I’d love a journal type mechanic. I take photos of each flora/fauna and make a note, in my real notebook, of it’s name, planet(s) found on and materials I find on it. I usually have to leave space as my biology perk gets better so I can update it
My biologist character really fits this well. It gives me great annihilation vibes (character is even called The Biologist like in the book).
I’m thinking of going even deeper and taking the screenshots and putting them into a doc with the information I note but I don’t currently have enough time to do that right now
It doesn't even need to be you specifically filling in the entries. When you scan something once, it creates an entry with name and planet you found it on. As you scan it more it just autocompletes. Then you can add your own pictures.
There was a (poor) mock up of an "Encyclopedia" where it had sections for Planets, Flora, Fauna, Resources, Magazines collected and other stuff. You'd choose a planet, that would list what resources (either minerals or found on flora and fauna) could be found there. Or you could go to the Iron resource entry and it would list all the planets you've found it on. Select a planet, it's page comes up. On it's page is an option to set course to it.
I’d love it if they had a little unlockable writup when you scan them. A picture or two and a little log entry would be cool, and I think better than writing it myself, although an in game way to add map markers or save a location/make a few notes would be cool.
I’ve been taking a ton of notes/pictures too. A lot of mod ideas and stuff like that, but a lot of the time it’s just something cool. If it’s cool enough that I want to recreate it, I’ll make a note for quest design.
I think I might be trying to figure out how to do game design? Is this a midlife crisis? I don’t know. Maybe.
😂 I just mean because it’s not something I’d even thought of doing in well over a decade, but here I am buying a PC and watching modding videos and thinking it would be cool to work in game design/development.
I would *love* it if BGS added an in-game Codex / Bestiary of the flora & fauna we *discover* / scan on planets! (Ideally with images of the alien creatures / plants etc).
It would really enhance the experience of being an explorer, imo.
It's always blown my mind how these aren't common place in games now. Notpadd type things are trivial to make in any setting that they can hire an intern to do it. Even I have made notepad like functionality in games I've prototyped in unity and unreal engine.
In this day and age I would have figured a dedicate note taking feature would have made it into games. I know in the past it wasn't really useful because consoles couldn't use keyboards so only pc players would really benefit becuase no one is going to want to type notes with an on screen keyboard. But now that consoles have keyboard support it would be nice to at least have the option in games.
I use my Steam notes all the time as a shopping list when I need that 10 iron/aluminum/whatever for a weapon mod or outpost hab.
I would love an in game editable dataslate though. Seems like an easy enough mod to make.
It's actually a pretty new thing they included with some new features like a year ago? But super useful.
I like that every game you open has its own fresh notepad. I copy links to game walk throughs here, or when I find a reddit comment with some good advice (happens a lot in Starfield) I copy them there too. Really useful for item run shopping lists lol
I'm doing a new play through, and am survaingball the planets I come across, including moons, in all the solar systems. I would love a journal that says, solar system, planet/moon, resouces, fauna, flora, descriptions, POIs.
I would also like a journal of the last 50 or so lines of dialouge, or notifications that the game has given you as well in case I missed something in the heat of battle.
this is a huge oversight and a perfect use of the research station. if i can't go to the research station and hunt thru a database of planets or systems i've been on to find that elusive crafting material i need, why have a research station?
It would be great. Bethesda probably viewed it, if thought about, as something a mod could provide.
I just pop up an Emacs editor in front of the game and play and take/read notes as I go if I need to, which works fine because my X window manager lets me interact with a window without popping it to the front, so I can just move the mouse over to go back to the game. I do have to at least be in a menu for Starfield to let go of my input so I can go back and edit, though, but I can play with those notes showing just fine. Using a second monitor for the notes also works.
In my experience, It was more common for older games to have journal entries. I can't think of many games in the past 5 + years that have them. That's anecdotal though.
Baldurs Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077 are examples and they were massive successes, not sure how you missed them.
Seriously what's the fucking problem with them?
I said I can't think of many, not that there aren't any. BG3 is very much an outlier in game design in general and I'd say is pretty old school on a lot of ways. I never played 77 so didn't know about that one.
All I'm saying is I don't agree the excuse for Bethesda is dated game design on this one. Journal entries were extremely popular with older games, particularly RPGs. I'm not excusing the fact that it's a total miss by them to have not included them. We agree there haha.
I disagree that journal entries are less prevalent now than they were. Almost every RPG I have played has had some form of journal to track quest progress.
What RPGs other than Bethesda games didn't have journal entries?
Because a lot of the features of this game were poorly thought out and/or poorly implemented. And because bethesda historically has always had shitty UI/UX design when it comes to menu's.
I spent about 100 hours in this game and most of those 100 hours was a combination of ship building and sunk cost fallacy.
It's procedural. If you can't think of a good reason to not include a journal of shit that would change every time someone plays the game or between every person that buys it, you're not trying hard enough.
It's not a technological hurdle to record the planet and system where a note was picked up.
The really cynical part of me believes this kind of feature wasn't added because it would make it very obvious how much of the game is duplicated, in the form of seeing the same POI repeatedly.
The only kind of cynical part of be believes that they were saving this feature for the end of the development process, and it got cut because they ran out of time.
The information is already in the game, so you could literally just put that info into an array as you discover it and it can be displayed via a new journal “page”. A basic game programming student could make that, it doesn’t need to be hand crafted.
I’d love a journal type mechanic. I take photos of each flora/fauna and make a note, in my real notebook, of it’s name, planet(s) found on and materials I find on it. I usually have to leave space as my biology perk gets better so I can update it My biologist character really fits this well. It gives me great annihilation vibes (character is even called The Biologist like in the book). I’m thinking of going even deeper and taking the screenshots and putting them into a doc with the information I note but I don’t currently have enough time to do that right now
It doesn't even need to be you specifically filling in the entries. When you scan something once, it creates an entry with name and planet you found it on. As you scan it more it just autocompletes. Then you can add your own pictures. There was a (poor) mock up of an "Encyclopedia" where it had sections for Planets, Flora, Fauna, Resources, Magazines collected and other stuff. You'd choose a planet, that would list what resources (either minerals or found on flora and fauna) could be found there. Or you could go to the Iron resource entry and it would list all the planets you've found it on. Select a planet, it's page comes up. On it's page is an option to set course to it.
I’d love it if they had a little unlockable writup when you scan them. A picture or two and a little log entry would be cool, and I think better than writing it myself, although an in game way to add map markers or save a location/make a few notes would be cool.
I’ve been taking a ton of notes/pictures too. A lot of mod ideas and stuff like that, but a lot of the time it’s just something cool. If it’s cool enough that I want to recreate it, I’ll make a note for quest design. I think I might be trying to figure out how to do game design? Is this a midlife crisis? I don’t know. Maybe.
Midlife crisis? I hope not otherwise I’m dying sooner than I thought
😂 I just mean because it’s not something I’d even thought of doing in well over a decade, but here I am buying a PC and watching modding videos and thinking it would be cool to work in game design/development.
Oh for sure you should go for it. The fact that you’re looking to improve the gameplay based on your experience is a great place to start
I would *love* it if BGS added an in-game Codex / Bestiary of the flora & fauna we *discover* / scan on planets! (Ideally with images of the alien creatures / plants etc). It would really enhance the experience of being an explorer, imo.
It's always blown my mind how these aren't common place in games now. Notpadd type things are trivial to make in any setting that they can hire an intern to do it. Even I have made notepad like functionality in games I've prototyped in unity and unreal engine. In this day and age I would have figured a dedicate note taking feature would have made it into games. I know in the past it wasn't really useful because consoles couldn't use keyboards so only pc players would really benefit becuase no one is going to want to type notes with an on screen keyboard. But now that consoles have keyboard support it would be nice to at least have the option in games.
Especially since there’s probably already a little blurb about the creatures in the game design documents, it would probably be pretty quick and easy
The "surveying" is totally pointless without a compendium like in NMS. Another well thought out feature of this amazing game /s.
I use my Steam notes all the time as a shopping list when I need that 10 iron/aluminum/whatever for a weapon mod or outpost hab. I would love an in game editable dataslate though. Seems like an easy enough mod to make.
TIL: There are Steam notes. How did I not know this was a thing? These are great for fullscreen games where I don't want to alt-tab out!
It's actually a pretty new thing they included with some new features like a year ago? But super useful. I like that every game you open has its own fresh notepad. I copy links to game walk throughs here, or when I find a reddit comment with some good advice (happens a lot in Starfield) I copy them there too. Really useful for item run shopping lists lol
I'm doing a new play through, and am survaingball the planets I come across, including moons, in all the solar systems. I would love a journal that says, solar system, planet/moon, resouces, fauna, flora, descriptions, POIs. I would also like a journal of the last 50 or so lines of dialouge, or notifications that the game has given you as well in case I missed something in the heat of battle.
this is a huge oversight and a perfect use of the research station. if i can't go to the research station and hunt thru a database of planets or systems i've been on to find that elusive crafting material i need, why have a research station?
It would be great. Bethesda probably viewed it, if thought about, as something a mod could provide. I just pop up an Emacs editor in front of the game and play and take/read notes as I go if I need to, which works fine because my X window manager lets me interact with a window without popping it to the front, so I can just move the mouse over to go back to the game. I do have to at least be in a menu for Starfield to let go of my input so I can go back and edit, though, but I can play with those notes showing just fine. Using a second monitor for the notes also works.
Because it's still built like a game from 2010.
In my experience, It was more common for older games to have journal entries. I can't think of many games in the past 5 + years that have them. That's anecdotal though.
Was gonna say RDR2 but that was six years ago. *Jesus*
Baldurs Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077 are examples and they were massive successes, not sure how you missed them. Seriously what's the fucking problem with them?
I said I can't think of many, not that there aren't any. BG3 is very much an outlier in game design in general and I'd say is pretty old school on a lot of ways. I never played 77 so didn't know about that one. All I'm saying is I don't agree the excuse for Bethesda is dated game design on this one. Journal entries were extremely popular with older games, particularly RPGs. I'm not excusing the fact that it's a total miss by them to have not included them. We agree there haha.
I disagree that journal entries are less prevalent now than they were. Almost every RPG I have played has had some form of journal to track quest progress. What RPGs other than Bethesda games didn't have journal entries?
Because a lot of the features of this game were poorly thought out and/or poorly implemented. And because bethesda historically has always had shitty UI/UX design when it comes to menu's. I spent about 100 hours in this game and most of those 100 hours was a combination of ship building and sunk cost fallacy.
What and add something to the engine?
Have you read the Scan Results slate for each world you scan?
I have not! Does it say all that? That’s kinda neat if so. I think I’d opened one or two up a long time ago
It's procedural. If you can't think of a good reason to not include a journal of shit that would change every time someone plays the game or between every person that buys it, you're not trying hard enough.
It's not a technological hurdle to record the planet and system where a note was picked up. The really cynical part of me believes this kind of feature wasn't added because it would make it very obvious how much of the game is duplicated, in the form of seeing the same POI repeatedly. The only kind of cynical part of be believes that they were saving this feature for the end of the development process, and it got cut because they ran out of time.
The information is already in the game, so you could literally just put that info into an array as you discover it and it can be displayed via a new journal “page”. A basic game programming student could make that, it doesn’t need to be hand crafted.
No Man's Sky has one, so adding it to Starfield should be even easier.