Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hater. I actually was really excited for the game. But so far I am just not having fun.
For a little bit of reference, I just finished playing thru Cyberpunk 2077 and then jumped right into Starfield. Maybe that was a mistake because I kinda just want to go back to Cyberpunk (and I will in a few weeks when the DLC comes out).
But I’m noticing two really big issues with Starfield: first, the gunplay/combat is… let’s call it underwhelming. I realize it’s quite probably a skill issue and I need to just git gud, but holy crap, everything is a bullet sponge and I don’t have that many bullets! Stealth seems to be pretty worthless at early levels as I don’t have any high-alpha guns that can take advantage of it and, most of the time, I’m detected before I even see the bad guys. I’m just not enjoying this aspect of the game at all.
The second big issue for me is that there’s a loading screen every five seconds! Again, probably a me thing, but OMG, it’s driving me nuts. Get into ship, loading screen. Launch from planet, loading screen. Fly to next planet, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen. Leave ship, loading screen. I just want to go shoot things! Let me shoot things!
Okay, found some spacers, time to… oh shit, out of ammo. Let me swap to a worse gun that still has ammo. Sigh. Okay, they’re dead. Let me just heal up… oh shit, out of med packs. Sigh.
Oh and wrestling with the UI is exhausting.
Anyways, I realize that this probably isn’t the place to find a lot of like-minded people. But I really do want to like this game. Any tips on maybe at least ways to make the combat less of a chore?
Most low level enemies drop weapons that only deal between 3 - 11 damage, which are basically useless against anything higher than level 5. I found some higher level weapons in a shop that dealt 30 - 40 damage and found they made combat much more fun.
As I progressed however, I noticed that enemy levels in a location were distributed:
So there is still a problem with bullet sponges. I keep an overpowered shotgun (med damage, high rate of fire, explosions on crit) with me and just bum rush the high level enemies with that. Otherwise you’d be shooting them all day with your 40 damage rifle.
As you go on, those high level enemies drop weapons that do more damage, so there is progression…. But you also just encounter higher level enemies with more health so the problem continues.
I see that there are already combat rebalance mods on nexus, the kind I’ve used on Fallout games in the past, and I’ll probably install one of those when I decide to start a new play through. (Which, I definitely will. I’m enjoying the game a lot overall despite there being some tedious aspects)
Thanks, I’ll pay closer attention to the weapon damage. Maybe I’m not upgrading enough.
I found that too, and I’d say that kind of design makes sense. For an RPG, it shouldn’t be like Uncharted where anything lying on the ground from your warpath suits the need; there should be reason and investment to get a good gun, then make it better.
I’ve actually been buying up ammo, something I didn’t do in Fallout, because the caliber I get off enemies is puny.