Starfield, a game mainly about space travel/exploration, couldn't convince a chunk of its players to leave the surface …
Starfield, a game mainly about space travel/exploration, couldn't convince a chunk of its players to leave the surface of the tutorial planet.
Starfield has been out for long enough now that anyone interested in playing it likely already has. But just how many of the game's millions of players stopped playing before finishing the first mission?
Well, according to achievement stats from TrueAchievements, around 25%! The For All, Into the Starfield achievement is awarded the first time you go to space, which happens maybe 30 minutes into the game. After a brief tutorial and some combat, you meet one of the game's major NPCs, and he gives you his ship.
As soon as you leave the surface of the planet and take to space, the achievement should unlock. According to the numbers, however, 75% of players did that, which seems a little low considering how early into the game that happens, and how practically unavoidable the achievement is.
Achievement % stats are so comically skewed by various factors that they mean basically nothing. There's an achievement in Minecraft for literally just opening your inventory for the first time but only 60% of Xbox players have it.
That achievement is likely to gather more accurate statistics due to the problems you mention. The Amid Evil devs can now confidently say that 12.7% of players who own the game have never started it. Meaning they can subtract that number from other achievement percentages to get a better idea of how many people are progressing certain ways.
The same is likely true for Minecraft's inventory achievement, though that's slightly less useful, as some players may make it a little further without opening the inventory and then stop forever.
Leaving the first planet in Stafield takes a little more effort, but not much. It's safe to say that some of the 25% of players who haven't done it haven't ever opened the game. But that number will probably be close to 10%.
Starfield has been out for long enough now that anyone interested in playing it likely already has.
Not even close, especially not in the year that also brought us Baldur's Gate and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. How much free time does this writer think everyone has?
Yup, definitely interested in Starfield. But at the moment still enjoying Act I of BG3, Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.0 and DLC are right around the corner and after I've finished those Cityies: Skylines 2 will be available. So I'll probably have time for Starfield somewhere early 2024, depending on if my recurring Satisfactory itch hits before that. But by that time more official and unofficial bugfixes and QoL mods will be available, so I'm fine with waiting a bit longer to play. This year is just filled with too many goodies. 😁
I've played Starfield (did not purchase it on Steam...) and it's alright. I haven't finished it, and I won't be for a while. It's is missing so much QoL and so many thing will need the mod toolkit for modders to fix, which isn't available yet. It should not be purchased by anyone at the moment. You'll have a better time in several months, and it'll quite possibly be cheaper.
There's so much else to play. I'm wanting to get around to Armored Core 6 sometime, but Payday 3 is coming out, and Cities Skylines 2 and Counter Strike 2 (both CS2, and cities dropped it's ':' to add to the confusion) are coming soon. I may hop back into Cyberpunk if I get around to it, but it's on the lower end of the list. There's literally no reason for anyone to bother purchasing Starfield for a bit.
They were actually fairly accurate that it's their least buggy title yet. That's not to say there are none, but they are few and far between. The game just isn't that fun for now. Animations take too long (currently already mods to fix most of them), traveling is boring, outposts suck, and just so much QoL changes are needed. Bug fixing isn't really required from my experience. Plenty of other fixes are though.
Yeah this one is most definitely back burnered cause it didn’t launch with DLSS and Bethesda always has a million bugs. I’ll wait for the mods to fix everything and play the polished games first.
Has this writer never used Steam or is he just unaware how many people buy games they don’t actually play
Firstly: If you had ever used Steam, you'd know that Steam differentiates between "have game in the library" and "have previously played a game". A bought game that was never launched, doesn't show up in these stats.
Secondly: It's clear you did not bother to read the article. "The numbers take into account players on Xbox, as well as those playing the Game Pass/Windows Store version of the game on PC." The 25% number isn't even from Steam.
Dude, I put like 60 hours into Skyrim my first time before I thought "hey... where's my shout powers and all the dragons?" Because as soon as Hadvar said "we should split up to avoid suspicion" I unchecked the active quest, said "adios!" And vanished into the trees. I had to come back at like level 30 or something to do the entire MQ from Riverwood to the end.
That's just how a lot of people play these. I don't wanna follow their story; I wanna make my own.
Edit: Oh and this is all besides the fact that not only do mods disable achievements, so now do console commands in Starfield. I've had to no clip a few times to get unstuck while jumping around with low gravity and ending up places I shouldn't be, so there are probably some achievements I didn't get simply because that command likely disabled them (it just gives a generic warning that some commands will disable them, but not which ones).
I think that 25% would be comprised of people that bought the game and haven't had much time to play, or use console command right away and disable achievements. Speedrunners, modmakers, and general hackers would use console commands liberally as they should be the same as Fallout/Elder Scrolls games.
Yeah, for a Bethesda game, 25% of people using mods right out of the gate is frankly totally believable.
And while starfield isn't perfect, people not finishing the first mission would hardly be an indictment against the game itself, who judges if a game is worth playing in the first mission? Usually - and especially in games like this - the first mission has practically nothing to do with the standard gameplay
I don't have this game yet but I know out of the box modding any of the Fallout or Elder Scrolls games disables achievements (but you can get around this with other mods), so I assume it's the same here. Bethesda games being some of the most modded games of all time I wouldn't be surprised if even a lot of first time players were using one or two mods and having their achievements disabled.
People do play games offline. Personally, I don't care about achievements. They mean nothing to me, except knowing that the game developer is tracking my play through, which I hate.
People play offline and they also mod games (especially Bethesda games and especially this one). In order to get achievements in Starfield you either need to play (mostly) vanilla or install an extra mod to re-enable them. This is a dumb article and should be downvoted. There are many reasons why the claim is likely wrong.
If I use a sample size of me and use my library of a measurement, it's probably more than 25% of games I haven't even launched let alone completing the first mission.
For what it's worth, I am one of these people. I'd already watched a couple of streamers play random sidequests, but when I saw the early game I just couldn't stomach playing any further.
Given that they have you meet a cowboy at the end of that mission, it is kinda understandable. I wonder who thought that having a cowboy as a main character would be a good idea for people outside of the US.
Whats wrong with a space cowboy? His faction is often referred to as lawless and wild. They believe in a wild sort of freedom. Astronauts are kinda space cowboys anyway. Also space cowboys are not a new concept in media. What about a cowboy would make people not get the tutorial?
It certainly put me off. Personally, I hate it when sci-fi writers use worn-out stereotypes in futuristic settings. Like the 'Irish, but not Irish' episode of StarTrek TNG.
I'd already seen a couple of streamers play random side quests, and this intro just made me definitively realise that this was not the game for me.
Cowboys could easily appeal to people from Canada, Mexico, and Argentina as well. I've come across a disturbing number of British men who harbor secret fantasies of being wild west cowboys, so probably them too.
It’s a classic figure in western culture… and a fitting character given his story and the planet he’s from.
We’ve had plenty cowboys in movies, comic strips and I’m from europe… Not my favourite setting but it works…
They were absolutely trying to appeal to Americans by making a cowboy character. Americans go nuts for cowboys. Everyone is downright obsessed with them. You can't find a single home in the country without seeing cowboy memorabilia and they watch cowboy movies on the weekends, it's crazy
As an American... what the fuck are you talking about? I don't know anyone who watches cowboy movies or have cowboy stuff in their homes. That would be fucking weird.
I live in CA, literally entrenched in the history of "the old west" and I can honestly say not a single person I know has any cowboy memorabilia in their homes lol.
My dad had a little cast iron statue of a cowboy wrangling a bull on his desk at work growing up (a gift from a client) , but that is literally the only instance I can think of lol
And I also don't know a single person who regularly watches cowboy movies, I can't even remember the last time a cowboy movie was made in the US.. I think that remake with Chris Pratt?