The new DLC and its primary issue that you dont know

[Bnn1]

and nobody tells you about since the Devs just don't think far enough.

The DLC,as I said before, will have the exact same result as Shivered Isles DLC had on Oblivion - a refid exception.

A long recap: the game uses an ID system to track items dropped, created, and spawned. Some items are permanent and have 1 id, and thats it. Most people work like that, in game.

Then we have "random" id's and those are used more often when stuff is dropped by dead people or the player. They are stored as HEXADECIMALS. So letters, and numbers.

They can be identfied by a byte, aka two numbers, like FF, for those "created items".

Now, All of Bethesdas modern games could theoretically use 4 bytes or "8 numbers".

So you can count from 0 to FFFFFFFF, which is a lot of numbers and will most likely end with crashes, as the number becomes a negative at such high hexadecimal values.

Now, bethesda did a dummy. Their numbers dont go from 00000000, because the first number is read out and assigned as the "DLC" identifier as i call it.

00 is the base game, 01 is either the first major update (update.esm) or the first DLC or a mod, 02 is the next dlc or mod and so on.

So if you have a mod installed and its the 5th spot in the load order, any items the mod has would be starting with "05", like "05006CBA".

How does this all matter?

Welp.

You see, you have 8 numbers, aka 4 bytes. But yeah. Bethesda RESERVES one of those numbers. This means you only have 3 bytes, or 6 numbers available.

So for dummies: you can count less high with 6 numbers than with 8.

Now. The core.

There is a few of these "numbers" that are assigned to placeholders/functions that Bethesda either uses or doesnt. And once the number of any ID reaches that number, the game exits with a crash. And will crash as soon as you load and an ID reaches that number again, softlocking you in an infinite loop of the game closing on you and you restart to find out what is the issue.

Sadly, that number quite high, but not high enough. It's not at the top-end of the spectrum, like FF99XXXX or something. Its something as trivially low as FF04XXXX. You can see the issue. The count of possible ID's is "rather low".

The issue is that in essence, the large amount of ID's used in the base game, the DLC and all of it combined, caused the game to crash because:

Bethesda forgot to "clean up" those numbers occasionally so every number was saved, and you will eventually run out of numbers to assign.

And Numbers increased because there was way too much stuff spawning all the time, that could assign a number.

Now in Starfield, sorry to break it to you:
We have this bug built in.
Your ship, you noticed it, will occasionally respawn ALL its interiour. Baseballs, coffee mugs, holotapes, everything will respawn.

Surprise: the ID's for those items are also saved, and not cleaned up.

So in technicality, it would be possible to crash your game and make it unstable by only simply having your ship respawn.

Another issue is: NPCS like the random passerbys in cities... all have ids. That are not cleaned up.

All the outposts you visit that have hundreds if not thousands of items in them??? All are saved, not cleaned up.

All the ship parts you install, then sell/delete? Yup, they have ID's, that do not clean up.

So by just playing the game, you slowly destroy your game. It's like the life simulator, you play to eventually die, and there is no way to prevent it.

Now imagine a new DLC, that adds the potential to have outposts that have hundreds or thousands of items.....

Now you see the issue.

The new DLC will cause the game to become unstable even earlier, and more brutally.

And Bethesda? So far we do not know if they confirmed that the bug is being purged, they seemingly only halfway confirmed that they are "investigating" in some reddit post from last year.

So yeah. The bug is not fixed, and once the DLC comes out, there will be more and more hell to pay.

Because there is only one single solution to fix this issue: starting New Game Plus, purges all ID's.

So basically, instead of infinitely enjoying your current universe, you need to eventually rush to NG+, otherwise you will be caught with your pants down.

Now there is a lot of people spewing misinformation claiming that you will "never reach that in a normal playthrough", and that is correct - unless you explore a few too many outposts, cartograph all planets, install a bit too many weapons, meet a few too many enemy or friendly spaceships, meet animals, drop items, kill enemies, destroy asteroids, etc.

So while these people are semi correct that on a normal playthrough (aka "run to the end game as fast as you can") you will hardly see this issue, anyone who takes a bit of time to explore will very soon run into a unrecoverable game state.

Good luck with making sense of this, since I know what I wrote, and its important information.

The TLDR is: Bethesda screwed up, and there is an unavoidable crash that will eventually get you, and the DLC will make everything worse if the bug aint fixed.

[alexyenov]

Never mind. Give the developers a chance.
It will come out - we'll see!

[alanc9]

It's not like you can infinitely enjoy your current universe anyway. There's only so much content in it.

[_oBSOLEte_]

Starfield is so truly next gen, it cant handle IDs of more than 3 bytes.

***Puff copium***

[Bnn1]

Originally posted by alanc9:

It's not like you can infinitely enjoy your current universe anyway. There's only so much content in it.

There is infinetly generated quests, as well as infinite amounts of POI's

[Bnn1]

Originally posted by M4st0d0n:

Starfield is so truly next gen, it cant handle IDs of more than 3 bytes.

***Puff copium***

It's a bug carried over from their newer engine itterations, so Bethesda should know better. But now that we have the biggest game ever (Starfield has the biggest amount of items created for random outposts, ships, etc., its the largest scale game so far), and Bethesda has not learned to fix their stone age old engine, well....

The people planning to buy the DLC, do not.

The issue with the bloating and overflowing ID's need to be fixed. It would be ok if they recycled/cleaned up the 3 bytes, but they don't. And that's the issue.

[StormhawkV]

They also said they're working on a solution for the ID problem.

[Silverlight]

Originally posted by Ben1:

Originally posted by M4st0d0n:

Starfield is so truly next gen, it cant handle IDs of more than 3 bytes.

***Puff copium***

It's a bug carried over from their newer engine itterations, so Bethesda should know better. But now that we have the biggest game ever (Starfield has the biggest amount of items created for random outposts, ships, etc., its the largest scale game so far), and Bethesda has not learned to fix their stone age old engine, well....

The people planning to buy the DLC, do not.

The issue with the bloating and overflowing ID's need to be fixed. It would be ok if they recycled/cleaned up the 3 bytes, but they don't. And that's the issue.

You know it will be fixed with the first community patch if not by BGS themselves

Just like it has been in every title yet- eventually

But for some reason I have a feeling that won't be a good enough answer!

Sorry things are like this!

I'll be buying the DLC day one myself!

~~Silverlight

[Thomas A. Anderson]

This is interesting because I think this is the same reason it causes CONSTANT crashes to the desktop in the only save I have. Another NG+ is not an option because I can't pick up the last artifact and continue to Unity (again).

[minisith]

Originally posted by Ben1:

and nobody tells you about since the Devs just don't think far enough.

The DLC,as I said before, will have the exact same result as Shivered Isles DLC had on Oblivion - a refid exception.

A long recap: the game uses an ID system to track items dropped, created, and spawned. Some items are permanent and have 1 id, and thats it. Most people work like that, in game.

Then we have "random" id's and those are used more often when stuff is dropped by dead people or the player. They are stored as HEXADECIMALS. So letters, and numbers.

They can be identfied by a byte, aka two numbers, like FF, for those "created items".

Now, All of Bethesdas modern games could theoretically use 4 bytes or "8 numbers".

So you can count from 0 to FFFFFFFF, which is a lot of numbers and will most likely end with crashes, as the number becomes a negative at such high hexadecimal values.

Now, bethesda did a dummy. Their numbers dont go from 00000000, because the first number is read out and assigned as the "DLC" identifier as i call it.

00 is the base game, 01 is either the first major update (update.esm) or the first DLC or a mod, 02 is the next dlc or mod and so on.

So if you have a mod installed and its the 5th spot in the load order, any items the mod has would be starting with "05", like "05006CBA".

How does this all matter?

Welp.

You see, you have 8 numbers, aka 4 bytes. But yeah. Bethesda RESERVES one of those numbers. This means you only have 3 bytes, or 6 numbers available.

So for dummies: you can count less high with 6 numbers than with 8.

Now. The core.

There is a few of these "numbers" that are assigned to placeholders/functions that Bethesda either uses or doesnt. And once the number of any ID reaches that number, the game exits with a crash. And will crash as soon as you load and an ID reaches that number again, softlocking you in an infinite loop of the game closing on you and you restart to find out what is the issue.

Sadly, that number quite high, but not high enough. It's not at the top-end of the spectrum, like FF99XXXX or something. Its something as trivially low as FF04XXXX. You can see the issue. The count of possible ID's is "rather low".

The issue is that in essence, the large amount of ID's used in the base game, the DLC and all of it combined, caused the game to crash because:

Bethesda forgot to "clean up" those numbers occasionally so every number was saved, and you will eventually run out of numbers to assign.

And Numbers increased because there was way too much stuff spawning all the time, that could assign a number.

Now in Starfield, sorry to break it to you:
We have this bug built in.
Your ship, you noticed it, will occasionally respawn ALL its interiour. Baseballs, coffee mugs, holotapes, everything will respawn.

Surprise: the ID's for those items are also saved, and not cleaned up.

So in technicality, it would be possible to crash your game and make it unstable by only simply having your ship respawn.

Another issue is: NPCS like the random passerbys in cities... all have ids. That are not cleaned up.

All the outposts you visit that have hundreds if not thousands of items in them??? All are saved, not cleaned up.

All the ship parts you install, then sell/delete? Yup, they have ID's, that do not clean up.

So by just playing the game, you slowly destroy your game. It's like the life simulator, you play to eventually die, and there is no way to prevent it.

Now imagine a new DLC, that adds the potential to have outposts that have hundreds or thousands of items.....

Now you see the issue.

The new DLC will cause the game to become unstable even earlier, and more brutally.

And Bethesda? So far we do not know if they confirmed that the bug is being purged, they seemingly only halfway confirmed that they are "investigating" in some reddit post from last year.

So yeah. The bug is not fixed, and once the DLC comes out, there will be more and more hell to pay.

Because there is only one single solution to fix this issue: starting New Game Plus, purges all ID's.

So basically, instead of infinitely enjoying your current universe, you need to eventually rush to NG+, otherwise you will be caught with your pants down.

Now there is a lot of people spewing misinformation claiming that you will "never reach that in a normal playthrough", and that is correct - unless you explore a few too many outposts, cartograph all planets, install a bit too many weapons, meet a few too many enemy or friendly spaceships, meet animals, drop items, kill enemies, destroy asteroids, etc.

So while these people are semi correct that on a normal playthrough (aka "run to the end game as fast as you can") you will hardly see this issue, anyone who takes a bit of time to explore will very soon run into a unrecoverable game state.

Good luck with making sense of this, since I know what I wrote, and its important information.

The TLDR is: Bethesda screwed up, and there is an unavoidable crash that will eventually get you, and the DLC will make everything worse if the bug aint fixed.

Why not compare it to 76? That is there latest game with this engine...

[Ǥɾᴧᴤʆᴧᵯᴧ]

Yes, I agree for the most part. It's a mistake to treat items in the game like this. At least the address range should have been an order of magnitude higher for this.
But I have at least heard rumors that this problem will be fixed or mitigated. In any case, I see it as a high priority problem.

[ebolaconundrum]

Originally posted by Ben1:

Originally posted by M4st0d0n:

Starfield

The issue with the bloating and overflowing ID's need to be fixed. It would be ok if they recycled/cleaned up the 3 bytes, but they don't. And that's the issue.

Yes if it's true they are not recycling/cleaning up Id's and they effectively only have 3 byte numbers since the first byte is reserved that is a very bad flaw in the engine.