https://wccftech.com/starfield-has-surpassed-12-million-players-goal-is-to-last-as-long-as-skyrim-says-spencer/
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed @ CCXP 2023 that Starfield has surpassed 12 million players. They want the game to last a long time
Yeah... With the trash reviews on steam, I was holding out on buying it but will probably just pass on it cause sounds interesting but looks boring. I give it 3-5 years tops before it's no longer played.
It's polarizing, a lot like many Bethesda games. My unpopular take is that I've been having an absolute blast with it and am on my third playthrough. It's the only game I've played for months and the only one I find myself wanting to play.
For me, what I love is that it's Skyrim in Space in so many ways. It's what I hoped/wanted for gameplay when I bought Outer Worlds. And Outer Worlds really disappointed me there.
Is it balanced? Hell, no. Personal and ship weapons are as much of a mess as I always felt weapons in Fallout 4's were. I have this badass heavy weapon that I have to fire on full auto for 30 seconds to kill a random enemy... Or I fire one shot from this other weapon. RPGs love to make automatic weapons do shit damage to keep them feeling balanced, and ultimately they often end up being a waste.
Ditto with the build system. The ship builder makes you dream of a badass build experience, but does admittedly fall short. But nobody else gives me that feeling the way Starfield does, so I find myself letting Good be enough for me when Perfect isn't available.
Again, I'm sure plenty of people are bored and hate it, but I consistently feel like Bethesda gave me exactly the game they promised me. And as much as I want more, it's still my favorite and most played game of 2023 by now.
Don’t bother till it’s on sale, by then the creation kit will have dropped and modders will be able to do Bethesda’s job for them for free.
It's on gamepass too, I have game pass but haven't played it. Watched a few streams, that was enough
Definitely worth playing it if you can play it "for free".
I've had nothing but fun from it. Yes, I'd probably have been willing to pay $60 for it, but IMO it's more fun played than watched.
You're gonna play it eventually because modders will do some really cool things with it.
In this respect it will be exactly like Skyrim. I held off it initially because the original release was ridiculous compared to Oblivion and Morrowind, but then the mod scene for it exploded and you could have your pick of changing anything that bugged you about the game.
Do they understand that skyrim only lasted so long because there were people who wanted to buy another game from them but couldnt
They don't care. If that means continually milking money without any additional effort, then that's all that matters. Only issue Todd has with Skyrim is that he had not "touch point" with all the users, as he said so himself in an interview. Translated, he sooo wishes they had a Skyrim as a service and some sort of micro-transactions built.
I didn’t even last a fuckin week… I tried putting off the final mission until I was just so bored with everything else and then I lost everything not knowing that was the way to do ng+. No shot im playing the same fucking missions again that soon, they were not that good to begin with tbh. At least with Skyrim I actually fucking cared about the plots and quests.
The only way this game could span years is if modders put in a lot of unpaid hard work. Shame on you Bethesda, how about YOU do the fucking work before you try to sell us on a shell of a game. Skyrim could and did do years without needing mods (tho the mods really made it shine), it’s a completely different story for sf
The only bright spot left is the creation kit coming in ‘24 and even then it’ll take time for good mods to come about
then I lost everything not knowing that was the way to do ng+.
Stop skipping dialog, it tells you that a few times. I prefer that to an immersion breaking popup or whatever.
Does that mean we have to wait 12 years for TES: VI while they milk this turd the whole time?
We will get TES: VI when Starfield can run on a toaster for the 20th anniversary edition.
I got the game for free when I purchased my video card. I got past the boring, 12 hour “intro.”
This game is just not doing it for me at all. Cities Skylines 2 got a bunch of negative reviews but I’ve played that significantly more than Starfield.
This is the first criticism of Starfield I 100% agree with. In line with other Bethesda games, the intro is a real sleeper.
I'd love a "Skip Intro" in the NG. Lucky we get to skip it in NG+ (minor spoiler I guess)
I want to know how many sales they got. I'm sure I count in those 12 million players because I downloaded it from Game Pass and played for about 40 hours before losing every ounce of interest
It's unlikely Bethesda is gonna replicate what CDPR has done with Cyberpunk and adress all the issues players have had with the game. If they claim support for years to come that would be the template. And just because 12 million people checked out the game, doesn't mean it has an active playerbase.
Because Starfield's problems don't have an easy fix. Cyberpunk had initial lack of optimization. Starfield lacks in writing and immersion, also some very basic areas like UI and loading-points. It's a different mess. I enjoyed both games and hope Microsoft keeps their word and invests in the continued improvement of Starfield. I'd love to come back when it's gotten better.
Im sure theyre banking on the modding community keeping Starfield on life support for a decade or more
The modding community won't be terribly motivated to build on top of their base game either, if the base game doesn't feel worth playing for long...
I feel like people with the ability to mod starfield would rather spend time modding skyrim
relatively little to no content
It has about as much handcrafted content as Skyrim if you count all settlements, crafted-quests, dungeons, etc. Just because it has a ton of procedural content with a ton more random missions than Skyrim doesn't mean it has less handcrafted.
I understand why some people say it feels like Starfield has little to no content because they swim (or fact travel) in an ocean of procedurally-generated stuff.
For me, each playthrough I'm discovering at least a handful of big new things I missed the previous playthrough.
To get to brass tacks, estimates have been showing Starfield has approximately 400-500 named quests. Skyrim vanilla has 274.
So if you think it won't last as long as Skyrim because you think nobody likes it, that's defensible from the Mixed reviews. But it's not due to lack of content but (arguably, because I like it) quality of content.
Some side quests in Starfield are longer than the main quests of other games.
For example, it took me the same amount of time to play through SF once as it took to play through The Witcher twice, including the DLCs.
"Little to no content" is an outright lie.
Long lasting content means fuck all if it's boring content. Not to mention you need gazillion loading screens which prolongs "play time".
Sure. But that's a different topic.
Quantitatively, Starfield simply has more hand-crafted content than Skyrim. More and bigger cities/settlements, hand-crafted dungeons, and handcrafted quests. In the map-size cases, it's only slightly more, but in terms of quests, Starfield has about as many hand-crafted quests as Skyrim and Fallout 4 combined.
Now, if you don't enjoy exploring in Starfield, you won't find a lot of those quests (same as Skyrim). Heck, if you don't enjoy the quests themselves at all, that's a thing too. There's a neat hand-crafted quest around every corner... if you're not so bored you just rush the main story. I for one really liked the Neon Street Gang quests and (haven't finished it yet) the Crucible quest chain. Both of them I completely missed in my first playthrough because the game didn't hold my hand to find them.
How does a loading screen "prolong" playtime when the alternative is going or flying everywhere in real time?
Game is short. People complain. Game is long. People complain. Game makes you stare at five hour space travel. People complain. Game gives you fast travel. People complain. Game takes you by the hand. People complain. Game forces exploration. People complain.
I'm tired.
Just in sheer quest counts, Starfield blows Skyrim out of the water.
Settlement counts as sizes? Ditto. There's only 4 Major Cities, but there are non-city settlements as big as Skyrim Cities.
And New Atlantis is Massive.
135 to 140 hours approximately. I didn't put a lot of effort into outposts, so it could've been more.
