this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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I like it so far, planetary exploration and the ship are the biggest letdowns.
I get the feeling that it would be a much better game if they just focused on what they are known for being good at, interesting maps and immersive worlds.
Interestingly, the original elder scrolls games had a lot of procedurally generated content, it was only Morrowind that was the first “handmade” world from what I recall. But it would have been much cooler if they could have added a few interesting little secrets or stories to each planet and just had fewer of them or something.
Do you think that’s because a lot of the planets are procedurally generated? I’ve seen people saying that since they’re generated, not hand crafted, they feel really same-y after a while, and there’s never anything interesting to find to start you on a quest you could easily miss, like you could find in other Bethesda games by exploring.
Imho its because the procedural underpinnings are so close to the surface. How are you supposed to stay immersed when you know roughly how many POI's there will be and that you will see the exact same POI on multiple planets, right down to object placement? They will all be within running distance of the ship etc etc.
Its not the first game to do it, NMS is pretty immersion breaking in this respect, but at least its somewhat masked by being able to cruise around the surface, use vehicles etc. But I think proc gen for POI's is a trap for devs. If they do go down that path there needs to be a deep well of content to stitch together so that things feel unique.
I suspect the use of AI in game design (not necessarily in runtime) will go a long way to improving this sort of thing. Its one reason I think the Creation Engine is a dead man walking so to speak and a really bad call for ESVI. I doubt they will be able to shoehorn in AI to the dev pipeline effectively.
How would you solve that paradox. You can always procedurally generate the encounters, buildings, dialogs to make it more interesting. Look at Minecraft or dwarf fortress. They have done a pretty good job in that sense I think
That's what I was going to suggest as well. Basically, the planets and whatever is on the could benefit from a greater degree of procedural generation, even if as trivial as variable room layouts, but a deeper system (variable objects, contents, colors, designs based on the module manufacturer like with ship habs, etc.) would greatly remedy the repetitiveness, as with the current system, you've basically seen all the POIs or the type once you've seen one of them.
Planet surface is nice, though, because I agree with Bethesda's idea of barren and deserted planets being much more prevalent than those that support any kind of life or even atmosphere. Elevation and scenery changes are also fine by me.
But still, POIs are oddly repetitive, even if somewhat numerous. They definitely should've gone for the more roguelike approach or something and use more proc gen with these.
Yes that would help. Also we need to fly across the planets. Really missing that
A lot of the game world in Oblivion and pretty much all of it in Daggerfall were procedurally generated by Bethesda yet I personally consider them to be the best games that Bethesda has ever produced!
Kind of, I don't mind the surface being procedurally generated but the landmarks themselves are empty.
Finding a dungeon in Skyrim means a unique layout, rewards and maybe a quest. In Starfield landmarks can't be unique because they need to populated too many planets but they are also empty, there is never anything worth grabbing or finding inside.
So basically, there’s a lot to explore, but nothing to find.