It's a long list. Basically very boring. It's.not exploration. No planetary exploration, no space exploration
Dry boring dialogue. Uninteresting quest lines. Combat is dull and repetitive.

And the fact that it felt like a chore just to get the desire to play. It feels cheap and rushed.

This is true, but looking at the Steam chart I think it should be considered a disappointment at this stage, no?

Apples to oranges, but for example Starfield has a peak of 330k and current of 90k

BG3 has a peak of 875k and 154k current.

This is only a snapshot and bigger samples are needed to draw real conclusions. But I think Starfield is a more mainstream thing and I would have expected it to be more popular than it is, and certainly more popular than a cRPG like BG3. It's not a failure, but it's not exactly a smash hit either.

I have yet to play it, as mentioned I'm just not convinced by it. I think maybe the most direct comparison is Outer Worlds? I that accurate? And I was unable to get in to Outer Worlds, which surprised me. One of the very few games of its type I've failed to find suitable. I'm sure I'll give Starfield a go down the line. Let it bake in the oven for a while.

I have not played Starfield yet so I'm asking this to those who have played it:

Is Starfield at all similar to how the Mass Effect RPG's played or is it fundamentally different?

Not quite similar to Mass Effect (I played 1 and 2). In ME you had control over your team during combat, in Starfield you only have companion at a time and no way to control him. Basically, the same as in Skyrim and Fallout 3: you can equip them with better guns/armor but their main use is simply to carry any loot and attract enemy fire. Often they'll stand right in your line of fire. Dismiss them if you need to use stealth. They do give bonuses on your ship and outposts, so they are not entirely useless. I just wish they stopped asking to date me all the time Companions in Mass Effect had much more character.

On the other hand, the locations in Starfield are much bigger and have more to interact with. The best thing about Starfield (IMO) is how much you can customize your own spaceship/outpost, down to where you put the plushies on your bed. Your spaceship is mainly used to fast travel, but if you include a workshop, laboratory and crew hab you have everything in one place.

The game currently has a 74% review rating on Steam which is not bad but it also suggests that the game did not live up to the pre-release hype.


Now it can certainly be debated who was mostly responsible for drumming up all of the excessive hype. Did it come mostly from the developer/publisher? Did it come from the gamer community itself? Did it come from advertisers?

There seems to be a general hankering for.... something where you can acquire/buy/build & fly your spaceship, walk around it, modify it, go to anywhere you like and still have a Skyrim-esque experience. Starfield made it seem that it was all of this, a vibrant cross of Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous. They were careful with footage that they showed.

I haven't played it myself, but it seems to me to be Fallout where you can choose to go to a new map whenever you'd like, and take your base with you to the designated base place for each map.

So, to answer your question, as I understand it, there was a careful setting up of expectation with little clarifications for plausible deniability

Good post DM and I agree with your last statement completely.

Mouse space control(and maybe 360 controller), load screens for planets to space and back, no true flight from points, and basic inside for the ship. Load screen to get on and off.

There are no load screens in Star Citizen.

Anywhere.

Except for when you first enter the game world.

In Elite the only load screens are between stars, and those are masked with the warp effect.

I have played a little of Starfield, but honestly, I get better texture quality in modded Skyrim. Feels very Fallout-esque, with no pretty faces. The character creator designer apparently is some overweight, not so attractive zoomer or millennial, so they did not want it possible for a player to create beautiful faces.

I'm enjoying the game... I got what I thought I was going to get.
I knew it wasn't a space sim, I knew there would be fast travelling involved. I was expecting something similar to Fallout 4 and Skyrim, but set in outer space.
I don't have a top end computer, but the game plays absolutely fine for me so far... I'm on level 33, and I'm having a blast.
I have Elite and Star Citizen, and as I said, I knew this was not going to be a simulator..

the fact you cant land/exit your spachship basically makes building one worthless as it is just a instance zone

It isn't a space sim. It is a loading screen sim, with occasional 'gameplay' between successive loading and inventory screens.