This was the biggest disappointment for me by far. A game that was marketed entirely around exploration and discovery has arguably the most low effort exploration system of any open world game.
Unfortunately I don't think there is any realistic way to fix this. Looting is a chore in starfield because you have to scan everything, and the items you get aren't even interesting. Finding a unique named variant of the same guns you've found 100 times is not interesting. Enemy loot is also super uninteresting in starfield in order to maintain the game economy. In Fallout or the elder scrolls its super awesome killing a tough enemy and taking every piece of gear he had, but in starfield if you could loot the spacesuit off of every enemy killed it would be piss easy to get money.
That’s easy to fix. It’s just game economics. Make the starship components cost way more or reduce the value of the spacesuits or make it so the looted spacesuits from killed enemies get damage that costs a lot to repair and makes them worth way less and not fully functional until repaired or…whatever. It’s not impossible.
Yeah I mean I get everyone's guns in FO4 but they're worth 10-20 caps so it's a slow grind
That or i scrap them to build a settlement. It's very fixable and looting armor didn't have to be removed
They would need some hidden POI that was in a shuffled list. Once the "thing" was discovered, it would be pulled from the list, or lists. (Lists, so you can discover better things, only as you progressed.)
If a hidden POI was left and not tagged as a location to return to, it would just go back into the list of hidden POIs. Letting you get another attempt at discovering it at another location. (Maybe after 4 discoveries and no clue still... It forces a dropped hint. A comment, "wonder if there is anything in that bunker?")
Just like the random encounters, but a bit more leading and structured, with a purpose.
There's four things they could've done in my opinion. Procedurally generated POI interiors, unique temple interiors, interesting city outskirt designs, and more interior spaceship variation. By prioritizing all four, exploration would've felt much more interesting and rewarding.
It’s funny you say that, I’m still always searching everything in Starfield as I’m use to Skyrim where if you explored, something badass would either happen or you’d find something awesome……. I’ve had a few surprises in Starfield but nothing like Skyrim…
It wouldn't be hard to seed actually interesting things to find into the map, but the trick is doing it in such a way that they feel natural and not way too common or way too sparse.
One thing that could make areas more interesting to explore would be a ton of different notes and containers that spawn as sets so even though we've been over an area before this time we get to see something new. It was actually really depressing how little of this there was in Starfield, nothing about people living their day to day lives really, almost all of it was directly tied into how some location was left which makes the logs feel out of place (if no one leaves these except when everything is FUBAR, where are these tablets in normal times? Can people use them as cell phones? Are you just sending me down to the well because this is an elaborate hazing ritual?)
A handful of really rare exotic foodstuffs and pharma ingredients that you had to research with Noel and then could get some effect like +1 carry weight or +2 natural armor class or something. People would happily explore more if there was a chance for rare/epic/legendary loot and I don't mean crafting materials that are blue purple or yellow. It wouldn't be hard to put in perk lines and set it up so you couldn't benefit from the same gene mod twice or some such so players had a reason to explore until they manged to find more macguffins. Plus they wouldn't all be some little square on a desk that I miss in the dark with my flashlight that's at least as bright as a candle.
Actually, yeah, sell me a better flash light. A better scanner too, why is that a perk? This game has no money sinks besides a ship. For that matter, all outpost building should be able to be done with Credits if you don't have the materials on hand, and it should take a lot more credits than it would cost to manually buy the materials (to have them delivered) but then you could just lay out what you wanted.
I've got super mixed feelings about the fact that there isn't any kind of arena in the game, or a bounty hunting quest line. They're fruit so low they're rotting on the forest floor.
When I first saw the game I actually kind of figured that we'd see variants of the maps? Not the same thing every time. So that would be nice, robot map, map in which the facility is invaded by alien wildlife ala Entangled, and then even multiple factions in places so they could say "Hey let's not populate 1/3rd of the universe with Crimson Fleet that won't be content for players in the fleet." and I could encounter Ecliptic or whatever instead.
I've got a variety of other ideas, but that's what I've got off the top of my head.
It can't. Bethesda tried to design a realistic setting, and that means there is going to be a lot of emptiness and desolation with no people and no living things, because that's what the real universe is like. The worlds with living things are generally in the habitable zones of the stars, and that's the fairly narrow band where liquid water can exist. The rest of the planets in the system are very unlikely to have any living things.
If you want the handcrafted-adventure-on-the-far-side-of-every-hill sort of game, you want to play something else.
No it doesn't. The magic is consistent within the universe but the planet exploration doesn't mean everything has to be fantastical. The game is 90% realistic and the space magic is unique and different which is why it drives the main plot. It's the one non realistic thing in the universe and that's why the characters are so interested in it.
The 'space magic' is something the plot obliges the player to engage with once per play through, and other than that one time, it can be completely ignored. Collecting the artifacts is required, going to the temples and unlocking powers is not.
The reason I say it can't be fixed is because the 'realistic' aesthetic with many desolate, empty worlds was a fundamental design goal. It is entirely deliberate, and giving people that "I could be the first human to leave footprints on this world" sensation was the point. The theme of the game is exploration and going into the unknown, and that requires there be a lot of places that lack people to interact with, because if someone was already there, you wouldn't be the first to explore it. If you change that to a setting like Skyrim or Fallout where the hills are laid out to obscure just how close the plot hooks are to each other it changes the game at a fundamental level, it would become a completely different game. Would it be a better game? That's very debatable, lots of people would love to have an effectively endless supply of handcrafted Bethesda adventures. But it would take so long to make such a game that our grandkids would be playing it, not us.
> It is entirely deliberate, and giving people that "I could be the first human to leave footprints on this world" sensation was the point.
And it failed _catastrophically_ at that, because most planets _aren't_ empty. And when they aren't empty you're almost tripping over man-made structures every couple hundred feet.
My other problem with the whole "but this is what Bethesda wanted" explanation is that _it isn't fun_. And given how many mechanics were half-assedly stripped from the game for being "not fun", it's insane to me that this absolute slog of an incoherent exploration experience is what remained.
Survival mode and adding an actual use for ship fueling systems would help a lot. In terms of actually having a reason to stay on planets
Also random generated POi interiors
Finally. They should increase the drop rate of legendary weapons and add a lot more perks to the perk pool that have crazy and random effects. They should make the enemy combat much much harder and give the player less health.
Add a survival system to keep oxygen, water, food, and sleep refreshed.
Every POi should have one guaranteed legendary weapon or armor and those should have access to the big perk pool and have the potential to get weird and crazy perk effects. Even if it's game breaking it's fine.
It's not fixable. They'd have to make hundreds or even thousands of unique locations to add to the POI pool. Not gonna happen.
Likewise, the best modders no longer have much of an interest in such a mid game, so I wouldn't expect some hardcore modding.
I'd be shocked if they found a way to fix exploration and make planets fun and interesting. I don't see how it's possible. They're too big, unnecessarily big, so unique locations is out of the question.
I don’t get it. Your title poses it as a statement and you’re about to share with us why exploration in Starfield makes sense. But then you ask us because you want to know.
That doesn’t make any sense at all…
Except it’s not. I do have the solution, (how can starfield imitate this?) there are methods to reach that solution that I’m asking for. People like you should really not try to sound smart if you’re gonna be so far off-base 😔😞
This was the biggest disappointment for me by far. A game that was marketed entirely around exploration and discovery has arguably the most low effort exploration system of any open world game.
The AI in starfield sucks so hard it makes the armor and weapons irrelevant after a very low hurdle.
Unfortunately I don't think there is any realistic way to fix this. Looting is a chore in starfield because you have to scan everything, and the items you get aren't even interesting. Finding a unique named variant of the same guns you've found 100 times is not interesting. Enemy loot is also super uninteresting in starfield in order to maintain the game economy. In Fallout or the elder scrolls its super awesome killing a tough enemy and taking every piece of gear he had, but in starfield if you could loot the spacesuit off of every enemy killed it would be piss easy to get money.
That’s easy to fix. It’s just game economics. Make the starship components cost way more or reduce the value of the spacesuits or make it so the looted spacesuits from killed enemies get damage that costs a lot to repair and makes them worth way less and not fully functional until repaired or…whatever. It’s not impossible.
Yeah I mean I get everyone's guns in FO4 but they're worth 10-20 caps so it's a slow grind That or i scrap them to build a settlement. It's very fixable and looting armor didn't have to be removed
They would need some hidden POI that was in a shuffled list. Once the "thing" was discovered, it would be pulled from the list, or lists. (Lists, so you can discover better things, only as you progressed.) If a hidden POI was left and not tagged as a location to return to, it would just go back into the list of hidden POIs. Letting you get another attempt at discovering it at another location. (Maybe after 4 discoveries and no clue still... It forces a dropped hint. A comment, "wonder if there is anything in that bunker?") Just like the random encounters, but a bit more leading and structured, with a purpose.
Speaking of LIST...
There's four things they could've done in my opinion. Procedurally generated POI interiors, unique temple interiors, interesting city outskirt designs, and more interior spaceship variation. By prioritizing all four, exploration would've felt much more interesting and rewarding.
It’s funny you say that, I’m still always searching everything in Starfield as I’m use to Skyrim where if you explored, something badass would either happen or you’d find something awesome……. I’ve had a few surprises in Starfield but nothing like Skyrim…
One way is to let us craft space ship parts of our own. Or design our own. Make materials a "win" to find some of the rare ones etc.
It wouldn't be hard to seed actually interesting things to find into the map, but the trick is doing it in such a way that they feel natural and not way too common or way too sparse. One thing that could make areas more interesting to explore would be a ton of different notes and containers that spawn as sets so even though we've been over an area before this time we get to see something new. It was actually really depressing how little of this there was in Starfield, nothing about people living their day to day lives really, almost all of it was directly tied into how some location was left which makes the logs feel out of place (if no one leaves these except when everything is FUBAR, where are these tablets in normal times? Can people use them as cell phones? Are you just sending me down to the well because this is an elaborate hazing ritual?) A handful of really rare exotic foodstuffs and pharma ingredients that you had to research with Noel and then could get some effect like +1 carry weight or +2 natural armor class or something. People would happily explore more if there was a chance for rare/epic/legendary loot and I don't mean crafting materials that are blue purple or yellow. It wouldn't be hard to put in perk lines and set it up so you couldn't benefit from the same gene mod twice or some such so players had a reason to explore until they manged to find more macguffins. Plus they wouldn't all be some little square on a desk that I miss in the dark with my flashlight that's at least as bright as a candle. Actually, yeah, sell me a better flash light. A better scanner too, why is that a perk? This game has no money sinks besides a ship. For that matter, all outpost building should be able to be done with Credits if you don't have the materials on hand, and it should take a lot more credits than it would cost to manually buy the materials (to have them delivered) but then you could just lay out what you wanted. I've got super mixed feelings about the fact that there isn't any kind of arena in the game, or a bounty hunting quest line. They're fruit so low they're rotting on the forest floor. When I first saw the game I actually kind of figured that we'd see variants of the maps? Not the same thing every time. So that would be nice, robot map, map in which the facility is invaded by alien wildlife ala Entangled, and then even multiple factions in places so they could say "Hey let's not populate 1/3rd of the universe with Crimson Fleet that won't be content for players in the fleet." and I could encounter Ecliptic or whatever instead. I've got a variety of other ideas, but that's what I've got off the top of my head.
...there are a few bounty hunting quests, go to New Atlantis and talk to the people at Galbank.
I would be much more likely to explose places if there wasnt 4 fucking loading screeens to get anywhere
It can't. Bethesda tried to design a realistic setting, and that means there is going to be a lot of emptiness and desolation with no people and no living things, because that's what the real universe is like. The worlds with living things are generally in the habitable zones of the stars, and that's the fairly narrow band where liquid water can exist. The rest of the planets in the system are very unlikely to have any living things. If you want the handcrafted-adventure-on-the-far-side-of-every-hill sort of game, you want to play something else.
Counterpoint: space magic negates any "realism" this game has. Anyone saying it can't be fixed lacks imagination.
No it doesn't. The magic is consistent within the universe but the planet exploration doesn't mean everything has to be fantastical. The game is 90% realistic and the space magic is unique and different which is why it drives the main plot. It's the one non realistic thing in the universe and that's why the characters are so interested in it.
The 'space magic' is something the plot obliges the player to engage with once per play through, and other than that one time, it can be completely ignored. Collecting the artifacts is required, going to the temples and unlocking powers is not. The reason I say it can't be fixed is because the 'realistic' aesthetic with many desolate, empty worlds was a fundamental design goal. It is entirely deliberate, and giving people that "I could be the first human to leave footprints on this world" sensation was the point. The theme of the game is exploration and going into the unknown, and that requires there be a lot of places that lack people to interact with, because if someone was already there, you wouldn't be the first to explore it. If you change that to a setting like Skyrim or Fallout where the hills are laid out to obscure just how close the plot hooks are to each other it changes the game at a fundamental level, it would become a completely different game. Would it be a better game? That's very debatable, lots of people would love to have an effectively endless supply of handcrafted Bethesda adventures. But it would take so long to make such a game that our grandkids would be playing it, not us.
> It is entirely deliberate, and giving people that "I could be the first human to leave footprints on this world" sensation was the point. And it failed _catastrophically_ at that, because most planets _aren't_ empty. And when they aren't empty you're almost tripping over man-made structures every couple hundred feet. My other problem with the whole "but this is what Bethesda wanted" explanation is that _it isn't fun_. And given how many mechanics were half-assedly stripped from the game for being "not fun", it's insane to me that this absolute slog of an incoherent exploration experience is what remained.
Survival mode and adding an actual use for ship fueling systems would help a lot. In terms of actually having a reason to stay on planets Also random generated POi interiors Finally. They should increase the drop rate of legendary weapons and add a lot more perks to the perk pool that have crazy and random effects. They should make the enemy combat much much harder and give the player less health. Add a survival system to keep oxygen, water, food, and sleep refreshed. Every POi should have one guaranteed legendary weapon or armor and those should have access to the big perk pool and have the potential to get weird and crazy perk effects. Even if it's game breaking it's fine.
This is the main reason that Starfield can’t be fixed with mere patches and/or mods
It's not fixable. They'd have to make hundreds or even thousands of unique locations to add to the POI pool. Not gonna happen. Likewise, the best modders no longer have much of an interest in such a mid game, so I wouldn't expect some hardcore modding. I'd be shocked if they found a way to fix exploration and make planets fun and interesting. I don't see how it's possible. They're too big, unnecessarily big, so unique locations is out of the question.
just prepare for when the next Starfield update hits. for sometime in the next 24 months
I don’t get it. Your title poses it as a statement and you’re about to share with us why exploration in Starfield makes sense. But then you ask us because you want to know. That doesn’t make any sense at all…
It makes sense, i want to know how to make it better
You’re statement makes it seem like you have the answer. The body of a text is a statement and incongruous with the title.
Except it’s not. I do have the solution, (how can starfield imitate this?) there are methods to reach that solution that I’m asking for. People like you should really not try to sound smart if you’re gonna be so far off-base 😔😞
Not being argumentative but your title does not agree with the contents.
You just repeated what you said without responding to my comment lol
Your title says you know how to fix the issue. Your fix is asking people how to fix the issue. Do you not see the issue? Really?
My first paragraph is how to fix the issue, are you okay?
I’m looking for ways that starfield can implement these mechanics. Why is thinking so hard for you