:.:. Starfield .:.: - by Vae
Jason Moyer on 15/12/2023 at 03:53
Quote Posted by henke
How to do stealth in this game continues to elude me
1.) Wearing a spacesuit is loud
2.) Moving quickly is loud
3.) Shadows help, chameleon helps, neither make you completely unnoticeable. Stacking chameleon gear, on the other hand, immediately turns you into invisible Jesus.
4.) People notice when you shoot them, or something near them
5.) If you shoot someone using a suppressor, people who see that their buddy died will become alerted, but if no one saw them get shot or sees a dead body they don't care
6.) If you're doing quests on Neon, sometimes using a disguise works better than sneaking (for instance, the entire Sabotage mission for Ryujin)
7.) If you're supposed to sneak through a mission, usually the path is laid out in an insanely obvious way that completely avoids NPC's or involves creeping behind them while they look the other way
8.) Cameras are assholes
I have 7,527 sneak attacks. I finished the Ryujin questline undetected, without concealment, before they made the stealth easier. It's fun. Play it like Thief and not TES or Fallout 3/4 where you're basically invisible if you have any stealth skill whatsoever.
Oh yeah, also, if the stealth meter is orange they don't know where you are. Even if they're shooting in your direction, it's because they *think* that's where you are and they're in an alerted state. Orange just means they know something's up and they're actively looking for you. They'll sometimes hit you with a random spray if you don't move, but until it turns red and says DETECTED you're still hidden.
My favorite AI behavior when being sneaky is if you try to snipe someone and miss, and you didn't give away your location, sometimes they'll just be like NOPE and run away.
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 01:23
Quote Posted by vurt
its astounding that they had 400 more people working on this than on Skyrim imo. It's such an incompetent game. For fun i unpacked it and counted the amount of flora (grass, bushes, trees etc), it has less than Skyrim and Skyrim is only one region, this is around 1700 planets. I was so disappointed when i noticed this. So much is copy/paste too. What did all those 400 extra people really do i wonder..
Between this, and Arkane getting handed projects at odds with their legacy, it's apparent mismanagement is rife at Bethesda. Dunno if it's a result of the Microsoft acquisition, or something preceding that.
Quote Posted by Komag
Wow, that's really telling! I played only for a couple hours but I just didn't get interested, and at this point I have no desire to play it at all. Kinda like how I feel about The Marvels, happy to just miss it.
The Marvels was good! It recognized its absurdity and leaned into its sense of humor (a sense which worked for me), with even the action scenes sharing in this humor.
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Oh yeah, also, if the stealth meter is orange they don't know where you are. Even if they're shooting in your direction, it's because they *think* that's where you are and they're in an alerted state. Orange just means they know something's up and they're actively looking for you. They'll sometimes hit you with a random spray if you don't move, but until it turns red and says DETECTED you're still hidden.
Gunplay and stealth just don't go well together, unless all your guns are laserguns or something. To keep from breaking the stealth aspects (either by trivializing them or making them impossible) your violent alternatives also need to be relatively quiet, like, say, a bow, a sword and a blackjack. :sly:
EvaUnit02 on 16/12/2023 at 11:34
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
Emil Pagliarulo is like every WRPG fan's retarded uncle, charmingly dependable but barely competent.
Dawww, the loveable retard went on a tirade and said dumb shit. How adorable!
(
https://web.archive.org/web/20231213213339/https://www.gamesradar.com/starfield-design-lead-says-players-are-disconnected-from-how-games-are-actually-made-dont-fool-yourself-into-thinking-you-know-why-it-is-the-way-it-is/)
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Between this, and Arkane getting handed projects at odds with their legacy, it's apparent mismanagement is rife at Bethesda. Dunno if it's a result of the Microsoft acquisition, or something preceding that.
Did you miss the Redfall investigative journalism articles, or gaming news in general? MS are notorious for being hands off with their first party game studios, to their detriment a lot of the time. People on the Redfall team were reportedly even hoping that MS would come in and cancel it. So yes, mismanagement of Zenimax's part.
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Gunplay and stealth just don't go well together, unless all your guns are laserguns or something. To keep from breaking the stealth aspects (either by trivializing them or making them impossible) your violent alternatives also need to be relatively quiet, like, say, a bow, a sword and a blackjack. :sly:
Please tell that you're joking? Surely you know that suppressors in games often make guns completely silent (game design focusing on player fun, rather than realism) and most more recent games (last ~15 years) have quick takedown actions (which are functionally almost identical to blackjacking unaware peeps in Thief)? Stealth is often broken in games due to other factors, not the gunplay. Common ones are A.I. coding (Eg, hivemind reaction; superhuman senses like X-ray vision in Far Cry 1) or severely undeveloped stealth mechanics in general (eg only being governed line of sight).
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 16:49
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
Did you miss the Redfall investigative journalism articles, or gaming news in general? MS are notorious for being hands off with their first party game studios, to their detriment a lot of the time. People on the Redfall team were reportedly even hoping that MS would come in and cancel it. So yes, mismanagement of Zenimax's part.
Yes, I did miss it all. I don't follow gaming news anymore, except what appears here and in other venues I frequent intermittently. If you know a particularly good such investigative article, I would enjoy reading it and would thank you for the effort of digging up the link.
Quote:
Please tell that you're joking? Surely you know that suppressors in games often make guns completely silent (game design focusing on player fun, rather than realism) and most more recent games (last ~15 years) have quick takedown actions (which are functionally almost identical to blackjacking unaware peeps in Thief)? Stealth is often broken in games due to other factors, not the gunplay. Common ones are A.I. coding (Eg, hivemind reaction; superhuman senses like X-ray vision in Far Cry 1) or severely undeveloped stealth mechanics in general (eg only being governed line of sight).
You're right, my claim was false. I should have added a third option:
To keep from breaking the stealth aspects (either by trivializing them, making them impossible, or rendering them implausible). Fwip fwip action-movie suppressors are silly. Quick takedown actions are needless ornamentation (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I'm looking at you), and so overblown that they too become implausible, breaking immersion.
Jason Moyer on 16/12/2023 at 17:31
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
I don't follow gaming news anymore, except what appears here and in other venues I frequent intermittently.
This should probably be its own thread, but trust me you aren't missing anything. 99% of gaming journalism is just algorithms scraping social media sites now. I'll see someone post something on reddit, then the next day every gaming site will have the exact same AI written article about it. And it's happening on sites like IGN, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, Kotaku, etc. and not just the ones that are obvious clickbait like Gamerant or whatever.
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 17:35
*sighs* I miss Rock Paper Shotgun.
EvaUnit02 on 17/12/2023 at 09:17
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Yes, I did miss it all. I don't follow gaming news anymore, except what appears here and in other venues I frequent intermittently. If you know a particularly good such investigative article, I would enjoy reading it and would thank you for the effort of digging up the link.
Henke summarised Schreier's Bloomberg piece (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151475&page=3&p=2502066&viewfull=1#post2502066) here. (The (
https://archive.is/5Xq7M) actual article.)
Bethesda's management was fairly bad. Their PR will be championing SP games, while simultaneously having a whole bunch of live service MP games in development. The reputation hit from Fallout 76 was so bad, that they tried to win back good will by announcing TES 6 years before it had even entered proper production.
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
You're right, my claim was false. I should have added a third option:
To keep from breaking the stealth aspects (either by trivializing them, making them impossible, or rendering them implausible). Fwip fwip action-movie suppressors are silly. Quick takedown actions are needless ornamentation (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I'm looking at you), and so overblown that they too become implausible, breaking immersion.
Ah, so it's entirely a YOU problem. Nothing we can do if you can't suspend your disbelief. ��*♂️
Anarchic Fox on 17/12/2023 at 10:00
Oh, it's a Jason Schreier article. He's reliable. I learned much from the article, thank you for digging up the link. Here are the things that stood out to me:
* Harvey Smith was enthusiastic about Redfall, but mainly described it by referring to Borderlands and Far Cry. It's apparent that between Colantino and Smith's contributions to Dishonored, Colantonio was the visionary. It makes me wonder what poor uncredited souls were the visionaries for Prey.
* "At Arkane's headquarters in Austin, Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare, respected industry veterans, were tapped to serve as co-directors of Redfall." So creative autonomy had already been lost by the time the project started.
* The staff churn in Austin was absurd. 70%, the article claimed. That's enough to cripple a studio. Middling pay and compulsory crunch doesn't yield such a high number; look at Naughty Dog, after all. And unless things have changed, Arkane isn't a crunch studio. Maybe Smith and/or Bare is a noxious personality to work under.
Quote:
Ah, so it's entirely a YOU problem. Nothing we can do if you can't suspend your disbelief. ��*♂️
My ME problems are numerous, but this isn't one of them. Suspension of belief is not the player's sole responsibility, but rather shared between player and studio.
If you truly possess the ability to suspend your disbelief entirely while playing something like, say, Starfield, then your capability for immersion is superhuman. But with how often I see you complain about games, I doubt you're so immersed.
Sulphur on 17/12/2023 at 11:51
I'm curious as to what the emoji are. Is it shorthand for the event horizon where a man falls into Starfield's anus?
zomfg1234 on 18/12/2023 at 12:03
Bethesda's leadership is mostly reponsible for the garbage they've been pumping out for a long while now, and even Skyrim was arguably a fluke that didn't have a strong foundation. They can double down on it and make TES 6 a piece of shit, or they can make big changes and get rid of stinkers.
At least now everyone can see how bad this studio is when they don't leech off pre-existing settings.
