When I first found out about Starfield, I imagined a grand space-faring adventure. I hoped to meet companions I’d get close with, speed around the galaxy coming across new and surprising things everywhere I looked, and spend time chilling out on distant planets, admiring astonishing views. What I didn’t hope for, nor expect from the game, was that I’d feel like I’d be grinding just to make the game feel playable.
For one, I never have enough credits to do anything fun. I want to buy a new ship because the starter ship kinda sucks. My grav drive isn’t powerful enough to get me directly to a location I want to go to, and I’ve already run out of storage. I do not want to build my own ship, because it looks difficult and I’m very lazy. My only solution is to buy a better ship from one of the many vendors that sell them, but I can’t afford any of the decent ones. I can’t afford a house, either, though that’s not as immediate a problem for me because I’m not much of an interior designer and it doesn’t interest me to create the perfect lodgings for my character.
So, what can I do? I had no choice but to go and make some money. The problem is that there’s no appealing way to do this. The most obvious is to sell all my junk, which I did, but I have so many food items that I want to eventually cook with that there really isn’t all that much to sell. My already full ship inventory and the incredibly annoying encumbrance system hold me back from collecting all the junk I could be collecting and dumping on vendors.
My next option is to use mission boards. This is the most nightmarish option, in my opinion, because it’s entirely meaningless busy work. You might be making deliveries to other systems, hunting down pirates, or just – and this is the worst one – surveying planets. It’s truly dreary stuff, stuff I would under no circumstances do for fun, but I’m not doing it for fun. I’m doing it for credits, so I can do stuff that’s actually fun. Hey, just like real life! It’s that or raid random ships for loot and cash, which feels a little evil considering I’m trying to roleplay a good guy right now.
It’s even worse that I don’t just have to grind for credits, I have to grind for the game to feel fun to play at all. I’ve seen my colleagues in the late-game boosting in the air, turning invisible, and sniping multiple enemies at a time. That looks like a cool way to play the game – shame I can’t access it because I’m not grinding and putting all my skill points into those specific things! I’ve been putting my points into skills that make the game more fun for me, whether that be stealth, weapon skills, or security. A lot of the things that make it easier to grind experience, like outpost building, are not fun to me at all.
I don’t want to do all this stuff to progress the game, I want to play the game. I want to love Starfield, but it keeps turning me around to face its worst aspects.