Starfield has lost 97% of its Steam players in less than six months

Damn it, "losing steam" was right there to make a great headline pun

The state of journalism today... smh

I've never understood why that matters for anything other than purely multiplayer games.

People finish games and move on. It's not some GaaS bollocks.

I love Bethesda, but putting TES6 on the back burner to make Starfield for eight years was an idiotic decision. They also took the wrong lesson from Skyrim, believing that streamlining the game through stripping of features was the reason for its success. They've done this same with each successive game since, and each has been more poorly received than the last. Go back to your roots and make a good, deep Elder Scrolls game. Continue to leave the shitty +5 modifier leveling system out, but at the very least restore attributes and birthsigns. Restore spellmaking. STOP FUCKING IT UP. You're on your last strike here and I don't have a lot of faith that you're going to make the right call.

No way but it won Steam's most innovative gameplay award for 2023.

That game was dead on arrival for me, everything from gameplay to story was absolutely outdated and not interesting.

For contrast, 24 hour peak for BGS game since skyrim

Skyrim base + special edition = 28.5k
Fallout 4 = 18k
Fallout 76 = 8.3k
Starfield = 9.2k

Starfield + fallout 76 can't even surpass Fallout 4. They sure is losing the plot lately.

I mean part of that is people just finishing the game. That's fine.

But also the consensus seems to be the game is at best "okay", and people won't be going back to it like they do with Skyrim.

I'm not sure if anyone at Bethesda honestly expected it to be better.

I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking to be honest, and I was fine with that. And yet, it still underdelivered.

The opening section where some hotshot explorer just GIVES you his organisation's only ship and robot has to be the most idiotic and unbelievable moment in gaming narrative history (at least in my experience).

"Ok... Maybe it gets better." I thought. It didn't.

Most of the quests are just fucking awful and nonsensical - "Oh hi, I'm a top scientist for MAST, we have access to all the latest cutting edge technonology. Oh, apart from WiFi. Sorry can you go and pick up my sensors I placed nearby because I'm fucking lazy? Thanks." Honestly, I had no words for this one, and it wasn't the only one. Just laughably dogshit.

I had some good fun initially exploring and the ship customisation was cool, and I even enjoyed the space combat for a while, but the whole game feels like it was made 20 years ago.

That's quite an accomplishment in a way I suppose.

I don't think even modding can save it.

Starfield's only hope is a robust modding community, but it's not there yet.

Because it becomes a boring point and click simulator with some exploration

The game doesn't even let you fly to and land on planets

Skyrim is fun, Starfield isn't

I'm one of those people. I played as a "good guy," played as a pirate, got to NG+10. I did every major quest line and most of the side quests.

I didn't stop playing because I don't like the game. I finished the game. Isn't that normal?

If you want to play a star game I recommend Starsector. I've been getting back into it recently and it's great. More a mount and blade in space than a Starfield though. Updates are slow but significant and there's plenty of game to enjoy already.

One really cool mechanic is story points which you get alongside levelling up (and you keep earning after the level cap) which you can spend in certain parts of the game to do special stuff or break the normal rules which is really cool. Many interesting things tie into it but yeah, lot's of interesting mechanics.

That's that Skyrim In Space game, right? Extremely corporately made RPG with very well done graphics and otherwise basically nothing special going on?

Starfield was so bad people consider The Outer Worlds to be a better Bethesda RPG in space, try telling that to someone in 2022.

This game is such a disappointment. Paused a bg3 game to test it. Did the tutorial rolling my eyes all the time. The first few missions hitting my head on the desk and finally, got back to Shadowheart.

It felt soooooo empty. So shallow.

i think starfield looks just as uninspired and boring as the next guy, but i think we should take player retention with a grain of salt on linear single-player games. of course people are less inclined to continue playing when they’ve finished the main quest

anyway play resident evil 2 remake

Yeah, Starfield has no legs. I got bored with it pretty quick; for me that BGS spark is gone.

Wait. It didnt help that Bethesda argued against reviews that said the game isnt fun by arguing "Yes it is fun"?

Starfield is a made by committee game. It was destined to be bad.

The game is pointless to return to. Base building has not point. There is no reason why anyone should even build a base. And the ship builder is cool, but it’s like a Lego, you can’t fly it.

This IP isn’t going to last a long time without that stuff.

I played and beat the main quest for both Skyrim and Starfield, and I thoroughly enjoyed both games. And while I agree that Starfield has things to complain about, I enjoyed the plot much more in Starfield. I'm a big sci-fi nut, so that helps, but once I finished the main quest in Skyrim, I didn't feel the pull to go any further.

In Starfield, I'm still loving all the side quests, and NG+. And although the ship builder is clunky, I love modding my ships.

I'm glad Bethesda finally came up with a new IP. I really don't get all the backlash.

Doesn't matter because Bethesda still got their money.

Playing Starfield, and actually enjoying a good part of it, like the faction quests, side quests, radiant quests even, and the increased roleplaying potential, then seeing a huge backlash against it, made me replay Skyrim, Vanilla, in 2024. The results may shock you!

The TL;DR is that Skyirm only beats Starfield in world interactivity like NPC schedules, and the percentage of gameplay you interact with that's hand-crafted vs procedural.

Comparing the faction quests of, say, the Dark Brotherhood and Crimson Fleet, you must play the Dark Brotherhood as a psycho assassin, while for the CF, you can be a fed, a brutal pirate, or someone walking that line, with your own background added for flavor.

The quest design in Starfield also gives more options, as well!

This overall means that, IMO, Bethesda game design itself is kind of shit without mods.

It lost me after 20-something hours sometime during the week after release. What a pile of shit

How does that look for other singleplayer games that take some 50-100 hours to beat?

Lol