‘Feels barren’: Starfield players blast Bethesda for relying too heavily on modding community

Mods make the game.

Two ships flying in space near a planet in Starfield.
Image via Bethesda

Starfield players are calling for Bethesda to stop relying so heavily on the dedicated modding community to fix the RPG’s bugs and more extensive issues.

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Starfield was in the development oven for more than 10 years before eventually launching on Wednesday, Sept. 6. While it does have several wonderful features that make it worth playing, it is still vastly lacking to the point where the only thing saving Starfield from falling into the abyss is mods developed for free by modders.

Players have decided this is simply not good enough from Bethesda, who as a massive triple-A gaming company shouldn’t be relying on the free work of the modding community to compensate for Starfield’s many issues.

It’s not just about bugs and performance issues either; it’s also about Bethesda’s worldbuilding and the dearth of quality-of-life features, fans said as they took aim on Oct. 15.

Some fans pointed out an example: why have an expansive open world like in Starfield if there’s no ground transport? At least in Skyrim and in Elder Scrolls, there are horses. Equally, cities fail to resemble a civilization that has spent 250 years in space.

Starfield could have been an incredible game with a few more years in development, but what we have now feels barren compared to Fallout 4 or Skyrim. The cities are an excellent example of this. Even though cities are supposed to have a dense population, they don’t feel alive or lived in; they’re bland, boring, and dry.

To many players, Starfield feels more like a skeleton that just wasn’t fleshed out, and they’re now calling for Bethesda to do something about it instead of just sitting back and letting modders flesh out the huge title.

Starfield isn’t a bad game, and players still love it, but the features that the modding community is providing through their mods should have already been implemented.

Author
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Hayley Andrews
Hayley is a gamer, writer, and author with a background in Business. Hayley graduated with a dual degree in Business Management and Human Resource Management in Australia. She spent many years in business until she found her passion for creative writing and the gaming industry. When she’s not indulging in the latest anime, she can be found reading or playing video games.