Sorry, but the other methods are demonstrably better at it. We didn't arrive at them by accident. There are outliers like Civilization keeping people hooked for years; the people still playing Skullgirls all these years later sure aren't doing it for any type of reward system. But the fast track to keeping people playing your game is to use all the scummy bullshit.
I wonder why they haven’t tried the model airport books and comics use, though. We could do it with games at this point. Like, make a series of games that are low budget, relatively short, and easy to pump out very quickly, but with a distinct series identity and maybe a consistent writer/artist across games. Then make a lot of them and get people hooked on the series instead of on 1 mega game.
Even just text adventure style games, wireframe arcade style games, bullethells, shooters like Vampire Survivor & etc, visual novels, syuff like Undertale, whatever? I think it’s clear that a low budget or small team doesn’t equate to unpopularity these days, if the game is made with care and attention to detail.
We do have series now but they’re high budget and long and kind of also trying to be the 1 mega game at the same time.
There’s also a lot of options for reaching new/underserved audience. Like. Make a high quality horse game for once, please? And profit off a bazillion horse girls who’ve been waiting for just that for decades.
Or make games for other countries that don’t have a big video games market yet, maybe. Like sell a console real cheap, at a loss, and then sell games in an area where there’s less competition? Maybe.
I wonder why they haven’t tried the model airport books and comics use, though. We could do it with games at this point. Like, make a series of games that are low budget, relatively short, and easy to pump out very quickly, but with a distinct series identity and maybe a consistent writer/artist across games. Then make a lot of them and get people hooked on the series instead of on 1 mega game.
I think that's exactly what Fortnite and Destiny 2 do, even though I object to the way they do it for so many reasons.
Like, make a series of games that are low budget, relatively short, and easy to pump out very quickly, but with a distinct series identity and maybe a consistent writer/artist across games. Then make a lot of them and get people hooked on the series instead of on 1 mega game.
Urban Games currently does this with Transport Fever. They flat out said while hyping the release of Transport Fever 2 (which was their third transport tycoon style game) that their goal as a development studio is to make the best transportation tycoon game they can. So they intend to continuously iterate.
N3V Games, who developes the Trainz simulator game was literally formed to buy up the property and talent from its original developer Auran and continue the franchise
There’s a third example I was going to give but got distracted while writing this comment and forgot
One example might be Fnaf (before security breach or help wanted), since they are relatively simple, short games made by one guy, not on high budget. Most of them launched like 3-6 months after each other, keeping up interest in the series.
Something big aaa games also miss is the creativity, since a cool gimick can be implemented as a main mechanic in a 1-2 hour game, since it doesnt over stay its welcome.
So yeah, most games are getting too long for their own good (like ubi sandbox games), not to mention the ‘games as a service’ games.
a series of games that are low budget, relatively short, and easy to pump out very quickly, but with a distinct series identity and maybe a consistent writer/artist across games
As much as I prefer this model that actually isn’t what creates engagement and retains players over several games and years. They don’t do it because it’s fun to make predatory things. They do it because it makes them heaps of money. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it. That’s the sad truth here.
Re: hats and paint jobs…hats dominated TF2 for how long? There was a black market and widespread scamming for cosmetics, that’s how nuts it got.
Seriously. Why the hell is the guy’s face in there anyway? I would understand if it was Nvidia’s logo that was large as hell. I imagine it might be to tell his followers “it’s me” but whatever.
Unfortunately it has been proven that putting a stupid human face into the thumbnail makes your audience much bigger. It would be nice if YouTube had a “show stupid face” option.
I like that this exists but I don’t want to use it because i want to know the content creatos to avoid, thumbnails are part of the game, but putting your face on them feels like a cheap trick ( since it’s unecessary ), effective… yes… but cheap…
Because humans love faces. We love looking at them, we love seeing them. Our brains are wired to handle facial recognition very well and be drawn to faces.
In fact, the effect is so strong that we often see faces where none exist
People being drawn to faces has led to thumbnails with faces on getting far more attention. Tbh, if you were trying to make a YT channel your job, it’s very likely you’d start doing it too, you’d be actively sabotaging yourself for the sake of pride otherwise.
You’re saying it’s biological exploitation? So do you have a dog? Do you play fetch with it? Or is that biological exploitation? Is it biological exploitation for food companies to monopolize on our taste buds? Just curious where you are getting these ridiculous claims. You do know that you can mouse over a video to get a preview of the content, right? Look up the definition and purpose of a YouTube thumbnail. Tell me what you find.
Because its proven to generate more views, why do people criticize the guy for trying to make a living? Literally every other big youtuber does this… Its effective. I do not understand why people hate someone for complying to an industry norm. Do you also hate real estate agents for putting their smiling face on billboards? Lol.
Totally agree. The content may be good, but title and thumbnail are marketing only. A silly thumbnail doesn’t make the content worse, so nothing wrong in the creator trying to use it as a way to increase their reach
Jirard never seemed like the type of guy to pull something like this and I really want to see his response but having the money just sit there (and hopefully still there) for years is a really bad look for him. At the very least he was just clueless but that’s still damaging taking into account all the lies on the charity streams
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, but after listening to the call, basically he pass the blame on both because they found the issue, to the point of saying that they did it for the views…
After that I knew that something is off, then he replied with something like “what do you want me to do, give all the money away, that will only make me look bad if I do it right now”, but that was the goal of the donation.
I mean, I wouldn’t see an issue if he was giving money but he didn’t and he was claiming to donated to several associations, which didn’t get a single dime
Muta talks to him during his video, I think. Response is basically “I had no clue” mixed with some vague excuses, including some that clearly contradict what was said before.
And then does the “But I don’t know how to fix this, so if you have any idea…”, as if, you know, donating the fucking money is such a difficult thing to do. And like Muta says, they don’t even detail their operating expenses, so any accountant could have a field day with that.
The only AI function I could see myself using is one that would summarize 15 minute youtube videos into coherent readable text in blog format. That would be nice. Especially when they’re posted like this, just links without much context.
No profit in that, though, so doubt any corpos will do it.
But in theory it should not be hard to do, there has to be a way to extract YT’s subtitles by scraping the page in something like Selenium (might be some trouble if they are really generated at runtime or in batches rather than once per video at upload and sent from backend during beginning of playback and simply made invisible in the source), then simply run a summarize prompt on the text to a local Mistral or w/e and have a result. If using 'Open’AI’s API, could even have it be a Firefox extension with mobile support.
The video is about the controversy surrounding how the Linux Foundation spends its money.
The speaker, Brodie Robertson, argues that the Linux Foundation should spend more money on the Linux desktop and less on other projects, such as blockchain and machine learning. He points out that the Linux Foundation employs the vast majority of core kernel developers, but that only a small percentage of its funding goes to Linux kernel development.
Robertson acknowledges that the Linux Foundation is not obligated to listen to his criticism, as it is a member-driven organization. However, he believes that it is still important to have a conversation about how the Linux Foundation spends its money.
Here are the key points:
The Linux Foundation is the biggest employer of Linux kernel developers.
Only a small percentage of the Linux Foundation’s funding goes to Linux kernel development.
The Linux Foundation spends money on a variety of other projects, such as blockchain and machine learning.
Brodie Robertson believes that the Linux Foundation should spend more money on the Linux desktop.
The Linux Foundation is a member-driven organization and is not obligated to listen to Robertson’s criticism.
The video discusses criticism of the Linux Foundation and how it spends its funds. While the Linux Foundation is the largest employer of Linux kernel developers, only 2-3% of its budget goes towards that. The rest is spent on various other projects like blockchain, AI, and cloud computing. The video creator argues that the Linux Foundation should allocate more of its funding towards improving the Linux desktop ecosystem, which is underfunded compared to these other initiatives. However, the video acknowledges that the Linux Foundation is beholden to the interests of its corporate members, who likely prioritize the other areas the foundation supports. The video presents the creator’s perspective, while recognizing the Linux Foundation’s right to spend its money as it sees fit.
This may not work out the way I want it to, but I'm actually a little excited about these tech companies making a bunch of anti-consumer decisions all at once. So many mainstream users will be looking for alternatives, and it's going to provide a great opportunity for non-profit open source projects. It's already happening with the fediverse suddenly becoming a viable place for discussion in the last 1.5 years. After Windows Recall was announced, I've seen more people talking about switching to Linux than ever before. Part of me can't wait for unskippable Youtube ads.
We need Cory to coin a term for what comes after enshittification. Perhaps we can call it the Great Wipening, where we all stop paying to be treated like serfs and start taking back control of our content and data.
The whole point of this particular comment thread here is that we’re already starting to see what’s happening: people are taking back control. You’re here on Lemmy, proving that exact point.
I never said we needed Cory to tell us what comes next. Just come up with another colourfully descriptive term like he did with enshittification.
You sound like that insufferable ponytail from Good Will Hunting.
People often decry accelerationism, but the reality is that the slow-boiled frog is the one that sits and dies. Chipping away at freedoms, consumer protections, product benefits, etc is all less likely to spark backlash than when they drop sharply in a short time.
That doesn’t mean you should help to make things worse, but it does mean that you may want to reconsider constantly mitigating every bad thing that others are doing, rather than letting them shoot themselves in the foot. When people are being hurt, help them. When people are being inconvenienced, let them get angry.
This looks like a very classical and well-known case of executives copying each other.
That other company is doing layoffs and seems fine? Reports the line going up? Let’s do it, too!
The guys across the street are already implementing AI? Investors love it? Let do it, too! We may have taken a risk with blockchain, but this one is just sure to work better for us!
The big name is going for the money, predator-style, and they’re still afloat? Finally, we can cash out, too!
This is an underrepresented viewpoint. We are at the point of “find out,” which so many tech companies thought they could stay just to the other side of the line on. Thing is, you can only move the goalposts so often before they’re in someone’s yard, and they didn’t sign up for this shit.
It was OneDrive upgrade nagging that made me switch to Linux. Microsoft could have, you know, not done that and kept a user. They also could have not gone regressive with how the taskbar functions. Or any number of other things that were dismissive of users.
At a certain point, you’re sitting in ever warmer water in the pot, and it occurs that maybe you’re being turned into food. That’s when the Linux pots start looking appealing. This was a completely avoidable problem brought to you by greed.
Greed! Because we don’t think making a good product is what capitalism is about.
I love it but I definitely wouldn’t call it rock solid. I have occasional small bugs here and there and especially with the Plasma 6 switch I’ve had the whole desktop going down (and taking all programs with it). That has been fixed though.
I was not satisfied with Plasma because I would have different window styles etc. With Plasma 6 I removed all themes and all the shit and customized it with builtin features only. It looks so nice and clean and just works like a charm.
Encountering sleep/black screen bug is not freedom. The average linux user is shifting, its not longer being used only by teens/tech savvy. People want to get things done.
It’s so funny to be reminded of that period in the 90s where any first person game was described as a “DOOM clone”, because DOOM itself was the first FPS that hugely took off.
TL;DW: Mario blinks at a set interval even after level loads to prove legendary Japanese speedrunner of old, who even had a timing sequence named after him, of cheating by splicing. Even in the run that gave him his fame.
Quite interesting video showing different ways people can prove a run is spliced.
The interesting outcome of there being so many tiny inconsistencies in a game is that it takes a true expert of the game to effectively cheat. At which point, it gets even more sad when they do, since they clearly have the skill to actually compete.
Cheating of this sort is almost always about someone who is already very good at the game. But it's simply not enough. They want to be the greatest, or do the impossible. They want to be legends instead of just being really good. And usually the only way to do that is to cheat.
If it means that it’s talking about society, every story ever written is political in some way. But we all know in this context it means “stuff I don’t like”.
TBH that goes both ways too. How many people would be upvoting and praising this video if it was coming at the topic from the other direction politically? I would bet it would be a LOT of people here. I get frustrated at hearing everything called “woke” too, but if people are going to ask one “side” to check their biases, they should be able to do the same for themselves.
It does get a lot of shit and I agree Bethesda is lacking in some creativity departments… but I’d still rate it a solid 6.5-7
I put about 80 hours into it. Enjoyed some aspects, disliked others. It’s just HEAVILY mid in my opinion. Worth a playthrough if you like Bethesda rpgs
Thank you for being the voice of reason. Talk about beating a dead horse. If you listen to the internet drama you’d think Starfield is the worst game ever made.
6.5/7 is fine if you’re not paying $70 for the base game. It might be worth it now the costs have come down, but paying a premium price for a mid game justifies some of the shit people gave it.
That said, I played on Game Pass, big fan of the genre, and could only make it a few hours in. Just wasn’t for me. But then I really enjoyed The Outer Worlds and people shit on that too.
It’s really weird how many people stop “a few hours in”. Modern Bethesda games are notoriously slow-starts. A few hours in is still “training wheels” for the game.
I’m not saying you should go back to it, but how did you know it’s not for you that quickly?
As for Outer Worlds. I enjoyed it for what it was, but I’m of the fringe view that it doesn’t hold a candle to Starfield. It has more style, but less substance than Starfield IMO.
Nope, The Terminator came first… And I don’t think that’s THE first game, either.
I only knew this because I did some research out of confusion. See, when I grew up I had a game by a company called “Bethsoft”, and I vaguely remember it being a joust clone (though I could be confusing two things). I remembered it real well because I was 9 years old and their logo was a “tastefully” topless fairy. And you know what “tasteful” means to a 9 year old boy lol
Edit, looks like their very first game was Gridiron!
Right. Arena has a special place in my heart. Never got close to beating it, but played hundreds of hours anyway. I wasn’t very good at finishing games at that age lol.
Daggerfall was a dramatically better experience IMO. Never beat that one either, but I played it more than Arena. If I recall, that one was the one where just chilling out and questing could cause the main quest to timeout.
For me, it was a lot of small moments that added up quickly. (By a few hours, I gave it at least 10 or so). One big one was I’d chosen the talent where you get a house on a planet but with a mortgage. I thought this would be a cool way to give me an economic incentive to explore more etc.
I get to New Atlantis and follow the quest for this and I find out the ‘mortgage’ has no penalties, isn’t paid in installments, and can only be purchased in a lump-sum. So, it was a talent that gave me the ability to purchase a house and be able to essentially rent it on a per day basis until the full amount was paid. When I finally do get there the house is empty, and not all that fun to be in. No special quests etc tied to it.
Another moment that soured it for me, and this is a minor quibble but again they added up, was visiting The Eye for the first time. There was this big pile of trash in a corridor used as the block to the door to prevent further exploration. It just entirely took me out of my immersion in what should have been an epic moment. So much so I actually took a screenshot of it at the time.
A lot of folks are likely happy to look past those things but they all added up + reviews from folks further along in the story and gameplay giving a bad impression made me move onto something new. Super happy other folks were able to find enjoyment, just wasn’t for me.
I also didn’t resonate with any of the companions to a degree where I found them actively annoying to be around. I know some would say ‘just don’t loot’ but their constant calling out people who like to loot was annoying too.
Whereas with Outer Worlds I immediately loved Pravati (and most of the other companions too). Starfield I felt like I was talking to puppets only there because I was playing the game. Outer Worlds I felt a connection to their stories as much as my own.
That said, many systems in Outer Worlds were underdeveloped and parts of the game felt empty. It was a game of high highs but also low lows. It did make me excited for the sequel to build on that foundation though.
Genuinely curious, but what systems did you feel added more substance to Starfield? Dialogue choices and completing quests in various ways really made Outer Worlds shine for me, particularly in the DLCs.
When I finally do get there the house is empty, and not all that fun to be in. No special quests etc tied to it.
I can see the value in tying a few quests to it. So is your preference that they gutted the background system entirely? Other than the parents, there’s very little unique content tied to them. They’re just “flavor”.
was visiting The Eye for the first time. There was this big pile of trash in a corridor used as the block to the door to prevent further exploration
Honestly, this feels like DLC-bait to me. I can see why you’d want to “repair the eye to full working order” and maybe we will see that in the future. But for reference, there’s notes that imply the rest of the Eye is fully depressurized and needs to be repaired but time and money don’t allow for it.
reviews from folks further along in the story and gameplay giving a bad impression made me move onto something new
This is what I think is happening with most people. They see reviews and they sour of an otherwise great game. I saw this happen with the Wheel of Time show as well.
I also didn’t resonate with any of the companions to a degree where I found them actively annoying to be around. I know some would say ‘just don’t loot’ but their constant calling out people who like to loot was annoying too.
This is a common Bethesda thing. If you want to be as thief, the list of companions that are ok with you stealing from everybody is fairly slim.
but what systems did you feel added more substance to Starfield
For me… to start, I’m a tES lifer. Most of what I like is the things tES does consistently. Grand-Theft-Spaceship. Low consequences. Decente stories for each faction. A good main plotline. Neat mechanics to play with, a few more than you really need. I enjoyed making ships and bases, playing around with powers.
Wide-not-deep is the Bethesda manifesto, but it works for the right gamers.
I feel like that hasn’t been true since Oblivion. Skyrim has you getting dragon powers a few hours in. Fallout gives you a gun and you’re blasting stuff right off the bat.
It’s those earlier games that force you to slow down. Morrowind for example gives you cave outside the first town that will almost certainly kill you if you go in.
Pretty much. In Starfield, the game gives you a ship that can reach about 75% of the star systems, and you can literally just start finding/stealing ships to cross the entire galaxy at the 1hr mark. If you know where you’re going, Starfield gets you in the action blazingly fast. If you don’t, well, that’s why they all (newer ones) hold your hand in the main story.
I just have a hard time committing so much time for the chance for something to get good. Same for anything else. People keep telling me to watch one piece, sorry not going to invest time in something I am actively not enjoying until it gets good X hours in. That’s not getting good, it’s Stockholm syndrome.
I disagree. A lot of epic tales grab you in the opening. In fact that’s a bit of a cornerstone of writing, grab them early. If there’s nothing for me to like in the first two hours of something, why should I assume it’s going to get better?
I haven’t read those books, but is there really nothing interesting in them in the first few chapters? No breaks from the norm, nothing to grab you and keep you invested? Tbf epic fantasy, yeah, not my genre but it seems so foreign to me, having it be THAT slow of a burn.
The first book (about 900 pages if I recall) is largely an homage to Tolkien with the slow meandering journey punctuated only by a few action sequences. There’s a few incredible beats (surprise, Wheel of Time is my favorite literature and I’ve read the 14-book series 6-7 times), but the author quickly shows his notorious slow pacing. It is a true joke that he can spend an entire page explaining the braid in someone’s hair and exactly how they pull at it when they’re angry.
But a lot of epic fantasy is notoriously slow with world-building.
How does it compare to Outer Worlds? I found myself really bored in that game pretty often and I’m a huge Fallout fan so it surprised me how bland it all felt 90% of the time.
I beat Starfield the first time before the bad reviews started overwhelming. And I still don’t get it (except perhaps as hype). Bethesda games are far from perfect (people seem to forget the negativity around Skyrim being compared to Oblivion), but they scratch a particular itch that millions of gamers have and crave.
What terrifies me is that this whole “Hey look, we’re getting 2006 again” attitude is exactly what’s going to kill off the Bethesda “genre” the same way SquareEnix gutted the AAA Turn-Based RPG. Sure, it means we might get a black horse game out of left field (Persona 5, talking about you) but it’s a shame to see so much hate on the style of game that Bethesda is.
And we need to make no mistake. While some complaints have been valid, the biggest ones that started this snowball have been things like “I shoot guns around guards and nobody comments” or “I murder an entire town and then pay a small bounty and everyone’s fine with me again”.
I get the “huge procedural universe is soooo boring” complaint; I don’t agree with it because I loved Daggerfall and because Starfield has more hand-made content than Skyrim, but I can respect it. But that alone doesn’t justify all this “worst game ever” BS. It makes Starfield sound like it’s worse than initial-release NMS was (and I can say from experience, it’s not).
And for me, I just crossed hour 180 with Starfield, and have not been bored once. I don’t expect it to be everyone’s favorite game, but it’s certainly mine for 2023.
I put 150 hours into it and loved it. Bethesda is such a giant, and I guess this game had such hype that it completely distorted reality.
Funny thing is, I had no hype for the game. I didn’t think I’d even play it from the early previews and announcements.
But after it came out and people figured out it followed the Bethesda formula and was “Fallout in space”, then I got interested. It had been long enough that I’d played a Bethesda game that it sounded like fun, and it was.
There are a lot of things I’d like to change and refine with Starfield. But it’s still a good game.
That’s the thing though- I’ve already played fallout. I’ve already played Skyrim. There are mods and expansion packs that give me more of the same already.
What I expected wasn’t fallout in space, I expected innovation and iteration on a genre, not the exact same things in a new setting.
What I expected wasn’t fallout in space, I expected innovation and iteration on a genre
This is what’s weird to me. Bethesda basically promised “Skyrim in Space”, and that’s what most of the hype started to come from. And they genuinely gave us exactly that.
People who don’t like Skyrim won’t like Starfield. People who wanted something more “innovative” than just Skyrim in Space with Better Graphics were creating their own sort of fabricated hype.
Personally, I think it feels like a bit of a mix of Oblivion and Fallout 3, but with Skyrim-like updated graphics and such. But I kinda like that anyway.
But didn’t give us Skyrim in Space that’s the whole point
In Skyrim you start a quest and then you start traveling to the quest location. A dragon swoops in and you fight a dragon. A spooky cave is along the way and you check it out. An hour has passed and you’re not even at the quest location yet. In Starfield you start a quest, you fast travel to your ship, then you fast travel to the planet the quest is on, you land on the quest location, you walk to the actual and 10 minutes later the quest is done. Nothing interesting happened between the start of the quest and the end of the quest, except maybe for the quest itself.
The adventure was the point in Skyrim. There is no adventure in Starfield because “space is empty, and boring” - Todd Howard.
It’s kinda hard to respond to you with this when everyone else is arguing “they gave us Skyrim in space instead of innovating at all in the last 20 years”. In fact, just looked back and that’s the exact family of criticism I was responding to.
There is no adventure in Starfield because “space is empty, and boring” - Todd Howard.
Space is empty and boring but still has more hand-crafted (non-procedural) content than the entirety of Skyrim. New Atlantis is arguably as big as the 3 largest Skyrim cities combined. The main quest+faction dungeons are as big as the equivalents in Skyrim. The New London battlefield (for example) is pretty gorgeous and fairly massive.
There’s a genuine argument that maybe we don’t have enough "sprinkled in random places "quest starts that aren’t radiant, considering it’s only 50% more than Skyrim has but an dramatically larger universe. More quests that start like Mantis could go a long way, where you’re nudged towards the quest regardless of proximity. BUT, saying “there is no adventure in Starfield” seems somewhat off to the actual facts of the game… that there’s 50% more adventure in Starfield than Skyrim, but the map is 1000x larger.
Same here. I actually expected to be disappointed from hearing the early complaints. I got an xbox subscription because there were a bunch of games I wanted to play, so I wouldn’t feel bad if Starfield sucked.
The thing is that for a lot of Bethesda fans the game fully missed the mark that scratches the players itch. If there’s one thing people unanimously agree Bethesda games are great at it’s creating a world that’s interesting to explore. Starfield is by far the least interesting Bethesda game to explore, because there’s nothing interesting to catch your attention?
Jake brings it up perfectly. In Skyrim you start a quest and then you start traveling to the quest location. A dragon swoops in and you fight a dragon. A spooky cave is along the way and you check it out. An hour has passed and you’re not even at the quest location yet. In Starfield you start a quest, you fast travel to your ship, then you fast travel to the planet the quest is on, you land on the quest location, you walk to the actual and 10 minutes later the quest is done. Nothing interesting happened between the start of the quest and the end of the quest, except maybe for the quest itself.
In Skyrim a quest is an opportunity to explore, in Starfield a quest is a check on a checklist. I don’t think Bethesda has necessarily lost its magic but I do think Starfield is missing the Bethesda magic.
The whole situation is blown out of proportion as is tradition in the modern world everybody can agree with that. But the complain is warranted in my opinion. What you might describe as a “genre”(it’s a style) can also simply be arguments against a lazy studio that doesn’t really progress in a meaningful way. Most of the issues people have with Starfield are the same they were having with almost all the games Bethesda makes. They simply ignore criticism about design. Of course it sells so they have an argument for continuing but that attitude made them stagnate as a studio. They never improved dialog choices. They never improved performance and optimization. They never improved npc AI. They never improved on UI design… They’re just painting by the same numbers every time just with the latest new tech in paint. So while the core is kinda dumb fun most of us like, it’s getting old now and we have every right to hold that against them.
We also cannot ignore all of the other studios making games in the same genre. CDprojeckt released Witcher 2 and 3 which are great example of progress and Cyberpunk which had a rocky start but was still miles in front of anything Bethesda story and role-playing wise. Obsidian themselves made a better Starfield since space exploration is a letdown in both. We just got Baldur’s gate but Larian made both Original Sins that were already chock full of what makes BG so great. Add to that Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Dark Arisen, Breath of the Wild, ALL the Souls games except for Demon. All of that in between Skyrims and Starfields releases. That’s a lot of competition, the genre changed and matured just like shooters did and so many other genres since. You just can’t slap a new coat of paint and then act offended by the criticism. Bethesda has shown many times now that they either ignore or simply don’t understand why they are getting negative feedback. Instead they rely on brand name, overpromise/lie, meme about their weaknesses (which is why I think they are lazy, they know) and then deflect criticism or blame players for being too picky.
That being said I also have over 100 hours in Starfield and I’m not saying it’s a guilty pleasure. It is fun to roam around being a half god everybody fears or love and everything being entirely without meaningful consequences. But I can’t ignore the shortcomings. And when I do so I keep remembering I’ve had the same for a decade.
Edit: I also don’t think the game is a 1/10 or whatever. I’d say it’s a 6 or so.
I think we can agree on some things, but I have no choice but to object to “genre = lazy”. There is a massive demand for a very specific set of gaming characteristics. Not only is it a silly move not to “scratch that itch”, but it’s a disservice to the fans of that genre to insist that there’s something inherently wrong to provide the exact itch in question.
I like obscure music from a dying genre that never really had a lot of legs. I just got introduced to a band called October Noir, and they’re blowing my mind. You could call them a cheap knock-off, a lazy attempt to get one last career out of the dead Gothic Metal genre. But as someone who has never had access to as many Gothic Metal albums as the mainstream gets access to Boy Bands, fuck that.
Bethesda addicts would consume 4 “Skyrim-Style games” a year, and have as much patience with them as hardcore gamers can be toward cheap soulsborne knockoffs. And I don’t think it’s an insult to the fan OR the companies making such a game.
Hey it’s totally fine if those games are enough then, more power to you. I still think you’d enjoy it even more if they did try a bit harder. And I’m not saying genre=lazy, I’m saying there is no such genre as a “betheda game”. The lazyness is in the repetition and lack of meaningful gameplay improvement over the years.
I still think you’d enjoy it even more if they did try a bit harder.
I think that’s true of any game except when it isn’t. Half (or more) of the complaints to me about this game in threads of this post have been about situations where they DID try harder.
Take the NG+. Not only is this the first time they went through the effort to add that, but they arguably did it because it was one of the most requested feature for Bethesda games of all time. Now everyone hates it because “it doesn’t work for me with how deep I go into a playthrough building my base”. Had they “tried less hard” and either not given us NG+ or not given us a base-builder, people would be happier. A Bethesda game doesn’t NEED NG+ OR base-builders, after all.
Also take “how vast and boring space is”. They explicitly took the biggest hand-crafted world they’ve ever made, and the most hand-crafted quests they’ve ever made, and put it on top of a Daggerfall-tier progressive wonderland. All of these things are examples of them trying really flaming hard, to me.
What it really seems to me is that they gave us the kitchen sink with everything everyone wanted, AND Polished it certified less-buggy… and most complaints from people are that they really wanted a game that held your hand a bit more, only had the planets that were hand-crafted (can’t ask for more than the ones they gave, since their hand-crafted mapsize is massive), and didn’t include the heavily-requested features. Oh, and a more realistic physics engine for some reason I still don’t quite get.
Basically, the complaints were “this game isn’t an Outer Worlds remake and that’s what I was hoping for”. As I see it, many of the complaints about Starfield were them doing the opposite of the complaints people had about Outer Worlds in the first place. Do you remember that awkward alien planet in OW that’s only about 500 meters square with invisible walls?
EDIT: To be clear, if someone likes Outer Worlds more, that’s great for them. For me, the only complaints I have are silly ones about the lack of full-lego-power of the ship builder. I’d have preferred a less friendly ship-builder that lets me make the ship happen more like outposts do. Custom doors would be so much better.
Stop using “it’s a bethesda game” as an argument. It’s weak and biased. It also deflects the fact that Bethesda games are actually marketed as RPG’s so they have to be compared to what available from other studios when talking flaws and features. You might think it’s enough but it’s not a valid argument. Bad AI and meaningless quests are not stylistic choices, they’re weaknesses. Also you have to address the criticism instead of pointing out other aspects of the game. Trying harder might not have been specific enough but what I meant is they don’t seem to work on the major issues they get criticised for over and over again. And by “they” I also don’t mean the individual devs but the company as a Whole. The presence of NG+ does nothing to improve on the abysmal npc AI or astonishing amount of loading screens and fast travelling.
In all honesty, I’ve never heard or read about the issues you are talking about. Even when googling about the NG+ addition it just talks about Starfield, post-release anwyay. And the complains were not “basically not an Outer Worlds sequel”. It was a let down that it isn’t closer, but the complains are about the lack of meat on Starfields large, dry bones. Outer Worlds is just used often as comparison because of the whole Obsidian/Bethesda past collab that make them very similar at their core especially since both are space themed. Nobody not fanboying was actually expecting Outer Worlds 2. The more optimistic were hoping some step forward but unfortunately, the pessimists were right.
That brings to your next point: bigger does not equal better. Bigger is actually a trap. The bigger the map, the harder it is to populate and bring to life in a meaningful way and Bethesda sucks at this. Here it’s once again just large inaccessible buildings nobody lives in and NPC’s just going nowhere 24/7. New Atlantis is the best example of a “big” map that feels completely dead. Nothing happens anywhere in any city that is not scripted anyway. Everybody is patiently waiting the player crosses the trigger that pushes “play” on the tape. I’d be way more excited if Betheda announced a game that brought back the scale to something like Fallout 3.
And you can’t be honestly saying it was polished and optimized. Todd Howard himself has been consistently caught saying it was optimized in interviews post release when the game still didn’t work properly on XBOX. He also blamed the gamers for poor hardware and told them they’d need to upgrade. This is bullshit, they simply didn’t take enough time, they rushed the release. They also repeatedly said they know the modders will fix for free what their billion dollars microsoft backed studio can’t be bothered with. And nobody is asking for more hand holding. It’s actually a common complain on many AAA rpgs and openworld games that everything is a freaking waypoint on your map and you end up looking at your compass more than the scenery. Starfield is no different here, it’s worse since you can rarely reach any waypoint without multiple loading screens and fast travels.
So yeah, I still believe if they listened and tried harder in bettering themselves, you would still get your “bethesda game” experience but better. Their games feel designed by a consulting firm that did a market evaluation and chose the easily added features instead of the core rebuild of their engine and expansion of the writing team. Shiny graphics and large maps are vague enough to hype up the people to pre-order while not actually having to improve gameplay experience, character building and meaningful world events which are hard to showcase pre-release, not to mention to actually do.
Alright. It’s fun to me and had they done what everyone else is asking for I wouldn’t have bought the game. And I know of thousands upon thousands fo people who feel the same way. How’s that for an argument? Also bad?
It’s weak and biased
Says someone who is not lacking bias. And who absolutely doesn’t want to have a civil conversation because opening that way is just going to get your interlocutor’s back up.
It also deflects the fact that Bethesda games are actually marketed as RPG’s so they have to be compared to what available from other studios when talking flaws and features
This is just a definition fallacy in action. RPGs are a massive genre with massive walls between the subdomains. Nobody ever expects a Bethesda game to compare with Final Fantasy, or Final Fantasy to compare to Baldur’s Gate. Or Baldur’s Gate to compare to Persona. Or any of those to my dusty copy of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.
I am a huge fan of Gothic Metal, which technically falls under “Rock and Roll”. But nobody compares the Beatles to Cradle of Filth.
Bad AI and meaningless quests are not stylistic choices, they’re weaknesses
I never said Starfield has bad AI or meaningless quests. Therefore, I don’t have to defend Bad AI or meaningless quests.
…I’m actually stopping here. I’m out of time, and everyone’s hatred for Starfield is just becoming a toxic waste of my chill. It’s unfortunate that in the entertainment community, some people just have to hate on things, and the more their interlocutor enjoys them, the more emotional they become. Like if Starfield is not an objectively horrible game and every fan of it is not just stupid and wrong, there’s something actually wrong in the universe. I spent three hours late night on my 3rd playthrough of Starfield, and I’ve been waiting all day to play three hours tonight and see if I can explore a specific quest chain I haven’t done yet I heard is fucking phenomenal. And that’s a LOT more fun than continuing to argue about it.
Todd? Is that you? And I know you will read this, it’s just human nature.
Yes it’s a bad argument. It doesn’t answer anything. You don’t know thousands upon thousands of people not even mentionning gamers that you talked to that actually played the game and have nothing but good things to say about it. It’s just unproven, unrelated statements. It would still be a bethesda game with all the things I’ve mentionned completely fixed. You just got caught by promises and brand recognition.
I myself said it’s a 6. There’s no hatred i just don’t think it’s the product of a great studio growing to be their best as I’ve thoroughly explained three times now. You just respond pointless straw man arguments when we bring forward valid criticism. You have to defend your points also, and they have to address the points others make. That’s how debating work. You can’t just say “but I like it” and be taken seriously.
You also don’t seem to understand bias. I thought about things I didn’t like and why. Contrary to you I explained with multiple examples why I came up with my opinion of Starfield but you just answer “It’s a bethesda game”. How is that a proper answer? And don’t go with whataboutisms about how the map size is big though, Tell my why the AI got better. Tell me why the quests and choices are good and deep and why the 230000 voice lines make the game better. You go, that’s how you debate. But no you only go back to “but I love it an millions do” on a post about a video (out of dozens) deep diving into the flaw of the game and studio. Tell me why my arguments are bad and why your NG+or whatever they worked so flaming hard on is correcting them.
Also don’t pretend I’m not civil because you disagree and bring forward evidence of your claims. Address the criticism instead of hiding behind your fandom. Don’t use straw man examples like the Beatles vs Cradle or NG+ addition bullshit unrelated arguments. It’s such a bad faith argument you cannot be really believing it’s in your favour. You are free to love it but this was a post about the flaws of Starfield and Bethesda as a whole and, most importantly, why. If you cannot bring anything more convincing than “it’s a bethesda game what did you expect” then you are actually lying to yourself and you know what we are talking about. You just can’t admit it to yourself, because you have to be Todd Howard himself or this doesn’t make any sense.
In that way games are very similar to musical instruments like Fender and Gibson. Both have been selling the same thing for decades, their new stuff is pretty much just a shiny new version and the older the better.
i just don’t get the appeal of the game at all. you load in, walk for a few minutes, talk to generic npcs to get generic quests, fast travel, walk for several minutes, shoot your way through unthinking npcs, scan some planets, etc.
bethesdas combat and writing has been lackluster for quite some time, but before they had the excuse of having interesting worlds to explore. here that is not the case. there’s like 3 or 4 copy pasted dungeons on most planets, and the rest is completely barren. i just don’t really see the joy in the game, it all feels so monotonous.
The copy/paste aspect of it is what really got me, and made me want to stop playing.
I’m okay with procedural generation, and there’s a lot of games that handle that sort of thing well. I never feel like exploration is a waste of time in Minecraft, for example, because there are always unique sorts of quirks about how the world is assembled that can still surprise you even if you’ve played for a while.
Starfield was fun for me early on. I was enjoying some of the sidequests and taking some time to just wander aimlessly in different planets. I would actually wake up feeling excited to play more during that first week.
But there was one moment where I was exploring a new planet, and I came upon the exact copy of a dungeon that I had done once already. Exactly the same, down to the layout of the halls, the trip mines placed up near the entrance, the locations of the enemies, and so on. That’s when it felt like I was running out of things to do. The world is procedurally generated, but it’s procedurally generated in a bad way, where there’s really only a small handful of different “things” that can just be anywhere, and there’s nothing really different in the ways that you can interact with them.
Plus the comedy of being on a no-atmosphere planet and seeing some of the clutter on outdoor balconies be, like, open food and drink packages as if people are just casually snacking in the vacuum of space.
yeah i completely agree. it’s in the details. there are so many oversights and inconsistencies that the game feels soulless, like they didn’t have a central vision they were trying to create. it’s a lot of jumbled parts that oddly feel both repetitive and disjoint. lots of the quests feel the same, and the game just gets so predictable.
I was all ready to roll my eyes at yet another attempt to blame all the Firefox problems on one thing or another based on superficial and emotional considerations without any data or serious analysis, but it turns out it's just the same video from a few months ago being posted yet again.
Criticizing this video for emotional arguments doesn’t make sense. It lays down statistics, quotes privacy policies, and chips at the way Mozilla uses emotional arguments in its marketing. And I’ve seen many Firefox people simply argue “the CEO deserves to be paid well” and “Firefox is the last bastion of the open web” - arguments that I myself have at least semi agreed with, which means I might have proclivity to emotion myself.
So if there’s a problem… Can you cite specific examples in the video?
I criticized the video last time it turned up in my feed. I don't feel it's worth doing again. The former over-paid CEO has since departed from that post, FYI.
I dunno, it might've been on mastodon. It's not as if I said anything that's likely to change your mind if you think this video is interesting and insightful. I'm not going to watch it again, but I remember it well enough to say that the only real questions it raises are that of how it got so many views and why it is still doing the rounds so many months later. It misses the mark. Stop to consider it carefully and I've no doubt you'll find for yourself much better things to say about the real problems at Mozilla.
I have carefully considered the arguments. Perhaps I have even contributed to them indirectly. I find them to be incredibly legitimate and in dire need of Mozilla’s action.
Indeed my comment seems unworthy of as much attention as you've given it. But you obviously care a great deal about the subject, so I suppose you must've noticed that in general much of the rhetorical abuse directed at Mozilla is even more unfair. I suppose it's because people like to look for easy targets.
There are definitely bad actors who have “Mozilla must fall” ideology, like Brian Lunduke (who gets one hell of a shout-out in this video despite doing nothing but reposting already publicly accessible documents and speculating about them). Lunduke is clearly ideologically biased and doesn’t care about whether things are true or false as long as his statements back up his personal agenda.
But the flip side to this is the “Mozilla mustn’t fall” arguments that dismiss all criticism of Mozilla and insist that continued compromise (throwing money at every shiny new object, overpaying the CEO, cutting jobs, ignoring their officially stated principles) is necessary for Mozilla to survive, as if survival in itself is a valuable end goal.
And I don’t think it is. A Mozilla that abandons its founding principles would be about as bad as a Mozilla that has ceased to exist entirely. We aren’t there yet, but it’s a death by a thousand cuts.
My own explanation for why Firefox market share is down would primarily consist of two things: 1. Abuse by Google and Microsoft of their monopoly power in other markets to push their browsers, and 2. A long list of individually small product design decisions that slowly eroded its reputation over the years.
Google’s influence on all web browsers (including Firefox) would definitely remain a constant even if Mozilla wasn’t accepting money from them. Which is also why I have no problem with Mozilla accepting money from them. It’s not the first time a company in fear of becoming a monopoly just threw money at a competitor; Microsoft did it with Apple.
The whole FakeSpot thing to me reads like a company pursuing new things on multiple levels. Back in 2022, FakeSpot was trying to get into NFT verification, and they only added the “with AI” label onto their product recently (with no changes I could detect). And given Mozilla’s willingness to shift from random project to random project, I’m not excited about what this AI shift is going to do by early 2025.
Not to be too negative but begging for drivers to consider us human is so tiresome.
We already know how to nearly eliminate road death. Unbundling the modes (segregation) and treating cars as guests where that’s not possible. After that treat infractions by drivers seriously. If you can’t drive safely your license should be removed. No more arguing in court that you need to drive to get to work.
It also, I think, centres the ability of drivers to act independently of the visual design of the infrastructure and whilst, that is possible of course, research suggests driving behaviour is more strongly determined by design than conscious choice.
I know Milly Bitchell is a rotten person. I know he’s a liar. I know he manipulates people. I know he’s a cheater. I know he has those dead, fish eyes. But the thing that bugs me the most about this piece of shit is that he wears his tie outside of his vest.
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