Starfield only has mediocre reviews on Steam – can the new big update improve the mood?

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Starfield has received a major update with many improvements, but can the patch improve players’ mood?

What was the mood of Starfield players before the update? Not good. Starfield received a total of 4,091 player reviews on Steam in January 2024, of which 69% were negative. This continues the trend from previous months.

The last time Starfield received more positive reviews than negative reviews was on November 22nd. Since then it has been steadily going downhill. Overall, Starfield is now only 62% positive on Steam, down 10% since its release month of September.

The players have the same criticisms as when Starfield was released:

  • Constant loading screens while traveling
  • lifeless planets
  • the performance of the game in the cities

    • All in all, the picture that emerges is of players who had high expectations for Starfield and were then disappointed by the finished product.

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    Patch brings huge mountain of bug fixes and improvements

    What kind of update was that? Bethesda released the major update 1.9.51 for Starfield on January 30th. The patch is over 11 GB in size on Steam and brought numerous improvements to the sci-fi role-playing game.

    For example, an issue has been fixed in the PC version that could cause the game to crash when switching from full-screen to windowed mode. Bethesda also addressed numerous bugs, such as incorrectly invisible creatures on some planets and the appearance of corrupted save states.

    One of the highlights of the patch is probably the improvements to the graphics of the role-playing game. Among other things, the lighting of the game world in a total of 73 locations as well as the reflections on water surfaces were improved.

    The complete patch notes for update 1.9.51 can be found on the developers’ official website at bethesda.net.

    The new patch cannot convince critical players

    How do players rate the update? Not really good. Although the mood on X.com (formerly Twitter) is somewhat positive and players are happy about the developers’ effort, some fans are also demanding new features and further improvements.

    It looks similar on Reddit – but even more negative. Many players simply ask “Was bug x also fixed?” (via Reddit), others continue to express criticism and decide that the update won’t make them return:

  • No-Internet-4630 via Reddit: “It feels like I’ve been battling glitches for weeks and getting stuck. The most recent update that came out yesterday fixed exactly 0 of the issues I was experiencing. […] It’s also pretty sad because I really enjoyed playing this game and wish I could keep playing it. But it’s just more frustrating than fun now.”
  • thefluffyburrito via Reddit: “I think there are just too many problems with the game right now for me to ever want to play it again in the same way as Skyrim. Even if the game were completely bug-free, I could talk for hours about a number of issues that either don’t exist in other Bethesda titles or are greatly exaggerated in this game.”
  • Metalocachick via Reddit: “I just think the game is fundamentally flawed. I tried to enjoy it, I really did, because Bethesda is one of the reasons I love video games today… But after spending the last few months trying to figure out why I feel zero to no desire for this game yet Once I’ve played it, I think it’s because the design decisions are just bad.”

    • Can the update improve players’ mood? Nope. Despite all the criticism, there are positive posts about the game every day in the Starfield subreddit. So there are definitely still players who continue to play the game and like it. Some even report having 700 to 800 hours in Starfield. So there are 2 camps among the players:

  • Negative threads mainly contain players who want to post their criticism.
  • Positive or neutral threads mostly contain players who continue to like Starfield.

    • The players who are in a positive mood do not really actively express themselves in the posts in which criticism is collected.

    Anyone who likes Starfield anyway will be happy about the bug fixes. If you’re critical of the game, that’s not enough. The update didn’t really improve the mood – except among the players, who were in a rather positive mood anyway. The release of the first expansion “Shattered Space” will probably be more important in this regard.

    It wasn’t until the end of December that Bethesda announced the big plans they have for the role-playing game in 2024: Starfield reveals big plans for 2024, talks about new gameplay options, mod support and the first expansion

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