The ones that aren't timed (don't have the hourglass icons) are worth picking up because they're all just like "kill 20 Athenians", "sink 5 ships", basically shit you're already doing, so you just swing by, pick them up, and keep playing like you already were and randomly one will pop and you'll get fat XP for doing what you were doing already anyway, but that's only if you want the extra XP, it's totally unnecessary
Nintendo hire this man
Sorry, my intent was not to sound condescending, I was erring on the side that you weren't aware of the ways you could get around those issues in order to enjoy the parts you wanted to. Your criticisms are definitely valid, I would agree that even needing to know about the workarounds sort of proves that what was included wasn't an entirely cohesive and tight product to begin with, the way I played is not necessarily right or wrong, and neither is yours, it's just how I was able to mine the most enjoyment out of what was there.
My main idea is to not let someone see your comment and assume that that's how the game is and there's not another way to enjoy it or any clear ways to identify where content you'd want to play begins and ends, I was able to figure out and selective play the parts I enjoy, but even still there is content in that game that I skip because it's, definitively, not fun. Even still, it's become one of my favorite games of all time, but no one game is for everyone, thanks for the mature discussion, sincerely!
Sad that your sticking points are making it too difficult to enjoy the game properly, but I also can't say you're wrong. They made it very easy to fast travel around and they gave us a jump range that hardly matters since fuel is infinite, and your ships can be teleported around with you with no problem or cost.
My reference point is Elite Dangerous, and you're right, the sense of scale in Starfield just isn't there. I enjoy the space setting a lot as a backdrop and change of pace from other Bethesda titles, and I love exploring space complexes, bases, and orbital stations, and the planets with flora and fauna are quite beautiful, but you definitely don't feel like you're in a large galaxy that you must traverse and explore, and as a result there's no incentive to specialize your ships for exploring or anything like that.
I'm able to forgive it more because I already have Elite if I want a space game that heavily commits to having a price for exploring and object permanence in the galaxy, that game's traversal is more time consuming and difficult and so it makes it harder to play in short bursts and more casually considering the fact that I can't just save scum and if my ship is destroyed it can be very costly. I do like the balance Starfield brought my personal space game variety in this respect, which helps me forgive the issues youre having, but they are still real issues with the game.
I think it's possible for a good deal of it to be alleviated eventually with mods, but the game Bethesda gave us by itself has some real caveats, absolutely.
You can just pay off your bounties instantly at any time from the map screen, and I've always had so much money in that game that I've never had to deal with a bounty hunter unless I wanted to, and I don't even sell any gear, I dismantle it all.
If you're a compulsionary completionist then the game is probably too big, but they make it as friendly as they can to not have to complete the world. Unique gear drops only seem to come from unique Cultist leaders or checking vendors, and there's no achievements for completing all map markers, it's just supplemental content for XP and some gear or if you just really want to do it, there's no huge cost to just moving on to actual quest content if you want.
They don't tell you when you've completed a whole region for a reason, to disincentivize completing it all unless you're a madman. I'm doing world completion just because I like grinding the game, but it's been two years in the making with big breaks in between, and if you ever feel like your gear or levels are behind the curve and you have to grind, the difficulty settings can be changed and can be set as forgiving as you like, they actually alter the level scaling and RPG aspects.
I think it's a great game worth playing, but you do need to be ready to tell yourself when enough is enough because they give you too much for weirdos like me that just wanna experience it all over a really long... Odyssey.
The quests you get from the quest boards, especially the ones with the hourglass icons can be pretty much blanket ignored. Otherwise you can tell when talking to the quest giver if Alexios/Kassandra accepts the quest generically and doesn't respond to anything the giver says very specifically other than "I'll take care of it" or things like that.
I love the shit out of that game, have been world exploring and only doing the unique side quests.
Funnily enough playing BotW on CEMU was what got me to get a switch, it was just so good I wanted to play it without any caveats or messing with settings or working around the gyro controls and the allure of playing it portably anywhere was high.
I don't play a lot of TCG, but Forced Showdown halfway counts as long as you're cool with the action side of the game. One of my favorites of all time.
Also, a lot of the Yu Gi Oh games probably count since there a lot with heavy single player content.
Probably five or six years ago when I was around 20 I went with my Uncle and his family to the beach. After we were finished and the sun began to go down, we washed off in our swimsuits in the outdoor showers.
Nearby they had some benches to sit on that were made out of the same concrete as the ground, smoothly sloping up out of it to form each bench. I was walking across one of these waiting for the rest of the family to finish rinsing off, and extremely stupidly walked down the end, down the slope, which, of course, was completely slick wet from being near the showers.
As soon as my first foot touches the slope, I slip backwards, with just enough time before impact to think "I really fucked up, this might not be good at all..."
The back of my head impacted the concrete slope of the bench, and it hurt like a mother fucker, but I didn't lose consciousness or awareness. After gripping my head and cursing for a few seconds my Uncle arrived at me and found my head to be bleeding, but the cut was not so wide as to need stitches.
We returned to his house nearby and after my head clotted up, i realized I needed to drive myself home, 40 minutes away on the freeway, and I felt... a bit dazed after the impact. I didn't feel sleepy at all, and after waiting for about half an hour, I decided I had to go home. I felt a little foggy until the next day, or maybe I'm just that foggy now and Im used to it.
There's a scar where hair doesn't grow, and sometimes I wonder if my universe forked to keep me alive somehow and I was supposed to just die instead, because it was entirely created by my idiocy and if seems silly I got that lucky. Sometimes I have dreams still where I'll slip on something and relive the sequence of slipping, accepting the imminent possibility of death, and everything sort of slows down increasingly until I fade to white and wake up.
Fuck, you got really lucky. There were so many aspects of that whole situation that you could've died from, even just the ladder.
That's sad news about the studio. I suppose some people forgot that the original Mass Effect had quite a few issues and it wasn't until 2 that it got real good, and having that bar set at a payoff that was only possible through three games of narrative choices and carryover was impossible to hit for Andromeda.
Once you get the perks you want you totally can hold onto it. Every ten levels all of your perk and major attack stat bonuses on gear get more powerful, (but there's no stat bonus to upgrading before the 10 level threshold at all) even when you upgrade the same old gear you had, but it happens at the "first" level of each ten, so not at level 20, instead it's 21, 31, 41, etc.
Basically I've had the "same" gear for like 30 or 40 levels, now, just every time I hit the new stat range I go and upgrade all of it. It costs a shitload of gold, but aside from ship upgrades I don't have another major gold sink, so it's worth it to me, my perk loadout is extremely optimized for assassin damage, which is important for me since I'm basically playing it as an open world stealth game where I only fight if I get caught, I can one shot anyone I want, no exaggeration (using critical assassination when necessary).
The final ship upgrades are very expensive, yeah, just seems like they give you something to grind for if you get that far