Fallout 76

I'm glad I waited to buy this game... now it seems like I will happily wait forever :D

In other news, saw this on Reddit:

pmzu4tafqde21.jpg


(Buy a controller, get a free Fallout 76)
 
Back in November I posted disappointment about FO76. I’m still disappointed. Maybe more so, as I realize how profoundly the design decisions have damaged the experience.

That said, I have a friend who puts in a lot of time, approaching level 200. The bugs annoy him, but he’s good with the tedium. I’m at level 42, largely as a result of his help.

He goes into an area and triggers the spawning of high level enemies. From a distance, I wound as many as I can, and when he takes them down, I get the XP as well because I contributed to their damage. He also crafts well-specced weapons and armor for me, and repairs my stuff to 200%.

With this assistance, it’s less of a tedious grind I guess.

The inability to save a checkpoint and repeatedly return to it discourages experimentation. For example, I’d like to try laying a minefield for the Super Mutants at Lewisburg. But if I get it wrong, either the spacing will be too wide and they’ll get through and kill me, or too close and the whole shebang will go up in one chain reaction and kill me. In previous FO games, I really enjoyed inventing a variety of approaches to a problem. This one is just a tedious slog, driven by game mechanics.

Oh, and the bugs persist.
 
Based on the feedback, I'm glad I held off picking up F76. I'm still enjoying Fallout 4 even with the limited PS4 mods. Getting the game for free is pretty tempting although my limits are currently in GB and not $.
 
GBO Possum
With this assistance, it’s less of a tedious grind I guess.

The inability to save a checkpoint and repeatedly return to it discourages experimentation. For example, I’d like to try laying a minefield for the Super Mutants at Lewisburg. But if I get it wrong, either the spacing will be too wide and they’ll get through and kill me, or too close and the whole shebang will go up in one chain reaction and kill me. In previous FO games, I really enjoyed inventing a variety of approaches to a problem. This one is just a tedious slog, driven by game mechanics.

Oh, and the bugs persist.
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I've always found with these Bethesda games that 'the grind', to me at least, is kind of the point of the game and the exploring that it leads to is the meat of it. I've never cared for any of the stories, they're just a way of gaining XP and maybe finding a part of the map you wouldn't have come across otherwise. I'm still just level 40, mainly as i'm always too over encumbered to fast travel and end up getting waylaid and distracted on my way to what ever point on the map i've been sent to.

Of course, it's still far from perfect. Buggy, glitchy and still very prone to crashing.

Aside from the obvious performance fixes, i'd like to see:
• An expanded stash box (who doesn't?)
• More places to trade and vendors with deeper pockets*
• A way to file or submenu items like notes, treasure maps, holotapes and keys so you don't end up with a massive list to scroll through.

*I've tried trading with other players but found that in general higher level players don't want any of your crap because they already have better stuff and lower level players probably can't yet use your high level guns and armour and have no use for that 240 units of waste oil and 1800 rounds of .38's you can't bring yourself to just drop. All the junk like plastic, aluminium, screws, ballistic fibre and lead etc that you constantly need to repair guns and armour and craft ammo with, everyone obviously wants to keep hold of.
 
malvforest
Absolutely worthless game, as for me
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There's absolutely nothing for non-native english speaker other than the endless grinding loop and leveling up.

There's millions of holotapes all without character photo making it impossible to identify who's talking, so i don't care. In Bioshock i understood nearly every audio diary, remembered the backstory later when i found more diaries from the same character - and there were many of them.

Few other notes:

Survival - What exactly? Finding ammo when out of? Use OP melee.
Looting - Loot everything, get overcucumbered, drop worst junk, buffout, teleport to camp. Repeat.
Scrapping - Like organizing your music folder on PC, but instead you 'dele... scrap the music folder'. Done.
Crafting - Absolutely no personalization. I don't care wheter if i have short or long stock, barbed or spiked bat etc... I look stats.
Enemies - Buggy. Too often either just sitting still or searching for right path. Also non-rewarding and repetitive. Kill 21lvl deathclaw with ease, but have a good fight with regular mole rat with legendary diseased upset and other nonsense in its name.
Armor sets/pieces - Hated them since Fo4. Comparing each piece is just time consuming and frustrating. With multiple legendaries you end up looking like raider or frankenstein.
Caps - Why, to fast travel?

Graphics, optimization, controls and user friendliness especially in pip-boy are absolutely ridiculous.

"Why i bought it?" ...Well i didn't. I chose not to.
 
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Knukel
Few other notes
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Scorchbeasts - Largest bullet sponges in the game. Burn through all your ammo and stimpacks trying to kill one and get pretty much nothing of value in terms of loot. Their sonic attacks are annoying as **** and go through any kind of cover you use. It’s not even worth fighting them.

Vendors - only 200 caps to trade, super steep prices. If you sell a bunch of stuff to one vendor and get those 200 caps, then other vendors within the same faction on different parts of the map have no caps left either.

PVP - It’s a joke, probably the worst system I’ve seen. I shoot you, then you must shoot back to start the fight. The person who shoots back is at an advantage everytime.

In game economy - tons of people have duplicated the most powerful weapons and items such as bobbleheads by glitxhing the game. Some even sold those weapons for real money!

Perk card system - I’m always swapping perk cards for trading, hacking, lockpicking, crafting, etc because I can’t increase my S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats after level 50. It’s annoying and pointless.

Numerous bugs and glitches - honestly I’d have to sit there with a pen and paper while playing becasue I can’t remember everything off the top of my head.



But don’t worry the atomic store is fine! Gotta have those micro transactions in there before developing a good game!
 
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Really thoughtful analysis of Fallout 76’s gameplay design decisions and how this guy would fix the shortcomings.

Be aware, this is long, concise, well scripted and exhausting to watch! The author has worked hard on it.

Worth watching even if only as an exercise in studying gameplay design principles.

It has got Bethesda’s attention, although it’s unclear whether much of it could be implemented given they are so far down the road...

 
I am subscribed to MATN and I have this saved for later. He is great and I love his Fallout content. He did an in-depth and thorough Medieval 2 series with Denmark and also a long Crusader Kings 2 series which was really good.
 
MATN has articulated the consequences of many design decisions in a way that I subconsciously understood, but failed to formalize in my mind.

From the simple, such as why I just try to get away from Scorchbeasts (killing them costs way more in resources than the benefits) to the absurdity that the benefit of scrapping weapons is randomly chosen, and there’s no indication when you’ve actually got all the knowledge available for a particular weapon. Or armor.

In Skyrim we got specifically better at making things by, well, making things. In ‘76, one gets (maybe) randomly better at making things by destroying things. WTF!
 
Long time MATN suscriber here. I watched it over the weekend, it's well done and points out the game's shortcomings and the poor choices made by Bethesda without resorting to insults and complete negativity (as is traditional from Jon). I'm not entirely sure I agree with all his proposed ideas to fix the game, though, some of them are a bit far fetched.

If you've never watched the stuff Jon does, I highly recommend his channel. His "YOLO" runs in Fallout 3 and NV (where he's completing both games on a single health bar without ever using any healing and keeping track of his HP after leveling up and whatnot) and his melee only and hardcore survival F04 runs are well worth the watch, if only for the strategy and preparation involved in doing such a thing.
 
I'm about an hour into his video now and it is insightful for me. Although I haven't played F76, his comparisons to F4 allow me to see what has changed in the game. Some of their decisions really are head scratching but as he points out, they may be purposely creating a scenario where necessary grinding by the players will help Bethesda reach their longevity goals for the game.
 
88GTA
New DLC has been released but I haven't looked into it yet.
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From what I've seen of it it's two short-ish quests that don't really solve any of the game's inherent problems. "Survival" mode is apparently coming soon, though.
 
Been a while since watching MATN's Fallout 76 review and i think he mentioned something similiar:

Instead of dull level gap, weapons should have skill points and/or SPECIAL requirements like in FO3 and NV; there you had greater sway and recoil if you didn't meet the requirements = SPECIAL + Skill point (0-100).
^ Without SP reqs. there's no use for a basic boxing glove if the upgraded deathclaw gauntlet is usable from the beginning..; Let's say if the boxing glove requires 20 unarmed skill then the gauntlet should require 90; with my 50 points unarmed build i should be penaltized for using the gauntlet, but with 30 extra points i could upgrade the boxing glove. Penalties could be slow swing speed, decreased accuracy and damage, risk of damaging yourself with explosive/heavy weapons or increased weight.

Skill points would also make chems, alcohol etc. more useful; instead of just buffing SPECIAL they'd temporarily increase your lockpick, hack and (barter?) skills like in earlier games.
^ So instead of terminals/locks being limited to 0-3 stars, they should be 0-100 (=0-10) with possible chem buffs when needed; but now you just end up swapping your perk cards that could be active in the background... (In fact, perks increasing each weapon type damage by +X% and 1-3 star hacking/lockpicking could be removed entirely).

Survival SP's should return with you gradually increasing your cooking skills (either Skyrim way or by adding points) with the freedom of spending points elsewhere and eating collected canned food. Survival could effect bullet weight, food spoilage and weapon condition etc.
Why condition doesn't affect weapon/armor stats or reliability??

Maybe after lvl 50 you start swapping SP's from skill to another, but with more options: heavy guns, light guns, plasma/laser, melee, unarmed and explosive or survival, medicine, lockpick, hack etc... I believe with proper calculations this would allow more balanced builds with greater variety. For example:

- Effectively using the '90 SP deathclaw gauntlet' would have deeper impact in other stats unlike now; melee requires just 3 perks to be OP.
- Wearing a Power armor should have high starting requirements. And positive/negative impacts in different weapon types (+ heavy guns / - small guns and one handed melee)

90% of current builds happen to be melee power armors...
 
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Not had chance to sample survival mode yet, but from what i've read, unless you're a level 100+ you're going to have a bad time. Because your Fast Travel options are limited to your own camp, Vault 76 entrance or any of the train stations, you just get gangs of high-level players 'camping' out by the stations waiting for unsuspecting travellers to pop up and die almost instantly in a hail of bullets. It is only a beta as yet so i guess it will get fixed in some way before long. On the plus side, it will attract all the idiots out of the old regular/new Adventure mode.
 
I should have mentioned it is also the survival beta so it could change a little. It looks like a survival mode based around running for your life and trying to live the longest. It is not at all like the Fallout 4 survival which addressed hunger, thirst or disease mechanics.
 
Bethesta released a new 'Battle Royale' game mode yesterday as part of the summer's Nuclear Winter season.

Had a brief play of it last night as it's on a weeks beta trial for now. I've not played any kind of Battle Royale game or game mode before so can't compare it to anything else. It plays and integrates pretty well with the 76 map, although you only use an ever-decreasing portion of it, which for now is the same section every time - but the way they've worded it makes it sound as if the full version may use other parts of the map too.

I've found that you spend most of your time creeping around, gathering new weapons, armour etc then dying suddenly in a brief firefight with another group. Maybe this is how all Battle Royale games pan out?

I know, probably rightly, that FO76 got panned on release, but the constant free updates, content and new features have really made it into a decent game right now.

I'm unsure if i prefer Bethesta's method of barebones game on release constantly updated and tweeked by listening to what players are complaining about with well advertised fresh content added regularly - or say Rockstar's method of releasing a very well-rounded game on release which doesn't get updated thereafter (in offline/story mode*).




* i'm assuming this having not played RDRII yet.
 
Just imagine if they didn't release the game last year and it came out this summer for the first time with all of these things included. Why do they always have to rush games out? We'll wait for the good stuff
 
DesertPenguin
Just imagine if they didn't release the game last year and it came out this summer for the first time with all of these things included. Why do they always have to rush games out? We'll wait for the good stuff
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Keeping some of the good stuff back does give a game longevity. As much as i loved GTA5, as soon as i'd finished main storyline and any of the side quests along the way, there was no reason to continue playing. I played the online stuff a bit, but soon realised it was either a DLC money pit or a massive grind to keep up with other online players. I imagine RDR2 is the same way.

I saved the DLC content on both Skyrim and Fallout 4 until i'd exhausted all the enjoyment from the main game, but again, once you've completed that, there's little enjoyment from carrying on. As long as FO76 continues adding and evolving at this rate - and their roadmap points to it doing so until at least the end of autumn/fall, i'll stick with it.
 
Spider-Man PS4 is a perfect example of getting everything right with proper add-on story DLC later in life cycle. Sure the game loses replayability due to only being single player but the way it was handled was perfect.
 
So Bethesda didn’t know that their player base was more into cooperation than conflict!?

You’d think that when spending development dollars on this scale, that just a little market research would be a sound idea.

My friend and I spent endless hours in FO4, and repeatedly wished we could be exploring the Commonwealth as a team. He's good at melee, while I prefer sneaky ranged attacks. At no stage did we consider it'd be a good idea to try to kill each other. I know that 2 is a small sample size, however the majority of people I have "met" in FO76 seemed to be conflict-averse and the rest were just a****les.

https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-was-surprised-how-uninterested-players-were-in-fallout-76s-pvp/
 
GBO Possum
So Bethesda didn’t know that their player base was more into cooperation than conflict!?

You’d think that when spending development dollars on this scale, that just a little market research would be a sound idea.

My friend and I spent endless hours in FO4, and repeatedly wished we could be exploring the Commonwealth as a team. He's good at melee, while I prefer sneaky ranged attacks. At no stage did we consider it'd be a good idea to try to kill each other. I know that 2 is a small sample size, however the majority of people I have "met" in FO76 seemed to be conflict-averse and the rest were just a****les.

https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-was-surprised-how-uninterested-players-were-in-fallout-76s-pvp/
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Whilst it's in human nature to be in conflict with others and want 'other people's stuff' it's also human nature to cooperate and create communities.

FO76 players spend so much time building their camps and collecting stuff to sell that they don't want to see it destroyed in seconds. You also get players with specific perk 'builds' which can make combat against them quite hard. Aside from combatting boredom, there's very little benefit in attacking your neighbours. Just like in real life.

In earlier versions of the game i found myself in conflict with other players by accidentally damaging their workshop-based camps. I found the pvp combat frustrating, especially if you're a level 40 something and the other player, or players, are lvl187 or the like. There's very little reward even if you do succeed in killing them.

i don't know why Bethesda were surprised by players reluctance towards pvp conflict. In a arena where it's you vs the world, it's no surprise that people lean toward cooperation rather than stacking the odds further against them.
 
It's especially baffling when the entire reason people have ever been wanting a multiplayer Fallout game was for the expressed purpose of being able to work together with other players to create their own wasteland community, and not only did Bethesda not make that a core component of the game but also seemed to go out of their way to discourage cooperation by making it so damned difficult to do anything together.

It never ceases to amaze how they got Elder Scrolls Online so right and Fallout 76 so wrong, especially when ESO has been around for so much longer. Do they just forbid dev teams from ever sharing information with each other?
 
EngieDiesel
It never ceases to amaze how they got Elder Scrolls Online so right and Fallout 76 so wrong, especially when ESO has been around for so much longer. Do they just forbid dev teams from ever sharing information with each other?
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Not played ESO. I was under the impression that FO76 was a Falloutified version of it - Like Fallout 4 was to Skyrim or RDR2 is to GTA5. Is that not the case?
 
TheCracker
Not played ESO. I was under the impression that FO76 was a Falloutified version of it - Like Fallout 4 was to Skyrim or RDR2 is to GTA5. Is that not the case?
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No, they're completely different. ESO keeps the feel and basic gameplay of Skyrim but it's clearly been built from the ground up and adds things that weren't present in previous Elder Scrolls games. There's also plenty of areas like Dark Anchors and public dungeons that encourage players to work together for a common goal, and PVP is essentially an entire huge zone in itself.

Fallout 76, by contrast, feels like Fallout 4 with a multiplayer component hastily retrofitted into it, with no real thought towards how to allow players to meaningfully interact with each other. The only time where it feels like cooperation is beneficial is at the very end where you launch the nuke to draw out the scorchbeast mother, and that's only because it's the single event that's designed to be impossible to initiate solo.
 

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