It’s funny. Everyone bitches that there’s no content and the world is bland, and then says “you can fast travel everywhere so there’s nothing in-between nodes.” Maybe, just maybe if people traveled between locations by actually launching into space and walking around in towns they’d run into all the random events that made me take 2 hours to cross the street in some places. Instead everyone just jumps point to point and says “the only thing interesting is the main story.” Is Starfield a GOTY quality game? No. But people sure seem to be going out of their way to play the game in bad faith for a bad review.
Maybe, just maybe if people traveled between locations by actually launching into space
You are aware that there isn’t anywhere to go while in space, right? You can’t manually fly from Cydonia to Deimos Staryards, nor can you go “beyond” the bounds of the planet cell you’re in. You can’t go from a “Settlement” planetary POI to an “Abandoned Mine” POI that is some 200km away from it without fast travel.
Or the developers could have put the story hooks in front of fast travel instead of hiding them? Look at Baldur’s Gate 3 with fast travel nodes. You can pick up several quests just by going to a few nodes. And other quests are found on the logical route to complete story quests. And a few are explorer rewards.
The thing is, this is a game design thing we’ve known for over a decade now. So no, if the quests are easily missable, it’s not the player’s fault for not finding them.
That’s on the game design. If players feel the need to fast travel then they aren’t linking to the side stories to the path of the main game well enough. Spider-man had fast travel, i used it once for the trophy and never touched it again because traversal was so good in the game. Red Dead did it brilliantly too. I’m not sure if fast travel existed or not, I never looked for it. The world was rewarding everywhere.
Starfield fast traveled to mostly negative
It’s funny. Everyone bitches that there’s no content and the world is bland, and then says “you can fast travel everywhere so there’s nothing in-between nodes.” Maybe, just maybe if people traveled between locations by actually launching into space and walking around in towns they’d run into all the random events that made me take 2 hours to cross the street in some places. Instead everyone just jumps point to point and says “the only thing interesting is the main story.” Is Starfield a GOTY quality game? No. But people sure seem to be going out of their way to play the game in bad faith for a bad review.
You are aware that there isn’t anywhere to go while in space, right? You can’t manually fly from Cydonia to Deimos Staryards, nor can you go “beyond” the bounds of the planet cell you’re in. You can’t go from a “Settlement” planetary POI to an “Abandoned Mine” POI that is some 200km away from it without fast travel.
Or the developers could have put the story hooks in front of fast travel instead of hiding them? Look at Baldur’s Gate 3 with fast travel nodes. You can pick up several quests just by going to a few nodes. And other quests are found on the logical route to complete story quests. And a few are explorer rewards.
The thing is, this is a game design thing we’ve known for over a decade now. So no, if the quests are easily missable, it’s not the player’s fault for not finding them.
That’s on the game design. If players feel the need to fast travel then they aren’t linking to the side stories to the path of the main game well enough. Spider-man had fast travel, i used it once for the trophy and never touched it again because traversal was so good in the game. Red Dead did it brilliantly too. I’m not sure if fast travel existed or not, I never looked for it. The world was rewarding everywhere.