Interesting. Maybe it's the tone? I feel like there is a slower pace, but I feel like it matches with the vastness and emptiness of outer space, so it pulls me in. I also have a million quests to do. Definitely, not all quests are the same level on the excitement meter. I did end up restarting with a new character. I just mapped out a progression to get the levels and advances I want. So that pursuit adds a level of excitement for me that wasn't available in other Bethesda games. I totally understand different folks have different expectations and ideas for the game. I totally don't begrudge anyone else for having other ideas.
I made one storage area just to test it out and have a crew station to which I could assign one of my crew members. I am planning on stockpiling resources for future outposts there.
RX6600, the only way it still works is because I still held on to a 1080 screen for just this kind of thing. Tweaking the settings I managed 50-60 FPS which makes it playable but obviously suboptimal. A new video card is definitely in my near future
I've been able to play quite a bit over the last 10 days thanks to being stuck inside with covid. It is very much a Bethesda game. I find it to be similar to my experience with Skyrim in many ways. It is very well done imo as far as storylines, exploration and attention to detail. I am playing on very hard and the AI is still too easy. This is not me bragging. The AI is literally stupid and that hampers the experience a bit. Conversely space battles are almost unwinnable before leveling up your tech perks and getting a better ship. This contrast in difficulty is confusing and leaves a lot to be desired. The combat is still fun at any rate don't get me wrong, I just wish the AI was smarter. Still enjoying the game very much. There is so much to explore and do. It is truly a massive game.
15 hours in and I feel conflicted about the quality of the game. There are great moments but also a ton of monotonousness. It's not nearly as fun as Fallout for me, I think I just find the post-nuclear apocalyptic setting to be a lot more interesting. Another issue is the "open world" feel with the way Starfield is set up, the constant need to fast travel, and all the empty spaces, I have to really focus on curating your experience to enjoy the game, unlike fallout where it's really easy to wonder and explore. I might put in 100 hours, or I might uninstall it is how I feel after any given session.
I think the leveling of the space combat is a lot slower/more restricted than the ground combat leveling. This is probably good since I think on "normal" your character does way too much damage on the ground with few upgrades. I decided to tackle a level 25 planet at level 18 or 19 yesterday. I needed some money for ship upgrades, so I decided to accept a quest to take out pirates at a local facility. I thought I'd end up tackling level 25 pirates. It ended up being taking out a few level 8-10's, and a few level 20's, followed by taking out a level 38 (wth?). Even then, it was fairly easy, which was disappointing. I think part of this is because you can pick up all kinds of good gear everywhere in the ground combat while in space, you have to specifically level up skills to even equip a lot of stuff on your ship. I'm guessing this is why the ground combat seems to go easier. That being said, I don't think you really have to level up your ship a ton to be able to kill enemies - at least not on "Normal". About the toughest thing for me so far is having too much cargo (I never want to sell resources, so it maybe a personal thing). I need a bigger ship for more cargo. Luckily I acquired a power (Personal Atmosphere) from a temple that helps with that. lol. This is where tastes really matter. When it comes to RPGs, I'd much rather play stuff like D&D, space, etc. themed stuff. I generally don't like first-person/shooter games but will make exceptions for RPGs. I never played Fallout because I generally don't like the post-apocalyptic games. They're just not too far "out there" for me. They seem too much like the world I live in (scary thought). What's weird is I'd probably like playing Fallout, but for me, the environment is a ton of the game. I have to have either spells or the sense of exploration, space, and/or aliens in an RPG. Elite : Dangerous isn't an RPG, and can get monotonous/boring really quick, but I haven't played a game yet (including Starfield) that can compare to it in terms of relaying what space exploration should or could be. It should be a vast emptiness dotted with planets with more emptiness. lol.
I've heard this sentiment a lot and I can understand why. The vastness of the game certainly opens itself to jumping straight to objectives with little exploration, making it feel emptier. As someone that gets to play an hour a day, I kinda appreciate that I can jump straight to the objective. But you do lose the feeling of exploring and random encounters. This is my first Bethesda game I've played. I actually bought Skyrim a long time ago, but couldn't get past 30 minutes into it because the beginning basically gave me no direction and I walked around for those 30 minutes aimlessly bored. After having recently played Farcry 5 and Cyberpunk 2077, I think those hit a good balance between fast travel and exploration with random encounters. Starfield feels on the extreme end of requiring fast travel. So far, I'm enjoying it and it was included with gamepass so I don't have any sunk cost fallacy built in where I need to get my money's worth. One big gripe I have is with the temples. There's nothing interesting about them. Land on X planet, scan for anomaly, run to temple in 3 minutes. Float around for 3 minutes. Fight one enemy. Done. Repeat. So stupid.
The team is limited by testing, sometimes they know how to fix it but the higher ups are too worried about it breaking another subsystem....modders can just get in and build upon the quality work that is already there....it is much easier to mod. They don't have to worry about testing taking 2 weeks to retest everything to make sure your fix didn't screw something else up. I shipped several products under MS banner, they are RIGOROUS in the power they put in their testers. DD
I've been clearing out some abandoned outposts just as a way to fight mobs and level up. The loot itself hasn't been worth it. But then I went to do some story missions and I encountered a science lab with the exact same layout as an outpost I had just cleared. It was identical down to the rooms, storage and ammo crates, locked doors, etc. Kinda disappointing to be honest.
I've pretty much abandoned the game at this point, it's just not fun or interesting enough for me to choose to do over all of the other things I should be doing instead. I might revisit it later, but at this point I'm calling it a dud.
There is a glitch that allows you to collect millions per hour, but I hate those things. They completely ruin the game, so I'm doing it the old-fashioned way.... working and grinding for it. lol. I've switched to making more money to upgrade my ship, as well, and am doing it the same way as you, for the most part - trying to find abandoned facilities with pirates to take out or outposts where there's someone working looking for help taking pirates out. I started by saying I'm going to complete the main mission and then go back and explore. But, as usual, I'm running around doing side quests here and there, but mostly just looking for more loot to upgrade my ship and get my XP up. Now I'm looking to build an outpost and doing the thing I told myself I wouldn't do in the game - min/max stuff. So I spent, no kidding, almost 1.5 hours running around on a planet trying to find a place where I can put my outpost in such a way to collect 4-5 resources with one outpost. So far I've failed, but I've seen it done. One of the coolest things I recently encountered was while flying through some random encounters in space, I ran into a UC military official I teamed up on a quest with days and several gameplay hours ago. This was a completely different system. I saw a ship flying in a system I had just "warped" into, so I thought I'd hail them (or at least I think I did), but then a conversation started on the comms where someone said "hey, I know that guy!" And it was the military official I had teamed up with to take out a station full of pirates. They gave me another parting gift as I left. Just thought that was a cool for some reason.
I saw some YouTube tutorials about easy XP farming from building an outpost that can harvest 4-5 resources. I was tempted, but building/sim isn't fun to me. After hitting the level cap and building my character in Cyberpunk, I haven't even finished the ending. I'm like 20 min away from it but the fun part to me is building the character. I'm afraid if I utilize the XP farm, I'll hate the game and not wanna play it more. So I'm taking it slow and steady with quests and occasional mobs, too. I just wish the enemies gave more XP. Killing an enemy twice my level should net more XP in my opinion. In my quests, I tend to go the murder route. Killing the enemies nets me more XP and loot than peaceful methods.
I didn't even know about an XP farm. I was just building it as part of the whole RPG aspect of it and also so I can focus on combat and the main story again without having to worry about resources. I usually intentionally avoid exploits. The one 4-5 resource site I found unfortunately has 2 of the resources on the outer edge of the base "zone", so they don't really produce much. Not to mention at my level, the storage available doesn't really store much, so I don't think I'm going to be a gazillionaire anytime soon. I'm already looking for more sites to build more outposts. It's kind of cool to watch them linked together and ships landing and going with cargo deliveries. I haven't done that yet, but was thinking about making my real outpost to be the central location for all depots to dump stuff maybe. I just need to find a good planet to build one. Get married and sleep for an hour before going out on an expedition. Use aids that bump up XP, too. I do/did the former two. They give a bit of a bump in XP, but may add up over multiple kills. I haven't used the drinks/foods/aids that bump XP, but may just to get rid of some of the stuff I've collected since I always travel overweight from the looks of it. My ship cargo is up to 4000+, and even that is almost full, but almost all of that is resources. I usually only resort to killing if they're evil types, rogues, pirates, etc. Otherwise I'm usually peaceful. I go after pirates/Crimson Fleet whenever I can. While in Alpha Centauri, I saw 2 ships landing in the distance behind some mountains and decided to run over there. I accidentally found a civilian outpost there with the 2 ships just sitting there. I decided to jump onboard, kill the crew, and take both ships. Then I decided to wipe out the base of pirates. My disappointment was that although both ships showed 37,000+ in value, when I sold them, I got maybe $8-$11,000 each (if even that). But considering I had to register both of them for another $4,000+ before selling, I basically made chump change for the work. I knew I wouldn't get full value for the ships, but geez, that seemed more like a waste of time. Of course the combat was kind of fun. I need to find bigger targets to hit, I guess. Right now, the best way to make money for me is just find some structure full of pirates who are several levels above me and take all the weapons and other stuff I find and sell them. I'm only around level 25 or so right now and made the mistake of going to a planet where I saw a level 35 or 38 beast wandering around. I figured I could take it out from distance, but what I didn't account for was this species apparently defends its own. lol. Another 7 or 8 30+ of them came after me and they were fast. I didn't stand a chance even with a companion.
I have only built one outpost and I've just filled it with storage containers, and a crew station. I realize now that I could have done more in terms of my location but that's okay. I'll take all the stuff I've stored there and start a more productive one as well. I've only added some cargo to my first ship then upgraded the other components a bit as well. I love shipbuilding and will probably work more on that. I just got a decent new ship from a mission, but it will need more cargo as well. I have long term plans for an ultimate ship build but I'm only level 16 now
I guess it depends on the user. I love it. I enjoy how much there is to do and explore. I also haven't finished the main quest. Combat is fun even if not overly challenging. Ship to ship combat has been tougher for me to do well. I probably only survive about 50% of those. I love the freedom the game allows. I can board ships, and steal them or just steal from them. I can destroy them, I can run away, or bribe my way out of combat all together. Sometimes on planets random ships just land. It's possible to just run up to them and steal them. I haven't found many bugs at all on the Xbox version. There are some weaknesses. Some of the UI is very clunky and difficult to find out what options are even available to you for things like shipbuilding and outpost construction. Also using my powers doesn't always work because of the clumsy mechanics involved. The characters are mostly one-dimensional and not all that interesting. There are a few exceptions. I was most disappointed in that aspect of the game. Those are my main issues with the game. Overall, I love the freedom to run around to so many places, customize the skills and traits of my character and progress it in a million different ways. I especially love having so many choices and options that I feel a little stressed about having so many things to do and that I want to do. I feel like I can play this game for years and still have interesting things for me to do. I can work on being a Mandalorian style bounty hunter, a Han Solo type smuggler, a space pirate, a do gooder justice seeker, or switch back and forth if I wish. The game is that flexible. There will also be mods and expansions to add to all of that. The game is far from perfect, but I am engrossed and always look forward to some free time to dive in and do more. That's really all I can ask for in a game.
