I usually do pirate and then buy (if worthy) but surely a major Bethesda release would be worth 80 bucks, right?

Right?

Only consolation is that it might be good in 5 years… :(

I’d rather buy it than spend hours and hours downloading and failing to unpack it for unknown reasons.

But I’m not going to spend more than like 10 minutes trying to make it work. If it takes longer than that, it’s just a shit game that doesn’t deserve my money. Too many other perfectly good games to spend my time playing to fuck around with all of that.

I’ve had them refund on longer than two weeks but it was because I had 0 play time in it.

I’ve heard that, but once I tried to refund a game at 3 hours and got nothing but an automated response (denial) everytime I requested a refund.

In this specific case it was actually a game I played 2 hours of during a free weekend approximately 4 years before buying it, played one hour after buying it to see if it had gotten better, decided it hadn’t and refunded it. But Steam counts free weekend playtime towards the refund window…

If there’s any actual way to ensure a human reviews it, that’d be neat. 100% it was automatically denied by some code just checking my playtime and seeing it was past two hours.

Even 2 weeks isn’t the hard limit, at least in Australia.

I finished Doom Eternal at launch and put about 20-30 hours into it, but got it refunded when Bethesda added Denuvo to it 3 weeks post launch

Ngl I’m honestly happy with the trade off of being able to refund games when publishers try to pull shit vs being able to buy a Steam Deck

I once got a refund after 5 hours. I opened the game, left it running at the main menu, then went to make lunch and completely forgot about it. Wasted probably about 3.5 hours in the menu. When I asked for a refund, I didn’t even explain that I’d left it open in the main menu; I just pointed out why I didn’t like it and why I wanted a refund. The game in question was Mount and Blade, store country was Germany, and I submitted the refund request on the same day I bought it.

I’m at 5hr and was denied. Really didn’t think Bethesda could make such a wreck… Or at least would try harder post fo76.

I did try for a refund at 20 hours but no luck

Pirate before I buy

It required true innovation to make a game this aggressively mediocre and bland. True

Yeah, the last time was FO4

You have to complete the game to even play the New Game +, dont think that’s what got them the nomination

I thought that was a good idea, and I’m a huge fan of timeloops… But so much of the rest was poorly done that after a couple loops, you stop wanting to loop.

True that idea was definitely cool

Fingers crossed on Larian getting a licence for Traveller…

The one thing I would argue that is a bit “new” is that they had a design paradigm similar to immersive sims on their systems, and that is not so common on these kind of top down rpg.

But yeah, the real “innovation” was just making an actually polished game.

It isn’t an ad. I just linked to the store page itself and I don’t post affiliate ads and those aren’t possible on steam anyway. It’s just resolving the link and there just happens to be a sale for that garbage shaped game.

I think Fallout 4 was a solid 7. Starfield seems to have been aiming for F4 in space but it falls short in just about every arena. I remember the settlement feature being really cool but unfortunately not very well integrated into the game, and a little half baked. I was so hype to see Starfield would be bringing it back, but instead it was entirely pointless and a total waste of time, as well as being far more restrictive.

The main quest in F4 was at least relatable and interesting enough with some very nice side quests. Starfield has the most boring narrative of every game I’ve ever played, the mind brainless go-hum fetch quest side quests, and no interesting characters in sight. It was literally the 7/10 Fallout 4 but somehow worse.

A solid 7? I’d give it a 4-5. I very stupidly preordered and I very much regret it. The one and only time I ever did so as well. The game shows a shocking lack of care. It definitely has some systems which ought to be interesting but they’re rendered pointless by the game and the main plot is utterly appalling.

Removed by mod

It’s the worst Bethesda RPG game I’ve ever played. What did you think was worse? I suppose the MMOs?

If you can’t get 40 hours out of a AAA game then it wasn’t a AAA game.

Most games don’t aim to provide hundreds.

True, but games are different and an open-world game should be fun for far longer than for example a linear shooter, due to density and freedom with sandbox elements.

Oh yes, 100% - if they were to implement a fuel system, then just mining for fuel manually on the existing planets would be incredibly dull. Building something like a fuel refinery on the other hand would make sense - it would even give a purpose to habitats/planetary bases, which are completely superfluous at the moment. At no point in the game did I need to build one, and if the game didn’t keep reminding me that base building existed I would probably have forgotten all about that feature.

About lack of schedules, at least for shops, there’s a very easy solution: have a second NPC for the night shift, sharing the same inventory. That way the shop stays open 24h and the npcs can still have some downtime.

after starfield i finally played Outer Wilds (not a typo) and goodness, i have so much more memories with that game than starfield, despite the fact i finished it in half the time i beat starfield

if you’re craving incredibly crafted space exploration play Outer Wilds, don’t look up anything about it though, it’s one of those that will make you wish for amnesia so you can experience it again for the first time

i think they thought it would be more fun than most people seem to think it is. and being wrong is an easy path to failure.

Make it some weird bizarre aliens that can live without atmosphere and have it set on an extremely small pair of binary moons set to real scale.

If only old school Bethesda fans had warned us of this trend of Bethesda removing the very things that make their games worthwhile for their last four major releases.

well, i thought of it as fallout 4 in space before playing. it has a couple core gameplay changes i liked and a couple i didn’t. it is the slowest paced bethesda game for sure, which is why i think most people call it boring. if you didnt replay skyrim i doubt you would replay this game. i give it a 7/10 for people of my taste and i would consider myself the intended audience. i have played bethesda games since oblivion and average about 200 hours per bethesda game, usually 3 playthroughs seperated by about a year or 2. for reference here are my top bethesda games:

1. Fallout: New Vegas - 9/10(obsidian for a major win)
2. Fallout 3 - 9/10
3. Oblivion - 9/10
4. Skyrim - 8/10
5. Fallout 4 - 8/10
6. Starfield - 7/10
7. Fallout 76 - 3/10 - i wish i could enjoy this game

these scores reflect how much i enjoyed each game. but if New Vegas had no technical issues it would be 10/10 for me.

Not op but I too give it 6 or 7. I liked the story. I liked shooting things. I liked the dialogue. I liked the base building. Liked the graphics, it was super quick for me on my 4900 xt. But everything was liked. Not loved. It was mediocre in everything. The POI were fun, but there are like 10 that get recycled. I like the planets but they’re also recycled. I like the cities but they’re all the size of a tiny town. It’s fun but it was sold as something grand which undersold it’s promises. First colony outside of earth, biggest civilization, has like a population of 100 if that. They should have sold the entire story as worlds on the rim. Not the hub of humanity.

There’s no voiceover work to be spoken of. You’re constantly just reading dialog and menus. The loop isn’t that different from almost any other open world survival crafting game, except it has spaceships you can fly from planet to space - just like in Space Engineers an arguably better space sandbox game that’s actually a sandbox.

I bought it about 2 years after launch, played through the main story, and then kinda got bored with it because it’s just the same thing over and over again. I came back after the first major update, played it for a few weeks and then got bored again because it was mostly a “fixing things to how we wanted them to be”. I played after the next major update as well and while it did bring some new life back into the game, it’s still essentially just “build a base to put these few things in and collect resources so you can build more stuff” or “do these pointless side quests so that you can buy/build more stuff”.

i watched all of the update for NMS. the updates are cool but non of them made it more interesting. i would like to say i think it is a good game, but at the end of the day starfield aligns with my likes much better.

by locking many parts behind two different skills, Piloting and Starship Design

And upgrades locked behind levels, plus not having all parts at all shipyards (or even all parts of one brand at their main location).

i agree that the exploration outside of the main areas is very sparce, but i think its important to cosider thats is what was promised, and the lore backs it up. i liked the hand-crafted areas a lot but outside of those areas tends to feel like NMS with a couple generic things to do every some often. but i still enjoyed building my bases and running in a circle around them destorying all abandon factories with rando baddies i could find.

i agree the fact that they are a AAA studio is irrelevant, but most people do judge things differently when considering this. its too often i see people praising indie games that i eventually try and hate. but i dont freak out and call it terrible, i stop playing. and i see well made AAA games that i greatly enjoy get review bombed for defending there design decisions which were based of what the designers consider fun.

but i dont agree that they made a “pile” of bad decisions. Again i think they were trying to make a fun game and most of the designer probably enjoyed playing it before releasing. but the majority of people who thought bethesda was making “their” dream space shooter didn’t like it so know bethesda is evil for some reason. i liked this game, i will play the dlc, and likely replay it.

I agree that the skill-locked purchase of physical equipment is garbage but I found myself sticking on the question of if you got the ‘de-facto’ best ship part for each category because you had the relevant skill.

Like some quest is occuring and, in dialogue, you have a choice locked by being the most-skilled pilot and choosing it leads to one set of the best ship parts. How does that flow? Does that read as the same thing, or is it more enjoyable now as a reward for character build?

Maybe, just maybe if people traveled between locations by actually launching into space

You are aware that there isn’t anywhere to go while in space, right? You can’t manually fly from Cydonia to Deimos Staryards, nor can you go “beyond” the bounds of the planet cell you’re in. You can’t go from a “Settlement” planetary POI to an “Abandoned Mine” POI that is some 200km away from it without fast travel.

Or the developers could have put the story hooks in front of fast travel instead of hiding them? Look at Baldur’s Gate 3 with fast travel nodes. You can pick up several quests just by going to a few nodes. And other quests are found on the logical route to complete story quests. And a few are explorer rewards.

The thing is, this is a game design thing we’ve known for over a decade now. So no, if the quests are easily missable, it’s not the player’s fault for not finding them.

That’s on the game design. If players feel the need to fast travel then they aren’t linking to the side stories to the path of the main game well enough. Spider-man had fast travel, i used it once for the trophy and never touched it again because traversal was so good in the game. Red Dead did it brilliantly too. I’m not sure if fast travel existed or not, I never looked for it. The world was rewarding everywhere.

From what I understand modders have already bailed on starfield :(

Not really. 1 modder made a public rant about how they were quitting Starfield and some “journalist” outlets exaggerated that to make it seem like all modders were quitting

Well, that may be for the best. Good “space games” are really hard to make for a variety of obvious reasons, so publishers should be really picky about the ones they greenlight.

multiplayer looter-shooter mechanics for a single-player experience.

Well shit that’s the only review I need.

Feels like they threw a bunch of different little systems and forgot to connect them in any manner, which makes them pointless.

Outposts exists so you can get materials and create stuff. The “get raw stuff, make industrial stuff” part can be ignored, as you can easily find merchants selling resources and components you might need. Outposts thus become pointless, other than for farming XP.

“Exploration” is there so you have “something” to do while on land, other than to blindly speed towards the nearest POI. The reward for completely “discovering” everything in a planet is a slate that you can sell for 1700~2200 creds to Vladimir.

Your ship exists, but they forgot to give the player a reason to be flying it in the first place. You can “mine” asteroids but, just like outposts, there’s no reason to. Dogfighting in space is passable. Not good, but not terrible. But most of the time, you’re supposed to fully skip it and just go on land anyway. Which makes the “Spacer” weapon modifier (+30% damage in space, -15% on land) one of the worst in the game.

Even basic UI and QoL features

Some time ago I made a new modlist for Skyrim from scratch and forgot to include SkyUI, and after starting the game recoiled in horror. How can you make their baseline interface worse.

I’d say it’s more like Far Cry, where you go somewhere just to clear out the map.

Towers are actually a quite nice mechanic if done right, like in Horizon Zero Dawn or Zelda (or so I’ve heard). Now if it werent’ for Ubisoft being Ubisoft throwing content at their games without rhyme or reason for the sake of having lots of content. In fact HZD is probably the best ubisofty game ever, it takes the formula and does it right.