Fallout: 76 - Take Me Home, Country Roads

@Citizen H:

Fan Dumb is currently very strong right now in general. The problem is that negative voices tend to be the most vocal. The problem also is that people are kind of sheepish-if a person hears from someone else that a work is bad, when they go to play it, it's pretty likely they'll agree with what they heard.

Telling people beforehand that a game wasn't well-received actually makes it much likelier for them to dislike the game, regardless of the game's contents. They have actually tested this before.

Now, as for Fallout 76 specifically, the problem I've noticed is less that the game doesn't deliver on its promises-but rather a Vocal Minority of fans don't like what the game is promising to begin with. These people don't like the idea of a multiplayer Fallout game in general.

My response to this crowd, personally, is that this is a spin-off game. This is a specific case where "Don't like, don't play" is a perfectly valid argument-there's room for both multiplayer and single player fallout games to exist. A lot of these people claim that "nobody asked for multiplayer fallout", to which my rebuttal would be:

1. Actually, yes there were. I have heard people wish for a multiplayer Fallout game before (including myself). There are mods to make Fallout New Vegas and the like multiplayer as well.

2. The customer isn't always right. Sometimes the best call is to give the fandom something nobody asked for. A great example: Nobody asked for Piranha Plant to be in Smash Bros. Actually, Nintendo in general understands this pretty well.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Nov 10th 2018 at 2:27:40 AM

A cover.

Oh, HELL NO. Unity would be the absolute worst engine for a game the size of Fallout 4, for the simple reason that it cannot load or unload resources at runtime. All the models, all the textures, all the sounds, everything is loaded into the RAM on startup and stays there until you exit the game. Which means, to use an extreme example, if your game has 12 gigs of textures and models, you need at least 12 gigs of free RAM to even start the game (plus whatever else the sounds, scripts, etc. require) or else it crashes with an out of memory exception. And that's without considering Unity's memory leaks! Now consider that Fallout 76 is 45 GB without patches and do the math. QED.

Consider this. Kerbal Space Program, a game that uses Unity, is much smaller than Fallout 76 and is extremely crash-happy if it's modded unless you have obscene amounts of RAM. Up until the latest major update, you could pretty much forget modding it whatsoever if you had a 32 bit computer; in said update, the devs dropped 32 bit support altogether because the base game was getting so close to the RAM limit it was unplayable even without mods. On my computer with 4 gigs of RAM, KSP access violations all the time even without mods.

To run Fallout 76 on Unity, you'd need a fucking server mainframe just to have enough RAM, let alone CPU power for physics emulation (because Unity has a problem outsourcing that to the GPU as well).

Edited by amitakartok on Nov 12th 2018 at 4:59:47 PM

In more bug news, you cannot uninstall the beta unless you first buy the game.

So the game's almost coming. Beth did this post on the website — apparently 'C.A.M.P. building improvements, new quests and events, new Vaults opening, character respecing, a faction-based Pv P system, and much more' are in the works. I believe they mentioned they were hoping to support Push-to-Talk at some point in the future as well, which would be very, very good, you ask me.

I refunded the game in the end, but I might return to it another day. Kind of interested in seeing how the whole thing pans out post-launch, plus sales and the like.

On the PC at least the game server's are up early and everyone can play.

Edited by evilface on Nov 13th 2018 at 12:08:26 PM

The game has a Power Armor edition complete with actual helmet.

It's overpriced, looks, feels, and sounds cheap, the voice modulator is crap, the visor blurry, the carry bag cheap and flimsy, the inside smells like breathable cancer, and it's packing material sheds foam everywhere. It is also oversized, so if you have a smaller head, you'll need to pad the thing.

The steelbook reuses the same artwork twice on the inside. And there is no physical disc anyway, so why even bother?

The minifigs come in identical groups. They are all unicolor. The Bo S ones have a stupid pose, as do what passes for ghouls. It all looks rather cheap and childish, mostly because of the simplistic coloring. They might go well with your army men, though.

The map looks nice. I don't see the point in a glow in the dark map, though, unless you want to hang it on your wall. Only the water glows, and there are no secret messages.

It all just screams overpriced collector's items. I wouldn't waste 200 bucks on it.

Edited by Redmess on Nov 14th 2018 at 1:43:09 PM

That's a pro. As someone with an oversized head who can't wear a lot of helmets, I can say it's easier to pad a helmet then extend one that doesn't fit.

I feel like there have been a lot more of these overpriced "video game memorabilia" editions lately.

So just to recap, you pay 160 dollars for some cheap minifigs, a map, a redundant steelbook, and a crummy plastic helmet that may or may not be a health hazard.

It's practically a better deal than the fallout 4 pip boy edition which is over twice that price for a wrist thing that only works with certain smart phones.

Plus I honestly don't see the complaint. People can buy whatever they want, it's their money. It's not like half the game is locked unless you own the helmet.

Edited by Ghilz on Nov 14th 2018 at 9:38:33 AM

It's an embarrassment of riches.

It's not hurting anyone to buy a 5,000 (in this case) $200 hamburger, but why would you? The entire point of a hamburger/fast food in general is mass production at relatively minor cost.

It's hard to sympathize with the wealthy, or rationalize the things they spend money on. There's no arguing that point. I don't think there will ever be a day when spending more than the international equivalent of 60-70 bucks on a video game, no matter what edition, doesn't come off as silly or heinous.

That said, I'm more offended that this option even exists. Maybe if it was some kind of tie-in deal like, spend the extra $80-200 bucks for a tour of the game studio, or a signed copy, or any reward other than paraphernalia and an art book I could understand the allure. As it is, I wouldn't spend the money even if I had it to spend.

That said, I guess if anyone would rather have authentic merchandise from the game's distributors then all of this is justified.

Edited by Soble on Nov 14th 2018 at 7:49:59 AM

Yeah, people who go 'well, its their money, they can do what they want with it, theyre not hurting anyone" rarely consider that most people dont get to a point where they can dump 5k on a whim without some sort of career that makes life hell for the little people.

Not always. I make barely 50K CAD a year and I spend money on 300$ on third party transformers.

Not everyone is a monocle popping rich person standing on the back of unpaid minions.

It's not 5k, it's 160 bucks. you can budget that if it's your thing. Yeah, plenty of people can't, but like I said, I'm not finding the horror. And like I said, it's positively reasonable compared to Fallout 4's Pipboy edition.

It's not like the helmet edition is removing something from everyone else who buys the game, or comes with perks to give players who buy it a bonus. Heck, compare to plenty of other editions that'll charge you 20 to 30 dollars for an art book and sound track, both digital, the helmet and swag comes around to what, 70$ - 100$ That's actually pretty reasonable for that kind of collectible. For comparison, a light and sound Mjolnir is 100$ at most retailers, a Captain America shield is 110$.

It's about what you'd expect to pay for that kind of prop, once you factor the game price of the edition with all the content you also get

Edited by Ghilz on Nov 14th 2018 at 10:59:20 AM

It is worth noting that AAA games are getting a lot more expensive to make these days (due to rising customer expectations). The 60$ price tag is really not as sustainable as it used to be.

The person who spends 300$ on a game is helping the person who only wants to spend 60$. AAA companies can afford to sell games at 60$ because a minority are willing to spend a lot more than 60$.

Personally, I consider this a bad deal, but not one that actually angers me.

There are a few issues with that. One being that Bethesda isn't responsible for wealth inequality between their customers, or what the richer ones did to get that money.

Also I'd argue your argument implies that upmarketing in general is unethical, which is rather strange to me. There are some products only the super-rich can buy, but that doesn't necessarily mean those products shouldn't exist. There's nothing wrong with selling Ferraris after all.

Fallout 76 players are helping newbies by acting like NPCs

Hello friend, I have this very powerful weapon with low requirements. I don't need it anymore, but it ain't free. Please get me some Deathclaw skins so that I can finally craft some quality leather armor.

That’s nice of them

So, in light of that, anyone who has played the game, can you offer any spoilers about the main quest because I'm sort of curious what happens to this Overseer. I was silently critical of the choice to remove any and all human NPC's from the game but, I admit, that demands a different kind of storytelling and, hearing that other players are acting as "NPC's" now, I'm curious how it was handled.

Also, what are the funniest usernames you've encountered?

Edited by Soble on Nov 15th 2018 at 6:22:54 AM

XxxVault20NukeItxxX

Fuck me everywhere I read online and people I subscribe to are shitting on 76. It's super infuriating to me and I don't know what to do about it because it's everywhere.

So, Jim Sterling gives his take and it is not favorable to say the least. Some choice quotes:

"All Bethesda has done is justify the cynicism. This is a mess of a game- and yes, I mean a mess even by Bethesda standards."

"The core of the game is, at it's very best, boring. This is a dull, lifeless world..."

"... Fallout 76 expects you to make your own fun because the developers didn't bother putting the fun in themselves."

"... (Bethesda's) time as a market leader in the open world area has come and gone. Compared to pretty much any triple-A open world game that has come out this year, Fallout 76 is dated, old, archaic, cobbled-together, and it's sad to see what was once a trend-setter in the genre desperately, pitifully follow other companies' trends."

Considering that many other responses are in a similar vein, I guess the verdict on Fallout 76 is in. Can't say I'm all that surprised. I can vividly remember plenty of people being suspicious and/or dismayed upon first hearing this game's announcement, including myself. I'm not glad to have been vindicated- it's always better to have more good games than bad games after all- but it can't be said that people didn't see this coming.

The implementation of VATS is a particularly prominent sticking point. When the idea was first announced that there would be VATS in a multiplayer game, I couldn't possibly imagine how they could have made it work- and I was right. They didn't. VATS was always a crutch for the fact that Bethesda's shooting mechanics are substandard at best, and adapting it for real-time combat made it even worse, verging on straight-up broken.

Edited by Gault on Nov 15th 2018 at 6:29:08 PM

Shoulda revived Fallout Tactics for a Spin-Off game to be honest.

While I think Jim is being a bit too needlessly harsh on the game, he's not wrong by any means. It does feel void, and after a while the loop of "explore, kill, scavenge, build, repeat" becomes first tired, then pointless, and mechanics have not improved much since 4 to make any significant impression. The story is fine-ish, but it's not enough to hold it's own, and while the idea of "make a base with your friends in the game" seems nice, it's a novelty that I don't think has the power and longevity to keep this game going for long.

Screw the consensus. I'm having the most fun I've ever had a with a game in years in this game. It may be my favorite game world ever. If these naysayers drive off the playerbase and Bethesda stops supporting this game my faith in the game industry is over.