Fallout 76 » Discussions


Fallout 76 B.E.T.A. thoughts so far (spoiler-free)

  • November 8, 2018
    So on mobile and don't can't say much but I think that your opinion is expected (and totally great to share mate, just because the people enjoying it are vocal doesn't mean you shouldn't speak up) for a more MMO-focused gamer. Really I don't like calling 76 an MMO and I think if you look at it that way its flawed as all hell. But as a Party-Based online RPG (score it, specify Bethesda RPG) it works quite well. Bethesda's focus as far as I can tell, making an actual RPG first and an MMO second. Because yeah it had its flaws and is clearly console focused, but the game has a focus on RP and story that I've rarely seen in an MMO. That said, I'm not an MMO player at all so I could be wrong. Thanks for the thoughts regardless Duvain. Always great to hear note thoughts.
  • November 8, 2018

    Good to see this is not coming out as just me bashing FO76. :P

    @Dragonborn - Yeah for people who look at it just from a MMO game technical perspective things don't bode well for Bethesda and there will be quite a bit of complaining down the line I believe. To be honest I didn't bother with the main quest I just roamed around gathering things and exploring and most things were explained to me since I 've never played any FO game before. It was not bad but coupled with the other issues I mentioned it toned down the experience. Most of the fun I think in the game would be the roaming, gathering and building things especially if you have some friends to join. Also the PvP looks kinda meh from what I 've seen but didn't bother to look for trouble. :P If it has indeed good RPG elements that's cool but I saw a lot of negative comments regarding its main questline and that was what most of the people I know who played the game told me. I really think the game would be much better overall if they took more time testing and polishing it but for "reasons" probably they had to push it out at this point.

    @Feint -  Oh yeah I saw this 30GB patch mentioned. Yeah the final version is certainly not released but from what I 've seen with other games the time is very limited to adress all of these issues and it gave me the impression they meant they will be adressed later on during patches for the game. A hardcore Bethesda fan friend I have told me he didn't like the main questline of the game much and he didn't know how to feel about the lore of the game, me knowing nothing about FO can't say much on this though. :P

    All in all like I said it would have been a much better game if they took some more time developing and testing it. That is what it all came down to me. The game just needed more time in development more testing and more polishing and if they did that they would also have made progress with their engine's capabilities in general because quite a few of these problems I was made aware that existed in FO 4 as well and were fixed by mods. And not to kid ourselves quite a few problems have been solved already by others in their games so it wouldn't be so hard for Bethesda to solve them as well.

  • November 8, 2018

    Good to see this is not coming out as just me bashing FO76

    Nah, I did the first thing when Fallout: 4 came out, you'd see me here pretty often with topics and comments that made this seem tame :P I've grown to enjoy the game a bit more over time (because I said fuck the Main Quest, Bethesda can't write one for shit anymore) but the early days were me at a critical high. I think as long as your not here being an ass about it, which you definitely aren't, then say anything negative you want. Honestly my hope is that Bob in Bethesda Accounting reads our site, and drops a piece of paper off with some ideas and they add some changes based on some comments. Good ole' Bob :D

     Yeah for people who look at it just from a MMO game technical perspective things don't bode well for Bethesda and there will be quite a bit of complaining down the line I believe. To be honest I didn't bother with the main quest I just roamed around gathering things and exploring and most things were explained to me since I 've never played any FO game before. It was not bad but coupled with the other issues I mentioned it toned down the experience. Most of the fun I think in the game would be the roaming, gathering and building things especially if you have some friends to join. Also the PvP looks kinda meh from what I 've seen but didn't bother to look for trouble. :P If it has indeed good RPG elements that's cool but I saw a lot of negative comments regarding its main questline and that was what most of the people I know who played the game told me. I really think the game would be much better overall if they took more time testing and polishing it but for "reasons" probably they had to push it out at this point.

    Oh yeah, I'm 100% with you on the whole...not sure how to phrase it. I don't think it's rushed per se, but...I think they are releasing the game too early and should've focused on B.E.T.A's over a longer period of time (maybe just do these BETA weekends or something every two weeks for three months or something. Not sure but there needed to be more). I think Bethesda's entire approach to the BETA was flawed as all hell and it's going to cost them, and the game in the earlier days because there's less time for these changes to be made and for potential players to really enjoy themselves. I'm only picking it up myself because I can get it for $29 instead of $100, otherwise I'd be waiting until...May 2019?

    But yeah, I'm not sure about the PvP myself, I actually like a few of the concepts but they've had a tough time balancing it with stopping assholes from being assholes. There is a sort of established PvP system that I've heard someone talk about where you listen to a Radio Station and enter a sort of 'quest' to fight five other players for a reward. It's interesting but we look at some of the most popular PvP games (Destiny as a fairly solid example) and there's a huge difference in how they structure it because Fallout:76 doesn't have a seperate world-space for PvP or even PvP servers or anything like that. It's PvP meant to encourage Roleplay, and that's...weird you know, it's hard to grasp properly and obviously not easy to create. 

    But yeah, I don't expect anything from the Main Quest after Skyrim/Fallout 4 (let's be honest, Skyrim's Main Quest is not why we play the game) but I have to praise the fact that it's a lot easier to just roam around and ignore the MQ. In Skyrim and Fallout: 4 you were constantly being pushed towards it and some of the better content (Civil War in Skyrim, Factions in F4) were partially locked behind it. Sucked shit and made the game bad to play at times. The locations seem hit and miss, some are more like Embershard Mine with no story and nothing to say, but others have so much character and flair that it's kind of boggling. I've really enjoyed the Holotape focus from what I've heard from them, Bethesda has (luckily) put a fair amount of work into making locations feel interesting at least the first time you find them.

    Heh, but yeah, for every positive I've seen there's been a negative. It's not a perfect game and if it weren't for that deal I mentioned, I wouldn't even fully consider buying the game before half a year has passed. It's flawed, but I'm hoping for the best :)

  • November 8, 2018

    Yeah they certainly could and maybe should have taken some more time and solve a few of the more pressing issues. 

    Regarding PvP it's a hard thing to get it right in a game but haven't seen much yet although a seperate world space for pvp would be good and if they go for the survival pvp type experience like Rust or other such games well just remember to mute people it will be a damn hell in there. :P

    Regarding quests, yep after Skyrim I also gave up on them writing anything good as far as big questlines go and I recently made an Oblivion playthrough and the difference in quality was just too much, like very, very much... 

    Let's just hope they will at least improve the game down the line for the people that like it and the FO fans who wouldn't want to see the franchise being trashed left and right on reddit, youtube etc.

  • November 8, 2018

    Yeah they certainly could and maybe should have taken some more time and solve a few of the more pressing issues. 

    Definitely wouldn't have heard.

    Regarding PvP it's a hard thing to get it right in a game but haven't seen much yet although a seperate world space for pvp would be good and if they go for the survival pvp type experience like Rust or other such games well just remember to mute people it will be a damn hell in there. :P

    True, true. I'm just not entirely sure if there's a perfect way to structure the PvP for Fallout: 76, but I haven't seen enough to tell. All I know is that it's not nearly as annoying as most people thought it would be.

    Regarding quests, yep after Skyrim I also gave up on them writing anything good as far as big questlines go and I recently made an Oblivion playthrough and the difference in quality was just too much, like very, very much... 

    It's kind of baffling that there is that quality jump. It gets worse when you look at some of the smaller quests and the quality involved there with quests existing with actually intertaining stories, or at least well-written ones. Still nothing like Oblivion's questlines (or Morrowind's MQ) but still enough sprinkled through the game that it leaves you a bit confused when you see a poorly written story.

    Let's just hope they will at least improve the game down the line for the people that like it and the FO fans who wouldn't want to see the franchise being trashed left and right on reddit, youtube etc.

    Yep, I mean fans seem pretty divided on it. It's interesting because I haven't seen a game with such a divise starting period. I mean, the closest thing might be Destiny 2? Not sure, it's just a weird situation where some people think it's the best Fallout game, and others thing it's the worst Fallout Game/MMO in recent history.

  • November 8, 2018

    Regarding the divide in the community. I think the divide in FO / FO76 community is mostly from the technical issues the game has, I mean the game hasn't even accounted for people with health issues for example eyes (I felt uncomfortable after one and a half hour playing fov/dof cause me problems sometimes in general), hands (keybinds) or have impaired hearing or can't hear at all or have speech issues and there are people with those problems coming out and saying that they can't play due to this and some of these things missing were already in games from like back in 2000... there is even a meme calling FO76 to FO63 due to the fps lock :D That brings us to what I 've seen In the community of the game, there are those who while playing the game makes them uncomfortable and can't play so they are expressing this, then there are those who say hm yeah it has some bad things but let's deal with it for now and see how it goes and then there are the people who no matter those elements that are bad in the game will always defend it, at least these are the "teams" I 've noticed on reddit and youtube. Always speaking from a third person perspective since to be honest I 'm not that interested in this game or franchise (I am thinking though to give the other FO games a try I was advised to get FO New Vegas over the other titles first) and I just have my opinion on it as an average dude that has played a lot of games and mmos etc. :P

    Regarding the jump in quality. The quality jump might not be such a big surprise all things considered with where the gaming industry is heading. There is a huge wave of finding new ways to milk as much money as possible at the moment in the gaming industry in general and many things are changing (see the bad PR of Blizzard and Diablo Immortal a few days ago in the west market), their buiseness model is changing. It is unlikely that we will get a game again like Morrowind (which I haven't played but I will take the word of many other ES fans) or Oblivion not only from Bethesda but from any other company pretty much, because "the people above" want a game that will be simple enough for a 10 year old kid to be able to play easily and the parents of said kid will buy the game of course along with us the older gamers that will say this and that but at the end of the day will still buy the game. They do over simplified games hyping them with all the buzzcrap and then push them out. I believe in the future we will see big  but still not necessarily good games from those heavily leaning on microtransactions because yeah we 've reached that point where they want to make microtransactions a thing in single player games (Assassin's Creed for example). So from what I was looking into things look bleak in gaming for us who played the 2000+ at least older games.

    I 'm speaking for the gaming in general not just Bethesda here.