Starfield Boss on Planets' Environmental Hazards: "We Just Nerfed the Hell Out of It"

Starfield is all about exploring foreign planets the secrets they hold, but in many cases, Starfield's planets are not super receptive to being explored. Many of them feature environmental hazards that inhibit players' exploratory efforts with threats of the thermal and airborne nature among others to look out for when exploring. Those deterrents are more annoying than anything else since they typically result in negative impacts on a player's stats as opposed to outright killing the player from a lack of oxygen or anything like that, but according to Starfield's game director and the Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard, these environmental hazards could've been much more frustrating to deal with.

Bethesda decided otherwise, however, and opted to "nerf the hell out of" the environmental hazard system. Howard spoke about that and more recently in the latest episode of the Game Maker's Notebook series.

Starfield's Environmental Hazards

In the video, Insomniac Games CEO Ted Price spoke with Howard about Starfield's launch and the work that went into the game. Around the 48:40 point in the video, Howard gave an example from Starfield when answering a question about what metrics he uses to decide when to cut or adjust something in a game so as not to spend too long working on one particular area unnecessarily.

"I'll give you an example on Starfield," Howard said. "So the way the environmental damage works in the game and on your suit, you have resistances to certain types of atmosphere effects whether that's radiation, thermal, etc. It's a pretty complex system actually. It was very punitive, so we kept trying where you get these afflictions. We kept trying to tune it."

In the end, Howard suggested this was one of those things Price was asking about, a feature that had to be adjusted or simplified in order to make it work well.

"It was a complicated system for players to understand," he continued. "We just nerfed the hell out of it where it ends up being that it matters, but only a little bit. It matters more in flavor, like the affliction you get is annoying knowing you have it than game result."

Are Starfield's Environmental Hazards Done Well?

But is it less complicated to understand now? It's true that these kinds of environmental effects are largely more of an annoyance now compared to whatever iteration of the system Bethesda was testing previously. If you get afflicted with something like lung damage or another adverse effect, the quickest recourse is to check your inventory to see if you have an item that matches whatever the symbol of whatever ailment you have, and you don't have to look much further into it than that. 

Between the game barking warnings at players about their suits' protections and telling them that they've been afflicted with something only for several afflictions to be remedied simply by going inside somewhere, some players feel that the current system still isn't very clear.

"I have to ask, why are environmental effects so punitive?" read a post from a player within the Starfield subreddit within the past week. "Why is there no grace period between our protection being depleted and us gaining afflictions? The system is interesting and has potential, but I feel it needs tuning. Suit protection also doesn't last any meaningful length of time.

While spacesuits boast different stats against various elements, there's never really a reason to consider what suit you have on when visiting a new planet if you've got enough aid items to support exploration. Howard said in the talk that they originally wanted players to be in situations where they'd have multiple spacesuits fit for different planetary conditions and said that "might be something we address going forward." If Starfield were to ever get a hardcore mode like past Bethesda games have, that sounds exactly like the kind of feature that'd be included.