this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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Even Starfield's community patch modders are growing 'disenchanted' with the sci-fi RPG, as volunteers depart in droves: 'If nobody comes forward, we may have to retire the project' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago by Ashtear@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 41 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Starfield would be fine if there was a way to get from place to place without constant reloads. This is a limitation of the (ancient) engine the game is on, as I understand it.

The thing is, we already have games like No Man's Sky which do this very well. Starfield may have been better received if it came out 15 years ago, but against modern space games, it just sucks.

That's ignoring anything else wrong with the game, of course, and there is plenty. But I could get over a lot if it didn't feel like I was playing a menu instead of flying a spaceship at every change of scenery.

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 28 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Freelancer would have been fresher in memory 15 years ago, and that's one that had seamless intra-system travel. Gameplay in Freelancer even flowed better than NMS for getting from orbit to orbit and having encounters or discoveries along the way. It just didn't have the on-foot gameplay. I had the same problem with loading screens in Everspace 2. Killed the flow. Whoever tries to do this again is going to have to make sure transitions are minimal.

And that's what I don't get about Starfield, conceptually. With this project scope, you're not competing well with NMS for ship-to-foot or orbit-to-surface transition, you're not doing better than Freelancer--a 20+ year old game--for all the in-space stuff, and the procgen hamstrings you with all the "Bethesda magic" their worlds are known for. It's like someone said "let's do Daggerfall in space" and went rigid top-down design with it, retrofitting whatever they could along the way to make a functional game around the procgen.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 weeks ago

I maintain that if they didn't bother with the space thing, or abstracted it more to a "blip on a screen" type of topdown play like in mass effect, it would be a better game. They could have spent that time on the shooter gameplay loop not being shit.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 18 points 4 weeks ago

This is a limitation of the (ancient) engine the game is on, as I understand it.

Old engine isn't always bad. It is if you do like Todd and just slap more and more plugins and technology on top and call it a new engine, instead of fixing underlying issues or rewriting/updating old parts.

Which is why Starfield NPCs walk onto tables and become owls when the camera zooms into conversations, etc: It is the same code that is used in Skyrim and partly Oblivion. And Todd Howard doesn't want devs doing silly things like fixing twenty year old code, he wants new and bigger.

[–] Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

But I could get over a lot if it didn’t feel like I was playing a menu instead of flying a spaceship at every change of scenery.

I stopped playing mid-loading screen. My awareness just snapped into place, and I realized that the last 30 minutes of "gameplay" was effectively:

  1. bland fetch quest dialogue
  2. walk through corridor - board ship
  3. loading screen
  4. space (menu)
  5. loading screen
  6. Space over different planet (menu)
  7. loading screen
  8. landing pad - walk through corridor
  9. bland fetch quest dialogue
  10. GoTo step 2