My current issues with the game:
Menu diving is definitely a pain, mostly the map. There's ways to mitigate it, but it's a small convergence of minor issues that make it feel like one larger one. So, the scope of the game is so large and missions are not categorized by planet. Transitioning between missions to check the map is long and the alternative is menu diving. Sometimes you go to a planet just to land, talk to someone, and leave. Now, that is on me if I choose not to stick around but I'm also so full of quests that I'm worried adding any more will leave me with more planets with objectives I can't find. (I do like the abundance of quests, I really wish they had given a planet or at least galaxy category for missions).
Also regarding menus, I just wish the hotkeys were consistent. Have the scanner out? No hotkeys will work. Hotkeyed into a menu? Have to press tab to back out and select a different one, can't press a different hotkey. Minor timewaste but it adds up and gets annoying.
Quest streamlining - only ran into it once but in short, I was captured at a low level and followed its questline and got stuck in an auto-save encounter where I had a -10 advantage in the dogfight. I tried about 30 times, gave up went back a save before that grav-jump and went on elsewhere. It would have been nice to have been given some more information along the way, say the rough estimate of the level I should be for the quest. However, that has actually only happened one time and every other quest has been fine in this regard, so I think I may have just been low level in a high level unavoidable encounter. Ah, this quest also put me into an NPC bug "The people of New Homestead need these supplies!" for a little while. Resolved upon completion, though. || Quickly while on the topic of quests, the colonists "place gas sensors" quest is semi-bugged as no waypoint appears. Lots of gas spews, no interactions (unless maybe I'm missing a perk point for it!) People did say that if you find the right gas spot an icon will appear, so MMV for this one.
A minor gripe, it's not really so much an issue as it seems to be an oversight. As I've mentioned, there's multiple ways to travel. You can fly, select a waypoint and travel to it. Small cutscene and you're there, no map. You can go into your map, select a plant and set a course - you will be orbiting the planet. Or you can select the planet and view it and select a settlement to land at - you will be outside your ship. However, you cannot fly to the planet, select the planet, then land. Selecting the planet has you bring up the planetary map, where you then select a settlement... This is the course of action that results in your first bullet-point of no sub-orbit flight. Because we cannot select a planet to land on directly, we must use the map to travel. Also because of that streamer we saw that you also can't fly to pluto to land on it because we can't do that with any planet.
I personally don't have an issue with that aspect of it, my gripe comes down to the flow of gameplay. Like the menu diving, inconsistent hotkeys, I'm just not sure why they added some time buffers and menu-reliant methods when they also have existing ways to do the same thing. It's one of those things where it seems like by trying to accommodate doing something any possible way they ended up nerfing each way of doing it? That said, my friend made a good point - would you rather spend time at the destination or getting there? Currently, the game is maybe 30% (quest dependent) getting there and 70% being there. Sometimes you go to a location via grav jump, hail and dock, do a couple things and leave. Sometimes you grav jump talk to someone and leave. No matter what, you are going somewhere, doing something, and then leaving. So are you going to be happier spending your time doing frivolous things to get there, or would you showing up and spending your time in the area?
So far, my complaints have all been related to the flow of the game. Most of my time is really spent engaging in the world, talking, collecting, it's genuinely fun. Then I get a quest and it asks me to go to some far away planet... well, do I have anything else left to do here? Do I leave and come back? If I leave I'm going to find something else and then I won't come back for some time. Then I start trying to reference the missions and the map and that is where
So far honestly my biggest actual bothers me issue has been the egregiously long animations for getting into and leaving the cockpit. Hold E during a dogfight? You're fucked. Accidentally forget to add something to cargo? Go make some tea, it'll be a while. I'm being a little facetious but seriously, a 5-7 second long stand/sit animation is just too much for something I'm doing constantly, especially if it's prone to happening on accident.
My second biggest issue that I think most people have been talking about is rooted in that quests don't have a view all on map/make all active/most sensibly, categorize quests by planet (or galaxy). Goddamn, I have spent a lot of time in Neon trying to figure out which quests if any are still available there, or searching for another quest that is somewhat nearby another. I'm trying to follow sensible trade routes and plan accordingly, but there's just so many to sift through and cross referencing them is a pain. That said, it seems like they have combated this by trying to push that that does not matter. If you are in the Sol system and need to go to Neon or further right, just plot a course or go directly to the planet and land on the waypoint. If you have no contraband, you land in the settlement outside your ship/in the city. There's no need to stay within Sol/near Alpha Centauri because as long as you're ship is within range, grav-jumping is as instantaneous as a loading screen.
That's about it, honestly. Carrying capacity has been generous, 140kg per follower and 2 being pushed on you right away. Ships with 1,000kg can be had easily. Storage is pretty freely given, 300kg at the lodge (which has all the crafting right there), default ship has ~600kg (450 cargo + 150 captain + ~150 random storage?). I've been trying to take it easy and not grab all the junk to exist but only from looting bodies and actual usable materials. I've got 4 ships and 100k credits and still more to sell. The game is genuinely lots of fun, very detailed with lots of interactions, it really does feel alive especially compared to 2077 which I enjoyed but saw it's shortcoming for.
That's how I feel for Starfield. I see some shortcomings (frankly, that will be fixed with mods probably. I forsee a lot of animation skip mods.) being an otherwise extensively large, and so far well crafted game with meaningful decisions for your character. Actions I've made have actually made a difference and affected me later. And while bugs are gonna vary for everyone, my experience so far has had very few bugs that actually matter. To be honest, even if every 2nd body was flopping around after death I wouldn't care? It literally does not matter? I really don't care that once in a while an NPC is facing a different direction while they talk to me. Intended? Probably not. People in the real world also don't always face you or even look at you while they talk, so I don't see the issue.
So, there you go. Now either I'm a shill whose been paid by Bethesda (I could really use it right about now), or a pirate whose been blinded by the shiny new so I must be missing all the terrible qualities of the game.
Or, could it just be that it happens to be a slightly more fleshed out Bethesda game. It has some fairly minor shortcomings, performance aside, but it's also a fun light RPG. (I really have to stress, I see lots of complaints about performance online but ultra+RT medium on my hardware has been stable and fine, and I love high refresh rates. I have 165hz for a reason.)
Anyway, sorry not sorry for the length. I'm just tired of seeing people enjoy things and getting called a shill for it. It's disingenuous considering there are actual issues with the game to complain about.
all the streamers and reviewers acts like the game is fine. I see streamers encounter serveral game breaking bugs and then instantly praise the game again.
Could it be that, like myself, these streamers have found that in their playtime these bugs are pretty minor compared to the rest of the game that's been fun and engaging? Two things can be true, you know. I can enjoy the game and say that it's strong and well developed while simultaneously saying that it has shortcomings regarding how they relied on the map for travel. But just because they relied on the map for galactic travel doesn't mean that my excursions on planets are any less fun, it just means that it's a little less fun to get there than it is to be there.
