Board 8 > Starfield Starts and Discussion

(+) Yeah! (+)

did the little intro segment, then spent hours fucking around gathering resources on the next planet

then head to the main city planet. got off my ship, decided to immediately attack the ground crew, cops came and I killed like 5 of them, no more came after that

first building I saw after the landjng zone was the police station.

walked right in, dude at desk was like stop right there, youre wanted!

paid a 2600 credit fine for my septuple homicide and was free to go and also they offered me a job

then like fifteen minutes later in a shop menu the game hard locked up so I went to bed

bethesda

oh also on the second planet I was almost immediately struggling with the encumbrance limit, and my robot friend would neg me every time I went over the limit and I hate him now

and im 97% sure one of the three aliens creatures on that planet is just using Radscorpion animations

I won't be able to get to this for about a month due to being busy but there is no way I'm playing it without just getting rid of the encumbrance limit. I don't need to pick everything up but man does it feel bad when you have to keep doing inventory management.

That and I'm hoping I could do something like in fallout 4 where I just made a silo at my base that I dropped all yhe guns I picked up until it eventually crashed my game because of all the physics happening in there. It was glorious

Yeah when I play on PC eventually the first thing I'm going to do is raise the carry limit in the console. It's really easy apparently.

MoogleKupo141 posted...

oh also on the second planet I was almost immediately struggling with the encumbrance limit, and my robot friend would neg me every time I went over the limit and I hate him now

All companions do this. It's actually a useful indicator to know when to talk to them and give them all your rocks and knick-knacks.

I've gotten to the point where I'm not picking up every little thing anymore because 'I might need it', which is nice. About to finish up one of the main faction quests, I think.

Also, I met Willem Dafoe.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/3/4/AAEwvCAAE0HS.jpg

I was getting my ass obliterated in space battles until I unlocked the targeting skill, then I crippled a ship and boarded it, took it over, and now I'm crushing (almost) everyone.

I like the ship combat a lot.

Only a few hours in because it took a long time to download and then I had to figure out why it claimed my graphics card wasn't good enough even though it totally was. Still, I'm enjoying Starfield so far. I did a sidequest where I flipped switches in a slum to help a maintenance worker and it was fun.

Just found out for the first time in like 15 years theres an Xbox exclusive game I actually want to play. Bethesda, bunch of punks.

There has never been a single game that has benefitted from an encumbrance system and all games should eliminate it forever. It just decentivizes exploration. Heard this game has a particularly annoying one that I'm hoping doesn't turn me off too much.

_Blur_ posted...

There has never been a single game that has benefitted from an encumbrance system and all games should eliminate it forever. It just decentivizes exploration. Heard this game has a particularly annoying one that I'm hoping doesn't turn me off too much.

https://youtu.be/9KMbTUwpwbI?si=ENEuE8YGaE_iCjpU

_Blur_ posted...

There has never been a single game that has benefitted from an encumbrance system and all games should eliminate it forever. It just decentivizes exploration. Heard this game has a particularly annoying one that I'm hoping doesn't turn me off too much.

Could not disagree more specifically on the "decentivizes exploration" point. If you want to pick up a bunch of useless garbage, you can spec towards carry capacity.

Otherwise, it makes your exploration more focused because what you pickup actually matters.

No carry capacity just leads to mashing a button while you run around and ending up with thousands of items you have to go through (or more likely), you're just going to dump at a vendor without even looking at it.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Could not disagree more specifically on the "decentivizes exploration" point. If you want to pick up a bunch of useless garbage, you can spec towards carry capacity.

Otherwise, it makes your exploration more focused because what you pickup actually matters.

No carry capacity just leads to mashing a button while you run around and ending up with thousands of items you have to go through (or more likely), you're just going to dump at a vendor without even looking at it.

Then make games where what you pickup matters instead of having useless garbage to collect. If what I'm picking up is useless, that also decentivizes exploration.

I dunno, playing Bloodborne right now and I love that there's no carrying capacity. Carrying capacity can matter with outfits like in Elden Ring, but otherwise it's just such a turn off for me. The FromSoft games do it right.

A game with unique loot like a FromSoft game is completely different than a random systems-based loot game, like a Bethesda RPG (not that there isn't also unique loot).

The games are designed completely different, and it's an intention and preference thing.

If you want to mod out carrying capacity in a Bethesda game, more power to you, but then there are actual features and stats in the game that would no longer serve a purpose, and I don't play that way, I'm trying to be in that world.

Bethesda games have always been littered with junk that you can pick up because it promotes realism. Also, in Fallout 4, you could scrap most of them for their materials. But in a game of that style, with that much stuff, there does need to be some kind of limit.

I agree that in many games encumbrance is not a needed mechanic, but those games typically exist under very different circumstances. In general, if encumbrance doesn't serve a purpose, don't have it, but it very much does serve a purpose here. If you're just looting everything because it's not nailed down, you need to be a bit more judicious. I usually operate on a X:1 value-to-weight ratio in games, and gradually X gets larger. Starting off in Starfield, X appears to be 100 because that's what got me through the raider base on Kreet and that's as much as I've played.

Also I'm really feeling the complaints about the galaxy feeling smaller than it should.

Not just that you are forced to fast travel anywhere in seconds, but also it's really weird how people in a city on one planet are always talking about cities on completely different planets like they're just down the road. Might as well have made it "planetfield" and just squeezed everything onto one dense planet, tbh.

From what little I've played, I feel like Starfield could've done a better job making useful stuff stand out from the junk. Granted, I don't 100% know what is or isn't useful yet, but toxin materials really blended in with the lab equipment in that tutorial pirate base. It doesn't help that scan mode outlines everything with the same blue color, making it it all look similar. Still, I'm sure it won't be long until I only bother picking up important and obvious things, so it isn't a huge issue.

azuarc posted...

Bethesda games ... got me through the raider base on Kreet and that's as much as I've played.

Having played a few more hours now, I don't take back what I said, but the encumbrance limit is set rather low. It's realistic, or maybe even more generous than realism, but it does feel rather limiting.

Just stick your junk in Vasco. And then make him carry your stuff.

He may be sworn to carry our burdens, but he carries a lot less than Lydia.

Well, he's like a roomba, you need to empty him when you visit your ship.

Protip though, if you ever pick up the Mantis quest, go do it. The suit you get has stuff that reduces the weight of both resources and weapons. And is sick looking.

A few hours in and already have a pick pocketing problem, definitely feels like a Bethesda game.

JackMan posted...

Well, he's like a roomba, you need to empty him when you visit your ship.

The only place I've found on the ship to store anything is the captain's locker, which holds a whopping 40 mass. I know I have to be missing something.

azuarc posted...

The only place I've found on the ship to store anything is the captain's locker, which holds a whopping 40 mass. I know I have to be missing something.

theres a storage hold with 450 mass by default. You can access it directly from your inventory while on the ship, or theres like a blue pad thing to interact with in the cockpit.

The game probably needs the encumbrance system at least in regard to the ships. Its a big aspect of ship design/upgrading and theres some jobs you can get to haul crazy amounts of stuff. I saw a ship in the shop with like 2000 mass cargo space.

and since those limits can get so high, its not a major annoying inconvenience. Im like 10 - 12 hours in and just fixed up my ship to hold like 900, so its not so bad now.

i get the impression that the character encumbrance will also be less of an annoyance as I progress, but boy the initial limit really hurts the games first impression

I upgraded my carry weight and it's not a problem anymore.

Is there a ship part storage somewhere? I stole a ship with a reeeeeeeeally awesome gun on it, but I don't like the ship itself. I'd love to pop it on my other ship, somehow.

(Vague spoilers): Personal Atmosphere!!!!!!

this game really has some classic Bethesda unitentional silliness going on:

walk up to a cave, see a guy standing on a rock pile

hes like fuck off, these rocks are mine. I willl kill you for these rocks

Im like ok, sorry dude. Just passing through

he calms down, and suggests maybe theres other rocks around for me to find. convo ends

immediately I walk directly up to his rock pile and loot it without any consequence. dude does not react, I leave him standing on an empty pile of rocks

find UC ship landed on a barren moon. captain says oh jeeze, we got blasted and now our ship doesnt work ;_; plz give ship parts

mine are back on my ship, so I say maybe theres some around here I can find and Ill come back

decide to check if I can board the ship to steal stuff

I can and I do. Theres three ship parts in the cargo hold.

I try sitting in the captains chair, and am presented with the option to take off

the ship is totally functional, so I steal it and leave three UC dudes stranded on a barren rock. I dont even get a bounty put on me for stealing it.

also the ship is physically like 3x the size of my normal one, but somehow has the worlds smallest cargo bay. All my stuff from my other ship gets moved into the new one, so its at like 2700/245 capacity. Im gonna need to do some work on it.

If you take a ship, what happens to your old one?

It magically teleports to your ship collection.

Got to that one award retrieval quest mentioned before. Boy that was fucking silly.

"I need your id card to see that super expensive award you've been harping on about."
"What the fuck? No. Why should I do that?"
"But I need it tho."
"Again why should I do that?"
"because I really need it."
"Oh okay."

lmao

MoogleKupo141 posted...

this game really has some classic Bethesda unitentional silliness going on:

walk up to a cave, see a guy standing on a rock pile

hes like fuck off, these rocks are mine. I willl kill you for these rocks

Im like ok, sorry dude. Just passing through

he calms down, and suggests maybe theres other rocks around for me to find. convo ends

immediately I walk directly up to his rock pile and loot it without any consequence. dude does not react, I leave him standing on an empty pile of rocks

I encountered a similar angry miner guy, and mine was on an extreme condition planet, rescuing a colonist who got stranded "because it's so treacherous". Meanwhile, homeboy is walking around mining by himself with no ship in sight, lmao.

That ate up a weekend like a game hasn't in quite a while.

Some quick thoughts so far:
-Space combat is a blast, not sure if I like the lockon mode or not though as it feels like it slows the action down too much for my tastes. Maybe once I start disabling ships instead of blowing them up that'll be more useful.
-Ship customization seems cool, part management seems like a pain. If I remove a part from a ship is it just gone or do I have a garage of spare parts somewhere?
-Building bases with storage units helped solve the encumbrance problem. So many storage units.
-Enjoying base building, but wow the UI is... unique at times; definitely some controller first, mouse+kb second design choices. Also the snapping can be so annoying, it's way too eager to snap to nearby pieces at times and no snapping for rotation/an overall grid is an odd choice.
-No list of your outposts is a bummer, had to go analogue and start keeping track with a notebook
-For the love of god let us set an option to skip the short cutscenes that constantly play. (Landing, taking off, sitting down/getting up from your ship, etc.) Had a death in a space battle because I accidentally held 'E' on the keyboard triggering the 6 second stand up animation, followed by a 6 second sitting down animation, which was just enough time to get blown up.
-Learning to use the scanner to fast travel around helps skip a lot of those cutscenes and see a bit less menus. Started to get a bit of the 'blindly exploring' feeling I love about Bethesda games by just hopping to whatever planet/system I came across.
-Story mechanic spoilers: holy shit the floating through glowing light in the temples to get a power was cool the first time but those sequences could really be shortened. All the effects and sounds just feel like a migraine machine after the 5th glowy thing you collect.

Overall having a good time with it and I'm sure I'll lose next weekend to it too.

JackMan posted...

Protip though, if you ever pick up the Mantis quest, go do it. The suit you get has stuff that reduces the weight of both resources and weapons. And is sick looking.

Aww man perks must be random, I don't remember what I had on my Matis gear but wasn't anything that good. Love the ship though.

I think removed ship parts are just gone forever.

Bummer, trying to buy all of the ship parts would have been a pretty fun side goal.

As a huge Turning Red fan, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the voice actresses of Mei and Miriam have multiple roles in the game. Most notably, Mei and Sona have the same voices, and Miriam shares a voice actress with the girl on Cydonia who wants you to put up Space Frog posters.

Pirateking2000 posted...

Got to that one award retrieval quest mentioned before. Boy that was fucking silly.

It's the dumbest fucking thing.

I think 'a mile wide, but an inch deep' is the perfect description for this game. I did what could have been a cool quest involving a stranded colony ship that was 200 years old, but they did almost nothing with it and it was resolved almost immediately. I remember the Tenpenny Tower quest in Fallout 3 which had a similar premise, but much more interesting outcomes.

JackMan posted...

but they did almost nothing with it and it was resolved almost immediately

This describes 99% of Bethesda quests.

So can someone explain to me what having a crew member specialist on your ship actually does?

PerfectChaosZ posted...

So can someone explain to me what having a crew member specialist on your ship actually does?

I keep meaning to look this up, i dont know either

first, good news: you can build a ship landing pad at your outpost. You can modify and swap out ships there, and seemingly buy any possible ship part you have unlocked (most places you only get a limited selection of what the specific shop sells)

now Bethesda news: my ship is clipping through it. Its like halfway inside the floor. I could basically move about it normally, but cant see things below the landing pad floor (or above if I duck)

then I tried exiting the ship and ended up in a gray void. The game auto saved, and the void even has a name! I entered the Outpost overlay template.

but no big deal, I was still able to reload a previous save and take off from the landing pad normally it was just a very weird experience

There are moments when I really wish this game had a minimap.

Then again, I probably wouldn't be able to make use of it anyway considering I can't zoom the galaxy map. (Three cheers for developers who assume that they can just assign things to the scroll wheel and not let you rebind them.)

So out of curiosity, what kinds of characters are everyone playing?

I picked a ronin at character creation because the idea of this lone wanderer (not in the Fallout 3 sense) calmly walking through this world of space and guns with a sword sounded cool to me. I pictured them as someone who would just get stuff done on the ground, even if that meant infiltrating or coolly talking their way past obstacles...and so far, my ronin shoots things a lot, because I'm not convinced there are good melee weapons and it's hard to get stealth melee kills. I'm only level 16, so maybe when I get more perks that will change.

I also saw a ship for sale that I decided I was going to save up for and buy, and when I finally got the 250k credits, I discovered I needed a Class B license for it...and I definitely don't have the three points to put into Piloting for that. I don't even have boost pack training. (Though maybe I should; it might fit the character.) So now I'm looking around for a plan B (but class A) ship to upgrade to that I won't feel disappointed with. And no, I don't want to rush the Mantis quest.

my style in basically any game like this is basically to be a good guy in plot-related choices, but also do loads of crime

so I went with scoundrel. Im a fan of pistols, so that worked out well

Also I am a UC native with a bounty on my head and living parents

the parents trait is pretty great. They give me some nice stuff sometimes.

also it took until like level 30 for me to see a sword in this game, but now I have seen it. One day you can become the ronin you were meant to be.

and you dont really need to buy another class A ship, its cheaper to just build more stuff onto the Frontier. I used Frontier, but long up until recently when I jacked a really nice looking B-class UC ship.

I got really enamored with the idea of being a space trucker so I picked Long Hauler. I dressed her out in an old dirty baseball cap and she uses a shotgun. I toyed with the idea of not taking bounties but I prioritize delivery missions and explore where ever they take me. Shes not for being this chosen person, taking the piece to Constellation was a delivery just like a million others. Ill strip a planet bare to fill my cargo hold and sell it off. She hates pirates and I never steal, shes a trader after all. Most of my points went into the space combat and Im trying to dock and steal a ship to get rid of the Frontier but Im only level six so far. Shes good with guns tho and maybe heavy weapons some day but she has an assault rifle for now. Mostly a morally good person but she loves money and is basically a no nonsense trucker that got roped up in all this. Oh, and she runs around with Sarah Morgan who Im trying to flirt with.

I picked Neon Street Rat, Taskmaster, and Alien DNA as my traits. No idea if theyre any good but well see. Havent even seen Neon yet. But I liked the idea that she grew up poor enough to volunteer for an alien experiment. Its been fun.

I almost went with Alien DNA but decided to pick Wanted instead, so far seems like a pretty fun one especially if you like space fights. The story is you have an ever increasing bounty so hunters will randomly show up, but then sometimes other hunters who want your bounty to keep growing so they can claim it later will also show up to help keep you alive.

Good to hear there are swords, was also planning on a melee stealth build but ended up losing focus on that a bit.
How does everyone like the stealth so far? I usually enjoy it in Bethesda games but I feel like you get spotted super easily even with stealth gear and the perk maxed out. Lost patience with it and now I just sprint in with my knife and gun.

I picked Diplomat, so I persuade every chance I get, but I also rock the Han Solo jacket and have high piloting skills.

First skill I maxed out ended up being Strength, because +100 carry weight is niiiiice. Basically zero issues with overencumberence anymore

i am constantly annoyed with encumberance but refuse to put any points into strength because I dont care about the stuff further down that tree

but I did just get the perk that gives followers +50 carry weight, so thatll help