yeah, I agree. That's why I think it's so stupid they just didn't include it as an option or something.

But I think if they didn't include it at launch, they probably aren't going to release it ever. I guess they *could* work on it to sell on the creation club or whatever, but I feel like there isn't enough goodwill from anyone at this point to buy it.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

But I think if they didn't include it at launch, they probably aren't going to release it ever. I guess they *could* work on it to sell on the creation club or whatever, but I feel like there isn't enough goodwill from anyone at this point to buy it.

I don't see how the game even manages to ship a DLC at this point without retooling pretty much the entire game. Every system as it is now in the game makes me not even want to play a Shivering Isles tier expansion if one happened to be made.