Starfield, a game mainly about space travel/exploration, couldn’t convince a chunk of its players to leave the surface of the tutorial planet.
Starfield has been out for long enough now that anyone interested in playing it likely already has. But just how many of the game’s millions of players stopped playing before finishing the first mission?
Well, according to achievement stats from TrueAchievements, around 25%! The For All, Into the Starfield achievement is awarded the first time you go to space, which happens maybe 30 minutes into the game. After a brief tutorial and some combat, you meet one of the game’s major NPCs, and he gives you his ship.
As soon as you leave the surface of the planet and take to space, the achievement should unlock. According to the numbers, however, 75% of players did that, which seems a little low considering how early into the game that happens, and how practically unavoidable the achievement is.
Achievement % stats are so comically skewed by various factors that they mean basically nothing. There’s an achievement in Minecraft for literally just opening your inventory for the first time but only 60% of Xbox players have it.
There’s an achievement in Minecraft for literally just opening your inventory for the first time but only 60% of Xbox players have it.
12,7% of Amid Evil players are in-game forever:
That achievement is likely to gather more accurate statistics due to the problems you mention. The Amid Evil devs can now confidently say that 12.7% of players who own the game have never started it. Meaning they can subtract that number from other achievement percentages to get a better idea of how many people are progressing certain ways.
The same is likely true for Minecraft’s inventory achievement, though that’s slightly less useful, as some players may make it a little further without opening the inventory and then stop forever.
Leaving the first planet in Stafield takes a little more effort, but not much. It’s safe to say that some of the 25% of players who haven’t done it haven’t ever opened the game. But that number will probably be close to 10%.
Steam does not count games that have never been launched. For 12.7% of the players the game probably quit under a bit different circumstances: game crashed or they lost internet connectivity.
Starfield has been out for long enough now that anyone interested in playing it likely already has.
Not even close, especially not in the year that also brought us Baldur’s Gate and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. How much free time does this writer think everyone has?
Yup, definitely interested in Starfield. But at the moment still enjoying Act I of BG3, Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.0 and DLC are right around the corner and after I’ve finished those Cityies: Skylines 2 will be available. So I’ll probably have time for Starfield somewhere early 2024, depending on if my recurring Satisfactory itch hits before that. But by that time more official and unofficial bugfixes and QoL mods will be available, so I’m fine with waiting a bit longer to play. This year is just filled with too many goodies. 😁
I’ve played Starfield (did not purchase it on Steam…) and it’s alright. I haven’t finished it, and I won’t be for a while. It’s is missing so much QoL and so many thing will need the mod toolkit for modders to fix, which isn’t available yet. It should not be purchased by anyone at the moment. You’ll have a better time in several months, and it’ll quite possibly be cheaper.
There’s so much else to play. I’m wanting to get around to Armored Core 6 sometime, but Payday 3 is coming out, and Cities Skylines 2 and Counter Strike 2 (both CS2, and cities dropped it’s ‘:’ to add to the confusion) are coming soon. I may hop back into Cyberpunk if I get around to it, but it’s on the lower end of the list. There’s literally no reason for anyone to bother purchasing Starfield for a bit.
It’s a Bethesda game. In a year most of the bugs will be fixed by the Unofficial Starfield Special Edition Patch, and it’ll be on sale.
They were actually fairly accurate that it’s their least buggy title yet. That’s not to say there are none, but they are few and far between. The game just isn’t that fun for now. Animations take too long (currently already mods to fix most of them), traveling is boring, outposts suck, and just so much QoL changes are needed. Bug fixing isn’t really required from my experience. Plenty of other fixes are though.
Has this writer never used Steam or is he just unaware how many people buy games they don’t actually play
Has this writer never used Steam or is he just unaware how many people buy games they don’t actually play
Firstly: If you had ever used Steam, you’d know that Steam differentiates between “have game in the library” and “have previously played a game”. A bought game that was never launched, doesn’t show up in these stats.
Secondly: It’s clear you did not bother to read the article. “The numbers take into account players on Xbox, as well as those playing the Game Pass/Windows Store version of the game on PC.” The 25% number isn’t even from Steam.
In the Steam client, you have this box on the right:
And when you click on View All, you get something like this:
Oh, the irony. Steam achievements only count for players who have started the game.
I think that 25% would be comprised of people that bought the game and haven’t had much time to play, or use console command right away and disable achievements. Speedrunners, modmakers, and general hackers would use console commands liberally as they should be the same as Fallout/Elder Scrolls games.
The article says mods disable it unless you add an extra mod to re-enable them.
That’s really all the explanation you need to throw out the usefulness of the numbers completely.
Yeah, for a Bethesda game, 25% of people using mods right out of the gate is frankly totally believable.
And while starfield isn’t perfect, people not finishing the first mission would hardly be an indictment against the game itself, who judges if a game is worth playing in the first mission? Usually - and especially in games like this - the first mission has practically nothing to do with the standard gameplay
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s higher; there are people who mod who will also go out of their way to get achievements and people who don’t care about achievements at all.
I personally love the game for what it is. There’s no one else out there making anything all that similar to a Bethesda RPG. I do think that some portion saw the performance and set it aside for that reason, though. Especially gamepass people.
Dude, I put like 60 hours into Skyrim my first time before I thought “hey… where’s my shout powers and all the dragons?” Because as soon as Hadvar said “we should split up to avoid suspicion” I unchecked the active quest, said “adios!” And vanished into the trees. I had to come back at like level 30 or something to do the entire MQ from Riverwood to the end.
That’s just how a lot of people play these. I don’t wanna follow their story; I wanna make my own.
Edit: Oh and this is all besides the fact that not only do mods disable achievements, so now do console commands in Starfield. I’ve had to no clip a few times to get unstuck while jumping around with low gravity and ending up places I shouldn’t be, so there are probably some achievements I didn’t get simply because that command likely disabled them (it just gives a generic warning that some commands will disable them, but not which ones).