A new engine would just have to have a new mod API. Plenty of engines have mod APIs. Nothing’s really stopping them, but they really love driving creation engine onward for some reason.

“yeah we always thought this could happen,” the family said in a statement. “We’re very negligent, to the point of abuse.”

Idk what people are expecting to see.

I’m loving starfield and I’ll agree with this. It’s a mid eighties score kind of game. If it’s what you want it’s amazing, but the people calling it game of the century and whatnot are buying their own hype.

On the other hand, it’s likely to have serious staying power as an all time classic game, Bethesda is great at that and there’s a ton of room for people to use it as an incredible mod canvas. I don’t think that should affect launch reviews though.

I think this is it. I enjoy making fun of the NPCs in starfield but mostly when I’m playing I don’t notice them at all. I do have a few very pretty screenshots of the game. It’s not perfect by any stretch but the scope is impressive and most of it really is pretty good

I don’t think Bethesda has ever sold based on graphics no matter how much they want to pretend it. Morrowind and oblivion both looked under par when they came out as well.

I’m not a fan of Bethesda’s reliance on mods to do basic shit, like fix a broken UI and inventory management system, by honestly I also think this argument is overused. People pay for these games because they want to mod the shit out of them, it’s like ninety percent of the appeal. Nobody is forcing modders to work on them, either. That argument can only stretch so far. For comparison, No Man’s Sky is actively hostile to modding, and as a result I probably won’t be going back to it despite loving it. They’re not going to add the kind of content I want, they’re likely never going to, and they’re not letting anyone else do it either. I wish they’d allow free volunteers to finish off some of their 75%-of-the-way-to-greatness features.

With starfield, I’m excited for the mods, and the game is far from flawless goodness knows, but I’ve had a friggin good time and definitely got my money’s worth on vanilla. Now I look forward to spicing it as I like.

The upper whites thing has led to some of the funniest memes I’ve seen in ages, not gonna complain about that one.

I miss forums so much. A federated backend for forums would be nice. I’m so tired of having these giant communities of angry strangers if I want to talk about anything

It’s perfectly reasonable to wait. Games only gonna get better.

I’d try not to read too much into the internet fuss. It’s a better release than Bethesda’s usual in most regards. I wound up sinking almost the entire weekend into it, haven’t done that in ages. The games really fun. That said, it is only going to get better with time.

I’m playing starfield way too much. Every now and then I get a break to continue my Minecraft project with the kids. The internet keeps telling me I’m not supposed to be having fun with starfield but it’s just not working, I’m really excited about the new capital ship I’m working on now.

I found it took a long time to really get rolling. On the other hand I’m 70 hours in now and keep finding more depth and things to do and mechanics I haven’t even explored, it sometimes is a bit daunting how much there is to do in it.

!dda_discussion@cdda.social - we’ve got a micro-instance for our ultra-nichd foss roguelike, cataclysm: dark days ahead.

I’m not sure. It’s a good game, but the fun you can have in it is more Minecraft style than Bethesda style. If you want that, then it’s probably worth a try

Yeah. I’m agreeing with you I think, but my main gripe here is that even in the intro/tutorial moments they don’t actually tutorial anything.

I don’t mind the mechanic of the double unlock. I do think a lot of the unlocks themselves are phoned in. Was just ranting about how bad the “install 15 unique ship parts” one is with a friend, like why not something kind of interesting instead of such a grindy one? “Make a ship with only one engine and a top speed of 150” eg.

the system is interesting. The gameplay is meh, but I don’t think it’d be too bad if there was something tied to it.

personally I prefer finding the obelisks as a way to learn languages. I forgot about the cookie cutter, useless NPCs in the stations.

imo the main problem isn’t that there are a lot of things, it’s a major lack of information about game systems really. The game gives you a boostpack and tells you it’ll help, but doesn’t bother to pop up and tell you you’ll need a point in boosters if you want to use it. It shows you how to target enemy engines but doesn’t tell you you’ll need a point in targeting if you want to do it yourself. It’s an obvious, silly miss. I don’t mind that these things need points, but it’s annoying that it doesn’t tell you, especially when they have a place in the game where they easily could.

Lots of places really. Outside the tutorial sections of the main quest, why not have my boost packs say like “basic boost pack - function locked unless you have Boosters 1”

Depending on when you player, it’s generally a very different game every 2 years or so, but it’s still not perfect. I actually just posted a big rant about it upthread.

There’s a solid complaint IGN made that I think is completely true, that starfield has too many of its most fun systems that don’t unlock until you unlock the appropriate skill, and nothing in the game even tells you to do that. Disabling and boarding starships is a big one, or using boost packs; modifying weapons and armour too. Depending on how you ran your 12 hours you might be missing some of those.

Performance is a big one too. There are already some good looking performance mods on nexus iirc

One of the weirdest bits there is that they have a fairly interesting and robust system of learning alien languages, but then quest gives always give quests in your native language so there’s no reward for learning the alien stuff at all.

And of course all the quests are basic fetch quests, because there is nothing in the game resembling a dungeon or combat arena, and no real enemies you can fight (alien bugs or sentinels, wee)

I really hope starfield lights a bit of a fire under the NMS folks to fix some of their half-finished systems along those lines. NMS has procedurally generated ships, we’re just not allowed to tinker with the procedural generator to make our own for some reason.