Damn it, "losing steam" was right there to make a great headline pun
The state of journalism today... smh
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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I've never understood why that matters for anything other than purely multiplayer games.
People finish games and move on. It's not some GaaS bollocks.
Skyrim is 13 years old and has many more players. It says "Starfield was not a return to form for Bethesda."
Is it something to do with modding-community?
If that generates a load of free cool stuff people may play more for longer.
The main IP rights owner probably doesn't really want this, they want to develop and sell a new game or expansion.
The main IP rights holder for Star field is the same as that of Skyrim (aka: Bethesda)
Nah, it's just Todd Howard. His priorities are weird as hell when it comes to games.
Like, dialog and story is not prioritized.
While map size is highly prioritized.
It's a bit backwards when the games in question are supposed to be RPGs.
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I thought replayability was sort of Bethsoft's MO?
I dunno, I played Skyrim through once, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of replay value to me.
It's very long, and you can do everything in one playthrough. The only difference is which army you want to win, and you make that choice right at the end.
You can even take control of the magic guild even though you know no magic. I honestly don't know what other people see in it. Modding maybe? Not something that interests me. New Vegas was a lot more interesting.
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It's not really a great sign for the developers if their game doesn't have a ton of replay value I imagine. Consider Skyrim, it's the same general type of game, but people play that game over and over and make modifications to it to keep it fresh and enjoyable even now, and as a result Bethesda has been able to resell it for other platforms or with extra content or related merch for years, because people like it enough to keep coming back. If Starfield isn't managing the same despite being the same sort of game from the same company, then that both serves as a warning to those who haven't gotten it yet that the game probably isn't as enjoyable by comparison, and also doesn't give the devs as much incentive to keep making any improvements to it.
I mean, Harry Potter was the biggest selling game last year, and that has also lost 97% of it's players.
Not everything is meant to be played forever. I think Skyrim was a one-off tbh.
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I love Bethesda, but putting TES6 on the back burner to make Starfield for eight years was an idiotic decision. They also took the wrong lesson from Skyrim, believing that streamlining the game through stripping of features was the reason for its success. They've done this same with each successive game since, and each has been more poorly received than the last. Go back to your roots and make a good, deep Elder Scrolls game. Continue to leave the shitty +5 modifier leveling system out, but at the very least restore attributes and birthsigns. Restore spellmaking. STOP FUCKING IT UP. You're on your last strike here and I don't have a lot of faith that you're going to make the right call.
Hard disagree that taking the chance on a new IP was a bad call. It didn't work out, but more of the same thing forever would be worse.
New IP would have been fine if they didn't drag Gamebryo's corpse into it, as well as the worst part of Fallout 4's perks, "+5% pistol damage at night" and adding requirements onto those like it made them special. Almost every RPG part of this game is bland and uninteresting and it's so fucking unfortunate. Star Citizen might be taking a dozen years to complete but at least they're using Unreal Engine and actually adding some fucking depth to their shit.
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I don't even know, if I would normally truly agree that simplification isn't at least aiding their mass appeal, but Starfield did get absolutely stumped by a traditionally complex RPG (Baldur's Gate 3)...
I think the sweet spot is finding a way to make tradition mechanics a bit more casual friendly without removing them outright. I don't think Morrowind or Oblivion's attribute and skill system was difficult to grasp, but the leveling system was pretty bad. You either played the way you wanted to, using the skills you believed your character should be using, and received low modifiers as a result, or you meticulously selected and planned out major/minor skills that weren't reflective of your actual playstle, just so you wouldn't blow your chance at earning +5 modifiers.
You couldn't just comfortably advance to the next level. You had this paranoia that it would be a weak and wasted level-up because you didn't spend enough time jumping or something. It poisoned the gameplay with this annoying meta that was purely about exploiting the leveling mechanics so you wouldn't be at a huge disadvantage. They remedied this in Skyrim, but at the cost of making all characters feel generic. The heart was taken out of your character and who they were. You no longer had a class identity. Everything was just kind of same-ey.
If they could at least restore attribute points so I could give my character a deeper identity and allow more dialogue checks related to said attributes so these identities mattered, we'd be heading in the right direction. They don't have to be so impactful that casual players are put off by them, but c'mon, man.. I want to feel like there's a deeper system at work here. I want to measure my character in more ways than "Good with sword" and "Good with heavy armor".
Did I mention how much I miss skill checks too? Fallout 3 and New Vegas handled these superbly.
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Basically give us a Morrowind clone with a better leveling system, remove the hit rolls, and updated visuals.
OH, and voice acting. Nit because it's better than text, but because the writing on Morrowind was way too verbose. I don't need to read a 30-page essay on the history of the history of a family whose servants once believed they spotted a mythical ring that culminate in a fetch quest.
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I disagree that they took the lesson that streamlining was the reason for Skyrim's success, because Starfield is not streamlined in the least. It's a complex series of menus and loading screens that lead to empty planets and probably other types of content, I'm not sure, because I hated navigating the menus and loading screens.
The lesson they should have taken from Skyrim is that the more immersive the game feels the more popular it will be. Immersion doesn't require streamlining, and features like spellcrafting would be hugely welcome back for ES6, IMO.
But there's no way to enjoy a space exploration game where the space exploration is handled so incredibly clunkily.
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No way but it won Steam's most innovative gameplay award for 2023.
I definitely think that it was voted for as a "joke" vote
The problem with joke votes is that it really corrupts the entire thing. RDR2 getting "most loving updates" or whatever it was called after it was shut down is a middle finger to the devs who actually keep up with their games.
Kinda reminds me of brexit: "I didn't think that it'd actually happen!"
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That game was dead on arrival for me, everything from gameplay to story was absolutely outdated and not interesting.
same. i really tried to like, but after ten hours i just uninstalled it.
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For contrast, 24 hour peak for BGS game since skyrim
Skyrim base + special edition = 28.5k
Fallout 4 = 18k
Fallout 76 = 8.3k
Starfield = 9.2k
Starfield + fallout 76 can't even surpass Fallout 4. They sure is losing the plot lately.
I guess “lately” is relative considering that Fallout 76 has been out for awhile and had a disaster of a launch.
I say this as someone who is a huge Skyrim and fallout fan, but people need to realize that Bethesda might be dead soon and be absorbed into Microsoft.
Let me help wake you up to why. First, their games are developed incredibly slowly. This is showcased by Starfield really well. That game took 7 or 8 years to make and yet, it’s very unfinished. They cannot make games quickly. And clearly they’re being forced to. Fans will wait a long time, but when your franchise gives each generation one game to play, your goose is cooking. Not to mention the glacial pace means that Starfield screwed them big time.
This part is huge though: their tools are ancient and always have been. I know engines get reworked to fit new projects, it’s common in development. However, they haven’t invested at all in their engine and it shows big time. People were even saying it about FO4 how it ran very very poorly and couldn’t handle the cities at release. Everything in that engine was very similar to Skyrim so of course Starfield failed because it’s the same engine with little time spent upgrading it properly. In fact, that’s why the game sucks. They spent too much time on engine stuff and the project moved forward without content due to technical limitations.
Then all the minor stuff. Their PR sucks. FO76 was a scam and still has a subscription to it. Horse armor. Re-releasing games 3 times.
But that’s just the game studio. What about the publishing arm? Well, mostly fine except for Redfall. Seems the only thing they can manage sorta well is the Doom franchise. But my god what happened to Prey and why not have Prey 2?
In summary, Bethesda doesn’t appear to have it in them despite being a huge studio and I’m not looking forward to its future handling of TES6
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I mean part of that is people just finishing the game. That's fine.
But also the consensus seems to be the game is at best "okay", and people won't be going back to it like they do with Skyrim.
I'm not sure if anyone at Bethesda honestly expected it to be better.
I can see that side of things, but people often re-play games that they love.
Looking at Bethesda's games being played right now, Starfield is 4th place, but the newest by far.
Skyrim (special Edition) https://steamdb.info/app/489830/charts/
26,600 players online when I made this comment.
Fallout 4 https://steamdb.info/app/377160/
19,650 players online when I made this comment.
The Eldar Scrolls online https://steamdb.info/app/306130/charts/
16.304 players online when I made this comment.
Starfield https://steamdb.info/app/1716740/charts/
9,086 players online when I made this comment.
Fallout76 https://steamdb.info/app/1151340/charts/
7,596 players online when I made this comment.
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I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking to be honest, and I was fine with that. And yet, it still underdelivered.
The opening section where some hotshot explorer just GIVES you his organisation's only ship and robot has to be the most idiotic and unbelievable moment in gaming narrative history (at least in my experience).
"Ok... Maybe it gets better." I thought. It didn't.
Most of the quests are just fucking awful and nonsensical - "Oh hi, I'm a top scientist for MAST, we have access to all the latest cutting edge technonology. Oh, apart from WiFi. Sorry can you go and pick up my sensors I placed nearby because I'm fucking lazy? Thanks." Honestly, I had no words for this one, and it wasn't the only one. Just laughably dogshit.
I had some good fun initially exploring and the ship customisation was cool, and I even enjoyed the space combat for a while, but the whole game feels like it was made 20 years ago.
That's quite an accomplishment in a way I suppose.
I don't think even modding can save it.
The opening section where some hotshot explorer just GIVES you his organisation's only ship and robot has to be the most idiotic and unbelievable moment in gaming narrative history (at least in my experience).
THANK YOU for calling this out. The story is the most hamfisted, milquetoast, bland, unbelievable lazy writing I’ve ever seen in a video game. Hey, you’re a random miner on her first day at work, here’s a ship and a secret society you’re supposed to be in. Welcome to the video game.
Fuck off.
Hahah yes exactly. I know Beth isn't highly regarded for writing/narrative but it makes Skyrim look like Shakespeare.
I actually thought Skyrim's environmental storytelling was pretty good to be fair.
And yeah I think you called it with "lazy". As a writer myself I actually found it almost offensive how utterly dogshit and low effort it was from a company that has the resources to do so much better.
I sincerely got the bends from basically alt-tabbing from the middle of Baldur’s Gate 3’s superlative storytelling straight into “OMG I’ve never seen someone generically mine a rock as good as you” and I had to turn it off (I eventually played it for about 10 hours, but I also initially installed it to a slow SSD and it was also unplayable aside from the garbage intro.)
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Starfield's only hope is a robust modding community, but it's not there yet.
mod makers need to want to make mods for it first... we can't just assume that the modders will fix it if there's nothing worth fixing. multiple modders that have made mods for previous Bethesda games have said they aren't doing this one.
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Because it becomes a boring point and click simulator with some exploration
The game doesn't even let you fly to and land on planets
Skyrim is fun, Starfield isn't
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I'm one of those people. I played as a "good guy," played as a pirate, got to NG+10. I did every major quest line and most of the side quests.
I didn't stop playing because I don't like the game. I finished the game. Isn't that normal?
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That's that Skyrim In Space game, right? Extremely corporately made RPG with very well done graphics and otherwise basically nothing special going on?
The graphics are actually really dated. I don't use Reshade very often, but for this game it's necessary if you want even basic things like ambient occlusion (seriously, the shadows and lighting are so bad in this game).
But yeah, "corporate RPG" is correct. The game checks nearly every box for what you'd expect from a Bethesda game, but the game is just so soulless and boring. Bethesda doesn't write the best stories but they really dropped the ball on this one. At no point did I form any sort of feelings for the characters. They never have anything interesting to say nor give me any reason to care if they live or die.
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Starfield was so bad people consider The Outer Worlds to be a better Bethesda RPG in space, try telling that to someone in 2022.
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If you want to play a star game I recommend Starsector. I've been getting back into it recently and it's great. More a mount and blade in space than a Starfield though. Updates are slow but significant and there's plenty of game to enjoy already.
One really cool mechanic is story points which you get alongside levelling up (and you keep earning after the level cap) which you can spend in certain parts of the game to do special stuff or break the normal rules which is really cool. Many interesting things tie into it but yeah, lot's of interesting mechanics.
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This game is such a disappointment. Paused a bg3 game to test it. Did the tutorial rolling my eyes all the time. The first few missions hitting my head on the desk and finally, got back to Shadowheart.
It felt soooooo empty. So shallow.
i think starfield looks just as uninspired and boring as the next guy, but i think we should take player retention with a grain of salt on linear single-player games. of course people are less inclined to continue playing when they’ve finished the main quest
anyway play resident evil 2 remake
Yeah, Starfield has no legs. I got bored with it pretty quick; for me that BGS spark is gone.
Wait. It didnt help that Bethesda argued against reviews that said the game isnt fun by arguing "Yes it is fun"?
The game is pointless to return to. Base building has not point. There is no reason why anyone should even build a base. And the ship builder is cool, but it’s like a Lego, you can’t fly it.
This IP isn’t going to last a long time without that stuff.
To spoil it for anybody, Starfield has a "new game plus" where you carry over your character, stats, and inventory to a new universe (the new universe has new things).
But here's the kicker:
That base and ship you spent all that time building? DISAPPEARS.
And the game encourages you to do NGs so there seriously is no reason to build.
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