Making Starfield Good - A Beginner's Guide For Bethesda Game Studios

How do you want Bethesda to fix Starfield?

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:59 - Disclaimer (Not A Game Dev)
00:02:41 - BGS Expert Mode
00:02:38 - Rules For A Good Game
00:04:39 - Save Files Thumbnails
00:06:51 - Flashlight Upgrade
00:10:19 - Speed Up Waiting
00:14:59 - Maps
00:16:18 - Cardinal Directions
00:17:12 - Chronomark Watch
00:18:17 - City Maps
00:19:41 - Star Map Search Function
00:21:33 - Bestiary / Index / Encyclopedia
00:22:40 - Resources
00:23:41 - Fauna & Flora
00:26:29 - Sticker Book
00:29:09 - Single Player Competition
00:30:36 - Unique Creatures
00:31:45 - Digipicking
00:33:52 - Interacting With The Scanner Up
00:35:29 - Visual Indicator For Resources
00:36:26 - Inventory / Key Ring
00:37:22 - Aid & Food
00:38:12 - Books / Data Slates / Magazines / Notes
00:39:01 - Inventory Search Function
00:39:56 - Drop All For All
00:40:41 - Storage Linked To Crafting Tables
00:42:19 - Fallout 4 Item Scrapping
00:44:07 - Mark As Junk Option
00:44:28 - Aid & Food Crafting Sucks
00:46:01 - Unlockable Appearance Options
00:48:22 - Adding Modifier Effects Via Crafting
00:50:45 - Item Tier Crafting Upgrades
00:53:10 - Cleaning Item Names
00:55:12 - Unique Items
00:56:28 - How To Make Unique Items Special
01:00:11 - 4 Effects / Modifiers
01:03:28 - Other Unique Qualities
01:08:06 - Ships / Tour In Building Mode
01:09:04 - Blueprints For Ships & Outposts
01:10:04 - Buy Ship Parts As Movable Items
01:11:58 - Traversal / Underwater Exploration
01:12:47 - Zoology Skill & Sea Life
01:13:11 - Landing At Coastal Regions
01:13:39 - Fast Boosting
01:14:49 - Drivable Vehicles
01:16:18 - Procedural Generation Is Soulless
01:18:02 - Groundhog Day / 40 Second Rule
01:19:04 - What's Important When Exploring
01:19:59 - How To Fix Points Of Interest
01:21:26 - Random Kills Lore / Purpose / Meaning
01:22:50 - Illusion Of Scope
01:24:03 - Radiant Quests
01:25:14 - Burn The Nameless NPCs
01:27:01 - Romanceable Companion Variety
01:28:30 - Money / Economy
01:30:00 - Transmog System
01:31:33 - Active Effects / Character Stats
01:33:13 - Skill Description Clarification
01:34:38 - Update Patch For Broken Skills
01:34:59 - Reset Skill Points
01:35:29 - Rebalance Experience Gains
01:36:21 - Move XP Notification Off The Cross Hairs
01:36:56 - Killcams
01:37:26 - Cut Scene / Animation Remover
01:38:48 - Factions / Rant
01:39:15 - Problem With BGS
01:39:53 - Starfield VS. Morrowind Faction Quests
01:42:28 - Starfield VS. Morrowind Developers
01:44:03 - Starfield VS. Morrowind Dev Power
01:46:46 - Where Are All The Factions?
01:47:26 - Possible Factions To Be Added
01:48:48 - WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
01:49:32 - Hire More Writers NOW
01:51:18 - The Pizza Problem

[SgtGitaroo]

The saddest thing about Starfield isn't Starfield itself, but the foreboding feeling that the next TES game won't resemble the games we loved.

[bruhtholemew]

I can't shake the feeling that if a Bethesda employee saw this they'd suggest you get to modding if you want any of these features.

[steel]

Bethesda here. We'll forward this to the modding community. Thank you for your effort.

[olo]

This is the most constructive video I've ever seen on youtube:

-laying out each problem
-comparing it to previous games
-suggesting unidealized fixes that should be within the capabilities of the studio & engine

I love the way you go about it in the most fair and objective way possible; it couldn't be clearer that your intention isn't to dunk on the game, but to help them improve it for everyone's sakes

[emmaalbers]

the restraint in your voice the entirety of this video is palpable and amenable. Truly walking them through baby steps. Its really like their challenge for themselves is "how can we make our games worse while staying flashy enough to sell?"

[donkeysaurusrex]

The sad thing is so many, probably most, videos of this nature come from a place of love. People who want to see Bethesda at least do better next game even if they don’t try to improve Starfield through patches or expansion packs. Then you look at Bethesda’s response, and it seems they ignore it or worse yet view it as antagonistic.

[mohawkan]

I am just... baffled at what BGS have been doing for about 8 years. Most of these suggestions are not only common sense in 2023, not only have they been done before, but they've been done by Bethesda themselves.

[mattamiller]

About half of these are things I assumed I was missing somehow. Either I was doing something wrong, or there was a bug, or I just needed to upgrade something or get a skill. The first time I saw the surface map I immediately started Googling for something to fix it, cause I assumed it was a bug.

[Todesnuss]

They made waiting immersive. It's just tedious enough to make you actually feel like you're waiting. Amazing!

[nick]

Having one internal writer is baffling, why did they hire hundreds and hundreds of 3D artists over the years and then no writers? Clearly, 10 developers developing quests is also not enough for a game the size of Starfield. They should have at a minimum like 50 quest designers. Quests are the bread and butter of the game, which needs way more manpower.

[joelhicks]

So I actually went and explored every planet. And I mean every planet.

I made a project out of filling in a bestiary/resource guide for the game. Just like you said, a sticker book really made the exploration worth it. After finishing the main quest (which I overall liked and found interesting and compelling), I decided for RP reasons that I didn't want to leave my home universe. So I started exploring. I spent 300 hours catching up on years worth of podcast backlogs and hopping from planet to planet, moon to moon, and system to system. I scanned every plant, animal, and mineral on every planet in every system.

The biggest problem for me was that I had to make a gigantic google doc and do the sticker book myself. It's 2000+ pages. My browser crashes half the time when opening the tab. Literally only a handful of people are going to bother doing that. And the reason I started my grand compendium was because I wanted to use the outpost system to automate medicine production because I wanted to RP my combat medic trying to bring low-cost first aid to the Settled Systems. The idea of the universe of Starfield is brilliant, and I can see why Todd was able to get the dev team excited about this and willing to spend years bringing the game to life.

During my self-imposed mission to explore the galaxy, I grew annoyed by the sameness. I avoided map markers except for the features I needed to 100% planet surveys. Why go to locations that I had already memorized? I have an excellent memory for maps and dungeon layouts, so I quickly tired of looting the exact same places over and over. I stopped looting enemies except for ammo because my guns were fine and none of the dropped items were better than what I had stumbled onto after 150 hours of swapping gear and levelling up. Most of those guns were boring too, since I prized damage output over effects and that meant I used almost all common weapons. Combat itself was fine, but fighting the same people in the same places over loot that wasn't worth picking up just felt empty. So I stopped going to those places.

One thing I actually disagree on with this excellent video: there need to be planets that have no human presence AT ALL. I love the idea of exploring the far reaches of space and standing on other worlds. But it's frustrating to fly out to a system and find that some stupid pirates got here first and built a carbon copy of the same installation that you can find in 37 different places on every single planet. I want to visit worlds that nobody has been to yet, or at least that nobody has built industrial outposts all over and then proceeded to abandon for no discernable reason. But I was so tired of the same old places over and over, I really don't want to see more of them. There should be like 10-15 systems that are absolutely crammed with locations like this, but then 40-60 that have extremely sparse outpost presence and the last 20-30 might never have seen a human being before. Just throw in more natural locations like caves and unique creature encounters, or rich mining nodes with a variety of resources that are hard to find anywhere else. It's fine if 90% of players never visit a moon with nothing remarkable on it, but have something that will make a player say "gee, I'm glad I stopped here because I don't know when I might have seen an asteroid impact site with this much <insert legendary/unique element name> again." I want loot that's worth a damn, please.

Not having any good loot to offload meant that I didn't really go back to my lovingly crafted home base very often except to refill on mountains of healing supplies that I made through spending hours and hours tinkering with base building. It took a ridiculous amount of time to get the storage working - I had a dozen skyscrapers of nothing but storage crates that just shoved every item as far back as it would fit, and it should not have been as weird and user-unfriendly as it was to get that working. Oh, and my RP about bringing affordable care to every person in the universe? Yeah, there wasn't a single merchant anywhere in the Settled Systems who could buy all my supplies. My grand plan was foiled by the fact that I couldn't offload my infinitely replenishing bandages and antibiotics without cleaning out every merchant in every town every time I visited. They just didn't have the money to buy anything good. I got bored of that, so I went back to filling in my custom sticker book that should have been in the game to start with.

Now with all that said, please don't think I hate the game. I like Starfield a lot. I really do. But I want to love it, and with many of the flaws that I observed (most of which I saw mentioned in this video) I cannot love Starfield. Not the way that I love Skyrim - I actually watched this on a second monitor while playing Skyrim for what is probably my 60th to 70th character. I'm tabbed out of Skyrim right now just to write this. And that is Starfield's greatest problem: it could have been so much more than it is, but the drive to automate game production and cram vast universes full of meaningless crap is ruining AAA games.

My advice to Bethesda is to hire the people who Larian hired to write Baldur's Gate 3 and who CDPR hired to write the Witcher games. Games need personality to be good, and procedural generation has repeatedly proven that this is the thing it cannot replicate.

[Camelworks]

Merry Christmas! Here is a gift for BGS, our constructive feedback (mostly). How would you like BGS to change Starfield?

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:59 - Disclaimer (Not A Game Dev)
00:02:41 - BGS Expert Mode
00:02:38 - Rules For A Good Game
00:04:39 - Save Files Thumbnails
00:06:51 - Flashlight Upgrade
00:10:19 - Speed Up Waiting
00:14:59 - Maps
00:16:18 - Cardinal Directions
00:17:12 - Chronomark Watch
00:18:17 - City Maps
00:19:41 - Star Map Search Function
00:21:33 - Beastiary / Index / Encyclopedia
00:22:40 - Resources
00:23:41 - Fauna & Flora
00:26:29 - Sticker Book
00:29:09 - Single Player Competition
00:30:36 - Unique Creatures
00:31:45 - Digipicking
00:33:52 - Interacting With The Scanner Up
00:35:29 - Visual Indicator For Resources
00:36:26 - Inventory / Keyring
00:37:22 - Aid & Food
00:38:12 - Books / Data Slates / Magazines / Notes
00:39:01 - Inventory Search Function
00:39:56 - Drop All For All
00:40:41 - Storage Linked To Crafting Tables
00:42:19 - Fallout 4 Item Scrapping
00:44:07 - Mark As Junk Option
00:44:28 - Aid & Food Crafting Sucks
00:46:01 - Unlockable Appearance Options
00:48:22 - Adding Modifier Effects Via Crafting
00:50:45 - Item Tier Crafting Upgrades
00:53:10 - Cleaning Item Names
00:55:12 - Unique Items
00:56:28 - How To Make Unique Items Special
01:00:11 - 4 Effects / Modifiers
01:03:28 - Other Unique Qualities
01:08:06 - Ships / Tour In Building Mode
01:09:04 - Blueprints For Ships & Outposts
01:10:04 - Buy Ship Parts As Moveable Items
01:11:58 - Traversal / Underwater Exploration
01:12:47 - Zoology Skill & Sea Life
01:13:11 - Landing At Coastal Regions
01:13:39 - Fast Boosting
01:14:49 - Drivable Vehicles
01:16:18 - Procedural Generation Is Soulless
01:18:02 - Groundhog Day / 40 Second Rule
01:19:04 - What's Important When Exploring
01:19:59 - How To Fix Points Of Interest
01:21:26 - Random Kills Lore / Purpose / Meaning
01:22:50 - Illusion Of Scope
01:24:03 - Radiant Quests
01:25:14 - Burn The Nameless NPCs
01:27:01 - Romanceable Companion Variety
01:28:30 - Money / Economy
01:30:00 - Transmog System
01:31:33 - Active Effects / Character Stats
01:33:13 - Skill Description Clarification
01:34:38 - Update Patch For Broken Skills
01:34:59 - Reset Skill Points
01:35:29 - Rebalance Experience Gains
01:36:21 - Move XP Notification Off The Crosshairs
01:36:56 - Killcams
01:37:26 - Cutscene / Animation Remover
01:38:48 - Factions / Rant
01:39:15 - Problem With BGS
01:39:53 - Starfield VS. Morrowind Faction Quests
01:42:28 - Starfield VS. Morrowind Developers
01:44:03 - Starfield VS. Morrowind Dev Power
01:46:46 - Where Are All The Factions?
01:47:26 - Possible Factions To Be Added
01:48:48 - WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
01:49:32 - Hire More Writers NOW
01:51:18 - The Pizza Problem

[RedDragonLVSSRS]

As an actual game developer I can tell you: most of the things you ask for are completely fine for a studio of Bethesda's size to do. Not only that, several can be added even to smaller indie games with near zero difficulty (especially the beastiary stuff). Starfield is just a bad game, you are 100% correct in your complaints. At least up to the 27:35 timestamp, I haven't watched the whole video yet. I'll edit my comment once I do.

Okay. I, for now, stopped at 49:49. I think most of the complaints here are also easy to work with. Again, if a small company had access to the "finished" state of Starfield, they could do a better job, and implement most of these. The whole "skin discovery system" would be so easy to implement depending on how they made the base of it... The only reason they did not put it in was due to corporate greed. "Want skins? Pay extra"! My only disagreement here is about the "item scrapping" part. From a game designer's pov, that was a terrible feature. As I see, most people hated the idea of having to clutter up their inventory just to scrap them and get OP items. It's way too grindy and unbalanced that honestly I personally ended up just cheating in the nescessary raw materials to upgrade my gear. In fact, the entire crafting system in F4 was flawed at best, and utterly broken at worst. The game was reduced to "invest all your points in crafting, create an overpowered weapon, win" cicle, with no reason to even try most other perks until you were far enough into the game. I have my own idea of remaking the crafting system in Bethesda games from scratch, but this part of the comment is long enough.

I'll keep watching the video later, but for now I am really enjoying it.

[raviolimasteroli]

I’m glad this is actual criticism of the game and not someone else hopping on the “Bethesda Bad gimme views” bandwagon

[Armoredcompany]

Starfield's flashlight can best be described as "complimentary horror game flashlight"

[SynthLizard]

ALL of this is a prime example of just how crucial developer notes are during development, ALL the lessions learned from past games, during development and tracking the changes needed when the entire development of a game is done on the fly.

Base building, just throw it in and not connect it to anything or give it any real purpose.

[Makujah_]

Flashlight point. I'd argue you don't have to upgrade it. You start as a MINER, a profession intimately close with pitch black areas. They should have amazing lighting

[GastonGenta]

Considering BGS still in denial according to their steam review response, I doubt they will watch this. Especially when the lead writer/designer itself was publicly said that they ignore criticism.

[Betamon]

The depressing part is that they won’t bolster their writing staff because of Emil’s ego. He refuses to acknowledge any criticism, and rejects the idea of a design document which in my opinion seems like one of the reasons there isn’t more writers. With 20+ writers working on the game needing to be in cohesion with one another there needs to be that organisation there, but since BGS and Emil reject that idea it means that as far as writing goes the only way that cohesion can be done is by having one guy in charge and one guy alone, and we’ve seen how that’s panned out. They need a serious wake up call and I just hope that this release will have the chance to give that to them to reevaluate their approach and egos

[guanxiv]

Linking of ship cargo and outpost inventory should be part of the skill tree progression and visibly reflected on the star map. We need to be able to favorite / pin points of interest on the galaxy map as well