Is Bethesda working on a Starfield MMO?

[Bingy Bingy]

After playing the game, reading reviews, reading the forums, I'm starting to get a clearer picture of why the game was just an "eh, it's OK" to me and many other people too.

There have been a variety of explanations put forward for this - "it's just a standard Bethesda game", "now that they're owned by Microsoft they're playing it too safe", "it's a reflection of our current risk-averse culture", "Bethesda's innovative years are now behind them", etc, etc.

But one thing I've noticed is that many of the gameplay mechanics more resemble an MMO than a traditional RPG. So much repetitive makework - resource collection and scanning, so many fetch quests, 'theme park' main quest-lines where you ping-pong fast travel between quest markers. Then there's NG+, another mechanism to keep you running on that gameplay loop treadmill. Even the 'exploration', for what it's worth, dumps you 800m from a cut and pasted building that you have to spend 5 minutes walking to and then 'exploring' the exact same layout and enemies.

It's all very, very MMO.

So I wonder - was Starfield developed either as a lead-up to and to be integrated with 'Starfiled Online'? Or was it perhaps originally designed as a Fallout 76 semi-MMO concept, that they've (poorly) tried to retrofit to an RPG after Fallout 76's poor reception?

[MrSoul]

I mean, makes more sense than at least 90% of things read on here.

What I assumed was that cos NMS and Elite had these things, they’d become assumed as features of any “space” game. But elite is a…well at least was designed to be an MMO, still going but I dunno bout the massive part relative to actual MMOs. NMS as well is online, but I think their DNA is deff coming from minecraft more than MMO harvesting and mining.

But yeah, I could see it, or even not cos of F76 entirely but just said f it to making gamebro engine work in any multiplayer capacity and didn’t want to start entirely from scratch with w/e ESO runs on, having I’d assume a lot of game systems and base assets from fallout games they’d want to least use as a starting point for SF. Who knows for sure though, maybe working on SFO right now.

[Bingy Bingy]

Update: This article seems to support that hypothesis

https://gamerant.com/starfield-mmo-rumor-explained/

[MugHug]

See where you are coming from but my gut feeling is a project then just went bad for many possible reasons.

The vision, the implementation, the project management style, the decisions and all the other little things that can go wrong in a bad project.

Look at Hello Games and NMS, Gearbox/Timegate Studios and Aliens Colonial Marines, Destination Games and Tabula Rasa, 38 Studios and Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning and many more.

Maybe BGS managed to struggle through a lot of internal problems over the last 7-8 years, end up cutting corners from the original vision, stick with safe conventional game mechanics and actually release a product, but one that does seem to fall far short of Todd's claim of 'Next-Gen'.

Honestly feel it could have been.

[MugHug]

Suspect the move by XBox Game Studios to buy ZeniMax including IP for Starfield could have had both sides exploring the future of the IP as a key cornerstone for the Game Pass, etc. And it seems logical that they would consider how they could expand the range of games under the Starfield name.

Still not convinced it was Todd's original vision for Starfield because prior to XGS and ZeniMax having talks there was, according to what I can find no mention of SF as a MMO.

Many dots that can be connected in various ways to present different things, maybe.

But I could be wrong.

[Sean8102]

I doubt it.

Zenimax online studios (the studio behind ESO) has been public that they are working on a new MMO and have said it's a new IP.

BGS I'd imagine is now mostly busy with ES6 going into full production.

[Bingy Bingy]

Originally posted by Sean8102:

I doubt it.

Zenimax online studios (the studio behind ESO) has been public that they are working on a new MMO and have said it's a new IP.

BGS I'd imagine is now mostly busy with ES6 going into full production.

I donno, now that they're owned by Microsoft, anything is possible. An MMO is a licence to print money and I wouldn't put it past MS to demand that Starfield have 'MMO-friendly' mechanics for the purposes of future monetization.

[Silverlight]

Zenimax probably is.