Fallout 76

[Chindie]

This came out today, there's barely any coverage of it, and what there is looks **** dreadful.

I hope Bethesda chalk this up as a failed experiment and never speak of it again as soon as possible.

I don't like the Fallout series, and never have, so I was never going to touch this, but making it into an MMO seems to have unsurprisingly made it even worse. I'm watching the Giantbomb QL live and it's... It's so bad. The world feels dead, despite there being enemies about, and the missions appear to be the worst of both Bethesda's 'radiant' quests and MMO hackneyed nonsense - kill 10 X, take 12 Y here. And it's got some lovely GAAS crap and microtransactions, because of course it does. And it's pug ugly.

Ugh.

[Dante_Lockhart]

First Fallout/ES game I've not even looked into. Knew from the start it would be shit.

I'll be honest, Fallout 4 didn't grab me as much as previous incarnations either.

[LakotaDakota]

48gb bugfix patch out today

[Chindie]

Maybe the patch has the game in it.

[PieFacE]

Jim Sterling's video of this was enough to put me off this game completely.

[Davkaus]

It's about time Bethesda got called out for their bullshit. 

The same days engine that should have been put out to pasture after Skyrim, some of the same bugs Bethesda games have had for 15+ years. 

I've come to realise that they can build an impressive world, but they don't make good games. Typically their mediocre mechanics and story are compensated for by the immersion of the world they make. Yet somehow they thought they could strip most of the good bits out and sell this PoS for full retail price, they should be ashamed. 

Doesn't bode well for tes6, but I think I'd be avoiding it anyway after fo4. 

[Daweii]

I played about 8 hours of the beta (essentially final code) and it was an absolute shit show. 

Where do I start? There were very few positives at all..

I suppose the main positive that this game has going for it is that its a bigger world, and a more varied world. If you like exploration in Bethesda games then this one might just be one of the best for that, but that's probably the only positive thing I can say about it. 

Now onto the negatives.

Performance is a pretty big one. I don't know what it's like on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 although I hear very bad things, but on PC even on my monolithic system (6700K, 1080Ti) I was seeing drops to as low as 20FPS which is absurd. This is a spec that makes the Xbox One X look archaic and outdated and it was struggling at times. This game didn't just ignore optimisation, it killed it, dismembered it and scattered its sorry remains all throughout the wasteland, its terrible. The areas this game performs best in are the areas at the start of the game, so some optimisation happened, but only insofar as to make the opening 3-4 hours tolerable before careening off a cliff performance wise in the hours after that. 

Balance was another big one. This game is made to be played in 4-player co-op at all times, and if you don't play in co-op then you're in for a rough time. I was Level 1 when I met my first pack of Level 5 Super Mutants. That's right they have high level enemies in the starting area because they assume you will be with friends to minimise the threat, but if you're not with friends then you get your shit pushed in by enemies you can't easily beat, not without wasting all your ammo, stims and whatever else the game gifted you at the start. This is a complete oversight and one only an inexperienced developer in online gaming would make. I understand having foes that require a team and that's not my issue here, my issue is putting such foes at the start of the game. It's very demoralising to get absolutely annihilated by something that shouldn't be roaming the starting area. 

Glitches and bugs are super prevalent here as well. I had an issue where the water shader decided to **** off which left the river a nice shade of white. I had countless issues of god rays clipping through the ground as the sun set, so even though the sun was no longer there you could see its rays through the ground which was lovely. This game doesn't just have texture pop in, it has literal town pop in at times. There were occasions where I would be walking down a hill and buildings would decide to spawn in 30 yards ahead of me which was incredibly jarring and immersion breaking. This game is an absolute mess.

I don't know how this game got released, but it did and I'm amazed that a AAA developer/publisher in 2018 would be okay with this. 

[Daweii]

This guy gets it.

[Chindie]

This thing just crashes from one disaster to the next.

If three nukes are launched, the game crashes.

The stupid expensive collectors edition was sold as having a canvas bag with it, but when delivered was actually a really shitty nylon one. Complaints lead to the best PR response ever...

Realising that telling your customers that your false advertising was something you weren't going to do anything about is a bad idea, they offered 500 Atoms, the games currency (worth £3.99). Hilariously this isn't enough to buy the in game version of the canvas bag.

Then it turned out they actually did send a higher quality bag to 'influencers'. In all likelihood those versions were sent by a different company, but it's still not a good look.

They have now decided to sort out the bag issue.

But then today it turns out they've leaked a bunch of personal info of players, and somehow their ticket system has been left with the ability for users to cancel other users support tickets.

This thing is nailed on the outright biggest mess of the year. Bethesda might need to do some soul searching. 

[Wainy316]

I think somebody has got it me for Christmas so guess I'll be giving it a go afterall.

[Chindie]

Ooft. You must have done something dreadful this year.

[Junxs]

Did not even know this was out, was in Smyths yesterday and saw it for £14

I picked it up with excitement thinking "a new fallout game this cheap!"

But when I read the back and it stated "every person you meet will be a human player" I put it down again. 

I don't like online games and just don't play them because of all the idiots out there not playing as they should, messing about and swearing non stop, furthermore the whole reason I love Bethesda games like Fallout series and Elder Scrolls is the engrossing stories and characters you meet. Just the thought of having no AI characters was enough to put me off. 

[Paddywhack]

23 hours ago, Junxs said:

Did not even know this was out, was in Smyths yesterday and saw it for £14

I picked it up with excitement thinking "a new fallout game this cheap!"

But when I read the back and it stated "every person you meet will be a human player" I put it down again. 

I don't like online games and just don't play them because of all the idiots out there not playing as they should, messing about and swearing non stop, furthermore the whole reason I love Bethesda games like Fallout series and Elder Scrolls is the engrossing stories and characters you meet. Just the thought of having no AI characters was enough to put me off. 

Yeah, I'm the same. I love the franchise but even if this was getting rave reviews I'd still give it a miss. I don't even like the concept, so the fact it plays badly too.

Sounds like it's been a massive flop. £14 already. What was the release price?

[Junxs]

11 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Yeah, I'm the same. I love the franchise but even if this was getting rave reviews I'd still give it a miss. I don't even like the concept, so the fact it plays badly too.

Sounds like it's been a massive flop. £14 already. What was the release price?

Yeah. I avoided elder scrolls online for the same reason. With PS5 rumours for end of this year / start of next year looks like we won't even have a proper elder scrolls game this whole generation. 

[Daweii]

38 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Yeah, I'm the same. I love the franchise but even if this was getting rave reviews I'd still give it a miss. I don't even like the concept, so the fact it plays badly too.

Sounds like it's been a massive flop. £14 already. What was the release price?

£54.99 was the release price for the standard edition. (£80 for the Tricentennial Edition and £174.99 for the Power Armour Edition)

The whole game has been a scam at this point. I mean some may argue that as they delivered a product that it isn't a scam, but I wouldn't say the product was worth what they were charging at all.

The current list of issues this game has had is astounding;

• Game releases broken and almost unplayable with no issues fixed from the beta.
• The Power Armour Edition (this was £174.99) was advertised with a premium West-Tek bag, but upon release the bag that fans expected was a cheap £1.50 nylon bag. 
• Bethesda responded to the nylon bag issue stating, "there was an issue during manufacturing, we will not be doing anything about it".
• Bethesda responded again stating that all players affected would receive 500 Atoms (premium in-game currency). 500 Atoms amounts to £5, which isn't even enough to buy the premium West-Tek bag in-game. 
• Bethesda responded a third time stating that anyone that gives proof of their Power Armour Edition purchase by January 31st 2019 would receive the premium bag they expected. These bags won't dispatch for another 6-months though. 
• Someone then discovered that while claiming their bag they were given access to the back-end of Bethesda's website. This granted them access to every Power Edition owners address, phone number, credit card details and more.
  • Yes. Not only did Bethesda try to rip off their most loyal fans with a cheap nylon bag, but they also leaked all of their info when trying to make up for it.
• Due to Bethesda's lack of knowledge of online games, players found and exploited duplication glitches. This was made worse by being able to trade freely, so these items wound up on eBay being sold for a premium.
• Bethesda patched the duplication glitch, but then players found a "dev room" in-game that has hundreds of every item in the game in it. So Bethesda solve one problem and then it's discovered the problem is arguably even worse.
• Bethesda teamed up with a company to make "Nuka Dark Rum". This is an £80 bottle of rum that comes in what looks like a really nice frosted glass bottle, but instead it's a basic bottle inside of a moulded plastic shell worth at best 50p.  
• Finally and likely not the last of this, but dataminers have found loot crates cutely named "lunchboxes" in the code. These lunchboxes are assigned the ATX prefix for the Atomic Store, so a future update will add loot crates to Fallout 76's premium store. 
  • Just to add. Also contained in the code are lines stating what will be in the lunchboxes. Aside from in-game items, players can also get XP boosts, damage buffs and stat modifiers which in a game with PVP is super pay to win. 

Fallout 76 isn't just a disaster of a release it's one that has completely destroyed Bethesda's reputation as a developer.

1 hour ago, Junxs said:

Yeah. I avoided elder scrolls online for the same reason. With PS5 rumours for end of this year / start of next year looks like we won't even have a proper elder scrolls game this whole generation. 

Elder Scrolls isn't even the next game they are working on. They are finishing up on Starfield which is set to release late-2020/early-2021 and then they will start full production on Elder Scrolls 6. 

I'd fully expect Elder Scrolls 6 in 2023/24 based on their current schedule. Now things could change, but after the Fallout 76 fiasco I think they are going to take it one game at a time and Starfield is 100% the next game to come out.

[BOF]

Rumour: Fallout 76 Could Go Free to Play Soon (in Australia but maybe elsewhere too), Copies Pulled From Shelves

Quote

Fallout 76 has had a rough launch but no one really knew how bad the situation is until reports of the game possibly going free to play started surfacing. The news remains unconfirmed but it looks like preparations for Fallout 76 going free to play are possibly underway. EB Games, one of the biggest video game retailers in Australia is reportedly removing physical copies of Fallout 76 from its shelves.

According to reports, EB Games has pulled new copies of Fallout 76 from its shelves. It is a distributor recall and has nothing to do with EB Games itself pulling the plug on Fallout 76. Tricentennial or Power Armour editions are still available so it is only the base game copies that are pulled for the time being.

EB Games Australia currently has no new base game physical copies on sale. In fact, there is a buy one get one free offer up for Fallout 76 pre-owned copies at EB Games Australia. Interestingly, at the time of this writing Amazon had 28 copies left in stock for Fallout 76 which is strange considering the size of this retailer. It seems the new shipment hasn’t arrived for Amazon sellers. It is curious how Amazon sellers are low on Fallout 76 physical copies.

Still, the game is available to buy at multiple retailers across the globe so we can not say for certain what exactly is going on. It is possible that this is just a situation with EB Games Australia because, at the time of this writing, EB Games New Zealand is still selling physical copies of Fallout 76 at its storefronts.

Considering how poorly the game sold across the globe, going free to play may not be the worst of ideas at the moment. Fallout 76 crashed and burned soon after its release and Bethesda’s PR team made blunders that made matters worse.

This is a developing story so will have more for you once more information comes to light.

 

[Dante_Lockhart]

Still wouldn't play.

[Xann]

An Atompunk punk group elsewhere has a fair few Fallout fans in their numbers. Many of them are watching this with interest.

 

[Daweii]

Atomic Heart is BioShock meets Bloodborne so while the game will likely be great on its own merits, it's not aiming to be the next Fallout.

It's the same as The Outer Worlds. Yes that game is written and produced by the creators of Fallout, but that game is more like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Fallout is unfortunately a very unique setting, and a very unique IP in the gaming world. The only game like Fallout is Fallout which is why shit like Fallout 76 is so frustrating because it's a waste of a great IP. 

[LakotaDakota]

Seems that german retailer Saturn are so desperate to clear their remaining stock they have started bundling physical copieswith the Xbox one X Fallout 76 bundle

Edited January 29, 2019 by LakotaDakota