this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Starfield

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm looking forward to playing it. I'm going to wait for 6 months for the game to stabilize. Because that's my Bethesda tradition

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)

The tech issues are blown way out of proportion, especially with scaling dialed in at 80%. Runs like a dream on my system.

On steamdeck it chugs in the cities but it's still playable at medium settings.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The waiting 6 months isn't just for tech issues, it's for story patches, or inconsistency updates, or all the little modifications that make life easier.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Meh; the game isn't even that buggy. Hasn't even crashed on me yet, and I'm running the vanilla release with no patches.

But yeah, performance is a non-issue with the right mods, especially the free version of that DLSS 3 FG mod. In fact, there are a lot of good mods available already that make your life easier. Game has barely been out for a week and I already have 30+ installed.

That said, I can't wait for the larger mods. This game needs some that make going into the procedurely generated areas less boring. Like land vehicles. Or small aircraft. Maybe some more towns in those areas. This is still the biggest game I've ever played, though, even if you don't include the generated areas.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Mine is super buggy. I’ve found 1 mission I can’t complete. My achievements aren’t working, and I haven’t used the panel. Then this thing happened where I was in a conversation with an npc. They walked off mid convo. And the convo options disappeared but I was still in convo mode. I had to reload last save and get there all over again.

I’m just out of the tutorial missions. It runs fine though. I think all of my stuff is high or ultra.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My achievements aren’t working, and I haven’t used the panel.

My saves from the prerelease were flagged as modded. I assumed it was because the game wasn't technically out idk. Ironically I got them working with a mod.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm playing 'free' now in (PC) Gamepass. I'll buy it for steam on sale and go full hog later

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Really? I've seen lots of people complaining about loading screens. I'm playing on Xbox and haven't had an issue with it. I'm 82 hours in and only really noticed there's a few 2 second loading screens going from orbit to walking off the ship.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've had at times 4 loading screens consecutively in the space of seconds. They are quick but they do take me out of the experience. I think the engine is just showing its age in a way that a nice new coat of paint can't really hide for a game like this.

Fortunately I saw reviews before buying so I knew what to expect and it's not a huge deal for me after lowered my expectations for the game but I can understand people's disappointment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It's not really an engine issue. It's a design issue. Things have to load when there's no way to predict what will be needed soon. There are lots of ways to hide loading zones when you're walking in connected spaces. Assets can be streamed in when and where they're needed. When you're fast traveling between totally disconnected spaces, there's really no way to avoid some kind of loading screen.

The best way to handle this for a space game is to hide loading the planet surface behind your ship coming down from space. You can stream them in while keeping the player and ship loaded in so it's seemless. There's no way to do it when you're just teleporting to a location though. However, it could be done better in a lot of places. For example, why does it teleport you right outside the door of the lodge. Just teleport inside and save an extra loading transition after we just had at least one to get there.

All the ways to handle making transitions better can be done in the CE I'm pretty confident. It's constantly streaming in chunks of landscape as you travel around. They have full control over the engine source anyway, so if it can't handle it they could spend some resources to build that functionality. There's no reason landing on a planet should require a loading screen. Entering structures also are usually through an airlock style door. There's no reason that couldn't be used to mask a loading transition.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I don't really think I can agree here. As much fun as I'm having, this engine is showing its limitations with this game. It's honestly amazing what they've been able to do with it especially the space aspects where there is such a vast amount of area and all the planets modelled with orbits and everything. But in 2023 when you need a loading screen when the player opens a door, it's pretty evident that this engine has some old school limitations hanging on. This is well beyond just loading when fast travelling which is of course understandable.

I get it though. These are huge technical challenges that would require serious investment.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, yeah, it's technically possible, but it was not easy enough for them to implement in that engine for it to be the most financially feasible option in order to deliver on the amount of content/other engine changes that they wanted to, is probably the more complex answer. I'm sure if Bethesda stopped at nothing to achieve no loading screens that they could do it, but at the cost of whatever instability or lost time for other engine improvements or content created, which is the choice they made.

Unless we could see the nonexistent alternate Starfield where that was the priority instead it's hard to say whether it's "because of the engine" or not, whether that is a literal thing or more of a tradeoff of labor time thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Well, we can see other games where they did sort out the loading screen complexity while also including all of that other stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You say this, but thats just not how the engine was made.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

And unreal engine was made for an arena shooter...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Yes, because the engine is trash.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (10 children)

but the game still requires a lot of work

I can not see that. This game is the most polished game Bethesda has ever released in my 29 years of playing Bethesda games since Arena. It's just as polished as Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I'm 35 hours in and have barely scratched the surface, but I had only one crash and that was because my graphics card had a hiccup (driver update fixed it).

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

Its not bugs but QoL issues. Stuff like inventor management, map interface, triple loading screens, basic HDR support, absent FoV sliders, no DLSS support etc.

It is a great game, but has a lot of baffling QoL problems

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

"It’s just as polished as Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom."

Sorry, I can only laugh so much at such a pathetic claim.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

You can disagree with someone without saying that their opinion is pathetic.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (12 children)

I guess the Zelda franchise isn't what it used to be then?

  • Suit protection is apparently always depleted, even when it isn't.
  • The game randomly freezes my entire system at least once per day, if not more, requiring me to hard reset it.
  • Followers & player character often are missing various body parts.
  • The game crashes every now and then, sometimes even during saves.
  • Sometimes assets don't load properly, which bugged out a faction quest and boarding activity for me until I restarted the game and loaded an old save (which I luckily still had).
  • Every time you close a menu (including the container transfer menu) there's a whole bunch of graphical glitches coming from your character loading its assets back in.
  • Player spacesuit isn't taken off in spaceships even though I toggled the option in the inventory.
  • Outpost containers chain link breaks if you manually add or remove items from them, sort of defeating their point as storage units.
  • I somehow managed to break the rendering engine when I triggered the red mile airlock while tabbing out of the game, causing everything to be black. At first I thought I felt through the ground but I actually had to restart the game as reloading did not help and eventually also crashed the game.
  • During a quest in New Atlantis I got stuck when I had to use the EM rifle.
  • Lots and lots of possible sequence breaking that can bug out quests or other parts of the game.
  • The armory module just deletes all stored items when you edit your ship, instead of throwing it into the cargo. (Might also goes for other containers in other modules, not sure.)
  • FSR just lowers my performance instead of giving me more FPS.
  • Lots of other random graphical glitches, especially related to stacking transparency effects from like smoke for example (missiles, smoking docker in one mission, waterfalls, etc.).

And that's just the stuff from the top of my head after about 100 hours. I definitely had not that much and not that severe issues with Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, or Fallout 3. Kinda hoped there would be a patch for some of this stuff already.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Player spacesuit isn't taken off in spaceships even though I toggled the option in the inventory

It only takes it off in settlements. The toggle specifically says so. That's not a bug.

During a quest in New Atlantis I got stuck when I had to use the EM rifle.

Not sure what you mean by "stuck," but if it's the quest I think you're talking about you have to shoot them until they ragdoll. I thought downing them was enough, but apparently the game wants you to fully incapacitate them.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I literally have had none of those issues in my 40+ hours of playtime. Not even those usual creation engine bugs with NPCs walking through furniture or getting stuck in walls or so. In fact, I only now encountered my first bug: A digipick puzzle was shown incorrectly.

The weirdest thing is that I didn't experience any graphical glitches, even though my graphics card is below the minimum specs (RX 5600 XT).

I had not that much and not that severe issues with Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, or Fallout

Now that I can't believe. Morrowind and Skyrim have been Buggy shitfests on release (can't speak for oblivion because I didn't play that on release)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I’m loving the game, but I’ve had characters pop in and out of spaces, through walls/doors, models that shake uncontrollably. There’s a bunch of issues with some planets having no breathable air and companions aren’t wearing a suit. Buildings with no air locks on one side that have airlocks on the other. I picked up an item that inexplicably was on the door, to move it back to where it was supposed to be, and got instantly arrested….There is a ton of things to patch.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Agreed, I've had a lot of NPC jank, sometimes items in the environment fall out of place randomly. I had a bug where I couldn't land on Porrima III for a quest, I had to go to some other planets in the system, try to save, quit the game, come back, and it let me.

I sometimes wonder that people are so lax on the definition of a bug that they might say Starfield isn't buggy. It has not been like game breakingly buggy, aside from my quest bug if that had kept up, but it's certainly got a lot of low level bugs that amount to a reasonable bit of jank.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I had a couple game breaking bugs. Once I entered a building and the entire screen was very dark. I could not see anything with a flashlight, and could not turn around and leave. I had to reload. I also found a quest to mine 14 minerals, but the last one couldn’t be mined. The former wasn’t a big deal, but the mining bug drove me nuts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The floor at one of the spaceports just fully disappeared permanently for me, and bounties seem bugged in that they are not removed even after killing all witnesses. One of the transport pods in the main city is also just permanently gone. This is on top of all the issues you pointed out!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There is a massive need for QoL improvements. Clicking the left mouse button for more than .1 seconds fires off a shot. I can’t count the number of times I have accidentally started a fight in a city. Also, no one cares as long as no one is hit. Really takes the immersion out of the game. Regardless, I’m really enjoying the the game. It needed more time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (11 children)

Do you not just put your weapon away in cities? Ive accidentally drawn my weapon, but the draw time is long enough that I realize and just holster it again instead. You could also just select the weapon in your favorites again and it should unequip it.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I had to save scum the groundpounder mission because I got soft locked multiple times because an enemy ran off and unloaded before I could kill them to proceed with the mission.

Also, depending on the location, I've had multiple CTDs that required constant quick saving otherwise I'd have to do the same conversation repeatedly (Looking at you, GalBank in Akila City).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

It's just as polished as Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

LMAO

You need to learn what the term "polished" means.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes, it is the most polished Bethesda game, but no, it is not "just as polished as TotK". I'm sorry but that's blatantly untrue.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Star UI and no menu animation mods make this way more playable.

The console-ified UI is terrible, just as it was for Skyrim and Fallout 4.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Very tired of the number of people actively trying to police people playing this. It's fun. It's no Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate, and it's certainly not a GOTY, but it's good.

Let people enjoy things.

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