Starfield’s numbers have swollen in early access on streaming and gaming platforms - and the global release is yet to take place.

  • Shame. If people keep paying for “head start”, companies will keep selling them and making bank off FOMO.

    On the plus side, plenty of guides getting created so I can start tomorrow without fear of fucking up my first character too badly.

    • I worry that this also has a rose tinted glasses effect on early user reviews. The only people leaving reviews for the first few days are going to be the people already invested enough to pay extra for early access, and they may be more willing to overlook issues with the game.

      • That’s precisely what I’m seeing with streams of the game. There’s so many bugs and just bizarre design decisions, especially with the opening hour or so, but the streamers then claim it’s a perfect game with no problems.

          • A significant amount of the bugs do seem to be based on how long you’ve been playing and how far into the game you’ve gotten. The farther you get, the more bugs start appearing.

            People have been reporting various bugs in a number of places. Here’s one example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/168i21o/psa_major_bug_do_not_board_enemy_ships_to_capture/

            And a bunch of people bringing up various things here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166vco5/starfield_bugsissues/

            • Glad there’s a fix for that first one at least. That’s too bad, but it does seem to be very specific - if it’s prevalent outside one system then it’s definitely a huge issue though (and it’s big already).

              For the second thread, I’m not really seeing any specific bugs outside of 2, it’s mostly just complaints about performance. I have over 1 day in save time so I’d have expected to have seen some of them by now I guess lol.

              The only one through these threads I can corroborate is an NPC once turned around and faced the wrong way during conversation. Otherwise it’s simply been minor script delays - someone leave from an elevator that’s still closed so they run in super speed, or there’s a small delay when seating/conversing and the audio desyncs for one line before it’s back to normal. Once an NPC starting clipping into the air one step at a time, but then they reached the ceiling and it stopped.

              I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the game honestly. Oh, one other bug I’ve seen that I’ve seen mentioned is a quest on random planets where we are to place a gas sensor on gas spews. Well, I’ve found gas spews but no quest icons appear. Others said there’s ways to make it pop up when they’re seen though.

              Compared to my launch week 2077 which was also very bug free both Starfield and it seems to have a reputation that people want it to suck? The games have shortcomings, absolutely but have they realistically negatively affect my gameplay experience? So far for both games, they have not.

              That said, if I’d dealt with that ship bug I’d have gone crazy! So I’m not at all trying to dismiss the bugs, but rather am just generally more confused as to why my 2077 experience was prisitine and my friends was a bug fest. Do we get different distributions of the game or something!?

      • I wonder how long it takes for some of those people to transfer to a more embittered relationship with Bethesda over it? Assuming any of them have that “I’m staring at a title screen realizing I haven’t actually had fun playing the game in weeks but the dopamine loop of the ‘loot, kill, craft’ system had me deluded into thinking I was enjoying myself. Like a social media doom-scroller or something” moment.

    •  Erk   ( @Erk@cdda.social ) 
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      1 year ago

      I haven’t bought a triple a game on release in ten or fifteen years. For this one enough of my friends were already playing it for several days by the time I got it that it’s hard to see it as “early” (certainly not patient, either, but it’s fun to cheat on a diet now and then). And I’m really not finding it buggy particularly, no more than any non-aaa title would be shortly after launch. I hate to be overly kind to Bethesda but it’s really not worth the hate the net is leveling at it

  • I’m watching a streamer play the game, and what I see looks like I’d have some fun, and others probably feel the same way.

    I’m just not interested in playing at like 30fps on a 3080. Maybe some patches or driver updates can improve things and I’ll check it out in the Steam Winter Sale or something.

  •  Jujudos   ( @Jujudos@feddit.nl ) 
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    151 year ago

    I can see a lot of bad new standards develop from this, but i also recognise it gets more than just early review copies out rhe door before the majority buys the game making it a tactic bad games cant do and will reward good games to cash in. Still. Lots of potential bad stuff is intertwined with these same points

    • My concern is when I’m seeing streamers play games like Starfield and run into a ton of bugs, often game-breaking ones, but then go and praise the game to high heaven.

      I just want a basement level of proper standards, that’s all I’m asking for.

      • have you seen what happens if you say you didn’t like it? you’re told you’re a troll, you’re negative, you “just don’t get it”, or they take your criticism and then act like the only alternative is the complete and total opposite of that and try and pull a ‘gotcha’

        on one hand I would obviously LOVE for reviews (across the board, not just in gaming) to be realistic and not all be 7+/10 but I also understand why they don’t to an extent

  • I played 10hrs and refunded. (Thank god for Steam)
    I feel like im in Truman Show. I see how shallow the game is. Everything is a facade. They try to mask the issues of their old game engine and people (streamers and reviewers) just eat it up. Im watching streams where they run into game breaking bugs several times but still praise the game like they have a script to follow.