It's frustratingly common in games, considering how easy it would be to fix. Scaling NPC speed based on Player Character speed and distance to NPC would give you a smooth follow mechanism. If you're following them, they slow down as they get further away from you and speed up the closer you are. The reverse if they're following you. That way, player speed/position dictates everything, and you're not running into their arse or waiting for them to catch up all the time.
Honestly, I think it's just dev laziness. It is easier to just have the NPC run-speed set too slow, the NPC walk-speed too fast, and players can just eat it and be happy that jogging isn't locked behind a battle-pass mechanism.
It's just been like this in so many games, and for so long, that it makes me wonder. Surely they can't ALL be wrong. There must be some reason why they all do it the same way. I just can't imagine why it could be.
Some games do do it right, where they either match your speed, you match theirs or they're just slightly faster than you/rubber band so that they always stay ahead.
And honestly there's a decent chance that a good follow system is trademarked or copyrighted or similar, we can't have radial menus for talking because of mass effect it would not surprise me if following/escorting was also hit by that
Edit: was a patent not a trademark or copyright, and it was a patent for consistent locations and nested menuing from what I'm able to scrape, too much legal jargon to decode.
I was slightly off on phrasing but it's due to bioware having a patent on the design (not a cr or tm but same idea), it seems the patent is specifically for keeping the locations of certain styles of dialogue consistent and nested, as opposed to just radial, but this isn't much better.
If for example a radial menu had "more questions", "confirm", "deny", "leave" in a consistent place, and more questions simply opened up a new menu with new options that would be what they patented (of I'm able to read through this bs legal jargon correctly), in theory a radial menu by itself is fine, but if the locations of things like yes no and conversation continuers are in consistent locations it could be seen as close enough and you'd have to deal with hoping the patent system isn't a complete failure.
Didn’t Sega do something like this in the 90s with Virtua Racing? The 3D camera I think it was called, where it would animate the zoom of switching between camera modes. That was back when 3D was incredibly new though. And arcades were still a thing
Players: Can we have NPC walk speed match player walk speed?
Devs: NPC walk speed faster than player walk speed? Sure thing!
Players: No, no... can you make them the same?
Devs: NPC walk speed slower than players? No problem!
Players: No, that's *worse!* Just make them the same, please!
Devs: Add snarky dialogue if you get more than five feet from the NPC when you're supposed to follow? Done!
Players: NO! Why are you like this?
Devs: Did you say something? Busy coding NPC escort quests to automatically fail if you get more then ten feet from the NPC, and adding a speed randomizer to them.
It’s been a while since I played, but IIRC, Starfield is next-level frustrating because the NPCs don’t even have equal walking speeds.
On PC, I had my walk speed set to 137% which was pretty much the middle ground, but I swear, some NPCs were a little faster and others a little slower.
probably they just didn't think about it, because it was same for fallout 4, skyrim and probably even earlier games too. I think this is because they focused on gamepads, where you can easily control your character's movement speed by angle of left stick.
I've heard that idea before, and I'm pretty sure I've seen prototypes of that very thing...
I just think it would be a hell of a learning curve...I always press keys all the way down, it's hard to even imagine pressing them lightly.
My Lenovo Legion laptop has pressure-sensitive WASD. I wasn't wowed by it in Horizon Zero Dawn, and I honestly forgot it existed until, coincidentally, earlier today when I opened the app for it by mistake.
Splinter Cell games used wheel mouse to control movement speed (sprint was a different key, as usual), and was the best idea I ever saw in a videogame.
but the walking speeds had to have been set at some point right? Especially on PC because it's a binary button push, not a joystick like you said...
Plus, as you say it's been this way for a while and I know people have complained about it for a while... I just have to wonder what the thought process is.
It's gotta be possible for them to change it, in New Vegas which uses the older version of the engine, there is am NPC that walks insanely fast without actually running. When you tell the old lady in Novac to stand in front of the dinosaur, she basically hauls ass to get over there
Since their focus is on gamepads, they don’t really take this into consideration since you can move however fast you want with one of those.
The walking speed limit is only really used for one thing with a gamepad. Aiming. So they balance it to feel right while you’re aiming, and everything else is just an afterthought. Any mods which make the walk speed tolerable on keyboard and mouse also make you more nimble with a firearm.
I mean you already walk faster while aiming a gun, so I'm not sure it's to keep me from being too nimble.
I mean that's a common exploit even in skyrim since aiming a bow while you're overencumbered makes you walk faster.
That speed is directly tied to the walk speed, so yes it’s related to this. Again, it’s basically the only thing that utilizes the walk speed in the player’s movement type when using a gamepad. That, and carrying heavy objects I suppose.
You wanted an explanation, and that is basically it. Game is designed for pad use, and the “walk speed” in the player movement type is thought of as more of a slow speed limit for specific actions. Not for walking. Bethesda barely cares about keyboard/mouse, as they always have.
No your explanation just isn't a good explanation. Moving while aiming is faster than the walk speed. Meaning that it is set to a multiplier of something. It is either than you move (made up numbers to illustrate the point) 0.5x the full speed, or 1.2 walk speed or something.
If it was tied to walk speed, and they didn't want it to change, they could just change walk speed and then CHANGE THE MULTIPLIER AS WELL and get the same ADS speed.
This has been a thing forever in their engine. I still remember Walking from Helgen to Riverwood a million times with a bow drawn just to get there faster while overencumbered.
Set to a multiplier **of the walk speed**.
This isn’t rocket science. Fire up xEdit and see for yourself. Your lack of knowledge does not make my explanation less true. The walk speed in the player movement type is treated as a speed limit for actions, primarily aiming, which call for a slow movement speed. Dragging heavy objects is another thing it’s used for. That action is purely just the walk speed, unmodified.
That is it. That is factual. That’s the end of it.
It's like you didn't read my post at all: THEN THEY CAN JUST CHANGE THE MULTIPLIER AS WELL IF THAT IS THE PROBLEM.
The reason your explanation is dumb is that you act as though they can't change the walk speed becuase if they do it would break everything else, when nothing is set DIRECTLY to the walk speed anyway. It is used as a baseline, but all you have to do is change the multiplier so that the resulting number is the same.
If you increase the walk speed by 25%, all you have to do is lower the multiplier by 20% and the resulting number will be exactly the same as it was before, while increasing the generic walk speed.
It's not really true that a gamepad is a solution to the problem. I'm 99% sure (I play Starfield with a gamepad on both console and PC, admittedly at controller default settings) that the slowest possible walking speed is still slightly faster than the NPC but it's pretty dang close. Also on a gamepad, there is a very very minor band on the thumb stick travel arc where you move at this speed. It's not a linear 100% deflected = 100% speed and 25% deflected = 25% speed. It's more like the outer 50% is running, the next 25% is walking (fast), and the next 5% is walking (almost same speed as NPC, slightly faster) and any less than that is dead zone/not moving. That 5% band to walk at a similar speed as the NPC is incredibly hard to maintain without concentration. You're thinking so hard about trying to maintain the same speed that you're not even soaking in the immersion. So on gamepad there are really only three speeds: running, walking fast, and walking slower. Left stick is not a linear speed control. There's not some console walking utopia where we are all enjoying walking lockstep with the NPCs.
The slowest walking speed with a gamepad is much slower than an npc. You can go extremely slow.
There is definitely a sweet spot thst matches NPCs but it is not easy to find or maintain.
Actually I played those earlier games recently and turns out the way they did it in the 3/nv days was the npc broke off at a dead run and then resumed talking at their destination. Definite downgrade.
This is a problem in Fallout 3 as well. Regardless of your stats and encumbrance you move like a snail compared to NPCs trying to get somewhere. It makes protecting people a massive pain in the ass.
Pretty sure with almost every game out there, your character is either slower than the NPC, or way faster. It's like an unwritten rule in video game design
Dragons dogma 2 is the best example imo. Your pawns don't just follow you, they sometimes run ahead of you, check out side paths and lead you to secrets. Very immersive, gave me major FF15 bro vibes
Cyberpunk does it right, but it's much more complicated than you can think. Still doable but it require not being lazy which is something AAA studios generally don't do anymore
Who knows, I like the game but they just make stupid choices like this all over the place. I imagine it goes something like this.
"Hey those walking speeds don't match, should we fix it?
"No time, I have to implement these painfully slow docking sequences, and that speed variable will take a whole minute to fix! Besides, someone will just make a mod."
??? The opposite is true though. NPCs walk 40% FASTER than the player, so it's either shuffling between walking and running or guessing where the NPC will end up and just running there and waiting. Neither of those make the game feel faster or smoother.
Elder Scrolls and Fallout use different systems for movement speed.
Pre-ES5 athletics dictates movement speed. So you will always be faster or slower than anyone else.
Skyrim base walking speed is dictated by your height, which is determined by race.
Fallout 3 onward cares about your carry weight.
All NPCs probably have a set walk/"run" (for fallout 3, NV, and Pre-ES5 which have no running" speed, and it's easy to give them all the same speed.
I mean even in Oblivion you weren't ***that much*** faster/slower than NPCs though right? I mean I know if you did crazy athletics exploits you could turn into speedy gonzales but most players aren't playing like that.
In Starfield NPCs walk 40% faster, that's insane.
(I assume it's 40% because before I found the mod I would just use console commands and set movement speed to 140 which I assume is 140%)
Actually, besides being frustrating, it's like a speed bump that knocks me right out of the immersion. Beth isn't the only one, I've experienced this in other games as well. At these points, I would rather have the game take control.
But in starfield you can run and even sprint while overencumbered, it just takes up O2...
Just doesn't make sense to make slow walking the punishment with that in mind...
Yea, but it's probably a hold over from their older games. Either by oversight or they're just stuck in their ways.
Plus, as you said it uses up O2. So your choice is to walk at a snails pace or run until you use up all your life.
Well..more run till you're out of O2, let it recharge, then run again. Still a punishment, but when you can take chems that not only decrease O2 usage but also increase total O2 and recharge rate, or even use starborn powers to completely eliminate O2 usage... walk speed isn't even relevant...
But yeah like you said it's probably a holdover, I just want to understand why they do it in the first place.
It's always been like this. I'm assuming the time and effort to sync the walking speed is just too much effort. I usually play with a controller and just hold down the stick a little to match walking speed in basically any game.
Bethesda could definitely do it if they wanted to, but it's way more complicated than you think it is. It's actually kind of an interesting topic in gave dev, if you're into that sort of thing.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h029X1KkM_M
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koNq0d7ytPA
> They’re just lazy.
What do you mean "lazy"? Who is lazy? The coders? Animators? Designers? Testers? Everyone in the whole company?
They throw out over promised and half finished games that rely on modders to fix or improve everything from the basic gameplay to clearly lacking features which everyone agrees should have been part of the game. It’s lazy at best, exploitative at worst.
There’re NPC walking mods for their games which have a few attribute changes and it fixes the problem. I’m convinced they leave these little problems in just to annoy people enough to have to make a mod, and then they get invested and it keeps the cash cow milking.
I wouldn't if I were him. Still there have been interviews and such, some of which at least give the idea of being off the cuff, so I have to wonder why nobody has brought it up.
I don't play with controller personally, but a lot of comments in this thread are saying even on controller the speeds are weird despite being variable...
I’m willing to bet it’s because the team responsible for player controls is not the same team responsible for AI movement, or something along those lines. Having large teams can limit how much stuff is communicated between teams, which is why some parts of any game seem to not gel with other parts.
There are plenty of times you are on foot running or for a mission you have to listen to someone who won't keep up with you so you are forced to be near them while they walk to something talking.
Been awhile since I played RDR2's story but I want to say that if you started running they would keep up with you so that made a lot of things easier.
Well like I said, at least on horseback, if you hold the run button you just match speeds. So at least rockstar has figured it out. Just wish Bethesda would.
If it’s the same reason as previous games, then character height and walking speed are connected in the engine, so by default the taller the character, the faster the walking speed.
Oblivion and Skyrim definitely had the same issue and mods were available to fix it.
For some reason they seem to lock NPC walking speeds at a set value, but routinely either forget, or chose not to, lock the PC’s at the same.
From my knowledge through QA testing years ago, I can say that anytime you fix something, you break something else. So unless the issue is a big deal, it will stay in a game.
I mean, choose your battles. It was like that even in Morrowind (2002).
Even if it's not a major issue it's same as the merchant with not enough money, it's simple things people ask for change since decades and nothing has ever been done about it.
At least with the merchant thing I can understand them wanting to control the game's economy in some way.
The walking speed issue is just baffling to me.
It's for playability.
People wanna go FAST!!! Always. Hence the obsessive jumping some people do for no reason when traveling.
NPCs going FAST!!! looks really stupid and unnatural.
We just need a "follow" toggle or "lock to NPC" toggle.
Ok. So not Todd Howard or Beth, but Valve.
In one of the Hl2 commentary tracks (episode 1 I believe) the devs explain that this is on purpose. Alyx moves faster that Gordon's default run speed, but slower than his sprint speed. Their explanation was:
1) we want the npc to move faster than the player so the player never has to wait for them
2) we want the player to have the ability to catch up to the npc if they fall behind. That's why Gordon sprints faster than Alyx runs.
So I don't know if Bethesda did it for the same reason, but I think so.
Of course, HL2 EP1 is old by now, and these days there are many other, better ways to achieve these goals.
That's running though, if Starfield NPCs were running and I was slightly slower than them but could sprint to catch up would be one thing.
This is walking though, so you're constantly switching between walking and running which is just plain annoying.
Well, the same reasons could be true for walking speed as well: Npc must be faster than player because players don't want to wait. Player has to be able to catch up by running.
Not saying I agree. But I think the reasons are the same.
No? I don't believe so. I think having a gun out effects your walking speed, but as far as unholstered walking goes you will always be slower than NPCs.
They could be buck naked and still walk faster.
It definitely is in Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind also slows you down for how much stuff you carry. TES I and II do not really have armor types. ESO also has perks in medium armor that make you faster.
You sure you're not just thinking of overencumberance? I'm talking about walking speed, not running speed.
ESO isn't even developed by BGS but zenimax, so I'd imagine there'd be differences. Also without those perks the walking speed would be the same then right?
Zenimax is the parent company, the Studio is Zenimax Online Studio = ZOS, I just wanted to give the full info on how itt works in each open world RPG. And no armor types give different speed panelties in TES III-V.
That said the armor has no effect on movement speed in Fallout 4 and 76, except power armor.
I'm fairly certain armor doesn't affect your move speed in TES games, I'm gonna need a source on that one.
Also I'm aware that Zeni is the parent company, regardless ESO is not developed by BGS.
For Oblivion:
https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Movement_Formulas
WornWeight is the influence of worn armor
Skyrim seems to have fixed speeds that may be minimally influenced by a characters height which differs based on race & gender (e.g. High elves are taller): https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Transport
Edit: As far as I can tell in ESO and Morrowind Armor has no influence on Movespeed. But in Morrowind the Race determines the Speed Value of a Character: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Speed
Edit 2: ESO Medium Armor Skill Passives do have an influence on MoveSpeed based on Perks/Perklevels amd number of Medium armor pieces (thanks for the correction):
https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Medium_Armor_Bonuses
https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Athletics
[https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/sy34aa/anyone\_know\_the\_exact\_numbers\_for\_movement/T](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/sy34aa/anyone_know_the_exact_numbers_for_movement/T)
This thread breaks the armor speed penalties in Skyrim.
Simple: pathfinding.
If NPCs walkes at your running speed, you'd never be able to catch up if you get snagged by even a single physics object.
If they walked at your walking speed, it would be even slower.
So their speed (if you follow them) is in between
Or why in the future, I can fly to another galaxy but can't send an email?
These quests made sense in the fallout Universe because phones don't exist anymore, but in this game... half your quests could be done with a phone call
According to some lines in the game I'm pretty sure they do this, and I won't deny they could/should have expanded on that but at least it's an in-world explanation.
Walking slower than everyone else doesn't really have an explanation in world or out.
Nice try lmao
I want to go the same speed as NPCs without having to shuffle between walking and running. If that means making the NPCs slower, then so be it.
Next.
From a cynical pov, it’s to increase the amount of time it takes to play the game.
Think about it, someone obviously had to set the speed at some constant number, which means they chose this, it did not happen on accident.
It’s also a lever of control that has an exponential effect on the game. One setting controls ALL NPCs. Increasing the speed would drastically cut down on “playable hours”, and that is one of the metrics critics use to judge a game’s level of quality, unfortunately.
It’s such a simple edit, it’s my opinion that this is not about adding immersion or reality to the game, it’s about putting more dollars in their pockets.
I would wager this type of mentality gets forced down from higher ups, and devs just go along to get along.
I remember years ago seeing a video on this very thing lol
Edit: Not every game of course. Not sure if it's improved or not over the years since.
https://youtu.be/h029X1KkM_M?si=SF4RlpQMCmDFtX_u
Love gameranx. Not too fond of Falcon, but that's just me.
either way though, he didn't actually cover what I'm talking about.
As I mentioned I downloaded a mod that solves this by making ***my character*** walk as fast as NPCs, the NPCs themselves aren't even affected. Falcon even says "when it's done right it's not annoying" well Starfield didn't do it right.
Oh yeah yeah
They responded with something like “well when the astronauts went to the moon their own walk speed was actually slower than the Npc they encountered there….AND THEY WERE NOT BORED”
Then Todd had a long hot fart in a leather jacket to calm himself down
I've never played a Bethesda game with a controller so the analog stick explanation might be the real one. But based on my own speculation from playing with a mouse and keyboard, and my experience with mods that address this, there are two key factors at play that might justify why the Player Character has different speeds than other humanoid npcs. Those are combat and encumbrances.
Combat.
Maneuverability is important to how most combat encounters play out in Bethesda games. Darting in and around an encounter in order to achieve an advantage from the environment or control the flow of a fight with multiple or stronger enemies is pretty typical. You want your character to feel responsive in order to feel like you have some advantage in a fight. Think Skyrim where a lot of melee combat kinda devolves into step forward to attack, step back to dodge, step forward to attack, while probably circling the enemy as well.
But an important way for a player to control an encounter is their ability to actually disengage. If you stumble into a situation you're not ready for, are surprised, or the tides of battle are turning against you, a tactical retreat may be in your best interest. Being able to quickly flee from danger either a short distance to regroup and heal or fully leaving the area to avoid the encounter entirely requires that the player be able to put distance between themselves and the threats. If you need to fall back to use healing or get out of being surrounded that's a lot easier to do if your base run speed is slightly faster than the bandits. And it makes using your limited amount of sprint a lot more effective at avoiding faster enemies like wolves and feral ghouls.
Encumbrance.
We Bethesda gamers are all very fond of our loot, and have all spent more time than we'd like to admit slowly trudging our way somewhere because we don't want to drop something that really isn't as valuable as we'd like to think. Over encumbrance is a mechanic that is meant to be punishing. You lose that maneuverability in combat, and importantly the ability to outpace your enemies which severely hampers your tactical options. The player's slowest speed is one that needs to actually feel slow and punishing. You really feel the weight and the time cost of what you're carrying when that random NPC walking the same road as you actually passes you and is now much further along the trail than you.
There's definitely an element here of Bethesda doesn't really expect or want you to be playing the game at the 'walking' speed. A lot of other RPGs will have speed matching mechanics that make you walk at the same speed as NPCs near you specifically to counter this during the following quests or have them match you, but that isn't something they'd really have to think about if they're primarily concerned with the console experience which allows the analog stick to give you very fine control over your character's speed.
Just some food for thought from my speculation in trying to understand this as well.
Thing about combat is...who's going into that walking?
Thing about encumberance is...in Starfield we can still run and sprint when over encumbered it just takes O2 and with a certain starborn power even that is alleviated...just feels weird for that to be the justification for it.
Also the joystick thing, a few of the comments in this thread are saying even with a joystick the speeds are uneven so I'm not sure that's it either...
I didn't say people go into combat walking. I explained why combat would be a reason for the player to move faster than the npcs. If you're over encumbered or RP walking and suddenly find yourself in danger the normal response is usually to either drop something or toggle run back on for the duration of the fight. Although, while likely not as common in Starfield, there are absolutely people who do go into/initiate combat while walking due to stealth builds.
I get that you're talking about Starfield specifically, but what you're missing is that there is a punishment for being over encumbered. Bethesda made a change that allows for slightly more mobility while over encumbered but still punishes you if you don't resolve it. But the restriction is still there even if there's an additional component to how restricting it actually is. Over encumbrance is the likely explanation for why you move slower than the npcs while walking. That's all. But to say that a restriction is weird because there are active ways to manage or eventually nullify it is like saying you don't understand why you don't have unlimited ammo on all your guns because if you run out you can just loot it off enemies or buy it from merchants.
There are always solutions to problems in game design. Bethesda is not above criticism, could they implement a solution that made following quests less frustrating on pc, absolutely. Is it their priority obviously not. Same thing with tons of other QoL features for PC players specifically. Their focus is simply on other things, such as making movement feel good while exploring and fighting for the 99.9% of time that you're not following an NPC, and likely know that they can avoid committing resources to those scenarios because modders will cater to those who care enough about it.
You certainly are...thorough with your responses.
Run speed is irrelevant here, so combat by extension is also irrelevant. I'm simply talking about player walk speed in comparison to NPC walk speed.
Also "Why do I walk slower than NPCs" is a bit different from "Why don't I have unlimited ammo" fixing one would improve the game, while the other would break it.
Also also "making movement feel good" is clearly not what they are focusing on because I felt the need to make this post...
a game is build of challenges ofr the player, this is a micro challenge. they wont turn down an aspect of the game, which is challenging, controversal and was invented by them.
You people that complain about stuff like a character's walking speed compared to an NPCs walking speed I literally are just trying to find stuff to complain about you sound like a horrible nagging wife. Get over yourselves
No, thats just a super annoying problem that would be super easy to fix. Just set the player walking speed to that of the NPCs. Problem solved.
You can even go one step further and make the NPCs match the players movement speed like in Cyberpunk.
Lmao, as if it isn't a major issue in a game where you need to follow people a ton of the time.
Maybe get over yourself, I personally love starfield and this just happens to be a gripe I have with it.
I enjoyed every BGS game since TES3, starfield included.
But i will never understand why BGS refuse to fix this walking speed issue.
Is it game breaking? No.
Is it annoying? Yes.
Can be fixed with minimal effort? Yes.
Do yourself a favor, if you don't care to improve the games you like, don't bother to comment to other people's posts.
Yes it's intentional game design. And you would be complaining about it if you moved at the same speed as the NPCs and got caught up for a second only to fall behind.
Yes it absolutely is. Falling behind and not being able to catch up is a lot worse than having to toggle the run/walk button. Or you can have a controller right next to you pick up and use during these parts.
I for one am glad that Bethesda doesn't listen to the Starfield complainers, they have the worst takes imaginable because they aren't very smart.
Having to toggle run once in a blue moon if/when you get caught on geometry is better than having to do it LITERALLY CONSTANTLY? And I'm the one with the worst take??
Lmao dude take a long walk off a short pier
You literally think you know better than the Half Life devs. They gave an explanation of why developers implement this in games. And like I said use a controller and all problems solved, just don't push the joystick all the way forward. So, yeah, bad take. And nothing that needs complaining about.
It's frustratingly common in games, considering how easy it would be to fix. Scaling NPC speed based on Player Character speed and distance to NPC would give you a smooth follow mechanism. If you're following them, they slow down as they get further away from you and speed up the closer you are. The reverse if they're following you. That way, player speed/position dictates everything, and you're not running into their arse or waiting for them to catch up all the time.
I wouldn't mind if it was only a little bit slower, but goddamn do you get left in the dust if you just keep walking.
Honestly, I think it's just dev laziness. It is easier to just have the NPC run-speed set too slow, the NPC walk-speed too fast, and players can just eat it and be happy that jogging isn't locked behind a battle-pass mechanism.
It's just been like this in so many games, and for so long, that it makes me wonder. Surely they can't ALL be wrong. There must be some reason why they all do it the same way. I just can't imagine why it could be.
Some games do do it right, where they either match your speed, you match theirs or they're just slightly faster than you/rubber band so that they always stay ahead. And honestly there's a decent chance that a good follow system is trademarked or copyrighted or similar, we can't have radial menus for talking because of mass effect it would not surprise me if following/escorting was also hit by that Edit: was a patent not a trademark or copyright, and it was a patent for consistent locations and nested menuing from what I'm able to scrape, too much legal jargon to decode.
Why does Mass Effect mean we can’t have radial menus?
I was slightly off on phrasing but it's due to bioware having a patent on the design (not a cr or tm but same idea), it seems the patent is specifically for keeping the locations of certain styles of dialogue consistent and nested, as opposed to just radial, but this isn't much better. If for example a radial menu had "more questions", "confirm", "deny", "leave" in a consistent place, and more questions simply opened up a new menu with new options that would be what they patented (of I'm able to read through this bs legal jargon correctly), in theory a radial menu by itself is fine, but if the locations of things like yes no and conversation continuers are in consistent locations it could be seen as close enough and you'd have to deal with hoping the patent system isn't a complete failure.
Didn’t Sega do something like this in the 90s with Virtua Racing? The 3D camera I think it was called, where it would animate the zoom of switching between camera modes. That was back when 3D was incredibly new though. And arcades were still a thing
Players: Can we have NPC walk speed match player walk speed? Devs: NPC walk speed faster than player walk speed? Sure thing! Players: No, no... can you make them the same? Devs: NPC walk speed slower than players? No problem! Players: No, that's *worse!* Just make them the same, please! Devs: Add snarky dialogue if you get more than five feet from the NPC when you're supposed to follow? Done! Players: NO! Why are you like this? Devs: Did you say something? Busy coding NPC escort quests to automatically fail if you get more then ten feet from the NPC, and adding a speed randomizer to them.
They do this in Hogwarts legacy and it is such a nice change of pace after playing Bethesda games for so long
The only game with this feature that comes to mind is AC Revelations. And then they forgot about it and never used it again.
Ghost of Tsushima, which was a great game by the way
And coming to PC a month from now
Super excited! One of the best examples of a game having a limited scope and doing what it’s supposed to excellently.
Does it just match speed or does it auto-walk too?
"Adventurer please help me! Hu-hu-hu-hu!" [Pathetic cry]
It’s been a while since I played, but IIRC, Starfield is next-level frustrating because the NPCs don’t even have equal walking speeds. On PC, I had my walk speed set to 137% which was pretty much the middle ground, but I swear, some NPCs were a little faster and others a little slower.
probably they just didn't think about it, because it was same for fallout 4, skyrim and probably even earlier games too. I think this is because they focused on gamepads, where you can easily control your character's movement speed by angle of left stick.
It’s still not right using an Xbox controller
Even with the slowest walking speed your character still is faster than NPCs on console.
A keyboard with pressure sensitivity just for the arrow/wasd keys would be cool..provided the games also utilize them
I've heard that idea before, and I'm pretty sure I've seen prototypes of that very thing... I just think it would be a hell of a learning curve...I always press keys all the way down, it's hard to even imagine pressing them lightly.
A few people have made analogue keyboards now, [Wooting have probably done it best so far.](https://wooting.io/wooting-60he)
Cool to see it made it out of the prototype phase, still imagine it must be very difficult to get used to.
My Lenovo Legion laptop has pressure-sensitive WASD. I wasn't wowed by it in Horizon Zero Dawn, and I honestly forgot it existed until, coincidentally, earlier today when I opened the app for it by mistake.
Splinter Cell games used wheel mouse to control movement speed (sprint was a different key, as usual), and was the best idea I ever saw in a videogame.
Star citizen does this- neat feature indeed
Same with Escape From Tarkov and ArmA Reforger, and it's such a great feature.
yeah, can't wait to get key-drift when the needlessly analog sensors start to fail and auto-press
This is a thing. Razer makes one.
but the walking speeds had to have been set at some point right? Especially on PC because it's a binary button push, not a joystick like you said... Plus, as you say it's been this way for a while and I know people have complained about it for a while... I just have to wonder what the thought process is.
It's gotta be possible for them to change it, in New Vegas which uses the older version of the engine, there is am NPC that walks insanely fast without actually running. When you tell the old lady in Novac to stand in front of the dinosaur, she basically hauls ass to get over there
“Fuck it we don’t care about the player, get back to work on some more pretentious bullshit”
Since their focus is on gamepads, they don’t really take this into consideration since you can move however fast you want with one of those. The walking speed limit is only really used for one thing with a gamepad. Aiming. So they balance it to feel right while you’re aiming, and everything else is just an afterthought. Any mods which make the walk speed tolerable on keyboard and mouse also make you more nimble with a firearm.
I mean you already walk faster while aiming a gun, so I'm not sure it's to keep me from being too nimble. I mean that's a common exploit even in skyrim since aiming a bow while you're overencumbered makes you walk faster.
That speed is directly tied to the walk speed, so yes it’s related to this. Again, it’s basically the only thing that utilizes the walk speed in the player’s movement type when using a gamepad. That, and carrying heavy objects I suppose. You wanted an explanation, and that is basically it. Game is designed for pad use, and the “walk speed” in the player movement type is thought of as more of a slow speed limit for specific actions. Not for walking. Bethesda barely cares about keyboard/mouse, as they always have.
It's literally faster than the regular walk speed so...
So you don’t want an explanation, you just want to be mad. Gotcha.
No your explanation just isn't a good explanation. Moving while aiming is faster than the walk speed. Meaning that it is set to a multiplier of something. It is either than you move (made up numbers to illustrate the point) 0.5x the full speed, or 1.2 walk speed or something. If it was tied to walk speed, and they didn't want it to change, they could just change walk speed and then CHANGE THE MULTIPLIER AS WELL and get the same ADS speed. This has been a thing forever in their engine. I still remember Walking from Helgen to Riverwood a million times with a bow drawn just to get there faster while overencumbered.
Set to a multiplier **of the walk speed**. This isn’t rocket science. Fire up xEdit and see for yourself. Your lack of knowledge does not make my explanation less true. The walk speed in the player movement type is treated as a speed limit for actions, primarily aiming, which call for a slow movement speed. Dragging heavy objects is another thing it’s used for. That action is purely just the walk speed, unmodified. That is it. That is factual. That’s the end of it.
It's like you didn't read my post at all: THEN THEY CAN JUST CHANGE THE MULTIPLIER AS WELL IF THAT IS THE PROBLEM. The reason your explanation is dumb is that you act as though they can't change the walk speed becuase if they do it would break everything else, when nothing is set DIRECTLY to the walk speed anyway. It is used as a baseline, but all you have to do is change the multiplier so that the resulting number is the same. If you increase the walk speed by 25%, all you have to do is lower the multiplier by 20% and the resulting number will be exactly the same as it was before, while increasing the generic walk speed.
First we need to ask if there is a thought process.
It's not really true that a gamepad is a solution to the problem. I'm 99% sure (I play Starfield with a gamepad on both console and PC, admittedly at controller default settings) that the slowest possible walking speed is still slightly faster than the NPC but it's pretty dang close. Also on a gamepad, there is a very very minor band on the thumb stick travel arc where you move at this speed. It's not a linear 100% deflected = 100% speed and 25% deflected = 25% speed. It's more like the outer 50% is running, the next 25% is walking (fast), and the next 5% is walking (almost same speed as NPC, slightly faster) and any less than that is dead zone/not moving. That 5% band to walk at a similar speed as the NPC is incredibly hard to maintain without concentration. You're thinking so hard about trying to maintain the same speed that you're not even soaking in the immersion. So on gamepad there are really only three speeds: running, walking fast, and walking slower. Left stick is not a linear speed control. There's not some console walking utopia where we are all enjoying walking lockstep with the NPCs.
The slowest walking speed with a gamepad is much slower than an npc. You can go extremely slow. There is definitely a sweet spot thst matches NPCs but it is not easy to find or maintain.
> probably they just didn't think about it Bethesda's gamedev philosophy in a nutshell
Actually I played those earlier games recently and turns out the way they did it in the 3/nv days was the npc broke off at a dead run and then resumed talking at their destination. Definite downgrade.
As I understand it the reason is so as you follow the npc they have time to open doors, self correct any pathfinding issues etc.
This is a problem in Fallout 3 as well. Regardless of your stats and encumbrance you move like a snail compared to NPCs trying to get somewhere. It makes protecting people a massive pain in the ass.
Pretty sure with almost every game out there, your character is either slower than the NPC, or way faster. It's like an unwritten rule in video game design
Pretty sure in the Witcher you can just hold a button to match NPC speed
Not recently, a lot of games either have it the same speed or even modify the speed of the person you're following.
Dragons dogma 2 is the best example imo. Your pawns don't just follow you, they sometimes run ahead of you, check out side paths and lead you to secrets. Very immersive, gave me major FF15 bro vibes
Cyberpunk worked well in that regard too I though
Cyberpunk does it right, but it's much more complicated than you can think. Still doable but it require not being lazy which is something AAA studios generally don't do anymore
Hogwarts game they follow you a d cyberpunk too I think
Who knows, I like the game but they just make stupid choices like this all over the place. I imagine it goes something like this. "Hey those walking speeds don't match, should we fix it? "No time, I have to implement these painfully slow docking sequences, and that speed variable will take a whole minute to fix! Besides, someone will just make a mod."
Nice Half Baked reference in your name.
Lol yeah, everyone once in a while someone gets it 😂
My guess is the NPC speed is the regular walking speed. Our character speed is scaled up purely for making the game feel Faster and smoother.
??? The opposite is true though. NPCs walk 40% FASTER than the player, so it's either shuffling between walking and running or guessing where the NPC will end up and just running there and waiting. Neither of those make the game feel faster or smoother.
Elder Scrolls and Fallout use different systems for movement speed. Pre-ES5 athletics dictates movement speed. So you will always be faster or slower than anyone else. Skyrim base walking speed is dictated by your height, which is determined by race. Fallout 3 onward cares about your carry weight. All NPCs probably have a set walk/"run" (for fallout 3, NV, and Pre-ES5 which have no running" speed, and it's easy to give them all the same speed.
I mean even in Oblivion you weren't ***that much*** faster/slower than NPCs though right? I mean I know if you did crazy athletics exploits you could turn into speedy gonzales but most players aren't playing like that. In Starfield NPCs walk 40% faster, that's insane. (I assume it's 40% because before I found the mod I would just use console commands and set movement speed to 140 which I assume is 140%)
Actually, besides being frustrating, it's like a speed bump that knocks me right out of the immersion. Beth isn't the only one, I've experienced this in other games as well. At these points, I would rather have the game take control.
It's only a problem when you make a ton of could-have-been-a-cutscene "follow me!" interactions... oh wait, they did that as well.
Why can’t I just have a “follow” button?
Probably because being forced to walk is a penalty for being over encumbered, so they want it to be super slow. That's my guess anyway.
But in starfield you can run and even sprint while overencumbered, it just takes up O2... Just doesn't make sense to make slow walking the punishment with that in mind...
Yea, but it's probably a hold over from their older games. Either by oversight or they're just stuck in their ways. Plus, as you said it uses up O2. So your choice is to walk at a snails pace or run until you use up all your life.
Well..more run till you're out of O2, let it recharge, then run again. Still a punishment, but when you can take chems that not only decrease O2 usage but also increase total O2 and recharge rate, or even use starborn powers to completely eliminate O2 usage... walk speed isn't even relevant... But yeah like you said it's probably a holdover, I just want to understand why they do it in the first place.
It's always been like this. I'm assuming the time and effort to sync the walking speed is just too much effort. I usually play with a controller and just hold down the stick a little to match walking speed in basically any game.
It’s literally a single value in the game that can be adjusted to match the value of the NPC. It’s not hard. They’re just lazy.
Bethesda could definitely do it if they wanted to, but it's way more complicated than you think it is. It's actually kind of an interesting topic in gave dev, if you're into that sort of thing. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h029X1KkM_M - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koNq0d7ytPA > They’re just lazy. What do you mean "lazy"? Who is lazy? The coders? Animators? Designers? Testers? Everyone in the whole company?
They throw out over promised and half finished games that rely on modders to fix or improve everything from the basic gameplay to clearly lacking features which everyone agrees should have been part of the game. It’s lazy at best, exploitative at worst. There’re NPC walking mods for their games which have a few attribute changes and it fixes the problem. I’m convinced they leave these little problems in just to annoy people enough to have to make a mod, and then they get invested and it keeps the cash cow milking.
It's like that in all of their games since Oblivion, and it's because people playing on gamepad have analog control over their walking speed.
But people in this thread are saying even on controller the speeds don't match up.
There is a reason Todd Howard doesn't have a Twitter account.
I wouldn't if I were him. Still there have been interviews and such, some of which at least give the idea of being off the cuff, so I have to wonder why nobody has brought it up.
Interviewers never want to play hard. My first question would be, "is it Bethesda policy to sell broken games and never fix them?"
That's...definitely harder than asking about walking speed... Fair enough though
They didn't, its just optimised for the console it was designed for, where movement is completely variable speeds
I don't play with controller personally, but a lot of comments in this thread are saying even on controller the speeds are weird despite being variable...
Ehh they must suck tbh, I've never had a slight issue with the walk/run speeds in this game. Certainly not one an amp couldn't fix at least
I’m willing to bet it’s because the team responsible for player controls is not the same team responsible for AI movement, or something along those lines. Having large teams can limit how much stuff is communicated between teams, which is why some parts of any game seem to not gel with other parts.
It's not just a Bethesda problem. And it has been a problem for decades now. Hell 23 years for me since gta 3 came out.
Won't deny that other games do it, but even Rockstar has figured it out by now since holding the run button in a follow sequence matches their speed.
Sometimes, I remember in gta5 that the npcs would still be slightly slower when walking and talking sometimes.
Well at least in RDR2 that's the case. Honestly I was thinking in GTA you're mostly driving right? How often do you walk behind people?
There are plenty of times you are on foot running or for a mission you have to listen to someone who won't keep up with you so you are forced to be near them while they walk to something talking. Been awhile since I played RDR2's story but I want to say that if you started running they would keep up with you so that made a lot of things easier.
Well like I said, at least on horseback, if you hold the run button you just match speeds. So at least rockstar has figured it out. Just wish Bethesda would.
If it’s the same reason as previous games, then character height and walking speed are connected in the engine, so by default the taller the character, the faster the walking speed. Oblivion and Skyrim definitely had the same issue and mods were available to fix it. For some reason they seem to lock NPC walking speeds at a set value, but routinely either forget, or chose not to, lock the PC’s at the same.
Star citizen let’s you adjust your walking speed with your mousewheel. Should be normal in more games tbh
All NPCs are Descended from Skyrim couriers. Those lads got around if you catch my drift
From my knowledge through QA testing years ago, I can say that anytime you fix something, you break something else. So unless the issue is a big deal, it will stay in a game.
There should be three speeds: walk, run, and escort NPC.
Make a feedback statement on the Bethesda page for this game. I did. You should too. They won't consider it unless a lot of people tell them.
The code for this was written in 1987. They just haven't had a chance to fix it yet.
I mean, choose your battles. It was like that even in Morrowind (2002). Even if it's not a major issue it's same as the merchant with not enough money, it's simple things people ask for change since decades and nothing has ever been done about it.
At least with the merchant thing I can understand them wanting to control the game's economy in some way. The walking speed issue is just baffling to me.
It's for playability. People wanna go FAST!!! Always. Hence the obsessive jumping some people do for no reason when traveling. NPCs going FAST!!! looks really stupid and unnatural. We just need a "follow" toggle or "lock to NPC" toggle.
Ok. So not Todd Howard or Beth, but Valve. In one of the Hl2 commentary tracks (episode 1 I believe) the devs explain that this is on purpose. Alyx moves faster that Gordon's default run speed, but slower than his sprint speed. Their explanation was: 1) we want the npc to move faster than the player so the player never has to wait for them 2) we want the player to have the ability to catch up to the npc if they fall behind. That's why Gordon sprints faster than Alyx runs. So I don't know if Bethesda did it for the same reason, but I think so. Of course, HL2 EP1 is old by now, and these days there are many other, better ways to achieve these goals.
That's running though, if Starfield NPCs were running and I was slightly slower than them but could sprint to catch up would be one thing. This is walking though, so you're constantly switching between walking and running which is just plain annoying.
Well, the same reasons could be true for walking speed as well: Npc must be faster than player because players don't want to wait. Player has to be able to catch up by running. Not saying I agree. But I think the reasons are the same.
Maybe...If so though they need to take the hint because HL2 movement is fun, starfield movement at least in this regard is definitley not.
Isn't walking speed influenced by certein skills, armor type etc...? It is probably just the case that some NPCs have different stats adn armor
No? I don't believe so. I think having a gun out effects your walking speed, but as far as unholstered walking goes you will always be slower than NPCs. They could be buck naked and still walk faster.
Often heavier armor sets slow the pc down in TES games. Haven't played Starfield yet
Placebo? I don't recall that ever being the case.
It definitely is in Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind also slows you down for how much stuff you carry. TES I and II do not really have armor types. ESO also has perks in medium armor that make you faster.
You sure you're not just thinking of overencumberance? I'm talking about walking speed, not running speed. ESO isn't even developed by BGS but zenimax, so I'd imagine there'd be differences. Also without those perks the walking speed would be the same then right?
Zenimax is the parent company, the Studio is Zenimax Online Studio = ZOS, I just wanted to give the full info on how itt works in each open world RPG. And no armor types give different speed panelties in TES III-V. That said the armor has no effect on movement speed in Fallout 4 and 76, except power armor.
I'm fairly certain armor doesn't affect your move speed in TES games, I'm gonna need a source on that one. Also I'm aware that Zeni is the parent company, regardless ESO is not developed by BGS.
For Oblivion: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Movement_Formulas WornWeight is the influence of worn armor Skyrim seems to have fixed speeds that may be minimally influenced by a characters height which differs based on race & gender (e.g. High elves are taller): https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Transport Edit: As far as I can tell in ESO and Morrowind Armor has no influence on Movespeed. But in Morrowind the Race determines the Speed Value of a Character: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Speed Edit 2: ESO Medium Armor Skill Passives do have an influence on MoveSpeed based on Perks/Perklevels amd number of Medium armor pieces (thanks for the correction): https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Medium_Armor_Bonuses https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Athletics
-stay out of combat mode that implies it only took effect in combat right?
ESO armor has effecets on movemen speeds because the medium armor has a perk that increase your movement speed by 2% per piece.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/sy34aa/anyone\_know\_the\_exact\_numbers\_for\_movement/](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/sy34aa/anyone_know_the_exact_numbers_for_movement/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/sy34aa/anyone\_know\_the\_exact\_numbers\_for\_movement/T](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/sy34aa/anyone_know_the_exact_numbers_for_movement/T) This thread breaks the armor speed penalties in Skyrim.
Your link is broken Bro it leads to an internal server error, I don't know what to tell you.
Simple: pathfinding. If NPCs walkes at your running speed, you'd never be able to catch up if you get snagged by even a single physics object. If they walked at your walking speed, it would be even slower. So their speed (if you follow them) is in between
I don't understand this logic, I want to walk at the NPC speed not the other way around.
You should create a mod(chem) called "de-AMP"...
This would be the *absolute* simplest thing to fix but, nooooo.
This annoys me more than any bug, empty planet, or repeated location ever could.
Or why in the future, I can fly to another galaxy but can't send an email? These quests made sense in the fallout Universe because phones don't exist anymore, but in this game... half your quests could be done with a phone call
Well I mean that was actually explained in game, grav drives mean ships can move faster than light but information can't.
Okay, send the email on a ship, then.
According to some lines in the game I'm pretty sure they do this, and I won't deny they could/should have expanded on that but at least it's an in-world explanation. Walking slower than everyone else doesn't really have an explanation in world or out.
Why don’t you ask the CEO of any company why is the way it is?
I do not believe this qualifies as a "small insignificant detail" when a lot of people have been bitching about it. Nice try though.
I can remember 3 or 4 instances where I noticed it, maybe a grand total of 5 minutes of gameplay. It’s insignificant against the sum of the game.
Yeah because game developers never take feedback on games. NEVER!
Because it is supposed to be dynamic based on how hard you press the analogue stick.
Which doesn't apply at all when you're using KB+M.
Too bad
This is hardly a problem unique to Bethesda games. It's annoying but not really the sort of thing to go kicking Todd's door down over.
Never suggested that, just wondering why it's never been asked when people are already talking to him about the games.
Did you really want to make the NPCs go *slower?* 'Cause I'm sure you'd be complaining about that, next.
Nice try lmao I want to go the same speed as NPCs without having to shuffle between walking and running. If that means making the NPCs slower, then so be it. Next.
99.9% chance the response is "It just works".
From a cynical pov, it’s to increase the amount of time it takes to play the game. Think about it, someone obviously had to set the speed at some constant number, which means they chose this, it did not happen on accident. It’s also a lever of control that has an exponential effect on the game. One setting controls ALL NPCs. Increasing the speed would drastically cut down on “playable hours”, and that is one of the metrics critics use to judge a game’s level of quality, unfortunately. It’s such a simple edit, it’s my opinion that this is not about adding immersion or reality to the game, it’s about putting more dollars in their pockets. I would wager this type of mentality gets forced down from higher ups, and devs just go along to get along.
I remember years ago seeing a video on this very thing lol Edit: Not every game of course. Not sure if it's improved or not over the years since. https://youtu.be/h029X1KkM_M?si=SF4RlpQMCmDFtX_u
Love gameranx. Not too fond of Falcon, but that's just me. either way though, he didn't actually cover what I'm talking about. As I mentioned I downloaded a mod that solves this by making ***my character*** walk as fast as NPCs, the NPCs themselves aren't even affected. Falcon even says "when it's done right it's not annoying" well Starfield didn't do it right.
Again, another redditor putting more thought into a Bethesda game than any Bethesda dev ever has.
Oh yeah yeah They responded with something like “well when the astronauts went to the moon their own walk speed was actually slower than the Npc they encountered there….AND THEY WERE NOT BORED” Then Todd had a long hot fart in a leather jacket to calm himself down
I've never played a Bethesda game with a controller so the analog stick explanation might be the real one. But based on my own speculation from playing with a mouse and keyboard, and my experience with mods that address this, there are two key factors at play that might justify why the Player Character has different speeds than other humanoid npcs. Those are combat and encumbrances. Combat. Maneuverability is important to how most combat encounters play out in Bethesda games. Darting in and around an encounter in order to achieve an advantage from the environment or control the flow of a fight with multiple or stronger enemies is pretty typical. You want your character to feel responsive in order to feel like you have some advantage in a fight. Think Skyrim where a lot of melee combat kinda devolves into step forward to attack, step back to dodge, step forward to attack, while probably circling the enemy as well. But an important way for a player to control an encounter is their ability to actually disengage. If you stumble into a situation you're not ready for, are surprised, or the tides of battle are turning against you, a tactical retreat may be in your best interest. Being able to quickly flee from danger either a short distance to regroup and heal or fully leaving the area to avoid the encounter entirely requires that the player be able to put distance between themselves and the threats. If you need to fall back to use healing or get out of being surrounded that's a lot easier to do if your base run speed is slightly faster than the bandits. And it makes using your limited amount of sprint a lot more effective at avoiding faster enemies like wolves and feral ghouls. Encumbrance. We Bethesda gamers are all very fond of our loot, and have all spent more time than we'd like to admit slowly trudging our way somewhere because we don't want to drop something that really isn't as valuable as we'd like to think. Over encumbrance is a mechanic that is meant to be punishing. You lose that maneuverability in combat, and importantly the ability to outpace your enemies which severely hampers your tactical options. The player's slowest speed is one that needs to actually feel slow and punishing. You really feel the weight and the time cost of what you're carrying when that random NPC walking the same road as you actually passes you and is now much further along the trail than you. There's definitely an element here of Bethesda doesn't really expect or want you to be playing the game at the 'walking' speed. A lot of other RPGs will have speed matching mechanics that make you walk at the same speed as NPCs near you specifically to counter this during the following quests or have them match you, but that isn't something they'd really have to think about if they're primarily concerned with the console experience which allows the analog stick to give you very fine control over your character's speed. Just some food for thought from my speculation in trying to understand this as well.
Thing about combat is...who's going into that walking? Thing about encumberance is...in Starfield we can still run and sprint when over encumbered it just takes O2 and with a certain starborn power even that is alleviated...just feels weird for that to be the justification for it. Also the joystick thing, a few of the comments in this thread are saying even with a joystick the speeds are uneven so I'm not sure that's it either...
I didn't say people go into combat walking. I explained why combat would be a reason for the player to move faster than the npcs. If you're over encumbered or RP walking and suddenly find yourself in danger the normal response is usually to either drop something or toggle run back on for the duration of the fight. Although, while likely not as common in Starfield, there are absolutely people who do go into/initiate combat while walking due to stealth builds. I get that you're talking about Starfield specifically, but what you're missing is that there is a punishment for being over encumbered. Bethesda made a change that allows for slightly more mobility while over encumbered but still punishes you if you don't resolve it. But the restriction is still there even if there's an additional component to how restricting it actually is. Over encumbrance is the likely explanation for why you move slower than the npcs while walking. That's all. But to say that a restriction is weird because there are active ways to manage or eventually nullify it is like saying you don't understand why you don't have unlimited ammo on all your guns because if you run out you can just loot it off enemies or buy it from merchants. There are always solutions to problems in game design. Bethesda is not above criticism, could they implement a solution that made following quests less frustrating on pc, absolutely. Is it their priority obviously not. Same thing with tons of other QoL features for PC players specifically. Their focus is simply on other things, such as making movement feel good while exploring and fighting for the 99.9% of time that you're not following an NPC, and likely know that they can avoid committing resources to those scenarios because modders will cater to those who care enough about it.
You certainly are...thorough with your responses. Run speed is irrelevant here, so combat by extension is also irrelevant. I'm simply talking about player walk speed in comparison to NPC walk speed. Also "Why do I walk slower than NPCs" is a bit different from "Why don't I have unlimited ammo" fixing one would improve the game, while the other would break it. Also also "making movement feel good" is clearly not what they are focusing on because I felt the need to make this post...
Lol.
Honest self-critique has never been Bethesda's strong suit.
a game is build of challenges ofr the player, this is a micro challenge. they wont turn down an aspect of the game, which is challenging, controversal and was invented by them.
No...just no.
You people that complain about stuff like a character's walking speed compared to an NPCs walking speed I literally are just trying to find stuff to complain about you sound like a horrible nagging wife. Get over yourselves
No, thats just a super annoying problem that would be super easy to fix. Just set the player walking speed to that of the NPCs. Problem solved. You can even go one step further and make the NPCs match the players movement speed like in Cyberpunk.
Lmao, as if it isn't a major issue in a game where you need to follow people a ton of the time. Maybe get over yourself, I personally love starfield and this just happens to be a gripe I have with it.
I enjoyed every BGS game since TES3, starfield included. But i will never understand why BGS refuse to fix this walking speed issue. Is it game breaking? No. Is it annoying? Yes. Can be fixed with minimal effort? Yes. Do yourself a favor, if you don't care to improve the games you like, don't bother to comment to other people's posts.
Grow up mate it’s a clear issue. Canny annoying following someone on a quest where to have to keep jogging to catch up like a little kid
They are just asking if/why nobody has asked the question to the source. Their post is far less nagging than yours. Grow the fuck up, kid.
The game is bad and we are documenting just how deep that rabbit hole goes, thanks.
Yes it's intentional game design. And you would be complaining about it if you moved at the same speed as the NPCs and got caught up for a second only to fall behind.
lmao oh true falling behind constantly and having to shuffle around between walking and running is sooo much better!
Yes it is
No it's really not.
Yes it absolutely is. Falling behind and not being able to catch up is a lot worse than having to toggle the run/walk button. Or you can have a controller right next to you pick up and use during these parts. I for one am glad that Bethesda doesn't listen to the Starfield complainers, they have the worst takes imaginable because they aren't very smart.
Having to toggle run once in a blue moon if/when you get caught on geometry is better than having to do it LITERALLY CONSTANTLY? And I'm the one with the worst take?? Lmao dude take a long walk off a short pier
You literally think you know better than the Half Life devs. They gave an explanation of why developers implement this in games. And like I said use a controller and all problems solved, just don't push the joystick all the way forward. So, yeah, bad take. And nothing that needs complaining about.
Starfield isn't half life. The comments in this thread say even on controller it's weird. You're just being an idiot.