Fallout 76 - Review in Progress @ Gamespot
 

Gamespot checked out the online RPG Fallout 76:

More information.

A surprisingly honest review from Gamespot thus far. I barely ever visit that site these days since they typically gloss over the glaring problems of any game whose publisher paid them.

That was me in Fallout 4. The franchise is dead to me now, but I do so love to watch the pyre.

While Fallout is certainly not "dead to me", the fact that I enjoyed building bases more than anything else in Fallout 4 is telling. Since I like beating a dead horse, I'll say that Fallout has certainly lost its edge since New Vegas.

Wow, even mainstream media (partly) recognizes how awful this game is?

Check out Metacritic, all 3 versions(PC/X1/PS4) are being massacred by people… Lolz.

Me to but I like using a few settlement mods that automate it.:nod:

Link - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/21096919

As it got boring quickly rebuilding the same settlements every play through.

You know it's bad when your paid reviews can't even give it a pass.

Yeahhhh, this was a mistake. Kind of "Emperor has no clothes" moment for Bethesda.

Reason people like their games is that sense of "live in another world", that no one quite does, at least not in the same style as they do.

NPCs, quests, story, progression, combat, performance, etc, etc are all ( very) poor..but they add a mixing, addictive loop to it.

Remove it and you can't really ignore how clunky, shallow and pointless gameplay really is.

Really, did anyone ever suspect that this thing would even remotely be a success? It's still early but I think we've not heard the worst of it yet.

The game was in a position of having to prove itself from the outset and then as soon as they announced no npc's it was guaranteed to be garbage. I really don't know what they were thinking with that decision.

I'm sure it'll be successful from a profit standpoint - really, how much money did they really invest into this recycled garbage anyway? :P

The question is whether it'll be successful in the eyes of the bean counters that expect 20 million sold units as their standard. I doubt there's *that* many completely blind Beth fanboys with their head in the sand - but one never knows.

Because 'Oblivion with guns' had worn out its welcome as a moniker, we now have 'Fallout with Dragons'.

Seems like this holiday season will be remembered as the year of of clusterfuck rpg releases. Too bad. I’m still backlogged and playing blood borne and POE1 so I’m good…

Having watched some of the gameplay videos, there still seems to be some elements of the usual gameplay, I'm talking fallout 4 (which I did enjoy). Ill no doubt pick this up at some point before Christmas, it wont be the first xx amount wasted on a game and it certainly wont be the last.

Wow this thing is completely shattering all records for low critic scores of a game from Bethesda. Critic reviews on Metacritic, across all platforms, so far: 30, 50, 56, 60, 65, 76. If those scores had all been submitted for a single platform, the game would now be sporting a 56 on Metacritic, which is shovelware territory. ME:A was poorly-received enough to get a studio closed down, and it ended up in the low 70's. Will be interesting to see how they spin this disaster. With any luck, many heads roll.

Seems like a lazy and failed attempt to retrofit a tired old engine with netcode, compounded by not even bothering to add meaningful content.

There's also this mod to transfer your own settlements you like from some older character or some other builds from other people to your game: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/22442

I don't play online games anyway, so my interest in this is limited. I was following the footage though, and it looks like Fallout 4 more or less, just more boring. I'm not even sure this is targeted at Fallout fans that much. The survival game crowd seems to be mostly turned off though.

I'm not sure why some of those people who loved the building aspect in Fallout 4 seem to think this is a good replacement. As this is an online game, the build limit is quite brutal. I guess YouTubers have to look at their bottom lines and transfer to the new game to keep their viewer base happy.

They are not floating in any market so have very few people/organizations to convince. And they are probably launching that as a first ride, a beta test before their space game, a new Elder Scroll and so on. Probably been presented as this internally.

It is not like if it was the first time they have shown they do not give a flying shit, most of their game have only been supported by the community for years. Now they have shut down that possibility, it is only them and it shows.

I agree, it looks like a marketing test. They sell power armor skins for $18 within this game, and other inconsequential stuff for lots of real money. There's also the, as yet unused, event tab in the store. In Fallout 4, they already sold a game mode for $9 on the Creation Club (attracting and beating waves of enemies while winning "trophies").

And now for something different. An opinion from someone who has actually played the game. Someone who doesn't do hysterical Youtube videos for a living, with names like Angry Joe, Terrible Timmothy the Tantrum Throwing Toddler, or Screaming Lord Byron. How can anyone even stand to watch those clowns?

Metacritic? What is a Metacritic? There's this old fashioned concept where people actually do their own research and decide if they want to try something or not. I guess it's not too popular these days.

The game is a lot of fun, period. Nearly all of the people I know who actually play the game, like it. It seems most of the people who have jumped on the hate train, have never played the game. Figures.

Don't like PvP? Don't engage in it. Don't like microtransactions? Don't go looking for them, because if you don't, you will not see them. 50+ hours in, never been attacked by anyone, never seen a microtransaction. It's Fallout, it's fun. All of the hate is totally uncalled for.

I agree. This is more like a public experiment, a testing of the waters. and I'm sure their expectations for its reception were modest. And, as you say, I think it speaks to their blase overconfidence.

I don't get the hate for the game, at all.

But one observation I've made that might interest people, is that I'm sure most of the people in the game are playing solo. Which tells me that it is mostly traditional Fallout fans, and not some new crop of PvP players, which Bethesda may have hoped to attract. But PvP is not that much fun in the game. Solo is fun and is what most people are doing.

So when I say PvP is not fun in the game. You can attack someone in the game who is not interested in PvP. But it is really not worth the trouble. You will do very little damage to them. They can just run away and disappear off the map. They can just fast travel away. They can jump servers. They can block you. If you do manage to kill them, you'll get a bounty on your head and will be wanted. And it's 100% guaranteed if there are many players on the map at the time, you'll get hunted down. Game is not made at all for involuntary PvP. Which is probably why most PvP people are saying it's not fun.

I think most players would rather not even have the PvP, but it's still very playable in solo mode.

Stop trying to redefine what playing solo means.

If I sit in the same room as 10 other people, I am not alone. Regardless of whether or not I directly interact with them.

Sounds like you are confusing solo with single player.

The game isn't dedicated to anything and ends up failing at every aspect. It's a crappy shooter and a crappy rpg and crappy builder/survival game/looter/etc. On top of that, it looks ugly And runs very poorly at the same time.
Seriously, this would likely be cancelled by most AAA publishers.

I really have no idea what they were trying to do here. It would've been better if they just let ID design shooting and make it open world PvP in Fallout universe.

Or full blown faction based MP…now that would be interesting.
Pick a role at the start, each with different progression/perks/stats/skills/gear, etc: NCR, Legion, Brotherhood , Supermutants, Ghouls, etc.
Large scale war where you build bases for your faction and try to take control of whole territory.
And each group having different build options, sort of like in strategy games, offense/defense.
I could see something like this selling like crazy. Though old school fans would probably still resent this, this time even "mainstream" simply isn't willing to tolerate standard issues from Bethesda.

Sooo, what are you trying to say? You don't like it?:)

No, you are. This is a multi-player experience where players are tasked to make this world interesting to each other. You make it sounds like if it was some SP game with fun quests, lots of exploration and when you are done, well, you have finished the game. There is no such thing, quests are poor, there is no NPC and there is nothing to achieve as a goal for any single player here.

This is a MMO light, like Conan, it is a persistent world where you are supposed to gather resources with friends, build a base, trade with other bases, attack them if you want to and so on and so on.
That is what the game is about. People are supposed to play it for months.
And it is piss poor at that.

Bethesda being Bethesda they tried the theme park approach, they just dropped the charade about this is a destroyed world and you have to survive it.
Everything you knew has been destroyed? No problem, you do not care, gather some friends, and build a base. You are one cold bastard.
In truth, you have nothing really to survive to since other survivors cannot really kill you if you do not want to, food and water are never really an issue and radiations are a mere inconvenience.

What about the other survivors who were not in any Vault? Did they become cannibals, raiders, slavers or whatever they had to do to survive? No, just no, only voices on some tapes because bloody tapes are the kind of technology to survive a nuclear after effect.

Come on, enjoy it if you want but do not present as what it never was meant to be.

Could be but I'm unsure. So lemme try to explain what I think.

Solo playing (viola) in a singleplayer game (orchestra):


Not solo but coop (two oboe) in a singleplayer game (orchestra) would be this:


MMO where everyone plays for themselves as the "game" is about nothing really:


What's fun, what's more fun and what's not really fun - you choose.

While interesting, I don't think the rest of the game has enough depth to really offer rewards for a development of factions. Ideally, you want an economy and at least one town/city for each of those factions. Something that gives credence to the group beyond, "ME SMASH!" A post-apocalyptic setting is ripe for setting up vastly different factions with completely isolated motivations (potentially hearkening back to Tim Cain's ideas for fallout 1).

But this is all impossible with Bethesda really. They are not up to the task of developing complex systems in their games - whether due to ineptitude or sheer laziness - and instead rely solely on physical world building with little regard for the systems and motivations for that world. Why have ghouls, supermutants, and raiders become mindless targets in the latest Bethesda Fallouts? Simply because providing a backstory and potential civilization-altering paths would require too much effort and be prohibitive for copy/pasting.

Todd Howard's PR-speak for using the same engine for TES VI can thusly be applied not simply to the tech, but also the design of Bethesda games:

It's simply more "efficient" to create a bland world without interesting systems of society. This is all well and good with their TES series that relies on a derivative fantasy setting (for which consumers have come to expect droll and cliche settings), but it's all so much more glaring when juxtaposing that design theory into a post-apoc setting that could truly nourish the inherent chaos of lawless society.

So, instead we get an endless scavenger for respawning junk and level 50 zombies.

Ok, just checked the meta critic reviews page. The overall rating based on player reviews is sitting at a shocking 3.0 out of 10. That is based on over 2000 ratings.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-76

That has to be a record low not only for a Bethseda game but I'm thinking also for a major game release from a AAA video game developer, at least in the recent past.

Could be the lowest. Battlefield 5 is slightly better (3.4 from console users). CoD: Black Ops 4 too (3.5 from PC users). Same goes for Destiny 2 (3.5 from PC users).

If we take singleplayers into account, then FIFA 19 is probably the worst scored AAA title by users ever (less than 2.0 across all platforms).

Normies are finally figuring out stuff about Bethesda Fallout that I already figured out with Fallout 3 - it is crap.

Have to add something.
I'm not sure what's with Battlefront 2 metacritic pages. But something is fishy. That game had user score around 1 back in the day. Go here and then check the release date and scores on both PC and xbox versions then try to return to PS page - not possible:
https://www.metacritic.com/game/play…battlefront-ii

Wo do I e-mail about this? Jim Sterling? Yong Yea? Or that basement/attic guy that gives @crpgnut the creeps? :D

… and that's a synonym.

https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/2437
https://www.nerfnow.com/img/2437/3782.png

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2…6/radio-active
https://photos.smugmug.com/Comics/Pa…2100x20000.jpg

https://cad-comic.com/comic/it-changed/
https://cad-comic.com/wp-content/upl…813.x60343.png

None of us should really be surprised, I mean look at just how bad Fallout four was. To this day I still cannot believe I actually played through the entire game, when compared to previous Fallout games, it failed utterly on so many levels. This online fiasco just takes that about ten steps further in a very wrong direction.

Sorry can't agree with this.
If you apply just two mods, FO4, IMO, gets very close to 9/10. These two:
- no trashmobs respawn
- no "another settlement needs" rubbish
Without those two mods I would probably uninstall it after a couple of hours.

But FO76 is MMO. You can't mod everspawning trashmobs and fetch radiant crap out of it, right? :)

Your standard for a good game is pretty binary, Joxer.

You can't mod anything until, at the earliest, November 2019 and the introduciton of private servers. If the game survives that long.

Well, there's this: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout76?tab=new+this+week

All client-side though. No removal of trash mobs.

Personally I could never get that damn transfer settlement mod to work in Fallout 4. I tied to transfer a few of mine, and even downloaded a few off of nexus to try out.