I will come back to this post in September to see if I was right lol
Biggest concerning signs:
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30 FPS lock on xbox, there’s no way to spin that positively, absolute fail
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Predatory pre-order bonus skins to get people to buy before they know what they’re actually going to experience (buggy shitshow)
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Countless attempts to hype up the game and huge random assurances from the devs
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Preemptively admitting the game has jank and trying to make it seem okay lol
At least the bugs will be absolutely hilarious I think.
Is it going to be horrible ? No. Just from the gameplay I’ve seen I can tell you I’m going to have a good time. Will it live up to my personal expectations? Absolutely not. But neither did cyberpunk and anytime someone asks me for a good cyberpunk game I don’t hesitate to tell the cp2077 is in a league of it’s own, despite all the shortcomings.
Off topic but I am SUPER STOKED for the upcoming Cyberpunk overhaul.
I’m hoping it will be decent, but the official trailer made it look empty and boring. It did not inspire confidence for me.
Not sure if you’ve seen it, but there was also a 30 minute deep dive where they showed off most of the different features of the game.
With the abysmal state of most AAA releases, I just hope they manage to give the game some soul to it. I’m tired of clones and Elden Ring has been the only recent AAA title that feel like creativity was still put into it.
This is why I am going to wait for reviews before I pull the trigger. It hope it runs reasonably okay on PC but the required specs don’t give me confidence.
Same here. No trigger pulling as I don’t have the funds for that behaviour. Leave that to the YouTubers.
I never expect a stable game from Bethesda, I only hope when I play it (months/years later) there are community patches to fix most of it, and most importantly mods to make it more fun
As for the 30fps thing, it makes no sense to me why there can’t be a performance mode, that being said I play on PC and if it’s locked to 30 there then there are some major problems
The pre order bonus I just see as a common market tactics today, and am just glad it doesn’t unlock abilities early like the preorders for spider-man on PC
And yeah I don’t buy the “least buggy Bethesda game ever on release” thing, becouse well, that doesn’t say much
As for the 30fps thing, it makes no sense to me why there can’t be a performance mode
Graphics aren’t the only thing that are heavy on resources. The thing with Bethesda games is that you have a lot of clutter items scattered around (like tin cans, forks and cheese wheels) that you can pickup, drag around, and because of this interactive nature, there’s physics calculations for all these items, and this hogs resources. You can’t just lower texture resolution or turn off anti aliasing and be done with it, you’d have to fundamentally change how the game works to make a performance for a Bethesda game
Do not pre-order games.
Do not buy AAA games at launch, especially Bethesda games.
Preordering is dumb for digital releases.
Well it was -20% on greenmangaming lately, -15% now. I can see a point there at least 😄
Join House Biscuit! We do not pre-order.
No need to preorder/buy it, since the game will be on gamepass on release.
What point is there to not try the game for 10€ for a month? You can cancel it anytime.
If it’s shit, you still have a huge library of big name games you can play. You can also get gamepass keys for much cheaper on ebay or key resellers but there you might get scammed. Also if you have friends with gamepass ultimate, they can give you free 14 day trial keys.
If the game turns out great, you can still just buy it later on sale
https://sh.itjust.works/c/patientgamers
For the win. It’s helped me avoid wasting money on most game purchases I’ve done.
We actually got a decent Cyberpunk 2077 experience. I think. I still haven’t gotten around to playing it, plus I’m more hyped to play Slime Rancher 2… after I finally beat Slime Rancher 1.
Not everyone got a “decent” Cyberpunk 2077 experience. The game was released prior to it being playable on every device to which they sold it.
With the DLC announced I will eventually get CP2077 when the complete edition gets a bigger discount down the line. I sure hope there’s lot of quality of life improvements by then which the DLC is looking like it’ll do.
Nah, I think you’re way overblowing this. Starfield is going to be a success, it’ll be the least buggy release they’ve ever had and people will love it. Monetization? Sure. 30fps? Yeah that’s standard for consoles. It’s not going to be a perfect game, it’s just going to be a damn good one. Enjoy it in the sea of mediocrity we have right now
Yup. It’s easy to be cynical about the current state of video games, but Bethesda seems to still be made up of people who are genuinely excited about what they are building, all the way up to management.
It’s not a perfect indicator for success, but I think it’s a pretty damned good one.
it’s an rpg not forza. 30fosnisnt that important in the context.
It’s also the first game they’re making with Microsoft resources, and by what they’re showing, they really seem to be learning with their mistakes and improving.
I agree with OP that Starfield is going to make a lot of people unhappy, mostly because of their own unreal expectations, but it is not going to be a blunder, let alone a massive one. However, it could be the most perfect game ever made and yet gamers/redditors that won’t even bother playing the game will find something to complain about and hop on the hatewagon because they’re just that miserable
- 30 fps lock is not a bad thing for a not action heavy rpg, many games already did and prove that if you do it properly it’s not that bad.
- you don’t have to do the pre-order no one is forcing you to pre-order. They set a FOMO flag on the pitfall if you go ahead and fall then it’s your issue.
- every big budget game hypes their game, they have to cause marketing money sometimes exceeds the development cost.(depending on the audience reach results, they usually don’t spend marketing money like idiots.)
- if it doesn’t pull a cyberpunk then I think it would be fine.
my predictions:
- at best it would be a space new vegas, At worst a space warp simulator cause loading or procedurally generate stuff for the system you are in takes time. And then it’s full of copy paste settlements where 95% of the planet is not even worth visiting, you just scan locate settlement, land near by do your space fetching and then move on.
- it would be some interesting landscapes probably from AI generated ideas so main location won’t feel too repetitive.(so do a planet with just one biome, except story relevant planets.)
- space combat is probably gonna suck or forced cinematic thing(force you to land somewhere, get ship taken away, etc. )
- many startrek/starwars “inspirations” for factions.
Is this a sign though that games are going to start heading in the direction of 30 fps again? I remember last gen earlier titles would be 60 fps with the cross platform approach, but gradually it became rarer until 30 fps became the norm again with 60 becoming more of an outlier.
Every generation moves back towards 30fps as devs try to push the limits of the hardware.
not necessarily. Due to adaptive sync and render thread/game thread can become somewhat doing their stuff in parallel, modern engine can reduce the old fixed 3 frame input lag into mostly 2 frames and with some good scheduling 1 frame input lag is possible for 30fps.(the higher the frame rate the more impossible to achieve 1 frame input lag, like even if your game is just moving a cube in empty space, above certain frame rate it becomes not possible to keep 1 frame input lag due to engine overheads.(note here we do not consider display input lag, just your input action and then later gpu draws the update. )
You can see that’s a very big improvement for 30fps based games. ie. old engine with fixed 3 frames lag, 60fps is about 50ms, where if it’s 30fps but with 2 frames input lag it’s 66.6ms, and it’s not a lot different. So it becomes sort of standard for raytracing enabled game to target 30fps, or like ratchet and clank where they have modes that targets 40fps as a compromise.(that needs a 120hz monitor as support), oh, why 40fps?? if you do the number, 40fps with 2 frames input lag is 50ms, is this number familiar? yep, it’s the same input lag as old engine where 60fps but have fixed 3 frames lag.
It’s funny, I’ve never thought about the render-ahead queue manipulation being a way to make lower FPS more tolerable.
I don’t mind that the game is targeting 30fps on consoles but man I cannot for the life of me get used to it. I got a Steam Deck and targeting 30fps would let me run more games at native resolution but I haven’t been able to handle the lag and choppiness so I’ve been settling for 40-45.
like ratchet and clank where they have modes that targets 40fps as a compromise.(that needs a 120hz monitor as support), oh, why 40fps?? if you do the number, 40fps with 2 frames input lag is 50ms, is this number familiar? yep, it’s the same input lag as old engine where 60fps but have fixed 3 frames lag.
Been using 40 on the steam deck a lot with it being a good compromise between battery life but being smoother than 30. Are there any Xbox games that take the 40 fps compromise yet?
The scope of the game is too big for Bugthesda to deliver. It’s litteraly 2 games in one, Fallout + No Man’s Sky, how can anyone believe it’s not gonna be the biggest bugfest of all time?
Let’s say that somehow, Bethesda finally release a game which doesn’t need modders to fix it, we all know they overpromessed and overhyped it. Planets are gonna be tiny instances, not fully open, otherwise they would have shown vehicles to travel on them.
I would love Starfield to be everything they promess but considering the history of Bethesda, you can’t trust Todd lies again.
Bethesda jank is what brought us the Giant Space Program in Skyrim so I’m definitely fine with some jank. They’ve also said it’s the least buggy Bethesda game they’ve made. It feels like you’re just picking bad points to shit on the game.
Jank is partially the result of allowing for emergent gameplay where various forms of simulated systems can interact with each other in novel or unpredictable ways.
That being said I have no clue how people tolerate playing these games on console. Can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to use console commands to fix something myself.
The fact they are priming people to expect this is pretty bad.
They’ve also said it’s the least buggy Bethesda game they’ve made.
They have also said the exact same thing every single time they have talked about a new game. Literaly EVERY SINGLE TIME. Jesus christ please stop…
Are you arguing against it? Has anyone actually done an in-depth analysis to prove that the games are not getting less buggy? I know Bethsda has a vested interest in us thinking it’s true but without any evidence I’d trust them over random people on the internet.
I am pretty damn sure Fallout 76 was the buggiest game they ever released. And Todd literally said: dont worry no bugs this time. It just works.
Fallout 76 is extremely different technically from their single player games so of course it’s going to be more buggy. I’d be more interested in a comparison between Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield after it releases. Also the “It just works” quote comes from Fallout 4 talking about the settlement builder. I don’t know what claims they made about FO76 since I wasn’t interested in it but I doubt he would use the same phrase again after it backfired so bad (and I also can’t find any evidence he did say it for FO76). So no, Todd did not “literally say” it just works. In fact for FO76 he said “sometimes it just doesn’t work”.
There is likely going to be loading screens when entering buildings like in past games built on basically the same engine.
“Our tech is cutting edge as far as I can tell, the Creation Engine’s aging very well! We’re not planning on doing anything about it”
most engines used by AAA studios are just upgraded versions of engines that games were running on 20 years ago
Yes but Gamebryo’s always been somewhat trash since fallout 3.
Hell, it was already considered outdated and clunky in 2008.
I don’t think its going to be a massive blunder, I do think that its being hyped up a little too much right now.
Every game that Bethesda releases is buggy as hell and worth waiting to buy. This will be no different.
It’s a Bethesda game. I fully expect it to be buggy as heck and be kind of janky. It’ll probably still be fun though. Personally, I’m gonna wait for a remaster release on whatever Xbox system comes next. It’ll probably be really good by then. I have a PS5 and not an Xbox series x, so I can wait. I’m not gonna buy a system for a game that likely won’t play well for a while. There are plenty of other great games out there to play while I wait.
fully agree but only because this is just how games are now. people keep buying them so there is no push to make a decent product. they’ll release it and maybe after a decade it’ll be okay. just like Skyrim and Cyberpunk and everything else.