Why is flying to planets important?

[Arhat]

I have seen proffesional reviews being very critical about this missing feature, opinions on this forum is same.

One of my fav sci-fi rpg is Mass Effect, it is beloved by many. But no one has ever complained about not being able to fly directly onto planets.

p.s
I have never played super deep space simulator games e.g no mans sky

[Cahl Phoenix]

because we are in 2023 and with a budget of over $200 million...

san speaking that communications and promotion was centered on the free space exploration of 1000 planets

And mass effect was released in 2007... after the takeover by EA, planetary exploration with Maco was deleted and so many fans expected and dreamed of space control or battles and real freedom of piloting the Normandy
but unfortunately that never happened.

16 years later the standards have evolved.
A "space exploration game" without real travel, or atmospheric flight can no longer exist
in the same way that a car or boat game with travel in hidden loading time can no longer be accepted in 2023

Especially when in addition, independent games with only 1 or 2 developers realize it's mechanical today

[Chuckawookie]

Have you played this game? Is this story anywhere near the level of Mass Effect? Have you even heard of Mass Effect Andromeda? That's the game that's similar to Starfield, except it had way better combat.

[GoreTiger]

Originally posted by Chuckawookie:

Have you played this game? Is this story anywhere near the level of Mass Effect? Have you even heard of Mass Effect Andromeda? That's the game that's similar to Starfield, except it had way better combat.

We do not speak that accursed name, That game does not exist. It has been struck from the history books

[Chuckawookie]

Originally posted by ghxost:

Originally posted by MostlyPanda:

You can't. Getting loaded into a box, where everything is immediately visible is not exploration.

Play No Mans Sky. You'll learn what exploration is. it's not a "super deep space simulator game". it just gives proper content, not... this illusion of freedom.

hey, you figured it out, this *isn't* no mans sky nor is it trying to be
Cheers

No Idea why we even have to go all the way to NMS to justify this. Meanwhile Bethesda's own game, Skyrim, did a better job at exploration than Starfield. I can walk from one town to the next in Skyrim, see something on the road and deviate off the path for an adventure. Or I can help townspeople getting attacked by bandits or dragons on my way to some other activity, but not in this game. In this I open the "map" and fast travel from my house to a another solar system so I can pick up 1 thing and fast travel home. This is exactly what people hated about ME 1's Mako missions yet you want to boast about that for some reason. It's poor game design and should never have been there at all.

If anything, Starfield should have been based in Alpha Centauri and have each planet be Skyrim sized and instanced. Each planet could then be fully realized and developed with barren sections and settlements (since it's an entire planet ffs). Then we could have the instanced space flight to move from planet to planet. Instead they spent all their money and stretched themselves too thin to make something bland.

[Xander Tyrann]

Originally posted by Chuckawookie:

Originally posted by ghxost:

hey, you figured it out, this *isn't* no mans sky nor is it trying to be
Cheers

... Skyrim, did a better job at exploration than Starfield. I can walk from one town to the next in Skyrim, see something on the road and deviate off the path for an adventure. Or I can help townspeople getting attacked by bandits or dragons on my way to some other activity, but not in this game.

I've done all of those things in starfield, except its pirates and xenomorphs.

[LykosVT]

Originally posted by Arhat:

I have seen proffesional reviews being very critical about this missing feature, opinions on this forum is same.

One of my fav sci-fi rpg is Mass Effect, it is beloved by many. But no one has ever complained about not being able to fly directly onto planets.

p.s
I have never played super deep space simulator games e.g no mans sky

As someone who plays a lot of space sims, it's mainly an immersion thing. Once you get to do it, it just kinda like... sets in that you can. It's like games that have excessively long and frequent loading screens compared to games with relatively few and do dynamically loading. Once you experience a game without loading screens constantly, having them in feels weird.

Some space sim type games do add a lot of content by being able to do that though. Imagine being in space, knowing where you go, but there being AA turrets on the ground. In order to land, you need to either fly through the AA, weaving to avoid fire and do a quick hot landing then have the ai fly your ship back out into space to avoid blowing up (think auto-pilot or having a friend fly it if the game is multiplayer). Every enemy knows you're there and can swarm to you. Or, you can land far away and hoof it over taking a while, but being relatively unknown and being able to take a stealth approach. Now throw in enemy fighters buzzing around in the sky complicating that all. This style some games do adds a TON of gameplay variety to the experience. This is the sort of thing you get (sort of) in Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen, as well as some other space sims.

As for why people don't complain about Mass Effect, because it was done before most of these games were really a thing. For me, as an avid player of space sim type games, it feels weird but I got over it pretty fast. What IS something I can't get over is flying like I'm in a jet in atmosphere at all times in space. I'm used to decoupling and strafing sideways, up and down, sliding around, etc while dogfighting. Kinda just flying straight towards the enemy feels incredibly wrong with every fiber of my being and I'm struggling to get used to it, but I'm slowly getting there.

For what it's worth, I'm happy Bethesda took the route they did. Other games did the whole seamless approach and it caused massive issues for most all of them. Even if they did figure it out eventually, it set a lot of other features behind in development that took time to catch up on. Bethesda not doing it let them focus on building out other aspects of the game, which made it as good as it is. I'm loving it, it feels like Oblivion in space, which is exactly what I expected and what I wanted from it.

[briantherunner]

If you followed Starfield you would know it never was trying to be No Man's Sky. It was revealed early on there would be no flying from space into a planet's atmosphere. People who thought this game was going to be No Man's Sky or Star Citizen just haven't been paying attention. This is a story-driven role-playing game first with space exploration added in. I have played all of their games since Morrowind and Starfield is exactly what I expected it to be and I am really enjoying it. I wish people could simply enjoy the game for what it is and where it delivers rather than what they hoped it would have been. Unhealthy expectations (hype) pretty much always leads to disappointment because reality can never live up to those expectations.

[MattLat]

Masseffect did not advertise ship building and space flying/combat and then provide skyboxes to fly in and a menu actual travel system.

[UNBREAKABLE]

Originally posted by briantherunner:

If you followed Starfield you would know it never was trying to be No Man's Sky. It was revealed early on there would be no flying from space into a planet's atmosphere. People who thought this game was going to be No Man's Sky or Star Citizen just haven't been paying attention. This is a story-driven role-playing game first with space exploration added in. I have played all of their games since Morrowind and Starfield is exactly what I expected it to be and I am really enjoying it. I wish people could simply enjoy the game for what it is and where it delivers rather than what they hoped it would have been. Unhealthy expectations (hype) pretty much always leads to disappointment because reality can never live up to those expectations.

though todd constantly saying "these are real planets that are really there and you can go to" "what you can see you can go to" etc didn't help much even if he was correct in the loosest of possible technicality

[LykosVT]

Originally posted by UNBREAKABLE:

Originally posted by briantherunner:

If you followed Starfield you would know it never was trying to be No Man's Sky. It was revealed early on there would be no flying from space into a planet's atmosphere. People who thought this game was going to be No Man's Sky or Star Citizen just haven't been paying attention. This is a story-driven role-playing game first with space exploration added in. I have played all of their games since Morrowind and Starfield is exactly what I expected it to be and I am really enjoying it. I wish people could simply enjoy the game for what it is and where it delivers rather than what they hoped it would have been. Unhealthy expectations (hype) pretty much always leads to disappointment because reality can never live up to those expectations.

though todd constantly saying "these are real planets that are really there and you can go to" didn't help much even if he was correct the in the loosest of possible technicality

Yea, some of the messaging was vague to misleading. I won't say what they accomplished was a technical marvel, but game is still extremely fun to me. I followed content creators watching the game closely so I knew this was going to be the case pre-release from some dev talks and interviews, but if all I saw was the showcase stuff, I'd be pretty upset right now.

[LocalDaddy]

Flying to/from planets, manually landing/docking, being able to actually just fly in space... etc all those things that are either illusions or just cutscenes.

The simplest way to put it is...

Would it be fun if you could?
yes.

Is it immersion breaking how obvious the gimmicky illusion is?
yes.

It's a space game. I don't need, or expect space sim levels of gameplay but... I expected space, not just spinning around in a 3d bubble taking pot shots at moving targets. Descent did that better in 1995.

I dont play NMS, or Elite, or Star Citizen and I didn't expect this to be that. I can't simply enjoy it because not only is the extremely limited space part of the space game super immersion breaking, but the writing is god awful.

[Kilo_60]

One thing I still Love about Star Citizen...

Can fly from one end of galaxy to the other and land and take off from planets without ever seeing a damn loading screen!

[Arhat]

Originally posted by LykosVT:

Originally posted by Arhat:

I have seen proffesional reviews being very critical about this missing feature, opinions on this forum is same.

One of my fav sci-fi rpg is Mass Effect, it is beloved by many. But no one has ever complained about not being able to fly directly onto planets.

p.s
I have never played super deep space simulator games e.g no mans sky

As someone who plays a lot of space sims, it's mainly an immersion thing. Once you get to do it, it just kinda like... sets in that you can. It's like games that have excessively long and frequent loading screens compared to games with relatively few and do dynamically loading. Once you experience a game without loading screens constantly, having them in feels weird.

Some space sim type games do add a lot of content by being able to do that though. Imagine being in space, knowing where you go, but there being AA turrets on the ground. In order to land, you need to either fly through the AA, weaving to avoid fire and do a quick hot landing then have the ai fly your ship back out into space to avoid blowing up (think auto-pilot or having a friend fly it if the game is multiplayer). Every enemy knows you're there and can swarm to you. Or, you can land far away and hoof it over taking a while, but being relatively unknown and being able to take a stealth approach. Now throw in enemy fighters buzzing around in the sky complicating that all. This style some games do adds a TON of gameplay variety to the experience. This is the sort of thing you get (sort of) in Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen, as well as some other space sims.

As for why people don't complain about Mass Effect, because it was done before most of these games were really a thing. For me, as an avid player of space sim type games, it feels weird but I got over it pretty fast. What IS something I can't get over is flying like I'm in a jet in atmosphere at all times in space. I'm used to decoupling and strafing sideways, up and down, sliding around, etc while dogfighting. Kinda just flying straight towards the enemy feels incredibly wrong with every fiber of my being and I'm struggling to get used to it, but I'm slowly getting there.

For what it's worth, I'm happy Bethesda took the route they did. Other games did the whole seamless approach and it caused massive issues for most all of them. Even if they did figure it out eventually, it set a lot of other features behind in development that took time to catch up on. Bethesda not doing it let them focus on building out other aspects of the game, which made it as good as it is. I'm loving it, it feels like Oblivion in space, which is exactly what I expected and what I wanted from it.

Very interesting points, it is a relief that it still exist people in steam forums that are capable of posting mature and thoughtful replies. I 100% agree with your last take, I enjoy bethesda "jank" and I love starfield for what it is.

[OneNineDeepSilence]

Would be cool, but adding features makes the development take longer. See Star Citizen for example. Also there has to be a compromise because the engine limitations.

[Grailer]

Originally posted by JubilantJack57:

Because everything we know and love about the Bethesda formula plus what they indicated in all of their promotions was that you would be able to do this. It's not in itself a dealbreaker for me because yes, you bring up the Mass Effect example and it's a good point. But a game set in space, an open world(s) space exploration game where you can't actually travel to a planet without a loading screen seems like a failure to me. ME was primarily a story-driven game.

If they made it like No Man Sky but with the combat/looting and RPG etc this would have been GOTY