Fallout: 76 - Take Me Home, Country Roads

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Where talking to NPC resets your XP or weight capacity or some other stupid bug.

I had my best melee weapon taken from me. A Grognak axe that did double damage to healthy enemies and absorbs hp for every swing. RIP healing assassin axe

Fallout 76 is out on Steam. Getting past the "Bethesda is evil and we hate them" reviews, reception seems moderately positive.

I watched a bit of some people streaming it, and my first impressions are good. Now, one poor NPC spawned with no head, but such is life in the Wastes. Mainly I've heard positive things.

I've been eyeing Wastelanders with a sort of cautious ambivalence since they started to show it off, so I'll be pleased if this is a turning point for the game, although it'll still probably be a bit before I jump into the game even so.

Well, or it would be, but Bethesda seem to have accidentally granted me a Steam copy, I assume because I briefly had a pre-order (that I cancelled before the game's initial release). I'm waiting on a support ticket before I just download and play it, though; I don't know if they'll be taking that back or what. I've heard a few others get similarly lucky, although it's mostly been drowned out by other commentary. I'm admittedly in not much of a room to complain, as things stand now.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Apr 15th 2020 at 9:48:54 AM

Based on what I've seen:

• The original main quest has been updated to take the new characters into account. Possibly meet the Overseer in the flesh at the end?
• The new main quest involves a legendary treasure hidden somewhere in the region and many, many people are out to find it. The two biggest groups after it are the Foundation, a philantropist group of settlers who are basically a cross between the Followers and the Minutemen, and the Crater, a loosely-knight group of Raiders who are, well, Raiders.
• There is a reputation system for these two groups. Apparently, you eventually unlock someone who can help you reset your reputation with a group that's hostile to you for a fee at one of the very first places you're likely to find after starting fresh.

...sigh... it was good while it lasted. But Bethesda. Bethesda never changes.

Wastelander NPC characters are looting dead players, causing them to lose equipment permanently.

The best part is that they only go for weapons stronger than their own, and start using them afterwards, which, in conjunction with the persistent servers and the fact that you can't kill an NPC, means soon enough we might have some really overly powerful NPC characters.

Bethesda has yet to comment.

That's amazing. Like, if there wasn't such an insane grind to unlock those weapons at stake, i'd really like this as an actual mechanic.

Oh, no question. If this was intentional and you had any way to get your weapons back, this would be a great idea!

Sadly, it's just a bug. Bound to be patched out in a few.

Aside from this, how is the Wastelanders dlc in terms of content and quality?

It's actually a pretty good update. Amazing what adding a few NP Cs and dialogue mechanics adds to a game. I'd almost say it's worth the price tag now, but honestly 40$ is still a little steep for what you get. On sale though, for sure, worth playing.

Eh. "Humans in 76 will be other players" was a neat concept. I still think people rushed into this game ignoring that part.

If everything else hadn't gone to pot the whole "no human NPC" thing would've been cool.

If it makes this game worth the money though, and after everything the playerbase has gone through, who I am to argue?

The thing is. the devs also we found out expected everyone to just go pvping like mad.

Which to be fair, Survival mode (Now removed) proved we absolutely would.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Apr 25th 2020 at 1:36:53 PM

One article said that they were stunned most people wanted more lore and roleplaying in interviews and interaction.

Which was received like, "Who cares about lore and roleplaying?"

Which to me says everything that was wrong at Bethesda.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 26th 2020 at 8:01:07 AM

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Though I don't think that is exclusive to Bethesda. I think that is a wider issue with video games in the past few years: too much focus on story-less multiplayer and deathmatches.

Apparently they never noticed that New Vegas is one of the most highly praised games in the series for those exact reasons.

I think there is room for both, but they should have made it clearer from the start that it wasn't going to be a traditional Fallout game, and that there would be more traditional games in the future.

I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have any new Fallout ones planned.

Yeah it kinda came off as the devs dont understand fallout as a series at all and were shocked when a lot of players started opening up shops or interacting peacefully.

They apparently thought people would just be dropping nukes and raiding each others camps and therefore thats all the game needed

Edited by Midgetsnowman on Apr 26th 2020 at 9:12:08 AM

Yeah, they've still got to utterly foul-up ES:VI with the zombie engine that Bethesda would like us to call "The Creation Engine", but everyone who has to put up with the damned thing call "Gamebryo" before they even think about fouling up Fallout 5.

And if Howard and Hines think the kicking they've had since this game launched was bad, they've not seen anything yet.

No bigger fuckup than looking at Fallout and thinking "okay, the franchise is clearly about how fun it is to drop nukes on things".

They took a franchise that's been almost nothing but story-heavy single-player games and decided to make a story-free Pv P game. This might have worked a little better if they'd tried it with an original IP.

It never would have worked because Fallout's combat is shit compared to...just about every other shooter PVP game out there.

People played Fallout in spite of its mechanics.

... that is quite accurate and I hate you for it

@The Lovecraftian This has been mentioned before, but it should be noted that most Fallout games actually do include the opportunity to set off nuclear explosions, and many of these decisions are portrayed morally or neutrally. For example, it's possible to set off a nuclear explosion to defeat the antagonist of Fallout 1 IIRC.