Community MetaSteam | September 2023 - The galaxy awaits

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inky

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I think it's safe to say Starfield didn't hit like people were expecting it to. Like a must buy, revolutionary game that finally brought all these things together and blew every different audience apart, console, pc, space simmers, hardcore RPGs, shooter fans, etc. No reason to look around and try to come up with theories for the concurrent numbers or reviews, or player impressions. It's quite straightforward.

My assessment so far is that it's Bethesda's most ambitious game by far, but also flawed in some key designs. Iterative of their own previous work, and also a big departure in other aspects, so it's not an instant crowd pleaser like Skyrim. Now everything is a refined version of that, Zelda, Souls games, even a branch of Sony's first party, so people are waiting for the next huge leap and this isn't it.

Hopefully it will teach people to get less invested into whatever narrative they want, and just play the games as they are, but probably not.
 

Stevey

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I think it's safe to say Starfield didn't hit like people were expecting it to. Like a must buy, revolutionary game that finally brought all these things together and blew every different audience apart, console, pc, space simmers, hardcore RPGs, shooter fans, etc.

I don't know anyone that was expecting that.
 
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inky

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I do. From hearing people I know and in other places talk about it pre-launch and after the showcase, it's similar to how people expected GTA 2077 out of Cyberpunk in my experience, people were expecting (broadly) Starfield Citizen.

This isn't trying to ignore the criticisms of the game, on the contrary. Once you take the game for what it is, arguments could be made that the game even fall short of just being Skyrim in space and that's why a lot of people are disappointed or straight up not interested. The numbers tell the story. Plenty of people playing, but there's not a flock to buy it like there is with other games.
 
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STHX

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Hm, what I've been seen people wanting from Starfield is 'Skyrim on Space' which it seems to be just that.
It will probably have the longest legs.
The one issue with Starfield for me compared to Skyrim is the game is basically a "fast travel simulator". Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, NV and 4 all let the player not use fast travel if they want, there is always a way to simply walk where you want even to and fromof the dlc areas. But in Starfield there is not, you literally can't reach another place without using your spaceship. Actually it's even worse than that because even quick-travelling usually can take too much time (get on your ship, get in the pilot seat, fly out of the planet, jump to the new system, click on the landing point, get out of the ship). That's it until you discover you can simply teleport to a quest marker from the quest list skipping half of those extra clicks. And that's exactly why the game is a "fast travel simulation": I haven't touched the pilot seat in 10 hours, it's simply faster to get where you need from the quest list (you even skip the contraband scanning and go straight to the landing point, at least if you don't have contraband)

And you know what's the worst part of this. It's the one thing that feels like a test run for ES6. Everything I said about Starfield being a fast travel simulator could be said about Daggerfall, ergo ES6 could easily cover all of Tamriel by simply giving the player a "starship" horse and procedurally generate the terrain between the main cities and landmarks. And I'm not sure I want that. I vastly prefer the "Great City of Whiterun" being 10 houses and a palace if it means I can just walk to Riften on my own
 

Dinjoralo

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I always found the idea that Bethesda game launches being huge cultural events to be a weird take. Maybe I'm just out of touch.


The playtest is available until the 21st.
Ohhh, I remember this!
 

crimsonheadGCN

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www.resetera.com

NarohDethan

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Alextended

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So what's this about roblox child labor that's been growing popular the last year or so? In that sense couldn't ANY game where the primary focus is player creations be considered just the same? Making itself a success in sales because of the content made by anyone, including kids (or even when it's not the original focus but by being modable or allowing creations on any level multiplying its success many times over similar games that just have the main content and no other potential so are soon forgotten)? But they're not big/popular enough for them to get the same flak or don't even allow creators to get any money at all by selling their creations and only using it to increase the value of the main base game or subscription or whatever rather than let them sell individual pieces within the platform that they then take a cut from? To me it's the same difference in all cases so by that logic we can't ever have creation type games because they're all exploiting the user? Someone probably has to make some clear distinctions there that aren't just based on how big/popular/making a target of itself the game/platform is in general or with certain demographics. To me it almost seems like mods/creation platforms/games are under attack by indies who see them eat their lunch even if they themselves began their passion/hobby/profession under similar circumstances modding Doom, Half-Life, Unreal etc.. Plus the popular scandal chasing media mentality. Not that regulations and what not shouldn't be in place but treat every game equally and not just by its level of success at it. Hell, Minecraft's probably where it is largely thanks to the creation/custom server capability and wide appeal with children too. It just didn't make the mistake of actually advertising that outright I suppose, but come on, we can see how things are whether an egregious ad was made or not. Maybe some specific mechanics I'm not aware of by not playing it escape me in how egregious they are but in general it seems unfair to see other creation games/platforms, from Little Big Planet to Dreams to VRChat, all of which are things I've seen awesome things come from (and Roblox with VR too now) not get any flak for doing the same thing, relying on user creations to make themselves popular and successful and profitable on any level whatsoever.
 
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lashman

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but roblox has an official way to make money on there, and they pay creators like 5%, and there are no age limits to become a creator

I just watched a bit of someone streaming Disco Elysium and it made me remember that I really haven't been that immersed into any other game in the past 5 years. It's so good.
and that music

:steam_pigblanket:
 
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Mivey

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but roblox has an official way to make money on there, and they pay creators like 5%, and there are no age limits to become a creator



and that music

:steam_pigblanket:
If you liked the music, I can really recommend the band "British Sea Power", I am not sure if they actually wrote songs for the game, or the devs just licensed some of their songs, but I find a lot of their work carries some of the same themes and notes as the game itself
 

lashman

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If you liked the music, I can really recommend the band "British Sea Power", I am not sure if they actually wrote songs for the game, or the devs just licensed some of their songs, but I find a lot of their work carries some of the same themes and notes as the game itself
straight into my veins!
 
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spindoctor

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Does Starfield seriously not run at 60fps locked on any hardware?

What happened to the frothing demands of PC gamers, that every game should run at least 60 even on lower end hardware? It seriously doesn't make sense.
It runs above 60fps for me but then I have a 1440/144 monitor. 90fps in the city of New Atlantis and then 120-144fps elsewhere. This is with 100% res scaling, FSR2, all settings max (no motion blur), no dlss mod on a stock 13700k/4090/32gb system. I decided to test it out at 4k and the framerate is around 70 in the city but it drops down to 50ish randomly.

I'm pretty sure the performance issues are all CPU related. I think you realistically need a Rocket Lake or better Intel chip and equivalent AMD CPU to run it well. You can tell they had to limit CPU impact because a lot of the NPCs in the city have no proper routines other than just milling around to make it look lively. Their older games were a bit more complex in that regard. I also think people are maybe under the impression that this is just another Bethesda game running on their old engine so it should perform exactly like the previous games did when this game is way, way bigger and better looking than anything they've ever released before this. One can always cherry pick bad looking NPCs or screenshots but for the most part this game looks really, really good and it does so at scale.

Fuck Epic and you know what, fuck Remedy too, I'll just pirate it if I'll want to try it out of curiosity. Maybe they'll just do a proper launch with no exclusivity bullshit next time, they're doing these shenanigans with every release since AW1
Yeah, their record for bypassing what PC gamers would want is just something else. Alan Wake was supposed to be a PC exclusive DX10 showcase and then it became an Xbox exclusive and only released on PC like 5 years later. Quantum Break for PC was exclusive to the Windows store before it came to Steam. Control was exclusive to the Epic store before it came to Steam. Now Alan Wake 2 is exclusive to EGS again, and probably permanently this time around. I have no qualms about pirating their games at this point. Fuck them for somehow managing this bullshit for the last 20 years.

Nah, even their duds are pretty fun, like Quantum Break.
QB is their best non MP game by a lot. A gigant lot in fact.
Yeah I actually do think Quantum Break was better than Alan Wake and Control. The live action TV cutscenes stuff was an experiment that didn't quite work out as well as they were hoping but it had an interesting story and it was fun to play. Alan Wake had a somewhat interesting story but the gameplay was extremely dull. Control had somewhat interesting gameplay but the story was rubbish. The Max Payne games were the last time they had good gameplay and storytelling (for their time). I honestly think people put Remedy on a pedestal that they don't really deserve to be on.
 

hersheyfan

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I do. From hearing people I know and in other places talk about it pre-launch and after the showcase, it's similar to how people expected GTA 2077 out of Cyberpunk in my experience, people were expecting (broadly) Starfield Citizen.

This isn't trying to ignore the criticisms of the game, on the contrary. Once you take the game for what it is, arguments could be made that the game even fall short of just being Skyrim in space and that's why a lot of people are disappointed or straight up not interested. The numbers tell the story. Plenty of people playing, but there's not a flock to buy it like there is with other games.
IMO, expecting it to be like Star Citizen was an incredibly unrealistic ask. Cyberpunk being GTA 2077? Sure, you can see it. At that point, CDPR already had three mainline Witcher games under its belt, with the last one (Wild Hunt) being a very well regarded open world game - its not a big leap of logic to expect they would be able to make a great OW action RPG.

But Starfield being Star Citizen? Bethesda had never made a game of that scale before, and had likewise never made a game with 6DOF space combat (no Wing Commander pedigree, or anything! lol). I expected and wanted a better looking Space Skyrim coming in, and (barring a few extra bells and whistles) thats exactly what I got.

It's totally fine if some folks feel that they didnt hit that bar (being Space Skyrim), but being disappointed that "its not Star Citizen" is more on them than on Bethesda IMO.
 

dex3108

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Fuck Epic and you know what, fuck Remedy too, I'll just pirate it if I'll want to try it out of curiosity. Maybe they'll just do a proper launch with no exclusivity bullshit next time, they're doing these shenanigans with every release since AW1
That's not fair in case of AW2. Epic actually went and fully paid development of that game. We can like or not Epic Store but in this case Epic did good thing in my opinion.
 

PC-tan

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The punishment for Nobuhiro Watsuki, author of Rurouni Kenshin, who got caught with so much child pornography the cops thought he was a distributor, got fined 1500 bucks.
I'm still convinced that Oda played a big role in him getting a very light sentence. The fact that Rurouni Kenshin is getting a new anime is just absurd.



Meanwhile Actage mangaka touches a girls but (he even flat out admits to it) and gets his manga cancelled (the only reason the cancellation is a shame is because he only wrote the manga and was not the one drawing it. So he dragged down some one with him that has nothing to do with his actions).


People should get punished but sadly they don't always.
 

inky

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IMO, expecting it to be like Star Citizen was an incredibly unrealistic ask. Cyberpunk being GTA 2077? Sure, you can see it. At that point, CDPR already had three mainline Witcher games under its belt, with the last one (Wild Hunt) being a very well regarded open world game - its not a big leap of logic to expect they would be able to make a great OW action RPG.

But Starfield being Star Citizen? Bethesda had never made a game of that scale before, and had likewise never made a game with 6DOF space combat (no Wing Commander pedigree, or anything! lol). I expected and wanted a better looking Space Skyrim coming in, and (barring a few extra bells and whistles) thats exactly what I got.

It's totally fine if some folks feel that they didnt hit that bar (being Space Skyrim), but being disappointed that "its not Star Citizen" is more on them than on Bethesda IMO.
I honestly just wanted a Bethesda Mass Effect, and it totally delivers, warts and all.
 

Ge0force

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That's not fair in case of AW2. Epic actually went and fully paid development of that game. We can like or not Epic Store but in this case Epic did good thing in my opinion.
That doesn't change the fact that Epic keeps betting on disrupting other storefronts to gain market share. While I usually don't mind if games are locked to the publishers' storefront, I won't support Epic because of this.

The more successful AW2 will be, the more devs will sign with Epic's publishing label. That's not something I'm looking forward to. Unless Epic dramatically shifts their focus from exclusives to pro-consumer actions, they should never become a major player in PC games distribution. By buying any of their games on EGS, you're helping them to achieve this.
 

dex3108

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That doesn't change the fact that Epic keeps betting on disrupting other storefronts to gain market share. While I usually don't mind if games are locked to the publishers' storefront, I won't support Epic because of this.

The more successful AW2 will be, the more devs will sign with Epic's publishing label. That's not something I'm looking forward to. Unless Epic dramatically shifts their focus from exclusives to pro-consumer actions, they should never become a major player in PC games distribution. By buying any of their games on EGS, you're helping them to achieve this.
Again they are paying for development so they set their terms. You can like it or not but that is how things usually work when publishers pays for development. And that is healthy competition.
 
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Durante

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Again they are paying for development so they set their terms. You can like it or not but that is how things usually work when publishers pays for development. And that is healthy competition.
That in itself is neutral (I'd say "healthy competition" would be publishing games on all platforms), but Epic's strategy overall is not. Personally, I find that overall strategy (as embodied by Tim Sweeney) so utterly distasteful that I'm highly reluctant to support anything they do (even transitively), but of course I don't expect everyone to feel this strongly about it.
 

dex3108

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That in itself is neutral (I'd say "healthy competition" would be publishing games on all platforms), but Epic's strategy overall is not. Personally, I find that overall strategy (as embodied by Tim Sweeney) so utterly distasteful that I'm highly reluctant to support anything they do (even transitively), but of course I don't expect everyone to feel this strongly about it.
In case of Valve vs. Epic this is healthy competition because Valve also doesn't sell their games on other stores. Other things done by Epic is not something I support either.
 
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hersheyfan

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Again they are paying for development so they set their terms. You can like it or not but that is how things usually work when publishers pays for development. And that is healthy competition.
I appreciate where you're coming from (and respect that Epic actually funded an Alan Wake sequel despite no evidence that Alan Wake actually makes any money), but like Durante and Geoforce mentioned, I just can't support what Epic is trying to do with EGS. It's not beneficial for the PC ecosystem in general, and for my personal preferences as well.

So I'll just split the difference and buy Alan Wake 2 on one of the consoles (after a decent price drop). I still play the game, I still supported Remedy, and I don't contribute to any EGS exclusive game being a financial success.
 

lashman

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In case of Valve vs. Epic this is healthy competition because Valve also doesn't sell their games on other stores. Other things done by Epic is not something I support either.
yes, they do - The Orange Box used to be on Origin before EA axed third-party sales
 
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dex3108

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yes, they do - The Orange Box used to be on Origin before EA axed third-party sales
Come on now lash. They released games after that. And they did sell on other stores but then removed it (if i remember GMG was selling some Valve games). Alyx was Steam only.
 
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Mivey

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Alyx was Steam only.
I wonder if it will come to PSVR2 down the lines, there were some rumours. I don't think it's fair to call this "exclusivity", as no other store outside of Steam has proper support for openxr titles. I guess there is oculus, but surely the Quest 2 would never run Alyx in any decent shape, so that was out of the question. And the PS5 did not have VR support in 2020.
I very much expect Valve to port Alyx to other platforms as they become capable of running it. Valve wants to push VR gaming as a whole, they aren't in this to make a profit. That's the cool thing with Valve, they absolutely don't have to worry about the bottom line, ever. (since their bottom-line is the never ending well that is Steam)
 
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dex3108

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I wonder if it will come to PSVR2 down the lines, there were some rumours. I don't think it's fair to call this "exclusivity", as no other store outside of Steam has proper support for openxr titles. I guess there is oculus, but surely the Quest 2 would never run Alyx in any decent shape, so that was out of the question. And the PS5 did not have VR support in 2020.
I very much expect Valve to port Alyx to other platforms as they become capable of running it. Valve wants to push VR gaming as a whole, they aren't in this to make a profit. That's the cool thing with Valve, they absolutely don't have to worry about the bottom line, ever. (since their bottom-line is the never ending well that is Steam)
Valve can sell keys on GMG, Humble or Fanatical at least.
 
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Ge0force

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this is healthy competition
While funding games is definitely better than money hatting, Epic's publishing label is still part of their global strategy, which is focused on convincing devs and publishers to sell their games exclusively on EGS. I don't exactly call this healthy competition, nor is this good for us as consumers:



Games published by Epic being successful will definitely convince more independent devs to sign with Epic, resulting in more games locked to EGS. I don't want this to happen so I won't support this in any way.
 

dex3108

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While funding games is definitely better than money hatting, Epic's publishing label is still part of their global strategy, which is focused on convincing devs and publishers to sell their games exclusively on EGS. I don't exactly call this healthy competition, nor is this good for us as consumers:



Games published by Epic being successful will definitely convince more independent devs to sign with Epic, resulting in more games locked to EGS. I don't want this to happen so I won't support this in any way.
And? That is competition. Epic is using their money to improve their service in a way that is not cheap and sh*tty. Any publisher and platform owner had opportunity to fund AW2 for years now and nobody did. Nothing is preventing Valve to start Publishing branch if they think that they had to do it. Valve showed that focusing on quality service means more than paying to skip store. But fully funding projects is different story.
 
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Mivey

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I will say it's nice that Epic actually supports local currencies, like SEK. Having to pay like 79.99€ or 760SEK is a big difference. Paying the deluxe edition here would cost me as much as buying the regular version back in Austria.
 

Kal1m3r0

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That's not fair in case of AW2. Epic actually went and fully paid development of that game. We can like or not Epic Store but in this case Epic did good thing in my opinion.
Would've been a simple publishing scenario I would have agreed, but Epic and Remedy history with PC gaming is known and to me they're far too antagonized to care about fairness at this point
 

Ge0force

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And? That is competition. Epic is using their money to improve their service in a way that is not cheap and sh*tty.
Locking games from 3rd party devs to a single storefront is definitely not how I see healthy competition. Epic's publishing label isn't limited to AW2. It doesn't benefit us in any way that the next Playdead game is locked to EGS.

On the contrary: we can't play the game in the ecosystem we want (sucks for steam deck owners for example), we will have to pay more because Epic ignores 3rd party key stores, and we'll have to miss lots of features because Epic barely invests in improving EGS.

Exclusives only benefit the owner of one particular storefront/ecosystem, while ignoring the wishes and needs of the gamers. I'm actually happy that Valve never raised a publishing label in order to lock games to Steam. Instead, Valve has been continuously improving Steam with unique features that add value to PC gaming. THAT is what "improving a service" means to me, and that is what healthy competition should look like on an open platform.
 
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