Starfield DLC Gives Bethesda's Game a Boost but Mixed Reception Could Cut It Short

Source: Microsoft

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Yesterday marked the release of, Shattered Space the first major expansion for the space RPG Starfield. It's worth checking out the project's reception.

If Bethesda was expecting enthusiastic reviews, they the devs must have been disappointed. On Steam, only 49% of player reviews are positive, which is categorized as a "mixed" reception.

1. Players complain that the expansion is expensive and short. The new city is small, and the number of additional weapons is disappointing. We also didn't receive any new parts for the ships. Additionally, many people are disappointed that in practice it's just more of what the base game had to offer - the DLC doesn't change the rest of the game in any way. It is praised for visuals and the fact that the entire story takes place on one beautifully designed planet, and there is no running around empty worlds, typical for the basic version of Starfield.
2. It's clear that some players were hoping Shattered Space would be something much more ambitious. Ultimately, it's just the same type of add-on that Bethesda has released for its previous games. The DLCs created by this team is typically received more coldly than the base versions of their games, and since Starfield was not universally acclaimed, its expansion was received even worse.

However, it is worth mentioning that on Reddit, the reviews are generally more positive. Players are praising the return to the satisfying exploration found in older Bethesda titles. The plot and the way the missions are designed also receive better reviews. This is not surprising, because Starfield's Reddit is mostly visited by fans, so not only are they mostly people who liked Starfield , but they also had more realistic expectations for Shattered Space.

Weak increase in Starfield's activity results on Steam

While the add-on did encourage some players to return to the game, it's not a huge success. Yesterday's activity record for Starfield on Steam was 21,792 concurrent players. This is a result twice as high as the one obtained on the same day last week. However, it does not even constitute even 10% of the result achieved by the game right after the premiere (330 thousand users simultaneously).

So the activity increase is actually quite small and it cannot be stated that the premiere of the DLC led to a renaissance for the game. The impact that warmly received DLCs can have on game activity results was clearly visible, for example, during last year's release of the Phantom Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk 2077. On the day of the expansion's debut, CP2077's activity record on Steam was 246 thousand concurrent players, which was approx. 1/4 of the game's all-time record (which was slightly over a million).

So all in all, Shattered Space is not an add-on that will change anything in the general perception of Starfield. It did not transform the game into something better, nor does it have any real chance of leading to a large increase in its activity scores. However, it should be emphasized that the final judgment on this matter can only be made on Monday, as some players will certainly start playing only over the weekend.

New update for Starfield

Alongside the expansion, a new update to the base version of Starfield was released. The patch is numbered 1.14.70 and brings mainly bug fixes and performance improvements. Among them, it is worth noting the fact that the devs finally removed the flaw which limited the number of mods loaded at the same time to 255. This may seem like a high number, but a lot of mods consist of many smaller elements, each of which is loaded separately, so hitting the limit much easier that it seems.

Before the patch, if we exceeded 255 mods, the game would literally start to fall apart. Some missions stopped working, and buildings and other objects often did not load correctly. Now this won't be a problem anymore. This is important because although Starfield met with a rather cold reception on Steam, it can boast a large and active modding community. Over 9 thousand modifications have already been made available on NexusMods, and have been downloaded a total of over 58 million times.

1. Starfield on Steam
2. Starfield Review: A Stellar Masterpiece