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
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.
Todd is the reason Bethesda games have been steadily getting worse since Morrowind, as a game designer he’s largely a fraud riding on the coattails of much better designers.
I’m waiting on more world shit mods to play it again, recently saw a house building mod on any planet and have my hopes up more will come. Granted Bethesda might actually want this engagement so they can release a definitive edition with hella mods, to bridge their own technical gaps again lol.
To some degree, yes. Very few people are playing Skyrim in it’s vanilla format, these days. The same is likely true of Fallout 4.
I enjoyed Starfield but it’s definitely missing something Skyrim had which made me continue playing after I completed the MSQ.
I’ve put close to 500 hours into vanilla Cyberpunk but only around 80 into Starfield. My classic Skyrim, which I did play mostly vanilla, was roughly 250 hours. Where special edition is around 1500 hours purely due to mods.
But I already know I’m not chomping at the bit to mod Starfield like I was other games.
Vanilla Skyrim < Vanilla Starfield
Modded Skyrim >>> Vanilla Starfield
Simple as. I went back and replayed Vanilla Skyrim this year, and let me be the first to tell you that Starfield is legitimately a better game when it comes to roleplaying, choices, and quest design. Skyrim has a far more interactive and immersive world design, but to me that falls flat when the game is so fucking boring to interact with (hot take, I know).
Mods fix all of those problems with Skyrim, and that’s what people are playing now.
Yeah, this headline reads “disappointing single player game somehow stopped selling all that much after 6 months”
Like… Yeah???
I thought replayability was sort of Bethsoft’s MO?
The opposite, actually. Bethesda goes for infinite playability, rather than infinite replayability. New Vegas is far more replayable than anything Bethesda has released.
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.
I liked living Skyrim 4 from wabbajack but yeah the base game isn’t really that special and I haven’t replayed it without mods
I replayed Vanilla Skyrim this year, and yea, it’s boring as hell. Better world design than Starfield, but Starfield is overall a better game when it comes to roleplaying and quest design, in Vanilla.
I honestly don’t know what other people see in it. Modding maybe?
Pretty much. Bethesda’s RPGs live and die by their mod support.
Yeah I never valued skyrim for replayability… I replayed oblivion a lot (maybe because I was younger), and replayed FO3/NV a bit. But even with mods, I could never get myself to replay skyrim more than a couple hours in.
Just felt so repetitive with boring dungeons and drauger. Stumbling into Blackreach was one of my favorite Bethesda experiences tho. But the gameplay felt stale halfway through my first playthrough. Felt like a chore to finish the story.
Skyrim’s true power is that it’s excellent for single-player roleplay. The game is very immersive, the universe feels extremely vast, and the gameplay allows for extremely varied play styles.
The end result is that the game is very replayable if your thing is building a consistent and unique (head)cannon for your character. If you don’t focus the main quest, you can put in hundreds of hours across multiple characters before things get stale. Even the quests that you follow multiple times, you might approach from very different angles.
It’s really not good for roleplaying, though. The game doesn’t give the player much to work with when it comes to creating unique characters, it’s more like a demigod simulator. Mods fix this, but New Vegas still stomps it because the game and the quest design facilitates roleplaying better.
I’m supposed to move on?
Wait. It didnt help that Bethesda argued against reviews that said the game isnt fun by arguing “Yes it is fun”?
Damn it, “losing steam” was right there to make a great headline pun
The state of journalism today… smh
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!”
“And now here we are, on an island with a failing economy and scrambling to establish trade routes with the people we just told to fuck off.”
Considering the awards are nigh-useless anyway, sacrificing some “credibility” to call out shitty business seems worth it imo.
It’s not like it’s a “haha look how silly this is” joke–it’s a “you all fucked this up though for the public to hate you, do better” joke.
Think of it like this: You could annoy some shit companies for a few minutes or give a small dev a life achievement they will cherish for years.
Don’t undermine these things please. We used to not have awards, award shows, anything for games. Showing we don’t give a shit is a quick way for them to disappear.
Award shows have been on the way out for well over a decade, and have been purely marketing tools for even longer.
More importantly, the devs who got their games nominated likely saw sales spike, which means more players enjoying the things they created, and they were properly compensated for their work. That means way more than a BS award that sits on a shelf.
It’s “undermining gaming” to give award show results so much weight when we know how biased they are.
… Homie, every single year I look forward to the games I had a ton of fun with and emotionally connected with get the recognition they deserve so the people who worked so hard on it get a little more than just a paycheck and a high five.
I’m sorry you’re so jaded and scarred by something that you can’t understand what it means to pour your heart into a project and have one of the biggest stages for that field of work hail it as one of the best pieces of work for the year. Steam awards are directly voted on by us and it’s made clear by the dogshit picks everyone made as a ‘joke’. The award shows themselves have to filter out joke votes for that exact reason or it’s just not fun to watch.
Bro it is truly, truly not that deep.
I played and beat the main quest for both Skyrim and Starfield, and I thoroughly enjoyed both games. And while I agree that Starfield has things to complain about, I enjoyed the plot much more in Starfield. I’m a big sci-fi nut, so that helps, but once I finished the main quest in Skyrim, I didn’t feel the pull to go any further.
In Starfield, I’m still loving all the side quests, and NG+. And although the ship builder is clunky, I love modding my ships.
I’m glad Bethesda finally came up with a new IP. I really don’t get all the backlash.
I actually went back and replayed Vanilla Skyrim this year because I found myself enjoying Starfield more than Skyrim, and I’ll back you up. Starfield’s quest design is more complex, more apt for roleplaying (multiple options for each major questline so you don’t have to be a psychopath to play both Companions and Dark Brotherhood), and general RPG design, but the world design is more lacking than Skyrim.
I’m glad to know somebody enjoys it. I found it quite dull.
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.
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.
I think the number one rule of space exploration is “players must be able to fly wherever the fuck they want in their spaceship.” Their engine couldn’t handle that so they were hobbled from day one. All the design decisions were working back from that catastrophic mistake. They should have used Unreal or built a new engine or radically overhauled Gamebryo.
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.
Did Star Citizen change engine? I thought they used a modified CryEngine. Just checked, they now use Lumberyard, which is based on CryEngine.
Wait, really? I would have bet real money on it being UE4. Whelp, my mistake.
I’m pretty sure UE4 wasn’t even close to being released when Star Citizen started, and changing engine is a good way of wasting a lot of time.
UE4 released in 2014 and Star Citizen started releasing modules in 2013, so pretty close actually.
If they wanted to create something fresh then sure, but the end result was the same game they’ve released multiple times, except this time it’s with a new coat of paint.
They could’ve spent that time adding to an existing IP instead of creating a new IP to make the same thing again.
Yeah, also imagine waiting this long for the next elder scrolls and it was this quality. Now they have one more chance to get things right and apparently they needed it.
To play devil’s advocate, Starfield is absolutely a better RPG than Skyrim when it comes to roleplaying, quest design, and more. They made huge improvements to complexity and options for the player.
They just also paired that with awful world design, and could no longer rely on lore written by GOATs no longer working for the company.
I have a hard time believing they spent one year on this game, let alone eight. Half of it, including the game’s engine, the leveling system, and the fucking dragonshouts in space, is pulled from existing sources, the writing sucks, the base building is a pointless perk sink, there’s maybe three dozen unique structures copy-pasted again and again, the enemies are spongy and boring as hell, and despite being Bethesda’s “Least Buggy” work to date, it’s still chock-a-block with bugs.
You know what I think? I think they jerked around exactly like Randy Pitchford did with DNF and they’re trying to pretend they didn’t.
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.
I’d kill for a Daggerfall remake. That was my first TES experience and I still remember staying up all night to play it in highschool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXOWKABmxCQ
Theres never been a more perfect time! This project recently reached 1.0 converting it over to Unity and is supported by mods!
That’s Awesome! Thank you!
It lost me after 20-something hours sometime during the week after release. What a pile of shit
Starfield was so bad people consider The Outer Worlds to be a better Bethesda RPG in space, try telling that to someone in 2022.
The Outer Worlds was good, though…
Its just kinda plain.
The anticapitalism and queer are good, but the gameplay is repetitive
The outer worlds was so much better than starfield in every single way. Better gameplay, world and companions.
I’m playing through The Outer Worlds now. I’d consider it more enjoyable than what I played of Starfield. Gives me Borderlands vibes with Bethesda dialogue.
Playing Starfield, and actually enjoying a good part of it, like the faction quests, side quests, radiant quests even, and the increased roleplaying potential, then seeing a huge backlash against it, made me replay Skyrim, Vanilla, in 2024. The results may shock you!
The TL;DR is that Skyirm only beats Starfield in world interactivity like NPC schedules, and the percentage of gameplay you interact with that’s hand-crafted vs procedural.
Comparing the faction quests of, say, the Dark Brotherhood and Crimson Fleet, you must play the Dark Brotherhood as a psycho assassin, while for the CF, you can be a fed, a brutal pirate, or someone walking that line, with your own background added for flavor.
The quest design in Starfield also gives more options, as well!
This overall means that, IMO, Bethesda game design itself is kind of shit without mods.
World interactivity is one of the most important things in open world games. Starfield is just completely empty
And because many of the sites you find on a planet are just RNG, there’s not much visual story-telling, either. Which is one the things they’ve always done pretty well until now. It’s just a place to find loot with no actual context or story behind it, which makes the exploration little more than “oh hey, there’s something here.”
yeah i miss the lore and sense of world building i get in Fallout. every little note adds to the story and overall feel
I don’t disagree. However, some of the absolute worst aspects of Bethesda games, like roleplaying mechanics, quest design, and more were actually improved in Starfield. BG3 still smokes it, same with New Vegas, but it’s also much better than Skyrim with those respects.
That’s why it’s interesting.
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.
Same. Played for 40 hours, did the ranger questline, went “is thats it?” And basically felt no urge to play again.
Starfield’s only hope is a robust modding community, but it’s not there yet.
DLCs and the Creation Kit will fix this, and Starfield will get many “Starfield is underrated!” videos. I am calling it now, just like I did a couple weeks after release.
The bones of Starfield are better than the bones of Skyrim by a huge margin, even if the skin is far worse.
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.
And tons, like Enai Saion (one of the absolute powerhouses elevaring skyrim) will mod Starfield. More will come once the modding community gets started.
Wait. You’re telling me Starfield doesn’t have the recently reported 30 million mods?
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.
People are still playing skyrim
Not every game can be Skyrim and setting the bar that high is ridiculous
Bethesda set the bar. It’s their job to raise it with future releases.
Skyrim was pretty bad. I’d say it’s a pretty low bar. They did get the overall atmosphere right though.
I feel like the “there are dozens of us! Dozens!” meme when I’m like I didn’t think Skyrim was very good. The story was mostly thin, the combat wasn’t great, the systems were shallower than the previous games, the leveling wasn’t great (the scaling was better than oblivion but that’s a lot bar).
I played it a lot but a lot of that was trying to get it into something I liked via mods.
Edit: I think Skyrim also has a certain meme status, where people who don’t play a lot of games play it. That’s a very loose measurement of quality.
Regardless of your personal preferences, I don’t think it’s reasonable to call Skyrim’s longevity and continued active user base a low bar
I think it’s reasonable. Skyrim is boring as hell Vanilla, but mods make it great. The devs shouldn’t get credit for modders.
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.ESO is live service and an MMO, it doesn’t really belong in this list, but otherwise yeah basically everything you said.
Lets see how well this age. People said the same about 76 and Bethesda didn’t give up on it.
I played fo76 when it had a free weekend and I really didn’t like it at all. I guess it’s good that people enjoy it, but I thought it kind of stunk.
It takes a bit to get going, but we’ve put a lot of hours into it. But for online game, it’s achieved what it set out to do. The story can be hit or miss but it has a boat load of it so overall it’s super enjoyable due to the usual fallout world building.
achieved what it set out to do can be hit or miss
Damn. I know you meant well, but you sound like a project manager of a feature on an insurance website and the minimum viable product was kinda janky and you are trying to soften the blow to the team during the lessons learned meeting.
But this is a video game. For relaxation and recreation. With lots of competition in the market. What you wrote is more of a condemnation than any hyperbolic gamer nerd rant.
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
I never really understood that fly and land on aspect that a lot of people pick on. No man’s sky does it and that game bores the hell out of me. It’s cool for a couple of times I guess.
That’s what space sims are though. Not your type of game, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have open flight.
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?
