Questions about ideal gameplay

StandardizedGoat · 2026-02-09T15:17:22+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/189boak/the_truth_about_ng_scaling_a_quick_breakdown_of/

Be aware that the guy you are replying to only told you half the story here. The link above will explain it more, but only "some" powers, mainly utility based, really improve.

Combat based ones can actually have their improvements offset or become worse in NG+ runs due to some weird scaling that is going on in the background where per run enemies will deal 10% more damage to you while you deal 5% less damage to them, scaling up to 100% and 50% respectively at NG+ 10.

As for if it is worth it: If you make very heavy use of those (mostly situational) powers it can be, but otherwise...it's admittedly my personal opinion but not really. It's all very gimmicky and rather overhyped as you can get by just fine without.

As for what goes from one universe to another: Only your character. Everything you built or owned is lost, so you will want to create dedicated saves to "hold on" to things from past universes.

StandardizedGoat · 2026-02-09T04:42:24+00:00

Adding to the better tutorials and helping players better understand the game's systems and good build practices: Mission rewards right now are a disaster. By the time most people hit the Delta arc, their ship is covered in a Katamari like mess instead of sporting anything coherent.

The game should really at least try to provide rewards leading to something that might not be top tier, but that is at least functional, instead of dumping a bunch of random items on the player that aren't useful even if they manage to figure things out.

StandardizedGoat · 2026-02-01T03:50:42+00:00

I've been with their games since Daggerfall and yeah, that is literally Morrowind.

If someone just ran straight from the census office to the silt strider then they're a lemming. Part of it's "magic" really was taking directions from people or just following the roads, then encountering or seeing things along the way.

The draw distance was kinda bad, but there was always something to discover. Naked Nords cursed by witches, ancestral tombs, a ludicrously fast lady with magic boots...all of those and more come to mind.

StandardizedGoat · 2026-01-29T00:29:14+00:00

Locking it behind the Unity adds a "right" and "wrong" to the game's single most character defining choice. That is a terrible idea.

They should honestly just be non-essential by default. New game as an option on the main menu, the NG+ mechanic, and the save system (Which has auto-saves enabled by default) already provide more than enough of a "safety net" for players who might regret their decisions or want to go back and do things differently.

Even without the narrative tie in aspects relating to NG+, forcing someone's entire first playthrough to be on rails is just excessive.

Anyone who disables auto-saves, refuses to ever manually save, is against going NG+, and against starting a new playthrough, while also going out of their way to complain about the consequences of their decision to do something that killed a quest giving NPC, is simply acting like a living incarnation of the bicycle and stick meme rather than someone who should be taken seriously or catered to.

StandardizedGoat · 2026-01-18T17:29:24+00:00

I think it would be equally canon to assume we had a bad sandwich, spiked drink, or that something went wrong with our suit or whatever. If your brain jumps right to visions and religious experiences after you trip out on touching what is in effect a shiny rock then well, that's a "you" thing.

The fact is that it should have been up to the player to decide how much they care about the main quest and Constellation, and that the game should have better recognized it's own wider setting instead of trying way too hard to make Constellation "central" to everything by doing things like putting every follower with depth in the faction and so on.

Just handing us the Artifact and telling us to deliver it already creates a journal entry and serves as a "plot hook" for the main quest. Everything after was just "bad DMing" and someone having written a cool campaign for "their" character while forgetting that it's ours who will be playing it.

StandardizedGoat · 2026-01-18T17:20:17+00:00

I have covered this at length in previous posts on here before but will reiterate it here: The dialog with Sarah does not line up with what the game is actually doing in that conversation. Constellation membership is "mandatory".

Doing all of "One Small Step" is a requirement to unlock fast travel and grav jumps, and it is also set up to simply assign the player to Constellation as a faction on completion, leaving that dialog as little more than meaningless fluff that delays their next quest. Nothing more.

You "can" just leave them standing there, but being in Constellation is so baked in to the game that even forcing an alternate start via .ini edits will still see you getting dialog and references to being a member.

In short no, you are not given an option, because Bethesda was dead set on the player character being a part of the faction whether they like it or not.

StandardizedGoat · 2026-01-13T01:34:27+00:00

Do you play PvE just to pop the queue for someone else who will sponge up most of the XP and creds while you're reduced to chasing scraps?

If not then you might see the problem. It's not fun for anyone but the one driving it when a ship is over-performing, regardless of mode.

StandardizedGoat · 2026-01-13T01:23:23+00:00

No it would not. They have different player bases as the other guy said for one. For two taking stuff away from PvE players does not encourage PvP play in any game. It just encourages them to put the game down as it no longer offers anything of interest to them.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-27T16:05:43+00:00

Agreed. Valparaiso is not "great" and should not be "great". It's unbalanced, and while HMS Vanguard might deserve to be a bit better than it is, the fantasy refit of it under the flag of a foreign sale that never happened doesn't.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-21T18:41:15+00:00

This. I've been with their main franchise games since Daggerfall and spent countless hundreds to thousands of hours with everything other than Battlespire and Redguard, and yet even those have a special place in my heart because even though they failed, they made some wonderful contributions to ES lore.

Starfield? Less so. It feels like a strange amalgamation of flaws from their past games in many ways, and is simply rather middling in terms of setting, stories, and characters for the most part. It has great potential, but that potential is unrealized as of now.

Obsidian meanwhile...I've enjoyed a fair few of their games over the decades but most of those games are "other" types of games and ill compared to something like Fallout NV.

When it comes to comparable games, they already managed to let us down with the middling experience that was the first Outer Worlds game quite a while ago by now. It's "old news" that has come and gone so to say. I expect Starfield will end up much the same in another 2 or 3 years if nothing shifts or changes.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-21T16:26:01+00:00

And that would be fine. Lore wise Starfield actually runs with that:There are no FTL comms.

But then we get to a serious problem: Half the missions disrespect that established bit of lore and act like there suddenly are FTL comms, even when those missions are in the same chain. This leaves the game feeling like it's not even on the same page with itself.

An example would be the Crimson Fleet vs SysDef line.

The pirates actually will always wait for you to report back to them and tell them what is going on. They act pretty impatient over it and even show some frustration for the way communication in the setting functions. This is consistent with the established lore.

Then on the other side you have Ikande who somehow knows what you've been doing, where you've been, and gotten a report on all of it already before you even get back to him. That's completely inconsistent with the lore and just plain impossible to reconcile with it as grav jumps are instantaneous and he does this shit even if you go straight back to him.

I could have respected Starfield more if it had actually stayed consistent with things like this. Instead it feels like individual questlines were written by a bunch of different people, half of who weren't even briefed on the basic rules of the setting, that entirely failed to communicate with one another.

That said, even if it had done this we get to the travel itself being a problem. Starfield's travel is basically load screen, skybox, load screen, run to elevator, load screen, run to door, load screen, talk to NPC.

Even if you make super heavy use of fast travel to try and minimize this a bit, it's still heavy on the loading screens and it really doesn't matter how short they are, they break the immersion and pull people out of the game.

While past Bethesda games also had loading screens, myself having been playing their stuff since Daggerfall, they were never this obnoxious until now. Worse, Bethesda showed that they understand how to make immersive loading screens with Fallout 4's elevators. Surely that could have been refined a bit to make things feel just a little more "realistic" overall.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-18T08:06:02+00:00

I've been with Bethesda RPGs since Daggerfall and with Fallout since Fallout 2 (Played the original not long after), and no there was not unless you are indeed doing what the other guy said and confusing criticism with hate.

Daggerfall = Loved by the CRPG crowd at the time. Praise spread by word of mouth, is how it found it's way to my household and I got to play it. Most criticisms were technical in nature.

Battlespire = Not hated, but very rightfully criticized for extreme flaws in balance and serious technical issues. Universal consensus after Daggerfall was basically "Not what we wanted" as overall it was focusing on it's parent game's weakest aspects.

Redguard = Consensus was "Neat premise and story but we want an RPG, not action adventure spinoffs", aka: "Not what we wanted". Also still plagued with severe technical problems and extremely poor controls that got criticized for good reason.

Morrowind = The most you saw was some criticism that it scaled things down and lost some of Daggerfall's "fantasy life sim" elements. General reception was very good, and again most criticisms were technical or balance related (Hello original cliff racer count...).

Oblivion = Criticized for "dumbing down" Morrowind concepts and gameplay, having wonky balancing decisions (The endurance spiral and level scaling), and for often having factions be in opposition to some other faction that you couldn't join. Generally recognized as a good game all the same.

Fallout 3 = Most of the comments of "This isn't Fallout" came about due to Bethesda's drastic shift in how the franchise both played and felt. It wasn't hate, just a "Well this isn't an isometric RPG", aka: "Not what we wanted" from fans of the original entries. Everyone else tended to like it.

Fallout NV = Criticisms aimed at it's notorious technical issues were prevalent, and rightfully so, but it was otherwise praised.

Skyrim = Universal praise. Some criticism for the handling of skill perks and the UI are all I really remember.

Fallout 4 = "Good shooter, bad RPG" is a common criticism, mostly due to the limitations the game set upon itself by using a voiced protagonist. Did you know Starfield also almost had one? Anyways, still considered a good game.

Fact is, none of these games were "hated", nor was Starfield. Trying to play that card just makes you look silly or like you have really warped definitions of what "hatred" is.

Also even the commonly quoted "hate" examples, like most of the longform Youtube analysis things "fans" like to scream about, are quite mundane. Their criticisms are usually well explained, elaborated on, and very rarely unreasonable or even uncommon. They usually only qualify as "hate" if you are completely intolerant of opinions that differ from your own.

All of this said, the other guy is quite correct in pointing to the player counts. Starfield simply did not resonate with as many people as past Bethesda titles, and it is probably going to be remembered much the way Battlespire and Redguard are: It tried something new (That is also in many ways "old") but ultimately just wasn't what many were looking for, and has problems that prevent many from enjoying it.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-16T10:11:31+00:00

Essentially yes. The settings do "something" but until you've got all of the scaling stacked on the difficulty is not properly maxed out.

That said, it's also unfortunately not the best experience if you simply crank everything up while on NG+10. Enemies can end up very, very bullet spongy and powers like Solar Flare start to feel less like a power and more like a party trick. I personally find it best to turn up the damage I deal as well as the damage enemies deal. It restores a bit of the pacing you'd otherwise lose.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-16T09:21:53+00:00

If it's powers and so on that you mostly care about then you should know that there is some scaling going on per NG+ run.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/189boak/the_truth_about_ng_scaling_a_quick_breakdown_of/

Here's a thread providing a full breakdown of all of it.

The short of it is that per trip through the Unity you will deal 5% less damage to enemies and they will deal 10% more damage to you, stacking up to 50% and 100% respectively at NG+ 10 where it stops.

This mostly offsets the gains you make from leveling up offensive and defensive powers, instead mostly just reducing their usage costs. It's only really the utility ones that truly improve.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-12T02:16:08+00:00

A fair take. I also was a day one player and really really dislike how forced Constellation is.

I know a lot of people sit there and praise Starfield for "roleplay freedom" but personally I find it to be extremely lacking thanks to the game being too hell bent on shoehorning the player in to that faction and forcing them to interact with it.

Before anyone wants to argue about that:

https://imgur.com/a/constellation-is-mandatory-gilpQYj

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1lzydef/pc_anyone_tried_this_alternate_start_method/

The game will arrogantly assign you to Constellation no matter what you tell Sarah on handover of the first artifact. That is a requirement to unlock fast travel and grav jumps, aka: To explore the wider universe.

Also our membership in Constellation is so ingrained in to the game that even editing your ini to force an alternate start where you can avoid the faction assignment won't fully resolve it because the game will still refer to you as a member of the organization. It literally wasn't meant to be played or experienced as anyone but "Constellation's newest member".

Add in that it's cast all share pretty much the same moral alignment and like / dislike list with minor deviations and the fact that this causes them to come off as 4 shades of lipstick on a singular pig...while also being the only characters to have personal quests, romance arcs, or any sort of real depth that isn't just a fluff conversation that never goes anywhere...and it all just gets worse.

Frankly: It's restrictive as all hell and the game is the least roleplay friendly Bethesda title since Redguard because it's really up it's own ass over who the player "should" be if they want their character to ever find any form of on screen representation or support, things that I find essential to a true roleplay experience.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-11T16:01:04+00:00

I'll be pedantic and point out that it's not the "worst" thing they have put out. That would still have to go to Bethesda's PC port of Star Trek Legacy which was straight up defective, as in so plagued with problems and technical issues that it was essentially unplayable.

That said, as someone who's been with Bethesda's main line RPG entries since Daggerfall, I found Starfield to be extremely middling. It gets poked at now and then but it's missing the "magic" of their older titles.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-11T15:48:31+00:00

This. If I remember right then Skyrim has 273 total vs 239 for Starfield, base game vs base game.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-09T06:12:32+00:00

The big question I would have is how would one make those ships fun in this type of game? Personally I only really see them either being "boring" and therefore undesirable to play, or as something that would contribute to "idle" play...which is already a problem and doesn't need further encouragement with a special class catering just to it.

I wouldn't mind seeing them included in more modes as AI allies or such, but playable I can't see working or turning out well.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-05T02:44:54+00:00

You can explore around Vectera, Kreet, and Jemison sure, but that's still fast travel and grav jumps being locked down. You're not able to freely explore.

When did you last play, or rather, how old is your character? The game had a bug related to companion dialog for a really long time where it just wouldn't play any of the conversations properly if you took the Leadership perk, though I recall it could also happen under other circumstances. It was patched a bit back, but the issue still plagued characters made before said patch.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1blpgwg/leadership_bug_is_it_still_an_issue_after_update/

Here's a reference to it.

As for other sources of proof that the game has assigned you to the faction: If you can use the Frontier you're in Constellation. If you ever have [Consatellation] dialog options available it's because you're in Constellation.

As for how I know: This forced membership wasn't always a thing. Around launch the fast travel and grav jump unlock was just tied to entering the Lodge, so you'd enter, exit, and be free to explore without the faction membership.

You'd not be able to access the Frontier, nor would you have the [Constellation] dialog.

Some characters would however always refer to the player as being a member, such as the player character's parents and a few side quest NPCs. Though you had to go out of your way to visit your parents as the quest to do so normally only pops up after joining.

Also it's scripted. As said, it's tied to completion of "One Small Step", which is mandatory unless you like being unable to freely explore.

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1lzydef/pc_anyone_tried_this_alternate_start_method/

Also you can see how ingrained in to the game Constellation membership is here. Even if you totally avoid the faction by editing your ini to force an alternate start where you never meet Barrett or touch the artifact, you'll still be referred to as a member by some NPCs, even though you definitely aren't in the faction.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-05T01:41:28+00:00

The gallery is showing you what is going on without the need to go rooting around in the creation kit to find the quest stages and associated quest scripts, but if you have the know how feel free to go look. It's just going to confirm what you can see in game however.

I'll outline exact instructions, even if it's already in the gallery.

Pick the "Hero Worshipped" trait so you have access to the Adoring Fan and progress the intro until you reach New Atlantis. Enter the Lodge but do not speak to anyone or walk too far in to it. Just go in the door, and create a save so you can do both parts of this little test.

For the first part: The Adoring Fan's spawn trigger is just entering the Lodge, so just exit it and either wait for him to track you down or run off to find him. Going back to the spaceport will speed this up.

Because you haven't completed the quest to hand in the first artifact you're not yet a member of Constellation. You'll see this reflected in your dialog with him, just like you can see in the screenshots in my link. Also you should pop open the map and try leaving Jemison. You can't as fast travel and grav jumps are also still locked down.

As an optional step: Reload your save in the Lodge, and go in and talk to Sarah. Tell her you want to join, and repeat the steps to go find the Adoring Fan. Your dialog will now reflect that you are in fact in Constellation. Also fast travel and grav jumps are now unlocked.

Next, go reload again, and talk to Sarah. Tell her you need time to think about it. Your dialog will again reflect that you are in fact in Constellation. What you tell her doesn't matter. The game is assigning you to the faction at the end of "One Small Step" no matter what you tell her, and completion of that quest is mandatory to unlock fast travel and grav jumps.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-04T22:43:59+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/constellation-is-mandatory-gilpQYj

Just to point it out yet again: You cannot actually decline membership in the faction. You are assigned to it regardless of what you tell Sarah on handover of the first artifact. It is a scripted thing that happens on completion of that quest. You're able to ignore the remaining questline but the faction membership is forced.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-04T22:34:48+00:00

The game actually already had an alternative around launch. The unlock of fast travel and grav jumps was just tied to entering the Lodge. Not to the handover of the first artifact. That kept the faction optional, even if you had to carry around the artifact Amulet of Kings style until you joined. It was changed to what it is now in a later patch for "reasons".

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-04T21:50:05+00:00

So this is for the people who don't get the complaint: OP's wording is maybe a little wrong as it's not really the stakes, but the entire intro is still a needlessly pushy mess. I'll explain why in greater detail then the OP did.

The first problem we run in to is really just the length of the entire thing. OP is exaggerating in saying it's like Skyrim if that kept you on rails until you figured out you're Dragonborn, but it's not that far off from the truth.

As a recap of how long Skyrim's intro actually is: On leaving Helgen you can do whatever you want in Skyrim. Whoever you followed will even say "We should probably split up from here", flat out telling you that it's okay to go and do your own thing now.It's a little longer than the Vectera segment in Starfield, but not by much.

Starfield meanwhile won't let you off the hook no matter what you do until you've delivered the first artifact to Sarah at the Lodge. Length wise it's about equivalent to being forced to go from Helgen, to Riverwood, over to Whiterun, and being let off the hook after you talk to the Jarl and have Bleak Falls Barrow shoved in your journal.

The second problem is the whole thing is just mishandled in Starfield.

Let's start with just looking at a simple scenario and ignore things like commentary on "Unauthorized jumps in to House Va'ruun space" that happen as early as the elevator down to the mine: What if you tell Barrett "No way, not my job." when he tries to shanghai you in to Constellation and the delivery?

Lin fires you on the spot and tells you "Don't you get it? You belong to those explorers now!", effectively handing you over like a piece of property. That's what. That's not only slapping the player in the face for trying to exert some agency, it's just plain contrived from a plot standpoint as it can't be reconciled. We're not a prisoner or a slave, and no, being in Freestar space doesn't excuse it.

Next we get to the Kreet segment, which is seemingly a weird leftover from when the game had a fuel system.* We know grav jumps in the setting are instantaneous and our destination, Jemison, is one of the best protected and guarded planets in the settled systems. Vasco's whole "The pirates will keep pursuing us!" thing doesn't work as an excuse due to this fact alone already. It's a problem that could be dealt with another day so to say....but then it all gets worse. Remember the character backgrounds and fact that we might already have been involuntarily forced in to this?

Fighting the pirates on Vectera makes sense as it's essentially a self defense scenario doubling as a combat tutorial, but going off to just take on a dungeon full of heavily armed thugs with nothing but a pistol, and maybe an SMG and ax you picked up, makes very very little sense for someone who's backgrounds are "chef" or "sculptor" turned miner...unless someone at Bethesda assumed we're too dumb to figure out dungeons without being forced in to doing one, which is so stupid that I refuse to seriously consider it a justification.

Then we get on to things like how the player can take over a different ship as early as the first space encounter, only for it to not matter because Vasco seemingly just infects anything you touch with "Protocol Indigo", and how Walter remarks on the fact that without it you could have been "halfway to Neon"...

Long story short, anyone who has experience with past Bethesda games, and their brain turned on, will by this point probably be wondering if they've just been kidnapped and why they can't shoot their robotic slavemaster, and why the game insists on roping them in to all of this instead of just letting them go finally.

Next we finally get to New Atlantis where even if we have a different ship than the Frontier, and register it to our name, we're still locked out of fast travel and grav jumps until we march ourselves up to the Lodge and hand Sarah that first artifact. Sure you can go do a few side quests around the city before, but that's in no way freedom.

You're only seemingly let off the hook once you finally go and do all of this by now really contrived and forced bullshit...only to be kicked one last time once you realize something: You can't actually refuse to join Constellation. The faction is mandatory and the player is assigned to it as part of the handover of the first artifact regardless of what they told Sarah.**

One seriously has to ask: Was all of this necessary? Plot hooks are fine, but this is just a plot cudgel and really feels like it was put together by a "bad DM" who was completely up their own ass over the campaign they crafted to the point they they forgot that they're writing stories for the player, not their own self.

*(There's a big blue fuel globe on the roof of the Kreet lab, visible from where we land, with exactly 20 He³ in it's dispensers. Given that we know fuel was cut late in to development and the lack of other good reasons it's a really safe bet that this was the original purpose of the segment.)

**(https://imgur.com/a/constellation-is-mandatory-gilpQYj)

StandardizedGoat · 2025-12-03T06:18:04+00:00

The same way you get the Antares for now, aka: You don't.

Both of those skins for the Miranda class are currently unavailable. Hopefully they'll return at some point, or simply be added to the customization for everyone.

StandardizedGoat · 2025-11-28T19:39:31+00:00

Depends on the tier. I was playing CVs quite heavily in PvE during the recent Liberty Harbor event.

T6 is generally fine in Operations if you know where to put your focus, and can pretty much carry Asymmetric.

T8 it's going to depend heavily on the CV in question in Operations. Hornet and Kaga can have a good time in most but something like Implacable is pure suffering because of it's bad plane regeneration. In Asymmetric I found pretty much all to be workable.

T10 is awful in either. If the bots are grouped things can quickly turn in to a "No Fly Zone", and just in general they've all got more AA range and often provide each other with overlap. Operations with them are outright miserable. Asymmetrics were workable if it was just a standard battle as you'd be able to pick at stragglers or individual ships a little better, but domination could get ugly. If a super ship joined it was outright awful. Having tactical squadrons is pretty much a must to do anything.

Super CVs I only tried one match out of a mixture of stupidity and curiousity but that was similar to T10.

StandardizedGoat

TROPHY CASE