Prediction: Starfield is going to a massive blunder and people are going to be unhappy

It's probably going to be the game of the year, maybe beaten by TOTK. Certainly it'll be one of the best selling games of all time.

This is such a neckbeard take.

Maybe somewhere in the middle, honestly. Highly publicized bugs at launch, people complaining they're under-delivering on what we all knew was marketing bullshit, then bugs get fixed under the radar and the game turns out to be amazing by the time they release their first DLC.

People always harp on about not pre-ordering, but you know what's even better? Ignoring launch hype. I mean, look at Cyberpunk.
Yea, single player games, on consoles, can be 100% enjoyable even at 30fps. BotW and TotK are perfect examples of it. I haven't seen any trailers or reviews or content of Starfield, btw, so don't anyone date call me a coper.
- It's a bit rougher in an FPS, but not a deal-breaker if the game is good.
Member Fallout '76? I member.
Wow that is way more of a neckbeard take. There is no way in hell starfield is going to beat totk. It's going to be janky shit, but outside of specific communities nobody cares about starfield in comparison.
- I think it'll be close as TOTK is a really, really strong contender. In any other year Starfield would get it for sure. But TOTK is pretty incredible.

Nah, I think you're way overblowing this. Starfield is going to be a success, it'll be the least buggy release they've ever had and people will love it. Monetization? Sure. 30fps? Yeah that's standard for consoles. It's not going to be a perfect game, it's just going to be a damn good one. Enjoy it in the sea of mediocrity we have right now

Yup. It's easy to be cynical about the current state of video games, but Bethesda seems to still be made up of people who are genuinely excited about what they are building, all the way up to management.

It's not a perfect indicator for success, but I think it's a pretty damned good one.
it's an rpg not forza. 30fosnisnt that important in the context.
It's also the first game they're making with Microsoft resources, and by what they're showing, they really seem to be learning with their mistakes and improving.

I agree with OP that Starfield is going to make a lot of people unhappy, mostly because of their own unreal expectations, but it is not going to be a blunder, let alone a massive one. However, it could be the most perfect game ever made and yet gamers/redditors that won't even bother playing the game will find something to complain about and hop on the hatewagon because they're just that miserable

This post reads as if you're a PlayStation player that still obsessed over the cOnSoLe WaRs and is just salty.

Countless attempts to hype up the game and huge random assurances from the devs

You mean... marketing?

Pretty much everything you said is dumb or just not true, but that one was especially hilarious.

I don't own a playstation

30 FPS lock on xbox

This is factually true
- reads as if
  
  Didn't say you did
  
  pretty much everything
  
  And I didn't say everything wasn't
I’m 100% expecting this game to crash and burn in the most outrageous manner possible. I’ll be surprised if it turns out to be a good game.

It’s possible that they’ll get around to making it good eventually but I’m betting it’ll be total garbage at launch

Bethesda jank is what brought us the Giant Space Program in Skyrim so I'm definitely fine with some jank. They've also said it's the least buggy Bethesda game they've made. It feels like you're just picking bad points to shit on the game.

They’ve also said it’s the least buggy Bethesda game they’ve made.

They have also said the exact same thing every single time they have talked about a new game. Literaly EVERY SINGLE TIME. Jesus christ please stop...
- Are you arguing against it? Has anyone actually done an in-depth analysis to prove that the games are not getting less buggy? I know Bethsda has a vested interest in us thinking it's true but without any evidence I'd trust them over random people on the internet.
Jank is partially the result of allowing for emergent gameplay where various forms of simulated systems can interact with each other in novel or unpredictable ways.

That being said I have no clue how people tolerate playing these games on console. Can't even count the number of times I've had to use console commands to fix something myself.

The fact they are priming people to expect this is pretty bad.

Patient gamers unite!

It's on Gamepass, I literally lose nothing from trying it day one whether it's pants or brilliant.

Do not pre-order games.

Do not buy AAA games at launch, especially Bethesda games.

Preordering is dumb for digital releases.
- It's dumb for physical too.
- Well it was -20% on greenmangaming lately, -15% now. I can see a point there at least 😄
No need to preorder/buy it, since the game will be on gamepass on release.

What point is there to not try the game for 10€ for a month? You can cancel it anytime.

If it's shit, you still have a huge library of big name games you can play. You can also get gamepass keys for much cheaper on ebay or key resellers but there you might get scammed. Also if you have friends with gamepass ultimate, they can give you free 14 day trial keys.

If the game turns out great, you can still just buy it later on sale
- I don't like gamepass because it requires me to install games through the Microsoft store. I'd rather buy them from anywhere else or pirate them.
Join House Biscuit! We do not pre-order.
- Yes!

Not sure what people are actually expecting from starfield. It'll be TES/Fallout in space. The story will be mediocre but who plays Bethesda games for the main quest anyway? The graphics won't be top-notch, but who plays Bethesda games for the graphics? It won't be completely bug-free, but who... You get it. It will be a game that we will play for decades to come, especially with mods. But I don't expect it to be a revolution of the genre.

.
Before they showed it people absolutely where expecting something else than TES/Fallout in space. But as soon as they showed it, it was obvious it is just another typical bethesda RPG. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people seem to love that. But the expectation was certainly something else after they announced it.

I think it'll be just like every other release. If it's not absolutely perfect people are gonna shit all over it, but the reality will be that it's fine. There's no such thing as a perfect game. Either play and enjoy it or don't. It'll be on GamePass day one, so your monetary investment in trying it doesn't have to be $70. Hell, you can probably find a free trial somewhere to try it with. So who cares if it's not perfect or not. I bet just like all of their other games it'll be a load of fun.

I don't understand why anyone is naïve enough to still preorder from companies like Bethesda.

Mostly I don't understand pre-ordering games at all (patient gamers represent) but from Bethesda? You're basically paying to get kicked in the shins. Surely we all know this by now.

Right? How could anybody still fall for that after the shit show that was Fallout 76? I recently watched a long video with some gameplay footage and Todd Howard giving an interview and most comments were people being absolutely hyped to the bone. I'm sorry for them... They're going to be so disappointed.
- Fallout 76 is only the most recent, they've been like this since... I guess a little after morrowind? As an early adopter of tes (saved my sheckels to buy arena after reading a PC gamer review, did not regret), I was sad to see them go to shit, but to shit they went and it was not recent.
Part of the reason Bethesda'a PC games age so well is because of them being so moddable.
- Yep, and that doesn't fit well with 'omg must preorder this game'
I never understood why you would even want the pre-order bonuses. Surely that would detract from unlocking things in game if they give you a bunch of stuff for free. Wasn't it one of the dead space games that have you a bunch of bonus weapons that broke progression?
People really SHOULD be smarter and not fall for the many promises Bethesda do.

I always remember this classic

Honestly I could not care less about console FPS locks. If you don't play Bethesda RPGs on a PC then I don't even know what you're doing with your life.

Predatory pre-order bonus skins to get people to buy before they know what they’re actually going to experience (buggy shitshow)

Countless attempts to hype up the game and huge random assurances from the devs

Preemptively admitting the game has jank and trying to make it seem okay lol

none of this is particularly different from their other releases, and 2 & 3 arent even out of the ordinary for AAA gaming in general, regardless of quality or reception

Plus number 4. It's a Bethesda game, if you don't expect jank/bugs then I have a bridge to sell you..

Ofc it will be broken at launch but the amazing modding community that comes with Bethesda games will have that shit sorted in no time
- Ofc it will be broken at launch but the amazing modding community that comes with Bethesda games will have that shit sorted in no time
  
  Doesn't make the base game any better.

Point 5) No games are released finished anymore an no gamer is ever happy.

Diablo 4 seems finished on release. Also Hogwarts and Elder Ring

But someone will always unhappy.
- Yeah but D4 also had a known issue, where when you log off with your hardcore character it just dies because of a server bug (error code 316009).
  
  Excuse the bird-page, but here is an example.
- I'm looking forward to FFXVI myself, loved the demo, it's shaping up to be a pretty good release.
- Outlast Trials also released finished and polished (even if it is still Early Access). Though i guess that game is not big enough to count
- Hogwarts had/have some absolutely horrendous preferences issues and lag spikes and some bugs where the world doesn't load throwing you into the void.

With the abysmal state of most AAA releases, I just hope they manage to give the game some soul to it. I'm tired of clones and Elden Ring has been the only recent AAA title that feel like creativity was still put into it.

Is it going to be horrible ? No. Just from the gameplay I've seen I can tell you I'm going to have a good time. Will it live up to my personal expectations? Absolutely not. But neither did cyberpunk and anytime someone asks me for a good cyberpunk game I don't hesitate to tell the cp2077 is in a league of it's own, despite all the shortcomings.

Off topic but I am SUPER STOKED for the upcoming Cyberpunk overhaul.
I’m hoping it will be decent, but the official trailer made it look empty and boring. It did not inspire confidence for me.
- Not sure if you've seen it, but there was also a 30 minute deep dive where they showed off most of the different features of the game.

30 fps lock is not a bad thing for a not action heavy rpg, many games already did and prove that if you do it properly it's not that bad.
you don't have to do the pre-order no one is forcing you to pre-order. They set a FOMO flag on the pitfall if you go ahead and fall then it's your issue.
every big budget game hypes their game, they have to cause marketing money sometimes exceeds the development cost.(depending on the audience reach results, they usually don't spend marketing money like idiots.)
if it doesn't pull a cyberpunk then I think it would be fine.

my predictions:

at best it would be a space new vegas, At worst a space warp simulator cause loading or procedurally generate stuff for the system you are in takes time. And then it's full of copy paste settlements where 95% of the planet is not even worth visiting, you just scan locate settlement, land near by do your space fetching and then move on.
it would be some interesting landscapes probably from AI generated ideas so main location won't feel too repetitive.(so do a planet with just one biome, except story relevant planets.)
space combat is probably gonna suck or forced cinematic thing(force you to land somewhere, get ship taken away, etc. )
many startrek/starwars "inspirations" for factions.

No need to preorder since you can just pay 10€ and play the game day 1 on gamepass. If it sucks, you still have a huge choice of games to play
Is this a sign though that games are going to start heading in the direction of 30 fps again? I remember last gen earlier titles would be 60 fps with the cross platform approach, but gradually it became rarer until 30 fps became the norm again with 60 becoming more of an outlier.
- No, this is a sign that Bethesda can't get their ancient garbage engine up to snuff.
- Every generation moves back towards 30fps as devs try to push the limits of the hardware.
- It could be a problem with modern console's dynamic resolution. Most console games don't run close to 4k outside of menus and low action areas. That might break Starfield so they just lock it at 30 fps with a static resolution.
- It was always going to happen. Even most games that offer a '60 fps' performance mode are mostly targeting 30 fps, with the performance mode being an afterthought. They cut back resolution and tons of graphic settings and half the time don't even hit 60. Like Jedi Survivor ran great in Quality mode with nearly no fps drops throughout the entire game (excluding one small area) while the performance mode had tons of issues.
  
  Do not, my friends, become addicted to 60 fps. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
- not necessarily. Due to adaptive sync and render thread/game thread can become somewhat doing their stuff in parallel, modern engine can reduce the old fixed 3 frame input lag into mostly 2 frames and with some good scheduling 1 frame input lag is possible for 30fps.(the higher the frame rate the more impossible to achieve 1 frame input lag, like even if your game is just moving a cube in empty space, above certain frame rate it becomes not possible to keep 1 frame input lag due to engine overheads.(note here we do not consider display input lag, just your input action and then later gpu draws the update. )
  
  You can see that's a very big improvement for 30fps based games. ie. old engine with fixed 3 frames lag, 60fps is about 50ms, where if it's 30fps but with 2 frames input lag it's 66.6ms, and it's not a lot different. So it becomes sort of standard for raytracing enabled game to target 30fps, or like ratchet and clank where they have modes that targets 40fps as a compromise.(that needs a 120hz monitor as support), oh, why 40fps?? if you do the number, 40fps with 2 frames input lag is 50ms, is this number familiar? yep, it's the same input lag as old engine where 60fps but have fixed 3 frames lag.

There is likely going to be loading screens when entering buildings like in past games built on basically the same engine.

most engines used by AAA studios are just upgraded versions of engines that games were running on 20 years ago
- Yes but Gamebryo's always been somewhat trash since fallout 3.
"Our tech is cutting edge as far as I can tell, the Creation Engine's aging very well! We're not planning on doing anything about it"

https://sh.itjust.works/c/patientgamers

For the win. It's helped me avoid wasting money on most game purchases I've done.

We actually got a decent Cyberpunk 2077 experience. I think. I still haven't gotten around to playing it, plus I'm more hyped to play Slime Rancher 2... after I finally beat Slime Rancher 1.
- I finally bought Cyberpunk recently, as it reached a pricepoint I liked. Now with the news of the overhaul, I'll just wait until after that to play it.
- Not everyone got a "decent" Cyberpunk 2077 experience. The game was released prior to it being playable on every device to which they sold it.
- With the DLC announced I will eventually get CP2077 when the complete edition gets a bigger discount down the line. I sure hope there's lot of quality of life improvements by then which the DLC is looking like it'll do.
- CP2077 is very much a ymmv experience.
  
  I saw the early gameplay footage, got excited, then stopped consuming media about it.
  
  When it dropped I got it on PC and played it on a decent rig. I encountered nothing outside the norm and had a blast.

I don't think its going to be a massive blunder, I do think that its being hyped up a little too much right now.

I never expect a stable game from Bethesda, I only hope when I play it (months/years later) there are community patches to fix most of it, and most importantly mods to make it more fun

As for the 30fps thing, it makes no sense to me why there can't be a performance mode, that being said I play on PC and if it's locked to 30 there then there are some major problems

The pre order bonus I just see as a common market tactics today, and am just glad it doesn't unlock abilities early like the preorders for spider-man on PC

And yeah I don't buy the "least buggy Bethesda game ever on release" thing, becouse well, that doesn't say much

As for the 30fps thing, it makes no sense to me why there can't be a performance mode

Graphics aren't the only thing that are heavy on resources. The thing with Bethesda games is that you have a lot of clutter items scattered around (like tin cans, forks and cheese wheels) that you can pickup, drag around, and because of this interactive nature, there's physics calculations for all these items, and this hogs resources. You can't just lower texture resolution or turn off anti aliasing and be done with it, you'd have to fundamentally change how the game works to make a performance for a Bethesda game

it's a Bethesda game, it'll be jank but in ways where the game is still enjoyable imo. there's like a certain charm to the way Bethesda games are bugged to hell for me. yeah I like when a character suddenly becomes an eldritch ragdoll in dialogue.

I don't know if any of these things are going to doom the game outright, per se, but there's been a lot of hype building around the game for a long time and I think that's... potentially ominous. It's being positioned as the Next Big Thing(tm), and it's rare that any game can live up to that. Even if it's not a complete Cyberpunk-esque disaster, failing to live up to the frankly impossible expectations that are being foisted upon it are very likely to result in backlash.

Their game engine is shit, always has been shit.

30FPS cap is a function of their old engine being shit and attempting to keep up with modern engines.

I wish they would just abandon the engine already and move forward with a modern engine.

I’m 100% expecting this game to crash and burn in the most outrageous manner possible. I’ll be surprised if it turns out to be a good game.

It’s possible that they’ll get around to making it good eventually but I’m betting it’ll be total garbage at launch

Patient Gaming wins again

I think it's probably going to be fine, even if it does have some bugs.

But I'm not buying it on release week or probably even month anyway so it won't burn me if it isn't.

You could just try it on gamepass (10€ for a month ).
If it sucks, you still have a huge choice of other great games to play

This sounds about right.

I think one thing to remember is that it's going to be on the XBox Game Pass when it releases. So if you are subscribed to that, you can download it for free and play it before you decide whether to get it or not.

Though, given it's supposed to be 125 GB, I'm seriously wondering if I want to dedicate that much storage space on my XBox Series S to it...

It's a Bethesda game. I fully expect it to be buggy as heck and be kind of janky. It'll probably still be fun though. Personally, I'm gonna wait for a remaster release on whatever Xbox system comes next. It'll probably be really good by then. I have a PS5 and not an Xbox series x, so I can wait. I'm not gonna buy a system for a game that likely won't play well for a while. There are plenty of other great games out there to play while I wait.

Im super hyped about the game. preordered the deluxe edition to get the predatory 5 days early access that lands over a 3 day weekend...

It's going to be janky. The preorder bonus skins will be garbage. It's going to be a bad PC port that has issues with FPS and performance... They probably broke the cardinal rule and linked the physics to the frame rate and it's going to fuck everything up... Youre probably going to have load screens when you enter/leave your ship or any building just like every TES/Fallout game...

Still excited for it!

fully agree but only because this is just how games are now. people keep buying them so there is no push to make a decent product. they'll release it and maybe after a decade it'll be okay. just like Skyrim and Cyberpunk and everything else.

It might end up as a cyberpunk 2077 kind of launch but, who are we kidding it's Bethesda. It won't be perfect day 1 but, soon after it'll be good.

The scope of the game is too big for Bugthesda to deliver. It's litteraly 2 games in one, Fallout + No Man's Sky, how can anyone believe it's not gonna be the biggest bugfest of all time?

Let's say that somehow, Bethesda finally release a game which doesn't need modders to fix it, we all know they overpromessed and overhyped it. Planets are gonna be tiny instances, not fully open, otherwise they would have shown vehicles to travel on them.

I would love Starfield to be everything they promess but considering the history of Bethesda, you can't trust Todd lies again.

Every game that Bethesda releases is buggy as hell and worth waiting to buy. This will be no different.

It's free on GamePass so I'll be playing it on PC on day one. I have high hopes but realistic expectations (this is Bethesda so it'll likely be broken af). I really WANT it to be good though!

I just hope this game isn't going to need like 200gb of drive space.

125

Has there been any mention of mod support?

Yes. Not so much the extend of it. I still want to know whether modders can create entire planets & star systems or not.

Considering the bugs they didn't hide in showcases and footage, I've gotta agree.

There's footage of the player character's head clipping through their spaceship when they exit it. The planetoid they showed for the lighting had the lighting at the incorrect angle for the arch. On the storepage is a character's hand clipping through their gun. No doubt their entire team of workers spotted these flaws, but still waved it through.

This is either two things; This is the most jank, broken game ever... It's actually really well-made, and they're incredibly confident with the gameplay that such minor errors are minuscule compared to the fun factor.

Idk, as a console user I'm pretty used to 30 fps myself. I actually get motion sickness pretty easily at higher fps. It's why I can't stand soap operas or TVs that run at 60 fps (or higher)
Oh yeah, no pre-orders. Fuck that noise
I mean, there's two sides to this coin. On one side, a company needs to hype their product up in order to get customers on the bandwagon so they'll buy the game. On the other side, developers are nerdy and can be proud of something they've made. That genuine pride can bleed over and seem authentic to the customer, which again might more consider to pick the game up. Either way, this is what companies do lol. Also I don't think they're random, what the devs talked about in the 45 min Deep Dive were probably aspects of the game that they worked on. You can't interviewevery developer on a game and cover all the bases: that Deep Dive might end up being like 3 hours or more.
Has jank? Do you mean junk? Or is jank? I mean, some gamers appreciate that they can break the engine and make meme content. To them, that is fun. I imagine that you find other ways of playing games fun, and I'm sure you'll be able to have your uber serious playthroughs yourself. There's choice there, which is good.

The bugs are features :)