Highlights
- Todd Howard advises players against hoarding unnecessary items like pencils and notepads.
- The hoarding behavior in Bethesda games, including Starfield, continues to leave many players overburdened with weight, causing constant movement problems.
- While some players debate the value of hoarding everything in Starfield, PC players have used mods to mitigate issues, while console players will have to wait for the Creation Club in 2024.
Just like other Bethesda games, Starfield has no shortage of items, resources, and objects for players to pick up and Todd Howard has some advice for players who frequently find themselves overburdened. Bethesda franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout dig deep into RPG mechanics, letting players play the game how they want, from being a heroic guardian to perhaps someone a little more shady through the use of stealing or assassination from the shadows.
Recent games from Bethesda, such as Fallout 4, really leaned into the idea of crafting and base building, which typically required plenty of resources. Starfield follows a similar path in both crafting and the idea of setting up Outposts on the various worlds throughout the galaxy. As such, players have continued to resort to picking up as much as they can, both actual crafting resources as well as some of the more generic items commonly found in the game like pencils, notepads, and other basic objects that ultimately have limited value. Unfortunately, doing so has left many players overburdened with weight, to the point that it has become a constant problem.
The hoarding behavior has become so bad that Bethesda Game Studios director and executive producer Todd Howard has even chimed in, offering some advice to players who continue to carry more than they should be. As a recent guest on the AIAS Game Maker's Notebook Podcast hosted by Ted Price from Insomniac Games, Howard was asked about what strengths and features that the studio tends to emphasize in their open world RPG style games. His answer focused on prioritizing the level of player freedom of where they can go and what they can do in it, which has already proven to be a major selling point of Starfield and the type of ships players have continued to build.
However, Howard then pivoted a bit in his answer, highlighting a common hoarding trend the studio sees throughout many of their games where players tend to pick up everything and immediately become encumbered. Howard then went on to say that players don't actually need "the trays and the pencils" but the developers at Bethesda like the fact that these simple items can be picked up and interacted with in games like Starfield.
While there's plenty of items and objects that don't have a ton of value in Starfield overall, the debate will likely rage on among players and the idea of hoarding everything just in case. However, there have been plenty of players on PC who have managed to mitigate many issues, such as the idea of over encumbrance, through the use of mods. Starfield console players will have to wait just a bit longer to finally play around with mods as Bethesda aims to release the Creation Club sometime in early 2024.
Starfield is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.