Am I so out of touch...?
No, it's the players that are wrong.
this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
58 points (86.2% liked)
PCGaming
6487 readers
45 users here now
Rule 0: Be civil
Rule #1: No spam, porn, or facilitating piracy
Rule #2: No advertisements
Rule #3: No memes, PCMR language, or low-effort posts/comments
Rule #4: No tech support or game help questions
Rule #5: No questions about building/buying computers, hardware, peripherals, furniture, etc.
Rule #6: No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
Rule #7: No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts
Rule #8: No off-topic posts/comments
Rule #9: Use the original source, no editorialized titles, no duplicates
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Their working culture must be incredibly toxic to be responding like this to valid criticism.
It really explains the state of the game.
Yeah, gives the sense that open discussion amongst employees was heavily discouraged, and it was being led by a few people absolutely fixated on making their vision come true and making people afraid to question them even if they thought it was bad.
At this point I don’t want to play Starfield because I don’t want to support all of these shit asses.
LOL, yup keep bashing the customers. Bethesda are sprinting to their grave. Whole lot of trust has been flying out the window since 76 dropped and it doesn't seem to be slowing
Sprinting to their grave? They could release elder scrolls 6 now in its current state and people would say "it's a Bethesda game, there of course are bugs!" And move on with their day. Meanwhile Bethesda rakes in millions off a broken and incomplete game.
Is it the Creation engine?
"No, you don't understand, game dev is hard"
Is it the Creation engine?
"Is not that simple! There are complexities abound!"
Is it the Creation engine?
"Yes..."
And that Emil doesn't use design documents
So Bethesda is trying to make sprawling RPGs without a central documentation system to help track it all
Which is likely why their games now feel so fucking disconnected compared to their old games
So... then what is the real reason? You can't go screaming "You don't understand why it is like this!" without offering an explanation, and then wonder why people are listening to only the offered up reasons where they can get it (which generally is their own experience).
he does kinda say why. Games are difficult to make already and there are a lot of concessions that get made due to time constraints or business choices that are out of the hands of the developers.
Maybe they need to stop announcing shit half a decade before it comes out so they don't need to time crunch for expectations.
Because you've been reskinning Morrowind for 20 years? A game that you can probably ai generate at this point?
They treat their users like children yet those same children are the ones finishing the broken games they shit out
Most people don't get it.
With the right perspective you can note the sleek curves and suble divets. The way it flows and flops. It becomes possible to appreciate the subtle aromas of digested tendies and ketchup. Then you realise it's a part of you.. you are a part of the poo and the poo is a part of you.
That's how you enjoy that thing you don't understand silly billy
This is a game I'll happily avoid. I had my last taste of the tired Bethesda formula with Fallout 4.
All subsequent releases since then have demonstrated to me they prefer to trudge in the same lane they established almost twenty years ago.
You would think all those AAA devs would know by now that voicing that kind of stuff publicly is shit PR. Strangely enough sometime the indies appear to be the professional one.
That being said, I read the 5 Tweets, which I doubt many here did, and it is really not that bad. It is probably in response to some reviewers calling the game thrash with made-up fanfiction how game development goes. I think it is the later he has an issue with. Not that some players dislike the game.
Calling out your customers is always a losing bet. But he's absolutely right in its rant. Anyone who worked professionally in a game studio understand that the very vast majority of gamers are clueless, and especially those who speak with authority on YouTube and big platforms. Listening to such bs takes and misinformation over time certainly has its toll. "Gamers" in general, or should I say vocal gamers, are a very annoying and whiny bunch to please. You can hate playing a game all you want, but some gamers take it too far by attacking the devs directly and making it personal on top of making up bullshit about the nature of the job. "Gamedev is hard" is a terrible response to tell your userbase, but if more people understood how fucking true it is maybe they'd have a bit more empathy and would realize how petty some of the complaints.are in the bigger scheme of things.
Agreed.
It must feel bad to put your heart and soul into something people genuinely dislike. It's evident that Game Dev is hard. Their failures are the example that proves the rule.
In the end though, if the quality of the product is objectively sub par then the criticism is well deserved and the sales numbers should reflect that. There is a narrative of poor quality and disappointment that's been talked about amongst their fanbase for a while and I think it's just been compounding ever since fallout76. Nakey Jakey just did an interesting video on it and I think this level of disappointment is what Bethesda's strongest supporters are feeling right now.
Link to video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS2emKDlGmE
'Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is'
Oh don't worry, I'm not pretending to understand why the hype failed so hard.
On the way to work this morning and thought “I’d like to replay fallout 4” and I think now it was because after playing Starfield for 120, bg3 for 140, returning to cyberpunk for now a total of 400 that… uh.. I’d like to relive an at-the-time okay Bethesda game?
I enjoyed Starfield at times but man, it was certainly underwhelming. I was not necessarily disappointed because I was not expecting much from it, but it really did not surprise at any turn.
Wish they had just done a huge, bespoke solar system and not “an entire galaxy” of 5 outposts featuring literally identical dead npcs and flavor text. Kinda hard to feel the tragedy of a failed farm outpost when you already experienced the exact same failed farm outpost (down to the names of the people writing the logs) two planets over. (Man you get around, Dr. Nadia!)
Well you did play it for 120 hours so it couldn't have been that bad. I did enjoy the game as well, though as a 7/10 and not without its issues.
Wish they had just done a huge, bespoke solar system
I fully agree with this, the best parts of the game for me were the built up and designed cities.
Well, it's especially jarring if you've played a lot of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk does away with loading screens. Cyberpunk discussions with npcs are flowing directly from the gameplay. You're talking.
Starfield? Starfield struggles with everything. Emtpy cities with only a few npcs walking around. Enter a building: loading screen. No cars or other vehicles. Flying your ship feels... Weird. Enter your ship? Loading screen/fade to black. Enter the pilot seat? Fade to black and loading animation. Boring fetch quests. Talk with an npc? The game stops and puts the npc in your face. Fast travel here, fast travel there.
It was acceptable a decade ago. But now? I barely made it 20 hours in. I know i only scratched the surface but Cyperpunk, for all its flaws (and there arent many left) was and still is a way better ARPG. I dislike rockstar games, I don't know why, but gta4 and red dead2 are way better then this.
As an Elite dangerous refugee it's saddening that this game also doesnt live up to its promise. Because just like with elite dangerous, you feel that if they just did those few things different, if they just made some other design decisions it would have been one of the best games ever. But they didnt. And that grandness stays just out of reach. Only a promise of what could have been.
Starfield is what happens when you make "no design doc" policy in all post-oblivion games. It might work in 2011, but with a bigger scope of development they were sure to fail.
There's interviews where they shared their ambitious goals. But it wasn't fun. And Todd Howard chose to chop/neuter features for the sake of shipping.