Bethesda Is Responding to Negative Reviews of Starfield on Steam

“When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."

Yeah I think that might be because they were on the moon and not pressing WASD to walk around a fake moon

Customer: I didn't like the taste of this cake.

Management response: Dear customer, thank you for taking the time to try our cake. This is a cake, which is sweet and tasty by definition. We made the cake so customers can enjoy the cake and taste the typical cake ingredients which taste sweet and tasty. The cake experience as we created should appeal to everyone because cake is tasty.

Customer: Wtf, it tastes like wet socks!

Management: Cake

I didn’t find any of the responses to be insightful, more a marketing reply to convince people who are off put by the negativity. This is coming from someone who’s played the game nearly 80 hours. Still disappointed by it, but I have a hoarding sim problem

I wish these idiots would quit trying to tell the people playing the game that they are wrong for not liking it. Like, no man, listen to them, this is feedback. You can't take all of it without a pinch of salt but if you see a common theme, then you should address it.

Bethesda, simply put, doesn't know how to react to criticism. Instead of taking this feedback and improving their product they double-down and insist that you should like it because they said so. If it's boring it's boring man. They are simply as disconnected as possible. Remember the whole canvas bag fiasco? Then they said "ah, canvas costs too much, we aren't planning on doing anything with the nylon one"... deal with it in other words. Then they were puzzled why people disliked them to all hell.

Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design — but that's not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed.

May as well boot up SpaceEngine then.

I have played most of the fully 3D Bethesda RPG games and I am accustomed to their game design, bugs, and janks.

But the only thing I hate about Starfield is just the way the game always talks about how amazing exploration of the unknown is (heck, your main character is even a part of the explorer group name Constellation) while trying everything it can to stop player to do just that (overly rely on teleportation, cannot travel seamlessly between planets, etc...)

It feels like you are playing an institute scientist in an fallout game, always stay in your high tech base and only travel using teleportation to the outside world

This is a major turn off for me and there is no way to fix it

If a significant amount of people "misunderstood" you, it's not their fault, but yours for not clearly communicating or not tailoring your communication for the target audience.

Same here: if people play the game "wrong", you didn't design it properly and/or marketed it completely wrong.

Sure, there will always be "dumb" (or too clever) individuals who you simply can't properly address and satisfy, but if the group is large enough to be loud, you failed your job.

No Man's Sky has had no loading screens during gameplay, and space to planet transitions on full planets, since what... 2016?

The Creation Engine is just too damn old.

Edit @Dark Arc: You're right. Creation Engine is just too damn shitty, I guess. I called it "old" because the gameplay feels so antiquated.

Good job, guys, I'm sure that'll fix it.

Fuck. I mean I even liked Starfield but this level of mishandling the public perception is absolutely unreal.

I love that steam reviews can make companies take notice and is harder to shove away compared to other types of reviews with how it's always there on the store page.

Landing on the boring planets wasn't my problem with the boring game.

The ground combat was terrible. The space flight was terrible. The space combat was terrible. And it was wedged into every activity for no reason other than lazy design to pad things.

And then there was the UI...

You can't "feel small" when the game makes you a fiddly murder hobo in the tutorial.

There may in fact be a few games where empty spaces and a sense of vastness actually contribute to the atmosphere and make for an enjoyable game. But NOT in a game that’s divided by fucking loading screens with not a single “vista” to look out at.

Everyone seems to be missing the point so I'll let Todd Howard remind you all, "We're going to be doing a lot of add-on content for Starfield."

$5 horse armor folks. That's Bethesda. Stop paying them to make garbage, or at least stop complaining about it.

Cool, so I'll wait to pick this game up until it's $10 on a steam sale in 5 years, and play the community's modded version.

Luckily only tried it once on gamepass. For sure has some interesting parts to it (I did like the ship designer) but it hit me on the second location I explored - this is pretty much a Skyrim reskin. The are randomised dungeons everywhere for no goddamn reason whatsoever, my goddamn spaceship can only fit like 5 suits.... alright. Been there, done that, I'm out.

Looking for a re-release in 5 yrs with all the add-ons and mods, maybe I will get it then.

Looks like Bethesda discovered ChatGPT.

Some of those replies are as bland, hunky-dory and sanitized as can be, with a dash of "you're playing it wrong".

oh good, this reminds me I haven't bothered to leave a negative review yet. let me correct that.

Starfield frustrates me, because in many ways its a major step in the right direction. It has much better roleplaying mechanics than Skyrim or Fallout 4, but at the same time the lore is half-baked and the skill system is fairly weak. It has great potential, but a lot of it feels toned down and less "real" because of it. Space exploration has a lot of potential as well, but setting every objective so far apart on planets ruins exploration by filling it with monotonous procgen.

That's why I'm fairly confident that once properly patched, and mods/DLCs are in full swing, it will probably be remembered very fondly despite the release state. It'll pull a Cyberpunk.

I played 50 hours of Starfield. I had fun.

But two things are true. It's a step back from no man's sky and it's not worth playing more than 50 dollars for.

Starfield was super fun until it wasn't. I have no desire to ever go back to it. Skyrim on the other hand....

... I liked it

Hey surprise surprise a soulless corporation does soulless corporation things.

Amusing that the article gets the response of the first review wrong.

The negative review doesn't only mention that the empty planets are boring, but that the populated ones are the same locations over and over again.

Me: I'm bored

Bethesda: No you're not.

Me: Oh

I miss Games like Starbound. So much to see and do. Unbelievable good atmospheric Music under a Sky full of Stars while building you first Base. This was one, if not the, first game to give me a feeling of smallness in comparison to the Universe.

The failure is absolutely deserved

Slow news day, eh IGN?

amid Starfield's ‘mixed’ user review rating of 69%.

Nice.

I remember reading that quote before the game launched. Weird.

You can reply to reviews on Steam????

A bigger open world just means less interesting things to do. This is how I've seen Starfield described.

Bethesda games are always boring trash. The real game won't even appear for another year or two at least (after the modders have finished fixing all the bugs, the horrible writing, the design flaws).

Hah, that first quoted review is like playing Elite Dangerous. Really love that game. However, Starfield doesn’t have VR, so I’m not interested in going down that path. VR in Elite (except for ground ops) is amazing, and a spaceflight/sim absolutely should have a VR option IMO.

I didn't know Johnathan Blow worked for Bethesda.