Fallout. Online. Now available.

[Darren Dirt]

https://bethesda.net/en/article/httfrhABZmOwGQYoeo6ks/a-note-to-our-fans

BETHESDA GAME STUDIOS
@BethesdaStudios
A Note to Our Fans
re. Fallout 76
OCTOBER 22, 2018
"As a development studio, we?ve taken a lot of journeys. We?ve tried not to repeat ourselves, yet all our games have a similar DNA. In 2015, we decided to try something very new, and very scary for us ? take one of our worlds and make it online only..."


via https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/1054475944101138443

[Melbosa]

Is actually out on November 14, what is now available is beta, and only to certain people ( it's not an open beta is my understanding - certain preorder bonuses which some people are not to pleased about https://ca.ign.com/articles/2018/10/24/xbox-one-players-not-happy-over-fallout-76-beta-periods ). 

As for the game itself, it's a bold venture for the game company and franchise, but I worry it may not be a great move: https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/10/24/the-fallout-76-beta-makes-me-sad/#623061167802

[Mr. Analog]

I actually cancelled my pre-order for Fallout 76, the more I read about it the more apprehensive I became. IF I get this one it's going to be later if at all because there's too many things that aren't very Fallout-y. Fallout to me is a game where you are given a world with many possibilities and you can pick your destiny through each playthrough and have a different experience. Sometimes that's the decisions you make through the game other times it is the stats build or gameplay style you use, the core though is the world is just there and you as a player get to approach it from different perspectives. Fallout 4 drew a lot of flack for reducing player choice and making things even more linear than Fallout 3 for the main questline however there's enough things to do outside the main quest to keep things interesting. Fallout 76 has no quests, no framework from which to have different narrative experiences. You build your own narrative by playing the game with other people - I'm not sure how I feel about that, it has the potential to be great but it also for griefing.

Another big problem is that VATS appears to be useless (it functions like an aim-bot but you have to be quick with it otherwise you might as well just use iron sights), the gunplay is about the same as Fallout 4 (that's to say, not great) what this means is that your character could be a gunslinging god but if you aren't a good aim and you can't use VATS fast enough your character is going to be less effective. VATS was designed from the get-to to mesh the RPG elements with the player ability so that your character can be better at things than you are, while technically this exists its current implementation leaves much to be desired.

So to me the gameplay doesn't seem so compelling but more worryingly there is so much lore-breaking stuff in this iteration. This map isn't a wasteland, so people who were bothered by how colourful and alive Fallout 4 was this is 10x worse, it's a lush living environment just filled to the brim with plants, animals and colour. It looks great but that's kind of a problem; this is not a desolate world. Then we have Super Mutants again, in the world we have two places where they come from on the East coast; Vault 87 in Maryland OR the Institute in the Commonwealth (in the future) so presumably these ones come from Vault 87?? We just don't know the full story yet. Then we got the Brotherhood of Steel stuff, at this point in time they would have only existed on the West Coast and have always been an isolationist group of xenophobes, there's just no way they would have picked up a radio and connected with a random group halfway across the country to start a chapter. It just doesn't make any sense no matter which way you slice it. The Brotherhood we see in Fallout 3 and 4 all came originally from the West Coast by airship about a century in the future of this game. I get why they added the faction armor (for people who want to roleplay) but from the story of the world that's been meticulously built up over the last 20+ years it doesn't make sense.

I'm rambling on a bit but there's so much stuff that just doesn't make sense from a lore perspective coupled with what looks like spotty gameplay design that I'm just not interested in paying full price for an experience I might not like.

The other problem I see right now is that the servers are all hosted by Bethesda so there's not a lot of control and no private servers, I think it could be a fun sandbox with friends but in its current form it seems kinda empty and ripe for abuse. While I didn't see much PVP in the BETA streams I watched I did see how easy it was for higher level players to completely dominate lower level ones. Sure it doesn't make sense for higher level players to go after lower level ones unless you account for the jerk factor. If you are a high level player and you want to be nasty and just ruin some scrub's day it's very very easy to do so (PVP unlocks at level 5).

The frustrating part is they put a lot of effort into building this world and I genuinely want to explore it but there's a lot of things going on with the multiplayer aspect that I'm just not interested in. I'll most likely have to wait until Fallout 5 which is many years away given TES6 is on the way next. My hope is that Red Dead Redemption 2 comes to PC next year, I need a new sandbox game I can relax with!

[Melbosa]

I have a lot of the same misgivings that Mr. Analog has with the concept and game play.  This is also the reason I have not preordered it as I am worried too that I will not enjoy the experience at the cost level for release day access.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

For now, Spiderman and Odyssey will have to do for that open world exploration type game for me as I don't have interest in the RDR2 world myself.

[Mr. Analog]

So I watched a 4 hour livestream of the PC beta last night, group quests are bugged, enemy AI kept getting stuck and there are parts that you can't do alone (enemy attack waves are part of some quests) the PC port looks great and there seem to be a lot of good quests to do at early levels. The guy I was watching covered a good chunk of ground in the time he had (level 1 to 9) he was able to complete a quest for level 20 with a friend though and couldn't use most of the reward, which is silly. These guys moved fast and stayed ahead of the pack most of the time. They engaged in PVP and it was bad, basically you can respawn near your death so fights are really just a drain on resources (ammo, health and weapon repair) so there's not much point in doing it.

I'm still not sold but I'm thirsty for a Fallout experience,  I'll wait until after launch to decide. I feel like if you put your mind to it you could get to end game rather quickly though which is a problem IMO.

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[Mr. Analog]

I have two free codes if anyone wants to try it. It goes online at 3 today for a few yours and then tomorrow is like 7 hours

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/all-fallout-76-beta-dates-and-times-on-ps4-xbox-on/1100-6462674/

PM me if you want a key, you will need a Bethesda.net account and have the Bethesda client downloaded to redeem.

[Mr. Analog]

I must concede the game is fun but not for any of the reasons that make the game online only. I solo'd through the whole experience (made it to level 6) I only did one group event but the game is pretty easy to get through all on your own. The only thing that was annoying is people with mics are audible when you get close and some people have terrible mics and/or terrible personalities. The one multiplayer event I was in was a little confusing and one guy got frustrated with one of us for not intrinsically knowing what to do.

Killing mobs is a lot easier than I thought even though good weapons and VATS is different mainly because the enemy AI is super bad (way worse than Fallout 4) the map is also big and instances inside buildings are multiplayer so there's a lot of room to do things once people started spreading out things got more fun for me (I wanted to solo)

Base building is kinda pointless IMO and I can't really see the benefit to grouping up as everyone has to do quest things themselves rather than as a group. But the game is fascinating, I really do hope that they give us the option for private servers / invite-only RP servers.

As for the RP side of things the leveling and perk card system works well, the story is told through holotapes and is kinda hard to follow because it's tough to listen to a narrated story while you're trying to stay alive or do something else. The holotapes kinda play in the background. The quest markers are confusing and hard to read for me, I'm never sure what I should be going after and the map button is ESC which is weird I'm kinda stuck on one of the earlier quests because I'm not sure where to go at the moment. I had one quest marker that sent me traveling across the map to something I definitely shouldn't be anywhere near but I digress...

Anyway I can see myself playing some hours of this and I've re-purchased the game ($80 meh) it's Fallout and I'll play it

The world is too lush still, I need more wasteland in my wasteland (granted I haven't hit the higher level areas yet which are supposed to be more desolate.

[Lazybones]

Apparently the physics engine is tied to frame-rate and thus can be exploited currently.
https://youtu.be/BgKqawcb-80?t=297

[Mr. Analog]

Apparently the physics engine is tied to frame-rate and thus can be exploited currently.
https://youtu.be/BgKqawcb-80?t=297

It's also hilarious

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[Melbosa]

Wish I could get on this weekend to test the game but too much going on. I appreciate the code offer though Mr. Analog

[Melbosa]

https://ca.ign.com/videos/2018/11/22/7-reasons-fallout-76-failed-opinion

IGN's reviewer did NOT like the game for 7 Reasons... curious Mr. Analog on your thoughts of the game (or anyone else here whom is playing it)?

[Mr. Analog]

https://ca.ign.com/videos/2018/11/22/7-reasons-fallout-76-failed-opinion

IGN's reviewer did NOT like the game for 7 Reasons... curious Mr. Analog on your thoughts of the game (or anyone else here whom is playing it)?

PROS:
- Exploring a big open world
- Lots of lore to absorb
- Lots of gunplay / weapon modding

CONS:
- No storylines
- No NPCs
- No Mods

The Fallout series has been mainly a role playing game where you take on a character role of your own choosing and play through the world with it. Will you be a good guy, a bad guy or something in between? Kinda up to you and your behavior, stats and your dialog responses. Fallout 76 is not that kinda game, at least not without friends who are willing to RP with you.

76 is basically the radiant quests from Fallout 4, except multiplayer. Literally that's it, there's plenty of combat to be had with all the new creatures but you run around shooting stuff and reading things. Whether or not you do it alone is up to you but the main thing is you get a questline from either entering a location, talking to a robot or reading a terminal and it gives you a framework to just go and find trouble / explore locations.

For me it scratches the "I want to faff around with guns in a Fallout setting" itch but it doesn't quite fit the bill for what I would consider an RPG, which is what Fallout is supposed to be.

Sure you can sit there and read several pages or listen to hundreds of hours of lore or you can just click through terminal entries / play holotapes until your quest marker opens, it's really really hard to get invested in it if there's no purpose. Again going back to the radiant quests; if you didn't like the whole "go to a location and shoot stuff" fetch quests in the late-game of Fallout 4 then 76 is not for you. If you did enjoy just wandering around getting in trouble and exploring stuff then this will hold your attention.

I haven't really decided if I like or hate this game yet, I haven't logged many hours in it (in fact I went back to playing Fallout 4 again.) It's just missing those critical RPG elements that the other games had - if I could compare it to anything it would be RUST or ARK, you're just in a world looking to make your own fun, survive and occasionally read something about the Fallout universe. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I have to talk about the online only because it actively makes things worse:
- Realtime VATS sucks (it just does, half the time you'll never use it)
- No ability to pause or use console commands if you get stuck
- PVP is an utterly pointless drain of resources and not very fun
- No mods (yet)

I feel like if I could spin up a local instance and play with regular VATS, savestates, mods and the ability to pause I'd be a lot more happy with it but as it stands I've completely avoided any of the things that multiplayer is supposed to provide because I'm just not interested. Like many games before I like being a Lone Wanderer and just taking things at my own pace without feeling like I'm doing chores. AND YET the game looks and runs well and the combat and building is fun as is the exploring. So I am super torn about it. Plenty to hate AND enjoy.

Ayoooo spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

The reason why all the humans are dead is because of the Scorchbeasts unleashing a disease from underground the earth, the main quest starts you discovering that people survived the blast and were rebuilding the world but were all mysteriously killed off in the region. The "end game" is to get a nuclear launch code and drop a nuke on a scorchbeast fissure, this spawns the scorchbeast queen and you try to wipe them all out saving West Virginia for another day.

[close]

Would I pay $80 again for the same experience; probably not. It's just Fallout-y enough for me to want to keep going BUT not Fallout-y enough to keep me playing for hours on end

I'm sure that doesn't answer much LOL an attempt was made

[Melbosa]

Thanks for the info.  I think I will pass on this at full price, but if it really is on sale for a good deal I might check it out.  If I do maybe we can travel the wastelands together.

[Mr. Analog]

Thanks for the info.  I think I will pass on this at full price, but if it really is on sale for a good deal I might check it out.  If I do maybe we can travel the wastelands together.

For sure, if it goes on sale grab it because if anything this will be one of those games that Bethesda improves over time. That's mainly why I didn't talk about glitches and the like because those will get ironed out.

PvE would be super fun with people I know... trouble is finding time is hard

[Mr. Analog]

It's dropped in price, twice already...

https://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-76-drops-in-price-again-to-dollar35/

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