History ScrappyMechanic / Starfield

* While the new lockpicking mini game is generally more engaging than that of ''Skyrim'' and ''Fallout 4'', it's not without issues. First of all, lockpicking anything consumes at least one digipick, even on a straight success. So be ready to hoard these things as you will burn through them insanely fast, doubly so if you use the various undo features the game offers to correct mistakes. Second, lockpicking, especially higher end lock, takes a lot more time. Several high-rating locks in a row can become a serious chore. Lastly, there's no correlation between the quality of a lock and the loot you find. A master lock may have 300 credits and a piece of Chunks steak, while a novice lock may have legendary gear and [[CommonplaceRare 20 Adhesives]]. This makes investing further into the lockpicking perk a bit of a dicey proposition as they take longer to pick, may consume several picks, and often offer no reward for doing so.

* NewGamePlus has received some criticism. If you choose to go through the Unity at the end of the main quest, you'll re-start in another universe. All that transfers is your character's level, skills, and unlocked research. Ship(s), inventory, credits, character relationships, outposts, etc... are all lost. That's all fine and dandy, but the problem comes that there's ''multiple NewGamePlus'', each subsequent one upgrading the special armor (up to rank 10 at the 10th instance of new game plus), powers (again up to rank 10), and ship (up to rank six). This encourages players to just not get invested into starting a proper new game plus because they'll have to ditch all their progress 10 times in a row anyway, and instead just grind their new game progress, only bothering to get involved again once they'd done it 10 times and the game's run out of incentives to go through the unity. [[https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/09/18/starfields-eternal-new-game-plus-loop-was-not-a-good-decision-by-bethesda/?sh=7f07d64f3fd3 Some new outlets]] have pointed out that NG+ being a series of grind runs counter to the other mechanics where the game wants you to get invested by building outposts, custom ships, etc...

* The nnkillable "Essential" [=NPC=]s return from previous Bethesda [=RPGs=] and remain as frustrating as ever, especially in comparison to contemporary games like ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'' and ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds'', which give you the freedom to blow up questlines to take out hated [=NPCs=] if you really want to. Most companions also hate it when you take a bullet to the head of not actively hostile [=NPCs=], too, no matter how unforgivably awful they might be. Some specific examples:

It started with a couple of mechanics... then it drastically grew as more and more players got access to the game. This page more or less covers [[ScrappyMechanic the many grievances]] a lot of Spacefarers have had in their adventures throughout the vast VideoGame/{{Starfield}}.

* The "zooming uncomfortably close to you during a conversation" returns with a vengeance from the 17 year old ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'', despite ''Videogame/Fallout3'' and ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas'' toning down the zooming to a more reasonable level, ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' merely centers the camera to the conversation NPC, and '' Videogame/Fallout4'' follows, with camera changing to whoever speaks.
* The design of the space travel in game is probably one of the most contentious design decision in the game. Taking off, landing, traveling between systems and between planets inside a system, are all done through loading screens. Depending on where you're going, where you're coming from, and how you interact with the UI, you may be looking at 1 to 5 separate loading screens per trip. This design has been called dated, immersion-breaking and clunky, compared unfavorably to space sims like VideoGame/EliteDangerous and VideoGame/NoMansSky, both games almost a decade old at the time of Starfield's launch, who include seamless transitions between areas. Furthering the frustration is that players have found out that Starfield does load ''the entire star system'' when you're in a planet's orbit[[note]]Traveling between systems is not doable without loading screens. And while on planets, the game does simulate the entire local system (including orbits) in the skybox, but the planet surfaces and the actual system are separate cells, the planets in the system are hollow facades who become hilariously pixaleted if one flies up to them. Meaning Landing and Taking off is also confined to loading screens[[/note]], meaning that is is technically possible to fly between planets without loading screens (if one uses console commands to boost the speed of one's ship), which means it was a conscious decision, not a design limitation to not include it.
** The above has also several knock-on effects. Because of the sheer number of loading screens involved on a trip, the player is encouraged to optimize their interaction with the star map UI to fast travel. For example, by selecting to directly land on a planet rather than go in orbit and then trigger a landing, as this reduces the number of loading screens encountered at no real trade-off. Because the game rewards fast travel, it's often pointed that Starfield de-emphasizes exploration. A player isn't encouraged to poke their nose at every planet on the way because each trip is at least one loading screen (more if they are to land anywhere). While a player in say, Skyrim or Fallout might stop at every map marker on the way to a main or side-quest, a Starfield player is actively encouraged to beeline to their destination via fast travel, meaning they'll never encounter some of the side content.
* The inclusion of and process of leveling Starborn powers. The powers don't appear in marketing, wouldn't be missed from the general design of the game world, are only available if you progress deep into the main quest, are tedious by design to level with little indication you can even do that, and several completely change how you can play the game. Personal Atmosphere can trivialize being overloaded while Phase Time lets you play like its VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}. Phase Time in particular is never emphasized though and players doing NG+ without reading guides probably realize they have it by accident.
* The inventory is decried as being awkward to navigate and deal with, as it's very difficult to just compare stats between two weapons and juggling not only the player's on-person inventory, but also their ship cargo when dealing with traders can be awkward.
* The town maps being topographical dot maps of the area, and only showing broader districts instead of streets and buildings has been roundly critcized, with many comparing it unfavorable to the maps in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' (itself, without mods, was criticized for lacking details like roads for the world map, and poorly labelled and zoomed in for the local map) from over a decade before, which had much more detail. Players who haven't gotten used to an area's layout enough to remember where every business is are in for a rough time.
* Ship turrets are very powerful, especially on large and heavy ships that lack the agility for proper dogfighting. The problem is that there's absolutely no way to give turrets targeting priorities. They simply shoot at random targets in range, regardless of whether or not their weapon type is actually effective or if that target is currently a low-level threat. One can't even use the VATS-style targeting system to force the turrets to focus fire on a specific enemy ship. The result is wildly spread-out damage output that can't compete with focusing enemies down manually with your FixedForwardFacingWeapon array.
* Bethesda's decision to [[spoiler:permanently kill off a companion during the main quest is questionable on several levels. For one, there are only four of them to begin with[[note]][[MyFriendsAndZoidberg plus]] [[RobotBuddy Vasco]], who's a non-sentient robot with a severely limited range of interactions[[/note]], one of which is a single father to a young daughter, and another may be a surrogate mother to a different young girl. Either one of them or a third companion might be your lover/spouse. Who ends up dying is determined solely by how much they like you, and no, it's not the one who can't stand you; it's the one who likes you ''most''. The whole thing forces you to juggle RelationshipValues[[note]]which you can't check in-game without console commands[[/note]] in a desperate attempt to pass the buck to the companion you consider expendable... which means you must spend a lot of time with someone you may not like, while keeping your distance from those you ''do'' like. Even if you like all or none of the companions, you might still want to save the ones who have kids at least. And just to rub salt in the wound, losing a companion this way serves no tangible purpose story-wise other than establishing the bad guys as the bad guys. That being said, depending on what path you take for the ending you can prevent this from happening on your next time loop, preventing any death on your companion's side.]]
** This one can also permanently limit and handicap your run. [[spoiler:Sarah Morgan is the first human companion you get and the only one you get in a set order. She's also probably on your ship because she boosts it and is also one of two female romance options. All of this means she's likely the companion in the most danger on the Eye. Her death means the loss of her "free plus one crew" skill. Whoever dies, there is no 1-for-1 replacement for them as crew and if you haven't finished their personal quests, those are gone.]] All and all, it's a gutpunch to players by design, but one that goes so far it is frustrating in real life.
* Changing ''anything'' on your starship, even if it's just applying a different paint job, resets the entire ship and moves any loose objects inside to its storage. While thoughtful in case of weapons you displayed in an armory that might no longer be part of the ship, this also includes every single decorative junk item like pencils, coffee mugs, potted plants and such, ''which are then respawned immediately at their original location'' if the module that contained them is still present. This mechanic can quickly clog your ship storage with hundreds, if not thousands of near-worthless garbage items that can take several minutes of ButtonMashing to get rid off at the nearest vendor. There's a small saving grace to this in that selling all of them is an easy way to hit the quotas for your Commerce perk's level up requirements.
* Also on the topic of the ship builder - it is impossible to design the interior. Furthermore, something the game does not tell you, the order in which components are added (as well as their manufacturers) affects where doorways and ladders between components are placed. Components doorways have different level of priorities (which the game won't tell you about) dictating where passages are most likely to be, and the first two habs connected vertically will spawn a ladder even if a two story component with built-in stairs is added to connect the two after the fact. The ship builder loves to create dead ends, even if you lay out components in such a way that they should be able to form a continuous loop between them. You can easily have two habs be side by side yet have no connections between them as the game decides the only way to go from one to the other might involve crossing the entire width of the ship. There is no means to preview the ship interior before saving (which means if you don't like it you need to go back and edit your ship, you run into the issue in the bullet above). The lack of interior preview also means that it's impossible to know which habs contain what crafting station or facilities without looking it up online. (For example, not all armories come with mannequins). Players have taken to building online spreadsheets compiling what hab contains what. Making this even more difficult, doors can replace certain facilities in a hab depending where that door is as generating a door makes the game remove the wall that door is on and anything attached to it or in front of it.
* There's no way to take components from one ship and add them to another ship you already own. You can strip a ship down and reuse the stripped components as you rebuild it from scratch, but if you want to put ship A's guns on ship B, you need to find a technician who sells those guns (and buy them again at full price).
* The Unkillable Essential [=NPC=]s return from previous Bethesda [=RPGs=] and remain as frustrating as ever, especially in comparison to comparable games like VideoGame/BaldursGateIII and VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds which give you the freedom to blow up questlines to take out hated [=NPC=]s if you really want to. Party members really hate it when you take a bullet to the head of not actively hostile [=NPCs=], too, no matter how unforgivably awful they might be.
** A particularly obnoxious example of this is [[spoiler:the CEO of Paradiso, who casually suggests ''genocide'' as a solution to the "problem" posed by the ECS Constant arriving in orbit around the planet; many players will want to take a gun to him right there, but he's tagged essential and there is ''no'' solution to the questline beyond one of the compromises fielded in the meeting. Compared to what ''[=BG3=]'' or ''[=TOW=]'' might let you do in such a place, it's extremely frustrating and can make one wonder about the narrative message of the quest.]]
** Another potentially frustrating example of this is [[spoiler:Mathis]], from the Crimson Fleet line. [[spoiler:As soon as you're separated from Delgado by the cave-in, Mathis proposes turning on Delgado and killing him - but you can't shoot Mathis for suggesting such a stupid thing (as a die-hard Delgado supporter might want to), and worse you can't even just turn him over to Delgado. You either pretend it didn't happen and let Mathis join the Fleet, or you turn him down and he tries to ambush you and get revenge later.]]
** Many are describing [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Benjamin Bayu]] as the new [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Maven Black-Briar.]]
** It's pointed out that this mechanic makes even less sense since the game is based around [[spoiler:visiting multiple alternate time lines, meaning killing essential [=NPC=]s shouldn't really matter when there's an alternate reality where they are fine right around the corner.]]
* No matter how much you upgrade your scanning abilities, you can't fully survey lifeless planets you can land on from orbit. You ''have'' to make planetfall to manually scan every inorganic element at least once, even though you already know which elements are present and where they can be found.
* Environmental Hazards and protection when exploring planets is poorly explained and rife with bugs what make figuring out how it works even harder. The game never quite explains how the numerical protection values correlate to a given hazard type beyond "bigger number is better" or just how protection depletion works.
* Smuggling contraband is a fairly deep feature with several unique mechanics. Unfortunately, engaging with it just isn't worth the hassle, let alone the investment in the special ship modules you need to enable proper smuggling in the first place. Contraband is almost impossible to acquire reliably, being mostly found as unique loot that doesn't respawn[[note]]pirate, spacer and Ecliptic random-gen ships are all reasonably likely to spawn with a unit or two of contraband if you board them, but you still have to board the vessels to do this, which can be time-consuming[[/note]], so kiss your dreams of becoming ''Starfield''[='s=] Han Solo goodbye. If you happen to find contraband, the money you can make from selling it is pocket change past the early game (most legal merchandise is more valuable), but because merchants have so little cash on them, you usually still need to sneak past at least one cargo scan to sell all of it[[note]]you can dock at the Den without worrying about being scanned, but there's still just one cash-strapped fence aboard, so chances are you'll be forced to go somewhere else anyway or wait for 48 in-game hours to sell off the surplus[[/note]], at least if you aren't friends with the Crimson Fleet. There's also only a single fence in each hub city (barring Crimson Fleet HQ itself, which has two well-moneyed merchants who'll buy), and they're most often found behind multiple area transitions and loading screens.. Long story short, unless the whole system gets a serious balance overhaul, you're better off leaving contraband where you found it and lug some more looted guns and armor back to the nearest vendor instead.
** And to cap it all off, there's a fence in what is effectively "neutral" territory; The Den in the Wolf system has a Trade Authority vendor who'll buy ''anything'', no questions asked. This is despite the station being a UC outpost full of [=Vanguard/SysDef=] personnel, where you don't get scanned on approach. His presence trivializes selling off your contraband. If he runs out of credits, just grab a nearby chair and wait 48 hours for his stock to refresh. Rinse and repeat until you've shifted all your contraband.
* Despite the game advertisement and the perks saying players could specialize in laser weapons and that laser weapons are "common across the settled systems", there's only 5 energy weapon types in the entire game - the Solstice pistols, the Equinox rifles, the Orion rifles, The Arc Welder, and the mining Laser (Each has unique variants of these base weapons). They use the same 2 ammo types (save for the mining laser which uses no ammo), and behave very similarly (the Orion being basically a strict upgrade to the Equinox). If you count EM weapons[[note]]which you probably shouldn't because the game treats them as a separate class with its own perk[[/note]] this adds a 6th weapon to the list. This means that a player specializing in laser weapons is not only severely limiting their play options, but also runs the risk of severe ammo starvation as all their weapons will draw from the same ammo pool. Meanwhile there are over a dozen ballistic weapons with almost as many ammo types fostering incredible diversity in playstyle if a player decides to go for ballistic weapons. Despite being set in the future, there's less energy weapon types than in a ''Fallout'' game and specializing in energy weapon is almost a trap. The only "real" benefit to using laser weapons is the very-situational ability to shoot people through windows with them (laser beams are just light and windows don't stop light passing through them).
* Limited storage space in player-built containers. The game doesn't let you disassemble equipment for crafting components, doesn't let you sell it off easily because the merchants are broke all the time, and then it doesn't even let you store your excess loot in your base without building a giant stack of expensive ''industrial-scale'' storage containers first. There are a handful of infinite-capacity containers available in the Lodge, but they aren't all that helpful to players who don't want to use the Lodge as their personal HQ, plus they can neither be moved nor labeled nor rearranged for decorative purposes. Also Lodge containers are not linked to the crafting system meaning any resources in them cannot be drawn from by crafting workbenches without you walking to them and manually drawing from them.
* Several skills provide abilities that many players agree should have been available without investing in a skill. The biggest offender is the boost pack skill, as you are unable to use the booster jump at all without it despite booster packs being required to survive in space. Other annoying skills provide features that were given to the player from the start in previous games, such as requiring an investment in Sneak for the player to be able to tell if they were even hidden. It forces the player to invest points in skills early on just to have quality-of-life features, even if they didn't plan to invest in future ranks of that skill.
* NewGamePlus has had some criticism. All that transfers is your character's level, skills and unlocked research. Ship, Gear, Creds, Character Relationships, Outposts, etc... are all lost. That's all fine and dandy, but the problem comes that there's ''multiple NewGamePlus'', each subsequent one upgrading the special armor (up to rank 10 at the 10th instance of new game plus) and ship (up to rank six) and also the chance to upgrade one's powers (again up to rank 10). This encourages players to just not get invested into starting a proper new game plus because they'll have to ditch all their progress 10 times in a row anyway, and instead just grind their new game progress, only bothering to get involved again once they'd done it 10 times and the game's run out of incentives to go through the unity. [[https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/09/18/starfields-eternal-new-game-plus-loop-was-not-a-good-decision-by-bethesda/?sh=7f07d64f3fd3 Some new outlets]] have pointed out that NG+ being a series of grind runs counter to the other mechanics where the game wants you to get invested by building outposts, custom ships, etc...
* The much maligned merchant cash limit returns from other Bethesda games. However in Starfield it's felt far more. First of all, because unlike, say, Fallout 4, there's no alternative ways to dispose of gear. You can't scrap it for parts. You can't strip the mods. You can't even disenchant it like in ''Skyrim''. Second, unlike those games where money didn't have ''that'' many uses, Starfield does have a giant money sink: Starships. Meaning players are incentivized to sell their gear. Third, Starfield's encumbrance system is far more severe and players can rapidly find themselves and their ships overburdened. However merchants typically don't have more than 5k on themselves on average, with the most wealthy of them capping out around 10k. And mid to late game white rarity guns and spacesuits can sell from 1k to 2k. With Blues, Purples and Golds fetching all a merchant has, or sometimes even more than they can have. Merchant do reset after 24~48 hours, but waiting in Starfield is annoyingly slow. Also unlike Fallout and Skyrim, you cannot invest in a merchant to raise their available funds, or attract super merchants to your outposts.
* Transferring cargo between outposts requires the construction of cargo links, either normal ones for interplanetary transport or interstellar ones for moving stuff between solar systems. While the intention seems to be that you build a bunch of mining outpost within a single star system, ferry everything to a hub base with an interstellar link and then move it to your main base from there for further processing, it doesn't work this way. Cargo links can only link to ''one'' other cargo link, meaning that a hub base requires the construction of one cargo link per satellite base. Given the size of cargo links, you may well end up being unable to cram all the required buildings into your hub base's limited build area, not to mention it pretty much prevents you from using the hub base for anything ''but'' cargo transfer. The menus to set up transfer routes between cargo links aren't exactly intuitive either, plus the whole system is buggy as hell, with cargo randomly being lost in transit, being moved in the wrong direction, or just not being moved at all for no apparent reason.
* Nearly every "outlaw" ship you can board and steal will have contraband onboard. This is a nuisance in two different ways.
** First, the contraband will not be in the ship's cargo hold but rather as loose objects in random places throughout the ship. If you steal the ship and take it straight to patrolled space (probably to register and/or upgrade it) the contraband WILL be detected and get you slapped with a bounty. Any outlaw ship must be swept for contraband before attempting to take it to a port.
** Then once the contraband is located and picked up comes the question of what to do with it. If your stolen ship doesn't have any shielded cargo installed then your best options are either Red Mile, The Den or The Key. The Den and The Key have Trade Authority merchants that will buy the contraband and don't require sneaking past a contraband scan. Red Mile and The Key can also register the ship and allow installation of shielded cargo and/or scan jammers. Alternatively even just dumping the contraband is more hassle than it should be because you have to land on a planet first; you can't immediately jettison it from the cargo hold because you are not allowed to access the cargo hold of a newly stolen ship until it has become your home ship from landing on a planet.
** It is worth noting however that if you don't intend to steal the ships, simply boarding and looting outlaw ships is a reliable source of contraband to make some extra money if your own ship is already equipped to handle contraband.
* Being able to board and capture ships by disabling their engines is great and all, but many of the ones you're likely to seize are going to be marked as Unregistered... which requires you fork over a fee of around 90% of the ship's total value before you can do anything with them. This means you can't really make ''any'' reasonable kind of money by "flipping" stolen ships, which is doubly frustrating as ship service technicians have some of the largest cash pools out of all merchants and thus are in the best position to actually ''afford'' to pay you what those ships are worth. The registration fee means that the profit of selling a ship is almost always less than you get from selling the guns you took from the dead crew. Throw in the hassle of all your stuff shuffling back and forth and having to swap ships all the time, and it's not worth the hassle most of the time.
* The Ship Command skill. It is easy to build a ship with up to 10 max crew, but despite that you are limited to only 3 crew on your ship until you rank up Ship Command, which is a master-level Social skill and thus requires at least 12 levels invested in the Social tree before it can even begin to rank up. And even at Rank 4 the skill still limits you to less than the highest possible max crew you can achieve on a ship. Including Sarah Morgan in the crew does give 1 additional Ship Command slot but even with that you STILL fall short of the max 10 crew.
* Persuasion is a useful skill, but is poorly explained. Levelling up your Persuasion skill or using items increases your percentage chance of persuading someone, but the game does not tell you what your base chance is, or how the difficulty of an option affects the chance of passing it (apart from the obvious but vague "red = harder"). Rolling against a hidden percentage also means that you can't be certain of passing a check, even at maximum level. In summary, if you see a Persuasion check coming, SaveScum it.
** Diplomacy, Manipulation and Intimidation also affect the persuasion skill, sometimes adding new options. Those options often are guaranteed success. This isn't explained by the description of any of the skills.
* The power temple 'puzzle' involves flying around a small zero g environment hitting lights. That is, if the game decides this particular light is 'real' or you just fly through it. Every time it takes longer than it should and it's exactly the same for every temple you visit- 24 of them per universe, so at max you will have to do this minigame 240 times.
* While the new lockpicking mini game is generally more engaging than that of Skyrim and Fallout, it's not without issues. First of all, lockpicking anything consumes at least one digipick, even on a straight success. So be ready to hoard these things as you will burn through them insanely fast, doubly so if you use the various undo features the game offers. Second, lockpicking, especially higher end lock, takes a lot more time. Several high rating locks in a row can become a serious chore. Lastly, there's no correlation between the quality of a lock and the loot you find. A master lock may have 300 credits and a piece of chunks steak, while a novice lock may have legendary gear and [[CommonplaceRare 20 Adhesives]]. This makes investing further into the lockpicking perk a bit of a dicey proposition as they take longer to pick, may consume several picks, and often offer no reward for doing so.
* Everything in ''Starfield'' that's worth doing has massive roadblocks in front of it. DoubleUnlock seems trivial in comparison. For example, modding most equipment requires spending a Skill point, which unlocks the ability to spend resources to research the most basic mods of a type, which unlocks the ability to commit further resources to do the actual mod. Mods for basic things like switching a weapon between semi and fully automatic or increasing the environmental resistance of your pack can take ''twenty or more'' separate steps. One can't help but feel like the game shows you all kinds of neat things you can do, only to fight you every step of the way when you try.

* The "zooming uncomfortably close to you during a conversation" returns with a vengeance from the 17 year old ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'', despite ''Videogame/Fallout3'' and ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas'' toning down the zooming to a more reasonable level, ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' merely centers the camera to the conversation NPC, and '"Videogame/Fallout4'' follows, with camera changing to whoever speaks.

* The "zooming uncomfortably close to you during a conversation" returns with a vengeance from the 17 year old ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'', despite ''Videogame/Fallout3'' and ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas'' toning down the zooming, ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' mere centers the camera to the conversation NPC, and '"Videogame/Fallout4'' follows, with camera changing to whoever speaks.