This market resolves as YES if I play Starfield and I am disappointed by the game. Otherwise, it resolves as NO after I have been playing the game for at least two weeks or at least 40 hours, whichever is first.
I'm a big fan of open-world RPGs and sci-fi, and I've really enjoyed some Bethesda RPGs in the past (in particular, Skyrim and Oblivion.) Having seen the Starfield Direct and other promotional media, my expectations are currently set very high. Will Bethesda live up to them, or will they let me down?
Things that could cause me to feel disappointed with the game include, but are not limited to:
Character creation/background is more limited than advertised
Story is flat, uninteresting, or otherwise not great
Dialogue choices are very limited
Ship customization and companions/crew are more limited than advertised
Combat feels clunky, unintuitive, or unfun
Exploration feels very repetitive or annoying
Skill trees are more limited than advertised
Rampant glitches, bugs, and FPS drops make the game unfun or even impossible to play
This market is obviously subjective, so I won't be placing any bets on it.
I should be able to play Starfield on launch day, and I should be relatively free to play it for a while - my graduate TA position doesn't start until nine days after the game is released. If I'm unable to play on launch day, I'll move the closing date of this market back to reflect that. If something prevents me from playing the game entirely for a significant time, this market's closing date may be pushed back even further. If I somehow never play the game, this market should resolve as N/A.
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Resolves YES, unfortunately:
Rampant glitches, bugs, and FPS drops make the game unfun or even impossible to play
The game will not run on a hard drive, which I only learned after suffering through a barely-playable hour of gameplay. I don't have space for it on my computer's relatively small SSD (I use that mostly for the OS and personal projects, and use the HDD for storing games.) I'm not about to go spend $30-60 on an SSD for more space, either. I ended up requesting a refund (I might re-buy the game once I have a proper SSD.)
@evergreenemily Sometimes I hate being right. That sucks, I hope you can play it in future
@evergreenemily oof (also can't believe I noticed this market and bet seconds before it resolved. wild)
@Gen Yeah, me too. I was really looking forward to it, but I guess I'll just play more Skyrim in the meantime.
@Joghn I figured having my OS on an SSD would be fine, because I've played hundreds of PC games before and absolutely zero of them failed to work because they were installed on an HDD.
@Stralor Then why are they the standard across the systems? It would still be cheaper to use HDD.
@dagnazty because it's nice and fast and people like it. but windows still does its thing w/o it afaik
@evergreenemily the consoles have ssds so more and more games will require it. An SSD is on starfields min. Requirements.
@Strikehydra As I said before, I was aware of that, but assumed that running my OS on an SSD was what the game wanted me to do.
Updated the close date to reflect the fact that I should be able to play in an hour or so (depends on how long my computer takes to "unpack" the game after preloading it - it's been unpacking at a rate of about 1% per minute and it's 62% done now, so it should be done by 7, but I set the closing time on the 19th to 7:30 just in case.)
My hype for the game remains high, and I continue to have no actual work to do until (roughly) the 20th. I will probably play for 40 hours before I reach two weeks, unless I find the game unbearable to play.
Maybe I am just a hater, but I don't see how Starfield is on track to become a fun & beloved game:
- Are people really going to get excited for the nth Bethesda-game in years, with seemingly few fundamental differences between this game vs Skyrim, Fallout, etc? The addition of the tedious "mining laser" and other mechanics from No Man's sky does not seem like a plus...
- Things like the ship customization seem pretty shallow to me -- it doesn't seem like the placement of thrusters/mass/etc has much detailed effect on the ship's maneuverability, nor do you ever have to worry about things like reentry or power generation or whatever. Instead you are just stacking rooms together to make a custom house, and the house can fly around to different levels.
- The basic idea of taking off and landing on different planets seems poorly thought out; doesn't this directly contradict the open-world philosophy that has made previous Bethesda games successful? Instead of walking from place to place in a seamless world, you are basically watching a loading screen in-between separate small levels. Seems like a step backwards for the game design. (To clarify, I love games like Kerbal Space Program, where travelling between worlds is an interesting gameplay challenge. But this does not seem to be the case with Starfield, where you mostly warp from one point to another.
- I am an aerospace engineer and a huge space nerd, but even I find it hard to be captivated by the bland theming of this latest game. Realistic in all the boring ways (aesthetically everything is just metal boxes and rocky barren planets), not in any of the interesting ways (doesn't seem to have much of a hard-sci-fi sensibility in terms of lore / storytelling / game mechanics / etc).
- This seems like the kind of game, like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk, which might be susceptible to an exaggerated negative reception at launch (due to bugs, lack of features, etc) even if people eventually warm to it.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people who seem to like these games. (eg, considering existing Bethesda games to have fascinating story & characters when IMO they do not. Or being entranced by crafting and RPG mechanics that to me just seem like cynical game-length padding.) So I am hesitant to bet YES in this market.
@SpaceAge I think you're right on both counts. I'm actually kind of glad it's been delayed so much - it seems like a lot of development time went into the game, hopefully with good results.