Starfield - Bethesda Softworks - Release Date - Sep 6th 2023

[SpookyTsuki]

If they're even allowed to get a hold of it.

Why wouldn’t they?

 

[RandV]

Why wouldn’t they?

Bethesda hasn't done it yet but each release there's always a risk they cut out the free modding community. Any corporate exec is going to be looking at that action and be salivating over how they could monetize it.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

Bethesda hasn't done it yet but each release there's always a risk they cut out the free modding community. Any corporate exec is going to be looking at that action and be salivating over how they could monetize it.

I don’t think Microsoft would allow that but it is possible I guess.

 

[Osprey]

Bethesda hasn't done it yet but each release there's always a risk they cut out the free modding community. Any corporate exec is going to be looking at that action and be salivating over how they could monetize it.

They tried to monetize it 15 years ago with Oblivion (remember "horse armor"?) and it blew up in their face. They tried again more recently with their Creation Club by paying modders to make content for them, and that's gone a little better. They even released Skyrim Anniversary Edition a few days ago, which mainly adds a collection of those mods. I presume that that means that the Creation Club was successful and that they've figured out how to make money off of the modding community.

Basically, because they've supported modding, there's a large modding community (some of which makes mods for them to sell), the game is still relevant 10 years after release and they're able to keep selling overpriced editions and put off making a costly sequel. Such longevity is a lot more profitable in the long run, I imagine. I assume that Bethesda has come to the same conclusion.

Of course, there's always the chance that they may lose sight of that, but it really doesn't make any sense for them to change what's worked for them. It'd be especially dumb of them to make Starfield mod unfriendly because they need their new IP to be successful, and cultivating a community of diehard fans helps to make that happen.

 

[RandV]

They tried to monetize it 15 years ago with Oblivion (remember "horse armor"?) and it blew up in their face. They tried again more recently with their Creation Club by paying modders to make content for them, and that's gone a little better. They even released Skyrim Anniversary Edition a few days ago, which mainly adds a collection of those mods. I presume that that means that the Creation Club was successful and that they've figured out how to make money off of the modding community.

Basically, because they've supported modding, there's a large modding community (some of which makes mods for them to sell), the game is still relevant 10 years after release and they're able to keep selling overpriced editions and put off making a costly sequel. Such longevity is a lot more profitable in the long run, I imagine. I assume that Bethesda has come to the same conclusion.

Of course, there's always the chance that they may lose sight of that, but it really doesn't make any sense for them to change what's worked for them. It'd be especially dumb of them to make Starfield mod unfriendly because they need their new IP to be successful, and cultivating a community of diehard fans helps to make that happen.

Yeah I think it's not likely to happen that they go all in and drop modding at this point, but it's something that requires constant vigilance. Like advertisements in hockey, eventually they're going to wear you down and get those adds on the jerseys. Here the problem with DLC (separating this from expansion) and the Creation Club is I doubt it does very well because modding is just so much better. Yes modding gives the game far more long term viability, but you have to think there's some exec behind the scenes calculating what the increased quarterly profits could be if they ditched open modding and forced everyone into paid content.

Just in general one pro-modding angle you can play here is when mods require expansions/DLC. You probably don't see it as much in Bethesda games, but this is certainly a thing for me with the Civilization series. I don't know how many people do it this way but I often pick up a DLC (again, not expansion) because I want to play a mod that requires it.

 

[Dolemite]

Bethesda hasn't done it yet but each release there's always a risk they cut out the free modding community. Any corporate exec is going to be looking at that action and be salivating over how they could monetize it.

Anytime that happens another company will scoop it up and they make the bank. It’s happened so many times over the years in the game industry.

 

[Jussi]

 

[Dolemite]

Bethesda hasn't done it yet but each release there's always a risk they cut out the free modding community. Any corporate exec is going to be looking at that action and be salivating over how they could monetize it.

Id is notorious for this. They had a huge modding community for Quake 2 and when Quake 3 came to be not only did they remove all that was cool about the game but cut out the modding community. Enter Valve with Half-Life and open modding. The rest is history.

 

[HanSolo]

In other words, Starfield is at the point where Cyberpunk 2077 was at launch, and it's still a year away.

If it's at the point Cyberpunk was on release, it's two-three years away.

 

[Osprey]

If it's at the point Cyberpunk was on release, it's two-three years away.

I haven't played Cyberpunk recently, but it sounds like it's in a playable state (on PC and next-gen consoles) and the bugs and rough edges left aren't any worse than a lot of other games have at launch. If you mean that the game is years away from being playable on last-gen consoles, yeah, but that's more of an indictment of the decision to put the game on those consoles than on the state of the game, itself, IMO.

 

[aleshemsky83]

I haven't played Cyberpunk recently, but it sounds like it's in a playable state (on PC and next-gen consoles) and the bugs and rough edges left aren't any worse than a lot of other games have at launch. If you mean that the game is years away from being playable on last-gen consoles, yeah, but that's more of an indictment of the decision to put the game on consoles that were too underpowered for it than on the state of the game, itself, IMO.

It was mostly playable on PC around launch. It was just immersion breaking bugs and bad LOD pop-in (which it still has tbh even on max settings).

Console is another story, though tbh most of the issues were definitely cause by the game just not being optimized for hard drives vs SSDs.

 

[Commander Clueless]

It was mostly playable on PC around launch. It was just immersion breaking bugs and bad LOD pop-in (which it still has tbh even on max settings).

Console is another story, though tbh most of the issues were definitely cause by the game just not being optimized for hard drives vs SSDs.

I played it on PC at launch and it was a very buggy but playable and honestly pretty good game, IMO.

However, if you compared what it launched with and even what it is now with what was promised in marketing material, it's a couple years away still...conversely Starfield doesn't really have a ton of promises out there.


I guess it depends on your perspective.

 

[Osprey]

However, if you compared what it launched with and even what it is now with what was promised in marketing material, it's a couple years away still...conversely Starfield doesn't really have a ton of promises out there.

I'm sure that some features will be cut from Starfield between now and November. Whether we know about them or not, the game will be the same, so I don't think that it makes much sense to judge a game by what was promised. That's like saying that our expectations determine the state of a game, not the job that the developers are doing.

Nevertheless, some people do that and Bethesda seems more aware of it than CDPR. We didn't learn anything about Fallout 4 until 5 months before release and we probably won't learn much about Starfield until the same. They seemingly don't want to over-promise and have it come back to bite them, which is smart. No one will be upset at what didn't make it into Starfield if it wasn't known about in the first place.

 

[HanSolo]

I haven't played Cyberpunk recently, but it sounds like it's in a playable state (on PC and next-gen consoles) and the bugs and rough edges left aren't any worse than a lot of other games have at launch. If you mean that the game is years away from being playable on last-gen consoles, yeah, but that's more of an indictment of the decision to put the game on those consoles than on the state of the game, itself, IMO.

I mean it depends on your definition of playable. And I guess I meant more like 2 years to actually implement a lot of the promised features that were shitcanned. Features that could've gotten Cyberpunk closer to the level of quality in The Witcher 3.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I'm sure that some features will be cut from Starfield between now and November. Whether we know about them or not, the game will be the same, so I don't think that it makes much sense to judge a game by what was promised. That's like saying that our expectations determine the state of a game, not the job that the developers are doing.

I have to imagine you are correct and things are always cut from video games. That's a natural process, and it makes sense.

However, if you're going to show features off in marketing material and then cut them, I think it is fair to expect some backlash. Much of the marketing material where features that were cut were shown off could later be considered a form of false advertising.

While I think I understand what you are saying, I think there's a big difference between player expectations dictating development and claiming things and then taking them away.

Nevertheless, some people do that and Bethesda seems more aware of it than CDPR. We didn't learn anything about Fallout 4 until 5 months before release and we probably won't learn much about Starfield until the same. They seemingly don't want to over-promise and have it come back to bite them, which is smart. No one will be upset at what didn't make it into Starfield if it wasn't known about in the first place.

Not over-promising is absolutely the better approach, although you could argue they did some of that with the frankly disastrous launch of 76.

For me personally, I wasn't aware of many of the features CDPR showed off that were cut. I'm guessing I had a better experience because of that....at least that's my assumption from reading the criticisms of the game.

 

[RandV]

I'm sure that some features will be cut from Starfield between now and November. Whether we know about them or not, the game will be the same, so I don't think that it makes much sense to judge a game by what was promised. That's like saying that our expectations determine the state of a game, not the job that the developers are doing.

Nevertheless, some people do that and Bethesda seems more aware of it than CDPR. We didn't learn anything about Fallout 4 until 5 months before release and we probably won't learn much about Starfield until the same. They seemingly don't want to over-promise and have it come back to bite them, which is smart. No one will be upset at what didn't make it into Starfield if it wasn't known about in the first place.

I don't know what Starfield will be like but Bethesda tends to be much more straightforward in their approach which should makes things simpler. I haven't actually played the game, but I recall when CDPR put out their first demo for Cyberpunk there were all sorts of intuitive ways you could complete the mission they gave you. That was a huge red flag for me, as it's one thing to do it for a demo but all those different options have to actually be programmed into the game, and building that through the entire game is another thing entirely. They were promising a whole lot that the hardware and man hours weren't going to be able to deliver on.

Bethesda on the other hand, is generally: 'here's a big open world, pick from 3 base template classes to explore it'. They end up buggy cause they're so massive but mostly it's pretty straight forward.

 

[Osprey]

However, if you're going to show features off in marketing material and then cut them, I think it is fair to expect some backlash. Much of the marketing material where features that were cut were shown off could later be considered a form of false advertising.

While I think I understand what you are saying, I think there's a big difference between player expectations dictating development and claiming things and then taking them away.

I agree. It's fair to be disappointed that advertised features are missing. I'm only saying that I don't think that it should determine how ready for release a game is judged to be.

For me personally, I wasn't aware of many of the features CDPR showed off that were cut. I'm guessing I had a better experience because of that....at least that's my assumption from reading the criticisms of the game.

I didn't pay much attention to the pre-release hype, either. I used to with games, but I guess that I was let down enough that I'm now skeptical until a game is finished.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I agree. It's fair to be disappointed that advertised features are missing. I'm only saying that I don't think that it should affect how ready for release a game is judged to be.

It's a fair point.

I guess what I was trying to say originally was using Cyberpunk as a metric for readiness really depends on whether "ready" means playable or what was actually envisioned.

 

[Osprey]

It's a fair point.

I guess what I was trying to say originally was using Cyberpunk as a metric for readiness really depends on whether "ready" means playable or what was actually envisioned.

Yeah, I understood you and didn't mean to sound like I was arguing. I was only explaining my perspective of the two.

 

[Mikeaveli]

I don't know what Starfield will be like but Bethesda tends to be much more straightforward in their approach which should makes things simpler. I haven't actually played the game, but I recall when CDPR put out their first demo for Cyberpunk there were all sorts of intuitive ways you could complete the mission they gave you. That was a huge red flag for me, as it's one thing to do it for a demo but all those different options have to actually be programmed into the game, and building that through the entire game is another thing entirely. They were promising a whole lot that the hardware and man hours weren't going to be able to deliver on.

Bethesda on the other hand, is generally: 'here's a big open world, pick from 3 base template classes to explore it'. They end up buggy cause they're so massive but mostly it's pretty straight forward.

Yep I remember the demo where they showed off the quest where you get the spider robot with Jackie. I thought the game was going to be a combination of old CRPG mechanics where you have many ways to solve each situation using your character's skills with the newer Fallout-style open world and actually good combat. We only ended up with the last two.

Bethesda has abandoned that classic style of RPG at this point, although I believe there will be skills in this game unlike Fallout 4.

 

[Jussi]

Starfield developers aiming for a game with a "vision of a future that’s grounded in reality"

 

[Cush]

From the video:

 

[The Crypto Guy]

From the video:

3

 

[Rodgerwilco]

11/11 release date again? Are they trying to get some Skyrim juju here?

 

[SpookyTsuki]

11/11 release date again? Are they trying to get some Skyrim juju here?

Yes sir