Fallout: 76 - Take Me Home, Country Roads

Yeah, but that's the thing. Launching a nuke is generally a big thing in the Fallout universe. Blowing up Megatown in 3, exploding the Institute in 4, those are all big, important choices. They're heavy, special moments in the story. Fallout 76 looks at that and goes "let's launch nukes for fun and profit as many times as we want! Wheeeeeeee!", which feels kinda tone-deaf compared to the others.

To be fair

the nukes you use are used to defeat the Scorched Queen, who is genuinely an existential threat to all life on earth.

That is indeed a situation that calls for nukes

So it's not like this game is uniquely blase about it? I dunno

you can also just drop the nukes on somebody;s town, which was in theory part of the reason to do it

Nukes will never go away because...

[beat]

War never changes.

You do have to somewhat respect Bethesda for releasing the Wastelanders DLC as it's essentially them saying "You know what, we fucked up!", you don't really see that very often in rich companies.

Personally, I think the only other way they could have better mitigated the 76 debacle would have been to have another developer (preferably Obsidian but others would have been acceptable) make another Fallout spin-off as it might have gotten them back into the good graces of some of the fanbase and given them something else to focus on for a while. Plus, if it failed then they wouldn't be the ones to blame.

Is it? Is it really?

The whole point of these games and their subscriptions are to keep people playing as well as monetizing profit via purchases.

I find it hard to respect a company that spends an year and a half making increasingly worse screw-ups and reacting to all of them with "we're not planning on doing anything about it" or worse, no matter how good (and I'd call Wastelanders decent at best) an eventual fix they do roll in.

Least of all because I don't really see them releasing Wastelanders as them saying "we fucked up", but instead just trying to salvage a project that was already busted anyways into something that'll give them a bit more money. Lest we forget that all the cash-wringing methods are still there.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on May 1st 2020 at 2:12:00 PM

Yep. Quality of the DLC as a game aside, as an apology it has a price tag attached. If it was free, then it would be a pure apology.

I'm not saying they're wrong to charge money for it. But don't mistake another profit opportunity for them just being nice.

At the very least they learned from their mistake. Which is still something you rarely see in AAA game companies, just look at EA if you want an example.

I find that hard to believe as well, especially from Bethesda. Y'know, the guys who continuously port Skyrim to everything under the sun with an OS in it with the same bugs and issues? The guys who just reskinned Fallout 4 with a multiplayer framework, put it up as Fallout 76 and called it a day?

Come the next Fallout, or at least the next Bethesda game, and if they show clear signs of having improved on the problems people have been criticizing them for over the last solid decade, then maybe we can start claiming they learned their lesson. For now, I'm more inclined to believe they've been ridiculed into doing something they did not look like they wanted to do at all.

Uh, Wastelanders is a free update, there's no "price tag"

Except it works like an Expansion for other MMO games.

The whole point of them is to keep you playing for as long as possible.

But it was f r e e

Literally someone was trying to claim they were trying to charge for it

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on May 2nd 2020 at 3:26:43 AM

I swear I saw a price tag on Steam. It was part of the reason I didn't buy it when it came out, I was waiting for reviews (and now I'm busy).

EDIT: Oh, it was the Wastelanders Deluxe Edition. A bunch of extra stuff like bundles and whatnot.

Edited by Discar on May 2nd 2020 at 6:57:31 AM

they are trying to charge for it.

The expansion itself is free, yes. but pretty much all marketing I;ve seen for it is the aforementioned deluxe edition plastered on steam and psn and all that to try and entice people to buy it.

All optional, save for cosmetic items.

Hey does anyone feel like energy weapons got boosted?

I dont get encumbered just carrying energy ammo anymore and my Tesla rifle doesn't feel as useless as before wastelanders.

Optional, yes. Aside from all the known, underhanded ways games like these use to try and make people spend more money on them. Of which Bethesda has famously tried to have all of them.

I mean. It's not loot box or random. If you make a purchase what you buy is what you get. The currency you purchase with can be earned by doing objectives in game and is doled out fairly generously. I'm not seeing how wastelanders is any kind of money grab

It's still a collection of predatory forms of monetization. Just because they're not gambling doesn't make it all that better.

Wild hyperbole and catastrophization.

So which is it? "Tried all of them", or "not gambling"?

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on May 5th 2020 at 4:51:36 AM

Generally speaking, if there's a form of monetization in a game it's because the publishers want you to spend more money. Which means making the game so that not spending money makes for a less fun experience. Looking at you Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

I mean there are only like 4 items that can be purchased for real money that aren't cosmetic (not including the subscription service) and honestly they don't do much

• Weapon Repair kits: have never been in a situation where I needed to repair a weapon but didn't have the materials or a workbench nearby
• Scrap kits: very rarely encountered a situation where I needed to scrap all my junk in the field and didn't have a workbench nearby to do it
• Collectrons: The amount of stuff they give you is frankly pitiful
• Fridge: The only one that seems remotely useful and it isn't even available for purchase any more, for some reason

As much as I dislike how the game's launch was handled and how dishonest Bethesda was throughout the first year, the game isn't that bad anymore. The worst complaint I can think of is how weirdly evasive they are about whether or not they can restore lost items to an account (they can, and have done it for people in the past, but for some reason refuse to admit it and insist it's impossible whenever they're asked)

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on May 5th 2020 at 5:37:35 AM

sure.

But ten to one its way cheaper to buy those optional items from the store than grind for any of it because thats what you do with this sort of game. you make damned sure everything is technically earnable ingame but usually at at best a quarter of the speed of buying it.

It really isn't? Those items are MTX exclusive and there's barely any grind involved in circumventing them.

• Weapon repairs are relatively cheap in terms of scrap and scrap is plentiful, as are the workbenches required to repair weapons.
• Scrapping all your junk in the field is only ever useful is you are severely overencumbered and can't find a workbench, which are fairly rare, and stashing your junk is fairly easy as well.
• As I said the collectrons barely provide any advantage whatsoever
• The fridge, from what I've heard, is barely useful since it only slows the decay of food, which is relatively plentiful in the world anyway

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on May 5th 2020 at 6:02:19 AM

not to mention preserved foods and boiled or distilled water dont decay at all.

You get atom store credits for free anyway for completing challenges like picking a flower and killing an enemy you were already gonna kill.

Literally the game as is, has little to no predatory tactics.

The closest thing is Fallout 1st, which gives you "private" servers which are obviously recycled pu lic ones given you can find objectives already slain and looted. And gives you a unique cosmetic costume that appeals to New Vegas nostalgia. And also a camp away from C.A.M.P.

Bit odd to add premium membership to a game ur already charging a up front cost for but not unusual to have a membership to begin with.

And if you didnt already know this.....

Could it be out of inexperience?

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on May 5th 2020 at 8:55:38 AM