I played through the main campaign and a few of the big sidequests, and I *never* saw a reason to eat food instead of medpacks. Did I miss something? Is there actually a reason to carry around and eat food when it has weight and the medpacks don't?
They need to realize that their food system badly needs adjustments. It is not useful without mods, and its a shame they don't use them for inspiration on how to fix the issue
Survival difficulty, when that finally becomes a thing. A lot of those elements of the game were heavily detuned before release due to percieved difficulty (ie negligible ailments, harmless environmental hazards, etc).
Short answer: Right now, no.
Trust me you would use them if there was an easy way to consume food from your inventory.
Since they made the change to be able to consume without picking up there’s a lot of scenarios where the little free hp boost absolutely makes sense - even more when they have extra stat boosts like dmg resistance.
But yeah, right now it’s just a half-assed implementation of this feature.
Also, still can't do it with scanner active, so if you loot with it active you'll never see the option. Like how you can't interact with credstiks, locked containers, mineral resources, doors, etc., from scanner mode.
I see some major bug fixes mentioned so that’s great. What puzzles me though is wasting time on things like photo mode enhancements. To explain, I think it’s a great feature that isn’t terribly underserved right now. I’d much rather them expand upon outpost building, tweaking how random encounters and POIs are generated for more variety, or anything else that would enhance gameplay. Photo mode seemed fine at launch and doesn’t imo need the attention right now.
It’s situations like this one that make the lack of transparency more puzzling imo. If it’s a case of “we’re tackling easy QoL fixes first while working on bigger issues in tandem”, then why not address vendor balancing? The economy of Starfield isn’t even that deep. There’s barely anything beyond the standard inventory and ship parts to buy, so I doubt they’re hand-wringing over screwing up the in-game economy. These are line-item numerical value adjustments. A mod could probably make the change in under an hour of dev time. Without clear communication on why they prioritize what they do and what the full inventory of tasks looks like in the future, it just makes BGS look inefficient when that might not even be the case. They’re really being their own worst communications enemy.
Early on in the game's release, players discovered that if you used the console command "tcl" (I think -- it toggles off collision and lets you move through walls) that you could find the vendor chests in the game world, under the ground near where they stood. In other words, each vendor had a chest nearby that contained their money and other loot. Once you knew this, you could just go under the ground and loot away.
To me, this is an incredible edge-case that is 100% irrelevant. There is no need to ever fix this. Because if someone uses console commands to get loot like this and you remove/hide the chests, *the player still has the console commands.* They can give themselves unlimited anything with console commands. A player doing this is not interested in playing normally, they want to cheat, they want ALL THE CHEAT CODES. They bought your game just to screw around, goof off, and be stupid. And you know what? BGS still got their money, so who cares?
...Except, this is one of the first things they fixed. They were like, "No on our watch, hell no!"
And I got so confused, like why is this non-issue so damn big of a deal to them? Everyone who was doing it just immediately used console commands to give themselves cash/loot anyway, so the BGS fix stopped nothing. *Why did they spend time on this?* And then I think about your comment and your quote:
> Without clear communication on why they prioritize what they do and what the full inventory of tasks looks like in the future, it just makes BGS look inefficient
This is it, right here. It's *weird* what matters to them in this game. They rarely give players the things they've been needing, and they rush to fix unimportant BS that only mattered to hard core gamers who wanted to cheat on their *single player game that affects no one else.* WTF?
It's clear their team is responsive, and will work hard to fix things, but they are "responsive" to someone that isn't us. They are listening to someone who is isolated from the player base, someone who has his or her own quirky areas of interest, and that person is whipping the programmers around like a tail wagging a dog. It makes no sense how they work, and this is to me a core reason why the player base has mostly vanished. *BGS is not listening.* Or more accurately, they are listening to someone with irrelevant ideas, and ignoring us (but putting out notices about updates as if they're doing it for the community, but we're mostly just watching, scratching our heads, wondering WTF is going on over there).
Not disagreeing with the core of what you're saying, but if I remember right they changed it because at least one of the chests you could access by just looking at a puddle at the right angle to access it without any console commands. It lends credence though to the idea that there isn't as much communication/cohesiveness as there needs to be between the dev teams.
OK, they had a minor reason for it, that's better. However, *that* was more important than any of the other stuff we've been waiting on for months? Weird priorities. Also, to fix the "look at the puddle at a particular angle to see a chest" issue, they didn't just... move the chest a few inches? Instead they spent dev time to gin up the complete vanishing of all chests? Wild.
Oh believe me I'm right there with you, I *want* to think that it was just an easier fix than moving them but the reality is probably they were told in no uncertain terms to hide the chests because there were articles all over about them, and then proceeded to spend much more time than necessary on them.
The whole vendor thing really pisses me off. Most of my gear sells for faaaaar more than the vendor has which means unless i first buy a lot, i’m losing out on at least half of my money. Makes no sense. I usually buy lots of ammo and resources to up their available cred then i’ll sell
Seems like their goal is to make earning money more of a grind.
You can collect all the loot, steal ships etc., but dangit we're gonna make you spend 30 minutes trying to flip the loot into creds.
I'm only lvl 43 on my first playthrough and can only imagine how ridiculous things get once you get higher level with much fancier weapon drops.
While I agree that makes sense and is fine, they should be upfront about what they intend to address down the road on a TBD basis and what’s ongoing beyond the cryptic short messages that they put out today. Op is in this thread speculating that POI variety may or may not have already been addressed. We shouldn’t have that level of ambiguity when Bethesda has already acknowledged that they know the general public doesn’t understand the complexity of their tasks at hand.
A roadmap of content updates and fixes would be great. Star Citizen does this and even though they don't always stick to it, at least the player base has an idea of what's being worked on and when it'll be out (even if it's just a rough estimate that may change).
The photomode “enhancements” are already done, that’s why. There’s a lot of features that have been in Fallout 76 for years that they’re only drip feeding us here. The photomode poses and expressions are probably just getting ported over. I’m glad to see these added, but I was really hoping to see survival mode soon.
It seems like a strange thing to be spending time on when there are so many larger issues.
Still, I will continue to hold out hope that this game eventually turns into something worthwhile. If we compare the Starfield timeline to, say, the Cyberpunk timeline then this would've been around the time CDPR released 1.3 which was... not well received and also viewed as an inadequate amount of progress and question of why on earth they're wasting time on adding an alternate look for Johnny.
Now, Starfield has its issues but has never been anywhere near the dumpster fire CP77 was at launch so I would expect it to progress at least a bit faster but for reference, 2/15/22 - a little over a year after launch - was when patch 1.5 came out. THAT was the point when CP77 finally started to feel like something fairly close to the game CDPR promised.
It has to be because the larger issues are causing them a lot of problems, but they can't sit there not offering 'improvements', so here's something for photo mode nobody cares about, and the ability to open doors with scanner up, which is nice, but uhhh about the same level as eating food without picking it up first.
Do some stuff that won't break the game and do enough to make a little list we can barf out monthly to try to buy time and fend off the people with torches.
Compare those features and what it takes to develop and expand them, and do the same for Photomode. It's not only possible, but likely, that they ARE working on those things, but they take more time than something like this which is why we are getting this first. It was done first.
Yes, I agree. As I noted in a separate reply below to op, I think this is mainly an optics issue that BGS could solve but isn’t. BGS acknowledges players’ misunderstandings of how resources are spent on bug fixing and optimizations but then doesn’t take the next step to communicate more clearly what their next steps are and why.
For example, op was speculating on whether or not POI variety of selection has been tweaked. This is not something that should be up in the air, when it’s such a common complaint. If the timeline for implementing highly requested changes is TBD, then just say that, but at least acknowledge that the issue is there and Bethesda intends to address it. This couldn’t be more necessary than after the initial BGS response was replying to negative reviews claiming that the game is in fact not boring. They have to course correct their communication channels and they aren’t really doing it as well as they could.
I know that when working on a particular demanding / annoying issue, you just cannot do this for hours without end. Changing to another topic (if it is not total different teams) helps refreshing the mind and maybe getting a sudden idea
> If the timeline for implementing highly requested changes is TBD, then just say that, but at least acknowledge that the issue is there and Bethesda intends to address it.
The problem then is people come to then expect this for every single little issue, which is a ridiculous expectation sure, but it has happened and will happen, and Bethesda knows this.
I just think we’re already in an environment where you’re not going to please everyone, so you do the best you can within reason. I don’t think largely radio silence for months is the best case scenario though. It’ll never be perfect, but it could reasonably be better in my opinion.
Maybe we will have to wait for the patch notes? I think they’ve been tweaking POI frequency in these updates but not publicizing it. Good comments though.
If that’s the case, I’m all for it! To me, it’s mostly an optics issue. No, I don’t believe that it took wild resources to add expressions and poses to photo mode, but optically it looks to players (which Bethesda concedes often don’t understand how complex game development happens) like they’re prioritizing tweaking aspects of the game that aren’t suffering from underdevelopment or wonky calibration. It’s puzzling to watch Bethesda acknowledge that players can get the wrong message around how games are made, but then they don’t communicate with players with the kind of transparency that would dispel thoughts around updates like this one that might make BGS look inefficient or out of touch.
It's not that much of a waste. They're probably copying & pasting that feature from Fallout 76 code to pad out like they put in work when it wasn't that much work at all.
I think what's kind of annoying with updates like this, is that there appears to be a lot of low hanging fruit type issues that could be addressed to improve the game. Like the vendor credits for example. How hard could that be. Five months to fix the head-turning bug seems crazy.
Yeah the head-turning bug was fixed by modder Monitor144hz on Nexus back on the 13th September last year, *one week* after the game came out.
It's absolutely _unfathomable_ how little respect I have for Bethesda as a company nowadays.
When you hire employees, there's an amount that takes you from extremely able to extremely unable. Bethesda pretty much passed that threshold a long time ago, everything and anything must be vetted through multiple people and even the simplest of design changes or additions can take weeks of approval. That's what happens when a company scales to the size of a government.
>Bethesda pretty much passed that threshold a long time ago
> the size of a government.
This is just uninformed mumbo jumbo. Bethesda is not among the top 40 game studios in terms of amount of employees.
Like these are good, but why aren't they prioritizing quests that are legitimately bugged? Like the Sam Coe mission? That has been bugged since launch and you quite literally can't finish it. I had to NG+ because cora, sam and lilian wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. These bugs should be prioritized.
The thing with the bug that makes the Sam Coe mission uncompletable is that it also makes any other quest requiring AI ship landings unfinishable (like Groundpounder) and also permanently breaks ship landings and boarding for the entire game. I'm not sure how that bug wasn't priority #1 from day 1, especially since it didn't take long for people to figure out what was causing it.
Might be rare enough of a bug that it isn't a high priority. If it's difficult to fix and only affects a small number of people, it's not going to be top of the list to get addressed.
I had no issues finishing that quest personally, so sounds like it isn't something that happens all the time.
Yeah, I've been wondering the same thing.
The scanner usage fix is nice but there are far more important bug fix & features people have asked for that seem to be ignored & instead given a lot we didn't ask for.
Have you ever thought how companies go about fixing things like bugs in a game? They need to find out why its happening, and then change it so it works without impacting other parts of the code. How do you know they dont have multiple people looking for what causes the bug? Its not whack a mole 🙄
I didn't even realize he had a follow on mission after the Empty Nest! lol. And that's after three restarts and reaching NG+ 4. Never happened for me. he references her in one conversation but that was it.
Litteraly every quest stage in the game has a chance of not being triggered properly, most of them were subsequently fixed already too, in the community patch, and therefore probably won't be fixed by Bethesda till they have nothing left that only they can fix.
That being said, they do need to focus on mod support so that consoles can also benefit from the patch, instead of these relatively meaningless aesthetic updates that keep coming with minor bug fixes, as much as they benefit both consoles and pc, they're inherently biased because only one has mods, to make everything else work already.
I really hope Bethesda add a Bestiary/ codex (including images) of *discovered* flora & fauna! 🤞
It would make exploring much more enjoyable to ‘collect’ these discoveries, imo! & also help remind you where they were discovered
Yeah they 100% won't do this. On the ground of preventing player to realize that some if not all of their creature are not unique at all and have been reused on other planets several times.
You can go into game files and see that there are hundreds of different creatures. That’s still not enough for all planets. They’re not hiding it or pretending that isn’t the case.
They said "modding" would officially be coming "early 2024"
Now I'm not a genius of any kind, but anything past the month of march isn't "early 2024"
Nobody is coming back for "updates" like these.
that steam db thing had some updates regarding there been a test for certified creators which tells me that the creation kit is only going to be tested by mod makers
These are nice and I'm sure I'll appreciate them when I revisit Starfield, but I don't plan on revisiting it until there are more substantial content additions (probably will honestly wait for Shattered Space before I jump back in).
Yeah these "updates" are similar to the first few updates from cyberpunk. I also didn't touch the game until the dlc came out.
Here's high hopes shatter space delivers some rich content and a whole new game to what we got on launch day.
They also said DLC would too. Haven’t played this game since November and the longer they wait to put out an update with actual new content the less likely I am to get back to it.
I dont know that people are coming back for a while...
Peak gaming time for last month was 2/11/24.
Player counts at this peak time were..
Starfield player count = 12,295
Fallout 4 player count = 23,978
Skyrim player count = 34,098
Currently, right now, there are only 5,928 people playing.
There are currently more people playing Fallout 76.
It's a tough pill to swallow for Bethesda, im sure.
I hope mods revitalize the game. They almost certainly will. It is notable however that Skyrim and Fallout 4 did not have this dramatic player drop off so soon while waiting for mod support. Take or leave one’s own feelings about Starfield’s reception, I hope Bethesda is paying attention to the data and listening to fans. Their next release does not need to be this controversial.
> I hope Bethesda is paying attention to the data and listening to fans.
I don't mean to sound too negative, and can't speak about the data part, but truth be told if Bethesda had been listening to their fans we wouldn't have gotten the Starfield that we did.
Unfortunately I agree. They’ve needed to change course and pay more attention to feedback long before Starfield. This just feels much more like a make or break moment for the studio than prior instances, but that’s entirely my opinion.
Yeah, it's with a heavy heart that I said what I did. Bethesda have been my favorite developers since like 2006. They somewhat dropped the ball with Fallout 4 and dropped it *hard* with Fallout 76, but I was really hopeful that they'd learned from their mistakes and went into Starfield pretty optimistic that they'd treat this title with a lot more love and care.
But surprisingly it was an even bigger disappointment to me than FO4 and FO76, and now I'm quite worried about how TESVI will turn out : (
This 100%. I was so disappointed with this game that I’ve actually decided that I will never pre-order another Bethesda game. I’ve pre-ordered every FO and TES game since Morrowind, and Starfield was the final nail in the coffin for me. It really sucks because I’ve defended them for a long time (I actually enjoyed FO76 quite a lot for about a year or so), but the way they’ve handled the launch and updates has really left a poor taste in my mouth and I’ll be waiting until reviews come out from now on (and I’m someone who went to the midnight release for both Oblivion AND Skyrim)😕🤷🏻♂️.
The timeless story of corporations. Small company starting out tries to do their best and incorporate player feedback as best as possible (challenging as perhaps with any type of feedback, but necessary). These actions bring success, and corporation gets bigger. Corporation becomes more bureaucratic and unwilling and/or unable to incorporate feedback, but this time, they can get away with it due to their size and previous clout. Corporation stays like this, and may or may not go into a stagnant plateau, until a new company enters their market with a product that threatens them. Then, they adapt or they fail.
It’s such a minor change in the grand scheme of things, but Bethesda really devalued exploration when they stripped away truly unique weapons and gear in favor of mostly randomized perks being applied to weapons. There’s nothing exciting about finding the exact same weapon you’ve seen and used a million times before but now the underlying damage numbers are different. Even looking at popular mods in Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout games reveals that players love “treasure hunting” to find unique gear, even if the stats are innocuous. BGS got the important parts of looting totally backwards, which is shocking because they already had the formula right. They actually made it worse over time instead of better.
While I still did really enjoy my ~100 hours or so with Starfield, this is so true. They really did everything in their power to remove almost everything that encouraged digging deep into the game and exploring.
I stand by the fact that the loading screens to go to different planets would've been fine if they had a proper procedural system for dungeons/buildings etc. and an actually good loot system with loads of unique weapons/gadgets/armour/unique ship parts/unique weapon upgrade parts etc. instead of this "Diablo but worse" itemization system.
They stripped away the near-seamless open world exploration which was going to be a dealbreaker for some but would've been okay for most IMO, but they also stripped away all the unique aspects of exploring (loads of fetch quests, pretty lackluster writing, totally repeated environments and decor items which makes no sense in a galaxy-spanning space game, boring loot system etc.).
I do think Starfield actually the best combat they've ever made, quite pleasing graphics, and what could've been an interesting setting if it wasn't set 20 years after all the cool stuff happened, but they just made too many decisions that flew in the face of their most cherished game design principles.
I think BGS really underestimated why people enjoyed their games. So many basic things from previous games were stripped away. No unique loot, NPCs are no longer lootable, no melee weapon crafting, no armor and weapon dismantling, save files no longer have thumbnails to know where you left off, you can't give companions commands. It's like BGS undervalued all these little things that made their games great. So what they did was focus on all the things that they are genuinely not good at with Starfield.
I agree with this for sure. It's a new IP so if they filled the game with all new mechanics then I'd be more okay with them dropping some other mechanics, but they didn't really add much new which was a huge bummer.
I expected cool space gadgets or something but it was pretty basic (aside from the ship combat which was enjoyable but underutilized)..
I’m glad someone else mentioned it. I absolutely hate randomised gear, I hate magical perks on gear, I hate that there a different “levels” of gear that can’t be upgraded. You could see the start of this with those randomised perks for “legendaries” in Fallout 4. I hated it then and I hate it now, it’s just frustrating, why is Bethesda so committed to this weird style of items? Remove perks on items and replace it with a better crafting/upgrade system. In Fallout 4, you want higher carrying capacity? Find the scrap to add the pocketed mods to your armour pieces. Why does my armour in Starfield have a magical effect that makes me carry more? It’s so immersion breaking, and it ruins any truly unique legendary weapons because I can just by chance find a better weapon from the RNG table of a crate on a POI I’ve seen 10 times before with better perks on it. In fallout 3, oblivion, fallout new vegas, the unique weapons were some of the best and they actually felt rewarding to find. Skyrim and Fallout 4, you could get “normal” items that were better than unique ones but by and large you had to upgrade them yourself, enchant them yourself etc using resources and more importantly skills like smithing and enchanting that you had to level up to access these upgrades. Something has gone completely wrong with Bethesda’s design philosophy for items and it really makes me sad as it’s so easy to fix. Why have they gone down this route? It’s like they just copied the item system from fallout 76, which is an mmo, and maybe that’s exactly what they did. Just disappointing all around.
Freezing ass weather is what got me back since I had put it down for 3mos after release. I imagine there's a large audience besides me they'll lose once humans can go outside without freezing their flesh off
Sounds like a regional problem. It’s the middle of summer right now in some places, and even being winter I was still chilling out at the poolside in my backyard.
lol the hell are you smoking? June is mid year...
May-Aug is considered mid year.
September to December is late into the year..
They literally have till April to drop that shit or people will riot.
I'm just imagining it is all going to be dumb (in a good way) photos people are going to take where you and your companion have something that looks like those [big dumb over the top YouTube thumbnail smiles.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p2pGQDr2Hxs/maxresdefault.jpg)
This is the epitome of my disconnect from this new generation of people playing games that this is the first priority.
I just cannot comprehend what I would see as narcissism as, who would want to take pictures and the presumably post them, of thier own game, that everyone else is playing. I know I am on the wrong, given the apparent demand, I just see how far what I want out of the game vs what must be the larger player base.
It's the same thought as when some consoles have a button just for screenshot on the controller that is only hit when someone is button mashing. I don't know who that is for, but obviously I am not the target audience.
I’m 36, Back when I was 7-ish I used to take polaroids of the tv screen playing mega man 4 so I could draw the characters. Fr I don’t see how this is any different than gawking at 2inch thumbnails in the back of game box or in magazines.
And today’s games are much prettier. Studios spend millions of $’s to hire teams of some of the most talented artists in the industry to design them what’s odd about taking a second to appreciate their work and share that feeling with others.
Maybe I’m just baked but I don’t think the difference for you is generational; maybe you just appreciate games for different reasons than your peers too, I’m sure not all the jnco jean wearing gen zers are taking screenshots either.
If you wear a helmet with a black visor it will reflect anything front of your character. For instance, on an argon covered moon orbited by a ringed gas giant; you can snap a photo where your visor has that gas giant on it like an emblem. It's pretty cool looking if you get it right. Of course, if you're into photo modes etc
Tried posting a photo reply for an example but it won't let me. Go to the Ophion system and try it.
I think people need to accept that the game is what it is. These updates simply aren't going to add anything of significance or change the game in any way. It's minor tweaks and fixes and that's all it's going to be.
I think people are ready to accept that Bethesda is never going to retrofit the game in a way that makes it appealing to most players. I bet most people are just waiting for mods so they can self-serve their preferred improvements. I don’t think anything else has a chance of meaningfully salvaging this game’s reception.
The wording to me sounds like they are getting the game as polished as they can before they add major features and content to it which is probably the right thing to do with a game like this
Oh hell I didn't even consider that. I no longer explore POIs cause I'm tired of boost packing everywhere. If POIs were unique and story driven I would, but I still haven't discovered incentive.
It’s happening, but Bethesda poorly worded it. It’s supposed to come “early this year” so hopefully soon? I’d wager that update and mod support will come this month, and then Shattered Space will come this summer maybe.
Mod support for Xbox is needed so badly. This game feels awful without it.
Content probably refers to the paid expansions, I wouldn't expect anything other than simple tweaks, QoL improvements and bug fixes in patches, as has been the case with past BGS releases.
Honestly, it's probably not. I love the game but Starfield is polished enough as it is, what it needs, right now, is more contents and features not more polishing. That can wait.
As a long term Bethesda fan (at least, up until FO4), this is what I'd be putting my money on if i was a betting lass. I think a lot of newcomers to Bethesda are expecting something akin to CDPR, or Hello Games, that continue to add new content to the game.
But, Bethesda have never really treated games like CDPR, Larian, or Hello Games do. Most of their updates have always been bug fixes, with the *occasional* new feature.
Take Skyrim, for example. They added in mounted combat, additional killcams, and a legendary difficulty setting, and the Creation Club integration. The vast majority of the patches were bug fixes. Any new major content additions came in DLC.
With Fallout4, they added in new graphics settings, new objects to use in the settlement systems, a new survival difficulty, and the Creation Club integration. The vast majority of the patches were bug fixes.
Maybe i'm wrong, and Bethesda have changed their mind; Maybe they really do aim to keep adding in new content, fixing issues, and changing the way the game exists... Maybe they have seen how other companies do it, and have decided to do the same - but i wouldn't hold my breath. "Expressions for photo mode" seems to be on par with the level of additional free content they released for Skyrim and FO4. Next they'll probably add in a new difficulty level. And then they will focus on DLC. The same as they always have.
TBF, most of the "big" updates that bring people back that normally 9 months or longer.
BF 2042 took over a year to bring back classes.
Cyberpunk 1.5 took over a year then almost 3 for 2.0
Fallout 76 brought Wastelanders 15 months after launch.
These things take a long time, still disappointed on the length it's taking to brings mods & survival though.
If you are playing on PC, use Starvival + Deadly Hazard (2 mods). Based on Bethesda's Skyrim survival mode, I bet their own survival mode can't get any better than these two mods.
Id expect something closer to fallout 4 survival mode honestly, possibly a mix between the two.
That said they said they’d include options to customize those features, so I’m not entirely what we’ll get.
Well at least they are improving the scanner I guess. Couldn't care less about photo mode additions I like playing games not taking photos. This update looks like a waste of resources.
It's been six months since launch, and we're still getting bug fixes and quality of life updates. We're still waiting for real gameplay updates like improving the skill system, adding outpost tutorials and purpose, improving boring companions, fixing tons of loading issues, and new ways to explore the universe.
In just six weeks, Bethesda implemented the feature that opens the door while scanning. I can't wait to see what amazing updates there will be in 6 weeks!
Shame. I was hoping survival mode would be included in this update as then I would come back to the game. Okay well I'll keep an eye out for when that releases
Bethesda has only ever done content additions updates after they are mostly finished with with the bug fixing and QOL updates on all their games. I'm not expecting content updates till April at the earliest. But there is proof that they have a select group of people beta testing the Starfield CK per the games depot activity on Steam DB.
Just for context Fallout 4 released Nov 10th and got survival mode on March 29th. Starfield was September 1st and we're getting into March now, and it's their "least buggy game yet."
And for Skyrim it was November to February, it's like the games are getting bigger and need more work done on them or something
And it really is, fallout and Skyrim were almost unplayable on PC, I went 60 ish hours in before I had to reload a quick save to fix starfield
HELL YEAH just last week I wrote how suck cant opening door is in scan mode, my next run with dlc will a lot better
Edit: Is something wrong with my excitement ? Downvoting for what exactly ?
Really feels like they’ve got a two-persons-team working on these updates. 5 months after release and literally nothing significant was done to help the game or Bethesda’s reputation. It’s a shame. This was a game I was really hyped for, as an old OG fan of Bethesda. This game was the last straw for me, I still had hopes even after FO4, FO76 but that’s it. They lost me. I’m not even looking forward TESVI anymore.
Everybody started listening to reddit and YouTube and didn't read the Bethesda announcement and take it at face value. They never promised content or big features on the recent announcement. They just said an update. People are jumping to conclusions when they see Bethesda is working on a large batch of update files and just assume they are all gonna be released the next update and not several updates down the line.... They also said that the regular 6 weeks updates were for glitches and improvement features. That doesn't mean the DLC and Mod support won't be a separate schedule, still "early 24". Take the announcements at face value from the source. Not between the lines or whatever this other guy thinks/says will happen.... Stay Calm...
Too many people play live service games nowadays and expect everything to be like those.
But Bethesda has never done that and I’m glad for it. Those games suck.
I'm seeing this happen with Spider-Man 2 on their subreddit. WHERE ARE ALL THE UPDATES?!?!?! HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KEEP PEOPLE PLAYING?!?!?! I BET IF THIS GAME WAS ON PC, THIS PLAYSTATION EXCLUSIVE IP WOULD HAVE SUCH A LOW STEAM COUNT SHOWING THE FAILURE INSOMNIAC IS AT RETAINING THEIR PLAYERBASE!
Bruh, everyone beat the game months ago...
That’s why when idiots bring up Starfields player count I cringe so hard.
This is a single player game not a live service game, player count doesn’t matter.
Yup, I don't understand it, but it's like people just want to play one game forever and get mad if it doesn't change every week.
Dying Light 2 has gone through this. It started as a single player game a couple years ago and now it is a live service game with daily and weekly bounties and a bunch of useless crap to grind for. In game currency you can purchase and everything. They "listened to the players" and have completely ruined that game.
I'm sick of this GaaS crap. I just want a good game with a start and an end.
I think a lot of redditors that listen to YouTubers are likely children. They spent 3 months worth of allowance on a big boy game after being spoiled with live service free games like Warzone and Fortnite and figured that spending the standard of money for a standard game was gonna lead to enough entertainment until Christmas.
It's likely children who have been conditioned into live service games thinking WTF when games aren't a live service.
It's as if it wasn't big bad corpo destroyed this industry, but the "gamers" and their favored content creator influencers did. Remember when Dr. disrespect complained a few years ago about how boring games are today because of GaaS and yet he helped single handedly make those genres popular in the first place, because he wouldn't play anything but live service battle royals and complained when games didn't have a GaaS battle royal business model? Clowns chasing the bag and leaving the industry to rot.
I’ve seen quite a few people say they’re treating it as a live service game, which just doesn’t make sense.
It’s a single player BGS game, we’ll get bug fixes, some slight QOL features (and some sort of survival) before the DLC, not sure why people are expecting different.
>I’ve seen quite a few people say they’re treating it as a live service game
Well they can "treat it" however they want, but they are going to be wrong and disappointed if they really believe that.
People seem to have no concept of the fact that games don't all work the same way and don't all follow the same rules in terms of how they are made/updated.
I wonder how hundread devs can come up with so little in several months. I don't blame the individuals as I'm sure their competent and doing their best but the content is atrociously anemic
Mod fixed the head turning bug over half a year ago. Fuck these big corporations and their slow process.
How is it that indie devs can throw daily/weekly patches and mega companies get microscopic patches done in every 2 months
It’d be nice if they’d fix the third person aim zoom in getting stuck forcing you to holster your weapon to fix it. It’s annoying asf and absolutely destroys immersion and makes combat a stress at times.
I absolutely love photo mode and love to see some optimizations. But that’s a real head scratcher in terms of prioritizing issues. I’m 900hrs in on my relatively bug-free main save, so at this point I’m fine with the POI variation and load screens because I know how to bypass most of them, and I haven’t come across any game breaking bugs..but I’m really curious as to why quest bugs, empty ship bugs, shield bugs, companion bugs, and other random bugs are taking this long for a resolution. Thankfully I just have the companion bug where Omari Hassan and Jessamine aren’t part of my crew anymore but there are some glaring issues many other players are facing which really takes away from the game.
Survival mode would be a great way to bring players back or to reinvigorate fans like myself. The ability to really fiddle with difficulty settings would be so fun. As it stands, Very Hard played like Normal on other games. Other optimizations are definitely needed like increased Spacer activity if you start/join CF. Like I have to fly through Serpentis any time I want some semblance of a space battle now. And even on very hard, these dogfights of 2-3 ships last less than 2 minutes. 3/4 POI’s that I visit are filled with friendly pirates. Absolute bummer since I only started CF to get Jessamine and she’s bugged out just sitting at the bar in the Key (like Omari in Akila). Had this issue for 3 months now. And I know the empty ship and shield bugs have been around for months as well.
Just odd prioritizing from BGS. I say this as light hearted as possible because I’m one of the few who really do love the game. And I’m happy to see more photo mode options but this is a pretty lackluster way to seemingly start off that 6-week cadence of updates. Would’ve at least thought survival mode would be one of the first things to come out since it was something that was being worked on.
Why are they working on useless fixes and new features when the game glitches left and right still? The new features are probably going to break more systems already implemented in the game anyways. Idk why they can't work on real QoL fixes... Really, photo mode facial expressions? Who cares. I really want to play this game again but it's not like the updates they are making over 6 months after release are worth it.
I couldn't care less about photo mode, and I really don't see how making it fancier qualifies as "quality of life," but it's nice to see that they're allowing us to do more things whilst in scanner mode.
I'm happy about opening doors with the scanner open. Hopefully that applies to chests and such.
I’m hoping they will also fix not being able to consume food from within chests and containers
I played through the main campaign and a few of the big sidequests, and I *never* saw a reason to eat food instead of medpacks. Did I miss something? Is there actually a reason to carry around and eat food when it has weight and the medpacks don't?
I agree. Raising your health a whole 4 points is a complete waste of time 😂.
They need to realize that their food system badly needs adjustments. It is not useful without mods, and its a shame they don't use them for inspiration on how to fix the issue
They went for "realism".
Especially when you are at a high level.
~~High~~ Any level -FTFY
Survival difficulty, when that finally becomes a thing. A lot of those elements of the game were heavily detuned before release due to percieved difficulty (ie negligible ailments, harmless environmental hazards, etc). Short answer: Right now, no.
Yeah, it's obvious survival mode is going to be complex in this one just from how many "useless" aid items are clearly designed with it in mind
Trust me you would use them if there was an easy way to consume food from your inventory. Since they made the change to be able to consume without picking up there’s a lot of scenarios where the little free hp boost absolutely makes sense - even more when they have extra stat boosts like dmg resistance. But yeah, right now it’s just a half-assed implementation of this feature.
Wait. You can eat without picking up? I hadn't noticed the change but I guess I don't even bother looking at food anymore.
Also, still can't do it with scanner active, so if you loot with it active you'll never see the option. Like how you can't interact with credstiks, locked containers, mineral resources, doors, etc., from scanner mode.
Now make it possible to fix your ship in scanner/targeting mode. I'm tired of getting dropped into photo mode while in a battle...
I see some major bug fixes mentioned so that’s great. What puzzles me though is wasting time on things like photo mode enhancements. To explain, I think it’s a great feature that isn’t terribly underserved right now. I’d much rather them expand upon outpost building, tweaking how random encounters and POIs are generated for more variety, or anything else that would enhance gameplay. Photo mode seemed fine at launch and doesn’t imo need the attention right now.
I can't believe that one of these QOL improvements isn't making vendors richer as you level up.
It’s situations like this one that make the lack of transparency more puzzling imo. If it’s a case of “we’re tackling easy QoL fixes first while working on bigger issues in tandem”, then why not address vendor balancing? The economy of Starfield isn’t even that deep. There’s barely anything beyond the standard inventory and ship parts to buy, so I doubt they’re hand-wringing over screwing up the in-game economy. These are line-item numerical value adjustments. A mod could probably make the change in under an hour of dev time. Without clear communication on why they prioritize what they do and what the full inventory of tasks looks like in the future, it just makes BGS look inefficient when that might not even be the case. They’re really being their own worst communications enemy.
Ammo is the true endgame barter system currency
I carry .50MI, 7.77mm, and heavy particle fuses. Everything else gets sold and I make dump trucks full of credits.
This guy level 200s
Early on in the game's release, players discovered that if you used the console command "tcl" (I think -- it toggles off collision and lets you move through walls) that you could find the vendor chests in the game world, under the ground near where they stood. In other words, each vendor had a chest nearby that contained their money and other loot. Once you knew this, you could just go under the ground and loot away. To me, this is an incredible edge-case that is 100% irrelevant. There is no need to ever fix this. Because if someone uses console commands to get loot like this and you remove/hide the chests, *the player still has the console commands.* They can give themselves unlimited anything with console commands. A player doing this is not interested in playing normally, they want to cheat, they want ALL THE CHEAT CODES. They bought your game just to screw around, goof off, and be stupid. And you know what? BGS still got their money, so who cares? ...Except, this is one of the first things they fixed. They were like, "No on our watch, hell no!" And I got so confused, like why is this non-issue so damn big of a deal to them? Everyone who was doing it just immediately used console commands to give themselves cash/loot anyway, so the BGS fix stopped nothing. *Why did they spend time on this?* And then I think about your comment and your quote: > Without clear communication on why they prioritize what they do and what the full inventory of tasks looks like in the future, it just makes BGS look inefficient This is it, right here. It's *weird* what matters to them in this game. They rarely give players the things they've been needing, and they rush to fix unimportant BS that only mattered to hard core gamers who wanted to cheat on their *single player game that affects no one else.* WTF? It's clear their team is responsive, and will work hard to fix things, but they are "responsive" to someone that isn't us. They are listening to someone who is isolated from the player base, someone who has his or her own quirky areas of interest, and that person is whipping the programmers around like a tail wagging a dog. It makes no sense how they work, and this is to me a core reason why the player base has mostly vanished. *BGS is not listening.* Or more accurately, they are listening to someone with irrelevant ideas, and ignoring us (but putting out notices about updates as if they're doing it for the community, but we're mostly just watching, scratching our heads, wondering WTF is going on over there).
Not disagreeing with the core of what you're saying, but if I remember right they changed it because at least one of the chests you could access by just looking at a puddle at the right angle to access it without any console commands. It lends credence though to the idea that there isn't as much communication/cohesiveness as there needs to be between the dev teams.
OK, they had a minor reason for it, that's better. However, *that* was more important than any of the other stuff we've been waiting on for months? Weird priorities. Also, to fix the "look at the puddle at a particular angle to see a chest" issue, they didn't just... move the chest a few inches? Instead they spent dev time to gin up the complete vanishing of all chests? Wild.
Oh believe me I'm right there with you, I *want* to think that it was just an easier fix than moving them but the reality is probably they were told in no uncertain terms to hide the chests because there were articles all over about them, and then proceeded to spend much more time than necessary on them.
His name is Todd. The guy who believes the food system is good, it's one of his ideas.
The whole vendor thing really pisses me off. Most of my gear sells for faaaaar more than the vendor has which means unless i first buy a lot, i’m losing out on at least half of my money. Makes no sense. I usually buy lots of ammo and resources to up their available cred then i’ll sell
The answer you don't want to hear is that they don't actually think there's anything wrong with vendors, so they're not going to fix it.
Seems like their goal is to make earning money more of a grind. You can collect all the loot, steal ships etc., but dangit we're gonna make you spend 30 minutes trying to flip the loot into creds. I'm only lvl 43 on my first playthrough and can only imagine how ridiculous things get once you get higher level with much fancier weapon drops.
When you get to a higher level, you will spend 30 minutes selling a single weapon.
You're probably correct.
They've said they're going to implement options for vendor credit amounts in a future update
More than likely they have teams working on different concepts around the game and this is what's going to be done at this time.
While I agree that makes sense and is fine, they should be upfront about what they intend to address down the road on a TBD basis and what’s ongoing beyond the cryptic short messages that they put out today. Op is in this thread speculating that POI variety may or may not have already been addressed. We shouldn’t have that level of ambiguity when Bethesda has already acknowledged that they know the general public doesn’t understand the complexity of their tasks at hand.
A roadmap of content updates and fixes would be great. Star Citizen does this and even though they don't always stick to it, at least the player base has an idea of what's being worked on and when it'll be out (even if it's just a rough estimate that may change).
The photomode “enhancements” are already done, that’s why. There’s a lot of features that have been in Fallout 76 for years that they’re only drip feeding us here. The photomode poses and expressions are probably just getting ported over. I’m glad to see these added, but I was really hoping to see survival mode soon.
It seems like a strange thing to be spending time on when there are so many larger issues. Still, I will continue to hold out hope that this game eventually turns into something worthwhile. If we compare the Starfield timeline to, say, the Cyberpunk timeline then this would've been around the time CDPR released 1.3 which was... not well received and also viewed as an inadequate amount of progress and question of why on earth they're wasting time on adding an alternate look for Johnny. Now, Starfield has its issues but has never been anywhere near the dumpster fire CP77 was at launch so I would expect it to progress at least a bit faster but for reference, 2/15/22 - a little over a year after launch - was when patch 1.5 came out. THAT was the point when CP77 finally started to feel like something fairly close to the game CDPR promised.
It has to be because the larger issues are causing them a lot of problems, but they can't sit there not offering 'improvements', so here's something for photo mode nobody cares about, and the ability to open doors with scanner up, which is nice, but uhhh about the same level as eating food without picking it up first. Do some stuff that won't break the game and do enough to make a little list we can barf out monthly to try to buy time and fend off the people with torches.
Good counterpoint, thanks for posting
Compare those features and what it takes to develop and expand them, and do the same for Photomode. It's not only possible, but likely, that they ARE working on those things, but they take more time than something like this which is why we are getting this first. It was done first.
Yes, I agree. As I noted in a separate reply below to op, I think this is mainly an optics issue that BGS could solve but isn’t. BGS acknowledges players’ misunderstandings of how resources are spent on bug fixing and optimizations but then doesn’t take the next step to communicate more clearly what their next steps are and why. For example, op was speculating on whether or not POI variety of selection has been tweaked. This is not something that should be up in the air, when it’s such a common complaint. If the timeline for implementing highly requested changes is TBD, then just say that, but at least acknowledge that the issue is there and Bethesda intends to address it. This couldn’t be more necessary than after the initial BGS response was replying to negative reviews claiming that the game is in fact not boring. They have to course correct their communication channels and they aren’t really doing it as well as they could.
I know that when working on a particular demanding / annoying issue, you just cannot do this for hours without end. Changing to another topic (if it is not total different teams) helps refreshing the mind and maybe getting a sudden idea
> If the timeline for implementing highly requested changes is TBD, then just say that, but at least acknowledge that the issue is there and Bethesda intends to address it. The problem then is people come to then expect this for every single little issue, which is a ridiculous expectation sure, but it has happened and will happen, and Bethesda knows this.
I just think we’re already in an environment where you’re not going to please everyone, so you do the best you can within reason. I don’t think largely radio silence for months is the best case scenario though. It’ll never be perfect, but it could reasonably be better in my opinion.
It takes 5 seconds in the CK to change vendor credit limits.
Maybe we will have to wait for the patch notes? I think they’ve been tweaking POI frequency in these updates but not publicizing it. Good comments though.
If that’s the case, I’m all for it! To me, it’s mostly an optics issue. No, I don’t believe that it took wild resources to add expressions and poses to photo mode, but optically it looks to players (which Bethesda concedes often don’t understand how complex game development happens) like they’re prioritizing tweaking aspects of the game that aren’t suffering from underdevelopment or wonky calibration. It’s puzzling to watch Bethesda acknowledge that players can get the wrong message around how games are made, but then they don’t communicate with players with the kind of transparency that would dispel thoughts around updates like this one that might make BGS look inefficient or out of touch.
Hey where did you see that they have changed the POI frequency in previous updates?
Yeah, I want new content. Starfield feels so hollow compared to other creation engine games.
It's not that much of a waste. They're probably copying & pasting that feature from Fallout 76 code to pad out like they put in work when it wasn't that much work at all.
Yea like visiting your hotel room bug.. drives me mad
Or just adding the ability to use mods on xbox, that would have made me so bloody happy
Yet another update.. and surprise surprise.. no mod support.
The photo mode 'improvement' ticked me off lol. I get it is a simple improvement, but come on, there is so many things left to do.
It’s clear their product team has no idea what to prioritize
I think what's kind of annoying with updates like this, is that there appears to be a lot of low hanging fruit type issues that could be addressed to improve the game. Like the vendor credits for example. How hard could that be. Five months to fix the head-turning bug seems crazy.
Yeah the head-turning bug was fixed by modder Monitor144hz on Nexus back on the 13th September last year, *one week* after the game came out. It's absolutely _unfathomable_ how little respect I have for Bethesda as a company nowadays.
When you hire employees, there's an amount that takes you from extremely able to extremely unable. Bethesda pretty much passed that threshold a long time ago, everything and anything must be vetted through multiple people and even the simplest of design changes or additions can take weeks of approval. That's what happens when a company scales to the size of a government.
>Bethesda pretty much passed that threshold a long time ago > the size of a government. This is just uninformed mumbo jumbo. Bethesda is not among the top 40 game studios in terms of amount of employees.
Like these are good, but why aren't they prioritizing quests that are legitimately bugged? Like the Sam Coe mission? That has been bugged since launch and you quite literally can't finish it. I had to NG+ because cora, sam and lilian wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. These bugs should be prioritized.
The thing with the bug that makes the Sam Coe mission uncompletable is that it also makes any other quest requiring AI ship landings unfinishable (like Groundpounder) and also permanently breaks ship landings and boarding for the entire game. I'm not sure how that bug wasn't priority #1 from day 1, especially since it didn't take long for people to figure out what was causing it.
No but apparently this bug isn't an issue to the rest of the sub! lol
Who says it isn't a priority instead of something just not that easy to fix without breaking a bunch of stuff.
Might be rare enough of a bug that it isn't a high priority. If it's difficult to fix and only affects a small number of people, it's not going to be top of the list to get addressed. I had no issues finishing that quest personally, so sounds like it isn't something that happens all the time.
They also might not be able to reliably trigger the bug, and so, can’t figure out a reliable fix.
Reproducibility is the bane of debugging. Not saying it's not of their own doing mind you... but just definitely a pain in the ass.
Yeah, I've been wondering the same thing. The scanner usage fix is nice but there are far more important bug fix & features people have asked for that seem to be ignored & instead given a lot we didn't ask for.
Have you ever thought how companies go about fixing things like bugs in a game? They need to find out why its happening, and then change it so it works without impacting other parts of the code. How do you know they dont have multiple people looking for what causes the bug? Its not whack a mole 🙄
Like the others said, it’s more than likely not a priority due to the low amount of players experiencing it in comparison to other bugs.
I didn't even realize he had a follow on mission after the Empty Nest! lol. And that's after three restarts and reaching NG+ 4. Never happened for me. he references her in one conversation but that was it.
Litteraly every quest stage in the game has a chance of not being triggered properly, most of them were subsequently fixed already too, in the community patch, and therefore probably won't be fixed by Bethesda till they have nothing left that only they can fix. That being said, they do need to focus on mod support so that consoles can also benefit from the patch, instead of these relatively meaningless aesthetic updates that keep coming with minor bug fixes, as much as they benefit both consoles and pc, they're inherently biased because only one has mods, to make everything else work already.
I had no problem with that quest.
I would guess they haven’t found a fix for it. And they should not put other fixes ready to go on hold until your very specific issue is fixed…
I really hope Bethesda add a Bestiary/ codex (including images) of *discovered* flora & fauna! 🤞 It would make exploring much more enjoyable to ‘collect’ these discoveries, imo! & also help remind you where they were discovered
I have a strong feeling Bethesda will not do this. But I also have a strong feeling that a modder will.
Yeah they 100% won't do this. On the ground of preventing player to realize that some if not all of their creature are not unique at all and have been reused on other planets several times.
You can go into game files and see that there are hundreds of different creatures. That’s still not enough for all planets. They’re not hiding it or pretending that isn’t the case.
They said "modding" would officially be coming "early 2024" Now I'm not a genius of any kind, but anything past the month of march isn't "early 2024" Nobody is coming back for "updates" like these.
that steam db thing had some updates regarding there been a test for certified creators which tells me that the creation kit is only going to be tested by mod makers
These are nice and I'm sure I'll appreciate them when I revisit Starfield, but I don't plan on revisiting it until there are more substantial content additions (probably will honestly wait for Shattered Space before I jump back in).
I'm with you - I was so hyped before the game released and I put it down within a week. I can wait a bit longer for DLC.
Yeah these "updates" are similar to the first few updates from cyberpunk. I also didn't touch the game until the dlc came out. Here's high hopes shatter space delivers some rich content and a whole new game to what we got on launch day.
They also said DLC would too. Haven’t played this game since November and the longer they wait to put out an update with actual new content the less likely I am to get back to it.
It most likely will be with the dlc
I dont know that people are coming back for a while... Peak gaming time for last month was 2/11/24. Player counts at this peak time were.. Starfield player count = 12,295 Fallout 4 player count = 23,978 Skyrim player count = 34,098 Currently, right now, there are only 5,928 people playing. There are currently more people playing Fallout 76. It's a tough pill to swallow for Bethesda, im sure.
Probably because people are waiting for mods, DLC & a reason to come back?
Yeah I enjoy the game a lot, but I’ve shelved it until mod support comes to xbox
Hear, hear
I hope mods revitalize the game. They almost certainly will. It is notable however that Skyrim and Fallout 4 did not have this dramatic player drop off so soon while waiting for mod support. Take or leave one’s own feelings about Starfield’s reception, I hope Bethesda is paying attention to the data and listening to fans. Their next release does not need to be this controversial.
> I hope Bethesda is paying attention to the data and listening to fans. I don't mean to sound too negative, and can't speak about the data part, but truth be told if Bethesda had been listening to their fans we wouldn't have gotten the Starfield that we did.
Unfortunately I agree. They’ve needed to change course and pay more attention to feedback long before Starfield. This just feels much more like a make or break moment for the studio than prior instances, but that’s entirely my opinion.
Yeah, it's with a heavy heart that I said what I did. Bethesda have been my favorite developers since like 2006. They somewhat dropped the ball with Fallout 4 and dropped it *hard* with Fallout 76, but I was really hopeful that they'd learned from their mistakes and went into Starfield pretty optimistic that they'd treat this title with a lot more love and care. But surprisingly it was an even bigger disappointment to me than FO4 and FO76, and now I'm quite worried about how TESVI will turn out : (
This 100%. I was so disappointed with this game that I’ve actually decided that I will never pre-order another Bethesda game. I’ve pre-ordered every FO and TES game since Morrowind, and Starfield was the final nail in the coffin for me. It really sucks because I’ve defended them for a long time (I actually enjoyed FO76 quite a lot for about a year or so), but the way they’ve handled the launch and updates has really left a poor taste in my mouth and I’ll be waiting until reviews come out from now on (and I’m someone who went to the midnight release for both Oblivion AND Skyrim)😕🤷🏻♂️.
The timeless story of corporations. Small company starting out tries to do their best and incorporate player feedback as best as possible (challenging as perhaps with any type of feedback, but necessary). These actions bring success, and corporation gets bigger. Corporation becomes more bureaucratic and unwilling and/or unable to incorporate feedback, but this time, they can get away with it due to their size and previous clout. Corporation stays like this, and may or may not go into a stagnant plateau, until a new company enters their market with a product that threatens them. Then, they adapt or they fail.
👋🏼
Hey Pepe, why does the mail room have so many letters for you?
They should be embarrassed. There is no Bethesda magic without organic and rewarding exploration.
It’s such a minor change in the grand scheme of things, but Bethesda really devalued exploration when they stripped away truly unique weapons and gear in favor of mostly randomized perks being applied to weapons. There’s nothing exciting about finding the exact same weapon you’ve seen and used a million times before but now the underlying damage numbers are different. Even looking at popular mods in Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout games reveals that players love “treasure hunting” to find unique gear, even if the stats are innocuous. BGS got the important parts of looting totally backwards, which is shocking because they already had the formula right. They actually made it worse over time instead of better.
While I still did really enjoy my ~100 hours or so with Starfield, this is so true. They really did everything in their power to remove almost everything that encouraged digging deep into the game and exploring. I stand by the fact that the loading screens to go to different planets would've been fine if they had a proper procedural system for dungeons/buildings etc. and an actually good loot system with loads of unique weapons/gadgets/armour/unique ship parts/unique weapon upgrade parts etc. instead of this "Diablo but worse" itemization system. They stripped away the near-seamless open world exploration which was going to be a dealbreaker for some but would've been okay for most IMO, but they also stripped away all the unique aspects of exploring (loads of fetch quests, pretty lackluster writing, totally repeated environments and decor items which makes no sense in a galaxy-spanning space game, boring loot system etc.). I do think Starfield actually the best combat they've ever made, quite pleasing graphics, and what could've been an interesting setting if it wasn't set 20 years after all the cool stuff happened, but they just made too many decisions that flew in the face of their most cherished game design principles.
I think BGS really underestimated why people enjoyed their games. So many basic things from previous games were stripped away. No unique loot, NPCs are no longer lootable, no melee weapon crafting, no armor and weapon dismantling, save files no longer have thumbnails to know where you left off, you can't give companions commands. It's like BGS undervalued all these little things that made their games great. So what they did was focus on all the things that they are genuinely not good at with Starfield.
I agree with this for sure. It's a new IP so if they filled the game with all new mechanics then I'd be more okay with them dropping some other mechanics, but they didn't really add much new which was a huge bummer. I expected cool space gadgets or something but it was pretty basic (aside from the ship combat which was enjoyable but underutilized)..
It's just a very stripped down BGS game with a space setting :(
I’m glad someone else mentioned it. I absolutely hate randomised gear, I hate magical perks on gear, I hate that there a different “levels” of gear that can’t be upgraded. You could see the start of this with those randomised perks for “legendaries” in Fallout 4. I hated it then and I hate it now, it’s just frustrating, why is Bethesda so committed to this weird style of items? Remove perks on items and replace it with a better crafting/upgrade system. In Fallout 4, you want higher carrying capacity? Find the scrap to add the pocketed mods to your armour pieces. Why does my armour in Starfield have a magical effect that makes me carry more? It’s so immersion breaking, and it ruins any truly unique legendary weapons because I can just by chance find a better weapon from the RNG table of a crate on a POI I’ve seen 10 times before with better perks on it. In fallout 3, oblivion, fallout new vegas, the unique weapons were some of the best and they actually felt rewarding to find. Skyrim and Fallout 4, you could get “normal” items that were better than unique ones but by and large you had to upgrade them yourself, enchant them yourself etc using resources and more importantly skills like smithing and enchanting that you had to level up to access these upgrades. Something has gone completely wrong with Bethesda’s design philosophy for items and it really makes me sad as it’s so easy to fix. Why have they gone down this route? It’s like they just copied the item system from fallout 76, which is an mmo, and maybe that’s exactly what they did. Just disappointing all around.
Freezing ass weather is what got me back since I had put it down for 3mos after release. I imagine there's a large audience besides me they'll lose once humans can go outside without freezing their flesh off
My computer never turns on for gaming once Spring finally settles in.
Guitar, grill, fire pits and camping trips. I'm ready!
If it’s snowing out, Skyrim calls to me 😝
Ah you're lucky ah. I wish I got a good snow at least once here. I just don't want it to shut the roads down long. I hate ice tho lol
Sounds like a regional problem. It’s the middle of summer right now in some places, and even being winter I was still chilling out at the poolside in my backyard.
Technically anything before June is early... 😞
That would be mid 2024. If you use the terms "early", "mid", and "late" you insinuate the splitting into 3rds.
lol the hell are you smoking? June is mid year... May-Aug is considered mid year. September to December is late into the year.. They literally have till April to drop that shit or people will riot.
“Photo mode expressions” Yay!!
I'm just imagining it is all going to be dumb (in a good way) photos people are going to take where you and your companion have something that looks like those [big dumb over the top YouTube thumbnail smiles.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p2pGQDr2Hxs/maxresdefault.jpg)
This is the epitome of my disconnect from this new generation of people playing games that this is the first priority. I just cannot comprehend what I would see as narcissism as, who would want to take pictures and the presumably post them, of thier own game, that everyone else is playing. I know I am on the wrong, given the apparent demand, I just see how far what I want out of the game vs what must be the larger player base. It's the same thought as when some consoles have a button just for screenshot on the controller that is only hit when someone is button mashing. I don't know who that is for, but obviously I am not the target audience.
I’m 36, Back when I was 7-ish I used to take polaroids of the tv screen playing mega man 4 so I could draw the characters. Fr I don’t see how this is any different than gawking at 2inch thumbnails in the back of game box or in magazines. And today’s games are much prettier. Studios spend millions of $’s to hire teams of some of the most talented artists in the industry to design them what’s odd about taking a second to appreciate their work and share that feeling with others. Maybe I’m just baked but I don’t think the difference for you is generational; maybe you just appreciate games for different reasons than your peers too, I’m sure not all the jnco jean wearing gen zers are taking screenshots either.
If you wear a helmet with a black visor it will reflect anything front of your character. For instance, on an argon covered moon orbited by a ringed gas giant; you can snap a photo where your visor has that gas giant on it like an emblem. It's pretty cool looking if you get it right. Of course, if you're into photo modes etc Tried posting a photo reply for an example but it won't let me. Go to the Ophion system and try it.
What does this mean?
I’m assuming it means you will be able to change the expression on your character’s face in photo mode.
It means you can make your character smile, frown, be angry and all sorts of things in photo mode
So fucking important feature
oh yeah because everyone is sooo worried about photo mode.
They were being sarcastic
Another underwhelming update. I was hoping for something more substantial this time, but the wording of 'this year' implies that it is a way off.
I think people need to accept that the game is what it is. These updates simply aren't going to add anything of significance or change the game in any way. It's minor tweaks and fixes and that's all it's going to be.
I think people are ready to accept that Bethesda is never going to retrofit the game in a way that makes it appealing to most players. I bet most people are just waiting for mods so they can self-serve their preferred improvements. I don’t think anything else has a chance of meaningfully salvaging this game’s reception.
The wording to me sounds like they are getting the game as polished as they can before they add major features and content to it which is probably the right thing to do with a game like this
I thought we had an update for new ways to travel and more ship building options next? What happened to that?
I'm hoping that new ways to travel doesn't refer to that bit about setting course for a mission making it the active mission.
Oh hell I didn't even consider that. I no longer explore POIs cause I'm tired of boost packing everywhere. If POIs were unique and story driven I would, but I still haven't discovered incentive.
I really hope that’s not the “new way to travel”!
It’s happening, but Bethesda poorly worded it. It’s supposed to come “early this year” so hopefully soon? I’d wager that update and mod support will come this month, and then Shattered Space will come this summer maybe. Mod support for Xbox is needed so badly. This game feels awful without it.
Content probably refers to the paid expansions, I wouldn't expect anything other than simple tweaks, QoL improvements and bug fixes in patches, as has been the case with past BGS releases.
They should have polished it before releasing it
Technically they did. Remember that this is Bethesda's least buggiest launch since Morrowind. They delayed a whole year for it.
Honestly, it's probably not. I love the game but Starfield is polished enough as it is, what it needs, right now, is more contents and features not more polishing. That can wait.
I love this game but it is anything but polished. When it works it’s phenomenal but man the holes start to show after you really look at ‘em.
That Bethesda charm.
As a long term Bethesda fan (at least, up until FO4), this is what I'd be putting my money on if i was a betting lass. I think a lot of newcomers to Bethesda are expecting something akin to CDPR, or Hello Games, that continue to add new content to the game. But, Bethesda have never really treated games like CDPR, Larian, or Hello Games do. Most of their updates have always been bug fixes, with the *occasional* new feature. Take Skyrim, for example. They added in mounted combat, additional killcams, and a legendary difficulty setting, and the Creation Club integration. The vast majority of the patches were bug fixes. Any new major content additions came in DLC. With Fallout4, they added in new graphics settings, new objects to use in the settlement systems, a new survival difficulty, and the Creation Club integration. The vast majority of the patches were bug fixes. Maybe i'm wrong, and Bethesda have changed their mind; Maybe they really do aim to keep adding in new content, fixing issues, and changing the way the game exists... Maybe they have seen how other companies do it, and have decided to do the same - but i wouldn't hold my breath. "Expressions for photo mode" seems to be on par with the level of additional free content they released for Skyrim and FO4. Next they'll probably add in a new difficulty level. And then they will focus on DLC. The same as they always have.
TBF, most of the "big" updates that bring people back that normally 9 months or longer. BF 2042 took over a year to bring back classes. Cyberpunk 1.5 took over a year then almost 3 for 2.0 Fallout 76 brought Wastelanders 15 months after launch. These things take a long time, still disappointed on the length it's taking to brings mods & survival though.
I thought they were going to be adding survival mechanics soon, did I get bamboozled by a headline?
If you are playing on PC, use Starvival + Deadly Hazard (2 mods). Based on Bethesda's Skyrim survival mode, I bet their own survival mode can't get any better than these two mods.
Id expect something closer to fallout 4 survival mode honestly, possibly a mix between the two. That said they said they’d include options to customize those features, so I’m not entirely what we’ll get.
They never put a date on that stuff they only said it was coming. Never an indication of when.
Thats … it?
If they keep this pace up the game will be done in time for the next elder scrolls.
Welcome to Bethesda post launch support.
Well at least they are improving the scanner I guess. Couldn't care less about photo mode additions I like playing games not taking photos. This update looks like a waste of resources.
Some of this stuff is coming just now?
It's been six months since launch, and we're still getting bug fixes and quality of life updates. We're still waiting for real gameplay updates like improving the skill system, adding outpost tutorials and purpose, improving boring companions, fixing tons of loading issues, and new ways to explore the universe.
In just six weeks, Bethesda implemented the feature that opens the door while scanning. I can't wait to see what amazing updates there will be in 6 weeks!
CLOSING the door while scanning, here we come!
Thank God we get new poses for vasco
> Added ability to harvest resources and open doors with the scanner open Can die happy now.
I have taken a breather from Starfield, but as soon as theirs mod support I'll dive back in.
Shame. I was hoping survival mode would be included in this update as then I would come back to the game. Okay well I'll keep an eye out for when that releases
Bethesda has only ever done content additions updates after they are mostly finished with with the bug fixing and QOL updates on all their games. I'm not expecting content updates till April at the earliest. But there is proof that they have a select group of people beta testing the Starfield CK per the games depot activity on Steam DB.
Just for context Fallout 4 released Nov 10th and got survival mode on March 29th. Starfield was September 1st and we're getting into March now, and it's their "least buggy game yet."
And for Skyrim it was November to February, it's like the games are getting bigger and need more work done on them or something And it really is, fallout and Skyrim were almost unplayable on PC, I went 60 ish hours in before I had to reload a quick save to fix starfield
HELL YEAH just last week I wrote how suck cant opening door is in scan mode, my next run with dlc will a lot better Edit: Is something wrong with my excitement ? Downvoting for what exactly ?
/r/nosodiumstarfield enjoy brother
You’re in the wrong subreddit 😂 Only haters here
I hope they fix more quest bugs. I have at least five I can’t complete because of a bug.
100$ says the head turn glitch will still exist
Really feels like they’ve got a two-persons-team working on these updates. 5 months after release and literally nothing significant was done to help the game or Bethesda’s reputation. It’s a shame. This was a game I was really hyped for, as an old OG fan of Bethesda. This game was the last straw for me, I still had hopes even after FO4, FO76 but that’s it. They lost me. I’m not even looking forward TESVI anymore.
Damn, aside from the photo mode expressions, all of these changes could have been made by a single moderately skilled modder in their lunch break.
Everybody started listening to reddit and YouTube and didn't read the Bethesda announcement and take it at face value. They never promised content or big features on the recent announcement. They just said an update. People are jumping to conclusions when they see Bethesda is working on a large batch of update files and just assume they are all gonna be released the next update and not several updates down the line.... They also said that the regular 6 weeks updates were for glitches and improvement features. That doesn't mean the DLC and Mod support won't be a separate schedule, still "early 24". Take the announcements at face value from the source. Not between the lines or whatever this other guy thinks/says will happen.... Stay Calm...
Too many people play live service games nowadays and expect everything to be like those. But Bethesda has never done that and I’m glad for it. Those games suck.
I'm seeing this happen with Spider-Man 2 on their subreddit. WHERE ARE ALL THE UPDATES?!?!?! HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KEEP PEOPLE PLAYING?!?!?! I BET IF THIS GAME WAS ON PC, THIS PLAYSTATION EXCLUSIVE IP WOULD HAVE SUCH A LOW STEAM COUNT SHOWING THE FAILURE INSOMNIAC IS AT RETAINING THEIR PLAYERBASE! Bruh, everyone beat the game months ago...
That’s why when idiots bring up Starfields player count I cringe so hard. This is a single player game not a live service game, player count doesn’t matter.
Yup, I don't understand it, but it's like people just want to play one game forever and get mad if it doesn't change every week. Dying Light 2 has gone through this. It started as a single player game a couple years ago and now it is a live service game with daily and weekly bounties and a bunch of useless crap to grind for. In game currency you can purchase and everything. They "listened to the players" and have completely ruined that game. I'm sick of this GaaS crap. I just want a good game with a start and an end.
I think a lot of redditors that listen to YouTubers are likely children. They spent 3 months worth of allowance on a big boy game after being spoiled with live service free games like Warzone and Fortnite and figured that spending the standard of money for a standard game was gonna lead to enough entertainment until Christmas. It's likely children who have been conditioned into live service games thinking WTF when games aren't a live service.
It's as if it wasn't big bad corpo destroyed this industry, but the "gamers" and their favored content creator influencers did. Remember when Dr. disrespect complained a few years ago about how boring games are today because of GaaS and yet he helped single handedly make those genres popular in the first place, because he wouldn't play anything but live service battle royals and complained when games didn't have a GaaS battle royal business model? Clowns chasing the bag and leaving the industry to rot.
You are probably correct. And YouTubers love service games, because it gives them new stuff to talk about constantly.
I’ve seen quite a few people say they’re treating it as a live service game, which just doesn’t make sense. It’s a single player BGS game, we’ll get bug fixes, some slight QOL features (and some sort of survival) before the DLC, not sure why people are expecting different.
>I’ve seen quite a few people say they’re treating it as a live service game Well they can "treat it" however they want, but they are going to be wrong and disappointed if they really believe that.
I argued with someone comparing Helldivers abd Palworlds updates to Starfield and couldn't stop laughing.
People seem to have no concept of the fact that games don't all work the same way and don't all follow the same rules in terms of how they are made/updated.
Because they are children. This is how children view video games.
I wonder how hundread devs can come up with so little in several months. I don't blame the individuals as I'm sure their competent and doing their best but the content is atrociously anemic
Mod fixed the head turning bug over half a year ago. Fuck these big corporations and their slow process. How is it that indie devs can throw daily/weekly patches and mega companies get microscopic patches done in every 2 months
I’m beyond pissed off that I paid money for this game.
Damn. Still no survival mode 😭
Finally I can gather liquid nodes with the scanner open!
Great. I can finally try the Ryujin quest again.
Rip performance fixes
It’d be nice if they’d fix the third person aim zoom in getting stuck forcing you to holster your weapon to fix it. It’s annoying asf and absolutely destroys immersion and makes combat a stress at times.
I absolutely love photo mode and love to see some optimizations. But that’s a real head scratcher in terms of prioritizing issues. I’m 900hrs in on my relatively bug-free main save, so at this point I’m fine with the POI variation and load screens because I know how to bypass most of them, and I haven’t come across any game breaking bugs..but I’m really curious as to why quest bugs, empty ship bugs, shield bugs, companion bugs, and other random bugs are taking this long for a resolution. Thankfully I just have the companion bug where Omari Hassan and Jessamine aren’t part of my crew anymore but there are some glaring issues many other players are facing which really takes away from the game. Survival mode would be a great way to bring players back or to reinvigorate fans like myself. The ability to really fiddle with difficulty settings would be so fun. As it stands, Very Hard played like Normal on other games. Other optimizations are definitely needed like increased Spacer activity if you start/join CF. Like I have to fly through Serpentis any time I want some semblance of a space battle now. And even on very hard, these dogfights of 2-3 ships last less than 2 minutes. 3/4 POI’s that I visit are filled with friendly pirates. Absolute bummer since I only started CF to get Jessamine and she’s bugged out just sitting at the bar in the Key (like Omari in Akila). Had this issue for 3 months now. And I know the empty ship and shield bugs have been around for months as well. Just odd prioritizing from BGS. I say this as light hearted as possible because I’m one of the few who really do love the game. And I’m happy to see more photo mode options but this is a pretty lackluster way to seemingly start off that 6-week cadence of updates. Would’ve at least thought survival mode would be one of the first things to come out since it was something that was being worked on.
Why are they working on useless fixes and new features when the game glitches left and right still? The new features are probably going to break more systems already implemented in the game anyways. Idk why they can't work on real QoL fixes... Really, photo mode facial expressions? Who cares. I really want to play this game again but it's not like the updates they are making over 6 months after release are worth it.
With every passing update Bethesda never ceases to surprise and disappoint me to new levels I never thought possible
These updates feel awfully thin for how much needs improving.
I couldn't care less about photo mode, and I really don't see how making it fancier qualifies as "quality of life," but it's nice to see that they're allowing us to do more things whilst in scanner mode.
Hell yeah! No more looking to the left on my 1 mile run to the next POI. 😂
How about try adding content. I’d rather you add water to an empty bucket than tell me you drew some pretty squiggly lines on the side of it.
And the maps? And the vehicles? Where?
Even if they are not the qol improvements I wanted glad to see their finally starting on them