Starfield players cannot actively pilot their ships to a planet's surface

[alexnode]

It's not elite dangerous ... or no man's sky . The story is what matters really. Having planets to explore sounds fun but an extra.

 

[Zlapiz1]

Ooohhhh Todd.... Why can't you just shut the f. up. "What the players want???????who the f have you talked to??Its just like in fallout, outside is one thing then you have to load to enter a building witch he says is another reality. It just works....not this time bruh

 

[Tantor]

Glad I'm not a game dev, gamers are one of the meanest, pettiest and cheapest bunch of fans something can have.

Well..... SOME gamers are that way but the majority are pretty decent. And then you get the huge numbers who actually care and can contribute. Look at the Skyrim modding community. Without that community Skyrim would be nothing

 

[Tantor]

I think Bethesda made a mistake here. The reason I have enjoyed their earlier games is specifically because of the immersion and the struggle to get from point A to point B. I still remember the incredible satisfaction I felt the first time I climbed to the top of the Throat of the World and looked down.

Skyrim gave you a beautiful natural world, and the ability to become fully immersed in that world.

IMHO Bethesda should make landing a part of general planetary travel. You should have the ability to fly to any point on the planet itself, including mountain tops and sea bottoms. This should extend to travel from the planetary surface to nearby moons. This is exactly what you get in Skyrim, the ability to physically travel to all points of the map and enjoy the journey. Valheim does the same.

Look at Dying Light 2. The entire game is based on free travel through an open 3d environment. It keeps you on the edge of your seat.

I'm not saying that Bethesda should create DL2 levels of flight, but to cut it entirely out of the game is failing to take advantage of a great opportunity. Hopefully Starfield's on-planet experience is sufficiently immersive to make up for it.

Immersion is the name of the game in computer gaming. It's what we shell out the bucks for. It's also why we spend huge amounts of money for fast CPUs, GPUs and memory.

 

[GamerNerves]

What kind of game is Starfield? To me, it seems like it is a sort of sandbox title with many RPG elements, but it is also a shooter and flying game in space. I cannot say if any of these aspects are really that good, since the recent gameplay reveal with it's current form of FPS combat certainly did not look very convincing, but the game certainly is designed to have these different parts of a gameplay loop which you will repeat over and over again, so it is not meant to be a seamless space exploration adventure game like Howard states.
Concerning this article, I think it is stupid to ask something from a game that it's not aimed to be like a game the author wants to play, so my advise to him is just to skip this game and forget about it, if this brought up "issue" is that big of a deal to him.

PS. Only part I really liked about in the reveal was the character creation and I think the creatures on the showcased planet were cool. :O :S
I very much hope they will excel though, but it is hard not to be sceptical about this.

 

[waclark]

On one hand, it would be cool to fly down to the surface manually... but on the other, I personally wouldn't miss it (since there would be nothing special about it). And as a dev, I do know that is a loooot of extra work (performance when going from space to planet, streaming of detail, physics, etc) for something that probably can be skipped after the first several times.

And it's not like it's a standard feature one would expect in a space game. I'm not seeing how this is a big deal...

I agree. I see pros and cons, but honestly, after you've done it 1000 times, who cares? In fact, if we had this level of technology, I suspect we would just pick out coordinates and auto-pilot to the landing spot anyway.

 

[OortCloud]

Usual internet-entitlement nonsense. Wait until the game comes out and see if you like it or not before getting all riled up about every detail. All games have compromises - things they do, things they don't. You don't pilot a ship down to Mars in Doom - nobody cares - its an FPS. You don't really fly ships in Mass Effect - its an RPG. Ludicrous article.

 

[bviktor]

Oh if Todd says it's not important to me, then it's not important to me.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Go buy a flight sim if you want to spend a bunch of time landing on planets rather than all the fun shown in the game play videos.

 

[CapNemo72]

My take is:
This is not space exploration flight sim ( like Eliteangerous)

This is RPG that happens in space. So, no, need to fly a ship is not so much needed.

Plus, you can always get that alpha version of SC for small price of ...

So, most important thing will be, once you are on one planet surface, will that be interesting and challenging?

 

[Rocky4040]

I have very little interest in this game but I am sure anyone complaining and also had interest in the game is still going to buy the game and enjoy the heck out of it. No matter how much you complain about feature or lack of features in the game. As long as the game play itself is good and the story is good those that buy it will probably enjoy the game even though before buying we all will hear oh that sucks I'm so mad I'm not buying it blah blah blah then on launch day and if smart wait for the reviews and if good will still go out and buy it and play it to the end and never even miss no in flight landing. It's just how things work in the world and this won't be any different but being a Bethesda Title I would be more worried about game breaking bugs more than anything else.

 

[GamerNerves]

I have very little interest in this game but I am sure anyone complaining and also had interest in the game is still going to buy the game and enjoy the heck out of it. No matter how much you complain about feature or lack of features in the game. As long as the game play itself is good and the story is good those that buy it will probably enjoy the game even though before buying we all will hear oh that sucks I'm so mad I'm not buying it blah blah blah then on launch day and if smart wait for the reviews and if good will still go out and buy it and play it to the end and never even miss no in flight landing. It's just how things work in the world and this won't be any different but being a Bethesda Title I would be more worried about game breaking bugs more than anything else.

Yeah, it's like with Blizzard fans who trash the company all the time but still give all their available money for them whenever they release something new (and overpriced). I have nothing against Blizzard, in fact, I admire the quality of their games in general, but Bethesda is the total opposite tech wise, so if I will ever buy Starfield, it is not going to be on the launch date and most likely not sooner than three months after that, but we know that many people cannot resist even if they know the absolute fact that this game is going to be a glitchy bad performing mess.

PS. I very much appreciate Bethesda's past work, especially Oblivion, but Fallout 4 unfortunately didn't feel like a solid RPG, but more like a semi-RPG shooter. Nothing wrong with mixing this, but you know, overall the game was just lacking compared to their previous titles, so this definitely affects my expectations.