Starfield players hit out at the game’s “half-baked” bounty-hunting system

Starfield fans have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the game and criticisms come as often as praise. The game’s bounty-hunting system is the most recent aspect of the game to draw ire from players.

Starfield’s perceived snub at this year’s Game Awards was a surprise to some but a number of its dedicated fans claim to understand the decision. Its relative absence at gaming’s biggest awards show has seen players reflecting, which seems like bad news for Bethesda.

In the last week, players have demanded an overhaul of environmental hazards, criticized Starfield’s “limited” outposts, and complained about persistent progression bugs that have yet to be fixed.

Continuing the trend, Reddit user u/StranglePants has prompted a discussion on the disappointing lack of immersion in Starfield’s bounty-hunting system. Many players chimed in with their own issues.

The main gripe that u/StranglePants is that Starfield’s bounty hunting doesn’t offer the variety of games like Red Dead Redemption 2. Specifically the lack of mechanics for live capture.

“It’s just basic hit jobs,” They explain. “Find guy, Shoot guy & money magically appears in your account.” While many games have similar systems, Bethesda themselves have included live capture elements in their own titles previously.

“They let you capture people alive and forcibly send them where you want in Fallout 3, 15 years ago,” one player pointed out. One helpful Starfield fan did point users to a mod that updates bounty hunting and adds functional brigs to ships.

Despite this helpful suggestion, players in the comments have accused Bethesda of “sitting back and letting modders fix the game”, and believe “a lack of care” is the larger problem. “Everything is messed up in the game, traits, skills, bounty-hunting, smuggling, weapons,” a user complained. “Everything is half-baked.”

Bethesda Softworks

Whether or not VASCO has it in him to bring bounties in alive, we don’t know.

Starfield has a major update incoming that will hopefully fix a lot of the persistent bugs and roadblocks for quests. Unfortunately, these more intrinsic issues will require more time and effort from Bethesda or failing that, modders.

Inbound official mod support launching sometime in the middle of 2024 may help the community-driven improvement of the game. Only time will tell.