• XanXic@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’m sure too people will be like “oh but you played 40 hours! It can’t be that bad” but the first 10-15 are misery from a gameplay perspective, like you’re just trying to level up to get more carrying capacity and get more combat options.

      • Bongles@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        There’s too many basic things locked behind perk points before you can even begin doing whatever it is. Like, I spent most of a day to grind to get to be able to buy and fly a bigger ship only to then not be able to put any extra crew on the ship because that is also a perk.

        • abraxas
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          11 months ago

          That’s…not really true. First, you can get to class C ships at level 4 out of 300+ if you really want to. Second, you can build some pretty decent-sized class A ships.

          Honestly, is this something you’ve just always hated about Bethesda games, because everything about that is true to a greater extent in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games as well.

          • Bongles@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            Some of it’s an opinion but nothing I said isn’t true. Sure, if I started the game with the goal of flying class C ships I could get there by level 4, but I didn’t. I played the game for a time doing other things and then came to a point where I saw an NPC selling a ship I wanted. So I grinded to get the money, saw that I needed to rank up piloting but I didn’t have any points. So I needed to level up 3 times and I needed to kill a few dozen ships. So I grinded that out and bought the ship which, with getting the money, took me the better part of a day.

            Then, after I bought that ship and got the ability to fly it I couldn’t add any additional crew compared to my starting ship because that is locked behind a different perk, which would mean 4 more levels (which take time now), and many more destroyed ships with X number of crew on board, to get the most crew on my ship; EXCEPT that it’s a master tier perk so I would first have to sink many more points into that tree to even get there. So I guess screw whatever build I was going for, if I want more crew I have to go deep into the Social tree.

            Take stealth for example. To even get a stealth meter I have to drop a point into stealth. To get a meter that is slightly better and on par with the default stealth meter in their other games I need to put in another point. Want to pickpocket an enemy? Takes a point to even unlock the ability. Want to even use a boost pack? Point.

            It’s fine to unlock abilities through the trees, there’s more of these that I didn’t mention that I’m fine with, but this does not compare with their previous games. In Skyrim, if I want to pickpocket I just try to do it. It sucks for a while but it levels up and gets better by doing it. I don’t need to go grind enemies to level up so that I can get a little better at pickpocketing. If I want to be stealthy I just need to sneak around to work on leveling up the skill and I get the UI from the beginning. If I want to work on the heavy armor skill I don’t first have to get through light armor.

            • abraxas
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              11 months ago

              Well, it seems contradictory to me and I’m just picking at that. If you care about class C ships, it’s super-easy to unlock (compared to some of the skills in FO4’s base builder). If you don’t, the lack will never matter. You can easily take the Razorleaf through the entire game with few (if any) modifications.

              So I grinded to get the money, saw that I needed to rank up piloting but I didn’t have any points. So I needed to level up 3 times and I needed to kill a few dozen ships.

              I do the same in Skyrim when I want the Meteor spell :)

              after I bought that ship and got the ability to fly it I couldn’t add any additional crew compared to my starting ship because that is locked behind a different perk

              …so? Why exactly did you want to add more crew? I’m having trouble grokking this. More crew is kinda a win-more feature and down that page for a reason.

              Take stealth for example. To even get a stealth meter I have to drop a point into stealth

              Pretty typical.

              To get a meter that is slightly better and on par with the default stealth meter in their other games I need to put in another point

              This blew my mind, but if you’re somewhere you can breathe and take off the space suit, your stealth SKYROCKETs. Walking around stealthily in a heavy space suit is tough.

              Want to even use a boost pack? Point.

              This one is the first one I sorta agree with. I understand thematically why there would be skill involved. But I’ll give you this one. That’s just not enough to sour me on an epic game like Starfield.

              • Bongles@lemm.ee
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                11 months ago

                Take stealth for example. To even get a stealth meter I have to drop a point into stealth

                Pretty typical.

                I disagree here. It’s a UI element that is often there by default in other games from Bethesda. It’s the little eye in Skyrim, it’s the hidden/caution/danger bar in fallout 4.

                This blew my mind, but if you’re somewhere you can breathe and take off the space suit, your stealth SKYROCKETs. Walking around stealthily in a heavy space suit is tough.

                You know I did read that and I think that’s a neat touch, i wish it was explained somewhere in game (if it was I missed it) but it makes sense. I was referring to the UI again, where you upgrade the stealth meter itself slightly.

                …so? Why exactly did you want to add more crew? I’m having trouble grokking this. More crew is kinda a win-more feature and down that page for a reason.

                I bought a ship with 7 chairs, why can’t 7 people sit in it. I understand to a point that it could be for balancing the game, but to me getting the ship with 7 slots should be balancing enough.

      • starman2112
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        11 months ago

        Looking back at the 50 hours I spent on it, I have to contextualize how much of it wasn’t spent having fun. How many of those hours did I spend building an S-class ship and outposts with 4+ materials before I discovered that all of that was utterly worthless due to the main questline destroying everything? Building the ship certainly wasn’t fun. Having a planet on my screen for three hours at a time while I scout for an outpost one pixel at a time was miserable. The point of those was that the reward would be worth it, but then during the main questline it all gets erased and you have to push the stone back up the hill again.

        Contrast that with the game I spent the most time on this year: Hi-Fi Rush. It took me 80 hours to FC that game, and I was having a blast almost the entire way through! The tower was a bitch and a half before I learned the meta, beating Mimosa without taking damage took a good two dozen tries, but you know what Hi-Fi Rush has that Starfield doesn’t? Exciting gameplay. A soundtrack. A story worth paying any attention to. Likeable characters. The Prodigy. Even though replaying every level on every difficulty setting is tedious as all hell, the process of doing it was still fun, and I can still open the game up and admire the Wall. I can’t open up my Starfield file and admire my fully customized ship, the Death of Shame. It was erased along with every outpost and every relationship with every NPC.

      • abraxas
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        11 months ago

        I mean, at the 1-hour mark I was starting with space piracy and having a blast.

        The first 10-15 are misery if you follow the breadcrumb trail and don’t leave it. But the same is (more) true of Skyrim.

    • Drbreen
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      11 months ago

      Yeah same here. Around the 40 hour mark. I found I moved onto something else. People spending time and resources on building big and different ship designs and building a base seemed pointless to me given the gameplay loop.

      • sleep_deprived@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I was even kind of interested, but then I got further in the main quest and figured out what the ending is…

        Then I felt like there was no point to anything I did.

        • starman2112
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          11 months ago

          It’s annoying because a lot of people say it’s no different to starting a new save file in any other game, but no other game encourages you to spend tens of hours on tedious pointing and clicking just to throw it away. Fallout 4’s outpost system wasn’t designed with the intention of deleting your settlements at any point in the story.

          • abraxas
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            11 months ago

            but no other game encourages you to spend tens of hours on tedious pointing and clicking just to throw it away

            I don’t really understand the NG+ complaints. The game warns several times in several ways you before you do it, and it is absolutely not necessary to enjoy the game. And people who know the reasons you’d want to NG+ because they read spoilers? They ALSO know that they’re going to lose the previous playthrough well before they’ve gotten too deep into outpost design.

            The most common Bethesda play pattern is to reach a point your’e so powerful you’re “just done”, so you go beat the game. You take a break, and come back to NG. The number of people who maintain all the FO4 settlements for hundreds of hours are quite rare. NG+ exists to give people of that most common play pattern the option to start over again and extra content they’ll enjoy.

            Starfield is technically bigger than Skyrim before accounting for NG+. So why punish them for a new feature that rewards what most gamers want to do?

            I feel like this is a “this is why we can’t have nice things” scenario. I have been wanting a fun NG+ mechanism in a Bethesda game for 15-20 years. I hate saying goodbye to my character, but I love rising through the ranks and completing major story quests in different ways.

            • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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              11 months ago

              Are you a bethesda dev? Because its like you only understand what the maybe potential intent was of the design, while being completely blind to the massive pile of neon feedback saying that the design failed to achieve the intent.

              • abraxas
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                11 months ago

                Are you a bethesda dev?

                No. I like owning a home so I opted against gamedev :)

                completely blind to the massive pile of neon feedback saying that the design failed to achieve the intent

                I mean, it’s largely a success to me playing the game. Am I not allowed to enjoy it or struggle to understand why “Game A” might be strictly worse than “Game A plus feature B that many players really wanted”?

                • Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  The difference is that the actual stated end goal of the game is to go NG+.Not defeat Aldiun, not battle for New Vegas.

                  So to use your words, it’s not “Game A plus feature B”, it’s just feature B,

                  NG+ as a concept stresses immersion, and making it the point of the game shattered it completely. I like the idea or giving an in-game explanation, and the story they used could have worked, but it needed to be a side quest

                  • abraxas
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                    11 months ago

                    The difference is that the actual stated end goal of the game is to go NG+.

                    I mean, it’s “Discover the secrets of the artifacts”. The main plot is never the goal of a Bethesda game.

                    and making it the point of the game shattered it completely.

                    Since when? You can say you don’t like it, but it certainly technically worked.

                • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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                  11 months ago

                  When people watch the movie Grown Ups 2, there is a chance they might enjoy it despite it being a well recorded shit waste of time film.

                  That doesnt mean the entire world lied to hide a secret gemstone. It means that by chance you like an over all bad movie. No one said you arent allowed to enjoy shit films, but your single enjoyment doesnt make the film not shit.

                  Same thing here. The NG+ gambit failed, it does not do what the devs wanted. That it happens to work for you is great, for you, but doesnt change its grander failure.

                  • abraxas
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                    11 months ago

                    When people watch the movie Grown Ups 2,

                    Yeah, I really don’t think there’s any substantive way that Starfield compares to “Grown Ups 2”. That’s naked hyperbole.

                    The NG+ gambit failed, it does not do what the devs wanted

                    Then just enjoy the game that’s bigger than Skyrim and don’t NG+. Bethesda games always include side-quests and mechanisms that some players want and others avoid.

            • starman2112
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              11 months ago

              The game warns several times in several ways you before you do it, and it is absolutely not necessary to enjoy the game. And people who know the reasons you’d want to NG+ because they read spoilers? They ALSO know that they’re going to lose the previous playthrough well before they’ve gotten too deep into outpost design.

              When a dev says that the game doesn’t really “start” until you finish the main story, I feel like that means it is actually necessary to enjoy the game as they designed it. The game was designed with this form of NG+ from the very beginning. It’s a bit like saying you can stop playing Nier: Automata after 2B’s story. Sure, you can, but it’s super not what the devs intended. Not engaging with NG+ is an option the same way quitting MW2 before No Russian is an option.

              And for people who know the reasons you want to NG+, that causes a conflict. If I know from the start that I’m going to be ditching this universe, I’m not going to be invested in what it has to offer. When I reach the end of the game, _____'s death wasn’t a big emotional moment because I never spent the time to develop a relationship with them.

              NG+ has been sorely needed in Bethesda games for a long time, but saying this is what we’ve been asking for is like saying FO76 was the multiplayer Fallout experience we were asking for.

    • Veraxus@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      40h is where I gave up, too. I would stopped much sooner, because everything feels like the worst kind of MMO grind… but folks kept telling me “keep going, it gets better!”

      Narrator: It never gets better.

      • starman2112
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        11 months ago

        In fact, it gets worse. As part of the main storyline, everything you’ve done is erased. It is literally not worth your time to engage with the systems in the game, because everything gets reset. The only thing the main story encourages you to spend time on is the worst game mechanic in anything outside of F.A.T.A.L.