As a person who knows nothing about this game and only understands kerbal space program:
As a Flight of Nova player, I just saw death. Yes, this is extremely unrealistic, approaching a planet at that speed you'd just vaporize as soon as you hit the atmosphere. It looks like a tiny planet, though, which wouldn't have enough gravity for a thick atmosphere. Probably just scaled down, like Kerbin, which is smaller than Charon.
Answers
1: future magic
2: future magic
But yes, that fireball would be spectacular even if the ship could somehow survive.
Starfield is more an 'Open World' rpg. Exploration on foot with fight and quest is more prominent than exploration in space. The space part is more like a mean to travel between planet where you could find quest. Sometimes, there's a space fight, or boarding other ship/station. But ship simulation isn't the purpose of this game. You can still build a ship, but you're more focused on look than : 'Will it work ?'.
So basically they could replace space travel with a magic portal and it would be a fantasy game?
Yeah, your ship is basically a somewhat customizable base and the navigation computer is just a fast travel portal that moves your base, at least in the update I played a couple years ago.
A space fantasy game, sure.
TL;DR: This is impressive, however for me personally seeing cool Bethesda mods is so bittersweet at this point. Like imagine the kinds of things you could do if you put that effort into somewhere more appreciated. Idk.
I certainly don't mean to insult anyone's efforts, I imagine Bethesda games do offer some real value for budding game developers in the form of a very accessible entrypoint into modding and I think that's great.
But what would be even better is if this company weren't basically entirely surviving off the coat tails of their community of unpaid laborers. The only reason why these games are so moddable is because Bethesda as a company wouldn't survive if they weren't. The product being given by itself is so bad and Bethesda so inept that it compelled people to learn how to fix it themselves just to deliver on what could've been.
Bethesda basically sells you the idea of a game, delivers about 60% of it and then asks you to make up the difference. Anyone playing Skyrim or Fallout 4 could see how good those games could've been even with no prior game design knowledge, it's just an innate feeling.
this "bethesda depends on mods" thing completely falls flat when you point out how popular the games were on console long before mods were able to work on console
It’s such an intrgral feature for space flight games (IMO) and it saddens me to see that after all these years they still haven’t implemented it, and the community has to step in.
Isn't that pretty par for the course with mainline Bethesda games?
i just think the idea of spreading out a Bathesda RPG over an entire galaxy was flawed even if it had seamless planet landing from the beginning. constantly flying between solar systems for different quests, often in the same quest, is just tedious as hell even if it was seamless.
In order for it to work they need to make the spaceflight/combat/space itself more compelling and worthwhile. In Elder Scrolls and Fallout, exploration between quests is fun because there are chance encounters, side quests, unmarked dungeons, easter eggs, great scenery, etc. There was almost none of that in Starfield, although you could tell they tried to inject some.
Not to mention most of the planets are randomly generated. There aren't really any unique things to discover, just the same buildings randomly pasted around. Even the planets that are supposed to be unique like the capitals of the factions are so underwhelming. You're telling me that this interstellar faction that rules over a dozen planets is run out of a dingy Western looking ass town with 300 inhabitants?
I'll stick with Elite Dangerous. Can already do this, and it has a whole galaxy to explore, and costs like $15. And it doesn't have tons of bugs and crashes.. and works great on Linux.
I played elite dangerous for a while, was fun. But I got tired of grinding for new ships. I was just going out to kill ships for money all the time. I dont remember exploring much... What is there to explore?
What is there to explore?
A whole galaxy...
...of the same 5 types of solar systems, 5 types of tasks and 5 types of stations with randomized distances in between.
I really hate this reductionist attitude towards the game. I can promise you there are much more than 5 types of systems - there some 15 star classes, but then there are giants, sipergiants, you have planetoids, star orbiting othed stars, planets orbiting pulsars, moon-moons, sheperd moons, hot jupiters, gas giant pairs and many more variantions and that's just orbital mechanics, before you even get planetside or before you see the dozens of space anomalies. Stations, yes, are about 5 main types, but there are settlements, outposts, the odd science station and megaship, tourist outposts etc. The game offers a diversity in exploration that i've yet to see NMS match, despite it having landable earth likes and alien life. And Starfield somehow can't even match what's in NMS, despite todd bragging about exploration being the main focus.
Elite is a game about flying your spaceship in a space sandbox. If you like the flight model, the combat model, the symphony of sounds your ship makes you're gonna love doing whatever with it.
Now the game has plenty of flaws, and yes it is grindy ( or it used to be, as it's been lessend lf late ) but anything is grindy if you're just doing the same thing over and over. If you find you liked the game but got bored with it, maybe join a community, or join an outgoing expedition. Elite's community is unmatched in its awesomeness.
Apologies for the rant but I hate people besmirching the good name of Elite.
Yes, it's hyperbole. I didn't mean there are literally only 5.
These are my criticisms of the game I've played since the closed beta. Namely that it all feels the same. Yes, like I said in my other comment, there's inevitably repetition in any game, but Elite is very shallow compared to most other sandbox games I've played.
Star types exist, yes, but they're just floating orbs of fire with different colors. Stations and outposts etc exist, but you interact with them in the same way. What is there to interact with? How does it affect the system around it or the gameplay? Factions at war spawn conflict zones, but aside from those, there's very little to make you feel like a war is actually taking place. Exploration? I haven't done that in a long time, but at least before, it consisted of you jumping to a system, honking your system scan and then going to the next system. Engineering is "hey, let's play around with a random number generator", and then wasting a lot of resources you've managed to collect in various places over a not insignificant amount of time.
Yes, it's a sandbox and I don't mind repetition, but if after a week of playing you feel like you've seen pretty much everything there is to see, barring the things you need to grind for, I wouldn't consider it worth the entrance price.
If you consider that "besmirching" the game, then I would call you excessively defensive. It's just a game, and it doesn't need you to defend it.
I wasn't defending as much as offering a different perspective on the game in case someone sleeps on it. I mean, you say "mile wide and inch deep" and it is like that sometimes ( stellar anomalies are drop in, gawk, scan, screenshot and leave ). But they also say it's "space trucking simulator", and it is that too sometimes. And that it's "just a wallpaper generator", and that's also true. But these add up. There's also the "emerging gameplay" which fdev kept yapping on about - things like the fuel rats, hull seals, the dssa and star carrier networks, axi etc.
I'm probabaly wrong thinking you haven't played in a whole but you might wanna give it another chance. In their defense, fdev corrected the engineering rng bullshit and added a feature to shorten tedious in-system travel. They also reworked powerplay and added some colonization features as well as some squadron activities and operations if you're on foot. On the other hand, some flaws persist: for one, it still does not respect your time, and it still does not explain much and requires third party tools and websites if you want to dive into anything.
Also I'm genuinely curious what other sandboxes ( preferably space ) offer what elite does. I know x4 does some things much better but the flight model, controls and ui is atrocious every time I play. There's also SpaceEngine, which kinda does what Elite does with exploration but with a lot less travel time and a lot less interactivity. I was rooting for Starfield for a while but the moment todd said "One. Thousand. Planets" I knew exploration would be shite. Any other recommendations?
Yeah this is what worries me.
I don't mean to suggest Elite is necessarily a bad game because of it. Every game is ultimately limited in some ways. I've enjoyed most of my time playing it, until I hit the part where any kind of grinding just makes me unwilling to participate. I do occasionally install it, fly around a bit in VR and blast some enemies. That keeps me entertained for a few hours. Then I uninstall it and forget it exists for a few years.
So you might have fun playing it, you might not. There's a fair amount of grinding required to get the better ships or a big number in your credits account. If the limited amount of variety isn't an obstacle for you, then there's a decent chance you'll have fun.
I, ngl, could grind money trading for days in elite. Never was a problem for me, and haulers do generate money fast. I hate engineering though. It's unnecessary tedious. The amount of planning and time wasted just to get AX ready ship is ridiculous. And pvp balance with fdl meta somewhat puts me off. Add to this that separate arena pvp mode in elite is dead. At some point I got Soo bored that I couldn't really continue playing it. No matter what, their ass engineering is too much for me. And linear progression killed any reason to even bother with that. And recent updates don't seem to really fix any of the existing issues. They tried to make engineering less painful by making rates and activities you get materials from more consistent. But it never fixed core issues with engineering. Like broken balance, or pathing that can take days to fully upgrade the ship if you have life outside of the game. Also the fact that you have to use outfit sites and inara for almost anything route related, because UI in the game is not really done in a good way puts me of playing it on steam deck as well. Elite could be a great game, but somehow it feels that devs maintaining the game and not developing it when it comes to ship related gameplay. Oh right, f-ing potato servers that will kick you from the game even if you are in solo mode on the busy weekend is painful too. Not to say that I prefer starfield. Starfield is not even on my radar, I will prefer elite any day over starfield. Just elite state is frustrating as hell for me.
Yeah I did that when the game was almost new. And I dont mind some grinding for better stuff, it's just that I felt that grinding was the entire game. I was hoping to be able to buy and sell resources and transport them across star systems for a profit, under the danger of pirates attacking me. Stuff like that. But its not that kind of game.
I guess more like the original elite game worked, but with modern graphics. That would be so cool.
So no man’s sky with less variation?
Haven't tried NMS, but I'd guess probably? "A mile wide and an inch deep" is the phrase I've commonly seen used with regards to Elite. Sure, there's a whole galaxy worth of systems, but they're all pretty much the same, with the same activities.
ED is OG too. One of the pioneers.
Still haven't bought it...I tried at launch. Laughed and cried, then refunded. How is it now? Except the unchangeable fundamental flaw (to me!) of procedural generation.
Nothing has changed enough to make it worth checking out again. If you didn't like it at launch, you still won't like it now.
I dunno if I may have liked it. Had sound-issues and performance was a joke. The procedural flaw was noticable fast and no mods will fix. But the mod-scene seems active and considering that skyrim was bland crap without mods....
I'm surprised so many people make this a big deal. It's a complaint I heard since launch of the game. Some people even stopped playing or didn't even purchased the game because of this!
I was never too bothered by the landing animation ( or the multitude of loading screens for thag matter ) because I figured it's a limitation of their engine so they won't be able to fix it easily or at all - and besides other games have been getting away with it: Mass Effect, SW Outlaws etc.
What irks me about this is that a modder has been able to actually do it, without access to their engine and supposedly doing it in their spare time and for free. It really shows how lazy bethesda have become and frankly don't hold much hope for their future games.
What irks me about this is that a modder has been able to actually do it, without access to their engine and supposedly doing it in their spare time and for free.
Okay, that's actually amazing and crazy. Modders never stop amazing me. Bethesda still works on the game, so there must be technical reasons why they don't do it then. Maybe there are edge cases when this doesn't work well or has side effects. I can fully see why someone gets disappointed if this is actually possible.
Us space flight sim enjoyers like that kind of thing. When Starfield was announced we kinda expected it to be a default feature, so obviously when we saw it wasnt a feature it was disappointing.
Starfield is NOT a space flight sim. It’s a CRPG set up in a space traveling society, so it has… space travel.
The ‘flight model’ is absolutely arcade-ish and oriented to have fun while pew-pewing pirates or space jihadis, not to provide the player with a ‘sim’.
Yaaaay, now we can do something No Man's Sky could do 10 years ago, yaaaaaaay!
Yaaaay, now we can do something Frontier could do 33 years ago, yaaaaaay!
You just answered your own question...
What question? What answer?? I'm surprised many people make a big deal out of this isn't a question, nor contains it an answer. I'm making an observation, and find it stupid to not play a game because of this.
I get what you mean, but it makes sense in context.
Immersive "Open World" Sims with ground and space exploration have a hard time tying the two together. Often they feel like two separate games, and one of them often feels like the "second class (star) citizen". Not that making them seamlessly connected actually makes the two mechanically complimentary, but separating them by a loading screen makes this dichotomy all the more obvious. Starfield was no exception.
To exacerbate this, Bethesda made its brand the "You see that mountain? You can climb it!" game makers (Which, to be honest, I think they started to lose the plot on what made their games good when they started saying this. But that's a different conversation.). So when they made their foray into space exploration, they really had no one else to blame when folks expected a similar "You see that planet? You can fly to it!" design philosophy.
Though I think it would have been overlooked if the game was... good? At the very least, if it was way less bloated with low effort copy pasted fluff content. Complaints like this only tend to become so focal when people have more disappointment to express than meaningful critique can adequately convey.
Though I think it would have been overlooked if the game was… good? At the very least, if it was way less bloated with low effort copy pasted fluff content. Complaints like this only tend to become so focal when people have more disappointment to express than meaningful critique can adequately convey.
Guess this is a good point here. It's an easy point to talk about specific failures (from perspective of the player) when they don't like the game much. To me it sounds like an excuse not to play or not to like, and this is something they can blame. I don't know for me it wouldn't be a big deal, at least not to this scale. I get that many and long loading screens are terrible. Maybe I'm not the person looking into a virtual reality like immersion and are not affected by such details, therefore don't have the empathy for players missing this feature.
Adds a hell of a lot more immersion than a loading screen.
So timely!
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