commercial success and marketing disaster

[major tom]

built on expectations and hopes starfield does not compare or even reach the quality of previous fallout games content and game design.
in my opinion the new game design completely fails to combine the strengths of existing ip's with the new ip.

skyrim and fallout proved to have a long term player and fan base.

i have no clue why all this so help me to answer some questions:
so why does starfield not rely on the formula of former games ?
why does starfield presented itself as a polished but lackluster regression of a working formula in 2023 sold as us a new ip?
why no renovation of the outdated core ending up in a predictable stutter and loadscreen desaster dragging all innovations into a big outdated performance and design mess confirmed even by devs ?

[Raistlin]

meh

[Jarsonne]

- Give up main formula: A leader moving to his end of career and realizing that past Morrowind he chained 2/3 clones. It makes ambition grow up and it's not money related but fame related.
- Presented as a new IP: That's a new IP, that's a deliberate attempt to setup a totally new RPG blueprint.
- Load excess: Don't believe they didn't try, they only didn't anticipated they couldn't not achieve it better in a context of a deeply new blueprint.

EDIT:
Starfield is no commercial success (sales levels proved it), eventually not a real failure and a gamepass half success (only half seeing users review rate even worse than on Steam, but also clearly a game that moved gamepass, at least along 3 or 4 months).

[Humpenstilzchen]

The irony is that skyrim and Fallout 3 and 4 were also really bad rpgs. The only thing that made them fun was the open world with all its secrets to discover and sidestories but when it comes to main storyline and its presentation or player agency oh boy does Bethesda suck.

I always feel a bit sorry for people who praise skyrim as if it were the best rpg of all times.

To me it was disappointing through and through. A shallow game with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ story consisting mainly of fetch and killquests with no logic behind it. Every faction or guild wants you to be their leader after three fetchquests ect. Skyrim is such a bad game it baffles me how people can act like as if it were the golden standard.

And to answer your question which is so simple that you should be able to answer it yourself, it has the same formula when it comes to questing the only difference is its no longer an open world where you can freely stroll around and stumble on hidden stuff at every corner and the story is even worse plus no proper lore. Add to that 16 times the loading screens and you have starfail.

[ebolaconundrum]

I think drunk on the success of their past games, they just got lazy as so many once great Studios have in the past. They though acclaim was their due rather than something to be striven for and they took a lets do just enough to say we've technically included the box features we've been talking about approach.

I think there is not only a slight regression but a failure to recognise that the state of the art in AAA games has moved on since Skyrim. This may be because thanks to the efforts of modders people have continued to play Skyrim. Vanilla Skyrim though is antiquated in many ways now not just graphically but game design wise. Parts of it where never good and almost immediately fixed by modders, but at the time it released vanilla Skyrim was a much more impressive game than it would be if released today.

Starfield does seem to be simply Skyrim in space with much of the actual charm removed. It looks like their facial animation is still awful despite being a triple A studio who could do better, this is a pattern with them though the environment art is good but the character art is well behind the times.

The dialog system is simplistic and the writing not as good as Skyrim's, which was adequate but nothing to write home about.

The companions look bland and uninspired and the game has a lot of fake choices, where it looks like you can choose to deal with something in a certain way in dialog, but choose the wrong option and you find your companions force you back to one of the other options. That is awful in an RPG.

The procedural generated planets, seem poorly realised and pointless in the main other than being able to say they exist on the box. No man sky has better procedural worlds with more you can do on them and it has a lot more of them, and you can fly down to the surface and explore as much as you want with no loading screens, that of course would be impossible with creation engine 2 hence all the loading and having a small area of surface you can explore before having to load down to another part of the planet.

You can't explore the way you did in skyrim when moving between objectives.

Still I always had my doubts about the IP itself being a real realised and interesting universe so I always was likely to buy this only if it actually looked good.

Lets hope this is a wake-up call for them and the realise they need to do better with ES6 to restore their reputation.

I think two other factors have not helped them publicity wise, arguing with reviewers about if said reviewer should find their game fun, pointless, bad PR, counter productive and makes you look silly.

two this steam innovation award, which of course brings up the fact this game lacks innovation and what an odd award it is all over the internet turning it to actual bad publicity, though I'm sure the people who voted for them to win it had good intentions and where people who enjoyed the game, they still seem hard pressed to pint to innovation when asked.

Finally BG3 coming out and raising the bar for many people, this is a somewhat different type of RPG but there is plenty of lessons all AAA developers could learn form BG3 and it brought up the whole issue of value for money in the modern AAA gaming world. Then Starfield came out looking very much like it suffered from having a big budget, being in development for a long time and still being rather lack lustre and typical of modern AAA releases.

I think without those factors peoples view of Starfield would have been more positive than it is though most would have still considered it a rather bland and mediocre title from a once great developer.

[Flippy]

You know what just a couple days ago the big story is 148 TV shows ended or were cancelled in 2023.

How about some self awareness around here, Starfield is a total disaster in all ways and was some kind of last ditch attempt at profit sharing and to screw everything up or something.

This topic and alot of of comments are talking like its still 2016 or 2021 or something.

[Flippy]

Im waiting for a download for game update by the way or i wouldnt be chatting so much, but how about some self awareness around here seriously.

[Ruin]

Originally posted by cbweb:

built on expectations and hopes starfield does not compare or even reach the quality of previous fallout games content and game design.
in my opinion the new game design completely fails to combine the strengths of existing ip's with the new ip.

skyrim and fallout proved to have a long term player and fan base.

i have no clue why all this so help me to answer some questions:
so why does starfield not rely on the formula of former games ?
why does starfield presented itself as a polished but lackluster regression of a working formula in 2023 sold as us a new ip?
why no renovation of the outdated core ending up in a predictable stutter and loadscreen desaster dragging all innovations into a big outdated performance and design mess confirmed even by devs ?

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Nope...

[Silverlight]

It's always dangerous to step outside your established formula as bethesda has done here.

Starfield will find its fanbase regardless.

That fanbase just may not include you

[_oBSOLEte_]

Where is the commercial success? With 10k active players on Steam and a orange going to red review score, and not even a quarter of the gamepass userbase bothering to install it?

The only formula Bethesda is able to pull nowadays is to be the has-been trophy of Microsoft lackluster gamepass catalog.

[Soulstain]

Where is the evidence it's a commercial success? Free game keys with AMD products, massive refunds during the early access, millions of the early players playing for free on Game Pass, refunds still happening and the hundreds of millions spent on production and marketing. I'm waiting for the financials to come out to see if they've even broke even yet.

[zombygunner]

Its a fail but in the future itll be fine as long a they try...and i doubt that but its all we have.

[Bunker]

one day Bethesda might learn that the reason they sold so many games was not because of the text LOL.. the text is what people didn't want

small window of opportunity for players to make action games and win while they're pickin' their nose talkin' about magic and swords

to you.. robin hood may seem cool and hip.
to me.. robin hood looks like a tool in green tights.

[Silverlight]

Originally posted by Bunker:

one day Bethesda might learn that the reason they sold so many games was not because of the text LOL.. the text is what people didn't want

small window of opportunity for players to make action games and win while they're pickin' their nose talkin' about magic and swords

to you.. robin hood may seem cool and hip.
to me.. robin hood looks like a tool in green tights.

what about Robyn hood?

[Dagtag]

Originally posted by M4st0d0n:

Where is the commercial success? With 10k active players on Steam and a orange going to red review score, and not even a quarter of the gamepass userbase bothering to install it?

As usual you are drawing conclusions by generalising.

1. What is the average percentage of people who download a game on gamepass?
2. Does everyone on gamepass have to play a singleplayer story game?
3. Does everyone on gamepass have the hardware capable to run the game?
4. Is steam the only platform on steam or does gamepass influence that number?

[major tom]

in my opinion there is no doubt that starfield was a financial success in the first month. the question is; was the game release and the marketing strategy wisely chosen ? i would clearly say no!