Digital Foundry ,Starfield Meeting Expectations? Load Screen GALORE (Fast Travel Field edition)

Pretty much they wished it was like an experience like No Man Sky, Star Citizen ,but okay with the game.

They didn't like the loading screen when entering your ship, they didnt like the loading the screen when entering each building.

Felt the presentation of Starfield when it was first revealed last year was very misleading.

The game is more fast travel then actually flying your ship to explore the galaxy. Prefer less planets then having planets that are just empty.

Well i found the video very informative.

Certainly would have been nice to have the game more seemless but honestly the loading and fast travel doesn’t really bother me much at all.

Obviously haven't played the game, but watched a good amount of Doc and Asmon play it, and i never thought the game would feel this outdated, in a sense that it truly feels like a game release 15 years ago, but with shinier visuals. I don't know if my standards are higher, or because i haven't played their open world games since 2015 when Fallout 4 came out, but god damn, you really are visiting a time capsule when playing Starfield.

@daredevils2k: Starfield has 1 million concurrent players across all platforms right now.

Suck on that, haters.

One billion

Honestly, the visuals aren't that much better than a heavily modded Fallout 4. I'd say the visuals barely get past the 2019 date.

Not quite 1 billion but I know what you were going for ;)

* million. Sorry.

Wow. Egg on my face...

Of course, but we're talking about heavy modding to vanilla. I am sure that in 2 years time, Starfield will look sweet with 100 mods.

8 years for this. I'm playing this on PC, native. The game is OK. Not stellar. Not a system seller. An OK game that deserves the score it got. I just got to New Atlantis and I'm kind of bored. The disappointment of this game reminds me of the disappointment I had when playing Ragnarok. It was just an OK game.

If you want to play a space opera, Jedi Survivor is much better.

It's on Gamepass, 1 million players ain't it. We gotta take the L.

I will say though, if this was PS exclusive, DF would be like "sometimes it just a developer choice, it's ALL GOOD"...

Load screens are not very long at all on Series X. The game is a masterpiece and it sucks that PlayStation owners can't enjoy this amazing accomplishment.

But the few seconds it takes isn't good enough for the master developers at DF. MAN, the 10/10 AAA GOTY games they release. SO glad they're so judgy on others.

@HalcyonScarlet said:

@dabear said:

@templecow90999 said:

@dabear said:

@daredevils2k: Starfield has 1 billion concurrent players across all platforms right now.

Suck on that, haters.

Not quite 1 billion but I know what you were going for ;)

* million. Sorry.

Wow. Egg on my face...

It's on Gamepass, 1 million players ain't it. We gotta take the L.

I will say though, if this was PS exclusive, DF would be like "sometimes it just a developer choice, it's ALL GOOD"...

Props to you sir.

@dabear its okay, because

The loading screens haven't bothered me and they haven't damaged my emersion into the game. If anything, the loading is even faster on PC than on Xbox. I also think the graphics are pretty good, of course in time the PC version will have massive texture mods which will be truly epic!

What I find funny is when PC /Lems defend loading screens in 2023. A game like starfield shouldn't have loading screens, this isnt 2014. If games like No man sky /star citizens doesnt require loading screens when entering or exiting a planets atmosphere, then you would think Starfield can do the same. But instead we have fans that just defend , instead of wanting more from game studios like BEthsuda, they just defend old tech, which is why this game got a 7 here at GS and IGN.

This game looks like it is going to keep the Sony fannies triggered for sometime.😂

@HalcyonScarlet said:

@dabear said:

@templecow90999 said:

@dabear said:

@daredevils2k: Starfield has 1 billion concurrent players across all platforms right now.

Suck on that, haters.

Not quite 1 billion but I know what you were going for ;)

* million. Sorry.

Wow. Egg on my face...

It's on Gamepass, 1 million players ain't it. We gotta take the L.

I will say though, if this was PS exclusive, DF would be like "sometimes it just a developer choice, it's ALL GOOD"...

That's concurrent players, ya know. 1 million people were playing it at the same time. That's not player counts.

When Star citizen actually gets released as a fully fledged completed game, come back to us. As for No Man's Sky, everything looks the same. One wonder it doesn't need loading screens, in any case, NMS is only what? 14GB?

10 years in the making so of course it was designed around last gen hdd.

It has nothing to do with the storage solution, it's just engine limitations.

@fedor: until Sony comes up with a Space game as big as Starfield with no loading screens

What does Sony have to do with what I said?

@fedor: No consoles out now could provide enough bandwidth to have seem-less transfer from space to ground without loading screens. Don't mention NMS cartoony small textures simply geometry planets.

I'm referring to the large amount of load screens in the game, not just the leaving and entering planets. It's an engine limitation, plain and simple. You are just rambling off BS. Also you never answered my question, what does Sony have to do with what I said?

@fedor: Yeah I said Sony because they have the fastest SSD drive on Consoles and their games have loading screens they hide them between rock passages.

The loading is a design choice. Software is malleable.

Good lord you're daft.

@fedor: Not as much as the Sony Fannies! 😆

Don't sell yourself short.

@daredevils2k: Uh…huh. Because a game with randomly generated planets only is the same that has a game with planets that have cities, towns and settlements.

By all means, enjoy NMS.

Lems have a choice between both games.

YES engine is design around last gen specs is what I meant.

same thing happened to hfw2 or cross gen games.

the ps5 only games that are designed around the ssd has zero to very small load screens.

ratchet and clank rift apart is a great example. going from one planet the line just goes from left to right and your playing.

game that are next gen only designed around the ssd will not have fast travel like ps4 did.

take spiderman 1 ps5 version remade around the ssd. no train ride it just fades in and your playing.

once xbox drops last gen we will see this as well.

upgrading these last gen engines are going to be sweet.

that's ps4 and xbox one ways of doing it. gens before that as well.

ps5 ratchet and clank I did not see any between rocks passage.

nor will next gen only xbox games unless they design it like that.

really 10 years ago they knew the specs for ps5 and series x?

its 10 years ago they started this game.

it went next gen only years later.

example is cyber punk was designed last gen but the team vision was better off next gen only game.

I've actually played the game. What are you doing? Shitting on a game that's not on your PS5 and coping? Get a Series X so you can play this amazing game instead of shilling for old and outdated granpa mainstream websites.

It didn't even start pre-production until 2015, that's 8 years ago. Full production didn't start until 2018. It's the first game to use CE2, it's current gen only, and it was never planned on being on last gen. It's also the same engine they will be using for ES6. You have no clue what you're talking about.

Which would have been the first thing DF would say if it was a PS5 game.

Screen tearing on Baldur's Gate 3 PS5 "oh it's a design choice to not use v-sync".

Maybe, maybe not. If textures and other stuff can't be improved past much of what it is, then it might not have as high of a bar to leap up to. The reason Skyrim was able to have so much legroom is because it looked like utter garbage upon release. A lot of the textures in Skyrim weren't even close to 2k, I think many being basically 720p textures upon release. Also, many of the meshes were just low poly as well and poorly drawn, so that was another big upgrade.

If Starfield already has high res textures, there's not a ton you can do in terms of foliage except to possibly enhance LOD and other objects. Adding ray tracing would be huge, so in theory, if that was added, it would enhance a lot, but that remains to be seen if the engine can handle it.

Its textures are inconsitent. Some good ones, but then there's some ugly ass ps4 textures as well. Water looks like shit, and so are the trees. Lots to improve.

My problem is the fact that so many just cut to black. You could show me a splash screen about the planet I'm on etc.

👩‍🚀🚀🪐✨💫 = 🐄😭

GOTY 🏆

For me personally, I don't have an issue with the loading screens but I will say flying in/out of the planets should be the standard game mechanic by now. Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen, and even the lesser No Man's Sky can pull it off with ease. Starfield for as long as its been in development for so long should have done so IMO. All in all, I think the graphics is fine, I'm not much of a graphic whore to say the least despite I play on PC. Here's a vid I think this explains it better when it comes to no loading vs loading screens on Starfield vs Elite: Dangerous, Star citizen, & No Man's Sky: (fun fact: I actually enjoy NMS the most followed by Starfield and its a personal preference ya fanboys)

The AI being atrocious is also a design choice.

Weirdly OP forgot to mention what the guys at DF think of people like himself. I wonder why. 🤔

Folks, seamless loading is never automatic. You have to intentionally design for seamless loading. If they didn't design the game for seamless loading, you will have loading/load screens.

That's a Bethesda design staple.

@fedor: Makes you think. They have MS money but they're still stuck with Oblivion NPCs.

Normally I would say its Bethesda's old engine is holding them back aka the creation engine. It is primarily the cell-based loading that is holding them back when they made Starfield. At the time of MS purchasing them, I thought they would help Bethesda give them more money for a new engine. Guess that's not the case.

Edit: For better or worse, the creation engine proved me wrong it still has more life to give after playing Starfield. (Still, Bethesda needs a brand new engine IMO)