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.
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.
As someone that doesn’t mind waiting, I appreciate all the people paying to beta test the games before I play them.
I too like to wait until people can tell me how i have to play the game.
You used to be able to literally brick your build (get to a point where it’s impossible to progress any further) in Bethesda games. I’m sure that’s changed now, but that paranoia lingers.
RPGs almost always need a little hint on what’s actually useful, this game doesn’t have respecting AFAIK and is obviously quite long.
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.
Being a patient gamer is best. We need to give it at least 6 months for Bathesda to optimize the game and fix the major bugs.
They haven’t even fixed Skyrim yet.
I hope that since Bathesda is now a Microsoft studio, Microsoft is going to be persistent with bug fixes. But maybe it’s a tall order.
Microsoft? Fix bugs? Are we thinking of the same microsoft? Best they can do is integrate a weather app nobody asked for. And install candy crush without your consent.
Take a look at Halo Infinite’s networking problems that persist for more than a year.
Modders already on top of optimization. DLCC 2.0 mod already out there. Runs 40-50 fps 4K/ultra on my system unmodded. 3080ti, 12900k, 128GB DDR5, m2.
One can hope, but I kinda doubt that they can pull out like a 50% performance uplift, unless there’s just some weird bugs that tank performance.
Here are some numbers. I’m at 42 hours played. Resolution 2k, settings are on High. Ryzen 5800x and a Radeon RX 6800xt. The last session of ~5 hours had an average FPS of 108, Starfield is more optimized than BG:3 and Remnant 2… at least for AMD. I had to lower a lot of Remnant 2 settings and it still averages around 55.
Ony 3080 with a 5900x I’m constantly getting 60fps at 1080p (unfortunately for now that’s the only screen I have), meanwhile BG3 would dip to low 10s after a few minutes of playing every time
EDIT: I would also like to add that I didn’t use DLSS or FSR in both games, since my hardware is more than capable of running both on maximum quality at 60fps 1080p.
That’s exactly what I have, but I play on 3840x1600, 24:10 Ultrawide.
I don’t remember BG3 giving me any problems, even in Act 3, before the last patch, that supposedly addresses some performance problems. I loaded up a save just now and get ~50fps running around in the Lower City (very short test, only like two minutes). That’s with most settings maxed and DLSS Quality.
Depending on the area, I’d probably get similar numbers in Starfield (according to the benchmarks I’ve seen), but for me, it’s a difference playing an FPS or isometric RPG.
I heard this is because NVIDIA didn’t fund optimizations. AMD did so it’s running a lot better for them. I said fuck it and bought an Xbox with 2 year payment plan and game pass included. Cause no way my 1080ti is ever gonna play this game that good I don’t think. End of an era.
It’s all over the place. Some AMD GPUs are far better than the equivalent Nvidia GPUs, but then AMD CPUs are seemingly much worse than Intel.
Then there’s reports of Nvidia cards sometimes being stuck at like 60% power, which of course doesn’t help either.
Damn what a mess. I was hearing for Linux the mesa driver makes the game run pretty well for AMD cards.
It’s technically sponsored by AMD, which is why you
couldcan get it free with a processor or GPU upgrade.Edit: could to can, the offer is open until October apparently
1080ti could’ve been a solid 30fps experience…
Not what I’m hearing. Maybe after some more patches and a new driver.
My 980 is pulling 30 fps with most things on medium and high, and shadows on low because it has the most effect on performance. Also turn off resolution scaling, for nvidia at least, don’t know about AMD cards.
With resolution scaling it doesn’t matter if you’re using AMD or Nvidia, it’s doing the same thing and looks the same on both vendors.
If your GPU supports it (RTX cards), you can mod DLSS into the game and then get (supposedly) better image quality, on the same level of scaling as the non-modded FSR2, or potentially lowering the scaling even more, for better performance, while still getting a comparable image as a higher FSR2 preset.
Wow! Good job getting your 980 to run this! Gives me hope for playing on my PC with cross save in the future!!
I’ve also watched some streams, and the performance hasn’t even been my biggest concern. I’m just… not interested? It hasn’t been gripping me. Even though there are these shiny new things and bells and whistles, it still just looks like another Bethesda game to me, but with a blander setting this time. Though maybe it’s more fun to play than watch. I just haven’t really seen anything that makes me go “goddamn I gotta get a piece of that”.
Replied to wrong level, moving to parent comment.
AMD folks are having a good time, but nvidia folks will need to wait. The game is purposefully not optimized for nvidia at the moment due to AMD sponsorship. (Also potentially to point out that many AAA titles tend to be optimized for nvidia but not AMD at launch)
That doesn’t explain the CPUs though, since with those, AMD is much worse than Intel, so it’s not just a simple “game is optimized for AMD.”
CPUs though, since with those, AMD is much worse than Intel
Simply untrue with later AMD. Slight advantage to Intel, but not the blowout it used to be. Intel loses entirely if power consumption and cost is taken into account.
But of course, games rely largely on GPU power, and the CPU concern is generally secondary.
In Starfield the 13900K is 20% better than the best AMD offering, the 7800X3D. Even the 13600K is better than any AMD CPU. A 13100 is on the same level as the 5800X3D. I wouldn’t call that just a slight advantage.
It’s only this game right now, that’s why I’m saying something might be up.
Sauce?
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
Bro you gotta watch better streamers holy shit
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.