Lack of graphics settings aren't why I stopped playing. It's the game mechanics. The game isn't that fun for two major immersion breaking reasons.
Loading screens. So many loading screens. Just reminds me I'm using software instead of being in a universe.
Over reliance on fast travel. Yeah, space is boring. But why have a space setting at all if we are going to skip through it? Why bother building custom ships if there are no real challenges to overcome with them because spending time in space is not necessary at all ? Worse, it's a bad experience because of the loading screens.
There should be a happy medium. I haven't played Elite Dangerous in a year because I'm 50 jumps away from where I need to go, which means like 3 hours of nothing but travel. But the realism is out of this world. This Starfield thing of never needing to fly is too far in the other direction. I think a happy medium would be a system like Elite Dangerous, but if you need to travel more than a couple of systems over, have a long distance jump gate or something like that, and maybe autopilot. Eve online has jump gates and autopilot, but it can still take hours to cross the universe. It's more entertaining to have a quick travel option for those scenarios. Eve has wormhole systems that will let you cross the entire universe in a few jumps, but finding those connections will take longer than just flying directly, unless you're in a huge wormhole corporation that uses 3rd party tools to map all of the wormhole connections to known space.
Everyone loves to hate on it, but one thing that Star Citizen absolutely nails is the sense of immersion. From the time you load in until the time you are inevitably disconnected from the server, and from ground to ship to space, you are in one experience with no loading screens
Given every single system in Starfield is already explored and built on, I think they should have just given up on the jump system and gone with a gate system like Freelancer or the X series. You get to fly to every point without menus while still being time efficient. The reason they didn't go with this is presumably because of the supposed "exploring the unknown" angle, but you never explore anywhere new in Starfield anyway.
I'm 50 jumps away from where I need to go, which means like 3 hours of nothing but travel
If you upgrade your fuel scoop, that'll cut down your time severely. I can do about 30 jumps an hour with my Krait Phantom. Refuels before my FSD is even cooled down.
I must confess that sometimes fast travel removes a lot of value from a game. While it saves you a lot of time like a cheat. Cheats also save you time.
You see this issue when one of your core game loop isn't enjoyable. It happens a lot in games, and you notice it if a game gives you and item or ability to play the game less.
This can be okay if this item comes in just as that loop gets boring (like you unlock special flash grab drives part way through the game). But if they let you fast travel from the beginning the likely case is that they found the whole space travel boring and they ended up providing a way around it.
Which leaves people asking "why'd you bother adding it in there"
Did you try to play stealth my guy. And how much god damn work do I have to put in, how much useless crafting do I have to do so I can just put a silencer on my gun come on man if this doesn't mean broken what does.
So does this mean the game is finally ready for me to buy? Just waiting on a Steam sale and I'll finally get to play this. Bugs or not, I'm not paying $70 for a base video game.
I'd say probably not. Unless the graphics were the only thing holding you back, this update does not appear to have done anything to improve the gameplay loop, menu system, or story content.
Compared to previous Bethesda games, it actually ran rather well at launch even when missing the features added by this update. But I'd say there's quite a lot more that needs to be done to call it a good game, with graphics/performance being the lowest priority on the list.
Reletively speaking starfield is already a lot less buggy then other Bethesda game studio titles. Its just matter of fixing parts of the game some users didnt like.
Yep, as someone who beat it several times, I agree with this.
Its a great game, but is unpolished at launch like any bethesda game, 5 years from now it will have memorable gamer cultural references and a consistent modding/playerbase.
With the love of using the game engine to create entirely new games that bethesda fans have, I'm basically expecting a Star Wars/Star Trek total overhaul mod within the next decade.
I doubt a patch nor mod support will motivate me to play this game. This is the most empty Bethesda game they've released when they could've had something special if they had any ambition.