Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater. I actually was really excited for the game. But so far I am just not having fun.
For a little bit of reference, I just finished playing thru Cyberpunk 2077 and then jumped right into Starfield. Maybe that was a mistake because I kinda just want to go back to Cyberpunk (and I will in a few weeks when the DLC comes out).
But I'm noticing two really big issues with Starfield: first, the gunplay/combat is... let's call it underwhelming. I realize it's quite probably a skill issue and I need to just git gud, but holy crap, everything is a bullet sponge and I don't have that many bullets! Stealth seems to be pretty worthless at early levels as I don't have any high-alpha guns that can take advantage of it and, most of the time, I'm detected before I even see the bad guys. I'm just not enjoying this aspect of the game at all.
The second big issue for me is that there's a loading screen every five seconds! Again, probably a me thing, but OMG, it's driving me nuts. Get into ship, loading screen. Launch from planet, loading screen. Fly to next planet, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen. Leave ship, loading screen. I just want to go shoot things! Let me shoot things!
Okay, found some spacers, time to... oh shit, out of ammo. Let me swap to a worse gun that still has ammo. Sigh. Okay, they're dead. Let me just heal up... oh shit, out of med packs. Sigh.
Oh and wrestling with the UI is exhausting.
Anyways, I realize that this probably isn't the place to find a lot of like-minded people. But I really do want to like this game. Any tips on maybe at least ways to make the combat less of a chore?
It's less about the distances than the tedium of getting my character from one place to another. I fast travel everywhere as usual, but now there are so many more steps to it - Getting out of the pilot seat. Docking and undocking or landing and taking off. Finding a location by clicking through the 3-layered map. - It's way more complex than fast traveling from Windhelm to Solitude.
You can usually fast travel from one location to another, no need to take off. Just enter the menu, navigate to your location (or use the mission tab to show on map), and fast travel. Saves those multiple steps. Only exception is when you're docked - you need to undock first.
But I agree, space travel is more complex than land.