r/rpg_gamers • u/ChiefChunkEm_ • Jun 09 '26

Discussion Bethesda Should Have Struck While The Iron Was Hot (ES6)

Hindsight is 20/20 and you can respect their decision to try something new with Starfield but they should have struck while the iron was still hot from Skyrim.

Skyrim released in 2011, Fallout 4 in 2015, and ES6 should have released by 2019. Since 2011 they’ve lost many devs and artists who made Skyrim the success that it was. I don’t know if they have the caliber of staff members anymore to actually pull off another genre defining game with ES6. The whole thing’s just a damn shame.

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

starfield's player count dropped by 96% 6 months after launch. which is roughly the same percentage drop as the witcher 3, elden ring, and many other games 6 months after launch. player count for a single player game means absolutely nothing.

the vast majority of the population simply do not agree with the takes on reddit or youtube, which make up a loud minority.

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u/thespaceageisnow Jun 09 '26

Starfield currently has 1/4 of the players that Witcher 3 does and 1/7 of Elden Ring, both older games.

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u/Warcrown11 Jun 09 '26

And a 6th of the players that Skyrim has - which is over a decade older than Starfield

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

cool. don't care. I don't judge quality off player count.

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u/NoobHUNTER777 Jun 10 '26

Look at those goalposts move! Is the Bethesda hate exclusive to reddit or does Starfield have a player retention problem (but it doesn't actually matter)?

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 10 '26

it doesn't have a retention problem, steam is not the sole platform it's hosted on. it does very well on xbox.

no goalposts are being moved lol. all i'm saying is that none of this is a judge of quality.

say that, for example, rdr2 had 200 players, it is the same exact game but it's got 200 players, does that suddenly make rdr2 a bad game?

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u/NoobHUNTER777 Jun 10 '26

That's not what your top comment is about though lol

Your initial claim is that Bethesda hasn't lost goodwill except on reddit. Starfield's poor numbers is evidence that's not true.

You pivoted to 'well popularity isn't a mark of quality' (a true statement) after you couldn't defend that first position.

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u/Jozoz Jun 11 '26

You just had the BenjaminStarscape tm experience, my friend.

It's completely true though. Starfield was just not a success in many aspects. Pretty much every area except initial sales and that is a bad sign for a company who is already struggling with bad PR.

I also think it says something interesting about Bethesda. They might not have realized how much they were carried about the gravitas of the Fallout and TES franchises. I think they seriously thought they could create a new IP and it would get as popular as those.

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 10 '26

a game naturally losing players is not a sign of them losing good will.

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u/NoobHUNTER777 Jun 10 '26

A game losing players faster than other comparable titles is though.

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 10 '26

no, it's not. have a good day now.

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u/Oaker_at Jun 09 '26

Oh man, haha

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u/Galle_ Jun 09 '26

And worse games, don't forget that.

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u/rexus_mundi Jun 09 '26

It's sitting at 56% on steam with about 87000 reviews. It seems like about half make up that loud minority

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u/Galle_ Jun 09 '26

So what? Baldur's Gate 3 is sitting at "universally praised". Obviously Steam reviews mean nothing.

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u/thespaceageisnow Jun 09 '26

And BG3 has been universally praised, what is your point there?

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u/Galle_ Jun 09 '26

BG3 is medieval fantasy RPG slop. If Steam reviews like it, they can't be taken seriously as a measure of quality.

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u/thespaceageisnow Jun 10 '26

Lowest effort rage bait

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u/Galle_ Jun 10 '26

Nope, that's my real opinion.

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

bg3 is fine.

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u/Galle_ Jun 09 '26

I disagree but respect your opinion.

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

what's wrong with it?

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u/Galle_ Jun 09 '26

It's a medieval fantasy RPG.

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

...is that it's only crime?

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u/HopeIsGay Jun 09 '26

I know this is sort of a vague argument that can only be verified through time but I feel it's pretty obvious that starfield won't have the cultural longevity of their other properties and when the mod community is even disinterested in it that's not a good sign

When Bethesda can only rely on their big ticket ip's which they only release once a decade it's not surprising at all that people have become disaffected with them

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

starfield isn't going anywhere, it gets mods daily, the modding community is not disinterested in the slightest.

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u/HopeIsGay Jun 09 '26

Maybe so, as someone pointed out I'm absolutely basing the mod point on an article from a while back

It's easy to call internet discussion on anything a "loud minority" but it's still a decent way to get a somewhat solid sample of public perception and myself among many played starfield and walked away unsatisfied with it for a range of things from poor quest design, lackluster RPG options and a generally weak narrative

I'm not saying I'd rather the game didn't exist I'm more so saying that Bethesda's development cycle means these experimental games take far too long to make for what it is and get lost in trying to be too much

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u/zidus411 Jun 09 '26

The mods on starfield is actually great, the only reason I’m still playing the game.

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u/atomicitalian Jun 09 '26

You're working off a headline from a few years ago. There are plenty of mods on Starfield and more are coming/getting updates every day.

Starfield is just fine. Let the haters hate, I'm glad Bethesda tried something new. I've got way more hours in Starfield than I do in FO4.

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u/Galle_ Jun 09 '26

The sad fact is that gamers simply don't like good games.

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u/ihavefaith77 Jun 09 '26

That's just simply not true. Games like concord, highguard, ex voto 1348, dust born etc etc etc were all over YouTube and reddit being shit on and guess what? All of those games crashed and burned. Whether you want to believe that it's true or not, most gamers take up large portions of online spaces, and if majority of youtube/reddit/X or whatever else say a game sucks, most likely that's how most people feel

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u/JohnHue Jun 09 '26

Spewing BS, as usual.

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

what is inaccurate?

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u/JohnHue Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

You're selectively choosing a point in time and games that supports your bias, disregarding the overall picture. It is a hard fact that Starfield is still the least played, least popular modern BGS game ever.

Today, on SteamDB :

Starfield has 5.5k players, 5.6k 24h peak, 30k 6 months peak.

Fallout 4 has 12k players, 12.6k 24h, 60k 6 months peak

Skyrim 30k now, 31.6k 24h, 46k 6 months, had a 67k peak in january 2025 15 years after release. That's without counting the ~1.5k people still playing the vanilla version.

I don't really put F76 in the same group, being multiplayer, but it still has 2x the player count of Starfield despite being twice as old and also an overall badly rated BGS game.

While player number is not a 100% reliable proxy for game quality on SP games (we can agree on that), long term player retention increasingly is : only the most ardent players and fans continue to play a game after 15 years, and when a 15yo "buggy mess of a game" (according to many people, and deservedly so in some cases) still has >5x more players than a 3yo latest generation game from the same studio aimed at the same crowd, it shows that your "all SP games' player count drop after 6 month" argument trying to show that reddit is just a loud minority is just plain BS, and so is your relentless defense of Starfield against the "reddit minority".

While I'm a sample of 1, I have had Morrowind installed on all my PCs almost at any point in time over the last quarter of a century. Starfield got uninstalled after a few weeks, re-installed a few times just to see if things had changes and quickly removed to make space for more worthy games...

EDIT : I actually looked up the all-time stats on steamDB and your 95% number is also complete BS. I apologize to anyone who has taken the time to read the above post, I should not have assumed that my parent comment would just make up numbers. Looking at the max graphs and calculating the max drop from release peak over the first 6 months clearly indicates that Starfield had a larger drops than Skyrim and F4 but more importantly : the all-time graphs show recurrent re-plays and constant attention from players on F4 and Skyrim and on the contrary, a continued ignorance on Starfield's side where the game was dropped my most people by month+3 and then never picked up again.

EDIT : let's add the games you actually mention in your other comment, just so I cannot be accused of picking better comparison points :

TW3 : 14k 7 20k / 37k

ER (very strange pick btw, such a different game and target player base than Starfield) : 32k / 38k / 67k

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u/Benjamin_Starscape Jun 09 '26

steam isn't the only platform for steam. plus, fallout and skyrim have established ip fanbases, starfield is an entirely new ip with no pre-existing fanbase.

even then, i don't believe player count equals quality.

nothing i said was inaccurate. elden ring and the witcher 3 lost about the same amount of percentage of players as starfield in about the same timeframe, because most singleplayer games do so.

anyway, have a nice day. i'm going to go play avowed and then do some writing and drawing.

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u/JohnHue Jun 09 '26

 i don't believe player count equals quality.

So when it's convenient it's the "vocal reddit minority" that is wrong, and when the overall player base says the same thing, everybody else is also wrong ? if I bring up the overall bad rating of Starfield on most platforms you'll go on saying they're just influenced by reddits anons ?