Starfield will get city maps and "new ways of traveling" next year
As well as mod support
Open your map in Starfield and you won't see much more than a height map, even in cities. If you want to then travel around, you're limited to walking huge distances when on planet surfaces and using fast travel spaceship hops when in outerspace.
Both these things might change next year, as Bethesda have teased that they're working on "many new features" that players have asked for, including city maps and "new ways of traveling".
The tease was shared via Starfield's Reddit community.
"We’ve been hard at work on many of the issues you’ve posted, and expect an update early next year that will include a large number of 'in-progress' quest fixes as well as FSR3 and XeSS. Though we fixed several quest issues from occurring, in-progress quest fixes are much harder to fix and we’ve built a new system to correct those without you having to roll back your save," says the post.
"We’re also hard at work on many of new features you asked for, from city maps, to mod support, to all new ways of traveling (stay tuned!). These will be rolling out with a regular cadence of fixes and updates we expect to have roughly every six weeks."
There's not much more information than that, and "all new ways of traveling" is vague enough that it could be anything. Perhaps they're adding a Mako-style vehicle for tooling around on planet surfaces, or a new method of space travel that feels less disjointed than the current jumble of load screens. Perhaps they're adding an ebike for pedalling around cities. It could be anything.
City maps would also be a big improvement, given how bad they currently are.
The mention of mod support isn't news, as Bethesda have already said to expect official mod tools to arrive in 2024. The question remains whether mod creators will be able to sell their work, as per the ability recently added to Skyrim.