Would Starfield have been better if they focused on only 1 star system?

[Greywolf]

As in there simply are no other star systems to explore in the game, the game is limited to the confines only exists in 1 star system.

Of course I see the wisdom of this, to be honest if Bethesda approached me with the idea they had for Starfield before they had even made it this to me would have been the solution that I would have proposed for the vibe and aesthetic they were going for and I could give you a whole dossier on how it would have made for a much more compelling storytelling and gameplay experience and would make the galaxy feel bigger and less empty but I kind of want to see if Bethesda fans are capable of putting on their game dev hats and figure out why this would be a better solution?

Or perhaps you disagree with me and feel that this game needed to have over 100 star systems and 1000 planets? Perhaps you feel this was overboard but you still think there needed to be other star systems in the game, please tell me why you feel this way and I will tell you why you are wrong.

[ThatGuyFuryan]

Considering most of the content is in only a few systems, yeah, I think having limited the number of solar systems would have been good. The rest of the worlds and moons are all covered in abandoned outposts and really highlights the lack of depth to the space. Expanding out a few more solar systems each time, with each DLC or something, sure, would let the galaxy get bigger and bigger. But, as it is now it's a sign of excess for the sake of being excessive.

[Master myst eversong]

last night i broke my record for the entangled quest ,it only took me 45 min..lol

[Greywolf]

Originally posted by Mick Salvage:

Originally posted by Greywolf:

Yeah you are getting closer, but I said a single star system not a handful, why does the game need more than 1 star system?

Well the difference between 1 and a handful is 4, so not really a big deal lol

But it would depend on the content of course, I mean if they want a big MMO they need lots of different content for players. If a game dev can fit it all in one system then fine haha

The thing I am getting at is that you could technically fit any worthwhile POI Starfield has on 1 planet, just look at the diversity of locations and biomes on planet earth alone, within just one Star system you get a number of planets, sure not all of them will be capable of life but even just 1 planet capable of life will give you enough biodiversity for your game and if you want you can even have 2 planets in the system that support life, 1 for the UC and 1 for Freestar, the rest of the planets in the system would support mining outposts and bandit hideouts, then you also have asteroid belts and moons as well, for some reason everyone seems to underestimate just how much content you could fit in 1 star system alone and instead choose to have multiple star systems with the content spread around them making them feel smaller and emptier than what they should be.

[[CR] Mick Savage]

True and with a setup like that we could have had real space flight.
Fewer loading screens is always a plus.

[Master myst eversong]

did anyone make a speed run at the main quest,just the main quest,till you get the starborn ship

[shiftydarkshadows]

Originally posted by Greywolf:

Originally posted by Mick Salvage:

Well the difference between 1 and a handful is 4, so not really a big deal lol

But it would depend on the content of course, I mean if they want a big MMO they need lots of different content for players. If a game dev can fit it all in one system then fine haha

The thing I am getting at is that you could technically fit any worthwhile POI Starfield has on 1 planet, just look at the diversity of locations and biomes on planet earth alone, within just one Star system you get a number of planets, sure not all of them will be capable of life but even just 1 planet capable of life will give you enough biodiversity for your game and if you want you can even have 2 planets in the system that support life, 1 for the UC and 1 for Freestar, the rest of the planets in the system would support mining outposts and bandit hideouts, then you also have asteroid belts and moons as well, for some reason everyone seems to underestimate just how much content you could fit in 1 star system alone and instead choose to have multiple star systems with the content spread around them making them feel smaller and emptier than what they should be.

eh if only we could do that :/ i know u can have miners and stuff but wheres the asteroid belts at man i even want my own space station lol basicly a space station insted of going into the planet u can unload all ur crap to the space station then the stuff shoots down a tube into a big Cargo container man.. this makes me sad lol talking about it lol

[Adam Beckett]

I just deleted the novel I wrote in reply to Greywolf's excellent question.

Short version:

Why 'a 1000 planets'?

My answer:

... business. And 'wrong' ambition.

1.
Marketing and investors need 'bullet points' and every AAA game these days needs to try to be a GTA-clone, so the Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations in meetings reflect the 'retention rate' and other business metrics.

Three quarter of the players of any sold game do not see 'the end'. Less than 10% keep grinding in that '1000 planets', 'completionist', 'All achievements' category. But, those players are the ones, today's games are 'designed' towards. An 'All-you-can-Eat' buffet.

2.
The other part is the typical game designer ambition: trying to solve problems, trying to live by the 'more is more' philosophy. Beth devs are in a natural trap, due to their 'open world' games. They know their best content are the accidental 'dungeons' that players stumble into.

What if they could make more of those? Only faster? 'Procedural' is a solution to multiple demands: developing games faster and cheaper. While also tingling the engineering ambitions of programmers and designers to 'solve a problem?

'A 1000 planets' suddenly - to their engineering ears - sounds 'solvable'. Yet, any designer worth their salt, knows 'less is more'. Restriction is good. It allows no 'easy' answer to the question "What do we want the player to do here? See here? Experience here?" instead of

_random_event_type1
_random_event_type2
_random_event_type3
... repeat

But, this is how you can cut dev costs AND appease the type of players you are aiming at the most: the people, who still play GTAV to this day and make it the 2nd or 3rd ranked game on Twitch right now(!).

This tendency in modern game design = 'all-you-can-eat', 'do-what-you-want ... as long as you shoot at everything', is a path, I am not willing to follow. It is bad on top of boring?

[Master myst eversong]

i know what i want---->>>to space walk ,and build my space station

[Greywolf]

Originally posted by Mick Salvage:

True and with a setup like that we could have had real space flight.
Fewer loading screens is always a plus.

Yeah actual locations within the star system where you could pilot around asteroid fields chasing smugglers or looking for a hideout or something.

In truth I don't care as much about the loading screens so it wouldn't matter if there was some loading between different sections of the system map. What is more important is that the locations feel fleshed out and meaningful.

[lunsmann]

The beauty of 1000 planets is modding. When you restrict the game to just a small area, we find modders tripping over one another and many mods are therefore incompatible. With 1000 plus planets and moons, that problem disappears. There is enough space for everyone to claim their own world to place what they want on it.

Thats just one tiny part to it.

I am a players who has been to nearly every system at least once. Landed on nearly 1/4 of all the planets and moons. Never been bored while doing that. I even found planets and moons with zero human POI's, just natural places of interest.

I have even recently come across a new human POI that I had never seen before. Over 700 hours.

[Adam Beckett]

... one more thing:

any game that is trying to be 'everything to everyone' is the opposite of actual design.

'Design' means 'shaping'.

You shape a thing. A thing has it's limits. It does not exist outside itself. It is not 'infinite'.

An open world game, that is pretending to let you 'go everywhere - do anything' is even in a worse pickle than 'ordinary', non-open-world games. Because open world games silently promise something only to betray the people who believe in that promise.

Comments in these forums are full of people with the "I wish this game would let me do ..." trope. They have expectations no game can deliver upon. No sane designer should bother with. Yet, marketing keeps promising impossible things, so people will drop that 80 or 150 bucks on Day 1.

AAA video games are in a bad state, in so many ways?

[Starbug]

No.

[SerraShaar]

You are forgetting the most Important thing: Bethesda is only good at giving you Sandbox Games to add Mods to, so you can 'role play' in your head.

Just look at Skyrim! It sure like hell wasn't Popular because it had an Amazing Story!

What about the Guild you could join huh? As far as I could see, the only ones that was praised over and over was ONE Single Guild! The Dark Brotherhood. Where are the praise for...oh I don't know, the Bard College?

If they focused only on 1 star system, peoples would have whined it's too Limited. And then point out how No Man's Sky is way bigger! Why can't they make it bigger?! I wanna see More Systems and find weird Map to Land on!?

If they worked longer to fill all the planets with more Quest and encounter, it would have taken LONGER. Again, peeps will have whined and said ''I betcha the game is a dud! It has been YEARS and we saw or heard NOTHING! Just give it up Bethesda!''.

If they made the map auto Generate stuff, after all they did it a longtime ago with Daggerfall. It generated Dungeons. Peeps would still have found a way to whine, claiming 'Oh but its auto generating. Its NOT like Skylame or Fallout...its not UNIQUE!! You have to reload over and over to see that ONE Cool place...I liked that one, but I had to start Over because X Mod screw it up...and now, I have to RELOAD To get it Back! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Bethesda?!''.

The point being is that its Done. You have a game with Gazillions of Planets.

Focus on giving them feedbacks about how they can fill it with interesting Things.

And forget Skyrim.

[Greywolf]

Originally posted by SerraShaar:

You are forgetting the most Important thing: Bethesda is only good at giving you Sandbox Games to add Mods to, so you can 'role play' in your head.

Just look at Skyrim! It sure like hell wasn't Popular because it had an Amazing Story!

What about the Guild you could join huh? As far as I could see, the only ones that was praised over and over was ONE Single Guild! The Dark Brotherhood. Where are the praise for...oh I don't know, the Bard College?

If they focused only on 1 star system, peoples would have whined it's too Limited. And then point out how No Man's Sky is way bigger! Why can't they make it bigger?! I wanna see More Systems and find weird Map to Land on!?

If they worked longer to fill all the planets with more Quest and encounter, it would have taken LONGER. Again, peeps will have whined and said ''I betcha the game is a dud! It has been YEARS and we saw or heard NOTHING! Just give it up Bethesda!''.

If they made the map auto Generate stuff, after all they did it a longtime ago with Daggerfall. It generated Dungeons. Peeps would still have found a way to whine, claiming 'Oh but its auto generating. Its NOT like Skylame or Fallout...its not UNIQUE!! You have to reload over and over to see that ONE Cool place...I liked that one, but I had to start Over because X Mod screw it up...and now, I have to RELOAD To get it Back! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Bethesda?!''.

The point being is that its Done. You have a game with Gazillions of Planets.

Focus on giving them feedbacks about how they can fill it with interesting Things.

And forget Skyrim.

I know why Bethesda did what they did but lets just ignore that and pretend that Bethesda is a competent developer capable of making a good game, also lets ignore the inevitable complaints of idiots, sure even if a game is good you will still get people complaining that game does not have feature X even though implementing feature X would lead to disaster, but generally if a game is good it is going to have a much more positive reception than the reception that Starfield actually got.

Do you think that the game that this hypothetical version of Bethesda produces would need 1000 planets and 100 star systems or do you think it would be better if they focused on 1 star system with a handful of planets?

[Master myst eversong]

naa its all good,i love this game,and just wait