Starfield has become unplayable, CONSTANTLY crashing

Jim Locke1 · Nov 27, 2023

Frustrated with losing first a Level 80 then Level 51 character, I broke down and upgraded to an Xbox Series X. My Xbox One had served me well, but Starfield was too good to quit because of my console becoming outdated.

Got the new console November 2nd, and everything ran smooth as glass at first. I bought a cooling fan within a couple days, and its performance is great, keeping the exhaust about 82° or lower when playing. The game would freeze only occasionally, after maybe four hours or more, usually when transitioning from space battles to a planet environment. I chalked that up do the complexity of the cities loading in after spending a lot of time in space, and would save my game before landing. I took that in stride. It’s a very complex game, many many textures, so I didn’t mind cutting it some slack. Last night however things began to change.

The crashes have become very constant. Just now, for instance, I spent about half an hour using the shipbuilder, and as soon as I try to finalize the changes it crashed. I didn’t have a chance to save my progress. Since I already had an idea what the changes I wanted to make were, I loaded back up and made the changes again as quickly as possible. Once again, when I tried to save the changes the game completely closed out, without giving me any opportunity to save. You can’t save while you’re using the shipbuilder, unfortunately, otherwise I would have.

The game has been crashing and quitting to the wallpaper after only about 15 minutes of play since last night. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, where I am, or which saved game I reload. I’ve tried the troubleshooting steps, all to no avail. I’m afraid to uninstall the game and reinstall it, because I have a level 122 character now and don’t want to lose all that progress.

I read an article online about a particular fault with an MMC component that Starfield has been running up against. Does this sound like that? Can you give me any advice or instruction for my next step? Thanks

:)

SteveCassidy3

Hello Swordofwhedon thank you for your reply I'm sorry but I have to disagree with your statement they have worked through the process of saying its one of literal 100,000,000 scenarios causing the crashing over a month ago.What they have established is its the way the old ids are getting recycled or in this case not getting recycled.If your on PC and can give them your file they can even tell you how long you have to go before you hit the constant crashing(I think the problems start when memory gets to the 4,000,000,000 ids generated point)They explain how it could have been overlooked during development and how at a glance without going deeper you wouldn't spot it.A disclaimer I'm not a developer and I don't do code but I can follow whats being said and tie it with the experience I've been having and the fixes I have tried. All things considered I think they make absolute sense with what they are saying and what is happening in reality.It would be interesting to see the opposing views Bethesda saying its not memory recycling and the other side being very specific about whats causing the problem have a meeting of the minds then we can resolve this issue one way or another. regards steve

George Smith9

Thank you for your response, nice to know its the game iteself, which I suspected as I have no issue with any other games so that elimantes the xbox itself, guess I will just have to wait for Bethesda to pull their finger out :0

Gregory Brill

I COMPLETELY AGREE!! This game is completely unplayable and someone should consider suing Bethesda for releasing a game this inherently broken. It would be like selling someone a car without a transmission and just blowing it off as normal. There is literally no way that Bethesda did not know of these problems because anyone with a modicum of playing time on this dumpster fire would be able to point out these issues within a few hours of playing the game. The game CONSTANTLY crashes. Yesterday, in a single 3 hour session, the game crashes 20 times. That is not an exaggeration, literally 20 times. Since the last patch update crafting has become impossible. None of the cargo links are running unless you are physically on the planet, you cant craft unless you save/ quit/ resume and then 80% of the time the workbenches don't even work.

This is very sad because the game had a lot of potential, but collapses under the weight of it's own unaddressed and blatant failures. At this point, Bethesda has proven themselves to be incompetent and this game finds itself being retired to the trash heap of other "great concept but pi$$ poor execution" games that people wasted hard earned money on only to have it stolen by unscrupulous developers who knew, or should have known, how horrible the product was before release. This borders on being criminal.

SteveCassidy3

Hello I have I have identified one setting on xbox series x .If you are using the camera or photo mode for screenshots video clips etc go into settings and set it to not upload to xbox network automatically that helps with the number of crashes you can upload manually after you finish the game.The other thing is to delete the game file stored data on your xbox uninstall everything people are reinstalling the game but not uninstalling the data mine was corrupted it just brought it down from the cloud when I opened the game its not a full solution but it helps.The major issue has been identified its the way the game gives out id to items in the game its broken so the longer you play the more it crashes until it will not play at all.There is a problem with getting Bethesda Softworks to register this fact.The only thing you can do in game is ng+ and start over in a new universe were you loose everything and will deal with the same problems again the longer you play.There is a discussion on discord starfield that goes into detail.This problem will get worse the more people clock up the hours.Personally I've star jumped 5 times already I'm not doing it again in this lifetime regards steve.

Jim Locke1

Hey There Belen,

If you want the number I called in MD, I’d provide it, but it was surprisingly easy to look up online. 👍👍👍

—Jim

Starfield has become unplayable, CONSTANTLY crashing