Exploring Starfield's planets was a lot harder before Bethesda "nerfed the hell out of it"
Starfield director Todd Howard has revealed that exploring planets was originally a lot harder before Bethesda «nerfed the hell out of it.»
Speaking in a recent interview with The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook Podcast (via GamesRadar+) Howard discussed in detail the development process of building Starfield's massive open galaxy, as well as how the game's planets were initially designed to be a lot harder prior to launch.
«So the way the environmental damage works in the game, on planets, and on your suit, you have resistances to certain types of atmosphere effects, whether that's radiation or thermal, etc. And that was a pretty complex system, actually, it was very punitive,» Howard said.
The director went on to say that during exploration, «you'd get these afflictions», and the team kept trying to «tune» things to make them more manageable, and so there wasn't an excessive amount of healing involved. In the end, Bethesda eventually went on to change the system, which Howard calls «a complicated system for players to understand», and «just nerfed the hell out of it».
He explained that this allowed the afflictions to matter «but only a little bit», meaning the change made them less disruptive to gameplay.
«Like, the affliction you get is more annoying knowing you have it than the game result. Usually, I'm generalizing. So it was 'Let's just dial it down, because if we dial it way back, it becomes more flavor on the screen than it does a gameplay system we had originally wanted.'»
Howard added that an early gameplay system made it so the player had multiple spacesuits dedicated to certain afflictions you'd receive from certain planets, like those with high radiation and cold environments.
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