Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Wunderbar]

Russia has been trying to replace AK with something different since the 80s, it still remains in use not because it's an immortal design, but rather because russians are poor cheapskates.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

They literally bankrupted their guns industry trying to redesign it into something that could hit a barn 400 yards out. The end result: an AK with a gimped pickatinny rail.

 

[ropetight]

Some designs just don't need to change. The AK should be one of those, I'm pretty sure we'll still be using those in 300 years.

Gun Jesus of Forgotten Weapons actually commented on this. He said that gunpowder-based firearms have reached the apex of their evolution in terms of mechanics - all possible concepts have been explored and all that's left now is mixing and matching the various features, and unless some revolutionary new invention comes along that's pretty much it.

However, what he did also say is that ergonomics is where the focus is now: optics on every rifle, advanced scopes that calculate a firing solution for the user, red dot sights on every pistol, captive pins, springs and much less complex disassembly to make maintenance easier etc.

Also, new trends with ammo, as has recently been popularized by the US military's adoption of a new cartridge specifically designed to combat modern body armor.

Polymer casing ammo for True Velocity & General Dynamics rifle that lost US Army Next Generation Squad Weapon contest to Sig Sauer surprised me in every way.
Complete game changer.
Special polymer is much lighter and heat isolator, so all energy is focused to front, which results in increased velocity of the bullet.
It is so effective that spent casings and chamber of the gun remained cold after firing.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

>guns 300 years in the future include a P90 with a hotwheels skin, and your great, great, great, great grandfather's double barreled shotgun

Some designs just don't need to change. The AK should be one of those, I'm pretty sure we'll still be using those in 300 years.

Yeah, but why would you use a double barrelled shotgun in the far future when semi-automatic shotguns exist? Shouldn't those become the standard and double barrelled shotties more of a niche pick?
Aren't doubled barrelled shotguns already a niche anyway?

 

[Jarmaro]

You guys are seriously discussing whether it's rational to use ballistic weapons in the far future, meanwhile the game will have laser swords and other melee weapons. To be honest, I could see a situation a la Dune, the advancement in armoring and personal shields arriving at the point where ranged weapons are very ineffective and melee weapons come to the top again.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You guys are seriously discussing whether it's rational to use ballistic weapons in the far future, meanwhile the game will have laser swords and other melee weapons. To be honest, I could see a situation a la Dune, the advancement in armoring and personal shields arriving at the point where ranged weapons are very ineffective and melee weapons come to the top again.

Holtzmann shields were a (very good) literary device to make fights more interesting, and remain so.
The issue is with sci-fi stories that offer no such device but for some reason ballistic weapons are completely absent without explanation, somehow inferior to magical laser devices yet not explained how or why.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

You guys are seriously discussing whether it's rational to use ballistic weapons in the far future, meanwhile the game will have laser swords and other melee weapons. To be honest, I could see a situation a la Dune, the advancement in armoring and personal shields arriving at the point where ranged weapons are very ineffective and melee weapons come to the top again.

I think ballistic weapons aren't going away. Like, ever. There might be a move to coil guns, but projectile weapons would still be in use.
Punching big holes in your enemy will always be a viable deterrent.

 

[ropetight]

You guys are seriously discussing whether it's rational to use ballistic weapons in the far future, meanwhile the game will have laser swords and other melee weapons. To be honest, I could see a situation a la Dune, the advancement in armoring and personal shields arriving at the point where ranged weapons are very ineffective and melee weapons come to the top again.

I think ballistic weapons aren't going away. Like, ever. There might be a move to coil guns, but projectile weapons would still be in use.
Punching big holes in your enemy will always be a viable deterrent.

Only negative thing of ballistic weapons/mass drivers in sci-fi is that they have reaction pushing shooter in opposite direction.
So without mag boots or something similar, they shouldn't be used in low or zero gravity.

Since we have seen in Starfield trailers that people are firing in zero g without recoil, Starfield instead of being hard-SF(which is the look they give at first glance) is more free with physics than Star Wars (where all ships have mysterious source of artificial gravity).
It is a shame, cause recoil force in zero g could be interesting game mechanic.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, Newton's third law is a bitch. Apparently firing a handgun in space won't yeet you off into the void at least due to the firer's mass (you'll move, but it won't be that much), but could result in a funny situation where the bullet enters a planet's gravity well and loops around until it hits something. Like the shooter.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You guys are seriously discussing whether it's rational to use ballistic weapons in the far future, meanwhile the game will have laser swords and other melee weapons. To be honest, I could see a situation a la Dune, the advancement in armoring and personal shields arriving at the point where ranged weapons are very ineffective and melee weapons come to the top again.

I think ballistic weapons aren't going away. Like, ever. There might be a move to coil guns, but projectile weapons would still be in use.
Punching big holes in your enemy will always be a viable deterrent.

Only negative thing of ballistic weapons/mass drivers in sci-fi is that they have reaction pushing shooter in opposite direction.
So without mag boots or something similar, they shouldn't be used in low or zero gravity.

Since we have seen in Starfield trailers that people are firing in zero g without recoil, Starfield instead of being hard-SF(which is the look they give at first glance) is more free with physics than Star Wars (where all ships have mysterious source of artificial gravity).
It is a shame, cause recoil force in zero g could be interesting game mechanic.

actually looks like he starts going backwards when he shoots to me
not sure if it's the player doing it or a reaction to the gun

 

[Stavrophore]

Should've done something different, like you could identify a resource with your scanner and just queue it up for a little pocket drone to fly out and collect while you carry on. You know, something cool and unobtrusive. But no, let's shoot rocks.

That's what ME:A did with a mod from nexus to mine just ONCE the deposit for all resources.

 

[ropetight]

Yeah, Newton's third law is a bitch. Apparently firing a handgun in space won't yeet you off into the void at least due to the firer's mass (you'll move, but it won't be that much), but could result in a funny situation where the bullet enters a planet's gravity well and loops around until it hits something. Like the shooter.

True, mass and force behind bullet are much less that a shooter, but firing whole cartridge from automatic weapon should affect shooter - moving him away from bullets at walking speed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitize...stion_does_firing_ballistic_weapons_in_zerog/

Someone should buy the video game rights for The Expanse - it has lots of lore, interesting story, combat is very newtonian...
It would make nice full circle, since Expanse was first developed as MMO setting, and when it was cancelled - they wrote books.

 

[ropetight]

You guys are seriously discussing whether it's rational to use ballistic weapons in the far future, meanwhile the game will have laser swords and other melee weapons. To be honest, I could see a situation a la Dune, the advancement in armoring and personal shields arriving at the point where ranged weapons are very ineffective and melee weapons come to the top again.

I think ballistic weapons aren't going away. Like, ever. There might be a move to coil guns, but projectile weapons would still be in use.
Punching big holes in your enemy will always be a viable deterrent.

Only negative thing of ballistic weapons/mass drivers in sci-fi is that they have reaction pushing shooter in opposite direction.
So without mag boots or something similar, they shouldn't be used in low or zero gravity.

Since we have seen in Starfield trailers that people are firing in zero g without recoil, Starfield instead of being hard-SF(which is the look they give at first glance) is more free with physics than Star Wars (where all ships have mysterious source of artificial gravity).
It is a shame, cause recoil force in zero g could be interesting game mechanic.

actually looks like he starts going backwards when he shoots to me
not sure if it's the player doing it or a reaction to the gun

Somethirng is happening, model is twitching, it looked like janky 3rd person weapon firing animation to me.
But maybe you are right.

 

[ropetight]

Yeah, Newton's third law is a bitch. Apparently firing a handgun in space won't yeet you off into the void at least due to the firer's mass (you'll move, but it won't be that much), but could result in a funny situation where the bullet enters a planet's gravity well and loops around until it hits something. Like the shooter.

True, mass and force behind bullet are much less that a shooter, but firing whole cartridge from automatic weapon should affect shooter - moving him away from bullets at walking speed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitize...stion_does_firing_ballistic_weapons_in_zerog/

Someone should buy the video game rights for The Expanse - it has lots of lore, interesting story, combat is very newtonian...
It would make nice full circle, since Expanse was first developed as MMO setting, and when it was cancelled - they wrote books.

I missed this - The Expanse game, but unfortunately it is Telltale "adventure".
https://telltale.com/the-expanse/

 

[gerey]

Should've done something different, like you could identify a resource with your scanner and just queue it up for a little pocket drone to fly out and collect while you carry on. You know, something cool and unobtrusive. But no, let's shoot rocks.

That's what ME:A did with a mod from nexus to mine just ONCE the deposit for all resources.

I wouldn't put it past Bethesda for them to ignore the obvious ways in which resource collection could be automated.

As others have said, you could feature a drone module on your ship, along with a scanning module, that would allow you to dispatch drones to the surface of a planet to mine. You could also establish a base and tell your underlings to mine things for you. You could mine in space with your ship if it has the right equipment, or even command a ship in your fleet to mine, and then another ship to act as a freighter and bring the ores to you.

But nah, they'll probably just have you waste time mining shit like a nigger using your laser drill and let the modders actually introduce depth and QoL to the mechanic.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

>Be Bethesda
>Refuse to stop using the creation engine
>Release low FPS trailer showcasing incredible stutter and dated graphics

They have no shame.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

>Be Bethesda
>Refuse to stop using the creation engine
>Release low FPS trailer showcasing incredible stutter and dated graphics

They have no shame.

>Releases it in a buggy and barely finished state.
>Charges 60 dollars for it.
>People buy it anyway and call it the best game ever, even though they have to mod it heavily to fix performance issues and add features that should have been in the game to begin with.
Every.Fucking.Time.

 

[Jarmaro]

Ironic how Shamus Young (RIP) called for procedural generation to be used in a sandbox open-world game, like Fallout 3. Almost thirteen years ago. I wonder what he thought of it these last few days before his death. The potential is surely there, AI art, music and even text generation is imporoving at extreme lengths as of late, and if curated by a human who chooses the best results out of thousands of generated works we can easily achieve decent enough results. Applying this to video game worlds is a no-brainer. The fact that we're seeing it used on such a scale in probably the biggest AAA game of this decade (or one of two, if TES 6 does deliver) is going to be a model for the rest of the industry. Not as if it wasn't exactly unused before, but not on this scale.

Just the other day I played Minecraft again and couldn't believe how much better is the mountains generation compared to the stuff that I wished for all those years ago. Almost any palce makes me giddy to build a house there and start making towers, bridges etc. The views are trully charming. Just imagine how much of workload could be off-loaded from the developers if they could focus filling the created world, instead of painstakingly building everything from scratch, and combining it with hand-crafted relevant locations everywhere it matters. I guess I sound a bit like Todd now, but the vision of games with unprecedented sizes is incredibly captivating.

On a side note, I wonder if Todd specificaly wanted to do Starfield before TES 6 as a test run of procedural generation, as you can be sure as hell if it works in Starfield it will be used in TES 6. It makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of Todd, a person that, from what I know, really loved Daggerfall. All those years, just to return to Illiac Bay, bringing the extreme technological advancements in design, procedural generation and programming with him. It trully warms the heart to see a man so hell-bent on following his dream, thorough all those years. He will weather any insult and slur on himself, just so that he can step by step gain all the knowledge neccessary to create his masterpiece. It shows in his interviews as well, he isn't just a conman as people call him, he has passion for the games that few people can match. I love Todd Howard, may he bring us the incline that was promised. He's the closest we have to a prophesized Hero.

 

[tritosine2k]

Procedural is what you got in RAGE2 and everyone prefers to forget about.

Plus can you even generate semi-interior /exterior with any fidelity. If it can't handle anything like that then barren planets are a possibility and YTers are right

Spoiler

 

[Jarmaro]

Procedural is what you got in RAGE2 and everyone prefers to forget about.

Admittedly I didn't play Rage 2 and I cannot find anything about it being used in the development, but it's true, then knowing Rage 2 was also published by Bethesda means they tested it there as well. It'd be a funny conspiracy theory, Todd ruining other games behind the scenes by forcing technological prototypes to be tested in their making, just so he could make even better open-world CRPGs for himself.

 

[copebot]

Pretty sure everything in Rage 2 was hand painted and placed apart from the usual procedural generation of terrain and other natural features which is then later hand edited. The problem with that game was really just the open world Ubilike point of interest design. The combat was fine outside of the balancing issues. It's just you spend a lot of your time driving from spot to spot instantly murdering armies of people and then moving to the next spot. Even on the extreme difficulty setting your powers just made you wildly OP, which made it a pretty weak SP shooter.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint has excellent procedural terrain modified by hand. It and the other, better Ghost Recon also did a great job with this. Division 2 used tons of photogrammetry and satellite imagery as a starting point. That part of the Ubiverse of games is probably the best part of them, with the "game" parts being more perfunctory, sometimes sub-serviceable, and less interesting.

 

[Just Locus]

Technically he wasn't wrong. Skyrim had infinite quests, actually i found that pretty impressive at the time, even if they were just rudimentary go kill, fetch stuff from X.

Radiant AI is a joke but from time to time they have some moments like when you drop by random some cabbage and NPC will pick it up and then second NPC will accuse first NPC of stealing and they will start to fight each other. I just wish they would focus more on that instead of their shitty stories. Also if your murder shopkeeper his kin can take over shop which is not something you can see in any other RPG. There is some daggerfall DNA still there in things like that.

Betsheda could be respected dev if they would focus entirely on game systems. I said it in Fallout 4 thread. Fallout 4 might be garbage Fallout game but with different name and removal of almost all quests and npcs + some extra sprinkle of survival good light survival game.

The Main problem i see with bethesda is that they have a very random design philosophy, With Fallout 4: They didn't know which game they wanted FO4 to be, does it want to be a survival/crafting game? (ex: the settlement system, the gun modification) does it want to be a first person shooter? (ex: The legendary system, majority of quests revolve around fixing your problems with a bullet.) does it want to be an RPG? (ex: vague attempt at implementing skills into perks, integrating charisma into speech checks) it doesn't know what it wants to be, so it tries to do it all and fails miserably on all them, because they didn't focus on doing one thing and innovating on that, they tried to all of them in an attempt to please everyone, and ended up pleasing no one.
if bethesda wants starfield to be a NMS clone, good, keep it that way, don't ramshackle dozens of systems into a game and not being able to innovate on those systems cause they have countless others to worry about.
And i want Radiant Quests to die a quick death, it's useless, it adds nothing to the game but give players who have no life do the same bland, mundane, dull action over and over again, and i don't think a system that repeats the exact same shit over and over again, to be "impressive" more like it's a waste of time, both for the player and the developer, as they could be focusing on more important aspects of the game.

 

[AW8]

 

[Pink Eye]

truly. skyrim 2.0 is going to revolutionize the gaming world forever. i dont know about the rest of you. but i've already preordered the game on steam and bought the super ultimate mega ultra collectors edition with anime dancing figurine.

 

[Caim]

We had Oblivion With Guns, now get ready for Skyrim With Guns 2.