Is it just me or is Starfield kinda meh?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Stillhart@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hater. I actually was really excited for the game. But so far I am just not having fun.

For a little bit of reference, I just finished playing thru Cyberpunk 2077 and then jumped right into Starfield. Maybe that was a mistake because I kinda just want to go back to Cyberpunk (and I will in a few weeks when the DLC comes out).

But I’m noticing two really big issues with Starfield: first, the gunplay/combat is… let’s call it underwhelming. I realize it’s quite probably a skill issue and I need to just git gud, but holy crap, everything is a bullet sponge and I don’t have that many bullets! Stealth seems to be pretty worthless at early levels as I don’t have any high-alpha guns that can take advantage of it and, most of the time, I’m detected before I even see the bad guys. I’m just not enjoying this aspect of the game at all.

The second big issue for me is that there’s a loading screen every five seconds! Again, probably a me thing, but OMG, it’s driving me nuts. Get into ship, loading screen. Launch from planet, loading screen. Fly to next planet, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen. Leave ship, loading screen. I just want to go shoot things! Let me shoot things!

Okay, found some spacers, time to… oh shit, out of ammo. Let me swap to a worse gun that still has ammo. Sigh. Okay, they’re dead. Let me just heal up… oh shit, out of med packs. Sigh.

Oh and wrestling with the UI is exhausting.

Anyways, I realize that this probably isn’t the place to find a lot of like-minded people. But I really do want to like this game. Any tips on maybe at least ways to make the combat less of a chore?

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Comments

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jcit878@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
the only mechanic I truly want fixed is the need to pickup weapons to get all the ammo then having to dump the weapons. should be enough to collect the ammo only off a dead body and have that include the ammo loaded in their gun.

other than that I’m quite enjoying the game

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JohnnyLX91@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I truly dont understand the “everything is a bullet sponge” argument.

I havent skilled any combat related skills and I am doing just fine in combat. Also I dont expect enemies in an RPG to get down in a single shot. Especially when they are armored like tanks or some weird giant alien creature. People have weird expectations tbh.

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DavidGarcia@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
the bullet sponge must be really bad if you’re complaining about it after coming from Cyberpunk lmao

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- Stillhart@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s absolutely the most bullet-spongiest gunplay in my recent memory. As the other guy said, I can unload an entire clip with an AR an not kill a normal mob, and there are elites with multiple health bars. Ugh…
  
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- DontMakeMoreBabies@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I've found hammering folks with a shotgun kills them pretty quickly but an entire clip from an assault rifle doesn't kill most enemies. Pretty annoying.
  
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Cyncit@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
For less loading screens: fromthe surface of planet on foot, open you quest menu and place the cursor of your quest. On PC press R to planned your trip. Press X to travel and Bam! There’s a loading screen and Bam! you are on the surface of the other planet on foot. without other loading screen or ship animation. If you are already in space, you can’t escape some of those loading screen.

The other points: I feel you… ennemies are sponges. I carry way too many weapons to ensure to have bullets. Stealth is meh until you invest points in it. Ennemies were seeing me near the ceiling through a vent grid -_-.

Hope it helps, I had tons of fun with Cyberpunk! I wish an amazing DLC!

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- Silverseren@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  So, the ship is a superfluous mechanic they shouldn't have bothered with?
  
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  - Stillhart@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I have enjoyed the few minutes of space combat I did so far. I am looking forward to being able to board and steal ships later!
    
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  - averyminya@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    If you want it to be. You can skip any section of this game. You don’t need to build outposts, but if you want to use them you can. You don’t need to build a ship, but if you want to be a cargo hauler you can. You don’t need to do ship combat, but if you want to you can make that your main thing.
    
    You can really do whatever you want in whatever capacity you want to do it in. If you just want to be an on foot land traveller, then always fast travel to settlements and not in orbit. If you want to explore space and various planets and the stations and ships that are there, you can do that too.
    
    For me, ship building has been lots of fun and I have a strong 1/3rd of my gameplay focused on being an anti-pirate bounty hunter. There’s also entire systems locked behind skill points, so you very well could be missing an entire aspect of a type of gameplay by just not knowing about it.
    
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  - Cyncit@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Well I have plenty of fun building my ship (even if sometimes its frustrating) and winning a space combat gives me great serotonine.
    
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Russianranger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
When you realize how many loading screens there are, you begin to understand why Bethesda requires SSD versus HDD, otherwise half your time would be spent on loading screens.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found anything within the realms of “vanilla Starfield” to remedy your issues. I just kept playing through the main quest and as time went on, it got better (in my opinion). It’s one of those “oh you have to slog through X hours before it gets good” type of games.

Outside of the above, I can only recommend shelving it and waiting for mods or DLC that may freshen the experience.

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- Cyncit@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I first installed it on HDD…it wasn’t playable (I didn’t read the requirement, my bad). After the mining bit, the game just freeze every 10s for like minutes. I succeded to reach the door and see the sky before it crashed.
  
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TheOakTree@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I hardly run out of ammo, but I’m also the kind of person who levels up carrying capacity first and becomes a loot goblin.

And yes, ammo has 0 weight but more weight cap means more time for me to search every corner of every room

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- NuPNuA@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  In 20 hours, I’ve amassed 2k bullets for my main weapon type. Ammo is hardly scarce in this game.
  
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  - TheOakTree@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I have a beowulf that has increased damage for each consecutive shot and it deals 72 damage (large for my level). I have around 3.5k rounds waiting to be used and I’ve been really overusing it lol.
    
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circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I agree mostly with this. The bullet-sponginess makes me somewhat dislike the combat. During some random exploration, I found a nice weapon which allows me to one-shot most people. That actually helped a lot, which is one thing that made me realize how spongy things actually are. And yeah, I also found Cyberpunk’s combat better.

I’m on the fence with the menus and loading screens. Personally I just wish it was more consistent. If I set a course while sitting in the pilot’s seat, I at least get a cutscene that offers some slight immersion. If I do it from the nav table, I jump instantly to my destination regardless of where I was before. Hate that.

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- Stillhart@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Personally I just wish it was more consistent.
  
  Ha, I agree but the opposite. The cutscenes for immersion are great… the first 50 times. After that, I just want the option to SKIP IT!!!
  
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  - circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    But you can! Just use the nav table.
    
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EdanGrey@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I feel similarly. One of the biggest things for me is how, although much does feel like a Bethesda game, there were some times it felt like they’d just take stuff out of other games and dumped it in. The lack of vehicles annoyed me too, and don’t get me started on the basically non existent local map

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TheRoarer@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I could forgive bethesda games because I used to be able to look at them as “greater than the sum of its parts”

Fallout 4 with mods just barely got away with it.

Starfield has too many issues for me.

The biggest one, your second issue of loading screens, I don’t think mods can fix. There just will never be a seamless overworld because of the spaceship mechanic.

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- Never_Sm1le@lemdro.id ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  We have Open cities so I think there will be a similar mod for starfield that help reduce the amount of loadingscreens
  
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  - TheRoarer@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I would absolutely love to enter planets after grav jumping just by flying down. I’m just having trouble imagining it happening.
    
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- LordXenu@artemis.camp ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I have to be honest, If I could fly my ship right over a hideout and just shred it with turrets I would. The game just a bit to combat focused to have ships in the mix unless anti-air was a thing.
  
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  - TheRoarer@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That really only makes this world even weirder. Why AREN’T these ships just glassing planets?!
    
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47_alpha_tango@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It’s a little known fact that if you look up “meh” in the dictionary there is a picture of Starfield.

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Tunawithshoes@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
My recommendation is to mod away the bullet sponge. It made the combat much better for me.

The npc has a lot of life in standard but they then get 20 hp more for every level.

Look at your weapons and you realize how much they absorb just from leveling compared to your weapons.

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sizzling@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It took me quite a few attempts to get into the game, but I’m really enjoying it now. For me it’s the first 3D game I’m properly playing on the xbox so there’s a bit of a learning curve there (I’m used to mouse and keyboard on pc).

The biggest things that helped me enjoy it: when navigating cities or buildings that are all super maze-like, you can use your scanner to actually guide you in the right direction with little arrows on the ground as pathfinding. I kept getting lost and giving up on quests until I saw this in a video.

In the beginning I’d spent most of my money every time i was in town to pretty much fully fill my inventory with ammo, lockpicks and med packs. Especially since I’m trying to learn how to aim with a controller I’ll waste a lot of clips missing completely. Just maxing out on ammo makes it a lot easier (and using a shotgun early on, just run at them and blast em point blank, lots of dmg / bullet)

Looking up how the UI / systems work online… i wanted to do a pure experience, but holy crap is the UI hard to figure out sometimes. Especially things to do with ship building and traveling.

I’m really liking the random side quests though, and was just wasting away my entire Saturday playing, which hasn’t happened in years for me.

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Quentinp@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Wasn’t quite sure at first, but I kinda knew what to expect from a BethRPG - slowly grew on me and now i’m pretty into it. About 22 hours in and I feel like i’m getting thru most of the main quest. Seen some cool stuff, and I guess there’s a NG+ so i’ll probably push thru the main plot and then go a bit slower in the next game.

Wish you could traverse planets a bit faster, it can be a bit tedious. Felt like too much fast travel at first, but once you embrace it, it does move things along. (Wouldn’t want to play with a HDD and not an SSD) Gunplay isn’t bad. The companions are annoying and seemingly turn into stalkers lol.

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Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The game mechanics and worldbuilding are underwhelming for what they were touting it as. Its going to take a few years to be good.

but question is cyberpunk actually good now?

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- Stillhart@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I am one of those weirdos who enjoyed Cyberpunk when it first came out. I don’t know if I’d say it was “good” back then, but it was already fun. Now with a couple years of bug fixes and QoL features under it’s belt, yes, it’s a very good game. I just played through the entire game, doing all the gigs and most of the side jobs, and I’m really pumped to do it all again when the DLC comes out. Using a different build will change the entire play style of the game, and there is enough choice in the role playing that I can see different stories in the same quests.
  
  It’s a very good game and anyone who avoided it before because of the bad press (but normally would like this sort of thing) should really give it a shot now.
  
  It’s WAY better than Starfiield so far… :-/
  
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  - Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Ill tell my brother to play it, he’d love it
    
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- Ashtear@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I loved Cyberpunk. I didn’t pick it up until 1.3, but I ran into only one major bug. And that was only preventing progression on a sidequest.
  
  As it stands, I don’t see how I don’t ditch Starfield for Phantom Liberty in a couple weeks.
  
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- Armen12@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Cyberpunk was always a great game, incels hated it like incels hate everything
  
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regbin_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m liking it more than Cyberpunk 2077 currently. I couldn’t even bring myself to finish CP2077 and yet I’m playing multiple hours of Starfield every day.

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- Stillhart@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Out of curiosity, when’s the last time you played Cyberpunk? There’s been a TON of bug fixing and QoL in the least couple years. And the 2.0 patch coming with the DLC is gonna be huge even you don’t get the DLC.
  
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  - regbin_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Couple of months ago maybe. I don’t have any technical issues, just find that the world, characters, and gameplay to be uninteresting. The game ran great when I played it.
    
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Dylan@lemdro.id ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Loading screens are really the biggest negative for me. And navigating the menus takes some time.

I really enjoyed Fallout 4. And it feels pretty close to that for me with MUCH better gunplay. I can feel this being a time sink for me once i can actually get my teeth sunk in to it.

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thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
git gud n3wb!

Jk i couldn’t resist

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TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It definitely feels “meh”.

The characters are flat and tropey, the story itself isn’t very compelling, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of narrative freedom in the quests and the quests themselves are fairly cookie cutter. I was told the “First Contact” quest was really cool and well done. Nonsense! I’d like to be able to go back and talk to the NPCs about the progress of the quest, take their temperature on the options available. It didn’t feel like there was much of a point in getting the opinions of the entities aboard the ship as they had zero say in the outcome.

I like building a ship. I wish the ship had more functionality. I like building outposts, though I have no idea what for, I can’t see much of a use for harvesting and automating the production of resources.

The gun combat feels alright, but it seems health scales up really quickly on enemies.

I dislike how so much content is gated behind perk level ups, but it does keep me playing to see if the next unlock is cool.

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- Stillhart@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  there doesn’t seem to be a lot of narrative freedom in the quests
  
  I’ve been playing more since I originally posted this and I’m enjoying myself more but the game still feels pretty meh. But this point above I think is the biggest sin the game commits. It’s an RPG but it doesn’t really feel like my decisions effect anything other than my companion’s view of me. I don’t think there are branching storylines or anything like that.
  
  Hate to do it, but gonna compare to Cyberpunk again. In Cyberpunk, there are multiple ways to solve quests and multiple endings with multiple endings! BG3, of course, also has branching quests that effect the state of the world. The lack of a feeling of agency in this game feels like the biggest fault.
  
  I can get used to the loading screens EVERYWHERE (a loading screen to enter a tiny store? really??), the weak gunplay, the watered down mechanics and wide but shallow world. But this game is an RPG first and if the RPG mechanics are bad, what is left??
  
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  - TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I haven’t played CP2077, but I may have been spoiled by the characters and autonomy in BG3. The writing and choices are just so stellar in that game, it set a new standard. I remember in BG3 being so appalled by one NPC that I decided to just kill them instead of taking any of the games multiple dialogue routes to handle them and there were unique consequences and dialogue lines for taking that course of action!
    
    A lot of the story telling in Starfield just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny if you look at it too closely and you have to closely follow the set paths or else it kinda breaks. Really disappointing in that aspect. Maybe if it had released prior to BG3, it wouldn’t seem so unpolished.
    
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quinkin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m a social pariah for not even enjoying old Bethesda rpg games. So much loot fatigue.

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rgb3x3@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have a recommendation for running out of ammo and health packs: spend the time searching everything. There are boxes of ammo everywhere to the point that I’ve never gotten close to worrying about running out.

Yes, it’s tedious, yes, it’s probably not great gameplay to have to spend so much time searching rooms, but it helps you not run out of ammo.

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InternetTubes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Loading screens isn’t so much for a problem if you’ve got fast NVMe SSD drives. The travel is very akin to old school privateer games, where you basically traveled from loading screen to loading screen., so I don’t mind it that much. If you want something more spaceship focused, I’d recommend Everspace 2.

The gun play is basically a progression of Fallout 4, and if you go fully automatic instead of semi, you will have to spend those credits to purchase ammo and spec appropriately. People should be leveling their personal combat skills first, since that’s what the majority of the combat in the game involves and what most of the RPG components are designed around. Ships, well, you don’t even need to level anything to keep on par with them, I’ve found you can just slap particle weapons on those bad boys to cheese even the hardest fights.

Having said that, if you go the sneaky route, well, I’m going just fine with level 4 sneak bonuses without any rifle bonuses to my suppressed semiautomatic rifles (I’ve leveled melee first and am waiting to see which damage type I will prefer later on, even though I’m pretty sure I will be sticking to rifles).

You also should do the main story quests enough until you get to the game’s fusrodah moment, and then a few missions of that afterwards, since you will gain access to alternative ways of taking down enemies. You might also consider making use of and arming your companions with better weapons, since they don’t consume the ammo you give them.

The UI, well, that might hint at a performance issue again, otherwise it’s just been getting used to it for me. Most annoying thing for me has only been not being able to switch between the mission UI and the map UI easily, but I don’t consider it game breaking.

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Bloobish@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m holding back till more mods start coming out to improve it like all other bethesda games

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