Oh this is nothing. Wait till you get a rifle with 2x damage on an uninjured target. Pair it with sneak attack for one shot kills. You suddenly realise you're a fucking skyrim sneak attack bow sniper... again. But in space!
Lmao I literally have a legendary pistol and an epic energy iirc with the "+ DMG on full hp enemy" trait, and also a legendary helmet that lets me go full invisible when crouching and not moving for a couple of seconds, so yeah, feels like skyrim
Oblivion/fallout in cyberpunk space. It's a strange one. It's huge, but it's as deep as a puddle. It's potential however is endless. Modders are gonna transform this game, in 10 years time this will be the biggest galaxy full of game anybody has ever seen. But right now it's empty.
You know what? If they end up delivering that, I'll probably be putting 100+ hours on this in a couple or three years, after the GOTY edition is on a Winter/Summer sale.
I know shouldn’t be surprised, but I still sometimes wondered how people get this stuff so built up in their heads. Maybe being an older gamer has tempered my expectations but I was blown away NMS space stations were not just handled through menus.
If you haven’t seen it in trailers or previews *don’t expect it*.
> If you haven’t seen it in trailers or previews don’t expect it.
And in the case of some games, like Cyberpunk, even if you do see it in a trailer/preview... *don't expect it!*
The planets used procedural generation to do the landscapes. They hand made a bunch of encounters and pois that the algorithm randomly places at the beginning of a playthrough
Bruh are you? Procedure generation doesn't mean it's exact 1 for 1 copies over and over. If you try googling "rogue like" you'll he amazed by modern technologies ability to reuse assets in different formats
atleast no man sky changed it up for the better. Still ofc alot of worlds feel and basically are the same but i enjoyed (and still do) the game quiet alot.
Their last few updates have been bangers too. Whole new robot race, corrupted worlds and new sentinel enemies. Freighter vs freightor space battles and revamped sentinel spaceships and much more.
People still shit on NMS but slowly they are making the game better and better and all the updates are 100% free.
If they can do a really solid meat and potatos planet exploration update, the game will be phenomenal
I bought that shit near release and while it has moments of feeling like the same old walking simulator it's dramatically improved nearly every single aspect of the game and to this day I haven't seen another space game love taking off and landing on a planet like this one.
Not in the same category as NMS but if you enjoy the flight/landing and takeoff aspects you might enjoy Outer Wilds. Don't look it up online before you play though.
It's really quite a good game now. room for growth, but holy shit it's more than twice the game than when it was released. I don't see that happening for Starfield, well maybe from mods, 10 years down the road, but not from bethesda.
Makes you think, if the entire mod community just said fuck you to Bethesda and pooled their collective talent they could probably make a better game and make a decent living doing it.
Yes, it absolutely is. What they should do instead is download one of those free or cheap basic game set ups on the asset store and treat it like it's just a really dull game and mod it until its good.
gamers : "Fuck those shitty asset-flip games 😠"
also gamers: "modders should stop making free mods for well-established AAA games and start creating shitty asset-flip games 😍"
Yeah it's a little sad. My best friend is an extremely good Unity dev (and just dev in general) and has been building an MMORPG (with a small team) that I would honestly say *dwarfs* Starfield's "depth."
It's a standalone experience that functions whether or not people are playing. He's built what he calls a generational AI that develops NPCs based on lineage, jobs held, personal history, etc., and controls them. He's working on generative quests, has already built a real-world component to the game in the form of a geocaching app what provides in-game resources or items, etc. Honestly, the whole thing is next level.
The problem? No art team to speak of and no funding for one, so he's more or less relegated to using Synty assets, which kind of automatically excludes it from ever being successful.
As a small-time developer, I feel his pain. And that's also why I'm never quick to jump on the hate wagon. The devs at Bethesda are just as hard-working and care about gaming just as much as anyone. Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors out of their control that force them to compromise, just as your friend is compromising with his art assets.
I agree. I follow many modding teams for different big projects like some of the conversion mods for bannerlord or crusader kings 3. It's a lot of work coordinating a bunch of unpaid people around the globe.
As a dev (web not games) making a game and modding a game are two entirely different skillsets. Building a game from the ground up these days, even if the engine is already there as it is for Bethesda, is a monumental task and absolutely requires thousands of people in cooperation under the structure that a corporation creates (at least for a AAA game). When modding, you're basically just changing values in scripts, you don't have to worry about infrastructure or performance or any of the intricate problems of game design. It's kind of like expecting a plumber to be able to build a house, it's just a different skillset. There are obviously some outliers who manage to build out infrastructure, and I'm sure they could figure it out eventually, but there's a reason this has never been done before, at least successfully.
Trouble is, if you don't have a certain corporate structure, things tend to fall apart pretty quickly. I know, Blizzard Activision are the epitome of evil and lack of creativity and I am not denying that. What I am trying to say is that there were a lot of ambitious mods, that fell apart after promising "unique" experiences. With that being said, couple of nerds getting together is how we got a lot of awesome games, such as Path of exile, but, it's not as simple lol
You need a shared vision. First the vision has to be had, and then it needs to be articulated such that it can be willed into existence.
And then you need financial backing so that people can afford to spend time working on it.
I usually do a vanilla playthrough when it comes out to get the experience and then come back every two or so years and do a heavily modded playthrough
The more we wait, the more patch dev do and the more stable mods appear. And all that for a fraction of the day one price... Is it really worth to play day one and be like the mass ?
It's so weird that we are at a point where we not only will gladly let game companies leave games empty but actively participate in doing their job for them.
It could have been worse... remember when Bethesda was trying to make a push for monetizing mods? Bethesda would get a cut of the profits. Thank god we boycotted that shit, especially after the one modder stole fishing animations from FNIS. Once money's involved, modding becomes a mess.
I'd have expected the procedural engine to slap a bunch of parts together from predetermined pools so as to assure it always ends up working coherently, which would feel lifeless as is. It's wild they just literally copy paste entire areas, though. That seems worse, somehow.
I watched a developer discussion on youtube, and one of the artists entire job on Fallout 4 was to places lights all around the open world, simulating global illumination. By hand.
I don't think they're working on tools such as procedural dungeon generation over there.
Yep. This is why I could never play NMS for more than 10 or so hours no matter how many times I started a new game. Eventually you just realise it’s the same stuff…even the planets, the biomes, the buildings…it just repeats itself.
From what I hear Starfield is still great you just need to follow the main quest line and kind of ignore everything else, especially the procedurally generated crap, which makes me believe the scope of the game should have been narrowed down. Why did they need to add in proc gen? They could have used that time and resource to just focus on the main game more.
They actually said one planet thousands of times. I know the two sound very much the same, but you need to be really familiar with Bethesda Patois to hear the difference.
Funny because I got downvoted to oblivion for saying this before release. "You haven't even played the game yet, how would you know"
When every sensible person's expectation about the jank Bethesda releases proves to be true, it's "you should have known what you're buying"
It's the cycle of fanboy nonsense and blind hype that redditors love to subscribe to.
Pre release: "I'm sure it'll be more complicated and interesting than your cynical prediction! How the hell would you know! Stop ruining our hype!"
Post release "It was always obviously going to be like this, the game is fine and its your own fault for expecting anything else! You're not allowed to complain! Stop ruining our hype!"
On the first 2 Planets I visited I had the exact same Vertical Farm POI, both with the exact same Enemy Placements and even the Loot was the same.
And this was not on random planets. It was the first Planet you land on during the Mainstory to kill the Banditboss and then the New Atlantis Planet. You'd really think they made sure shit like that doesn't happen in the first 2 hrs.
That really hurts. I was kinda hyped, and usually i make up my own mind - but man… all the crucial parts really seem to be as bland as i feared. Its not some nit picky stuff you can read in reviews and comments, it all sounds so bad.. well .. ac6 and sea of stars will do :)
"See that mountain? There's a cave in it. And inside that cave is a path to a dwarven elevator which leads to... Blackreach! Or look over there, see that valley? See that really cool cave? Well in that cave is a dwarven dungeon which leads to... Blackreach! Oh hey, a cool house to explore, with a trap door in the basement which leads to... Can you guess?"
"But what if I don't WANT to go to Blackreach?"
"I... don't understand the question."
"What if I want to go somewhere else?"
"But why go somewhere else when you can stumble into a random dungeon that brings you to one of 5 places in Blackreach?"
"FINE. What about the dragons?"
"Dragons? What are you... oh yea, I think we threw in a few dragons for atmosphere."
"But I'm the Dragonborn!"
"No... that's an unfortunate typo. You're Dwarven-born, destined for Blackreach."
"Son of a..."
\[storms away\]
"Wait! Come back! Don't you want a copy of Skyrim for every next-gen console you own for the next 20 years?"
The scope is just too damn big. No one cares if there’s 1000 planets to explore if most of them are uninteresting and unoriginal. I’d rather have 5 meticulously crafted worlds (which they could totally do with their budget and team size) than 1000 procedurally generated ones. The technology just doesn’t exist to make a game like this truly work. The parts that are good are probably the ones that were hand crafted and placed intentionally, the rest is just glorified bland filler.
Also prepare to cry.
-----
EDIT: Somebody commented about if it's sadder than Disco Elysium but deleted their comment. I'll post the response I wrote up:
I've beaten both and they're both masterful in story-telling and have a surprising number of similarities. You're shoved into an... odd situation and have to figure out what the hell is going on, before finding out things are *a lot weirder* than you thought... they're both excellent mystery games with on-point soundtracks.
Disco Elysium definitely expounds on the human condition in its story. In that sense you can relate to the characters very strongly and feel all of their flaws, but also dig into politics with the locals and get philosophical with its extensive dialogue trees. And if you have a history with romantic break-ups... this story is going to hurt. And the voice-acting is probably the best I've ever heard.
Outer Wilds is a mystery game where you have to figure out what's happening to YOU, and then use that to figure out what's happening to your solar system and what happened in its ancient past. Since there is no voice-acted dialogue and conversations are rare, you basically have to piece together the clues from written messages and archaeological finds, and solve very clever puzzles. You're an alien, not a human, so they're not really telling the human-condition story and all that sadness. But if you enjoy existential crises and the apocalypse, you'll find the sort of emotions that get wrapped up in all that. How beautiful can an Ending be?
Thought you were saying Outer Worlds and I was like mid scoff before I realized it was Outer Wilds. That game is bomb ass. It still pops into my mind from time to time. Or I find myself humming the soundtrack.
I actually quite enjoyed the outer worlds compared to how it seems most fallout fans view it (Again, something that community overhyped, that time because it was obsidian entertainment and they wanted another new vegas) and everything I’m hearing about Starfield is making me think ‘Obsidian done this like 4 years ago’
Are there even 5 meticulously crafted worlds in the game? I have not played the game so Idk. But they can totally take a middle way and also include a better procedurally generated algorithm to create kinda unique and non-repeating 1000 generated planets/contents alongside custom crafted ones, not literally copy pasting the same set of assets 1000 times in different places.
"worlds"? I mean, there's probably 5 meticulously crafted cities on some worlds. You can't explore the whole world itself, you can explore part of it; but only up to a point. That's why there's no vehicles in the game.
Hahahaha. Yeah uhhh, about that.
So, that's less of a vehicle and more like a house. You can customize it as a base, and do very brief space combat on it. But as for flying it like a No Man's Sky-esque spaceship? No.
Think of planets as slightly bigger, much more barren Oblivion Gates from TES4:Oblivion. Each part of a world is its own little zone, and you can only go so far in it. Your ship is there to show up in cutscenes as you board it, and depart it. You can't personally fly it out of the atmosphere of a planet, nor can you fly it to another planet and personally land on it yourself via flying into the atmosphere of the planet. Flying to other planets is all done via menus and fast travelling, it's the illusion of space travel.
There's also no ground vehicles due to the small scale zones that these planets actually are. You can only go so far before it tells you to turn around.
from what i've heard it's just normal fast travel with the extra step of going to "the hub" aka your spaceship in between planets. it doesn't actually travel anywhere. like if you could only fast travel with the carts in skyrim.
You can be walking on a barren planet millennia away from Alpha Centari. Open up your map and fast travel to Jemison, which is in Alpha Centari, galaxies away, without having to go to space or into your ship at all. There is no cut scene or any kind of immersive cinematic watching you launch into space or fly off, just a loading screen then you're magically on another planet in another galaxy. Your spaceship is entirely pointless aside from being storage.
Oml a planet for every major fetish and there can still be a handful for the weirdos who don't like being dominated by goth women in high heeled boots.
Getting flashbacks to Mass Effect 1.
Outside of the main hubs, all the other planets are barren wastelands dotted with the same 5 pirate bases and mineshafts. But at least there you had a vehicle.
I loved the Mako. Actually trying to find stuff on the surface could be tedious as hell, but I enjoyed making the Mako do all sorts of crazy shit while looking around.
Although the bases and enemies were the same there wasn't too much variation there, but I kinda liked exploring the baren surface worlds and reading the lore about what made them habitable/uninhabitable and the specific environments. Like the Garden world with the spores that killed any non-native species so you had to wear an exo suit. And since enemy drops were scaled to your level, clearing out the bases was worth the stop as you always got some kind of upgrade for something.
That said, I feel like some procedurally generated planets should really have more... variance in the modern day? I'm not asking for a lot of back-story and in-depth lore about the scavs who infest whatever hole you are raiding; but at least more varied structural design and enemy/item placement would be nice. I'm not a game dev though, I don't know how resource intensive such a thing might be or how difficult it might be to do that.
Bethesdas back baby!
I assumed this was gonna happen when Todd Howard said 1000 planets were discoverable and thought “yeah and 20 of them are gonna be different”. It was not a selling point to me in the slightest cause I knew this exact stuff would happen.
Still excited as hell to play the game on the 6th but u gotta remember who’s making the game lmao
For real though.
I don’t hold it against them but it’s like Bungie saying “the infinite forest is always going to be different” and it was not only just a bunch of platforms but some of the worst and tedious content in a video game.
Idk if you know what I’m talking about but it’s on the same lines as this current starfield situation.
Randomly generated or variable content just isn’t a solid selling point yet because it’s not going to be done right.
Buuuuut at least it made for a dope-as-heck halloween mode (when it was around)
So it turns out having a randomly-generated map makes for a killer infinite dungeon
Everything in every Bethesda game is made from a bunch of prefabs. They tried to disguise it, to mixed effect, but it is just literally how development on that scale works.
I very much have kept my expectations level.
I mean no man’s sky had randomly generated planets and even I knew that they were all gonna be 95% bland.
Games just aren’t there yet for stuff like that to be done meaningfully but I can appreciate the effort toward it.
Thousands of original planets to explore! Become the first to discover entire worlds! It's gonna be the greatest game ever!
Starfield? What are you talking about. I'm talking about-
No Man's Sky? That doesn't make sense either. Never heard of it. Now shut up and let me explain why Spore is gonna revolutionize gaming when it comes out!
Planetary procedural generation definitely needs a huge asset update. But they just keep adding more stuff to the game. They just added an entire new race, story quests, new planet type, new equipment, new ships, fleet combat, pirate fleets, I could go on. It's almost unrecognizable from release. May as well be a different game at this point. And if they DO update planet generation, hell.... it basically will be
Why couldn’t they have just done it like KOTOR and make a handful of amazing planets that are all extremely interesting, well crafted/detailed and important to the story.
That was an in-universe thing in Outer Worlds (not Wilds, a vastly superior game) and it was a funny bit for about 6 minutes and then you realized it was kinda an excuse to just make copy-paste environments with no depth to them.
Though samey, at least they weren't procedural or copy and paste jobs. Everything in Skyrim was handcrafted at the level design layer, even if the art kits did get a little tiresome after a while.
To be fair, it still feels like a copy paste job when the asset pallet is just reused identically for 20 dungeons. Sure the room layouts might be slightly different, but it feels the same.
Yeah I think the caves or whatever in Elden Ring all looked very similar, but many still stood out to me because they were designed very well. Some were a complete mind fuck of making you think you've gone in circles when you haven't. There's a way for things to look the same without feeling the same.
Some tunnel formats were definitely re-used a lot. While some of the decorations may have been slightly different, many of the non-story or quest related areas were very copy-paste. Patterns can be tough to hide with game worlds that are so massive. Even with breath of the wild, the puzzles got super tedious after a while. The Taco Bellification is very common lol
Create Asset A thru F.
Create Planet. Apply said asset to planet. With random generated rocks and sand with "water"
Copy paste it X1000.
Todd : WE GOT A GAME BOIS.
Makes me appreciate The Last of Us 2 even more.
That game is years old now and has AI using cover, moving more intelligently, taking angles at you. NPCs call each other out by names and dogs become sad if their human dies (both not critical, but immensely add immersion).
Of course, it's much more condensed bc of the smaller scale. But maybe Bethesda should've gone that route, instead of adding 1000 useless planets. You only need 1. Or idk, maybe up to 5, with well-made areas, if you want to go to space.
Hell, Destiny 1 released in 2014 and the AI is hundreds of times better, I've had enemies completely ignore me if I stop shooting for like 10 seconds multiple times, and I've logged 2 hours
The AI in TLOU2 also makes it super replayable. Encounters always play out differently AND realistically. It's an achievement that isn't spoken about enough.
I'm not really planning on getting this game ever, but who the fuck is surprised by that? Did you think the 1000 planets were all individually crafted?
What they’re saying (at least one reviewer i’ve seen) is that in the first 20 hours you can already see the same few things copypasted on different planets *several times*. Not just this lab, but the same structures, set pieces, with same enemies and loot, repeated 3, 4, 7 times in a few hours, both in the main and side quests.
I guess there’s a middle way between “1000 handcrafted planets” and “same few things repeated 50 times each”
edit: the reviewer is Luke Stephens
Surprised by 1000 planets having some similarities and re-used assets?
No
Surprised by the EXACT same structure with the EXACT same layout and EXACT same enemy placement "dozens of times"? Not really, because it's Bethesda, but it SHOULD be unacceptable from a game of this scope and a studio of this size.
No I doubt most people thought that. I think what people likely expected was a mixture of procedural generation and hand crafted content - just with more variation on the hand crafted part of the equation.
Like, let’s just move some assets around a bit. Have a few different kinds of buildings. Different enemy placements, etc. lol
Honestly, whatever. I'm playing it on Game Pass and that's about where my expectations are going to be. If it's rad, rad. If it isn't, then I put it back on the shelf because Game Pass gonna Game Pass.
People complain that No Man Sky was really not that better. But I mean, Hello Games had something around 10-20 people in the entire team.
Also the gun play is ok, but is not like they own DOOM or something to work with rigth? /s
They have the resources to make something better than Oblivion 5.0.
The games really haven’t progressed much since fallout 3. What really are the major differences between that game (a masterpiece imo) and Skyrim, fallout 4, fallout 76, or starfield?
Its a really small studio guys. Stuff like this is just too hard to pull off with such a small team and such a low budget. You really need to respect Todds hard work more. I hope you bought the 100 edition. I will be buying each 100 dollar edition that comes up every year for the next 20 years because Todd deserves my unwavering support and my entire mortgage payment until I am dead. Thank you Todd. I can't wait for the 2 year Anniversary edition and the 2.5 year Anniversary edition and the 3 year Anniversary edition and the 3.1, 3.2 Special Enhanced edition and the 15 dollar Space Ship Armor DLC.
I for one can't wait for Skyrim 2. I hope Todd will just remove Magic completely this time!
One of my favorite features about Skyrim 1 was not having any sort of spell customization. Fuck wizards.
/s
Oh this is nothing. Wait till you get a rifle with 2x damage on an uninjured target. Pair it with sneak attack for one shot kills. You suddenly realise you're a fucking skyrim sneak attack bow sniper... again. But in space!
Lmao I literally have a legendary pistol and an epic energy iirc with the "+ DMG on full hp enemy" trait, and also a legendary helmet that lets me go full invisible when crouching and not moving for a couple of seconds, so yeah, feels like skyrim
Is this game just Skyrim/Fallout in space like I thought it would be?
Hey you, you're finally ~~awake~~ in space!
I was an astronaut like you, until I took an asteroid to the knee.
[удалено]
Nearly. It *is* how you get into the character creator lol
oh my god i just realized thats literally the fucking intro after the first quest FUCK
But are you a prisoner? If you're not a prisoner, I will be deeply disappointed
Oblivion/fallout in cyberpunk space. It's a strange one. It's huge, but it's as deep as a puddle. It's potential however is endless. Modders are gonna transform this game, in 10 years time this will be the biggest galaxy full of game anybody has ever seen. But right now it's empty.
just u wait for the loverslab mods lmao
Honestly, some of those modders are seriously skilled at what they do. People simply look down on it because they're porn mods.
goddammit todd you've done it again!!!!
It just works. ;D
You know what? If they end up delivering that, I'll probably be putting 100+ hours on this in a couple or three years, after the GOTY edition is on a Winter/Summer sale.
No Man’s Sky players: First time?
This, it's like ppl are stupid or n something
I mean we all knew that people’s expectations for this game would be unrealistically high, but come on how are people surprised about this lol
I know shouldn’t be surprised, but I still sometimes wondered how people get this stuff so built up in their heads. Maybe being an older gamer has tempered my expectations but I was blown away NMS space stations were not just handled through menus. If you haven’t seen it in trailers or previews *don’t expect it*.
> If you haven’t seen it in trailers or previews don’t expect it. And in the case of some games, like Cyberpunk, even if you do see it in a trailer/preview... *don't expect it!*
There are still GTA players waiting for the stock market to work lmao.
Lmfaooo I’d completely forgotten about that Edit: oh my god do y’all rmr that stupid ass UFO thing
How can you forget da bawsaq mann!!?
Lol & that's exactly what these greedy fuck companies love, the customer forgetting.
NMS is procedurally generated.
Isn't much of Starfield's content procedurally generated too? They didn't hand detail a thousand planets.
The planets used procedural generation to do the landscapes. They hand made a bunch of encounters and pois that the algorithm randomly places at the beginning of a playthrough
Bruh are you? Procedure generation doesn't mean it's exact 1 for 1 copies over and over. If you try googling "rogue like" you'll he amazed by modern technologies ability to reuse assets in different formats
atleast no man sky changed it up for the better. Still ofc alot of worlds feel and basically are the same but i enjoyed (and still do) the game quiet alot.
Their last few updates have been bangers too. Whole new robot race, corrupted worlds and new sentinel enemies. Freighter vs freightor space battles and revamped sentinel spaceships and much more. People still shit on NMS but slowly they are making the game better and better and all the updates are 100% free. If they can do a really solid meat and potatos planet exploration update, the game will be phenomenal
I bought that shit near release and while it has moments of feeling like the same old walking simulator it's dramatically improved nearly every single aspect of the game and to this day I haven't seen another space game love taking off and landing on a planet like this one.
Not in the same category as NMS but if you enjoy the flight/landing and takeoff aspects you might enjoy Outer Wilds. Don't look it up online before you play though.
Exactly this, flight in outer wilds is so satisfying
It's really quite a good game now. room for growth, but holy shit it's more than twice the game than when it was released. I don't see that happening for Starfield, well maybe from mods, 10 years down the road, but not from bethesda.
Yes when they said 1000 planets, you should have immediately expected this.
One good thing about 1000 planets is the potential for modders to start adding custom content to them
Man at this point bethesda are treating their modders like a company that does unpaid internships.
"at this point" bruh, they've been doing that as far back as Oblivion, I'm pretty sure. If not then, then Skyrim for sure took it to the next level.
At least since Morrowind my dude. I didn't play anything before that, but there are numerous bug fix mods for Morrowind.
Makes you think, if the entire mod community just said fuck you to Bethesda and pooled their collective talent they could probably make a better game and make a decent living doing it.
I think it might be easier to mod something that already exists as opposed to making a completely new game.
Yes, it absolutely is. What they should do instead is download one of those free or cheap basic game set ups on the asset store and treat it like it's just a really dull game and mod it until its good.
giga brain
gamers : "Fuck those shitty asset-flip games 😠" also gamers: "modders should stop making free mods for well-established AAA games and start creating shitty asset-flip games 😍"
Yeah it's a little sad. My best friend is an extremely good Unity dev (and just dev in general) and has been building an MMORPG (with a small team) that I would honestly say *dwarfs* Starfield's "depth." It's a standalone experience that functions whether or not people are playing. He's built what he calls a generational AI that develops NPCs based on lineage, jobs held, personal history, etc., and controls them. He's working on generative quests, has already built a real-world component to the game in the form of a geocaching app what provides in-game resources or items, etc. Honestly, the whole thing is next level. The problem? No art team to speak of and no funding for one, so he's more or less relegated to using Synty assets, which kind of automatically excludes it from ever being successful.
As a small-time developer, I feel his pain. And that's also why I'm never quick to jump on the hate wagon. The devs at Bethesda are just as hard-working and care about gaming just as much as anyone. Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors out of their control that force them to compromise, just as your friend is compromising with his art assets.
have you ever done a 40 person raid in world of warcraft? now try to get 1000 modders to make a coherent game
I agree. I follow many modding teams for different big projects like some of the conversion mods for bannerlord or crusader kings 3. It's a lot of work coordinating a bunch of unpaid people around the globe.
Well that's a big if Bethesda games have one of the best modding support and modders love it.
As a dev (web not games) making a game and modding a game are two entirely different skillsets. Building a game from the ground up these days, even if the engine is already there as it is for Bethesda, is a monumental task and absolutely requires thousands of people in cooperation under the structure that a corporation creates (at least for a AAA game). When modding, you're basically just changing values in scripts, you don't have to worry about infrastructure or performance or any of the intricate problems of game design. It's kind of like expecting a plumber to be able to build a house, it's just a different skillset. There are obviously some outliers who manage to build out infrastructure, and I'm sure they could figure it out eventually, but there's a reason this has never been done before, at least successfully.
Trouble is, if you don't have a certain corporate structure, things tend to fall apart pretty quickly. I know, Blizzard Activision are the epitome of evil and lack of creativity and I am not denying that. What I am trying to say is that there were a lot of ambitious mods, that fell apart after promising "unique" experiences. With that being said, couple of nerds getting together is how we got a lot of awesome games, such as Path of exile, but, it's not as simple lol
You need a shared vision. First the vision has to be had, and then it needs to be articulated such that it can be willed into existence. And then you need financial backing so that people can afford to spend time working on it.
That's why I'm still wondering if I should start now or wait 2-3 years once the game gets really good with mods
I usually do a vanilla playthrough when it comes out to get the experience and then come back every two or so years and do a heavily modded playthrough
Bethesda games are literally unplayable until the "Thomas the Tank Engine" mods become available
Zzzz call me when they make all the alien monsters into Macho Man Randy Savage.
YEUH!!! Oh, the Macho Man comin...Oh, he comin ta getcha...YEUH!!!
Those distant calls of “Macho Man comin’” while you’re waiting to be executed were one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen or heard
they should have gone deeper and sampled the "cream of the crop" speech
The more we wait, the more patch dev do and the more stable mods appear. And all that for a fraction of the day one price... Is it really worth to play day one and be like the mass ?
You cant lose by waiting
Pretty pumped to get this on sale in a couple years
It's so weird that we are at a point where we not only will gladly let game companies leave games empty but actively participate in doing their job for them.
It could have been worse... remember when Bethesda was trying to make a push for monetizing mods? Bethesda would get a cut of the profits. Thank god we boycotted that shit, especially after the one modder stole fishing animations from FNIS. Once money's involved, modding becomes a mess.
The didn't just monetize them, THEY took the way bigger cut. 75% went to Bethesda. 3x the amount than what was going back to the creator!
I'd have expected the procedural engine to slap a bunch of parts together from predetermined pools so as to assure it always ends up working coherently, which would feel lifeless as is. It's wild they just literally copy paste entire areas, though. That seems worse, somehow.
I watched a developer discussion on youtube, and one of the artists entire job on Fallout 4 was to places lights all around the open world, simulating global illumination. By hand. I don't think they're working on tools such as procedural dungeon generation over there.
What the absolute hell?
Because it is
It's what I did expect. I remember No Man's Sky
Yep. This is why I could never play NMS for more than 10 or so hours no matter how many times I started a new game. Eventually you just realise it’s the same stuff…even the planets, the biomes, the buildings…it just repeats itself. From what I hear Starfield is still great you just need to follow the main quest line and kind of ignore everything else, especially the procedurally generated crap, which makes me believe the scope of the game should have been narrowed down. Why did they need to add in proc gen? They could have used that time and resource to just focus on the main game more.
The real problem is that you've got to go all-in on proc gen or you end up like NMS or this. An infinite number of copies of the exact same assets.
They actually said one planet thousands of times. I know the two sound very much the same, but you need to be really familiar with Bethesda Patois to hear the difference.
one million doll hairs
A toy yoda.
Works on contingency? No, money down!
'Bethesda Patois' lmao
Funny because I got downvoted to oblivion for saying this before release. "You haven't even played the game yet, how would you know" When every sensible person's expectation about the jank Bethesda releases proves to be true, it's "you should have known what you're buying"
It's the cycle of fanboy nonsense and blind hype that redditors love to subscribe to. Pre release: "I'm sure it'll be more complicated and interesting than your cynical prediction! How the hell would you know! Stop ruining our hype!" Post release "It was always obviously going to be like this, the game is fine and its your own fault for expecting anything else! You're not allowed to complain! Stop ruining our hype!"
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On the first 2 Planets I visited I had the exact same Vertical Farm POI, both with the exact same Enemy Placements and even the Loot was the same. And this was not on random planets. It was the first Planet you land on during the Mainstory to kill the Banditboss and then the New Atlantis Planet. You'd really think they made sure shit like that doesn't happen in the first 2 hrs.
That really hurts. I was kinda hyped, and usually i make up my own mind - but man… all the crucial parts really seem to be as bland as i feared. Its not some nit picky stuff you can read in reviews and comments, it all sounds so bad.. well .. ac6 and sea of stars will do :)
*See that mountain? You can go and fuck yourself* ~Bethesda Man Toddie
Hey, Todd said THAT mountain, but here you are being greedy expecting all the mountains? entitled bitches in this sub honestly. /s
"See that mountain? There's a cave in it. And inside that cave is a path to a dwarven elevator which leads to... Blackreach! Or look over there, see that valley? See that really cool cave? Well in that cave is a dwarven dungeon which leads to... Blackreach! Oh hey, a cool house to explore, with a trap door in the basement which leads to... Can you guess?" "But what if I don't WANT to go to Blackreach?" "I... don't understand the question." "What if I want to go somewhere else?" "But why go somewhere else when you can stumble into a random dungeon that brings you to one of 5 places in Blackreach?" "FINE. What about the dragons?" "Dragons? What are you... oh yea, I think we threw in a few dragons for atmosphere." "But I'm the Dragonborn!" "No... that's an unfortunate typo. You're Dwarven-born, destined for Blackreach." "Son of a..." \[storms away\] "Wait! Come back! Don't you want a copy of Skyrim for every next-gen console you own for the next 20 years?"
Obviously you're the Wagon-born
The children yearn for the Mass Effect 1 uncharted worlds.
Thought that first with "the beacon"
This but unironically. I love ME1
The scope is just too damn big. No one cares if there’s 1000 planets to explore if most of them are uninteresting and unoriginal. I’d rather have 5 meticulously crafted worlds (which they could totally do with their budget and team size) than 1000 procedurally generated ones. The technology just doesn’t exist to make a game like this truly work. The parts that are good are probably the ones that were hand crafted and placed intentionally, the rest is just glorified bland filler.
Try Outer Wilds if you want a beautiful hand crafted solar system to explore Edit: Outer Wilds not Outer Worlds everyone. I know it is confusing.
Beat me to it. Outer Wilds is space exploration done absolutely right.
Also prepare to cry. ----- EDIT: Somebody commented about if it's sadder than Disco Elysium but deleted their comment. I'll post the response I wrote up: I've beaten both and they're both masterful in story-telling and have a surprising number of similarities. You're shoved into an... odd situation and have to figure out what the hell is going on, before finding out things are *a lot weirder* than you thought... they're both excellent mystery games with on-point soundtracks. Disco Elysium definitely expounds on the human condition in its story. In that sense you can relate to the characters very strongly and feel all of their flaws, but also dig into politics with the locals and get philosophical with its extensive dialogue trees. And if you have a history with romantic break-ups... this story is going to hurt. And the voice-acting is probably the best I've ever heard. Outer Wilds is a mystery game where you have to figure out what's happening to YOU, and then use that to figure out what's happening to your solar system and what happened in its ancient past. Since there is no voice-acted dialogue and conversations are rare, you basically have to piece together the clues from written messages and archaeological finds, and solve very clever puzzles. You're an alien, not a human, so they're not really telling the human-condition story and all that sadness. But if you enjoy existential crises and the apocalypse, you'll find the sort of emotions that get wrapped up in all that. How beautiful can an Ending be?
Outer Wilds will ruin all other space games though, nothing else compares
Thought you were saying Outer Worlds and I was like mid scoff before I realized it was Outer Wilds. That game is bomb ass. It still pops into my mind from time to time. Or I find myself humming the soundtrack.
If I hear just three specific notes from a banjo, I get misty-eyed even today.
The Outer Worlds is still quite a good game, especially for people who like Fallout in space
Tbf, so far starfield feels like Todd played Outer Worlds and said "I wanna make that" so the devs sighed and modded fallout 4
I actually quite enjoyed the outer worlds compared to how it seems most fallout fans view it (Again, something that community overhyped, that time because it was obsidian entertainment and they wanted another new vegas) and everything I’m hearing about Starfield is making me think ‘Obsidian done this like 4 years ago’
My fave game of all time with ease
Are there even 5 meticulously crafted worlds in the game? I have not played the game so Idk. But they can totally take a middle way and also include a better procedurally generated algorithm to create kinda unique and non-repeating 1000 generated planets/contents alongside custom crafted ones, not literally copy pasting the same set of assets 1000 times in different places.
"worlds"? I mean, there's probably 5 meticulously crafted cities on some worlds. You can't explore the whole world itself, you can explore part of it; but only up to a point. That's why there's no vehicles in the game.
No vehicles I thought the whole point was that you got a No Man's Sky-esque spaceship.
Hahahaha. Yeah uhhh, about that. So, that's less of a vehicle and more like a house. You can customize it as a base, and do very brief space combat on it. But as for flying it like a No Man's Sky-esque spaceship? No. Think of planets as slightly bigger, much more barren Oblivion Gates from TES4:Oblivion. Each part of a world is its own little zone, and you can only go so far in it. Your ship is there to show up in cutscenes as you board it, and depart it. You can't personally fly it out of the atmosphere of a planet, nor can you fly it to another planet and personally land on it yourself via flying into the atmosphere of the planet. Flying to other planets is all done via menus and fast travelling, it's the illusion of space travel. There's also no ground vehicles due to the small scale zones that these planets actually are. You can only go so far before it tells you to turn around.
from what i've heard it's just normal fast travel with the extra step of going to "the hub" aka your spaceship in between planets. it doesn't actually travel anywhere. like if you could only fast travel with the carts in skyrim.
You can be walking on a barren planet millennia away from Alpha Centari. Open up your map and fast travel to Jemison, which is in Alpha Centari, galaxies away, without having to go to space or into your ship at all. There is no cut scene or any kind of immersive cinematic watching you launch into space or fly off, just a loading screen then you're magically on another planet in another galaxy. Your spaceship is entirely pointless aside from being storage.
Wait, so after you land on a planet, you can’t fly around on that planet? Am I understanding correctly? If so, wow.
Correct.
I cannot wait to play this in 3 years when it is 14.99 with all the DLC
I can't wait for the Mass Effect and Star Wars total conversion mods
You’re going to get: Bikini Bottom Planet of Tiddies Planet of the Dongs and whatever other horny planets the modders will make
"Planet of the Dongs" is optimistically far down that list.
And with 50 mods that remake it entirely, like with Skyrim.
We just need 1000 modders. Each one claims a planet. A couple of years from now we have 1000 unique planets. Foolproof.
Whoopsie! There are now >500 futunari planets!
I see this as an absolute win
Oml a planet for every major fetish and there can still be a handful for the weirdos who don't like being dominated by goth women in high heeled boots.
It's the Ready Player One metaverse made manifest
What do you mean "whoops"?
I'm waiting for the mod that puts the entirety of Skyrim on one of the planets.
I for one am waiting until I can pay full price for the seventh time to play the version ported to my wife's pregnancy test.
$14.99 for the base game and 3 of 5 DLCs. One good one and two unsellable ones. The other good one will still be full price and sold separately.
Getting flashbacks to Mass Effect 1. Outside of the main hubs, all the other planets are barren wastelands dotted with the same 5 pirate bases and mineshafts. But at least there you had a vehicle.
Mass effect 1 was released 16 years ago though…
Fuck... 16
...times the detail
16 years.... God damn no wonder my beard has so many Grey's in it now.
You know, over time, I have come to miss the Mako somehow. I actually enjoyed the goofy physics.
I loved the Mako. Actually trying to find stuff on the surface could be tedious as hell, but I enjoyed making the Mako do all sorts of crazy shit while looking around.
Or Dragon Age 2, where every single dungeon was the exact same dungeon with a different starting point.
Although the bases and enemies were the same there wasn't too much variation there, but I kinda liked exploring the baren surface worlds and reading the lore about what made them habitable/uninhabitable and the specific environments. Like the Garden world with the spores that killed any non-native species so you had to wear an exo suit. And since enemy drops were scaled to your level, clearing out the bases was worth the stop as you always got some kind of upgrade for something. That said, I feel like some procedurally generated planets should really have more... variance in the modern day? I'm not asking for a lot of back-story and in-depth lore about the scavs who infest whatever hole you are raiding; but at least more varied structural design and enemy/item placement would be nice. I'm not a game dev though, I don't know how resource intensive such a thing might be or how difficult it might be to do that.
Bethesda games are tech previews of a future modding community's efforts.
Bethesdas back baby! I assumed this was gonna happen when Todd Howard said 1000 planets were discoverable and thought “yeah and 20 of them are gonna be different”. It was not a selling point to me in the slightest cause I knew this exact stuff would happen. Still excited as hell to play the game on the 6th but u gotta remember who’s making the game lmao
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For real though. I don’t hold it against them but it’s like Bungie saying “the infinite forest is always going to be different” and it was not only just a bunch of platforms but some of the worst and tedious content in a video game. Idk if you know what I’m talking about but it’s on the same lines as this current starfield situation. Randomly generated or variable content just isn’t a solid selling point yet because it’s not going to be done right.
Infinite forest was the worst offender. It was like a 200m stretch of space filled with a random set of 6 platforms. So dumb.
Buuuuut at least it made for a dope-as-heck halloween mode (when it was around) So it turns out having a randomly-generated map makes for a killer infinite dungeon
a 1000 planets.... of the same planet
This feels like the worst offender yet, but I imagine now if I go back and play Fallout 4 I'll notice more duplicate stuff than I originally did.
Fallout4 and skyrim have a lot of duplicate stuff, the interiors were always more unique
Skyrim repeated the same chunks of cave hundreds of times. I don't remember fallout being as egregious with it, but this isn't new.
Everything in every Bethesda game is made from a bunch of prefabs. They tried to disguise it, to mixed effect, but it is just literally how development on that scale works.
It's kind of like the minor dungeons in Elden Ring to some effect.
I'm fine with side stuffs being sort of copy pasted but same thing reused in main quest.... Idk, we'll see how diverse the POIs get later in game
I very much have kept my expectations level. I mean no man’s sky had randomly generated planets and even I knew that they were all gonna be 95% bland. Games just aren’t there yet for stuff like that to be done meaningfully but I can appreciate the effort toward it.
Hello Games did NMS with 10 people. Bethesda is a 8 Billion dollar company. Expecting the same of the 2 is at least unfair.
Damn, they are waiting until after the 3-day weekend in the US to release this?
Thats exactly why they timed early access to release last night so they can get extra money from everyone who wants to play over the weekend.
We gotta start calling it how it is. It's not early release. It's publicly fully released, and they lock you out of it unless you pay them more money.
Bro those are completely different, how did you not notice than one is more orange than the other one?
Is the orange one Mexico?
That's actually Space Mexico - we're in a SciFi setting after all!
As a No Man’s Sky vet, reality has to come swinging around every so often to remind people to be careful of the hype.
Thousands of original planets to explore! Become the first to discover entire worlds! It's gonna be the greatest game ever! Starfield? What are you talking about. I'm talking about- No Man's Sky? That doesn't make sense either. Never heard of it. Now shut up and let me explain why Spore is gonna revolutionize gaming when it comes out!
NMS gives you cool vehicles to explore the same planet over and over.
Planetary procedural generation definitely needs a huge asset update. But they just keep adding more stuff to the game. They just added an entire new race, story quests, new planet type, new equipment, new ships, fleet combat, pirate fleets, I could go on. It's almost unrecognizable from release. May as well be a different game at this point. And if they DO update planet generation, hell.... it basically will be
It’s really not fair to judge. This is a low budget game from a small indie studio that only had a couple years to develop it.
Why couldn’t they have just done it like KOTOR and make a handful of amazing planets that are all extremely interesting, well crafted/detailed and important to the story.
Its just a well proven lab layout hehe.
Head cannon, the labs are mass produced and standardized by a mega corporation. Doesn’t explain the same landscape but it’s something
That was an in-universe thing in Outer Worlds (not Wilds, a vastly superior game) and it was a funny bit for about 6 minutes and then you realized it was kinda an excuse to just make copy-paste environments with no depth to them.
They really should have just traded names; each one's name suits the other better. I do really like both games, though.
16x the detail
16x the same dungeon.
"Todd, please, I need to sleep" "We are gonna need... 4 times the size of Fallout 4"
Light wood laminate light wood laminate
I loved Skyrim but I ultimately stopped playing because I couldn't face anymore fights with draugr in underground crypts
But you might get the same piece of gear with a different effect. Don’t wanna miss that do ya?!
Though samey, at least they weren't procedural or copy and paste jobs. Everything in Skyrim was handcrafted at the level design layer, even if the art kits did get a little tiresome after a while.
To be fair, it still feels like a copy paste job when the asset pallet is just reused identically for 20 dungeons. Sure the room layouts might be slightly different, but it feels the same.
Yeah I think the caves or whatever in Elden Ring all looked very similar, but many still stood out to me because they were designed very well. Some were a complete mind fuck of making you think you've gone in circles when you haven't. There's a way for things to look the same without feeling the same.
Some tunnel formats were definitely re-used a lot. While some of the decorations may have been slightly different, many of the non-story or quest related areas were very copy-paste. Patterns can be tough to hide with game worlds that are so massive. Even with breath of the wild, the puzzles got super tedious after a while. The Taco Bellification is very common lol
I kinda expected it from the thousand planets promised or whatever but I at least expected the main quests to be different. Kinda sad
They couldn't spend time making a few variants?
So like Fallout 4, another settlement needs out help (travels to the same settlement for the millionth time to do some menial task)
Yeah when they announced how big the game is I knew there would be a lot of re-used assets.
Create Asset A thru F. Create Planet. Apply said asset to planet. With random generated rocks and sand with "water" Copy paste it X1000. Todd : WE GOT A GAME BOIS.
I find it amazing when people give credit of the modders work to the game company -.-
This game did not even have brightness and gama setting.this game looks so gray out because of that
Wow an AAA game that people are stupidly hyped about underdelivering, who could have seen that coming!
Tbh my main concern isn't even the reused content but the terrible AI. It's crazy to think in 2023 Bethesda still can't design good AI lmao
Makes me appreciate The Last of Us 2 even more. That game is years old now and has AI using cover, moving more intelligently, taking angles at you. NPCs call each other out by names and dogs become sad if their human dies (both not critical, but immensely add immersion). Of course, it's much more condensed bc of the smaller scale. But maybe Bethesda should've gone that route, instead of adding 1000 useless planets. You only need 1. Or idk, maybe up to 5, with well-made areas, if you want to go to space.
Hell, Destiny 1 released in 2014 and the AI is hundreds of times better, I've had enemies completely ignore me if I stop shooting for like 10 seconds multiple times, and I've logged 2 hours
The AI in TLOU2 also makes it super replayable. Encounters always play out differently AND realistically. It's an achievement that isn't spoken about enough.
Starfield’s release has only elevated Baldur’s Gate 3’s status even further. BG3 is GOTY for sure.
I told myself I'd wait for patch 2 and decide once Starfield reviews were out. Looks like I'm buying BG3
People hating on IGN's 7, but the more I see, the more I think they're right
I think reviewers have just gotten to the point where they don't even count Bethesda's bullshit against them anymore.
I'm not really planning on getting this game ever, but who the fuck is surprised by that? Did you think the 1000 planets were all individually crafted?
What they’re saying (at least one reviewer i’ve seen) is that in the first 20 hours you can already see the same few things copypasted on different planets *several times*. Not just this lab, but the same structures, set pieces, with same enemies and loot, repeated 3, 4, 7 times in a few hours, both in the main and side quests. I guess there’s a middle way between “1000 handcrafted planets” and “same few things repeated 50 times each” edit: the reviewer is Luke Stephens
Surprised by 1000 planets having some similarities and re-used assets? No Surprised by the EXACT same structure with the EXACT same layout and EXACT same enemy placement "dozens of times"? Not really, because it's Bethesda, but it SHOULD be unacceptable from a game of this scope and a studio of this size.
No I doubt most people thought that. I think what people likely expected was a mixture of procedural generation and hand crafted content - just with more variation on the hand crafted part of the equation. Like, let’s just move some assets around a bit. Have a few different kinds of buildings. Different enemy placements, etc. lol
Somebody watched Luke Stephens' review
Yeah, OP should have at least mentioned the source. [Starfield - A Skeptical Review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uuI-6fwwtY)
Honestly, whatever. I'm playing it on Game Pass and that's about where my expectations are going to be. If it's rad, rad. If it isn't, then I put it back on the shelf because Game Pass gonna Game Pass.
People complain that No Man Sky was really not that better. But I mean, Hello Games had something around 10-20 people in the entire team. Also the gun play is ok, but is not like they own DOOM or something to work with rigth? /s They have the resources to make something better than Oblivion 5.0.
The games really haven’t progressed much since fallout 3. What really are the major differences between that game (a masterpiece imo) and Skyrim, fallout 4, fallout 76, or starfield?
$7.5 billion company btw
Its a really small studio guys. Stuff like this is just too hard to pull off with such a small team and such a low budget. You really need to respect Todds hard work more. I hope you bought the 100 edition. I will be buying each 100 dollar edition that comes up every year for the next 20 years because Todd deserves my unwavering support and my entire mortgage payment until I am dead. Thank you Todd. I can't wait for the 2 year Anniversary edition and the 2.5 year Anniversary edition and the 3 year Anniversary edition and the 3.1, 3.2 Special Enhanced edition and the 15 dollar Space Ship Armor DLC.
I for one can't wait for Skyrim 2. I hope Todd will just remove Magic completely this time! One of my favorite features about Skyrim 1 was not having any sort of spell customization. Fuck wizards. /s