Well, remember the bookshelves in skyrim? They had the ability to randomize which books spawned on shelves, over a decade ago. Actual physics enabled books on physical shelves, that were randomly spawned. I never really noticed, but I was going back through Skyrim modding again and I noticed the level lists had that.
This isn’t super complicated.
The moment Starfield lost its shine for me was when I went into my second frozen lab and the layout was identical. I realised that the procedural dungeons I had been expecting were complete BS and that only quest related stuff would be unique, which was very disappointing.
I was expecting procedurally linked cells, a la Dead Cells or Diablo. Yes, individual sections would be recognisable, but how they’re put together would be different each time.
The veneer started to break for me when I walked into my first cave and found literally nothing.
On a planet that has like 4 points of interest total, and one of them is a 3 minute sprint away, just to find that it’s completely empty? That’s really bad design.
@CopernicusQwark @Blamemeta In general, I don’t mind the layouts being identical due to bureaucracy’s love for doing things one way only. I don’t like the repeated ones that have named npcs though.
Muybridge (or whatever it is) pharmaceutical seems like it was originally part of a quest line or something, since there is even a corpse of at least one of the 2 siblings down in the caverns.
I see what you’re saying, and could agree if the “scenario” was different internally.
In the example I gave, the frozen labs had the exact same corpses in the same locations and had the exact same ice damage. If they had even been able to make those things change from copy to copy it would have gone a long way to making it feel like I wasn’t wasting my time exploring location types I had already done.
@CopernicusQwark Just different tolerances for it between us. I am not sure if they will randomize scenarios or spawn points, but I hope future updates at least add more locations to the pool.
This is what irritates me so much.
Starfield had the best excuse of any game to have building structures be copy and paste copies. Just pay a writer an hours work to come up with a company that produces pre-fabricated facilities, and throw a message on a terminal somewhere thanking them for yet another purchase from Cheep-E-Builds Pre-Fabricated Services Inc.
And then they could have put their focus on randomizing the asthetics of the interiors. Same building, but maybe this one is clean and worked in, maybe that one is raided, with furniture blocking certain paths. All of them having desks in different orientations, different clutter on desks/foors/shelves/etcl. Would have been great.
Instead, they just copy and pasted everything. So once you see Building A, you know where the corpse is curled up in the shower. You know where the chest is under the bed in what room, etc etc.
I really don’t like this direction they are going with randomly generated games. First Fallout 4s boring, repetitive, and stupid Radiant quests. now Starfields boring, repetitive, and stupid random planet generation… Makes me seriously concerned about the next game, in what they’ll cut corners on to make randomly generated next.
there’s “this building has the exact same plan / is prefabricated” and there’s “this building has the exact same objects put on the exact same furniture in the exact same spot”. if you experienced the former you’d be mumbling about how boring the federation is or something. if you experienced the latter you’d seek psychiatric help.
@pyre That doesn’t bother me. Probably because I wouldn’t want the job of coming up with multiple clutter schemes for the same complex. I can’t imagine that would be a quick process.