Starfield - Bethesda Softworks - Release Date - Sep 6th 2023

[Knave]

I find the dismissal of FPS fascinating since I figure you would want a consistent smooth experience in a game that is going for action and immersion.

It's competing narratives.

People complain and want truly open world and not zones.
People want amazing graphics and high fidelity.
People want a high framerate.

It looks like Starfield is going to sacrifice a bit on the FPS side to have more of the top 2. Some might not like the choice but most won't care.

It's like the quote if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bike. Starfield doesn't seem like it is trying to be or wants to be a game requiring a lot of skill. It's not selling itself on tough boss fights. Maybe if that is how it was selling itself they would have made different choices in regards to FPS or the complaints would be taken more seriously.

 

[RandV]

It looks cool. Not a single chance I am even thinking about pre ordering it. I do not trust it to not be an absolutely buggy mess at launch.

There's really no reason to pre-order games in general. But as Microsoft bought Bethesda and wants this to be a big system seller for them, it's entirely possible we get a pretty stable launch from a Bethesda game this time. From what little I've glanced at it seems they were 'Bethesda done' a year ago but MS had them spend more time polishing things up.

 

[Osprey]

Competitive gamers also lower their quality settings to have an easier time hitting those high frame rates. No one cares about graphic fidelity when they play Fortnite.

That is different for something like a single player game where you care much more about being immersed so people tend to pick better graphics and textures over FPS.

To a point, yes, but no one is going to put all settings and ray tracing to ultra if it results in 15fps. Most prioritize framerate over image quality below 60fps and the other way around above that.

It's competing narratives.

People complain and want truly open world and not zones.
People want amazing graphics and high fidelity.
People want a high framerate.

It looks like Starfield is going to sacrifice a bit on the FPS side to have more of the top 2. Some might not like the choice but most won't care.

I think that we all understand and accept that this is a demanding game that'll probably not have the best framerates. That's what we were discussing, but it was misinterpreted as complaining about it.

 

[MAHJ71]

Trailer looks OK... not super impressed though.

However, I DID cave and order the Starfield themed controller.. THAT looks great.

 

[Jussi]

Based on this poll, most people don't mind the frame rate: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxUKaq9mQd5AQxYTIStzUMoh4e7snyu9Ug

 

[RandV]

Based on this poll, most people don't mind the frame rate: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxUKaq9mQd5AQxYTIStzUMoh4e7snyu9Ug

Poll is asking for console, while I'd assume this is more a PC issue. Personally I don't want to begrudge anyone their opinions but as someone who doesn't notice a difference I can't help but be skeptical about perceiving such a difference in "frames per second". You can obviously tell a visual effect, like in movies when they played with doubling it from a standard 24 fps to 48 fps in The Hobbit (do they still do this), but having an impact on performance?

To be clear though I primarily play single player RPG & strategy games. I also always find the default mouse movement in games way too fast, generally like to move it down to the lower 1/5th of the setting. Almost feels like a skills development thing where I didn't really get into PC gaming till after high school and never played the twitch shooters or the Counter Strikes. Closest I played back then was Rainbow Six which discouraged twitch mouse reflexes.

 

[Osprey]

Poll is asking for console, while I'd assume this is more a PC issue. Personally I don't want to begrudge anyone their opinions but as someone who doesn't notice a difference I can't help but be skeptical about perceiving such a difference in "frames per second". You can obviously tell a visual effect, like in movies when they played with doubling it from a standard 24 fps to 48 fps in The Hobbit (do they still do this), but having an impact on performance?

To be clear though I primarily play single player RPG & strategy games. I also always find the default mouse movement in games way too fast, generally like to move it down to the lower 1/5th of the setting. Almost feels like a skills development thing where I didn't really get into PC gaming till after high school and never played the twitch shooters or the Counter Strikes. Closest I played back then was Rainbow Six which discouraged twitch mouse reflexes.

It's because framerate is linked to input lag, which is the delay until your inputs are reflected on screen. The higher the framerate, the more often that the screen is updated, so the sooner that you see your inputs. For example, at 60fps, the screen updates every 16.6ms. At 30fps, it updates every 33.3ms, making for twice the delay between when you tell your character to move or do something and when you see it. Because of that, games can feel more responsive at higher framerates and a little "sluggish" at lower ones. For probably a variety of reasons, PC gamers are more likely to feel the difference and care about it.

 

[Mikeaveli]

Poll is asking for console, while I'd assume this is more a PC issue. Personally I don't want to begrudge anyone their opinions but as someone who doesn't notice a difference I can't help but be skeptical about perceiving such a difference in "frames per second". You can obviously tell a visual effect, like in movies when they played with doubling it from a standard 24 fps to 48 fps in The Hobbit (do they still do this), but having an impact on performance?

To be clear though I primarily play single player RPG & strategy games. I also always find the default mouse movement in games way too fast, generally like to move it down to the lower 1/5th of the setting. Almost feels like a skills development thing where I didn't really get into PC gaming till after high school and never played the twitch shooters or the Counter Strikes. Closest I played back then was Rainbow Six which discouraged twitch mouse reflexes.

Since you're on PC I would suggest going into the Nvidia control panel and setting your max frame rate to 30 in the 3D settings, then play any first person shooter for a few minutes. Then go back into the control panel, remove the frame rate cap and play the game again. The difference should be obvious. If not, then you're one of the lucky ones who are impervious to it.

 

[Osprey]

Since you're on PC I would suggest going into the Nvidia control panel and setting your max frame rate to 30 in the 3D settings, then play any first person shooter for a few minutes. Then go back into the control panel, remove the frame rate cap and play the game again. The difference should be obvious. If not, then you're one of the lucky ones who are impervious to it.

That's actually why they're limiting the framerate. Todd Howard said that consoles are powerful enough to render the game at up to 60fps, but that's probably indoors and in sparsely populated areas. Imagine if you're getting 60fps indoors, then go through a door, out into the sprawling city, and your framerate drops to 30. You'd likely feel the difference. Rather than allow the framerate to jump back and forth between 30 and 60 and risk breaking the player's immersion because he notices it, they're just going to lock it at the lower value so that the game feels the same all of the time. As you probably know, it's a trick that helps in PC gaming, too. If you set your max framerate to the lowest that your framerate in a particular game goes, it can feel a bit smoother, even though you're giving up framerate, because the framerate that you're getting is consistent.

 

[MAHJ71]

Controller arrived yesterday. Pretty damn cool. The see-through triggers are probably my favorite part about it.

 

[Beau Knows]

This is looking good. I'm hoping it reverses the trend of the Bethesda games getting less RPG-ish with each iteration. The simplified dialogue system from Fallout 4 being dropped is a great start.

 

[Rob Brown]

I still don't have PS5 or Xbox Series X, and while I was leaning PS5, Starfield does look pretty awesome and it's sort of pulling me in that direction. I was Xbox 360 and Xbox One before so it would be consistent, but it's a tough call.

 

[Jussi]

Controller arrived yesterday. Pretty damn cool. The see-through triggers are probably my favorite part about it.

You also get a free dynamic background with it.

 

[Jussi]

 

[MAHJ71]

You also get a free dynamic background with it.

Love a good dynamic background.. just need Xbox to push their updated dashboard to everybody so I can see more of it

 

[WeDislikeEich]

This is exactly my type of game. Can’t wait to play it!

 

[flyersnorth]

It's a bummer that there's no multiplayer in any form - seems like such a missed opportunity to build a massive explorable universe and not be able to explore it with other people.

GTA and RDR have managed to create fully fleshed-out single player stories, and repurpose those open worlds into a massively successful multiplayer playgrounds.

I wonder if Starfield might ever do something like that eventually? What is ESO like? I've only ever played Skyrim, and not ESO. Are they the same universe?

I'm not complaining though - I'm really excited to play Starfield, seems exactly like my type of game.

 

[Mikeaveli]

This is not good, DLSS 3 would be huge for this game. AMD needs to allow competing upscaling technologies in their partners games instead of forcing modders to add it instead.

 

[Khelandros]

This is not good, DLSS 3 would be huge for this game. AMD needs to allow competing upscaling technologies in their partners games instead of forcing modders to add it instead.

This should surprise no one, because;

Microsoft Denies Partnership with AMD for AI Processors - TipRanks.com

On Thursday, reports surfaced suggesting that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) was partnering with AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) to venture into the AI processor market, sparking skeptic...

www.tipranks.com

 

[Mikeaveli]

This should surprise no one, because;

Microsoft Denies Partnership with AMD for AI Processors - TipRanks.com

On Thursday, reports surfaced suggesting that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) was partnering with AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) to venture into the AI processor market, sparking skeptic...

www.tipranks.com

I think the more relevant example would be Halo Infinite being an AMD sponsored title and 343 showing off their extremely mid RT implementation in that game at an AMD conference. I had held out hope though as Forza Horizon 5 recently got an update with DLSS 3.

I think this game would be a prime candidate for a good ray tracing implementation as Todd Howard confirmed they are already using a real time GI system. Being CPU limited also means DLSS 3 would have been a huge feature for this game. This is pretty disappointing.

 

[Osprey]

This is not good, DLSS 3 would be huge for this game. AMD needs to allow competing upscaling technologies in their partners games instead of forcing modders to add it instead.

One of my favorite YouTubers, Daniel Owen, made a video last week calling out AMD on this:

Spoiler

 

[Mikeaveli]

One of my favorite YouTubers, Daniel Owen, made a video last week calling out AMD on this:

Spoiler

That's a good video on the topic. There's been some backlash against this move so hopefully something is worked out.

 

[Knave]

Seems like a weird complaint to be honest. The video in the spoiler even admits unhealthy practices by Nvidia in the GPU market but doesn't seem to want to admit that's why AMD is acting the way it is - to try to maintain and gain a foothold in the GPU market.

I mean okay... you get your DLSS at the cost of the GPU market being even less competitive. What's worse here? The game performs a little worse or Nvidia continues to charge up the ass and engage in behavior to maintain their monopoly on the GPU market?

The statements are generic. AMD is not going to say "we're ~10% of the GPU market and so we sign exclusivity deals to push the sale of our GPUs" and Nvidia is not going to say "lol we're over 70% of the market, an even greater share of the consumer market so we don't have to sign exclusivity because we're a virtual monopoly". Reaching out for statements is the most obvious set up in the history of the world. It's surface level journalism. And then to dissect one statement without dissecting the other, lame.

Edit: this is after the like was given to my post - but it's similar to Microsoft in OS and productivity spaces as an example. Regulators have softly reminded Microsoft of this by fining them billions of dollars for things like bundling Internet Explorer and Windows because people were unlikely to go out of their way to download Opera or Netscape.

And of course people will point out now we live in a world of Chrome and Mozilla. But lets remember the cost to set up a browser is a fraction of the cost of a manufacturing base and a chip foundry to start making a graphics card. And that's without getting into R&D to develop a viable, workable product and the software needed on top of that.

It might seem benign but when you start nitpicking what AMD or Intel do in the graphics space you're playing into the hands of Nvidia as a monopoly. AMD and Intel are not good guys. But they are trying to compete against a monopoly and a deal that excludes DLSS to help push AMD graphics cards isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. It's not competitive in a vacuum but it is competitive in the greater overall view of the market of graphics cards for consumer gaming.

The reason Nvidia isn't doing the same is because they realize they're an actual monopoly and if they did that they would get sued and lose just like Microsoft because the courts would rightly view it as Nvidia trying to put AMD out of business so they have no competition at all.

 

[Mikeaveli]

Seems like a weird complaint to be honest. The video in the spoiler even admits unhealthy practices by Nvidia in the GPU market but doesn't seem to want to admit that's why AMD is acting the way it is - to try to maintain and gain a foothold in the GPU market.

I mean okay... you get your DLSS at the cost of the GPU market being even less competitive. What's worse here? The game performs a little worse or Nvidia continues to charge up the ass and engage in behavior to maintain their monopoly on the GPU market?

The statements are generic. AMD is not going to say "we're ~10% of the GPU market and so we sign exclusivity deals to push the sale of our GPUs" and Nvidia is not going to say "lol we're over 70% of the market, an even greater share of the consumer market so we don't have to sign exclusivity because we're a virtual monopoly". Reaching out for statements is the most obvious set up in the history of the world. It's surface level journalism. And then to dissect one statement without dissecting the other, lame.

I have to ask though, is anyone actually going to switch to AMD because they have feature parity with Nvidia in a few titles? All this does is make the experience worse (in line with AMD users) for the majority of players in a few specific games. Maybe if AMD had their own technology that was worth using people wouldn't be that upset about this and they would sell more GPUs.

 

[Khelandros]

I have to ask though, is anyone actually going to switch to AMD because they have feature parity with Nvidia in a few titles? All this does is make the experience worse (in line with AMD users) for the majority of players in a few specific games. Maybe if AMD had their own technology that was worth using people wouldn't be that upset about this and they would sell more GPUs.

This is just Microsoft trying to push things in their direction again. They are funding AMD on a bunch of projects, so what better way to recoup money than making them an official partner on products.