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[rofif]

86K reviews vs 4K. I'll take the fact that forespoken only has 4K reviews as a loss and that it did not sell well.

Well not shit sherlock. Starfield sold better than forspoken ?! NO WAY !
that hugely overhyped game !???

 

[Daneel Elijah]

It’s clear that it’s review bombing but what happened recently to make it reach mostly negative?

It depends of your definition of review bombing. The game was available to consumers since almost 3 months. With this thread, we have weekly, if not daily snapshots at times of the number of reviews and how many are good and bad. It seems that the progression was kind of constant degradation? And because there is more reviews, it has slowed down, but still down. At some point we talked about regions, as a lot of asian reviews(chinese I think) are bad compared to the US or Europe, but no real statistical work have been made about it. It should continue to get worse until some equilibrium will be reached, but the fact is that we got 76 748 good reviews in November and 84 317 when I looked at it today. Versus 36 931 bad ones in November and 48 147 today. So unless there is some long term cabal of people that really push for it, it should continue to go down until somewhere below 50%. Of course some patchs and mods should stop the bleeding before that happen, hopefully. I think that if this thread stay open long enough, it will go back to 80% or more one day, unless it is abandonned by Bethesda and Xbox, but working on fixing Redfall but not Starfield would be peak stupidity for me.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Don't celebrate yet. Though Starfield score is lowering and Forspoken is rising.
Starfield is still at a 66% user score. Forspoken is at 63%.
Maybe Bethesda can run their mouth a bit more on social media.

Starfield is 63%, not 66% (though Forspoken is 60%).

 

[Solidus_T]

It’s clear that it’s review bombing but what happened recently to make it reach mostly negative?

This is cope. Take a look at the reviews. The negative reviews show many hours played, many in the hundreds.

 

[mckmas8808]

It depends of your definition of review bombing. The game was available to consumers since almost 3 months. With this thread, we have weekly, if not daily snapshots at times of the number of reviews and how many are good and bad. It seems that the progression was kind of constant degradation? And because there is more reviews, it has slowed down, but still down. At some point we talked about regions, as a lot of asian reviews(chinese I think) are bad compared to the US or Europe, but no real statistical work have been made about it. It should continue to get worse until some equilibrium will be reached, but the fact is that we got 76 748 good reviews in November and 84 317 when I looked at it today. Versus 36 931 bad ones in November and 48 147 today. So unless there is some long term cabal of people that really push for it, it should continue to go down until somewhere below 50%. Of course some patchs and mods should stop the bleeding before that happen, hopefully. I think that if this thread stay open long enough, it will go back to 80% or more one day, unless it is abandonned by Bethesda and Xbox, but working on fixing Redfall but not Starfield would be peak stupidity for me.

I can't understand for the life of me why they still think Redfall has any life in it. And if the overall user score drops below a 60% for Starfield, I think MS and Bethesda should walk away from this game too. At some point, it's just not worth it.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Nah....Starfield is in no way comparable to a Gollum game and hasn't been treated as such. Much of the criticism is deserved, but lots of people, like myself, enjoyed the game quite a bit. I don't need a "defense" for that.

Agreed. I give it 7/10. It does many things well. The unforgiveable thing that killed it from being good was the lack of exploration and the excitement of finding something and starting a quest that way. Even Fallout 4 had the magic of wandering into a new area, travelling off the beaten path and discovering new things. Starfield did have good gunplay, exciting faction quests with a ton of variety. Anyone who is a fan of Bethesda games should give it a try at least once. It's not an all time great and not the gamechanging exclusive Xbox needed, but it's not terrible.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I can't understand for the life of me why they still think Redfall has any life in it. And if the overall user score drops below a 60% for Starfield, I think MS and Bethesda should walk away from this game too. At some point, it's just not worth it.

Yeah, no amount of patching/mods can fix players biggest criticism: lack of exciting exploration and getting lost. It would have been much better off keeping it to several systems, with fleshed out worlds that were large enough to explore and get lost in. Any expansion should take place on a few planets with smaller quests and be like Far Harbor.

 

[Topher]

Agreed. I give it 7/10. It does many things well. The unforgiveable thing that killed it from being good was the lack of exploration and the excitement of finding something and starting a quest that way. Even Fallout 4 had the magic of wandering into a new area, travelling off the beaten path and discovering new things. Starfield did have good gunplay, exciting faction quests with a ton of variety. Anyone who is a fan of Bethesda games should give it a try at least once. It's not an all time great and not the gamechanging exclusive Xbox needed, but it's not terrible.

7 is a good score. I give it an 8 because I really loved the ship building aspect, even though it was a little clunky. Definitely not a good exploration game and that's really too bad for a space game. To me, the worst flaw was the second half of the main campaign. Such a turd of a story. Not going to spoil it...... They built it up as a finding the meaning of the universe only to take the cheap, easy way out with this contrived infinite loop bullshit straight out of the 90s Quantum Leap show. Incredibly stupid. Thankfully the NPC and faction quests were not nearly as brain dead storywise. But yeah, the combat was good. I liked the RPG aspects. Overall I had a blast.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

I can't understand for the life of me why they still think Redfall has any life in it. And if the overall user score drops below a 60% for Starfield, I think MS and Bethesda should walk away from this game too. At some point, it's just not worth it.

Redfall was their first game at 70$ I think, first or almost first Series S/X exclusive and AAA game published by Xbox since their awful 2022. The blow to their image was hardcore. I think that doing was they promised, the DLC content, and fixing it is all about having some dignity than making money at this point. And maybe there is some corporate shenanigans too. Nadella talked about the game, and the reception had to be quite the surprise to him. So I can see Phil Spencer assuring him that "it will be fixed", and making sure of that somehow.

Steam is not the only storefront who sell Starfield, and MS and Bethesda have all the data they need, and more, concerning people use of their game. Who buyed it and why? How many hours? When do they stop, what do they don't like or redo each game session? On consoles, they even get to see how many people quit Starfield for Skyrim or Fallout, in real time, if they want to. How the game go from friend to friend, when that stop. In theory, the game should continue to be worked out for at least two reasons: making Gamepass feel more valuable as more time playing this game means that having Gamepass subs stay to be able to play it for "free", and like Fallout 76, and that point have been said by Bethesda themselves, prove that they care about it. IF they abandon the game now, the next Elder Scrolls will have some people not look at it regardless of quality, burned by Starfield. Walking away from a big open world like that would also mean losing a lot of potential money. A DLC can probably make a lot of money for them, if they fix the game image before it launches. Can they fix it is another question. But some people like it now, so they can't make it worse, I think. Hope.

 

[mckmas8808]

Redfall was their first game at 70$ I think, first or almost first Series S/X exclusive and AAA game published by Xbox since their awful 2022. The blow to their image was hardcore. I think that doing was they promised, the DLC content, and fixing it is all about having some dignity than making money at this point. And maybe there is some corporate shenanigans too. Nadella talked about the game, and the reception had to be quite the surprise to him. So I can see Phil Spencer assuring him that "it will be fixed", and making sure of that somehow.

Steam is not the only storefront who sell Starfield, and MS and Bethesda have all the data they need, and more, concerning people use of their game. Who buyed it and why? How many hours? When do they stop, what do they don't like or redo each game session? On consoles, they even get to see how many people quit Starfield for Skyrim or Fallout, in real time, if they want to. How the game go from friend to friend, when that stop. In theory, the game should continue to be worked out for at least two reasons: making Gamepass feel more valuable as more time playing this game means that having Gamepass subs stay to be able to play it for "free", and like Fallout 76, and that point have been said by Bethesda themselves, prove that they care about it. IF they abandon the game now, the next Elder Scrolls will have some people not look at it regardless of quality, burned by Starfield. Walking away from a big open world like that would also mean losing a lot of potential money. A DLC can probably make a lot of money for them, if they fix the game image before it launches. Can they fix it is another question. But some people like it now, so they can't make it worse, I think. Hope.

Great points. I just wonder how much it'll cost MS to keep producing content for Redfall at this point. And how much it'll cost to really give Starfield what it really needs. Which is some big expansion and an overhaul so that mods can be more fully supported.

 

[Setsuna Mudou]

Maybe the real Starfield... was all the friends we made along the way...

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

Obligatory:

Merry Christmas everybody

Edited: for safety concerns. Who knows what will get people in their feels these days.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

Great points. I just wonder how much it'll cost MS to keep producing content for Redfall at this point. And how much it'll cost to really give Starfield what it really needs. Which is some big expansion and an overhaul so that mods can be more fully supported.

For Redfall, better to let the team do something than kill the studio, and as long are they plan to do another game with them, they are only losing time. Starfield is another question. The game is big enough that simply fixing it and porting it in playstation should lead to a few millions sales IMHO. But this would lead to more questions than answers. No man sky and Cyberpunk did the right thing. Starfield can do the same, but this would mean basically no more game for the Series S/X generation from Bethesda, and I am not sure that Xbox want that. Mass effect Andromeda was in kind of the same situation, with a game that was weak but could lead to something. If Starfield do what they wanted to do, lead to a great Starfield 2, like GOW 2 or Uncharted 2 was to the first games, it would be perfect. But you can't do AAA easily now, and that would mean no Elder Scroll for 10 more years...

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I give it an 8 because I'm a dirty traitorous green rat but thankfully due to Ass of Can Whooping generosity I'll be put through rigourous reeducation to put myself back on the path of righteousness

FTFY

 

[mckmas8808]

For Redfall, better to let the team do something than kill the studio, and as long are they plan to do another game with them, they are only losing time. Starfield is another question. The game is big enough that simply fixing it and porting it in playstation should lead to a few millions sales IMHO. But this would lead to more questions than answers. No man sky and Cyberpunk did the right thing. Starfield can do the same, but this would mean basically no more game for the Series S/X generation from Bethesda, and I am not sure that Xbox want that. Mass effect Andromeda was in kind of the same situation, with a game that was weak but could lead to something. If Starfield do what they wanted to do, lead to a great Starfield 2, like GOW 2 or Uncharted 2 was to the first games, it would be perfect. But you can't do AAA easily now, and that would mean no Elder Scroll for 10 more years...

And the bolded is why I think MS should make Bethesda move on from Starfield post-2024. You don't want Bethesda drowning in Starfield man. None of us want that.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

And the bolded is why I think MS should make Bethesda move on from Starfield post-2024. You don't want Bethesda drowning in Starfield man. None of us want that.

They are fucked anyway. Skyrim was launched in 2011. For PS3 and X360. We will get GTA 6 before Elder Scroll 6. When they decided to make Starfield and not Elder Scroll, they naturally made that game go one gen of consoles later. The tech to do that, and do that well, don't exist yet. If Starfield was the success they wanted it to be, then they would do what they did with Skyrim: endless reeditions and ports. As it sadly failed to have the same impact, they have to fix that first. But now they are under Xbox. And Xbox have more money, but different goals than Bethesda. They can't allow another Fallout 76 scenario to occur. So we are looking at what, a 2030 date for Skyrim sucessor? They will have to support Starfield for Gamepass. I am sure that Xbox will periodically take some of their best people to help other studios for games that need it, like ID helped them for the shooting, or Gears of War team helping others studios in handling Unreal Engine 5. If Xbox was ambitious, they would grow 2 teams, one doing Elder Scrolls, and one working from Starfield to accomplish their ambitions. There is great potential in it. But the risk would be to fail at both. And yes, nobody want to wait even more for the next Skyrim. But at this point it is inevitable.

 

[Mortisfacio]

I'll revisit this game next year after some of the announced QoL updates hit (such as city maps). Is there any explanation in the game about crafting? That was highly annoying for me. Go to a station, can craft a support beam because I have the minerals, but... OK... what do I do with it without going to some website to tell me what does what? Also the inventory for crafting not linking to things outside you/your ship, kind of just made things tedious. Maybe there's a mod now that fixes those things, but those inconveniences were annoying.

 

[newtypepilot]

 

[geary]

 

[SmokedMeat]

I can't understand for the life of me why they still think Redfall has any life in it. And if the overall user score drops below a 60% for Starfield, I think MS and Bethesda should walk away from this game too. At some point, it's just not worth it.

They turned Fallout 76 around. Don’t get me wrong, shit should be great day one, but don’t go walking away from your problems. Fix them for your customers.

 

[OuterLimits]

They are fucked anyway. Skyrim was launched in 2011. For PS3 and X360. We will get GTA 6 before Elder Scroll 6. When they decided to make Starfield and not Elder Scroll, they naturally made that game go one gen of consoles later. The tech to do that, and do that well, don't exist yet. If Starfield was the success they wanted it to be, then they would do what they did with Skyrim: endless reeditions and ports. As it sadly failed to have the same impact, they have to fix that first. But now they are under Xbox. And Xbox have more money, but different goals than Bethesda. They can't allow another Fallout 76 scenario to occur. So we are looking at what, a 2030 date for Skyrim sucessor? They will have to support Starfield for Gamepass. I am sure that Xbox will periodically take some of their best people to help other studios for games that need it, like ID helped them for the shooting, or Gears of War team helping others studios in handling Unreal Engine 5. If Xbox was ambitious, they would grow 2 teams, one doing Elder Scrolls, and one working from Starfield to accomplish their ambitions. There is great potential in it. But the risk would be to fail at both. And yes, nobody want to wait even more for the next Skyrim. But at this point it is inevitable.

It sucks that the next Elder Scrolls is still years away. However, we get so many sequels and remasters/remakes these days that I appreciate a company risking millions trying something new.(even if this game is sadly disappointing in some aspects)

Granted, I certainly wouldn't mind an Oblivion remaster while waiting for the next Elder Scrolls.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

It sucks that the next Elder Scrolls is still years away. However, we get so many sequels and remasters/remakes these days that I appreciate a company risking millions trying something new.(even if this game is sadly disappointing in some aspects)

Granted, I certainly wouldn't mind an Oblivion remaster while waiting for the next Elder Scrolls.

Absolutely. At least they tried. Now if they stick with it and make it really work it will be even better.

 

[laynelane]

Maybe it was those post on Steam and Twitter from Bethesda, saying the game was boring by design. And telling gamers they don't know how to make games.
People are getting fed up with all the lies and excuses from Bethesda.

Those replies from Bethesda to players who left negative Steam reviews were especially bad too. Telling people that their experiences with your game are bad because 'you're doing it wrong' and 'space is boring' was never going to end well. That and Emil's pity party on Twitter show there's not much hope for Bethesda learning from this either.

 

[SJRB]

It seems a thread title update is in order.

 

[winjer]

Starfield is 63%, not 66% (though Forspoken is 60%).

I don't know where were sing those numbers.
They were 66% for Starfield and 63% for Forspoken.
I just checked again, and they both dropped one point.

 

[Tams]

Well at least it's getting some nice updates on the tech side early next year.

I don't do Gamepass so will wait for these updates and a super low price to finally give it a try.

Polishing a turd. They should make it the dictionary definition.

 

[demigod]

Obligatory:

Merry Christmas everybody

Where can I find this post?

I did find this little gem.

 

[Dane]

Agreed. I give it 7/10. It does many things well. The unforgiveable thing that killed it from being good was the lack of exploration and the excitement of finding something and starting a quest that way. Even Fallout 4 had the magic of wandering into a new area, travelling off the beaten path and discovering new things. Starfield did have good gunplay, exciting faction quests with a ton of variety. Anyone who is a fan of Bethesda games should give it a try at least once. It's not an all time great and not the gamechanging exclusive Xbox needed, but it's not terrible.

The main issue with a lot of the criticism with Bethesda is basically hate bandwagon that has gotten into mainstream ever since that hbomberguy Fallout 3 video, creating a revisionism circlejerk that BGS never did a good game. Before that there was No Mutants Allowed making boycotts against Bethesda for being the developer for Fallout 3 back in 06-07, and RPGCodex having a beef with the studio since Oblivion. No shit that Fallout 3 has issues, but I lived those days and people did love Fallout 3 and it sold like hotcakes, who didn't want that Pipboy and lunchbox edition?

These people really cling on anything that they see potential to "dunk" on BGS only to fall flat, like it was with Outer Worlds and then Cyberpunk, while curiously forgetting ever since the DLC that the latter had a massive two and half year marketing campaign non stop, every week there was a news from that game and developers were hyping up to eleven for far more time and impact than BGS did with Starfield, only to deliver a massively barebones game that took three years to be close to what they promised. They complain about their games being buggy, but gave a major pass to Baldur Gate 3 technical issues and performance that still crawl despite almost weekly updates.

I think Todd Howard and Emil won't improve shit not just because of their ego, but when a lot of the loud voices are desperate to do such acts like mentioned above, they will look as a bunch of people who hate them anyways and their feedback means nothing, a never ending cycle.

 

[Gaiff]

I don't know where were sing those numbers.
They were 66% for Starfield and 63% for Forspoken.
I just checked again, and they both dropped one point.

From SteamDB. The Steam website/app only use reviews from people who purchased directly through Steam. Steam DB uses the reviews from people who also purchased the game on third-party key sites.

You'll always see a small difference in the rating.

 

[Spitfire098]

Where can I find this post?

I did find this little gem.

Bro addicted to taking Ls

 

[bender]

Obligatory:

Merry Christmas everybody

 

[Heisenberg007]

I don't know where were sing those numbers.
They were 66% for Starfield and 63% for Forspoken.
I just checked again, and they both dropped one point.

The reviews we see on Steam are filtered by language. The reviews at Steamdb.info are global.

You can find the steamdb.info numbers at Steam too if you remove the language filter.

cc: Gaiff - the primary difference between the two platforms is the language filter - not just the source of purchase.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Santa Clause came to town. Looks like there was an influx of reviews on Christmas day.

What's a worse Christmas present, a lump of coal or a copy of Starfield

 

[GHG]

Where can I find this post?

I did find this little gem.

Here.

 

[Hudo]

Remember when Bethesda screwed over Obsidian w.r.t to their bonus because the Metacritic score of New Vegas was off by one point or something?

WHO IS NOT GETTING ANY BONUS NOW, HUH?

 

[Fess]

I still want to give it a whirl on PC(wasn't doing 30fps on XSX) under better circumstances.

Heads-up, don’t go in thinking it’s Skyrim in space, I did that and it gave a bad first impression.

After having played it for over 200 hours I see it as a slimmed down AAA No Man’s Sky RPG with better combat. Some features removed, some added. This is not a dis, I love NMS.

And if you play on PC there are lots of great mods that makes it better, new mods arrive every day, for visuals and gameplay.

Mods :: Starfield

Browse 9,462 mods for Starfield at Nexus Mods

www.nexusmods.com

I think those who still spend time hating on it after 4 months will come around eventually, there is definitely an interest otherwise they would just move on.

Personally I like the combat, best ever in a Bethesda game for me, the weapons, the dynamic nature of the world and the interactions, ship building, outpost building, finding new planets and doing surveys, the faction quests, side stuff and raiding pirate nests.
But again, it’s not Skyrim in space.

Biggest issue for me is the tame character design (somewhat fixable through mods). And no land vehicles for faster traversal. Hopefully the update about new ways to travel is about that. Loading times are no problem for me, it’s like 3 seconds unless you go to another planet which might take maybe 7, but I wonder how they’ll do the transition between the procedural blocks if they do add vehicles. Writing could definitely be better but I’m not a story-focused gamer so it’s no biggie for me. In my last playthrough I’ve only done one main quest in over 130 hours, there are many ways to play this thing.

 

[winjer]

The reviews we see on Steam are filtered by language. The reviews at Steamdb.info are global.

You can find the steamdb.info numbers at Steam too if you remove the language filter.

cc: Gaiff - the primary difference between the two platforms is the language filter - not just the source of purchase.

The score we see on Steamdb is adjusted by a custom formula.
On Steam they just divide the positive reviews by the total reviews to get the rating.

This is the formula that Steamdb uses

Introducing SteamDB's new rating algorithm

A short write-up on how the rating algorithm was made, and why it's probably a better estimate of the score.

steamdb.info

My screenshots were taken with the Steam filters to include All languages, All purchase types, All languages, Lifetime date range, Playtime no minimum.
Meaning it shows every review. And it still shows me 95% Overall reviews for Starfield. And 62% for Forspoken.

 

[SJRB]

Remember when Bethesda screwed over Obsidian w.r.t to their bonus because the Metacritic score of New Vegas was off by one point or something?

WHO IS NOT GETTING ANY BONUS NOW, HUH?

TRY GETTING A BONUS OVER A METACRITIC SCORE NOW, YOU FUCKING STUPID BASTARD

 

[Heisenberg007]

The score we see on Steamdb is adjusted by a custom formula.
On Steam they just divide the positive reviews by the total reviews to get the rating.

This is the formula that Steamdb uses

Introducing SteamDB's new rating algorithm

A short write-up on how the rating algorithm was made, and why it's probably a better estimate of the score.

steamdb.info

My screenshots were taken with the Steam filters to include All languages, All purchase types, All languages, Lifetime date range, Playtime no minimum.
Meaning it shows every review. And it still shows me 95% Overall reviews for Starfield. And 62% for Forspoken.

Not sure why that's the case for you. But, as you can see in the two screenshots I shared above, if the reviews are filtered by language (English), we see only 89,094 reviews. If we remove that filter (and all other filters), we see the full total of 133,081 reviews - which also show a 63% rating.

 

[winjer]

Not sure why that's the case for you. But, as you can see in the two screenshots I shared above, if the reviews are filtered by language (English), we see only 89,094 reviews. If we remove that filter (and all other filters), we see the full total of 133,081 reviews - which also show a 63% rating.

After opening Steam in anther browser, with no login on or cookies, no filters, I finally managed to get the same result as you:

133,081 reviews - which also show a 63% rating.

So Starfield score is even lower than I was counting it to be. LOL

 

[Xion_Stellar]

Remember when Bethesda screwed over Obsidian w.r.t to their bonus because the Metacritic score of New Vegas was off by one point or something?

WHO IS NOT GETTING ANY BONUS NOW, HUH?

I still remember it nearly shut them down and they had to let go of people because of it.

 

[Setsuna Mudou]

I think those who still spend time hating on it after 4 months will come around eventually, there is definitely an interest otherwise they would just move on.

Ah, so it gets better after 4 months then?

I remember when RPGs would get good after the first 5/6h, in retrospective, those were the days

Sounds like a lot of ball washing of Bethesda going on... either that or gas lighting others

 

[Flutta]

Can’t believe we’ve come to this. So it all comes down to Starfield v Andromeda.


Which one scratched that space kink better:

*Story
*Gunplay/Gameplay
*Space exploration
*RPG elements
*Character models
*Color palette
*Immersion

 

[Astray]

Remember when Bethesda screwed over Obsidian w.r.t to their bonus because the Metacritic score of New Vegas was off by one point or something?

WHO IS NOT GETTING ANY BONUS NOW, HUH?

The game's on Gamepass no one is getting any bonuses lol.

 

[hemo memo]

When you have expectations so ridiculously high that the game might be the ultimate cure to depression, that’s what happens. Mostly negative? C’mon.

 

[Hudo]

The game's on Gamepass no one is getting any bonuses lol.

Good. No one deserves any.

 

[Fess]

Ah, so it gets better after 4 months then?

I remember when RPGs would get good after the first 5/6h, in retrospective, those were the days

Sounds like a lot of ball washing of Bethesda going on... either that or gas lighting others

Not talking about playtime but those who keep talking about a game after 4 months they say they don’t find interesting. It’s like looking at a Steam review with 100+ hours logged and then a thumbs down. At some point those with no actual interest will turn around and walk away and I’m thinking that point comes slightly earlier lol

 

[StereoVsn]

Yeah, no amount of patching/mods can fix players biggest criticism: lack of exciting exploration and getting lost. It would have been much better off keeping it to several systems, with fleshed out worlds that were large enough to explore and get lost in. Any expansion should take place on a few planets with smaller quests and be like Far Harbor.

Writing looks to be atrocious as well though from examples I have seen. While previous games haven’t been a pinnacle of literature, at least it was tolerable before.

Although Fallout 4 started that downward spiral pretty hard.

 

[Topher]

When you have expectations so ridiculously high that the game might be the ultimate cure to depression, that’s what happens. Mostly negative? C’mon.

That's on Bethesda and Todd Howard for building up those expectations while not allowing anyone to actually play the game prior to reviews.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

That's on Bethesda and Todd Howard for building up those expectations while not allowing anyone to actually play the game prior to reviews.

Todd promised me Starfield would stop me from killing myself. He failed to live up to the hype and I killed myself

Fuck todd. Fuck Bethesda