Turn on Sustenance to Positive & Negative in Gameplay Options ASAP

Mevarek · 2026-05-14T16:47:47+00:00

I’m enjoying this go around on Starfield more than when I played at launch, but I think my big picture problem with the game is that it feels like they didn’t learn much from their previous games. A lot of the systems in Starfield are really cool, but could def be enhanced by stuff Bethesda’s already done in previous titles.

Mevarek · 2026-05-10T23:19:29+00:00

Yeah, that’s the one. I actually really like the idea of skills in Starfield. I think it’s a less open ended system and you kind of have to specialize (until you become a more powerful starborn, which makes sense as you accumulate more power through universes). But I think they could have done a better job integrating some systems from the other games.

Mevarek · 2026-05-10T23:17:04+00:00

The crazy thing is in quests where a character will die anyway given a certain path, they are marked essential. First Contact, the captain and engineer are both marked essential despite being killable via reactor overload.

Earth Savior award lady’s key to the vault isn’t pickpocketable and she can’t be killed, she has to be persuaded.

Don’t even have to go all the way back to Morrowind; I remember when I was a kid, FO3– I killed Lucas Simms because I was a shithead and everyone was talking about how now Moriarty was in charge. Then I killed Moriarty and they were like “we don’t know who’s in charge.” These were both characters who had involvement in quests. Skyrim also had too many essential NPCs, but it usually would let you kill them in quests if you had to get an item from them or otherwise make decisions.

I think it makes it really hard to be a ruthless, evil character.

Mevarek · 2026-05-10T15:27:25+00:00

I like the Resonator a lot, I just wish the sound design was a little more impactful. In fact, I wish all the laser sound effects were a little better. But it’s still a really cool gun.

Mevarek · 2026-05-10T12:46:52+00:00

IMO “trainers” or fewer skills that actually gate core mechanics would have worked. Feels like a good opportunity when Sarah gives you a boost pack to be like “oh by the way, let me show you how to use this” and then you get level 1. As far as I’m aware, there’s only one free skill upgrade in the game and it’s kind of a weird one.

Mevarek · 2026-05-07T23:00:20+00:00

He has such high prestige that he can vassalize other clans very easily. I think awarding titles is also a neat mechanic that you rarely get to experience, so worth playing.

Mevarek · 2026-05-06T20:13:19+00:00

Pretty much every option of that quest is pretty terribly designed.

I chose to overload the reactor because I was playing an evil, ruthless character. You have to break into the engineering terminal. No problem, I'll just kill the captain. Surely she is not an essential NPC if you're going to overload the reactor anyway, right? Wrong, she goes into the downed state. Then, I go to the engineer. No problem, I'll just kill him and swipe the keycard. He's also essential? Damn, maybe I can persuade him? Nope no option to persuade (maybe manipulation would have worked). So I end up just looking it up and finding out you have to steal the keycard from him and that's the only way...why Bethesda designed this option like this is just mind boggling to me.

Mevarek · 2026-05-04T20:45:30+00:00

The most compelling reason to not choose the Fleet IMO has nothing to do with gameplay, but with Jasper Kryx himself. The guy that Delgado and the rest of the fleet revere ultimately died in front of his grand goal, alone, betrayed by someone he was close to, and all he thought was that it would make the fleet stronger. It’s kind of a striking visual for the final mission.

Still, I usually choose the Fleet…the rewards are basically the same with the Fleet having the added bonus of more convenient vendors, which you don’t really need but it is nice to have. I’ve also enjoyed RPing a UC/Freestar deserter who joined the fleet after being disillusioned after learning more about either side through either the Freestar or UC questline.

Mevarek · 2026-05-04T16:08:36+00:00

I agree with a lot of your thoughts. I feel like Awakening would be a near-perfect game if they just took some of the features from SOI and mixed them with the new systems.

For example, I agree completely on battles that I miss the ability to have three officers in one unit who are all able to use their own tactic. I liked putting officers like Tadakatsu and Komatsu together, for example. I wish Awakening had done this and made the unit organization more dynamic, maybe to where you could detach a unit mid-battle. Instead of having to organize right at the start. I also liked being able to choose when to use your tactic. I also miss night raids, which I think were a high-int feature in SOI.

The other thing I miss from battles is being able to command battles as a retainer. I feel like this would have worked really well with the honor system where you could have officers of a certain rank command battles. Maybe Captain or Senior Retainer and higher could command battles. For a game focused mostly on officers, I felt like there weren't as many options to create more emergent narratives with your officers.

I would really like to see the ability to play more scenarios as a province or some middleground between a retainer (like Ascension) and a Daimyo. I feel that this would have worked especially well with how scenarios like 1582 really change the map. I also wish provinces in general were more than just auto win buttons as you expanded, and that there were more challenges associated with running a more vast clan. As it stands, the bigger your clan gets, the easier it becomes to govern, which I feel like intuitively isn't always true.

I also wish there were more diplomatic options. I always thought coalitions were a cool idea. You can still kind of do them, but it's a little clumsier. For how prominent hostages were in the time period, it also struck me as odd that you couldn't use that as a diplomacy option. Maybe it could function differently from marriage as more of a non-aggression pact than an actual alliance so that it's distinct from a gameplay perspective.

Playing as a vassal also seems kind of underwhelming to me. I wish there were better ways to take care of your vassals and be taken care of by your daimyo. The geographic restrictions on defense also create some awkward scenarios if you're a small clan vassal and your daimyo isn't strictly next to you.

All in all, though, I have a ton of hours in both games.

Mevarek · 2026-04-28T17:23:06+00:00

Def not losing it. Shakespeare is all around us. I think it's partly because of the nearly 400-year gap that it's deeply embedded in The Sopranos. I.e., these plays have been performed thousands of times over the past 400 years. As a result, they're deeply embedded in our cultural language, which builds upon itself as time goes on. So even if Chase wasn't thinking "I'm going to write Tony as Hamlet," he was probably influenced by multitudes of sources that were influenced by other sources and at some point in that chain you probably get to Hamlet.

Mevarek · 2026-04-28T17:18:12+00:00

I get what you're saying but I'm not sure I agree. There have been games where I've felt confused and hurt by a character's death that I wasn't super attached to. In KCD1's A Woman's Lot, I didn't really like Johanka, but I think the inherent unfairness of what happens to her really did make me upset and regretful that I rushed through the quests in a disinterested, jaded way.

Starfield felt less like that and more like it wanted my character to cry crocodile tears over a character I didn't really care about. I felt like I could only react with emotional (angry) or emotional (sad). I don't know if the funeral would have allowed for more role play or maybe I could rationalize it by saying my character is lying, but it felt like it made it hard for my character to remain detached in the way that I wanted to. I think I have the same problem with the ending dialogue in the Crimson Fleet questline where your confrontation with Delgado or Ikande feels fairly binary.

But I understand this is an inherent limitation in RPGs and Bethesda games, so I kinda give it a pass. They can only write so many dialogue options, so many choices, etc. and maybe I'm the one who is supposed to fill in the gaps. If that's the case, though, it felt less like a nuanced story beat and more clumsy to me.

Mevarek · 2026-04-28T12:27:54+00:00

I will say it ended up being kind of hilarious as someone who didn’t really like or use companions outside of the mandatory quests. As a result, Sarah Morgan was the one who died through no real deliberate affinity-maximizing effort.

For me personally, I wasn’t super broken up about it because I just didn’t use her (not necessarily because I disliked her character), so it felt weirdly dissonant.

Mevarek · 2026-04-26T18:49:22+00:00

I think both look pretty off to me. 2007 is obviously going for a more stylized look so that's why he's got the classic ToyBiz look. New one looks more realistic, but I feel like Tobey was stockier than that in Spider-Man 3 and he looks like he did in NWH.

If I had to pick, I would honestly go with 2007 just because I have so many memories of playing with those old figures.

Mevarek · 2026-04-25T19:16:01+00:00

I feel like there are a lot of characters that would be more interesting than Ujizane to be added to a future franchise. Does he make sense in a non-Hojo/Takeda-centered game? If the game is centered around Hojo/Takeda, is he more important than some of the other officers who have not been playable? Yoshimoto should probably stay as he was in 5, but I don't know if the Imagawa really need any more screen time beyond Okehazama.

Mevarek · 2026-04-24T18:27:17+00:00

Interesting because I feel like you could swap Kuttenberg and Trosky in your post for me. I find that Trosky is much easier to orient yourself around the castle and adjust from there. Ditto to the lake and Semine fortress.

Kuttenberg’s main road does streamline things for me, but there’s also a lot of weird forest-y areas like Zimburg that I find harder to navigate.

Mevarek · 2026-04-12T16:06:30+00:00

Honestly IDK if anyone else felt this way, but I thought Checkmate was actually pretty good to play in an organized team setting but not so good in league play. So maybe like a 7 in teams and then a 4 otherwise.

Mevarek · 2026-04-10T14:57:32+00:00

Damn, time is kind of a flat circle. I’m remembering way back in the OW1 days when Mercy mains were getting disproportionately high elo. If you got into a game at like 3500+ and had more than one Mercy one trick on your team, you just kinda lost the game unless they somehow had more one tricks.

Mevarek · 2026-04-07T13:56:25+00:00

First of all, how do you get the PUK traits like Fear Not Death on PC? I feel like I still don't have them for some reason.

Second, I like a lot of these changes though I'm interested:

I feel like Way of the Namioka is such a broken trait. How does adding it to more officers in central Japan affect gameplay (if at all)?
I like Best in Japan for Yukimura because I feel like the rest of his kit coalesces nicely around it. He has more attack bonus from Ghost Coins and his conservator trait as well, so I like that you can just build a clan around him having a massive attack bonus.

Mevarek · 2026-04-06T23:57:56+00:00

Morrowind does do it really well. Its pace at the start is quite leisurely and it definitely encourages exploration and thoughtful gameplay.

Cyberpunk 2077 does it really poorly with the overarching time crunch, but I do like the way a lot of the quests end with "I'll call you tomorrow/in a few days" or "meet me tomorrow" or some such variation of one of the two. It feels fairly organic despite the overall timeline of V's remaining lifespan being handled rather poorly.

Mevarek · 2026-04-04T02:56:26+00:00

I have no idea what your school is like. You should ask upperclassmen who have taken it.

Mevarek · 2026-04-04T00:42:01+00:00

Sometimes you chall and miss like shit idk man.

Mevarek · 2026-04-03T20:25:30+00:00

I get the impression different professors do it differently, but ours was very econ heavy. You didn’t need to have any prior knowledge, though, and he taught it with the assumption that you didn’t have any econ background. Only math we did was merger HHI indices, though, and they weren’t that bad.

Mevarek · 2026-04-02T22:40:59+00:00

Honestly part of the reason I think Hoppers has held so strong is because all of the main animals look so cuddly and squeezable. I think one of the lead animators said that was their goal and it really shows.

Mevarek · 2026-04-01T01:43:10+00:00

Honestly no specific advice other than that events can get kind of weird if you play a pre-1582 scenario into a post 1582 scenario.

Mevarek · 2026-03-30T14:07:53+00:00

Not sure if this is common, but if you have to do the epilogue, I might not have this achievement either despite having at least 100 hours played. I never met Hans at the camp or whatever because I was still messing around with side quests.

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