Starfield fans have a love-hate relationship with the game, and the criticism comes in just as often as the praise. The game’s bounty hunting system is the latest aspect of the game to irritate players.
Starfield’s notable snub at this year’s Game Awards came as a surprise to some but a number of its dedicated fans claim they understand the decision. Its relative absence at gaming’s biggest awards ceremony has gamers thinking, which sounds like bad news for Bethesda.
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Last week, players demanded an overhaul of environmental hazards, criticized Starfield’s “limited” outposts, and complained about persistent progression bugs that have yet to be fixed.
Continuing the trend, Reddit user u/StranglePants It sparked discussion about the disappointing lack of immersion in Starfield’s bounty hunting system. Many players shared their own problems.
The main problem with u/StranglePants is that bounty hunting in Starfield doesn’t offer as much variety as Red Dead Redemption 2. Specifically the lack of straightforward capture mechanics.
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“It’s just basic successful functionality,” they explain. “Find a guy, shoot a guy, and money will magically appear in your account.” While many games have similar systems, Bethesda itself has included live capture elements in its own titles previously.
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“They let you capture people alive and forcibly send them wherever you want in Fallout 3, 15 years ago,” one player noted. A helpful Starfield fan pointed users to this Mod that updates bounty hunting Adds functional boats to ships.
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Despite this helpful suggestion, players in the comments accused Bethesda of “sitting back and letting modders fix the game”, and believe a “lack of interest” is the bigger problem. “Everything is broken in the game, attributes, skills, bounty hunting, smuggling, weapons,” one user complained. “It’s all half baked.”
We do not know whether VASCO has the ability to bring rewards alive or not.
Starfield has a major update coming that will hopefully fix a lot of the bugs and persistent obstacles to quests. Unfortunately, these more fundamental issues will require more time and effort from Bethesda or, failing that, modders.
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The launch of official mod support coming sometime in mid-2024 could help with community-led improvement of the game. Only time will tell.
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