this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I didn't listen to the hype either, and was sucked in for like 70 hours, but knowing that >!the universe I'm in is gonna cease to exist as part of the main storyline!< makes it impossible for me to care about any of it. Why would I >!try to finish a side mission or make an outpost or build a ship if it's all gonna be wiped away in a few hours? Why would I finish the game if it means wiping all of that away?!< Why would I play the game if I want to not finish it? There's a fundamental disconnect there that kills my motivation to play
I noticed that while I was playing, before discovering how the game "ends," that I was at least keeping myself occupied, if I wasn't even really having all that much fun. Mostly, I was idly ticking boxes.
Once I learned about the end game, all motivation to play disappeared. Why waste my time ship building, outpost building, doing anything at all if I'm just going to have to start over? But I can't even change my skill points, so I'm stuck with ever-increasing amounts of XP just to get new skills.
Bad game design, overall it's at best a 6/10.
It could have been made so much better if instead of >!wiping universes, it just added them, and you could jump between them at will.!< It would probably make the game much larger to account for >!potentially ten sets of ten custom ships, ten sets of 27 outposts, and 10 sets of NPC interactions to keep track of,!< but at least it wouldn't piss off anyone who's spent more than a few hours building the perfect ship or finding that mythical 7 resource outpost
So you mean to say why should you enjoy the journey if you don't like the supposed end?
No, and I see your point. You've given me a better understanding of my own position. It's not that it isn't worth doing things in a temporary universe (that's what we're doing right now, actually), it's that I'm actually just not having fun with the journey. I've built essentially the same outpost a dozen times in FO4 because it's fun. I've landed on the Mün in KSP a thousand times with essentially the same ship because it's fun. I've played through the thieves guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines in Oblivion on every character I've played because they're fun, regardless of the fact that I know that eventually I'm going to drop this character and play as a new one. The difference is that I'm having fun with the process in those other games, and I'm not having fun with the process in Starfield.
Edit: but also, it is the temporary aspect of the universe that's the problem. Part of the core gameplay loop is to destroy your progress. That's fundamentally disconnected from the gameplay aspects of completing side quests and building things. We're talking about a video game, not real life.