Starfield (Skyrim in Space)

[Hammock Parties]

Let's gooo! 11-11-22

We've come to the beginning of humanity's final journey.

For all, into the starfield. pic.twitter.com/F1KOnxLBy4

— Starfield (@StarfieldGame) June 13, 2021

[svistop]

Starfield is the biggest disappointment in the gaming industry. I had high hopes for this game and was ready to sit up at night flying around different planets and studying their flora and fauna. But in fact, I barely got through this download simulator and immediately deleted it. I won't say it's the worst game of all time, but Todd shouldn't make any more games about space.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by svistop

Starfield is the biggest disappointment in the gaming industry. I had high hopes for this game and was ready to sit up at night flying around different planets and studying their flora and fauna. But in fact, I barely got through this download simulator and immediately deleted it. I won't say it's the worst game of all time, but Todd shouldn't make any more games about space.

There are aspects of it that are a lot of fun. I love building ships, boarding and capturing ships, modding my weapons and armor, and crafting/using the cool performance-enhancing drugs. I even like exploring the procedurally generated planets, but I mainly do it so I can kill shit and farm resources and experience points. Even the base building can be fun.

But yeah, this game is a far cry from Skyrim or Fallout. The main questline is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. It makes no sense, and nothing is ever really explained. Hunting for baby Shaun in Fallout 4 is a stroll in the park by comparison. The Constellation characters are mostly awful, particularly Barrett, who is far and away the worst game companion in the history of game companions. And what I wouldn't give to be able to shoot Cora and Matteo and especially Barrett in the ****ing face and actually permanently kill them. Advancing the main story, particularly late in the game, is like taking out the garbage in a hailstorm and then going to the dentist for a root canal.

And don't even get me started on the ****ing bugs. That's another thing that makes later stages of the game suck. As you build up more and more outposts, it really seems to make the game twitchy as hell. I used to try to build enough bases so that I could harvest every available resource, but now there are some things I just buy instead.

Overall the good outweighs the bad. I just mostly play so that I limit my exposure to the bad stuff.

[Imon Yourside]

Originally Posted by Frazod

There are aspects of it that are a lot of fun. I love building ships, boarding and capturing ships, modding my weapons and armor, and crafting/using the cool performance-enhancing drugs. I even like exploring the procedurally generated planets, but I mainly do it so I can kill shit and farm resources and experience points. Even the base building can be fun.

But yeah, this game is a far cry from Skyrim or Fallout. The main questline is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. It makes no sense, and nothing is ever really explained. Hunting for baby Shaun in Fallout 4 is a stroll in the park by comparison. The Constellation characters are mostly awful, particularly Barrett, who is far and away the worst game companion in the history of game companions. And what I wouldn't give to be able to shoot Cora and Matteo and especially Barrett in the ****ing face and actually permanently kill them. Advancing the main story, particularly late in the game, is like taking out the garbage in a hailstorm and then going to the dentist for a root canal.

And don't even get me started on the ****ing bugs. That's another thing that makes later stages of the game suck. As you build up more and more outposts, it really seems to make the game twitchy as hell. I used to try to build enough bases so that I could harvest every available resource, but now there are some things I just buy instead.

Overall the good outweighs the bad. I just mostly play so that I limit my exposure to the bad stuff.

Still waiting for the modding tools though, should make the experience even that much better.

[Wallcrawler]

I haven't played the game since I rage quit the day after the patch that was supposed to fix the Ryujin questline bug where the NPC you're supposed to turn the quest in to spawns outside the map.

Using speed run option in the ng+ to quickly loop through the multiverses and see the different iterations of characters was fun, as well as maxing out the starborn powers I liked. Slow time is absolutely op and ridiculously epic.

Didn't like that when going ng+ you lost all your money weapons and ships. That's kinda the point of ng+ right? To keep all your hard earned stuff.

Shipbuilding was fun. I had a Millenium Falcon, Ebon Hawk, Batwing, Serenity, and Star Destroyer build.

It was really fun in certain aspects, but absolutely rage inducing in others.

Mods will benefit this game greatly when once again, the mod community helps the game achieve its true potential.

[Chief Pagan]

Originally Posted by svistop

Starfield is the biggest disappointment in the gaming industry. I had high hopes for this game and was ready to sit up at night flying around different planets and studying their flora and fauna. But in fact, I barely got through this download simulator and immediately deleted it. I won't say it's the worst game of all time, but Todd shouldn't make any more games about space.

He had a good run.

He should retire.

Once upon a time I was looking forward to Elder Scrolls VI.

Yea, right. Not going to be fooled. Even if it is released before I end up in a nursing home...

[Frazod]

Well, in my current run I've gotten up to level 101, mainly by farming the crap out of hostile worlds and avoiding the main quest line. It's time to bite the bullet and complete the last series of mostly odious main missions so I can move on to the first starborn playthrough.

Perhaps Bethesda has been tinkering with this a bit, because this last run has been nearly bug free. Sure, there's still some minor stuff here and there, but none of the awful herpes stuff that sticks with you and wrecks shit. Never had any issues boarding/capturing ships, for example, and I boarded and captured loads of them. One thing I've done is keep my settlements really basic, which I think may have helped.

[Imon Yourside]

Originally Posted by Frazod

Well, in my current run I've gotten up to level 101, mainly by farming the crap out of hostile worlds and avoiding the main quest line. It's time to bite the bullet and complete the last series of mostly odious main missions so I can move on to the first starborn playthrough.

Perhaps Bethesda has been tinkering with this a bit, because this last run has been nearly bug free. Sure, there's still some minor stuff here and there, but none of the awful herpes stuff that sticks with you and wrecks shit. Never had any issues boarding/capturing ships, for example, and I boarded and captured loads of them. One thing I've done is keep my settlements really basic, which I think may have helped.

Good to hear, hows the planetary combat? That's my main will to play this game as well as gathering loot. I have no desire to fly around and dogfight in space and nothing very promising coming this year game wise.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Imon Yourside

Good to hear, hows the planetary combat? That's my main will to play this game as well as gathering loot. I have no desire to fly around and dogfight in space and nothing very promising coming this year game wise.

I haven't had any issues with the planetary combat at all. Of course, I'm now nearly at level 120, so even on very hard fighting is pretty easy. The maxed out sniper skill is beastly. Also doesn't hurt that I know the layout of every location by heart. I'm like the asshole major in Heartbreak Ridge who always knows where the ambush site is.

One problem I'm having, which I guess is minor, is that I never get enemy ships randomly landing on planets, even in spots where they usually spawn more than half the time. That's been broken since the beginning of this run. Sucks, because I enjoy storming parked ships and stealing them. Oh well. Ships still spawn randomly in space like normal.

Overall it's like night and day from when the game launched last year. Clearly they've worked out most of the problems.

[Frazod]

One wonderful thing I've learned during this playthrough is that you can actually sell that useless, horrible goddamn starborn ship and clear the spot from your inventory - apparently it's been there all along. All you have to do is sell it to a vendor who has less credits than the ship is worth. If you take a loss, any loss, on the sale, it works. That's it. No codes, no mods. Apparently it works on the crappy little Frontier as well, although I've already modded the crap out of it on this run so that it's now useful.

Dumping that wretched boat anchor was a feelgood moment for the ages.

[SAGA45]

I am trying to complete the Ryujin Industries questline, and, for whatever reason, the "Background Checks" mission won't fire after completing "Top Secrets".

This is super frustrating, as everything I've found online about it is either outdated or only fixable on PC with mods. Other than that, restarting the game is the only solution I've come across for the console version and I've invested far too many hours on this playthrough for that to be worthwhile.

[Frazod]

I've heard so many bug stories about he Ryujin quest that I just never bother with it. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

As for the game, I'm still at it. Up to level 151, getting ready to finish up NG2. I still haven't run across as many bugs this time, although it is starting to get a little wonkier as I progress. The most pervasive one is Andreja's head going into stealth mode whenever I do a sales run at Neon. You'd think the NPCs would comment about the headless woman following me around, but they don't seem to.

A couple of things I've learned this playthrough:

1. I finally decided not to rat out Vae Victus for the Londinium thing. If you do that, you get all the same rewards and nobody figures it out, and after that you can visit him in his cell and he'll give you assassination missions. There's nothing really special or different about them (still attacking pirates in the same old bases on random planets), but the ultimate target will be identified as something like "chem cooker" or "intelligence asset."

2. At long last, I know the one and only use for the mysterious "quark degenerate tissues." If you complete level 4 of gastronomy, which I only did to complete all the research, you can cook a level 4 dish which uses it as an ingredient that gives you massive defensive bonuses. I wouldn't say it's worth the trouble of getting to level 4 - I must have spent the better part of two hours wandering from vendor to vendor looking for large amounts of ****ing butter and eggs at one point - but there is a decent payoff at the end. Makes me wish I hadn't sold off so many of them, because they did eventually prove to be useful.

And one really cool thing I discovered I could to is completely enclose the ship cockpit (saw it in a YouTube video), which has enabled me to construct the coolest ship design I've done so far. All the weapons and the shield are glitched in, so the top of the ship is completely sleek. The only downside is the cockpit has no exterior view from the inside, but it doesn't matter when flying around because I always use the default full ship/third person view anyway. I'll attach a couple of images in a spoiler since they're pretty big.

Spoiler!

Oh, another thing I forgot to mention was an annoying maybe glitch/maybe **** you to hijackers issue with advancing the ship command skill. You have to destroy or board enemy ships in order to level up, but you have to use a ship you've either bought from a ship vendor or been given (Frontier, Razorleaf, Star Eagle) or your kills/captures don't count toward advancement. I also found out the hard way that selling a captured ship and then buying it back from the merchant (basically laundering it) doesn't work. Apparently to Bethesda, once hijacked, always hijacked. That cost me about half a million credits. ****ers. Luckily, the ship in the above images was once the Frontier, even though no original parts remain, so her kills count.

[Frazod]

There's a new update (available now in beta) that drops in about a week that should really improve the game. It includes far more detailed customized settings, improved maps with fast travel points to various points of interest in cities, and the ability to improve/decorate ship habs the same way you can improve/decorate outposts. This even applies to the crappy Starborn ship. You still can't upgrade the ship itself, but you can add stuff like beds and crafting benches to make it far less useless. The game rewards you for selecting higher difficulty levels with a boost to EXP, and conversely punishes you if you set things to easy mode. There are also survival settings you can choose that hurts your stats/abilities if you don't eat and drink regularly.

The one thing they've added which I personally like the best is the option to increase the amount of cash vendors have, by up to five times the base game level. So a vendor who originally had 12,000 credits will now have 60,000 credits. That ****ing rocks. You get gigged for it a bit, but obviously you can lower the setting when you're actually trading and then crank it back up when you're not. One of the lamest aspects of the game as it was before is how it can take half a ****ing hour to unload all the loot you've collected running from shop to shop and then waiting for them to reset over and over.

Anyway, all this, coupled with the fact that the game isn't nearly buggy as it was before, should make things much better.

[Frazod]

Apparently I'm the last person here who still gives a crap about this, but I'm still enjoying it. Another thing that's been added since the May update is a "creation" link on the menu page which contains numerous mods. I could never get the Vortex stuff to work and eventually just gave up on it, but haven't had any issues with these. The best ones that I use are:

1. A mod that massively increases vendor cash amounts, well into the six figure range. The days of half hour commerce runs through Neon are over.

2. A mod that makes all resources stored on ships weightless. That's a huge game changer, since it completely alleviates the need for huge ships with massive holds and super powerful engines. Makes shipbuilding much more fun as well.

3. A mod entitled "Shut Up Cora" which removes all the unwanted NPC chatter while you're actually piloting your ship. They do still babble incessantly while you're wandering through the ship, but that's tolerable. Also, since I no longer need Sam onboard to ramp up cargo capacity, I only have him and his unholy spawn onboard for the Empty Nest mission, and then leave them in the lodge after that.

There are a few others that I use, but I'm not going to list them all. So far there have been no crashes or conflicts, and everything seems to be working smoothly.

There is one that I just loaded last night called Darkstar Astrodynamics, which, among other things, gives you the ability to massively, and I mean MASSIVELY, upgrade your ship parts. 40 power reactors are replaced with 60 power reactors, shield strengths are tripled, base speed is increased to 200, and the weapons are just sick. I may not continue to use it simply because it's too much. I did a Kryx run on extreme difficulty, and I was basically like Tom Cruise piloting the Borg cube at Wolf 359.

One final thing - I finally got the NG+ start where an adult, Starborn Cora has taken over the Lodge and wants to kill me because she blames me for Sam's death. Since I was unarmed, and also, because Sam hadn't died during my playthrough, I was able to talk her down. So I left, got weapons, and came back and killed her. Goddamn that may have been my most satisfying moment in all my years of playing these games. I emptied three full magazines worth of ammo into her head while screaming "HAVE YOU READ ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY????? SKYSCRAPERS CAN'T JUMP!!!! NONE OF THAT GRAV DRIVE CHEATING!!!!"

[Hammock Parties]

Oh I'll be playing it eventually. There's a Star Wars total conversion that looks bonkers.

YouTuber DeityVengy turned Starfield into the ultimate Star Wars game by installing over 100 mods. Here’s footage from their video of Mandalorian, custom NPCs, AT-ST, and R2-D2. Full video: https://t.co/dOgFW1Zegd #Starfield pic.twitter.com/Gb8mo1Tard

— Rebs Gaming (@Mr_Rebs_) May 18, 2024

[Frazod]

Yeah, I'm still playing this shit.

The first full DLC dropped yesterday, called "Shattered Space," set on the House Varuun homeworld. I just started it today and got through the mission entry phase. Much like other Bethesda DLCs, the enemies are tougher and the look of everything is different. It seems an obvious choice to have Andreja as my companion, since she is from this planet, and also because she's the only Constellation companion who doesn't suck. I assume having her in tow will unlock some additional content. Maybe I'll get to finally meet the inlaws! I somehow doubt that they'll approve of her heathen lesbian lover, though.

As I said earlier, the game is so much better now. Sure, it still has the occasional Bethesda hiccup, but it is nothing like the twitchy, buggy mess it was a year ago.