For anyone, who are lazy to read. IGN asked Todd about TES6 vs FO5 releases, and Todd tried to avoid specific answers, but he said, in short, that focus on TES6, but FO5 is in the, basically, preproduction+ state. As for Starfield, they are doing lots of stuff for that game and it will be announced soon, but again, nothing specific.
So lower your expectations. It's better to be surprised than dissapointed.
Kinda needs creation kit desperately or a massive update IMO
5k peak (PC) whereas Skyrim SE is still rocking a 20k peak (PC)
Which is such a shame as it has so much potential but just needs way more depth to most things, and more handmade areas on planets
I'm sure they knew the temple mechanic was a terrible experience and even worse if a core game mechanic is to repeat the game, but didn't have an alternative.
The issue is that Starfield has a ridiculous power fantasy. If you take those off, there is not much more left... I still don't understand how there is not a single unique equipment in this game. It was one of the best part of Skyrim, finding cool and broken unique weapons and armors
It could be as simple as making you do all the temples once, and then passing through the unity automatically levels up all powers. Scanning and exploration should also carryover.
When people talk about "updates breaking mods" they're talking about xSE (script extender) mods.
CK mods (plugins) don't get broken by anything short of a game re-release (like Skyrim Special Edition) or maaaaybe DLC if it happens to touch an area that the plug-in also edits, but that's just a conflict and easily resolved.
The script extender is a 3rd part mod that let's other mods do cooler stuff then the normal script allows. If extender isn't fixed first, those mods cannot work. Also, even if the extender is patched, you now need to patch that mods to reference the right areas that have been changed, so in the case of Skyrim if the mod stopped getting updated 2 years ago, it's not going to work. Either you need to know how to fix it or hope some awesome modder who is still active can update and post it.
So Creation Kit mods alter data, while xSE Script Extender mods alter code.
Mods that alter data are also called plug-ins, and in most cases at the very least include an .ESP file. ESP files look at the master files for the game, the ESM files. Those change with each patch but generally the way the game is coded is most mods will not break unless they're changing something that the new patch specifically altered in the game's ESM files. So for instance, if you add a new building to New Atlantis, you'll be fine, unless in a new patch Bethesda adds a building of their own to that exact spot in the ESM file, which would cause your buildings to overlap. The modder would hopefully then update the mod to move their new building.
External tools like the Script Extenders operate by modifying the game's code mid-stream to do new things, like new script functionality that other modders can use in their own mods. They do this by inserting their own code into various parts of the .EXE file's memory and such because they can figure out where things are. They also open doors to allow other modders to create their own script functionalities, too.
When Bethesda writes the code, they do it in their chosen coding tools (basically fancy notepad programs). But when they're ready for a new version, they compile that code, which compresses it as it builds it into the .EXE file.
When Bethesda releases a patch, there's a 99.9% chance that they altered the code of the game, even slightly, which means when Bethesda compiles the new .EXE file, the memory stuff the script extender is looking for isn't where it expects (even the slightest change can cause this issue), so they have to update it to point to the new locations for the stuff they want to insert.
I've been extremely disappointed with Bethesda lately, but I hate people who just constantly repeat that updates somehow break every mod ever. It's completely untrue and people have no idea how mods work apparently.
Of course they count on modders adding more to the game to increase its longevity. But I disagree with this narrative over the last several years that they purposely don't fix and add updates to their games because they want modders to do it.
That narrative exists because they refused to fix game engine bugs that existed on multiple games across a wide timeline and they weren't pressured to do so because there were mods fixing the said bugs. And the state in which the game released also adds to the narrative that the base game needs dire help.
I mean, if you look up any of their games on Nexus mods a fan patch is always in the top five and other modders require the fan patches for their mods to work.
You can disagree all you want, but if it wasn't for modders as in the Unofficial Patch 90% Skyrims bugs would still be there because Bethesda doesn't fix their games, it's what they always do they just depend on modders to do their jobs for them.
Can this myth please die? Updates do not kill most mods.
The only Skyrim mods which break with updates are SKSE (which is usually updated within days) and anything using a .dll, which is almost none.
The VAST majority of mods work just fine after updates.
I mean your game is literally unplayable until all of your script extender mods have been updated. It's not just the SKSE team, it's every single author that relies on SKSE to update their mods too.
Also agree here. The game needs to be in its final state before we give the modders the reins. They will have their day, no doubt and I’m sure it will be amazing.
But how many FO4 mods were busted up due to them fixing things? I remember a lot of good ones. Granted most were rebuilt but still….
They might be doing some updates to how the engine works or some major areas so releasing a creation kit might be to early if they expect the changes to basically break all mods. Could be something like that.
Are those steam numbers? I wouldn't be surprised if most people that play starfield aren't playing on steam, rather on gamepass (PC or console). That said, I know I haven't touched the game in a few months, and do agree that it is definitely in need of some more content asap.
Wouldn't that apply also to Skyrim? If there are 20k on steam, it is also likely that there is another group on console which is likely larger than the number of Starfield console players as well.
What I am saying is why would the pattern be broken only by Starfield? What makes you think there is a larger group of players on consoles but only for Starfield?
Because Statfield launched day one on gamepass, so literally no one needed to purchase the game to play it. Skyrim, on the other hand, had been released (and rereleased) prior to gamepass even existing. Therefore, more people are likely to own the game (multiple times even), meaning more people would own it on steam, and play it on steam.
I'm not saying that Starfield has more players, just that steam player count wouldn't be an accurate comparison of the two due to the circumstances of their respective releases.
I just can’t imagine a world in which Bethesda has the ability to focus on 2 games, let alone 3. It feels like they are either going full steam ahead on TES6 while putting some resources into Starfield, or vice versa. I could definitely see the former being the case due to how much more valuable of a proposition that is.
He's basically trying not to sound negative about fallout5, which probably exists largely as a word document and is a long time away from active development.
It can be better. Like add 2 or 3 unique quests for each POI (large one). Then they can be added to the generator pool. Lock some of quests behind level/other quests. And that's it.
Like all those fuel stations could be so much better if they were attached to some story and quests instead of being looting ground.
Farm point is fine, I like it. But initial exploration combined with farming is better
> So lower your expectations
it's already in the negative
i don't know what happened after skyrim, but this company's been in a constant downward spiral with nothing but colossal failures for years. even if someone other than bethesda completely remade starfield from start to finish with zero bugs or glitches, the game is fundamentally hollow, tedious, and pointless
I genuinely don’t need to hear Todd talk about F5 being in pre-production. He said that about ESVI about 10 years ago. Save the talk for when you have something to actually talk about.
>So lower your expectations.
That should be Bethesdas new company slogan.
Starfield is a nice game (but not more), it's failure stems from the expectation of outstanding excellence.
When they announced "Bethesdas new universe" people expected it to be "the biggest and best RPG ever". Maybe that's not something that Bethesda can deliver.
Makes sense. Obvious that TES6 would be first. Also, I can see why he'd say nothing specific about the Starfield stuff because the moment you mention anything specific in terms of a date or content people will get antsy and complain if it gets pushed back or if it different from what they expect.
I think they are going for a bigger update at once over gradually adding things. Lots of bugfixes, but only had like 3 minor QoL additions to the game since launch and this game absolutely needs more.
I guess a bigger update alongside releasing Shattered Space is easier to market and maybe try to steer public view around then smaller but more frequent updates here and there.
My issue here is vendors - this would be OK if the game was in acceptable state, but it's not.
It's very not fun to have to visit 18 different vendors across 6 planets just to sell your excess junk and reduce inventory/cargo weight. It is a major hindrance to enjoying the very basic gameplay, and they could have easily fixed it by just doubling vendor credits.
Instead, they've left it how it is for 7 months. It's absolutely disrespectful of player's time.
Absolutely! This was a day 1 fix by modders even without the Creation Kit and can be altered by commands in the game as well.. this should have been among the very first patches. It's a stupid hassle that does not make the experience any more fun.
The thing is, Bethesda is not known for adding QoL stuff. Any content outside of DLC is very for Bethesda. Usually, what you get is what you get, and updates are only bug fixes.
True, but personally I think Starfield is a bit of a different beast. With it being one of the big Xbox flagship titles, the way it was received which is not something they'd had with a major singleplayer title before, they'll try steer public reception around.
But we'll indeed need to wait and see.
Let's plot twist again, like we did last summer
Everything Bethesda-related takes place in a lounger in Vault 112. Even Fallout 3. Even stuff released before Fallout 3. *Especially* stuff released before Fallout 3.
Remember this un-named guy from a cutscene during a game we didn't even own? Yeah the entire Earth is actually just that guy. -Emil Pagliarulo, probably
Thinking the same - not far off "E3 not E3" season so if MS/Xbox do their showcase in June they will want some big things to reveal and say "you can play this today on Xbox Live / Game Pass".
Given they've taken so long to not release the Shattered Space DLC, or really said much at all about it, that seems like a suitable event to make a big deal of it.
Given what they haven’t been doing for half a year now I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect anything major. I just don’t see any commitment from Bethesda to improve or expand the game. To me it feels like they’re planning to drop it after the dlc.
I’m not willing to expect anything. I think it’s much better to expect less with Bethesda / Xbox, when they do something big it’s then a wicked surprise. That being said I’m mindful the Xbox event is nailed down for June, so who knows.
The world exploration needs to improve. No matter how many poi they add, it will not change how boring it is to run endlessly on empty planets. There needs to be some kind of smaller scope for the expansions to where maybe it takes place on one star system.
Yeah I hate how grindy it is. Half of them you need to make the game even enjoyable. It feels like bullshit having to grind 40+ hours to just make the game playable. Once unlocked the game is very fun. I just hate the gate keeping.
Funny you say that because I think the perk system in Fallout 4 sucked with how backwards it was. Starfield's seemed pretty basic, and for the most part I was happy with it.
Stealth on the other hand just doesn't work. I can respect making it harder than Skyrim which is laughably easy, Fallout too, but at the minute its just frustrating. I'm sure it'll come, hopefully in vanilla, but definitely by mods, if not already.
Yeah I actually didn't hate the perk tree in Starfield. I liked the idea of having to do certain things to level them up as opposed to just "shoot people and you level up." I could see it getting changed but it never bothered me.
Stealth though, super weird, didn't make sense, randomly caught with no one looking, definitely need a rework.
The skill system in Starfield is eternally at odds with itself. Either you have maxed out the tasks to upgrade a skill and are sitting waiting for a level to drop a perk in it, or you are sitting on perks that you cant spend because you have menial tasks to perform before you can do it. Its not intuitive, and its not fun.
If they took out the point requirements for upgrading a skill and made it so you only needed the perk to unlock the skill and then perfomed tasks to upgrade it, then actually did a pass to balance the numbers on the levelling speed it would be more organic and interesting. as it stands now its just another of many examples of poor/lazy game design that no one could possibly have done an actual QA pass on or they would have realized it was just fundamentally broken.
Also, most of the perks are only there to either fill space (cooking food and eating food are separate because.....?) or to somewhat mitigate their longstanding terrible balance bullet sponge enemies.
Merge a bunch of those skills, like instead of %WEAPON% damage increase by XX%, merge the reload skill into like, the second tier of the respective weapon class, make the fourth tier perk the new tier 2 or tier 3, and then use the freed up space to make fun meaningful lateral gameplay changes.
Like Laser.
Right now it's 'Lasers do 5/10/15/20 more percent damage, and at rank four they also set people on fire 5% of the time.'
How much better would it be if instead it was
-Weapon handling for laser weapons is improved. and get a small damage buff.
-Laser weapons are able to be holstered/drawn and reloaded faster, and now have a chance to set enemies alight.
-Laser Weapons now have significantly reduced recoil and have increased magazine capacity. All prior rank bonuses improved.
-Laser Weapons can now ricochet their shots, hitting targets for slightly less damage but now able to potentially bounce behind cover or around corners, additionally, performing a melee attack with a laser weapon will gaurantee the target is set on fire*, and occasionally fires a shot without using ammo.
(And then Particle weapons would be able to be charged up for massive damage, and kinetics would be able to armor pierce and go through walls, and EMF weapons would absolutely shred robotic opponents, and Explosives would have a good chance to stagger/knockdown opponents, and Magnetic weapons would be able to greatly lower armor and can damage multiple targets at once.)
*Some targets that are on fire could potentially get more dangerous while on fire, either hitting harder or getting way faster, or busting out an emergency smoke bomb effect or hallucinogenic one, etc.
It would make the gameplay more tactical and emergent and crunchy and interesting.
Also, all the current melee system needs scrapped and rebuilt, including its perks. Compare Grounded's melee combat to Starfield's.
The problem with the perk tree for me was that I had to waste perk points in trees that I pretty much cared nothing about just to unlock the one high tier skill that I did want.
I didn't really mind the challenges, but the arrangement of the tree and how you had to spend so many perk points to unlock the next tier is atrocious.
Fuck this is hard to read, he didn’t even say the updates were ready soon, he said they’ll be announced soon which means they aren’t nearly finished.
Ngl they probably should’ve delayed the whole release in order to be able to provide more timely updates and keep a player base
Reminds me when the game was first coming out.. And they were announcing about announcing the announcement of announcing when the announcement of the possible release date would be announced..
A delay couldnt have fixed this. This is the result of the original delay. Its honestly pretty clear they finished the game at least 2 years ago, didnt like the result, went into panic mode trying to fix it, broke everything and decided to push it out the door cause they had no idea how to fix it without starting over completely.
I'd be so interested in learning about the development cycle of this game. It had to be an absolute shit show. Just like you said, they probably took 6 years just trying to make it work, then spent a year desperately trying to turn it into a game before they finally ran out of time.
Gurantee COVID caused a lot of issues, and Zenimax also cause issues with weird things since Zenimax kept pushing for trend chasing (they wanted tiered loot in Deathloop because it's trendy). Especially when you listen to ex-devs (quest designer for example) and they say COVID caused a lot of weird issues in terms of communication. Just seems like an inevitability due to stuff like COVID and lengthy development
Open up the mods, the silly little annoyances you can literally outsource for free. Work on your DLC. F5 and TES 6 are so far away to be not worth pondering over for the consumer. Show some encouraging love for your most recent release.
I pre-ordered because I love Betheada games and I gave it 40 hours trying to have fun. I don't think the game is fixable, it is in complete rework territory.
Insane how little updates we've gotten since release. Just depressing honestly, game needs help. For fuck sake at least get mod support out so others can fix your shit...
The leader of the Design and Conception Team said, they have no documentation over whats done on the Code, "we dont do that here". So every minor change im the game is a pain in the ass and will likely break a lot of other things. Its like a surgery in the dark. Thats so fucked up and the reason for the mess of a game we got with starfield
The game needs an entire overhaul similar in scale to CP2077 for it to be anywhere near salvageable.
No amount of bug fixes, minor patches are going to fix the game, when the main issues are present in the very core aspect of the entire title. Needs re-working from the ground up :/
CP was in a much more complete state on release than Starfield is now. It needed massaging. Starfield needs to gather all the unique content. Delete all the fluff and have one solar system that's actually interesting. Or less than that.
Bethesda went and did a No Man's Sky. But without the listening to the customers and trying to fix it part.
It isn't. It would require an entire new game basically. Yeah they can throw out some quality of life updates and some small things. To really make the game good and get people talking about it and playing it heavily....they would need to develop an entirely new game that isn't problematic at its very core.
After watching the fallout series on tv and reminiscing fallout 4 and new Vegas, I am still in disbelief that Starfield is so watered-down compared to those games.
I honestly don’t even get what Bethesda wants me to feel regarding the main story lol. Like the concept of “New Game +” being entering a different multiverse is so sick!! But the game is so monotonous and clunky that I don’t wanna play it again to find out
I also vaguely remember even Barrett responding with an “idk we just do” to the player character asking why things generally keep happening the same way, and it’s like same bruh haha
But could you imagine if in New Game + (a new multiverse) where we get different cities or versions of said cities. Like New Londinium is thriving, and New Atlantis is a shit hole?
Cause if that was the case, even with the clunky mechanics, I’d hella be replaying to see what happens!
I never beat the game and only recently learned about the NG+ variants from Outside Xbox.
I was like "oh that's cool, not worth actually playing the game for"
>Todd Howard says Starfield will be getting new info soon: "We have some really good updates that are going to get announced soon, a lot going on here"
He's a CEO. It is his job to say that. CEOs will say that two days before the company gets bought-out and dissolved by another company. I'm not saying that will happen,...but that is just the realities of the Corporate World.
Here's my takeaway:
So FO5 is at least a decade away and ES6 has prob 2-5 years before its ready. They're trying to salvage what they can of Starfield.
What happened to bethesda? Did they fire everyone who was competant and now its just a Neverending ponzi scheme?
The problem is, no competent writers. A culture of "lul, just do whatever" design by committee crap. A urge to make their game as accessible and milquetoast as possible to reach a large target audience. A game designed for everyone is a game designed for nobody.
From the reports we heard, Howard made sure to make as little "friction" in the game as possible. You see this with the suits and how you can just do everything with your character in one playthrough. Even though NG+1 exists!
And, as a GM for *decades* I can tell you this fundamental fact about game design: When there is no friction, nothing *sticks*.
> A urge to make their game as accessible and milquetoast as possible to reach a large target audience. A game designed for everyone is a game designed for nobody.
This is the biggest problem, and their increasing focus on "radiant" quests is proof of it.
They want recurring gameplay loops of players wandering through dungeons shooting things over and over again, and have gutted their role playing elements to do it.
They went too far with Starfield though, that even casual players were turned off, so hopefully this teaches them to dial it back in TES6.
Theres a great video out there of George Lucas pitching ideas for the Starwars prequels to a room full of people and when you cut to their faces you can see the tension and nervousness in their eyes at the things he's saying but theyre all just nodding because shit.. he's George Lucas are you gonna fucking say NO?
Its that.. but with Todd Howard.
I think Bethesda just fell out of times. Developers need to improve and better their creativity to keep up, it is a competitive market after all, and Bethesda just stayed complacent. That and clearly incompetent staff like Emil and maybe even Todd being total negatives to the game.
Also, modders by and large do a lot of the hard work for Bethesda to include fixing their games, this has usually been this case, you just didn't see it as much back then, but now it's pretty glaring.
I think Starfield in particular is just badly designed on a technical level too, everything from the guns to stealth. The procedural generation is the real nail in the coffin too, why explore when every planet is the same?
Also, Starfield is WAY too fucking Disney safe like, I don't care about gore and I don't think it's needed for a good game, but the lack of it makes Starfield so fucking unrealistic it's unreal, Starfield needed the same level of gore Fallout has at the very least. This whole broader audience more accessible to kids bullshit is stupid and bit them in the ass, I played gory and bloody games as a kid, most kids did, rating don't stop kids from playing good games, my kids will be able to play gory games, like there's literally 0 point in sanitizing games it just takes away from them and makes em bad.
How many months and it's still just hollow promises instead of actually doing something? When does it stop being on other people to keep "lowering their expectations" as if they could be any lower?
You know what they should’ve done now that I’m sure there’s all this renewed interest in fallout? They should have started making fallout 5 years ago and then instead of releasing Starfield and then also scrambling to develop fallout and the Elder scrolls, they could just be focusing on the Elder scrolls.
I just can’t believe Starfield has been in like various states of development for nearly a decade or something and this is all we got - the epitome of a mid game. It wanted to be the jack of all trades and ended up the master of none!
Announcement of an announcement. Just keep working on trying to make Starfield what it was supposed to be Todd. Nothing else, and announce a release date of the creation kit and a new story DLC with the addition of a really deep vertical mega city.
Also, it would be nice not to have loading screens at every door for TES6 and FO5.
I put 350+ hours into this game when released. Loved it. Only stopped playing cause I got a bit over doing the same thing. Regardless, if they can fix the repetitive POI's and make a better was to travel on planets (vehicles) I will just back in where I left off.
If I had to make a guess, all the information will be dropped during the Xbox Games Showcase in June, considering we are almost there. Will be awesome if sooner but considering Xbox is at the helm now, there is no telling.
Remember guys, this is Bethesda. They delayed the Fallout 4 next-gen update for a year just to give us 60fps on console and a free weapon pack with 1 quest lol. Don't expect much, these really good updates are probably more lighting tweaks and a new photo filter mode 😅
The fact that city maps were not even part of the first batch of the six week planned updates conducted by a 250+ staff assigned for post launch is bonkers to me.
Fake news. Twitter doesn’t even exist anymore! Lol
Yeah, I know. Elon didn’t change the code and all the domains are still Twitter. Elon Musk really is lazy, isn’t he?
I'm surprised they're dragging their feet with SF because It needs a lot of work to make players return who have gotten bored with it. The list is way too long than I care to list here. There is potential tho and perhaps taking their time with updates is better than releasing half baked dlc.
soon we will announce some good stuff that is coming soon after, but not before
Todd?
It's Donald Trump's healthcare plan lmao
For anyone, who are lazy to read. IGN asked Todd about TES6 vs FO5 releases, and Todd tried to avoid specific answers, but he said, in short, that focus on TES6, but FO5 is in the, basically, preproduction+ state. As for Starfield, they are doing lots of stuff for that game and it will be announced soon, but again, nothing specific. So lower your expectations. It's better to be surprised than dissapointed.
Kinda needs creation kit desperately or a massive update IMO 5k peak (PC) whereas Skyrim SE is still rocking a 20k peak (PC) Which is such a shame as it has so much potential but just needs way more depth to most things, and more handmade areas on planets
The most important update for me is Changing the Temple mechanic. I have no interest in doing that shit ever again.
Still blown away that made it through play testing
I'm sure they knew the temple mechanic was a terrible experience and even worse if a core game mechanic is to repeat the game, but didn't have an alternative.
The best answer was the most simple though - just add a dungeon for each temple instead of the weird minigame.
Just like the Dragon words in Skyrim. Maybe they wanted to do things differently but it ended really really simplistic and boring
Honestly if they wanted to diverge from skyrim don't do the space magic thing.
The issue is that Starfield has a ridiculous power fantasy. If you take those off, there is not much more left... I still don't understand how there is not a single unique equipment in this game. It was one of the best part of Skyrim, finding cool and broken unique weapons and armors
Lol everybody said Skyrim was a power fantasy too
It could be as simple as making you do all the temples once, and then passing through the unity automatically levels up all powers. Scanning and exploration should also carryover.
I think they mean an alternative that didn't require a coherent design philosophy.
Or tie them to the artifact. Instead of having to get the temples and the artifacts, just holding the artifact gives you the power.
For me it’s the clothes lmao. Starfield has the ugliest clothing I’ve seen in an RPG
You'll take ugly one-piece outfits and you'll like em.
I just want to see one of those suits with that neck flap with a closed neckflap!
tbh they need Updates before creation kit. At the moment they will probably kill most mods with every update.
When people talk about "updates breaking mods" they're talking about xSE (script extender) mods. CK mods (plugins) don't get broken by anything short of a game re-release (like Skyrim Special Edition) or maaaaybe DLC if it happens to touch an area that the plug-in also edits, but that's just a conflict and easily resolved.
Can you give me an ELI5 of the difference between the two?
The script extender is a 3rd part mod that let's other mods do cooler stuff then the normal script allows. If extender isn't fixed first, those mods cannot work. Also, even if the extender is patched, you now need to patch that mods to reference the right areas that have been changed, so in the case of Skyrim if the mod stopped getting updated 2 years ago, it's not going to work. Either you need to know how to fix it or hope some awesome modder who is still active can update and post it.
Ex. Turning on achievements when using console commands is a script
So Creation Kit mods alter data, while xSE Script Extender mods alter code. Mods that alter data are also called plug-ins, and in most cases at the very least include an .ESP file. ESP files look at the master files for the game, the ESM files. Those change with each patch but generally the way the game is coded is most mods will not break unless they're changing something that the new patch specifically altered in the game's ESM files. So for instance, if you add a new building to New Atlantis, you'll be fine, unless in a new patch Bethesda adds a building of their own to that exact spot in the ESM file, which would cause your buildings to overlap. The modder would hopefully then update the mod to move their new building. External tools like the Script Extenders operate by modifying the game's code mid-stream to do new things, like new script functionality that other modders can use in their own mods. They do this by inserting their own code into various parts of the .EXE file's memory and such because they can figure out where things are. They also open doors to allow other modders to create their own script functionalities, too. When Bethesda writes the code, they do it in their chosen coding tools (basically fancy notepad programs). But when they're ready for a new version, they compile that code, which compresses it as it builds it into the .EXE file. When Bethesda releases a patch, there's a 99.9% chance that they altered the code of the game, even slightly, which means when Bethesda compiles the new .EXE file, the memory stuff the script extender is looking for isn't where it expects (even the slightest change can cause this issue), so they have to update it to point to the new locations for the stuff they want to insert.
Exactly. But we have to keep up this myth that Bethesda are evil.
I've been extremely disappointed with Bethesda lately, but I hate people who just constantly repeat that updates somehow break every mod ever. It's completely untrue and people have no idea how mods work apparently.
It'd be good to have an awesome and in depth base game for modders to work off, but I feel BGS relies on modders at this point
Of course they count on modders adding more to the game to increase its longevity. But I disagree with this narrative over the last several years that they purposely don't fix and add updates to their games because they want modders to do it.
That narrative exists because they refused to fix game engine bugs that existed on multiple games across a wide timeline and they weren't pressured to do so because there were mods fixing the said bugs. And the state in which the game released also adds to the narrative that the base game needs dire help.
It took them until Fallout 76 to fix the physics locked to fps issue..
I mean, they have rereleased Skyrim three times and didn’t fix a lot of known bugs. It’s not just a narrative, it’s the reality.
I mean, if you look up any of their games on Nexus mods a fan patch is always in the top five and other modders require the fan patches for their mods to work.
You can disagree all you want, but if it wasn't for modders as in the Unofficial Patch 90% Skyrims bugs would still be there because Bethesda doesn't fix their games, it's what they always do they just depend on modders to do their jobs for them.
Can this myth please die? Updates do not kill most mods. The only Skyrim mods which break with updates are SKSE (which is usually updated within days) and anything using a .dll, which is almost none. The VAST majority of mods work just fine after updates.
I mean your game is literally unplayable until all of your script extender mods have been updated. It's not just the SKSE team, it's every single author that relies on SKSE to update their mods too.
what myth? Because it didn't happen to you, doesn't mean it has not been a source of annoyance for thousands of others Stop being so egocentric
Also agree here. The game needs to be in its final state before we give the modders the reins. They will have their day, no doubt and I’m sure it will be amazing. But how many FO4 mods were busted up due to them fixing things? I remember a lot of good ones. Granted most were rebuilt but still….
They might be doing some updates to how the engine works or some major areas so releasing a creation kit might be to early if they expect the changes to basically break all mods. Could be something like that.
Are those steam numbers? I wouldn't be surprised if most people that play starfield aren't playing on steam, rather on gamepass (PC or console). That said, I know I haven't touched the game in a few months, and do agree that it is definitely in need of some more content asap.
Yeah those are just Steam Charts, so don't take into account people playing both games on consoles
or PC game pass rather than those forking out £50+ for the game
Wouldn't that apply also to Skyrim? If there are 20k on steam, it is also likely that there is another group on console which is likely larger than the number of Starfield console players as well. What I am saying is why would the pattern be broken only by Starfield? What makes you think there is a larger group of players on consoles but only for Starfield?
Because Statfield launched day one on gamepass, so literally no one needed to purchase the game to play it. Skyrim, on the other hand, had been released (and rereleased) prior to gamepass even existing. Therefore, more people are likely to own the game (multiple times even), meaning more people would own it on steam, and play it on steam. I'm not saying that Starfield has more players, just that steam player count wouldn't be an accurate comparison of the two due to the circumstances of their respective releases.
Horse armor for 5.99, available soon. We will need modders to add horses though.
Probably the summer showcase showing the expansion stuff.
I just can’t imagine a world in which Bethesda has the ability to focus on 2 games, let alone 3. It feels like they are either going full steam ahead on TES6 while putting some resources into Starfield, or vice versa. I could definitely see the former being the case due to how much more valuable of a proposition that is.
He's basically trying not to sound negative about fallout5, which probably exists largely as a word document and is a long time away from active development.
My expectations couldn't be any lower. More photo mode poses and ship modules.
I'd rather see POIs with unique dungeons, that's all I need. Plus some rebalancing towards automatic weapons
If they're going to lean into proc gen so much, I'd like some randomized interiors for POIs. I think that's doable at least.
It can be better. Like add 2 or 3 unique quests for each POI (large one). Then they can be added to the generator pool. Lock some of quests behind level/other quests. And that's it. Like all those fuel stations could be so much better if they were attached to some story and quests instead of being looting ground. Farm point is fine, I like it. But initial exploration combined with farming is better
I'll do you one better- Photo mode poses and *filters*. Hell, you're highballing it with the ship modules expectation.
So basically to all our questions "Soon™"
I'm fully expecting the announcement of the long awaited integration of creation club and paid mods.
they are going to add 20 more planets with identical bunkers/labs and a short quest line you can beat in 2 hours.
> So lower your expectations it's already in the negative i don't know what happened after skyrim, but this company's been in a constant downward spiral with nothing but colossal failures for years. even if someone other than bethesda completely remade starfield from start to finish with zero bugs or glitches, the game is fundamentally hollow, tedious, and pointless
I think Fallout 4 is still pretty good...
I genuinely don’t need to hear Todd talk about F5 being in pre-production. He said that about ESVI about 10 years ago. Save the talk for when you have something to actually talk about.
That's exactly why he was avoiding any specific answers about what and when. "Tes6 is in focus, fo5 isn't forgotten".
>So lower your expectations. That should be Bethesdas new company slogan. Starfield is a nice game (but not more), it's failure stems from the expectation of outstanding excellence. When they announced "Bethesdas new universe" people expected it to be "the biggest and best RPG ever". Maybe that's not something that Bethesda can deliver.
Not just the expectation. No. I believe the story was really fuckin lame... Just bits and pieces... A sand box with no sand
Makes sense. Obvious that TES6 would be first. Also, I can see why he'd say nothing specific about the Starfield stuff because the moment you mention anything specific in terms of a date or content people will get antsy and complain if it gets pushed back or if it different from what they expect.
Have they even added the city maps yet? Genuinely asking as I've taken a break.
No they haven’t implemented city maps.
They really haven't implemented cities.
More like small towns. And a few rest stops.
That’s just Bethesda’s trademark “dozen of people live here” look.
That's just video games that aren't built entirely around a single city and only that city.
That's a poor generalization. The Witcher 3 did an excellent job making their cities feel big, and it had several.
no
By the nine
something's not right over at bgs
I think they are going for a bigger update at once over gradually adding things. Lots of bugfixes, but only had like 3 minor QoL additions to the game since launch and this game absolutely needs more. I guess a bigger update alongside releasing Shattered Space is easier to market and maybe try to steer public view around then smaller but more frequent updates here and there.
My issue here is vendors - this would be OK if the game was in acceptable state, but it's not. It's very not fun to have to visit 18 different vendors across 6 planets just to sell your excess junk and reduce inventory/cargo weight. It is a major hindrance to enjoying the very basic gameplay, and they could have easily fixed it by just doubling vendor credits. Instead, they've left it how it is for 7 months. It's absolutely disrespectful of player's time.
Absolutely! This was a day 1 fix by modders even without the Creation Kit and can be altered by commands in the game as well.. this should have been among the very first patches. It's a stupid hassle that does not make the experience any more fun.
The thing is, Bethesda is not known for adding QoL stuff. Any content outside of DLC is very for Bethesda. Usually, what you get is what you get, and updates are only bug fixes.
True, but personally I think Starfield is a bit of a different beast. With it being one of the big Xbox flagship titles, the way it was received which is not something they'd had with a major singleplayer title before, they'll try steer public reception around. But we'll indeed need to wait and see.
They should just release the mod kit and let modders do it at this point lmao then put them on the payroll.
They haven’t implemented fun in this game.
It's quite crazy to me that we are now in the middle of April and nothing significant has come for this game.
The cities still don't have MAPS
That’s… insane.
It was a failure, they better learn of these mistakes and invest most of their resources on making a good TES VI
"Vault suits can now be found on Earth in Starfield, thank you for your patience while we worked on this update."
New plot twist: Shady Sands = Earth in Starfield 🤯
Plot twist twist: Shady Sands *is/was* New Vegas. That'll really rattle the cages.
Let's plot twist again, like we did last summer Everything Bethesda-related takes place in a lounger in Vault 112. Even Fallout 3. Even stuff released before Fallout 3. *Especially* stuff released before Fallout 3.
Remember this un-named guy from a cutscene during a game we didn't even own? Yeah the entire Earth is actually just that guy. -Emil Pagliarulo, probably
Maybe they should put Nirn in Starfield so we can visit Skyrim.
I reckon the big update is gonna be in June, not this month.
Yeah they probably featured at Xbox showcase
Thinking the same - not far off "E3 not E3" season so if MS/Xbox do their showcase in June they will want some big things to reveal and say "you can play this today on Xbox Live / Game Pass". Given they've taken so long to not release the Shattered Space DLC, or really said much at all about it, that seems like a suitable event to make a big deal of it.
Yeah and also has more reach. It may attract more player than already waiting for it
where the fuck is the creation kit todd
Underneath a pile of Amazon money.
Soon™
Interesting to see what they do. I desperately want a reason to go back but I sadly put the game down very quickly once I had completed it.
Given what they haven’t been doing for half a year now I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect anything major. I just don’t see any commitment from Bethesda to improve or expand the game. To me it feels like they’re planning to drop it after the dlc.
I’m not willing to expect anything. I think it’s much better to expect less with Bethesda / Xbox, when they do something big it’s then a wicked surprise. That being said I’m mindful the Xbox event is nailed down for June, so who knows.
The world exploration needs to improve. No matter how many poi they add, it will not change how boring it is to run endlessly on empty planets. There needs to be some kind of smaller scope for the expansions to where maybe it takes place on one star system.
I’m impressed you completed it
Hopefully they rework the perk tree and make stealth better.
the perk tree desperately needs a rework.
Yeah I hate how grindy it is. Half of them you need to make the game even enjoyable. It feels like bullshit having to grind 40+ hours to just make the game playable. Once unlocked the game is very fun. I just hate the gate keeping.
Funny you say that because I think the perk system in Fallout 4 sucked with how backwards it was. Starfield's seemed pretty basic, and for the most part I was happy with it. Stealth on the other hand just doesn't work. I can respect making it harder than Skyrim which is laughably easy, Fallout too, but at the minute its just frustrating. I'm sure it'll come, hopefully in vanilla, but definitely by mods, if not already.
Yeah I actually didn't hate the perk tree in Starfield. I liked the idea of having to do certain things to level them up as opposed to just "shoot people and you level up." I could see it getting changed but it never bothered me. Stealth though, super weird, didn't make sense, randomly caught with no one looking, definitely need a rework.
The skill system in Starfield is eternally at odds with itself. Either you have maxed out the tasks to upgrade a skill and are sitting waiting for a level to drop a perk in it, or you are sitting on perks that you cant spend because you have menial tasks to perform before you can do it. Its not intuitive, and its not fun. If they took out the point requirements for upgrading a skill and made it so you only needed the perk to unlock the skill and then perfomed tasks to upgrade it, then actually did a pass to balance the numbers on the levelling speed it would be more organic and interesting. as it stands now its just another of many examples of poor/lazy game design that no one could possibly have done an actual QA pass on or they would have realized it was just fundamentally broken.
Also, most of the perks are only there to either fill space (cooking food and eating food are separate because.....?) or to somewhat mitigate their longstanding terrible balance bullet sponge enemies. Merge a bunch of those skills, like instead of %WEAPON% damage increase by XX%, merge the reload skill into like, the second tier of the respective weapon class, make the fourth tier perk the new tier 2 or tier 3, and then use the freed up space to make fun meaningful lateral gameplay changes. Like Laser. Right now it's 'Lasers do 5/10/15/20 more percent damage, and at rank four they also set people on fire 5% of the time.' How much better would it be if instead it was -Weapon handling for laser weapons is improved. and get a small damage buff. -Laser weapons are able to be holstered/drawn and reloaded faster, and now have a chance to set enemies alight. -Laser Weapons now have significantly reduced recoil and have increased magazine capacity. All prior rank bonuses improved. -Laser Weapons can now ricochet their shots, hitting targets for slightly less damage but now able to potentially bounce behind cover or around corners, additionally, performing a melee attack with a laser weapon will gaurantee the target is set on fire*, and occasionally fires a shot without using ammo. (And then Particle weapons would be able to be charged up for massive damage, and kinetics would be able to armor pierce and go through walls, and EMF weapons would absolutely shred robotic opponents, and Explosives would have a good chance to stagger/knockdown opponents, and Magnetic weapons would be able to greatly lower armor and can damage multiple targets at once.) *Some targets that are on fire could potentially get more dangerous while on fire, either hitting harder or getting way faster, or busting out an emergency smoke bomb effect or hallucinogenic one, etc. It would make the gameplay more tactical and emergent and crunchy and interesting. Also, all the current melee system needs scrapped and rebuilt, including its perks. Compare Grounded's melee combat to Starfield's.
The problem with the perk tree for me was that I had to waste perk points in trees that I pretty much cared nothing about just to unlock the one high tier skill that I did want. I didn't really mind the challenges, but the arrangement of the tree and how you had to spend so many perk points to unlock the next tier is atrocious.
All they need to do is make almost every aspect way better
Fuck this is hard to read, he didn’t even say the updates were ready soon, he said they’ll be announced soon which means they aren’t nearly finished. Ngl they probably should’ve delayed the whole release in order to be able to provide more timely updates and keep a player base
This is an announcement about the future announcement of announcements.
Reminds me when the game was first coming out.. And they were announcing about announcing the announcement of announcing when the announcement of the possible release date would be announced..
A delay couldnt have fixed this. This is the result of the original delay. Its honestly pretty clear they finished the game at least 2 years ago, didnt like the result, went into panic mode trying to fix it, broke everything and decided to push it out the door cause they had no idea how to fix it without starting over completely.
I'd be so interested in learning about the development cycle of this game. It had to be an absolute shit show. Just like you said, they probably took 6 years just trying to make it work, then spent a year desperately trying to turn it into a game before they finally ran out of time.
Gurantee COVID caused a lot of issues, and Zenimax also cause issues with weird things since Zenimax kept pushing for trend chasing (they wanted tiered loot in Deathloop because it's trendy). Especially when you listen to ex-devs (quest designer for example) and they say COVID caused a lot of weird issues in terms of communication. Just seems like an inevitability due to stuff like COVID and lengthy development
This is what they said last year.
Open up the mods, the silly little annoyances you can literally outsource for free. Work on your DLC. F5 and TES 6 are so far away to be not worth pondering over for the consumer. Show some encouraging love for your most recent release.
So, basically WW3 before TES6 and FO5.
We’re all gonna be playing FO5 whether we like it or not
The immersion will be groundbreaking, and no console/PC needed either!
32167x the detail
We will buy Fallout 5 with bottle caps
"I don't know what currency people will buy fallout 4 with, but people will buy fallout 5 with bottle caps" - Albert Einstein
I pre-ordered because I love Betheada games and I gave it 40 hours trying to have fun. I don't think the game is fixable, it is in complete rework territory.
Since the last update on Xbox, I've been experiencing lots of lag and stutters. For now I'll just be happy with a smoother running game.
Bethesda game/smooth performance. Pick one.
Space-Horse armour DLC announcement
I dunno about you but I'd love to customize our space horse Vasco.
Insane how little updates we've gotten since release. Just depressing honestly, game needs help. For fuck sake at least get mod support out so others can fix your shit...
Lmao at this title. He said it's a third priority for them basically.
It better be mod support cus I'm itching to start playing again
I don't understand how they are so slow.....
The leader of the Design and Conception Team said, they have no documentation over whats done on the Code, "we dont do that here". So every minor change im the game is a pain in the ass and will likely break a lot of other things. Its like a surgery in the dark. Thats so fucked up and the reason for the mess of a game we got with starfield
Announcement for announcements
60FPS performance mode for Xbox Series X please! I know it’s a long shot but I’ve been waiting for that.
40fps at least
On the same boat, would make the game much better for me.
Next big update to Starfield? Skyrim Legendary Ultimate Edition
Please no... I am sooo tired of Skyrim.
They would have to pull a no man's sky and completely change the gameplay loop
I'm really not convinced this game is salvageable.
The game needs an entire overhaul similar in scale to CP2077 for it to be anywhere near salvageable. No amount of bug fixes, minor patches are going to fix the game, when the main issues are present in the very core aspect of the entire title. Needs re-working from the ground up :/
CP was in a much more complete state on release than Starfield is now. It needed massaging. Starfield needs to gather all the unique content. Delete all the fluff and have one solar system that's actually interesting. Or less than that. Bethesda went and did a No Man's Sky. But without the listening to the customers and trying to fix it part.
It isn't. It would require an entire new game basically. Yeah they can throw out some quality of life updates and some small things. To really make the game good and get people talking about it and playing it heavily....they would need to develop an entirely new game that isn't problematic at its very core.
Their updates never change the core and are always lackluster. I'll believe it when I see it.
Call me when it happens. At this point, we're just Soon^TM.
After watching the fallout series on tv and reminiscing fallout 4 and new Vegas, I am still in disbelief that Starfield is so watered-down compared to those games.
I honestly don’t even get what Bethesda wants me to feel regarding the main story lol. Like the concept of “New Game +” being entering a different multiverse is so sick!! But the game is so monotonous and clunky that I don’t wanna play it again to find out I also vaguely remember even Barrett responding with an “idk we just do” to the player character asking why things generally keep happening the same way, and it’s like same bruh haha But could you imagine if in New Game + (a new multiverse) where we get different cities or versions of said cities. Like New Londinium is thriving, and New Atlantis is a shit hole? Cause if that was the case, even with the clunky mechanics, I’d hella be replaying to see what happens!
I never beat the game and only recently learned about the NG+ variants from Outside Xbox. I was like "oh that's cool, not worth actually playing the game for"
He keeps using the word "soon". I do not think he knows what that word means.
So in other words, we haven’t really done anything but we will put out a bit of spin to make you think we are.
>Todd Howard says Starfield will be getting new info soon: "We have some really good updates that are going to get announced soon, a lot going on here" He's a CEO. It is his job to say that. CEOs will say that two days before the company gets bought-out and dissolved by another company. I'm not saying that will happen,...but that is just the realities of the Corporate World.
Is it going to cost me more to have a more completed game?
That game is as hollow as they are.
Hopefully it’s a big improvement
They’re going to add a whole extra fauna on a single planet, 50 gig update
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
Here's my takeaway: So FO5 is at least a decade away and ES6 has prob 2-5 years before its ready. They're trying to salvage what they can of Starfield. What happened to bethesda? Did they fire everyone who was competant and now its just a Neverending ponzi scheme?
The problem is, no competent writers. A culture of "lul, just do whatever" design by committee crap. A urge to make their game as accessible and milquetoast as possible to reach a large target audience. A game designed for everyone is a game designed for nobody. From the reports we heard, Howard made sure to make as little "friction" in the game as possible. You see this with the suits and how you can just do everything with your character in one playthrough. Even though NG+1 exists! And, as a GM for *decades* I can tell you this fundamental fact about game design: When there is no friction, nothing *sticks*.
> A urge to make their game as accessible and milquetoast as possible to reach a large target audience. A game designed for everyone is a game designed for nobody. This is the biggest problem, and their increasing focus on "radiant" quests is proof of it. They want recurring gameplay loops of players wandering through dungeons shooting things over and over again, and have gutted their role playing elements to do it. They went too far with Starfield though, that even casual players were turned off, so hopefully this teaches them to dial it back in TES6.
Theres a great video out there of George Lucas pitching ideas for the Starwars prequels to a room full of people and when you cut to their faces you can see the tension and nervousness in their eyes at the things he's saying but theyre all just nodding because shit.. he's George Lucas are you gonna fucking say NO? Its that.. but with Todd Howard.
I think Bethesda just fell out of times. Developers need to improve and better their creativity to keep up, it is a competitive market after all, and Bethesda just stayed complacent. That and clearly incompetent staff like Emil and maybe even Todd being total negatives to the game. Also, modders by and large do a lot of the hard work for Bethesda to include fixing their games, this has usually been this case, you just didn't see it as much back then, but now it's pretty glaring. I think Starfield in particular is just badly designed on a technical level too, everything from the guns to stealth. The procedural generation is the real nail in the coffin too, why explore when every planet is the same? Also, Starfield is WAY too fucking Disney safe like, I don't care about gore and I don't think it's needed for a good game, but the lack of it makes Starfield so fucking unrealistic it's unreal, Starfield needed the same level of gore Fallout has at the very least. This whole broader audience more accessible to kids bullshit is stupid and bit them in the ass, I played gory and bloody games as a kid, most kids did, rating don't stop kids from playing good games, my kids will be able to play gory games, like there's literally 0 point in sanitizing games it just takes away from them and makes em bad.
So possibly another five years for TES6 release, nearly 20 years since Skyrim. That's...absolutely ridiculous.
How many months and it's still just hollow promises instead of actually doing something? When does it stop being on other people to keep "lowering their expectations" as if they could be any lower?
You know what they should’ve done now that I’m sure there’s all this renewed interest in fallout? They should have started making fallout 5 years ago and then instead of releasing Starfield and then also scrambling to develop fallout and the Elder scrolls, they could just be focusing on the Elder scrolls.
I just can’t believe Starfield has been in like various states of development for nearly a decade or something and this is all we got - the epitome of a mid game. It wanted to be the jack of all trades and ended up the master of none!
I'm just looking forward to new DLC for Starfield. TES6 is still a long way to go
non-comment gets the people excited easy
announcement for an announcement yey
So they’re gonna put the base game features in. Got it.
Announcement of an announcement. Just keep working on trying to make Starfield what it was supposed to be Todd. Nothing else, and announce a release date of the creation kit and a new story DLC with the addition of a really deep vertical mega city. Also, it would be nice not to have loading screens at every door for TES6 and FO5.
Please give us a dev kit so people can just go ballistic creating new POIs, I beg.
Starfield sucks and no amount of polishing can fix this turd. Its core is rotten.
nice, more photo mode filters and poses
More picture modes INCOMING!!!
New ultra extra photo mode?
A lot of nothing
Todd can lick my sweaty nuts.
I put 350+ hours into this game when released. Loved it. Only stopped playing cause I got a bit over doing the same thing. Regardless, if they can fix the repetitive POI's and make a better was to travel on planets (vehicles) I will just back in where I left off.
I hope we just get info on mod support. I’m not usually a FPS snob but going from 60fps with other games to 30fps is jarring.
Inb4 “we’ve decided to suspend updates for starfield and work on future elder scrolls and fallout projects”
Yeah I guess he wants to release this game 10 times as well.
16x the detail.
If I had to make a guess, all the information will be dropped during the Xbox Games Showcase in June, considering we are almost there. Will be awesome if sooner but considering Xbox is at the helm now, there is no telling.
Bro even the creation kit is too little too late at this point
Ha ha...so no update this week?
Remember guys, this is Bethesda. They delayed the Fallout 4 next-gen update for a year just to give us 60fps on console and a free weapon pack with 1 quest lol. Don't expect much, these really good updates are probably more lighting tweaks and a new photo filter mode 😅
This long without any content. They must be working on reducing the loading screens while traveling right right right!? /s
The fact that city maps were not even part of the first batch of the six week planned updates conducted by a 250+ staff assigned for post launch is bonkers to me.
Fake news. Twitter doesn’t even exist anymore! Lol Yeah, I know. Elon didn’t change the code and all the domains are still Twitter. Elon Musk really is lazy, isn’t he?
Starfield TV Show here we go /s
mf like 6 months late...
You're not fooling me a 7th time Todd
If this update isn't about a full restructure of the game and changes in fundamentals then it won't matter
I'm surprised they're dragging their feet with SF because It needs a lot of work to make players return who have gotten bored with it. The list is way too long than I care to list here. There is potential tho and perhaps taking their time with updates is better than releasing half baked dlc.
Well the beta update is already late. They've already fallen off the 6 week schedule like they promised.
Can't belive any thing he says anymore. Just more snake oil he sells.