I did my 80 hours in Starfield but haven't been wanting to go back, now that they've started talking about the new expansion, I think I'm gonna wait on it. I enjoyed Starfield for what it was, but...
I did my 80 hours in Starfield but haven't been wanting to go back, now that they've started talking about the new expansion, I think I'm gonna wait on it. I enjoyed Starfield for what it was, but definitely wish the exploration/open world was more fleshed out. Maps being fixed is really nice, and a land vehicles are cool (though I feel like it might make the "empty worlds" problem feel worse tbh).
I'm with you - I'll await their "Game of the Year Mega Platinum 10th Anniversary" or whatever edition when everything is settled and done. Maybe we'll even get Elder Scrolls 6 by then!
I'm with you - I'll await their "Game of the Year Mega Platinum 10th Anniversary" or whatever edition when everything is settled and done. Maybe we'll even get Elder Scrolls 6 by then!
The land vehicle is just giving me Mass Effect 1 Mako vibes and not in a good way. Exploring a procedurally generated square area with a whole lot of nothing in between. I've long finished the...
The land vehicle is just giving me Mass Effect 1 Mako vibes and not in a good way. Exploring a procedurally generated square area with a whole lot of nothing in between.
I've long finished the game and put it down. My main gripe was the lack of immersion especially with ship travel in a space game. I'm not expecting Star Citizen quantum travel, but at least something that conveyed your ship is somewhat seamlessly moving between systems that hides a chunk of the loading screens. Freelancer had jump gates that hid the loading screen behind the jump effect, so you got instant jumps if you loaded the next sector quickly.
The most minimal example is how Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart and Jedi Fallen Order handled it with a diegetic starmap and how it kept your view mostly within the ship and shifted the skybox around. Fallen Order had an additional trick to fade the skybox to white to quickly transition between takeoff and low orbit.
And then my other minor gripe is the ship density on the ground compared to everything they show in low orbit. If you want me to work with the "one city per planet" stretch of lore that they went with (especially when the rest of the planet is physically explorable and you have a star-spanning civilization) then the capital cities needed to look way more busy with ship trade traffic at least. I loved the first area in Rift Apart (Nefarious City) after you finish the prologue for that reason. So many ships and set dressing flying around aside from NPCs walking around that it actually felt like a bustling city.
I would have been happy with ship travel if you could fly to the edge of the "cell" and then load into the next "cell" so that you could somewhat simulate flying between planets. Add in random...
I would have been happy with ship travel if you could fly to the edge of the "cell" and then load into the next "cell" so that you could somewhat simulate flying between planets. Add in random encounters that can happen while you are doing that and it would have been great. I could have suspended my disbelief enough in that to simulate being able to fly around in my ship. Add in not forcing me to fast travel out of my ship if I've already been to a location (why didn't they make that an option you could turn off?) which at least there are mods to fix that.
Instead, the ship is a glorified fast travel point (kinda like how Outer Worlds did it but Outer Worlds was more honest about it not letting you actually fly it) and the only random encounters happen when you fast travel to a new cell. There is no point in flying anywhere or even just pretending to.
I mean I'm excited for being able to customize the interior of my ship but then what's the point when the ship is just a fast travel hub?
I don't think it's unfixable for what I'd like to see (as a good compromise between trying to make flying work in their engine as it can't handle all of space at once but letting me have more immersion in pretending I'm a space traveller). Add in random encounters in space that don't just happen when you fast travel in and add in fast travel happens if you reach the edge of the cell (and appoint pointers at the edges of what cell you fast travel to). Course I'm not a programmer but within what they've made I wouldn't think it would be too hard to just set at set parts of the boundary where to fast travel to if some one reaches it. The RNG encounter part I'm not as sure if it is as easy (I know in their regular games even random encounters still happen at set parts of the map but could they just map set parts in each cell in space for a random encounter to happen? Spread them out liberally so you have a good chance of running into one?).
Out of curiosity, did you ever try navigating from within the ship? I found that much more enjoyable. Pick your destination and then rather than clicking the fast travel button, go back into your...
Out of curiosity, did you ever try navigating from within the ship? I found that much more enjoyable. Pick your destination and then rather than clicking the fast travel button, go back into your ship, align yourself to the waypoint and hold the jump button.
It's still load screens and whatnot, but you're doing your jumps from within your cockpit and it just felt way better for me.
Yeah I've done all of that like initiating jumps from the cockpit, but I still would've preferred at least even an Elite Dangerous style smoke and mirrors with how that game handled moving a ship...
Yeah I've done all of that like initiating jumps from the cockpit, but I still would've preferred at least even an Elite Dangerous style smoke and mirrors with how that game handled moving a ship around a world at different scales, specifically the supercruise system.
So you'd have your standard on-foot Bethesda open world scale that we have now, then transition to cells for the ship control parts that already exist like station approach, ship combat or low orbit.
Ideally I'd like another open world "map" that's the equivalent of supercruise where instead of moving a character around in a wasteland, you move your ship around a streaming set of cells with textures of planets and stars around you. Elite Dangerous doesn't even let you land seamlessly at planets or dock at stations from interplanetary travel, you essentially have to instance into the planet or stations immediate surroundings by dropping out of supercruise. You solve the random encounter/space POI problem by things pulling you out of supercruise, then you can influence that with things already in the game like speech checks.
They mention difficulty improvements, but it looks like bigger and smaller numbers (albeit with quite granular control) and no mention of working on actual challenging enemy AI. Staying on the...
They mention difficulty improvements, but it looks like bigger and smaller numbers (albeit with quite granular control) and no mention of working on actual challenging enemy AI. Staying on the junk pile for me.
The bizarre thing is that they do actually have a passable enemy AI, it is just tuned to be very passive and difficulty doesn't change it. I 'modded' my game (config changes) to remove HP bloat...
The bizarre thing is that they do actually have a passable enemy AI, it is just tuned to be very passive and difficulty doesn't change it. I 'modded' my game (config changes) to remove HP bloat completely (good riddance) and to make the AI way more responsive and aggressive.
It didn't make the AI amazing or anything, but it did make the combat way more engaging. Did you know that there is a wait time between AI actions where they'll effectively just stand around? Gone. Did you know they'll eventually start throwing grenades if you hide behind cover for too long? Now they won't wait nearly as long. Aside from things like that, simply increasing their accuracy makes standing outside of cover riskier (especially combined with the no more HP bloat).
I do not understand why the difficulty level doesn't affect those things, and just affects a horrible HP bloat system instead.
Bizzare is the word, but also substandard AI is par for the course in open world games. Super interesting it’s there, I wonder why the implementation is so poor.
Bizzare is the word, but also substandard AI is par for the course in open world games. Super interesting it’s there, I wonder why the implementation is so poor.
I copied and tweaked from these three Nexus mods: AI, Enemy HP scaling, and Player HP scaling. They're all console commands that can be configured to run on startup. ;vanilla = 20 setgs...
I copied and tweaked from these three Nexus mods: AI, Enemy HP scaling, and Player HP scaling. They're all console commands that can be configured to run on startup.
60fps on Series X is HUGE. Huge. The poor framerate was the number one turn-off for me. Skyrim in space would be fine if it didn't feel like I was actually playing a 13-year-old game. Sure,...
60fps on Series X is HUGE. Huge. The poor framerate was the number one turn-off for me. Skyrim in space would be fine if it didn't feel like I was actually playing a 13-year-old game. Sure, there's other things that feel outdated besides the performance, but I enjoyed it enough that I'm definitely coming back for this update. Can't wait to feel this game with a reasonable framerate.
I did my 80 hours in Starfield but haven't been wanting to go back, now that they've started talking about the new expansion, I think I'm gonna wait on it. I enjoyed Starfield for what it was, but definitely wish the exploration/open world was more fleshed out. Maps being fixed is really nice, and a land vehicles are cool (though I feel like it might make the "empty worlds" problem feel worse tbh).
I'm with you - I'll await their "Game of the Year Mega Platinum 10th Anniversary" or whatever edition when everything is settled and done. Maybe we'll even get Elder Scrolls 6 by then!
The land vehicle is just giving me Mass Effect 1 Mako vibes and not in a good way. Exploring a procedurally generated square area with a whole lot of nothing in between.
I've long finished the game and put it down. My main gripe was the lack of immersion especially with ship travel in a space game. I'm not expecting Star Citizen quantum travel, but at least something that conveyed your ship is somewhat seamlessly moving between systems that hides a chunk of the loading screens. Freelancer had jump gates that hid the loading screen behind the jump effect, so you got instant jumps if you loaded the next sector quickly.
The most minimal example is how Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart and Jedi Fallen Order handled it with a diegetic starmap and how it kept your view mostly within the ship and shifted the skybox around. Fallen Order had an additional trick to fade the skybox to white to quickly transition between takeoff and low orbit.
And then my other minor gripe is the ship density on the ground compared to everything they show in low orbit. If you want me to work with the "one city per planet" stretch of lore that they went with (especially when the rest of the planet is physically explorable and you have a star-spanning civilization) then the capital cities needed to look way more busy with ship trade traffic at least. I loved the first area in Rift Apart (Nefarious City) after you finish the prologue for that reason. So many ships and set dressing flying around aside from NPCs walking around that it actually felt like a bustling city.
I would have been happy with ship travel if you could fly to the edge of the "cell" and then load into the next "cell" so that you could somewhat simulate flying between planets. Add in random encounters that can happen while you are doing that and it would have been great. I could have suspended my disbelief enough in that to simulate being able to fly around in my ship. Add in not forcing me to fast travel out of my ship if I've already been to a location (why didn't they make that an option you could turn off?) which at least there are mods to fix that.
Instead, the ship is a glorified fast travel point (kinda like how Outer Worlds did it but Outer Worlds was more honest about it not letting you actually fly it) and the only random encounters happen when you fast travel to a new cell. There is no point in flying anywhere or even just pretending to.
I mean I'm excited for being able to customize the interior of my ship but then what's the point when the ship is just a fast travel hub?
I don't think it's unfixable for what I'd like to see (as a good compromise between trying to make flying work in their engine as it can't handle all of space at once but letting me have more immersion in pretending I'm a space traveller). Add in random encounters in space that don't just happen when you fast travel in and add in fast travel happens if you reach the edge of the cell (and appoint pointers at the edges of what cell you fast travel to). Course I'm not a programmer but within what they've made I wouldn't think it would be too hard to just set at set parts of the boundary where to fast travel to if some one reaches it. The RNG encounter part I'm not as sure if it is as easy (I know in their regular games even random encounters still happen at set parts of the map but could they just map set parts in each cell in space for a random encounter to happen? Spread them out liberally so you have a good chance of running into one?).
Out of curiosity, did you ever try navigating from within the ship? I found that much more enjoyable. Pick your destination and then rather than clicking the fast travel button, go back into your ship, align yourself to the waypoint and hold the jump button.
It's still load screens and whatnot, but you're doing your jumps from within your cockpit and it just felt way better for me.
Yeah I've done all of that like initiating jumps from the cockpit, but I still would've preferred at least even an Elite Dangerous style smoke and mirrors with how that game handled moving a ship around a world at different scales, specifically the supercruise system.
So you'd have your standard on-foot Bethesda open world scale that we have now, then transition to cells for the ship control parts that already exist like station approach, ship combat or low orbit.
Ideally I'd like another open world "map" that's the equivalent of supercruise where instead of moving a character around in a wasteland, you move your ship around a streaming set of cells with textures of planets and stars around you. Elite Dangerous doesn't even let you land seamlessly at planets or dock at stations from interplanetary travel, you essentially have to instance into the planet or stations immediate surroundings by dropping out of supercruise. You solve the random encounter/space POI problem by things pulling you out of supercruise, then you can influence that with things already in the game like speech checks.
They mention difficulty improvements, but it looks like bigger and smaller numbers (albeit with quite granular control) and no mention of working on actual challenging enemy AI. Staying on the junk pile for me.
The bizarre thing is that they do actually have a passable enemy AI, it is just tuned to be very passive and difficulty doesn't change it. I 'modded' my game (config changes) to remove HP bloat completely (good riddance) and to make the AI way more responsive and aggressive.
It didn't make the AI amazing or anything, but it did make the combat way more engaging. Did you know that there is a wait time between AI actions where they'll effectively just stand around? Gone. Did you know they'll eventually start throwing grenades if you hide behind cover for too long? Now they won't wait nearly as long. Aside from things like that, simply increasing their accuracy makes standing outside of cover riskier (especially combined with the no more HP bloat).
I do not understand why the difficulty level doesn't affect those things, and just affects a horrible HP bloat system instead.
Bizzare is the word, but also substandard AI is par for the course in open world games. Super interesting it’s there, I wonder why the implementation is so poor.
What config changes did you make?
I copied and tweaked from these three Nexus mods: AI, Enemy HP scaling, and Player HP scaling. They're all console commands that can be configured to run on startup.
Thanks!! I'll definitely try that out, it sounds much better than the base game.
Bigger smaller number difficulty. The Bethesda Classic™.
60fps on Series X is HUGE. Huge. The poor framerate was the number one turn-off for me. Skyrim in space would be fine if it didn't feel like I was actually playing a 13-year-old game. Sure, there's other things that feel outdated besides the performance, but I enjoyed it enough that I'm definitely coming back for this update. Can't wait to feel this game with a reasonable framerate.
It's worded as a 60 FPS target, so be wary of the promises.
Very true, we'll see how it handles once it drops.