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I don’t get some people’s complaints about Starfield’s procedural generation. Did everyone forget Bethesda was one of the first to do this on this grand of a scale and did it well?
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I don’t get some people’s complaints about Starfield’s procedural generation. Did everyone forget Bethesda was one of the first to do this on this grand of a scale and did it well?
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View Reddit by prossnip42 – View Source
How many people who made that game still work there?
To me procedural generation is just naff, give me 1-10 hand crafted worlds to explore, not 1000 uninteresting repetitive expanses with “radiant quests”, I don’t want an endless game, I want a good one.
It’s a personal preference, if people enjoy it that’s great, who knows maybe it’ll be amazing, I just can’t get behind randomly generated stuff for the sake of more “content”
Counterpoint:
Daggerfalls dungeons were wild, massive, multi-leveled abominations that are infamous for getting you lost for three real days, virtually half a kilometer deep in the bowels of what looked from the outside to just be some dude’s mausoleum, in some distant corner of the world, just trying to find a harpy feather.
The “wilderness” was samey and unrealistic, and nobody ever went there because it would take multiple real-world days for you to walk to the nearest town.
And don’t even get me started on the quests.
And in truly Bethesda fashion, in a world without day-one DLC and instant patches, the game was literally unbeatable for years.
That said, Daggerfall was a phenomenal game, but procedural generation wasn’t the main reason for that.
The game did well and the scale of the game is still incredible. Issue is procedural generation gets boring. You can tell the difference between something designed by a computer with random assets and when a human sets the whole thing up. I have played a bit of the game and mainly watch MickyD stream Daggerfall, it’s one of my favorite Elder Scrolls, but he echos the same as me when going into dungeons, the fact the game is so enormous is staggering, but it’s gets boring and the dungeons are too big, even when turned to small because they can be confusing and too big. This is from again, when a computer makes it compared to a human.
I am extremely sceptical of Bethesda can make anything anymore since they haven’t made a new game themselves since 76. I trust game companies until they break it and with how awful 76 was they have broken that trust and have to earn it back.
I would love the game to be good, rare is the case where people really ever want games to be bad, but I just don’t believe Bethesda from until people get their hands on the game and play it.
I remember I also remember seeing the same tree for 8 hours of walking to get stuck in a dungeon because the map just screwed up half way through with no way back up. Fast travel was necessary but those skeleton screams haunt me to this day.
i also look forward to accidently clipping under the surface of procedurally generated planet type 3 while walking down a slight incline and needing a dedicated button to reset back to solid ground so i can go back to hinting for a quest item that may or may not spawn in a place that takes 3x longer to explore than the due date on the related quest 😊
‘Did it well’ is a relative term.
Bethesda had to release the debug codes so that players could get past the wonky dungeon generation.
“Did it well” as of years ago when people thought the procedural map was cool. Now people realize it is mostly an empty map with minimal content.
Probably a bit of No Mans Sky paranoia in that, while a lot better now, procedural generation was also a big selling point (among other things) that resulted in millions of planets that pretty much all looked the same and were largely empty and pretty boring.
I’d imagine people hanging out for this game are a little worried the same result may occur.
Lots of procedurally generated content that’s actually vapid, lifeless, and boring to explore.
diD EvErONe foRgeT?
It’s a game from 27 years ago
It very much did not turn out well in Daggerfall. I love that game, but the procedural generation was not good lol
do you think all of the people who made daggerfall are currently making starfield?
I honestly would – 100% – buy a remake of Daggerfall with modern graphics BUT has to have to original sounds. And I’m sure there are plenty like me.
Not the same company. This is the era corpo game making vs small company game making in the past. Zero innovation and only safe bets.
‘Did everyone forget’ you act like the majority of people waiting for starfield have even touched daggerfall. Terrible post.
“well” means something specific and what you have in mind is probably not it
On the contrary, the thing that Morrowind excelled at and launched Bethesda into the stratosphere was the decision to drastically reduce the scale of the gameworld from Daggerfall so that the whole thing could be handcrafted. This was considered a selling point at the time – no, it wasn’t close in literal size to its predecessor, but it felt far more expansive, rich and immersive because every step you took was in the direction of another crafted, creatively-led decision.
This has been a pillar of Bethesda design to this point, and I’d argue is one of the most critical to the success of their games. Their memorable locales, biomes and experiences are the result of deliberate and considered gameworld design. Had they retained the procedurally generated approach from Daggerfall, I don’t think they’re close to as successful as they are today.
Starfield’s decision to implement mass procedural generation feels counter to the decades of game design that made Bethesda what they are. That’s seemingly not all Starfield is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the handcrafted areas of Starfield that remain the showstoppers, with the procedural generation serving as drab intergalactic padding.
The studio has different cooks in kitchen, plus they were working with a different engine, expectations and fan base.
Have you ever played daggerfall? The biggest downside is that you have to fast travel everywhere because the map is so big.
That game came out in the 90’s. I dont think the procedural generation comparison is relevant.
Yes, I think having procedural generation is a big hurdle because you end up with repetitive or empty space as a filler. But, I’m also looking forward to bethesdas version of no mans sky and I’ll likely enjoy it no matter what. I loved no mans sky.
They did not “do it well.”
Source: Was one of the moderators for the #daggerfall IRC channel on EFNET in 1996 / 1997. We had Hal Bouma come to the channel all the time. We would report all of the bugs we found and he’d ask us to send him our save games. When he had enough of them fixed, they were used for the next patch that came out.
It’s no secret that the second name for the game was “Buggerfall” .
I don’t think you’ve played Daggerfall? The procedural generation straight up broke the game a lot of the times.
I think people are misunderstanding Starfield’s procedural generation. It’s not like No Man’s Sky where they’re generating each new planet you find, they’re just randomizing notable locations like one player might find a crashed ship, another finds a small abandoned shack, etc.
>Did everyone forget
I don’t know of a person under 35 that played Daggerfall.
What bothers me is this generic feel you get with procedural generation like No mans Sky. Everything kind of looks the same, color pallets look off.
I think people are also remembering No Man’s Sky. A lot promised, but not a lot delivered.
Solar system or actual planet scale procedural generation is crazy demanding. Im actually hoping it goes well, but I’m waiting at least a week before any of my $$$ is committed. I also have gamepass so I guess I could just do that.
The complaint is Bethesda has not been making good games for years now. Fallout 4 was a great playground.. with a horrible story. Fallout 76 was/is bad. Elder Scrolls Online goes in and out of being great and being terrible. Lets be honest with ourselves Oblivion really wasn’t that great and the writing was the biggest meme of its existence. Most of their games are good despite major flaws. Theres always aspects of the games that are really close this thing we all want and the thing that makes Bethesda is that they MAKE AN ATTEMPT at doing that thing we all want when no one makes the attempt… but in the end the actual execution is often a complete mess. They lucked out with Skyrim as it had THE LEAST fuck ups in it out of the bunch… there are still some really bad parts also everyone forgets there aren’t iron sights in Fallout 3 until they play the game again and realize how bad the gun play actually is. So why complain about something that usually doesn’t work out? Because Bethesdas track record with not being able to pull off aspects of games that ARE easy to do.
Everyone is forgetting the point of procedural generation. It’s not supposed to make the interesting places it’s supposed to make a believable scale in between the interesting points. Along with having genuinely new opportunities for stuff that is typically grinded or resource gathering. The interesting “attractions” should still be made by hand and placed appropriately.
It’s frustrating when the entire continent of Skyrim is smaller than a college campus. The immersion is hard to get right when the scales on these games are so absurdly small. Many “open world” games these days are often just a little main laid out like a theme park where entire towns are just 3 or 4 houses and just around the corner is the nation they’ve been fighting for hundreds of years. Often so close you can see every attraction on the map if you have decent draw distance.
Procedural generation ends that stuff. You can have actual real life scale with procedural generation if it’s done well. The interesting stuff should still be there, but the area in between is no longer imaginary. We no longer have to pretend like the game’s story isn’t ridiculous when it’s taking place in this super tiny little location.
Also traveling needs to not be a hassle as well, without being instant either. One of the better versions of this I’ve seen is Black Desert Online where you can click a place on the map and your character will autopath and walk there on their own. You can clean out your bags or read the internet while it’s going on. Also there’s things that happen on the road, bandits will occasionally attack you and you can run on rare monsters too. It’s genuinely fun to get places compared to the instant teleporting where there’s no journey. Every place feels so small when you can get there instantly. Plus you have no reason to revisit any of those places because you’ve already leveled through the area (tho this requires lower level content to remain relevant somewhat). Like for example FFXIV has this huge game world but it feels like it’s a fraction of the size of say Skyrim because you never really have to go anywhere after you’ve leveled through an area, you can just teleport then fly there.
Procedural generation is absolutely the future of not only open world games but all games will likely incorporate versions of it now that AI is getting better. It will be what allows for truly massive scales that make these world’s feel real.
Historic Bethesda did it well, anyway… are ANY of that team even still around?
Right… So I’m a massive Daggerfall fan. Favourite elder scrolls game. Always has been.
But you’re wrong. Bethesda didn’t do it well in Daggerfall. The *idea* was good. The systems and depth were cool. But they fucked it up entirely. The original Daggerfall is nigh unplayable. It is so far from finished it’s hysterical. It’s full to literal breaking point with bugs, and has literal holes in the world.
The reason Daggerfall is gaining traction and popularity now is largely because it was remade in unity by fans, and modders have been adding to it. Bethesda didn’t do it well. Modders did. Which is the story of the studio to be honest.
There’s also an astronomical difference between procgen in Daggerfall and procgen in starfield. My fridge could run Daggerfall.
As I’ve said before, I want starfield to be good. I want people to have a good time and get everything they want. I just don’t trust the Bethesda of today to pull it off.
This is before Todd took over. Main people who worked on this were replaced. Some of them worked a bit on Morrowind and then they to were gone.
Those people working on these games are now making their own and we shall see how it will turn out to be.
More on this link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1685310/The_Wayward_Realms/
“Did it well” got me I have to admit
Define “did it well” because I remember routinely falling through the game, etc.
From the presentation it sounds like it will be real time generation. My understanding of Daggerfall was that they used procedural generation in the development process, but the areas weren’t generated while you played it.
I just don’t think it’s possible to have a thousand full sized worlds and have all, or even most of the content of those worlds be interesting.