:.:. Starfield .:.: - TTLG Forums

Jason Moyer on 18/12/2023 at 21:32

I'm pretty sure Emil was reacting to people privately messaging him death threats. Criticizing a game is fine, hell even non-criticizing a game is fine (i.e. "lol this game sux0rz, CP77 has better titties" or whatever), but I get annoyed when people personally attack people in creative fields. The thing basic gamers do now is call devs lazy because they don't like the series of compromises they made when making a game, which means the people making it must be terrible. I have more respect for the people who made Big Rigs Over The Road Racing than I do people who just sit around and bitch about games all day. Nothing's lazier than creating nothing at all.

I don't really understand constantly bitching about things you don't like, but whatever. I own thousands of games and have an "I like it" rate of less than 5% and I've never thought "you know, I'm gonna go into the community for this game and tell them that anyone who likes this thing is a terrible person and the people who made it are terrible." I might offer an opinion or two about what I dislike, but I don't obsess about it in fan forums.

vurt on 18/12/2023 at 21:34

They'll alienate and anger a lot of people with it, same with replying to negative reviews. While this can be good for these people (dealing with their anger and frustrations), it will absolutely not do them any favors as a company on the whole i think. It pisses people off and it just looks very petty. "The customer is always right", it's not exactly a hard concept to grasp, but i guess in this day and age it is, customers should be attacked, called out... good luck with that long-term.

Edit: death threats? i doubt it. I don't doubt they happen, but i think it's again something that has been overly exaggerated and sometimes faked so they can play the victim. If there's evidence for it it's a police matter..

Anarchic Fox on 18/12/2023 at 21:35

I love it when I spark an argument. :joke:

vurt on 18/12/2023 at 21:47

Quote Posted by Jason Moyer

I don't really understand constantly bitching about things you don't like, but whatever. I own thousands of games and have an "I like it" rate of less than 5% and I've never thought "you know, I'm gonna go into the community for this game and tell them that anyone who likes this thing is a terrible person and the people who made it are terrible." I might offer an opinion or two about what I dislike, but I don't obsess about it in fan forums.

That's maybe 2-5% of whoever buys these games, a piss in the ocean and nothing to be upset about at all, just move on. That's what makes it even more petty when they feel they have to lash out at such a small minority, and people will take notice of this and the negativity and negative comments or involvement will most likely increase.

zomfg1234 on 18/12/2023 at 23:33

Death threats are an easy way to make critics look insane. I stopped caring about those (however true they might be) because it's often used as a deflection, same with some other low hanging fruit. Yeah, if you take a review of someone who's extremely ignorant about the process and present it to the world to make it seem like this is the norm, then it's easy to paint yourself a victim. Bethesda's managers seem like a group of completely out of touch, incompetent old people who don't give a fuck about video games as a medium with depth.

It's good to be critical, not in an unhinged way, offer a moderate amount of criticism that may or may not reach the dev/producers ears. If they keep making trash, then dunk on them even more or ignore them completely. Bethesda has crossed that threshold of benefit of the doubt, they are making turds after turds.

Sulphur on 19/12/2023 at 02:43

Quote Posted by vurt

Reading about game creation is one thing. Hearing someone whine about how his food, or game, or whatever it might be, is bad but for "a good reason", is not something i will consider interesting, i will consider it whining.

This is why I dislike how people conduct discourse these days. Emil specifically says you can go ahead and complain all you want in the Twitter thread, and specifically says this thread is in reaction to people who a) act like they know how the game was made, and b) aren't reasonable.

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https://i.imgur.com/kZ1uZLr.png

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https://i.imgur.com/qQcxVn0.png

If you're not one of those people, then it wasn't aimed at you, and you're taking issue with something he said because you, like most of the internet, want something to be angry about.

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I also would consider reading "you are not aware of the creation process" as something which 100% obvious - we don't. He does not go into technical details at all, it's not that type of article at all, this isn't about game creation, it's about calling out "fans" for not liking the game. There's a big difference.

I think you need to get your argument straight. First it's 'making games is hard is obvious, and no one is interested in hearing about that', and now it's 'we're not aware of how games are made, it's obvious, so go into detail about that'.

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Product vs product. It needs to deliver because there are other products to purchase. He can whine all he wants, it doesn't change this very, very simple fact, we have other products to compare to, we can buy those and just move on. At their first "But! listen!" i have already moved on, not interested. It's like a door-to-door salesman putting his foot in the doorway, no. go away.

I don't think Emil tried to shove his post in your feed, because that's the real analogue to your salesman scenario. And yes, you're welcome to buy something else instead. I didn't buy Starfield, and I'm not going to, but not because I think it's shit. It's because I think the Bethesda strategy of making games isn't for me, and I'm not a big fan of games that are miles wide and micrometres deep.

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It's a perfect example of a great game that was made by a super small team (not ~500 people like with this game, which is insane). I don't agree one bit that its boring, it's a stellar make-your-own-adventure game (if you have the imagination for that) and it delivers exactly that. I'd love to hear about a better open world space game where you can go from the surface of one planet to another with no loading!

Well, that's easy: Star Control 2.

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The game's patches are better than any DLC's that Bethesda has put out, and often way more massive in scope and delivery. The game delivered many years ago, it's just expanding in scope still. Personal preference of course what someone thinks about the game and not really the topic to discuss that perhaps. and yes it's an opinion, so is "starfield sucks" or whatever. Should be pretty obvious to anyone, no?

You like NMS, that's great. Yes, 'Starfield sucks' is an opinion, and yes, 'NMS is a great CYOA game' is an opinion. Comparing it to Starfield because it is a 'better game' and has 'no loading' approaches criticism, but isn't a very cogent point. Starfield having too much loading because of the exterior/interior cell system hamstringing the game, versus NMS having no loading thanks to a massively smaller number of assets handled by its procgen 'equation' is an actual point about which game made its constraints work better, and that's harder to disagree with.

vurt on 19/12/2023 at 08:47

What he says afterwards is one thing, that article didn't sit well with a lot of people and i think he understands that now.
Again, how the game was made is not very interesting in terms of defending its shortcomings.

I don't really care about Bethesda (if they will do well or not etc) just stating that this strategy of theirs, of replying to negative reviews, and having articles like this will not do them any kind of favors as a whole. They're just feeding into the negativity from a small minority which would be just easy to not comment on at all, especially if he truly means those people with absolutely insane takes. it's like 0.1%, so who cares?

I guess with the recent rather negative ratings on Steam the developers felt very disappointed and let down by the fans. It's understandable but it's still not a good strategy to go after them.

henke on 19/12/2023 at 08:58

Buddy, you keep referring to the article but I'm not sure if you understand that Emil didn't write the article. He posted on twitter, venting to his followers. And that's fine, that's what twitter is for. PCGamer turned it into an article because they smelled the sweet sweet aroma of clickbait in the air.

I did not care for Starfield, but I'm totally with him on this one. When you've spent years making a game as complex as Starfield you really don't wanna hear from a bunch of armchair experts who've never written a line of code confidently explain to you how you should've made the game.

vurt on 19/12/2023 at 09:03

Quote Posted by zomfg1234

Death threats are an easy way to make critics look insane. I stopped caring about those (however true they might be) because it's often used as a deflection, same with some other low hanging fruit.

It'll also completely shield them from ANY criticism because now they are victims of death threats. How can anyone continue to still critique it? If you do you will be considered straight up evil, you are someone who can be seen as partially responsible!

If it actually happens then proof should be provided, screen grabs including the user name + preferably also evidence that it is reported to authorities so we can see this is actually something real. This is a really, really serious accusation so if someone is using it as a "tool" it's fucking despicable, measures has to be taken to show it's real.

vurt on 19/12/2023 at 09:06

Quote Posted by henke

yes, but i meant after the article / twitter post. they don't want to hear anything negative about the game, that's why they even began to reply to negative reviews on steam, which is pretty laughable.

I don't think you need to be a coder to criticize a game's shortcomings, people have plenty of games to compare to where a mechanic for example might work better. If someone has an absolutely insane take, sure, i'm on his side. But again, how many people are that... who cares, not really worth a twitter post.