Starfield's May Update Causes Head-Scratching New Problems

Starfield’s large May update–the greatest to hit the sport since its September 2023 launch–arrived final week, introducing tons of latest quality-of-life options (like improved scanner perform and floor maps) and long-awaited bug-fixes for a number of the sport’s most essential quests. The May replace ostensibly has all of it, from choices to tweak fight issue to elevated stock house and even improved ship-decorating mechanics.As a fan of Bethesda’s earlier video games (and an enormous house nerd), I used to be excited to get my palms on the replace and take it for a spin. Disappointed by the state of the sport at launch, I’d awaited this replace with bated breath, hoping Starfield would lastly get the Cyberpunk 2077 remedy and rise like a phoenix from its buggy, underwhelming ashes. Unfortunately, upon firing up the sport, I found one thing extremely disheartening: Rather than drastically enhancing Starfield’s gameplay, the May replace as an alternative makes the sport’s flaws much more evident and introduces new bugs. Later, I stumbled into an much more painful fact: Although the replace itself is out there freed from cost, a number of the replace’s greatest quality-of-life enhancements include a shocking price–one that gamers won’t be keen to pay.Players who make the most of Starfield’s new settings could also be sad to be taught that some quality-of-life enhancements come at a shocking value.Playing on Xbox, I fired up an previous save and instantly proceeded to check out the brand new floor maps and scanner capabilities. Functionally, the brand new three-dimensional floor maps do a implausible job of serving to gamers get their bearings and permit them to survey a planet’s topography with out having to bodily run round to see if there’s something value discovering on it. The new maps do not precisely scream, “Hey, there’s a really cool point of interest over there!” however the 3D particulars that now seem on a planet’s floor map imply gamers can spot buildings, uncommon rock formations, and different particulars that will point out the presence of an attention-grabbing locale they could want to discover.There are 3D maps for main buildings, as nicely, which make getting from level A to level B considerably simpler when exploring massive enclosed areas with a number of flooring. Prior to the replace, gamers may solely depend on a path of arrows that would seem on the bottom whereas utilizing the scanner, pointing them within the path of their present goal. Those information arrows are nonetheless there, and nonetheless tend to vanish at random, however gamers now have extra choices than merely placing the scanner away and taking it again out once more to get them to reappear. The new replace’s 3D constructing maps make it a lot simpler to determine which ground sure locations are positioned on, however seem like accessible just for massive or distinctive buildings, just like the absolutely enclosed metropolis of Cydonia on Mars. If a participant finds themselves struggling to navigate oft-reused constructions, just like the Robotics Science Facility on Volii Chi, they will nonetheless should depend on the information arrows.Starfield’s new floor maps make navigating simpler, but additionally exhibit how empty the galaxy feels, even on main planets like Mars.The new 3D floor maps work nicely but additionally exhibit precisely how empty most of the sport’s 1,000+ planets really are. POIs are nonetheless extraordinarily sparse on most planets (even these with massive settlements, like Mars), and gamers are nonetheless going to seek out themselves operating for a number of minutes straight–with nothing however rocks to take a look at on the way–to get from their touchdown zone to the undiscovered POIs on their maps. Even with a completely tricked-out Boost Pack and a dose of Amp (which quickly will increase motion velocity by 35%), getting round in Starfield stays an train in frustration. Traveling from one POI to a different on-foot nonetheless takes far too lengthy, however on the intense facet, Bethesda has introduced that floor autos are lastly in improvement. In the meantime, Starfield’s scanner has been up to date with a helpful new characteristic: When activated, POIs now pop up on the scanner, permitting gamers to pick them and fast-travel immediately, with out having to waste time navigating by a number of menus to take action.Unfortunately, there is a draw back. Naturally, gamers can’t fast-travel to undiscovered POIs till the participant has unlocked them by first reaching the situation on foot. But returning gamers will probably be displeased to find that even POIs they’ve already found have to be re-unlocked in the event that they wish to fast-travel there with the brand new scanner perform. I’ve already explored each inch of New Atlantis, for instance, and whereas I can nonetheless fast-travel to The Lodge and varied different places by way of the menus on the starmap, these places aren’t unlocked for me on the scanner. This additionally means returning gamers shall be repeatedly bombarded with “New Location Discovered” notifications when arriving at POIs they have not visited since earlier than the May replace, and can clearly not be incomes any XP for re-discovering these places.Returning gamers should re-unlock visited POIs to make use of the scanner’s new fast-travel perform.Speaking of XP, one extremely essential element Bethesda neglected of its advertising for the May replace is the truth that making use of sure new options can have an effect on how a lot XP a participant earns. One of one of the best options within the replace is the flexibility for gamers to tweak issues like the issue of floor fight vs. house fight from the sport’s settings menu. Players may even enhance the quantity of credit that distributors have on them (making repeated journeys to unload stolen items a factor of the previous) and tweak how a lot weight their character can carry. But there is a value: Increasing your character’s carry weight will lower the quantity of XP you achieve. Increasing the gap from which you’ll entry gadgets in your ship’s cargo maintain can have the identical impact. Changing your character’s carrying capability from Normal to Increased will lower the quantity of XP you earn by 6%. Upping your carrying capability to Greatly Increased will value you 8% of your earned XP. Allowing your self to entry your ship’s cargo maintain from wherever will knock off one other 6%. Increasing vendor credit from Normal to Greatly Increased decreases your earned XP by an extra 4%.The new settings are nice, however the value gamers pay for utilizing them is quite steep.With my character’s carrying capability set to Increased, vendor credit set to Greatly Increased, and my ship’s cargo accessible from wherever, I used to be incomes a complete of 16% much less XP per exercise than I in any other case would. But even stranger than that, tweaking fight injury (in house or on the bottom) has zero impact on the XP you earn. It appears odd that Bethesda is ready on punishing gamers who wish to keep away from repeatedly fast-traveling backwards and forwards to entry their ship’s cargo maintain, making a number of journeys to a number of Trade Authority places to promote their items, or listening to their companions repeatedly complain out loud that they are carrying an excessive amount of as a result of the sport’s woefully insufficient default carry capability means they’re consistently discovering themselves overencumbered. Why give gamers the choice to play the sport their means after which punish them for it?Players in search of a problem shall be rewarded, nonetheless, as lowering vendor credit, ship cargo accessibility, and carry weight will enhance the quantity of XP gamers earn. But this makes the truth that there’s completely zero XP penalty for growing the injury one does in fight (or lowering the injury enemies can do) even stranger. I examined this by operating the “Eyewitness” quest with max participant injury and minimal enemy damage–reducing the issue so severely got here with no XP penalty however did make the battle laughably simple, lowering one of many sport’s most formidable monsters right into a creature roughly as harmful as a Radroach. One wonders what Bethesda’s aim is with regard to XP penalties and bonuses.Many of Starfield’s persistent bugs are innocent and hilarious, however others can show fairly irritating.On the subject of Radroaches, replaying the Terrormorph questline additionally revealed that there is nonetheless various work to be achieved when it comes to squashing the sport’s many bugs. I encountered bare miners on Cydonia, noticed my companions stroll round and not using a spacesuit on planets with no environment whereas brandishing invisible weapons, and had a whole dialog with the again of an NPC’s head (it appears the problem with the sport’s digicam glitching out throughout dialogue sequences remains to be alive and nicely). After disposing of the comically feeble Terrormorphs that attacked New Atlantis, I circled to find {that a} important NPC companion appeared to have been downed or killed within the battle. The choice to talk together with her was nonetheless showing, however choosing it did not wake her up, so I made my means again to the UC Vanguard troopers who I’d left to carry the road behind me.Upon putting up a dialog with the soldier who was meant to debrief me, the sport entered a dialogue scene, however introduced no dialogue choices for me to select from. Unable to exit the dialogue or entry the sport’s menu, I used to be compelled to restart, and upon doing so, found the automated save created after I exited the sport had been corrupted, renaming my character to “Dude Mack” and altering her stage from 31 to “##.” I went again to a earlier save, made within the moments after I put down my final Terrormorph, and loaded in to seek out that the whole thing of New Atlantis had turn out to be a game-breaking shade of yellow that made it nearly inconceivable to see something. After restarting the sport as soon as once more, the save lastly loaded accurately, and the mysteriously downed NPC was alive and nicely.Bugs are nonetheless alive and nicely in a few of Starfield’s most outstanding quests.Starfield’s May replace is actually a step in the best path, and options like the flexibility to embellish one’s ship in the identical method as an outpost or participant house are implausible. Updates to Photo Mode now enable gamers to select from a wide range of facial expressions for his or her character, and so they also can change the pose and expression of whichever NPC the participant has accompanying them, making photograph ops extra interesting. The 3D floor and constructing maps are extraordinarily useful, as is the brand new skill to fast-travel from the scanner. But finally, Starfield nonetheless suffers from the identical points that plagued it at launch, from irritating bugs to empty planets with little of curiosity to find. By far, the largest difficulty with the brand new replace is that a few of its most helpful features–like the flexibility to entry ship cargo extra simply, carry extra gadgets, and make fewer journeys to Trade Authority vendors–come with a built-in punishment for gamers who dare to utilize them.Though Bethesda hasn’t shared when gamers can anticipate to realize entry to floor autos for planetside exploration, their addition will hopefully enhance the core expertise of the sport, and one hopes that the Shattered Space growth coming this fall may also add a bit extra depth to a sport that at present feels a mile broad and an inch deep. I’m nonetheless longing for the way forward for Starfield and am wanting ahead to the brand new growth. But after experiencing the sport’s greatest replace but, I worry that Bethesda’s determination to penalize gamers for making use of sorely wanted quality-of-life enhancements and chronic bugs in a number of the Starfield’s greatest quests will proceed to negatively affect the sport, and I discover myself questioning if different options deliberate for the sport may also include a hidden value. Vehicles are all nicely and good, however not if I’ll should synthesize my very own gasoline to make use of them, or endure an XP penalty for daring to cram just a few too many house sandwiches within the trunk after I embark on an interstellar picnic.