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Starfield design director calls out unfair game criticism: 'Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is'

https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-design-director-calls-out-unfair-game-criticism-dont-fool-yourself-into-thinking-you-know-why-it-is-the-way-it-is/

Emil Pagliarulo says an awful lot of outspoken critics are "disconnected" from the realities of game development.

36 comments

FMT99

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Am I so out of touch...?

No, it's the players that are wrong.

HorreC

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Its almost like, you had a perfectly good place to openly say why it is the way it is. And instead you decided to just be like you know not the way of wizards.

bl4ckblooc

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At this point I don’t want to play Starfield because I don’t want to support all of these shit asses.

BruceTwarzen

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From all i saw about the game, i don't think i would play it for free. The loading screens are outrageous and the UI is absolute garbage and even that has loading screens. With all the time you spend in your menues for these games, noooo thank you.

Illuminostro

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Don't take a condescending tone when your inferior product is criticized.

Ashyr

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Their working culture must be incredibly toxic to be responding like this to valid criticism.

It really explains the state of the game.

Rottcodd

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This is the same company that took a weird joke character from Morrowind - M'aiq the Liar - and added him into Oblivion solely so that he could deliver a bunch of lines that were all just thinly veiled dismissals of criticisms that were made during development and/or insults leveled at the people who made them.

This is nothing new for them.

(edit to fix annoying typo)

andrew_bidlaw

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I don't know how I missed that. His lines on his UESP page are literally just that.

stardust

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Yeah, gives the sense that open discussion amongst employees was heavily discouraged, and it was being led by a few people absolutely fixated on making their vision come true and making people afraid to question them even if they thought it was bad.

qwertyWarlord

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LOL, yup keep bashing the customers. Bethesda are sprinting to their grave. Whole lot of trust has been flying out the window since 76 dropped and it doesn't seem to be slowing

RedditRefugeeTom

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Sprinting to their grave? They could release elder scrolls 6 now in its current state and people would say "it's a Bethesda game, there of course are bugs!" And move on with their day. Meanwhile Bethesda rakes in millions off a broken and incomplete game.

Fades

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They treat their users like children yet those same children are the ones finishing the broken games they shit out

delitomatoes

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Is it the Creation engine?

"No, you don't understand, game dev is hard"

Is it the Creation engine?

"Is not that simple! There are complexities abound!"

Is it the Creation engine?

"Yes..."

gamermanh

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And that Emil doesn't use design documents

So Bethesda is trying to make sprawling RPGs without a central documentation system to help track it all

Which is likely why their games now feel so fucking disconnected compared to their old games

Poggervania

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Doesn’t matter why a design is a certain way - if it’s shit, it’s shit.

Knowing why something is shit doesn’t make it not shit all of the sudden. I could tell you that Devil May Cry 2 was literally a single animation before they released it 4 months later, but it doesn’t make DMC2 a better game.

donuts

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Don't fool yourself into thinking that even a single player cares why it is the way it is.

russjr08

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So... then what is the real reason? You can't go screaming "You don't understand why it is like this!" without offering an explanation, and then wonder why people are listening to only the offered up reasons where they can get it (which generally is their own experience).

ramirezmike

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he does kinda say why. Games are difficult to make already and there are a lot of concessions that get made due to time constraints or business choices that are out of the hands of the developers.

guacupado

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Maybe they need to stop announcing shit half a decade before it comes out so they don't need to time crunch for expectations.

Kraivo

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Technically you can

Also, giving people the key to understanding underlying things usually makes people don't enjoy the scheme. For example, i can't play most of Blizzard games cus i know, their scheme is "if players suffers enough, he will be happier to get something, so grind justified"

And to add cherry on top, he might be under some sort of NDA still

russjr08

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Sure, but I'd argue (and perhaps this is just me) in both cases where you either can't say anything or the reasoning is awful, that it's just better to stay silent than to come out with:

"But don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is (unless it's somehow documented and verified), or how it got to be that way (good or bad)"

Now of course, there is some merit to what the rest of his quote says, but people are way more likely to pickup the harsher aspects of what you say (such as what has happened here), and in general this tone tends to go over like a lead balloon.

I've not played Starfield, aside from for 45 minutes because I had the chance to via game pass, so I don't know what to think about the game. I agree that you shouldn't go and spew vitriol at the individual developers making the games (management however... I'll leave that to each person's choice...) because there is a difference between saying a game is horrible, versus saying that a whole team is horrible. But the way this was approached somewhat comes across as "Don't you dare " which I've never liked, and is only likely to make the situation worse.

fsxylo

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Because you've been reskinning Morrowind for 20 years? A game that you can probably ai generate at this point?

RandomStickman

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Someone just watched that Nakeyjakey video lol

qdJzXuisAndVQb2

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I haven't seen any other videos on the subject, but his seemed to really skewer the game. I won't even buy it on sale for that shitty experience of loading screens, fast travel and running across deserted planetscapes.

GentlemanLoser

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Can you say Fast Travel Loading Screen?

2deck

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Most people don't get it.

With the right perspective you can note the sleek curves and suble divets. The way it flows and flops. It becomes possible to appreciate the subtle aromas of digested tendies and ketchup. Then you realise it's a part of you.. you are a part of the poo and the poo is a part of you.

That's how you enjoy that thing you don't understand silly billy

Gomiyboy

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This is a game I'll happily avoid. I had my last taste of the tired Bethesda formula with Fallout 4.

All subsequent releases since then have demonstrated to me they prefer to trudge in the same lane they established almost twenty years ago.

Elderos

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You would think all those AAA devs would know by now that voicing that kind of stuff publicly is shit PR. Strangely enough sometime the indies appear to be the professional one.

That being said, I read the 5 Tweets, which I doubt many here did, and it is really not that bad. It is probably in response to some reviewers calling the game thrash with made-up fanfiction how game development goes. I think it is the later he has an issue with. Not that some players dislike the game.

Calling out your customers is always a losing bet. But he's absolutely right in its rant. Anyone who worked professionally in a game studio understand that the very vast majority of gamers are clueless, and especially those who speak with authority on YouTube and big platforms. Listening to such bs takes and misinformation over time certainly has its toll. "Gamers" in general, or should I say vocal gamers, are a very annoying and whiny bunch to please. You can hate playing a game all you want, but some gamers take it too far by attacking the devs directly and making it personal on top of making up bullshit about the nature of the job. "Gamedev is hard" is a terrible response to tell your userbase, but if more people understood how fucking true it is maybe they'd have a bit more empathy and would realize how petty some of the complaints.are in the bigger scheme of things.

randomaside

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Agreed.

It must feel bad to put your heart and soul into something people genuinely dislike. It's evident that Game Dev is hard. Their failures are the example that proves the rule.

In the end though, if the quality of the product is objectively sub par then the criticism is well deserved and the sales numbers should reflect that. There is a narrative of poor quality and disappointment that's been talked about amongst their fanbase for a while and I think it's just been compounding ever since fallout76. Nakey Jakey just did an interesting video on it and I think this level of disappointment is what Bethesda's strongest supporters are feeling right now.

Link to video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS2emKDlGmE

Donebrach

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On the way to work this morning and thought “I’d like to replay fallout 4” and I think now it was because after playing Starfield for 120, bg3 for 140, returning to cyberpunk for now a total of 400 that… uh.. I’d like to relive an at-the-time okay Bethesda game?

I enjoyed Starfield at times but man, it was certainly underwhelming. I was not necessarily disappointed because I was not expecting much from it, but it really did not surprise at any turn.

Wish they had just done a huge, bespoke solar system and not “an entire galaxy” of 5 outposts featuring literally identical dead npcs and flavor text. Kinda hard to feel the tragedy of a failed farm outpost when you already experienced the exact same failed farm outpost (down to the names of the people writing the logs) two planets over. (Man you get around, Dr. Nadia!)

Tavarin

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Well you did play it for 120 hours so it couldn't have been that bad. I did enjoy the game as well, though as a 7/10 and not without its issues.

Wish they had just done a huge, bespoke solar system

I fully agree with this, the best parts of the game for me were the built up and designed cities.

Redredme

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Well, it's especially jarring if you've played a lot of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk does away with loading screens. Cyberpunk discussions with npcs are flowing directly from the gameplay. You're talking.

Starfield? Starfield struggles with everything. Emtpy cities with only a few npcs walking around. Enter a building: loading screen. No cars or other vehicles. Flying your ship feels... Weird. Enter your ship? Loading screen/fade to black. Enter the pilot seat? Fade to black and loading animation. Boring fetch quests. Talk with an npc? The game stops and puts the npc in your face. Fast travel here, fast travel there.

It was acceptable a decade ago. But now? I barely made it 20 hours in. I know i only scratched the surface but Cyperpunk, for all its flaws (and there arent many left) was and still is a way better ARPG. I dislike rockstar games, I don't know why, but gta4 and red dead2 are way better then this.

As an Elite dangerous refugee it's saddening that this game also doesnt live up to its promise. Because just like with elite dangerous, you feel that if they just did those few things different, if they just made some other design decisions it would have been one of the best games ever. But they didnt. And that grandness stays just out of reach. Only a promise of what could have been.

guacupado

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'Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is'

Oh don't worry, I'm not pretending to understand why the hype failed so hard.

puchaczyk

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Starfield is what happens when you make "no design doc" policy in all post-oblivion games. It might work in 2011, but with a bigger scope of development they were sure to fail.

Potatos_are_not_friends

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There's interviews where they shared their ambitious goals. But it wasn't fun. And Todd Howard chose to chop/neuter features for the sake of shipping.

xantoxis

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Okay, that's fair, I don't know why it is the way it is.

Now here's one for you: Don't fool yourself into thinking it's better than it is.

dan1101

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Most of the parts are great. They just don't all fit together and some are missing.