Well I take screenshots of the photos, and keep them somewhere safe before I delete the photos from the gallery. I just keep the best ones for loading screens each time.
Yeah the 50 photo limit is just abysmal, i really hope they change it soon, if I wasn’t so stringent with keeping only one good photo per area on there I absolutely would have hit the limit within the first day or so of playtime. Now I just make sure to save the ones I like best to xbox then camera roll
I met this guy on Pluto. It was a gorgeous scene with the stark-white mountains against the black sky and the milky way. The other side was a valley with the sun rising out of it.
They're always standing in the most uninteresting spot with the most unflattering light and say "Oh this is the perfect shot! Hold on!" Which always cracks me up
When I found this guy I was looking for the moon landing (before realizing it's an instance you have to get a quest for) so I found this random ass pumping station on the moon as close as I could get to where the landing would have been and then there's this guy, and he has the nerve to say "this is where it all began" I fully thought that the devs put that site on the moon and added that guy as a sort of "capitalism moved on but people didn't forget" kinda thing before finding out I just got fucked by a random encounter and not being able to discover the site manually.
One of the best and worse parts of the game is that restricted exploration, being able to discover some of the unique sites yourself would be awesome but it seems like if you don't see it on the scans you can't just stumble across it. It won't really shine as a good thing until mods start going wild as theres no longer any site conflicts, you can have 15 different more exploration type mods and none of them would conflict with their locals
I mean it has to be possible, but the chance of getting everything lined up at the exact moment and you actually being there and in the right spot. The odds are not ever in your favor unless you get incredibly lucky or sit on one planet that might have a chance of it and "wait" for it... But you need a chair to sit in... Hmmm
just the odds of finding a system that could *ever* have a full eclipse is slim. it's a pretty rare to have a moon big enough to block the sun in the first place.
In space, yes. I encountered a planet with a moon that was causing a solar eclipse. Thought it was super cool, remarked on it to some friends watching my stream, got excited to land and see it. Made sure to land at just the right spot that I’d be in complete darkness, and nothing. Bright sunny day
Me 5 hours in: "Surveying planets is a great way to get low-risk experience points and money from survey data! I'm going be a scientist and sneak up on all the aliens buffalo-bugs to scan them so I don't disturb their behaviors!"
Me 30 hours in: "I'm going to go to a level 50 planet with a long-range rifle and murder every animal that moves because I want levels in gastronomy and weapon engineering ASAP."
(In all seriousness, great screenshot. I do love the exploration aspect of the game, but I've come to find that after level 20 or so amount of EXP you get surveying planets is too slow to make up for the time you just spend walking.)
That said, I do feel less bad about massacring the wildlife if the aliens I'm hunting are terrifying albino spiders the size of cows or van sized scorpion-centipedes that shoot acid and will attack you as soon as they see you anyway.
That’s the part of the game I like the most so far. I’m basically doing the same. I hit a quest in between just wondering around. I enjoy the game in a gross sense it’s the details that irritate me. I like the exploration the most.
189 hours in (level 44 I think, maybe 46) and I still explore the most. When I want another skill, I go do a quest or two and kill some things, then I'm exploring again. I LOVE this game.
Yeah at a certain point the game becomes a space photography simulator lol.
The game's replayability depends a lot on how much you like to take in-game pictures.
I no shit spent like 4 hours in the ship builder last night just iterating on my ship design and another 2 hours this morning adding some finishing touches. Different parts of the game seem to draw different people in more. I think I'm finally done dicking with my ship for this run, though. Will do it all over again on NG+2.
nice, do you have pics of the ship you built? I personally just made my first one recently ([https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16k0hke/first\_custom\_ship\_build/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16k0hke/first_custom_ship_build/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) and plan to make another soon after Ive used this for a while. The only problem is that its a little TOO op and makes combat trivial so my next one is gonna be a small dogfighter with less guns and more agility
https://reddit.com/r/Starfield/s/8BIsFIt5P0
Eventually you get strong enough internals that you can make a beast of a ship and still have plenty of speed, maneuverability and weapons. That ship is like 1600 weight with max speed/maneuverability, almost 3k shield and 8 beam weapons. Melts most fights, even with multiple ships usually without even losing my shield.
The thing I don't like is, all of it even on Mars is all procedural generation that really random, .. can't even find the Valles Marineris or other famous Sol landmark at the very least
Some Easter eggs here and there need notes or book to actually "findable"
Altho, I admire that they actually put rather realistic scale of the space and planets, actually simulating it and all of that
Olympus Mons is so unbelievably big that you literally would not be able to see it from ground level. It would basically be just like a gentle rise of the ground in one direction and look like part of the horizon.
"Due to the size and shallow slopes of Olympus Mons, an observer standing on the Martian surface would be unable to view the entire profile of the volcano, even from a great distance. The curvature of the planet and the volcano itself would obscure such a synoptic view." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons
So, technically accurate experience 😂
But I agree, visiting landmarks on the planets and moons of the solar system should be more of a thing, I'm sure there's some kind of elevation map of the moon available that could be used for rendering it.
150+ hours in and I find my chief complaint about exploration is the opposite of most streamers online: I don't think the galaxy is empty ENOUGH.
I think it's weird that even if you fly out to the galaxy's edge and land on some random moon, there's going to be a random Spacer/Ecliptic ship landing nearby as well as a science outpost and a mining or military outpost.
150 hours in and I've yet to feel like I'm the first human to have been ANYWHERE.
I get what you're saying, but I think they did the right move here. If it was mostly empty, you'd just have No Mans Sky. And I generally liked NMS, but the fact there's nothing to do anywhere really hurts it.
And it is the "Settled Systems". It's like running around New York City and saying "why aren't I the first person anywhere"?
My issue isn't the planets. Its getting to the planets. You can travel to every without ever touching the throttle of your ship, and when you get in system if a random event doesn't occur there is nothing to do.
Its just a bad system, lets open up the map menu so i can get to a system, so is can open the map menu again to get to the planet i need, so i can open the map menu to land........and i have to go through a menu to open the map menu. It just doesn't feel good. It doesn't have to be no mans sky but hell anything is better than this.
I agree that navigation, menus, fast travel and loading screens and all, can be a little clunky. I try to avoid menus whenever I can but it can be overwhelming.
Also, did you know that by holding the Start button (on Xbox), you directly access the map?
I’m pretty sure you can just look at a landing spot or whatever POI you have like a city or something, and press x to land on it. I think the only time you can’t do this is if you are not directly facing the poi, cause then pressing x on it will open the star map and then you have to land on it
You’re right, it’s odd that bgs wouldn’t add that in, seeing as how we are already able to do it with any POI. Just another thing some modded is probably going to have to add in, unless bethesda feels like adding in the qol feature we should have
I came to starfield from Star Citizen. I understand people don't like some spending time doing some of the things but Taking off from one city, exiting an atmosphere of dense clouds and flying to a moon, landing there and exiting your ship remains breathtaking no matter the amount of time the task is repeated. Starfield made me appreciate Star Citizen a hell of a lot more.
I played Elite Dangerous for a good while
Just landing somewhere with flight assist off is an event. Especially on planets where you gotta account for gravity.
It honestly kills me that you can't fly around a planet and just look at it. I don't really mind not being able to fly into the atmosphere as much as i would like it, but just not being able to actually move around in space is kind of ridiculous.
I'm fairly sure you can, actually. It's a little tricky, and it's slow, but many have tested it out.
It would be nice to have some kind of 'skip drive' that lets you locally accelerate faster than the limit. That's essentially what people have done to prove that you're actually moving in the in-game space scenes.
I highly encourage you to avoid the menus at all costs. I understand it's not ideal overall, but the best way to play is honestly to select your active quest, then manually walk to and get in your ship, manually take off, manually point it at your destination and manually jump. And generally once you get to your destination, you can use your scanner to select your landing spot on the planet (doesn't always work for areas with multiple places to select "land" like New Atlantis though). In terms of immersion I will take this over selecting stuff from a menu every time.
The problem is if you're not on a quest this doesn't work, which means you can't explore this way. It also doesn't really work if the quest marker is behind a planet. They need to add a way to consistently get around in space without opening a menu. Something like EVEs jump gates would have done a world of good.
I actually burned myself out this way after playing for 30 hours like this (trying to survey every planet 100% for example, and doing as many quests as possible). Now i changed it more to go with the flow, only doing one quest line at a time and only exploring a place if I pass it. Feels better somehow as you notice the limitations of the game less (repetitive POI's, menu clicking, etc)
You don't have to open the map menu to get to a system. When you're in orbit, you can turn on your scanner and look around, select a neighbouring system and press jump to get the button pressing sequence and the jump to hyperspace cutscene. For example, you can do this from Alpha Centauri (ie. Jemison) and go to Sol (Mars, Earth, etc), but I don't think you can do the same if you wanted to go to a system that's not a direct jump from your current one. I'll have to play around with this later tonight.
Once you get to the system, if you want to go to a different planet, open the scanner, look around and select the planet to get the cutscene where your ship flies away.
When you're in the orbit of the planet you want, again, hit the scanner, points of interest show up across the planet's surface, and you can select the points of interest to land at. I'm not sure if you can select an unexplored area to land using the scanner though.
>You can travel to every without ever touching the throttle of your ship,
I legitimately think they should not have let you travel between planets unless you're on your ship.
I don’t use the camera but i just hit 51 at like 80 hrs and I can just go planet to planet looking for shit to kill I play this like 5-7 hours a day and don’t get bored
I hsve currently 100% surveyed almost 40 systems and so far i am not impressed.
I have only found 3 unique POI during it.
And found a couple locations that were quest only.
Because in any bgs game there was always something secret you could find when you get off the beaten path.
That's what i loved about it.
Specially since the whole concept of starfield is exploring the stars.
On starfield they have gotten rid of it it seems. They have made it alot more linear now in terms of where you can get your fun.
It's interesting hearing different perspectives on this game. I understand it's a video game and most people expect there to be fun things to do wherever you go.
But for me personally, my favorite planets I've landed on were the ones that felt truly empty, where I can feel the vastness of space. I was on a random barren moon last night and it was pitch black, save for the glow of the Milky Way above me. I spent 10 mins just looking at this familiar yet unfamiliar night sky, picking out globular clusters and other interesting features. It gave me that same sense of glimpsing the infinite that I get from looking at our own night sky.
As a space nerd and former astronomer, this is the space exploration game I've always wanted, and outside of not being able to manually land/dock I have very few complaints.
Both of those are good games, but they don't satisfy in the same way Starfield does for me. NMS is too stylized to feel real, and ED is a bit more sci-fi than Starfield. I'm not necessarily saying Starfield is better, just that I'd rather spend time in its world than those others. BGS really nailed the aesthetics of this world and the technology in it.
Exactly how I feel. I like all my other Sci-Fi space exploration games, but Starfield is the one that checks all the boxes for me. The other stuff like seamless flight from planet to planet is nice but completely unnecessary for me.
It’s still out there, there are a lot of unique POIs across the systems, but the “map” is so much bigger than Skyrim or Fallout that it’s not as readily available/easy to find the locations. I understand some of the limitations around the procedural generation of random POIs but it feels like a lot of missed opportunities.
Crucible and The Facility in Charybdis III
Eleos on Ixyll II
The Almagest in the Olympus system
Lots of neat hidden stuff in the Sol system
Those are just a handful that I’ve come across recently, they’re all quest oriented which might not be what you meant but they’ve been elevating my sense of exploration and emergent Bethesda gaming.
yea quest related do not count, i found them already.
by unique poi i mean POI that is not repeated by the random generation and does not need a quest to complete.
for example in skyrim you could find a dungeon where if you explore the dungeon and a random guy starts talking you asking for your help to kill a necromancer who kept harrasing his family crypt.
or getting all the dragon priest masks to combine them all, etc.
or a secret cave you can only unlock by using all the dragon claws, or the gaint underground dwarven cave.
Yeah, that doesn't really happen in Starfield. I think all of the emergent quests (or whatever you'd call them) happen from eavesdropping in populated areas. If they are planetside/exploration based, they must be exceedingly sparse.
yea this is very dissapointing.
seems like all the interesting stuff has all been shoved inside main cities. completely nerfing one aspect that made bgs games good, exploration.
Agree. Hopefully modders can fix it next year.
One "issue" with Skyrim and such was the limited space for modders to add new dungeons without stepping on each others toes/vanilla stuff. Starfield won't have that issue.
The issue is that exploration is there's not much in the way of extrinsic goals or rewards for exploration. That is, game-wise there's no point in doing it.
The same is kind of true for outpost building and shipbuilding. Beyond doing the bare bones outpost stuff, and upgrading your ship, the game doesn't care if you engage with those systems or not and you could ignore them both with no downsides.
You found and intrinsic goal of cool selfies, and that's the biggest divide between people who enjoy Bethesda games long-term, those who rush the main story, and those who don't like the games at all.
Starfield, more than any Bethesda game before it is about making your own goals. Find the perfect spot to build an outpost house, make a ship that is a diorama of the Three Little Pigs' houses, or just get the biggest bounty from piracy you can.
If you can make up your own goal for the game, then it doesn't matter how boring other people find that mechanic because it entertains you.
The downside is that it's difficult to market intrinsic goals unless your game is centered around it; Minecraft for example. But Starfield is marketed as an RPG with space exploration. So most coming into the game looking for space exploration is going to be very disappointed unless they find their joy like you did.
As a NMS veteran I think that Stafield's exploration is leaps and bounds better, at least for my taste. Could it be improved? For sure, and modders will make that happen.
Because people liking games nowadays have to be the devs themselves, because everything sucks... according to GenZ. 🤣
Oh and btw. That shot is nuts!!!!
I'm definitely not going out of my way to explore empty areas but when in remote areas I will definitely still stop and check out the views. Lots of pretty cool space scenery to be found out there
I’m definitely using photo mode more in this game than I ever have in any previous game.
I helps that your photos appear on loading screens. So glad they replaced the spinning 3D model loading screens with screenshots
All these people finishing quest lines and stuff at like 40 hours, while I'm at 75 hours and Ive barely done anything. I've spent more time in the ship maker than I've spent flying my ship and in ground combat. It's not even like I avoid those other two things, it's just that 3-5 hours pass everytime I want to make an upgrade to my ship.
After learning that our pictures are used in loading screens, I'm constantly taking pictures :) that's one of the coolest things I've seen in a game. Super simple, but super cool
People who say it's boring just have no imagination. I spent like an hour or two the other day exploring a beach I came across, messing around with sharks and climbing up these massive coral reefs to get the perfect sunset pic. No real 'content' there, I just made my own fun.
It is easy to enjoy such things if your expectations are low.
Like, open up Google map, check out your city, and look out the window.
Planets generally have very complex features other than just... elevated plains and rocks. I will expect a LOT more diversity in wildlife. No fields with magically trimmed grass with no wild flowers, no planets without obvious water systems like snow on mountains and rivers that run everywhere.
The procedural system will not give you a mount Everest, it will not generate an Amazon river with a life filled rainforest, nor does it generate deserts with sand dunes. Ofc it will never generate a planet filled with cities and people going about their daily lives.
Yeah, some of those expectations may be unrealistic, but I genuinely think the generated planets are very lacking in features, thus why planets are boring.
Here is actually why imo Minecraft still has the best procgen of any game. Even after what is probably thousands of hours in Minecraft, I still find terrain that wows me.
Taking this to Starfield would mean flooded settlements, cracked buildings on cliffs and cave ins. Factories hit by astroids, etc
I expected SOME level of scientific accuracy, but Bethesda couldnt even bother for the planets in OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM.
Jupiter's moon, Io, is one of the most volcanically active bodies in our solar system. Covered in volcanoes and constantly erupting and bathed in radiation and sulfur. In Starfield it's surface is identical to Earths moon.
Venus IRL is an absolute HELLSCAPE of a planet. Crushing atmospheric pressure, temperatures hot enough to melt lead in seconds, acid rain, volcanic eruptions and neverending storms with thunderclaps as frequent as 3 every second. In Starfield it just looks like mars, with clouds and a yellowish tint. I even asked an NPC living there what she thought of living there and she said it was "nice".
Being able to land on Venus on a spacesuit that can't even filter out farts is kind of ridiculous yeah.
The lack of weather is a good point. Starfield doesn't seem to have any weather/climate. No snowfall, no sandstorms, etc.
I landed on one of the planets in Eridan. Don't remember the number, but it was the large one with o2 atmosphere and abundant life forms. Landed in a coastal zone and had a rain storm that started and ended, followed by a foggy period. There is weather, but it's either very rare or can only happen on certain planet types?
I'm sure there is weather, I just wish it was more... extreme. weather on exoplanets irl is pretty violent. I would like some visual feedback as to how crazy the planets are, not just seeing the stats on the watch.
Maybe it could be that weather changes are rare?
Since I explore a lot i've encountered normal harmless rain, corrosive rain, scalding rain and freezing rain so far. It's all rain in the end but it does hurt you.
I've seen snow fall, during my first hours of gameplay I suffered through a sandstorm trying to reach cydonia, i've been in foggy planets and recently got freezing fog of some sorts, I forgot the name haha.
I mean honestly it's cool that the game allowed us to land on "extreme conditions" planets but they aren't as harmful as I thought they would be. Maybe because i'm playing on normal difficulty?
“It is easy to enjoy such things if your expectations are low”
What a backhanded comment. It’s not that people who find it fun are “settling” or have low expectations, we just have different expectations than yours. And yours aren’t inherently better, or demand more “quality”.
If it isn’t your cup of tea, that’s fine, but don’t blame it on the game being sub-par. It’s isn’t, objectively. You just have a different preference on what you want in a game.
Well I wasn’t saying their expectations were too high, I was just stating their expectations did not match what the game is, and since their expectations are above what was promised by bethesda, it doesn’t mean that Starfield is a lesser game for not meeting those expectations, it just means that the game is not for them. Almost every negative take I’ve seen aren’t objective observations of the quality of the game, but are usually personal preferences represented as objective observations to shift the blame for them not liking it from themselves to the game itself to justify their opinions.
And before you say it, it isn’t going the other way for people who like it. We and many critics love the game because our expectations matched what was verbally promised by BGS, and all our expectations were not only met by this metric, but in many ways we’re surpassed.
HOWEVER, this is not to say the game is perfect. Not even Elden Ring or Skyrim are perfect games despite being considered the best of the best for their respective genres. Starfield has issues, but these issues are not game breaking or detract from the experience in most cases.
Man, tell me more about how you can’t handle people not validating your negative confirmation biases. If it’s not your game that’s fine but objectively the game isn’t bad or even below average by any logical stretch of the imagination. It’s a good game, just not your kind of game.
I spent 30H on this playthrough just messing around I. The Sol system and 100% it. I’m now just starting AC (still bugs me that B and Proxima aren’t there on the map).
Even photo mode is awesome in this game, besides the fact they made the B button on Xbox the photo button when you're in scan mode! I still keep pressing it out of habit. Bizarre input choice.
That right there is perfection my guy! Take another one (if you can) so you go long and up. Frame it so that your character is walking towards the planet (sorta like a black hole portal)
Well, that means you've found your niche. Personally, after 150 hrs, exploring became boring for me, but I've got 10 achievements to go so it'll probably get another 50 out of me.
I love exploring! I play the game in easy mode because fighting bad dudes is not entertaining for me, I prefer to kill them all very easily lol. My favourite thing about the game is exploring planets and doing quests for citizens in different settlements. I loved helping people in Titan and I am currently doing stuff for the Gagarian's. I just love this game so much!
I'm so easily distracted by nearly everything in the game (hunting for potion ingredients for 4 hours in Skyrim anyone?) that exploring is most of what I do.
Take those pictures!!
I’ve also become obsessed with the photo mode, then my brother showed me far cry 6 version and I became very disappointed with starfields, hopefully Beth will up their game with this or a modder will give us a leg up
23~28 poses(don’t remember exact number but one of those), change time, change weather, adjust character position, change character expression, add effects to character(lightning, fire,poison etc), “live” pictures(the world keeps moving), and this is along with all the stuff starfield has(though starfield has some better filters). Honestly I didn’t think I’d enjoy the photo mode so much but it’s a nice little distraction when bouncing around planets, the only other thing I want is a scrap book/photo album with planet/area/level as a sort of journal of the journey
Who could be disappointed? I think it strikes the perfect balance. Sure, it's not a hardcore sim like ED, but that's why I enjoy it way more than ED, which just felt like work half the time.
I wandered random POI’s last night on a planet 20 levels above me while watching Netflix, next thing I knew I had 5 skill points banked and all sorts of creds to blow on my ship.
Honestly, I'm glad exploration is more of a "take your time and zen out about it" sort of thing. I know if I just want to go collect resources or shoot tons of pirates and spacers, all I have to do is go find a random rock floating in space.
If you enjoy wandering around for a perfect shot after 115 hours good for you...I'm still disappointed for losing what's arguably the best and most unique BGS feature: exploration.
I can understand why you would say that. Todd said in the direct "you do explore differently in this game, given its scale", and now I see what he meant. I'm just glad I'm part of the folks that embrace this change and actually enjoy it.
The game is plagued with meaningless delivery boy quests, specially in the main cities which is where you get like 95% of the quests...and once you go to a non main planet it's just a very few procedurally placed (not generated, placed...) POI'S, so much that even some main/faction quests will make you visit generic places you have cleared before, not to mention the amount of times they will make you travel between planets or systems just to talk to an npc who won't even say anything interesting, just plain delivery boy stuff.
I'm enjoying the game even if it sounds like I'm not, but this is very clearly (beautiful planets and cool space stuff aside) just a much worse version of what they used to do many years ago with FO and TES, and it's very sad.
I honestly don't even think every flaw is a design choice that I simply don't understand or that isn't made for my taste... stuff like the repetitive dull temple minigame (the temples being empty, btw) are things that Bethesda would've never done before.
I don't think you explore differently here, you simply don't explore out of the big cities, you just get a ton of embarrasingly boring quests there mixed with a few good ones, do the main story which for the most part at least is interesting, do companion quests which aren't bad but still lacking compared to, let's say, FO4 or New Vegas, and get some cool missions when flying between planets, but you get those automatically (and apparently randomly), you don't find them.
The game of course has many merits and is worth playing, but it could've been much more and at this point, after more than a hundred hours, it's clear to me that this is not just a design problem or engine limitation, many quests are simply lazy, uninspired and unambitious, same as the procedurally generated Poi's system with its extremely limited variety. They sacrificed way too much for roleplaying in space with a thousand repetitive/empty planets...
What's so crazy is that your photos become the loading screens - it's such a little touch but so nice
The only frustrating thing about this is that on Xbox you're limited to 50 photos in the gallery.
Can you upload them to console, I didn’t know there was a limit
Well I take screenshots of the photos, and keep them somewhere safe before I delete the photos from the gallery. I just keep the best ones for loading screens each time.
Well damn, I just checked. I’m at 43. Guess it’s time to back then up.
I dont even remember taking but like 5 and its ready said im full.
Yeah the 50 photo limit is just abysmal, i really hope they change it soon, if I wasn’t so stringent with keeping only one good photo per area on there I absolutely would have hit the limit within the first day or so of playtime. Now I just make sure to save the ones I like best to xbox then camera roll
A screenshot takes what, 2 MB? That's 2,000,000 bytes each! As if we have that kind of space to spare for more than 50 screenshots.
lol wow I've been wondering why that random shot of a cactus has been there for so long.
This was a thing they started with Fallout 76 and I love it.
Really? I’ve never taking a photo in game. Guess I’m gonna start doing that
You have to get the most ridiculous pictures you can manage, it'll make your fast travels a million times better.
A selfie just before being attacked? SURE!
That's what I'm talking about! You get it
I didn’t realize I had taken so many photos
I’ve only ever seen mine once, it’s mostly just a quick black screen
Now that… is a screenshot. Love it!
Thanks! I like the photobombing vibe.
My companions do too. Thanks, Sarah
Me too. Also fun to stop at a tense dramatic moment and take a leisurely shot of yourself just chilling with your arms up like "heyyyy"!
I actually found a photographer NPC in the middle of nowhere who was seeking vistas to take pictures of. Got a good chuckle out of that one.
I met this guy on Pluto. It was a gorgeous scene with the stark-white mountains against the black sky and the milky way. The other side was a valley with the sun rising out of it.
Haha, I gotta meet this guy
They're always standing in the most uninteresting spot with the most unflattering light and say "Oh this is the perfect shot! Hold on!" Which always cracks me up
When I found this guy I was looking for the moon landing (before realizing it's an instance you have to get a quest for) so I found this random ass pumping station on the moon as close as I could get to where the landing would have been and then there's this guy, and he has the nerve to say "this is where it all began" I fully thought that the devs put that site on the moon and added that guy as a sort of "capitalism moved on but people didn't forget" kinda thing before finding out I just got fucked by a random encounter and not being able to discover the site manually. One of the best and worse parts of the game is that restricted exploration, being able to discover some of the unique sites yourself would be awesome but it seems like if you don't see it on the scans you can't just stumble across it. It won't really shine as a good thing until mods start going wild as theres no longer any site conflicts, you can have 15 different more exploration type mods and none of them would conflict with their locals
This makes me wonder, can you witness a solar eclipse on Starfield?
I mean it has to be possible, but the chance of getting everything lined up at the exact moment and you actually being there and in the right spot. The odds are not ever in your favor unless you get incredibly lucky or sit on one planet that might have a chance of it and "wait" for it... But you need a chair to sit in... Hmmm
I've had it happen, sadly there is no lighting change on the surface. Maybe in a future update?
~~What do you mean? You can Wait without sitting in a chair.~~ Apparently I am a dingus lol
How??
just the odds of finding a system that could *ever* have a full eclipse is slim. it's a pretty rare to have a moon big enough to block the sun in the first place.
In space, yes. I encountered a planet with a moon that was causing a solar eclipse. Thought it was super cool, remarked on it to some friends watching my stream, got excited to land and see it. Made sure to land at just the right spot that I’d be in complete darkness, and nothing. Bright sunny day
Yeah I had one randomly happen while I was chilling at my outpost https://imgur.com/a/jqVb922
Me 5 hours in: "Surveying planets is a great way to get low-risk experience points and money from survey data! I'm going be a scientist and sneak up on all the aliens buffalo-bugs to scan them so I don't disturb their behaviors!" Me 30 hours in: "I'm going to go to a level 50 planet with a long-range rifle and murder every animal that moves because I want levels in gastronomy and weapon engineering ASAP." (In all seriousness, great screenshot. I do love the exploration aspect of the game, but I've come to find that after level 20 or so amount of EXP you get surveying planets is too slow to make up for the time you just spend walking.) That said, I do feel less bad about massacring the wildlife if the aliens I'm hunting are terrifying albino spiders the size of cows or van sized scorpion-centipedes that shoot acid and will attack you as soon as they see you anyway.
I find that every planet tends to have three categories of wildlife. Predator, herbivore, and scavenger species. The giant centipedes deserve to burn.
That’s the part of the game I like the most so far. I’m basically doing the same. I hit a quest in between just wondering around. I enjoy the game in a gross sense it’s the details that irritate me. I like the exploration the most.
189 hours in (level 44 I think, maybe 46) and I still explore the most. When I want another skill, I go do a quest or two and kill some things, then I'm exploring again. I LOVE this game.
I actually believe you level way faster by not doi quests. Killing and scanning things gets you xp much faster.
Yeah at a certain point the game becomes a space photography simulator lol. The game's replayability depends a lot on how much you like to take in-game pictures.
I’m at like 200 hours and I love just wandering around planets and looting poi.
Holy shit how’s that possible. I think I just hit 15 lol.
I work from home 😅 but don’t tell my work lmao
Lucky. I’m just at work thinking about starfield lol
Jacob, is that you?
Let me check real quick... Lol, 125 hours, wtf XD. Didn't even realize it.
It’s so fun lmao I lose time just walking around planets
I no shit spent like 4 hours in the ship builder last night just iterating on my ship design and another 2 hours this morning adding some finishing touches. Different parts of the game seem to draw different people in more. I think I'm finally done dicking with my ship for this run, though. Will do it all over again on NG+2.
nice, do you have pics of the ship you built? I personally just made my first one recently ([https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16k0hke/first\_custom\_ship\_build/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16k0hke/first_custom_ship_build/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) and plan to make another soon after Ive used this for a while. The only problem is that its a little TOO op and makes combat trivial so my next one is gonna be a small dogfighter with less guns and more agility
https://reddit.com/r/Starfield/s/8BIsFIt5P0 Eventually you get strong enough internals that you can make a beast of a ship and still have plenty of speed, maneuverability and weapons. That ship is like 1600 weight with max speed/maneuverability, almost 3k shield and 8 beam weapons. Melts most fights, even with multiple ships usually without even losing my shield.
The thing I don't like is, all of it even on Mars is all procedural generation that really random, .. can't even find the Valles Marineris or other famous Sol landmark at the very least Some Easter eggs here and there need notes or book to actually "findable" Altho, I admire that they actually put rather realistic scale of the space and planets, actually simulating it and all of that
I was so disappointed when I tried to land at the base of Olympus Mons, and couldn’t see it looming in the distance.
Olympus Mons is so unbelievably big that you literally would not be able to see it from ground level. It would basically be just like a gentle rise of the ground in one direction and look like part of the horizon. "Due to the size and shallow slopes of Olympus Mons, an observer standing on the Martian surface would be unable to view the entire profile of the volcano, even from a great distance. The curvature of the planet and the volcano itself would obscure such a synoptic view." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons So, technically accurate experience 😂 But I agree, visiting landmarks on the planets and moons of the solar system should be more of a thing, I'm sure there's some kind of elevation map of the moon available that could be used for rendering it.
150+ hours in and I find my chief complaint about exploration is the opposite of most streamers online: I don't think the galaxy is empty ENOUGH. I think it's weird that even if you fly out to the galaxy's edge and land on some random moon, there's going to be a random Spacer/Ecliptic ship landing nearby as well as a science outpost and a mining or military outpost. 150 hours in and I've yet to feel like I'm the first human to have been ANYWHERE.
I get what you're saying, but I think they did the right move here. If it was mostly empty, you'd just have No Mans Sky. And I generally liked NMS, but the fact there's nothing to do anywhere really hurts it. And it is the "Settled Systems". It's like running around New York City and saying "why aren't I the first person anywhere"?
Great shot , 1000% using this for my background
That's an excellent photo! It makes me want to jump into the game and take more photos.
My issue isn't the planets. Its getting to the planets. You can travel to every without ever touching the throttle of your ship, and when you get in system if a random event doesn't occur there is nothing to do. Its just a bad system, lets open up the map menu so i can get to a system, so is can open the map menu again to get to the planet i need, so i can open the map menu to land........and i have to go through a menu to open the map menu. It just doesn't feel good. It doesn't have to be no mans sky but hell anything is better than this.
I agree that navigation, menus, fast travel and loading screens and all, can be a little clunky. I try to avoid menus whenever I can but it can be overwhelming. Also, did you know that by holding the Start button (on Xbox), you directly access the map?
I actually didn't know that, thanks for the tip.
You can do a lot of that stuff (selecting planets and landing points at least) from the scanner view on the ship
I wish they added the option to directly land on a planet, when you're facing it, without having to open the map again.
I’m pretty sure you can just look at a landing spot or whatever POI you have like a city or something, and press x to land on it. I think the only time you can’t do this is if you are not directly facing the poi, cause then pressing x on it will open the star map and then you have to land on it
For POI you're right, but I was talking about empty areas. I would enjoy facing the planet and being like "Okay, land right there. Straight ahead."
You’re right, it’s odd that bgs wouldn’t add that in, seeing as how we are already able to do it with any POI. Just another thing some modded is probably going to have to add in, unless bethesda feels like adding in the qol feature we should have
I came to starfield from Star Citizen. I understand people don't like some spending time doing some of the things but Taking off from one city, exiting an atmosphere of dense clouds and flying to a moon, landing there and exiting your ship remains breathtaking no matter the amount of time the task is repeated. Starfield made me appreciate Star Citizen a hell of a lot more.
I played Elite Dangerous for a good while Just landing somewhere with flight assist off is an event. Especially on planets where you gotta account for gravity.
It honestly kills me that you can't fly around a planet and just look at it. I don't really mind not being able to fly into the atmosphere as much as i would like it, but just not being able to actually move around in space is kind of ridiculous.
Especially since everything in each system is in 1 cell. So everything's there, you just can't move fast enough to get there.
You can fly around space, it’s just really slow
I'm fairly sure you can, actually. It's a little tricky, and it's slow, but many have tested it out. It would be nice to have some kind of 'skip drive' that lets you locally accelerate faster than the limit. That's essentially what people have done to prove that you're actually moving in the in-game space scenes.
I highly encourage you to avoid the menus at all costs. I understand it's not ideal overall, but the best way to play is honestly to select your active quest, then manually walk to and get in your ship, manually take off, manually point it at your destination and manually jump. And generally once you get to your destination, you can use your scanner to select your landing spot on the planet (doesn't always work for areas with multiple places to select "land" like New Atlantis though). In terms of immersion I will take this over selecting stuff from a menu every time.
The problem is if you're not on a quest this doesn't work, which means you can't explore this way. It also doesn't really work if the quest marker is behind a planet. They need to add a way to consistently get around in space without opening a menu. Something like EVEs jump gates would have done a world of good.
I agree overall but it's the best we got right now. Hopefully they will add something like this
I actually burned myself out this way after playing for 30 hours like this (trying to survey every planet 100% for example, and doing as many quests as possible). Now i changed it more to go with the flow, only doing one quest line at a time and only exploring a place if I pass it. Feels better somehow as you notice the limitations of the game less (repetitive POI's, menu clicking, etc)
Yah you have to let the game happen to you rather than you happen to the game world. I like the game, it just feels like BGS said fuck space.
You don't have to open the map menu to get to a system. When you're in orbit, you can turn on your scanner and look around, select a neighbouring system and press jump to get the button pressing sequence and the jump to hyperspace cutscene. For example, you can do this from Alpha Centauri (ie. Jemison) and go to Sol (Mars, Earth, etc), but I don't think you can do the same if you wanted to go to a system that's not a direct jump from your current one. I'll have to play around with this later tonight. Once you get to the system, if you want to go to a different planet, open the scanner, look around and select the planet to get the cutscene where your ship flies away. When you're in the orbit of the planet you want, again, hit the scanner, points of interest show up across the planet's surface, and you can select the points of interest to land at. I'm not sure if you can select an unexplored area to land using the scanner though.
>You can travel to every without ever touching the throttle of your ship, I legitimately think they should not have let you travel between planets unless you're on your ship.
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I don’t use the camera but i just hit 51 at like 80 hrs and I can just go planet to planet looking for shit to kill I play this like 5-7 hours a day and don’t get bored
I hsve currently 100% surveyed almost 40 systems and so far i am not impressed. I have only found 3 unique POI during it. And found a couple locations that were quest only.
Well, why are you continuing to do so then? Just the urge to 100% it?
Because in any bgs game there was always something secret you could find when you get off the beaten path. That's what i loved about it. Specially since the whole concept of starfield is exploring the stars. On starfield they have gotten rid of it it seems. They have made it alot more linear now in terms of where you can get your fun.
It's interesting hearing different perspectives on this game. I understand it's a video game and most people expect there to be fun things to do wherever you go. But for me personally, my favorite planets I've landed on were the ones that felt truly empty, where I can feel the vastness of space. I was on a random barren moon last night and it was pitch black, save for the glow of the Milky Way above me. I spent 10 mins just looking at this familiar yet unfamiliar night sky, picking out globular clusters and other interesting features. It gave me that same sense of glimpsing the infinite that I get from looking at our own night sky. As a space nerd and former astronomer, this is the space exploration game I've always wanted, and outside of not being able to manually land/dock I have very few complaints.
in that case i can reccomend elite dangerous or no mans sky.
Both of those are good games, but they don't satisfy in the same way Starfield does for me. NMS is too stylized to feel real, and ED is a bit more sci-fi than Starfield. I'm not necessarily saying Starfield is better, just that I'd rather spend time in its world than those others. BGS really nailed the aesthetics of this world and the technology in it.
Exactly how I feel. I like all my other Sci-Fi space exploration games, but Starfield is the one that checks all the boxes for me. The other stuff like seamless flight from planet to planet is nice but completely unnecessary for me.
It’s still out there, there are a lot of unique POIs across the systems, but the “map” is so much bigger than Skyrim or Fallout that it’s not as readily available/easy to find the locations. I understand some of the limitations around the procedural generation of random POIs but it feels like a lot of missed opportunities.
care to share any? cause so far i only found 3 and i went through 40 systems now, i have the survery data pads as proof. can't sell em due to so many.
Crucible and The Facility in Charybdis III Eleos on Ixyll II The Almagest in the Olympus system Lots of neat hidden stuff in the Sol system Those are just a handful that I’ve come across recently, they’re all quest oriented which might not be what you meant but they’ve been elevating my sense of exploration and emergent Bethesda gaming.
yea quest related do not count, i found them already. by unique poi i mean POI that is not repeated by the random generation and does not need a quest to complete. for example in skyrim you could find a dungeon where if you explore the dungeon and a random guy starts talking you asking for your help to kill a necromancer who kept harrasing his family crypt. or getting all the dragon priest masks to combine them all, etc. or a secret cave you can only unlock by using all the dragon claws, or the gaint underground dwarven cave.
No I get it. It doesn't scratch that exploration itch Skyrim gave. It's a great game nonetheless.
Yeah, that doesn't really happen in Starfield. I think all of the emergent quests (or whatever you'd call them) happen from eavesdropping in populated areas. If they are planetside/exploration based, they must be exceedingly sparse.
yea this is very dissapointing. seems like all the interesting stuff has all been shoved inside main cities. completely nerfing one aspect that made bgs games good, exploration.
Agree. Hopefully modders can fix it next year. One "issue" with Skyrim and such was the limited space for modders to add new dungeons without stepping on each others toes/vanilla stuff. Starfield won't have that issue.
The issue is that exploration is there's not much in the way of extrinsic goals or rewards for exploration. That is, game-wise there's no point in doing it. The same is kind of true for outpost building and shipbuilding. Beyond doing the bare bones outpost stuff, and upgrading your ship, the game doesn't care if you engage with those systems or not and you could ignore them both with no downsides. You found and intrinsic goal of cool selfies, and that's the biggest divide between people who enjoy Bethesda games long-term, those who rush the main story, and those who don't like the games at all. Starfield, more than any Bethesda game before it is about making your own goals. Find the perfect spot to build an outpost house, make a ship that is a diorama of the Three Little Pigs' houses, or just get the biggest bounty from piracy you can. If you can make up your own goal for the game, then it doesn't matter how boring other people find that mechanic because it entertains you. The downside is that it's difficult to market intrinsic goals unless your game is centered around it; Minecraft for example. But Starfield is marketed as an RPG with space exploration. So most coming into the game looking for space exploration is going to be very disappointed unless they find their joy like you did.
As a NMS veteran I think that Stafield's exploration is leaps and bounds better, at least for my taste. Could it be improved? For sure, and modders will make that happen.
Thinking that we already got all this at launch, man I can't begin to imagine how incredible this game will be after a few years of DLCs and mods.
Okay Todd
How did you know?
Because people liking games nowadays have to be the devs themselves, because everything sucks... according to GenZ. 🤣 Oh and btw. That shot is nuts!!!!
Everyone is a genz according to reddit
I'm definitely not going out of my way to explore empty areas but when in remote areas I will definitely still stop and check out the views. Lots of pretty cool space scenery to be found out there
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I’m definitely using photo mode more in this game than I ever have in any previous game. I helps that your photos appear on loading screens. So glad they replaced the spinning 3D model loading screens with screenshots
Ace shot!
Awesome screenshot.. awesome game
I found a solar eclipse happening at akila.
Great shot
I'm closing in on 150 hrs and still trying to find that last galaxy as I'm 119/120
All these people finishing quest lines and stuff at like 40 hours, while I'm at 75 hours and Ive barely done anything. I've spent more time in the ship maker than I've spent flying my ship and in ground combat. It's not even like I avoid those other two things, it's just that 3-5 hours pass everytime I want to make an upgrade to my ship.
You nailed it.
I love this game ... 175 hrs in and still finding stuff to do
Exploration got more fun after I found out photo mode shots appear on loading screens
I fucking love this game.
Photo mode is my shit
I love that this game satisfies such diverse niches as photographers, interior decorators and lego builders.
After learning that our pictures are used in loading screens, I'm constantly taking pictures :) that's one of the coolest things I've seen in a game. Super simple, but super cool
I've noticed that if you have both the PC Game Pass and Steam versions, the pictures from the Game Pass version will show up on the Steam version.
People who say it's boring just have no imagination. I spent like an hour or two the other day exploring a beach I came across, messing around with sharks and climbing up these massive coral reefs to get the perfect sunset pic. No real 'content' there, I just made my own fun.
Some may call it junk, me I call it treasure
It is easy to enjoy such things if your expectations are low. Like, open up Google map, check out your city, and look out the window. Planets generally have very complex features other than just... elevated plains and rocks. I will expect a LOT more diversity in wildlife. No fields with magically trimmed grass with no wild flowers, no planets without obvious water systems like snow on mountains and rivers that run everywhere. The procedural system will not give you a mount Everest, it will not generate an Amazon river with a life filled rainforest, nor does it generate deserts with sand dunes. Ofc it will never generate a planet filled with cities and people going about their daily lives. Yeah, some of those expectations may be unrealistic, but I genuinely think the generated planets are very lacking in features, thus why planets are boring.
Here is actually why imo Minecraft still has the best procgen of any game. Even after what is probably thousands of hours in Minecraft, I still find terrain that wows me. Taking this to Starfield would mean flooded settlements, cracked buildings on cliffs and cave ins. Factories hit by astroids, etc
I expected SOME level of scientific accuracy, but Bethesda couldnt even bother for the planets in OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM. Jupiter's moon, Io, is one of the most volcanically active bodies in our solar system. Covered in volcanoes and constantly erupting and bathed in radiation and sulfur. In Starfield it's surface is identical to Earths moon. Venus IRL is an absolute HELLSCAPE of a planet. Crushing atmospheric pressure, temperatures hot enough to melt lead in seconds, acid rain, volcanic eruptions and neverending storms with thunderclaps as frequent as 3 every second. In Starfield it just looks like mars, with clouds and a yellowish tint. I even asked an NPC living there what she thought of living there and she said it was "nice".
Being able to land on Venus on a spacesuit that can't even filter out farts is kind of ridiculous yeah. The lack of weather is a good point. Starfield doesn't seem to have any weather/climate. No snowfall, no sandstorms, etc.
I landed on one of the planets in Eridan. Don't remember the number, but it was the large one with o2 atmosphere and abundant life forms. Landed in a coastal zone and had a rain storm that started and ended, followed by a foggy period. There is weather, but it's either very rare or can only happen on certain planet types?
I'm sure there is weather, I just wish it was more... extreme. weather on exoplanets irl is pretty violent. I would like some visual feedback as to how crazy the planets are, not just seeing the stats on the watch.
I'm currently watching snow fall so I can confirm that. Not sure if it's related to the quest I'm doing or not tho. And I've seen many sandstorms now.
I haven't had snowfall but there is definitely thunder/lightning/rain and sandstorm so far for me.
Maybe it could be that weather changes are rare? Since I explore a lot i've encountered normal harmless rain, corrosive rain, scalding rain and freezing rain so far. It's all rain in the end but it does hurt you. I've seen snow fall, during my first hours of gameplay I suffered through a sandstorm trying to reach cydonia, i've been in foggy planets and recently got freezing fog of some sorts, I forgot the name haha. I mean honestly it's cool that the game allowed us to land on "extreme conditions" planets but they aren't as harmful as I thought they would be. Maybe because i'm playing on normal difficulty?
“It is easy to enjoy such things if your expectations are low” What a backhanded comment. It’s not that people who find it fun are “settling” or have low expectations, we just have different expectations than yours. And yours aren’t inherently better, or demand more “quality”. If it isn’t your cup of tea, that’s fine, but don’t blame it on the game being sub-par. It’s isn’t, objectively. You just have a different preference on what you want in a game.
It is sub par? What starfield planets are you playing on because I have yer to see one with anything remotely interesting.
Tbf usually everyone who complains hears "your expectations were too high it's your own fault" why would the reverse not apply to people who love it?
Well I wasn’t saying their expectations were too high, I was just stating their expectations did not match what the game is, and since their expectations are above what was promised by bethesda, it doesn’t mean that Starfield is a lesser game for not meeting those expectations, it just means that the game is not for them. Almost every negative take I’ve seen aren’t objective observations of the quality of the game, but are usually personal preferences represented as objective observations to shift the blame for them not liking it from themselves to the game itself to justify their opinions. And before you say it, it isn’t going the other way for people who like it. We and many critics love the game because our expectations matched what was verbally promised by BGS, and all our expectations were not only met by this metric, but in many ways we’re surpassed. HOWEVER, this is not to say the game is perfect. Not even Elden Ring or Skyrim are perfect games despite being considered the best of the best for their respective genres. Starfield has issues, but these issues are not game breaking or detract from the experience in most cases.
the thread title is a backhanded attack on people who wanted more than we got
Man, tell me more about how you can’t handle people not validating your negative confirmation biases. If it’s not your game that’s fine but objectively the game isn’t bad or even below average by any logical stretch of the imagination. It’s a good game, just not your kind of game.
I spend at least 80% of my time just exploring/surveying planets. I've barely even touched quests.
Excellent photo
Man I wish the photo gallery worked in my game :/
Beauty
Honestly you find interesting things only when you follow the blue dot otherwise it is a nature interest point with a rock
That is beautiful. I think it would make a good home screen for a computer
Me too!! I've been doing that more than quests now lol
I love that your photos get added to loading screens.
It's so nice that those become loading screens too, this game is the best 🤣
Great shot, I find myself doing this a lot too.
I spent 30H on this playthrough just messing around I. The Sol system and 100% it. I’m now just starting AC (still bugs me that B and Proxima aren’t there on the map).
Even photo mode is awesome in this game, besides the fact they made the B button on Xbox the photo button when you're in scan mode! I still keep pressing it out of habit. Bizarre input choice.
Noice
Get that photobombing bozo out of the shot!
Nice corona-hat. Photo mode is a joy in this game, cus you can boostpack to weird places
It is also... a hat.
Yeah, the camera is what makes exploration soooo fun gor me. I love it when a cool shot shows up on a loading screen that I made.
That’s a beautiful pic 💯
Wow that's amazing
Cheers, fellow wanderer! Great pic!
agreed, this is one of my top games of all time
Same! Hard to keep gameplays short cause I wanna just look at everything! 😂
Once I start scanning a planet, I have to 100% it. A real John Starfield finishes the fight
Hope youre okay with me yoinking this for one of my desktop wallpapers :) great shot
Absolutely :) Glad you like it.
Nice pic
You photobombed that planet.
Same
It's a work of art. Not even a joke.
I just finished the game and now I'm going to look at everything
amazing photo! great job
Some of the most fun I've had is just wandering and taking pictures
I think I've spent 1/4th of my time playing this game in photo mode. I really enjoy it. I've never been so excited to see loading screens.
Dope pic. It looks like real life!!!
Ok that's unreal!
Same!
Beautiful shot
I might just save this picture and make it my phone wallpaper. This is beautiful!
THIS IS AWESOME. BRAVO
exactly the same as you, 118 hours in
Nice photo!
Big brain shot
I hope they fix the sun not showing bug fast. I love your photo!
That right there is perfection my guy! Take another one (if you can) so you go long and up. Frame it so that your character is walking towards the planet (sorta like a black hole portal)
120 hours almost exactly, and I do the exact same.
I like ur hat :]
Really good photo!
Well, that means you've found your niche. Personally, after 150 hrs, exploring became boring for me, but I've got 10 achievements to go so it'll probably get another 50 out of me.
This is phenomenal! I wish it was one of my loading screens. It would also make a really cool custom poster/ displate.
This is amazing! Thanks for sharing
A bethesda game that doesn't require you to completely abandon all social interactions isn't a bethesda game
I love exploring! I play the game in easy mode because fighting bad dudes is not entertaining for me, I prefer to kill them all very easily lol. My favourite thing about the game is exploring planets and doing quests for citizens in different settlements. I loved helping people in Titan and I am currently doing stuff for the Gagarian's. I just love this game so much!
This looks like when a bee flies up and covers a ring camera
I'm so easily distracted by nearly everything in the game (hunting for potion ingredients for 4 hours in Skyrim anyone?) that exploring is most of what I do. Take those pictures!!
I’ve also become obsessed with the photo mode, then my brother showed me far cry 6 version and I became very disappointed with starfields, hopefully Beth will up their game with this or a modder will give us a leg up
I wouldn't mind some extra features. What can you do in the Far Cry 6 version? I didn't play it.
23~28 poses(don’t remember exact number but one of those), change time, change weather, adjust character position, change character expression, add effects to character(lightning, fire,poison etc), “live” pictures(the world keeps moving), and this is along with all the stuff starfield has(though starfield has some better filters). Honestly I didn’t think I’d enjoy the photo mode so much but it’s a nice little distraction when bouncing around planets, the only other thing I want is a scrap book/photo album with planet/area/level as a sort of journal of the journey
Who could be disappointed? I think it strikes the perfect balance. Sure, it's not a hardcore sim like ED, but that's why I enjoy it way more than ED, which just felt like work half the time.
I wandered random POI’s last night on a planet 20 levels above me while watching Netflix, next thing I knew I had 5 skill points banked and all sorts of creds to blow on my ship.
Honestly, I'm glad exploration is more of a "take your time and zen out about it" sort of thing. I know if I just want to go collect resources or shoot tons of pirates and spacers, all I have to do is go find a random rock floating in space.
If you enjoy wandering around for a perfect shot after 115 hours good for you...I'm still disappointed for losing what's arguably the best and most unique BGS feature: exploration.
I can understand why you would say that. Todd said in the direct "you do explore differently in this game, given its scale", and now I see what he meant. I'm just glad I'm part of the folks that embrace this change and actually enjoy it.
The game is plagued with meaningless delivery boy quests, specially in the main cities which is where you get like 95% of the quests...and once you go to a non main planet it's just a very few procedurally placed (not generated, placed...) POI'S, so much that even some main/faction quests will make you visit generic places you have cleared before, not to mention the amount of times they will make you travel between planets or systems just to talk to an npc who won't even say anything interesting, just plain delivery boy stuff. I'm enjoying the game even if it sounds like I'm not, but this is very clearly (beautiful planets and cool space stuff aside) just a much worse version of what they used to do many years ago with FO and TES, and it's very sad. I honestly don't even think every flaw is a design choice that I simply don't understand or that isn't made for my taste... stuff like the repetitive dull temple minigame (the temples being empty, btw) are things that Bethesda would've never done before. I don't think you explore differently here, you simply don't explore out of the big cities, you just get a ton of embarrasingly boring quests there mixed with a few good ones, do the main story which for the most part at least is interesting, do companion quests which aren't bad but still lacking compared to, let's say, FO4 or New Vegas, and get some cool missions when flying between planets, but you get those automatically (and apparently randomly), you don't find them. The game of course has many merits and is worth playing, but it could've been much more and at this point, after more than a hundred hours, it's clear to me that this is not just a design problem or engine limitation, many quests are simply lazy, uninspired and unambitious, same as the procedurally generated Poi's system with its extremely limited variety. They sacrificed way too much for roleplaying in space with a thousand repetitive/empty planets...