:.:. Starfield .:.: - by Vae
EvaUnit02 on 27/9/2023 at 09:50
Pro-tip:-
Don't do any side-quests from a mission board. They're all Radiant procedurally generated garbage. Utterly boring as sin.
WingedKagouti on 27/9/2023 at 13:00
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
But unexpectedly the person who would have been the boss of the mission initiated dialog, and one of the replies was a faction specific one.
Factions, traits, backgrounds and skills can all provide new dialogue options, several side quests also have NG+ specific dialogue if you've done them in a previous iteration.
Wanted (trait) has a tendency to pop up when talking to criminal NPCs while Industrialist (background) can appear when talking to corporate management and engineers. Security (skill) popped up as a dialogue option at least once during the Ryujin story.
Quote:
I will say that the MQ might not be everyone's cup of tea,
From what I've seen, the Main Quest is mostly there to get you into the NG+ loop to experience new variants of the Main Quest and possibly try out alternate routes and dialogues in faction quests.
Without mods the first MQ always has the same story structure and the first NG+ also follows a set structure, but after that several variants become available.
Jason Moyer on 28/9/2023 at 00:07
I'm kinda disappointed that NG+ is where the action is (yeah I read about it and spoiled myself, bah) because I can't imagine continuing with my current character without being able to respec. I've been grabbing one skill at a time in each tree and maxing them out, and I'd kinda like to start over and only level up skills organically, so I'm not doing shit like picking fitness or environmental resistance then intentionally running into a wall or walking around without a suit to level them up. I feel like the system would be more fun if every time you level up, if there's not a skill that can be upgraded you choose a new one. That way you get basic perks you want, but only level up the skills you're actually using. I wish I had thought about that before starting, but I can probably breeze through playthrough 1 with a new character in a day or two. But I won't have all my cool guns and chameleon gear. :( I may just do as much content as I can in this playthrough pre-NG+ then make a second character and play it less anal retentively. They really seemed to make an effort to give you quests organically via NPC's approaching you to meet someone or overhearing NPC's talking, so I'm curious to see if you could get into and complete each faction and major side chain without doing what I normally do, being stupid and exploring/talking to every NPC in every city unprompted. It honestly seems like they tried to make the game more fun in that way, where you don't have to play it like an asshole like I'm doing to experience the content fully.
WingedKagouti on 28/9/2023 at 07:04
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
They really seemed to make an effort to give you quests organically via NPC's approaching you to meet someone or overhearing NPC's talking, so I'm curious to see if you could get into and complete each faction and major side chain without doing what I normally do, being stupid and exploring/talking to every NPC in every city unprompted. It honestly seems like they tried to make the game more fun in that way, where you don't have to play it like an asshole like I'm doing to experience the content fully.
As far as I can think of, you will get the introduction Activity (ie. go talk to the recruiter) for each of the factions except Crimson Fleet just by following the main quest. UC guards in New Atlantis will mention that Sergeant Yumi could use some help, the first quest after arriving at Constellation takes you to the Vanguard recruiter, the first visit to Akila City has a scripted encounter that leads to the Freestar Rangers, Ryujin has advertising kiosks in both New Atlantis and Neon.
If you do the probationary mission for the Vanguard you'll get an option to take care of their rather nasty problem or try to tackle the Crimson Fleet. There's also a different way to be put in contact with the Fleet. As far as I can tell, the Trackers Alliance, Trade Authority and GalBank aren't joinable factions, even if you can do some missions for them.
Jason Moyer on 28/9/2023 at 08:53
I'm not sure how, but I got summoned to UCSysDef without ever having a bounty or being arrested. I honestly don't remember what triggered it, but I had an activity to go see them and never went through the part of the questline you get doing it the normal way. Edit: I suppose I could have gotten sent there by the Vanguard recruiter.
I think the first time I visited New Atlantis something pointed me to talk to the GalBank dude. And some activity led down a path that put me in touch with the Trade Authority in the Well. IIRC the first time I went to Cydonis someone in a bar said something that sent me to see the Tracker's Alliance guy/girl. So I suspect the bounty board missions you can unlock have some sort of signposted lead-ins too. Come to think of it, I think even being anal about exploring, almost all of the sidequests I did started with a "go talk to so and so" activity.
Maybe this isn't unique to Starfield, I don't think I've tried playing Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim just picking off quests as I got them and letting the game point me to things or pick them up randomly in my travels. I did do a playthrough of New Vegas like that IIRC, and the only thing I remember not being led to was the creature fighting arena bit. I still haven't gotten around to the Skyrim remaster, so whenever I do that I may see how much it signposts the non-radiant content. Maybe I've been playing these games in an annoying way this whole time and not realized it.
I've gotten to the point of doing some temples in the MQ, and the first weird thing I've encountered was a quest where the entire location is patrolled by Crimson Fleet, so they just let me walk around (which is fine), but when I went into the cave with the artifact there were 2 of the Snake God faction fighting the Constellation chick I was meeting for some reason. Then the rest of the cave was CF who initially went into a hostile animation before calming down. It seemed to me like the Snake dudes should have been in control of that entire location instead of the Fleet and they fucked up populating it.
Weird thing that may or not be a glitch: Sarah Morgan doesn't count as a crew member if you assign her to your ship. So you can have 3 people in the Frontier as long as she's one of them.
Malf on 28/9/2023 at 09:14
Like you Jason, I don't know if I have the sheer bloody-minded stamina to stick with the game long enough to experience NG+ (although I haven't spoiled it for myself, so only know that it's supposed to be interesting).
But NG+ only works if the main game is compelling enough that you complete it. And in that respect, Starfield is awful. It's grey and bland with huge amounts of jank, and all of it built on technology that other than graphically, hasn't advanced in almost two decades, meaning that it feels like a game from two decades ago.
And either side of its release you have Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2.0 / Phantom Liberty, which positively put it to shame and show it up for the wreck it really is.
Jason Moyer on 28/9/2023 at 09:28
I think it's my favorite Bethesda game right now. Early on I thought it was kind of boring, then much later on it was getting pretty janky, but I really liked the faction sidequests other than the lame inconsequential Bioware-esque choices you make at the end of them. I mean the "which terrible thing do you want to roll with" part is cool, but I've mostly just done whichever one seemed to give you the most post-faction stuff to do.
There are some head scratching things of course. Environmental resistance is totally useless; I chose it because it sounded interesting as I'm making my way up the tree to get the god-tier stealth abilities, but in reality I've almost never taken any environmental damage without doing it on purpose and haven't even really looked at the spacesuit/pack/helmet resistances after stuff started showing up (early game) with interesting bonus attributes. I feel like they could have made that aspect more hardcore so that, like in...well, New Vegas mostly, you'd carry a radiation suit around because there were times you needed it. Also, the second special ability the MQ gave me seems basically completely useless outside of having something like the ability to get spaced during ship combat (that would be a cool mod, ship destruction killing your crew and leaving your supplies floating in space and you'd have to boost to another ship and board it without running out of dioxygen).
WingedKagouti on 28/9/2023 at 12:37
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Also, the second special ability the MQ gave me seems basically completely useless outside of having something like the ability to get spaced during ship combat (that would be a cool mod, ship destruction killing your crew and leaving your supplies floating in space and you'd have to boost to another ship and board it without running out of dioxygen).
Which order you get them in is random, the gravity ones are the least useful. I'll add spoiler tags for the ones I use:
Personal Atmosphere: Infinite O2 (ie. stamina) while active and refreshes O2, so you can use it when you're about to run out.Precognition: Allows you to see (part of) the initial reply to dialogue as well as patrol routes for NPCs.Sunless Space: Stuns a target for long enough to kill them with reasonably levelled weapons.Sense Star Stuff: Shows organic beings through walls at a decent distance.Void Form: Near-invisibility, the same ability you see some of the starborn use. Enemies won't lose you if they can see you when you activate it, but it can help with a stealth approach if you aren't spotted.Jason Moyer on 29/9/2023 at 21:16
It's always interesting how different people use different skills. I've been using gravity field as my combat power because it basically gives me as many free sneak criticals I want on multiple enemies who can't fight back. Non-combat I usually switch to precognition just because it's a neat power.
Jason Moyer on 1/10/2023 at 05:02
You know, I'd kinda like to ask the lead writer/designer/whatever on Starfield how communication works in the world. Because you either need to be face-to-face, over a loudspeaker, or in ships that are within 1km or something of each other to have conversations. There is that Tapping The Grid quest where she talks you through it but all she says is "I can talk to you remotely" and it's completely handwaved. I feel like the handful of QoL issues I have with the game, especially the late game (fucking Vlad) would be rectified by people simply calling each other on the phone or sending an email. Even Borderlands, which is 100% fantasy, takes remote comms into account.
Thinking about it more, it seems like they account for this sometimes, with colonies not being able to contact other settlements because their satellite is broken? But then, the Space News station doesn't know about anything that's going on unless you walk into their office and tell their reporter face to face. But then this person on this other planet knows they have a shipment you're delivering, without presumably getting that information in person since they could have just fetch quested the item themselves? I don't know, but it doesn't make sense to me. And how does Space News work exactly if there's no way to send it to other places. FFS.
