Fallout 76. Worried? Excited? Both?

[Brookshw]

That's what I've got so far anyway. A bit of statement combined with a bit of guesswork. Wish I could do more.

To add to this, we're not going to get a ton of build area to set up shop, they've said what you see in the videos is about the size you can build.

I'm wondering if new tile sets and building options will be popping up on the creation club (and if so, ffs, they just tricked me into buying them a'la season pass in F4)

[Stuebi]

I missed this, so I wanted to address it.



I apologize. I wasn't targeting you in particular for my statement, though I realize it certainly must have looked that way. I was just frustrated about the general atmosphere. People hating on the game because it was a "cheap cash grab battle royale bandwagon train crash with no plot", and then discounting evidence that their initial impression wasn't accurate. The level of negativity was, at a point in this thread, just unfathomable to me, and I couldn't understand the benefit anyone gained from it. Your post was the last push to drive me to ask a question that was on my mind, but it was not directed at you. Everyone has a right to their opinion. Even if that opinion disagrees with mine. Especially if it disagrees, actually, as I believe that opinions that aren't challenged will rot rather than be refined.

I should not have couched such a question in the form of an attack. I was frustrated and behaved poorly. Again, my apologies.

All good, I didnt take it as an attack, I sympathize a lot. When they announced FF15 everybody in my regular group was basically falling over each other in calling how it's gonna suck and be terrible and what not. It was quite disheartening, because the Trailers and Footage was just exciting enough to make me hope. The fact that I couldnt discuss the game at all without somebody going "Nah man, it's gonna suck." put me off quite a bit back then.

Also, I could stand to give the Devs some more credit, a lot of the footage so far and what they are saying implies at least that they are trying hard to make this good. I was wrong on doomsaying releases before.



As far as world size goes, I have to second the whole "95% of buildings can't be entered.". Size alone doesnt mean much, if theres barely anything in it to actually enjoy. Now before somebody points it out, I get that we are in a wasteland scenario. So the whole "A lot of empty space" thing is kind of a given. I'd still vastly prefer it if you did not spend most of your time trekking trough basically nothing.

F4's one aspect that was actually pretty good was exploration. If you entered a location, there was usually a bunch of stuff to be found. Bobbleheads, Power Cells, a weapon or a magazine, maybe some background Lore or a sidequest. I hope they stick more to that side of things. There are few things quite as sad as when you clear a location and basically get nothing beyond vendor trash. Which is a problem Skyrim was suffering from harshly, and I hope they learned from it.

[Brookshw]

Just saw this mod for F4, had to share because it made me laugh.

[Wardog12356]

Fallout 76 lets you play single player, but its easier to do it on multiplayer.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Fallout 76 lets you play single player, but its easier to do it on multiplayer.

[Citation Needed]

They've already stated the only servers will be Bethesda public servers, which necessitates a multiplayer experience. You can play solo all you like, but there's going to be other players on the server.

[Erloas]

Yeah, what they said is that you can play solo, which is distinctly different from playing single player.

[snowblizz]

Alot of this sounds distinctly like ARK Survival Evolved (basically if I imagine ARK with a Fallout mod the things described would be possible and true simultaneously even though somewhat contradictory).

Which is a multiplayer game, that you can start a (private) single player instance on.

That would be one way to have your cake and eat it.

Whether it will be close to that I guess we'll see.

I never buy games new so anything that relies on other people existing is a non starter. People have moved on when I can be bothered to buy.

ARK I play strictly single palyer, the stuff I hear about the multipalyer servers is so off putting.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Alot of this sounds distinctly like ARK Survival Evolved (basically if I imagine ARK with a Fallout mod the things described would be possible and true simultaneously even though somewhat contradictory).

Which is a multiplayer game, that you can start a (private) single player instance on.

That would be one way to have your cake and eat it.

Whether it will be close to that I guess we'll see.

I never buy games new so anything that relies on other people existing is a non starter. People have moved on when I can be bothered to buy.

ARK I play strictly single palyer, the stuff I hear about the multipalyer servers is so off putting.

Bethesda has outright stated that there will be no private servers at launch, so there will be no single player instances to begin with. And it's heavily implied that private servers are going to be paid content, or some kind of subscription/monthly maintenance fee, but that is implied, not explicit, so it might not be accurate.

[snowblizz]

Bethesda has outright stated that there will be no private servers at launch, so there will be no single player instances to begin with. And it's heavily implied that private servers are going to be paid content, or some kind of subscription/monthly maintenance fee, but that is implied, not explicit, so it might not be accurate.

"Private server" may not be same as single player.

In ARK, there are official ie developer provided servers. Private servers you can set-up and play on with friends. And Local instances.

Hence why I say it can be ARK-like and still have single-player even though "private servers" aren't available to start.

It's also entirely assbackwards to subscribe to a single player game while not doing so the the multiplayer version (the servers have running costs).

I'm trying to make sense of the information given and the ARK-like model is the way I can get it to compile.

[Mechalich]

Bethesda has outright stated that there will be no private servers at launch, so there will be no single player instances to begin with. And it's heavily implied that private servers are going to be paid content, or some kind of subscription/monthly maintenance fee, but that is implied, not explicit, so it might not be accurate.

If Bethesda actually sticks to this, it is likely to be a disaster. Official servers in survival games - whether it be ARK, Rust, Conan Exiles, or anything else, are notorious for getting flooded by exploiters/griefers and making it impossible for casual players to actually play the game. Additionally, the usually launch blitz means that a game relying only on official servers will never manage to have enough space at the start and people will ragequit due to being unable to login.

[Scowling Dragon]

The reason as to why their doing this is pretty obvious:
Microtransactions sell more than anything else in the gaming industry at the moment.
However, Bethesdas modding community is too strong. So if they can make a situation where modding is illegal everybody is forced to buy microtransactions.

This is not to the players benefit.

[Erloas]

If Bethesda actually sticks to this, it is likely to be a disaster. Official servers in survival games - whether it be ARK, Rust, Conan Exiles, or anything else, are notorious for getting flooded by exploiters/griefers and making it impossible for casual players to actually play the game. Additionally, the usually launch blitz means that a game relying only on official servers will never manage to have enough space at the start and people will ragequit due to being unable to login.

While I can't say how Bethesda would handle a situation like this, at this point in time highly scalable and adaptive servers are easy to come by. While a game like EVE couldn't do it, and traditional MMOs would probably have more issues, the server requirements for this should be nothing special. Any server farm should be able to scale up and take more instances without a problem and there are dozens of companies you could rent that server space from for launch and long enough to judge demand to see if the company needs to invest in more. Whether they choose to do something like that is another story, but the infrastructure is there.

The rest of the issues are an open question. The rest of the Fallout games are "survival" in only the weakest of senses (in normal game modes at least). How limited resources actually are and how much competition there is for them will decide how much you're going to have to live on the game if you want to actually do anything.

[Balmas]

[ShneekeyTheLost]

*video link snipped*

This is pretty much exactly what I'm afraid F76 is going to end up being.

[Triaxx]

That the Intro Fallout 2 where they step hopefully into the light and are immediately erased by power armored minigunners? Because that seems about right.

[Balmas]

Bethesda twitter just posted a bit of information about when the Beta starts: https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/...6057989]Linky! Apparently, the BETA will be stating in October, although we don't have an exact date.

Gotta say, I kind of expected it to be out much earlier than that. An October Beta means they have barely a month to find, fix, and test any problems that characters find. I'll toss it onto the small hill of other red flags.

And yet, there's still a part of me that's considering whether I want to try to party up for launch day, get some Youtube exposure for my channel.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

So... wait a second. You mean their Beta testing phase is only a month to a month and a half long?

Oh man, I'm torn between laughter and pity. I feel very sorry for everyone who has already preordered. This is going to be an absolute train wreck.

[Driderman]

Bethesda twitter just posted a bit of information about when the Beta starts: https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/...6057989]Linky! Apparently, the BETA will be stating in October, although we don't have an exact date.

Gotta say, I kind of expected it to be out much earlier than that. An October Beta means they have barely a month to find, fix, and test any problems that characters find. I'll toss it onto the small hill of other red flags.

And yet, there's still a part of me that's considering whether I want to try to party up for launch day, get some Youtube exposure for my channel.

Remember that Beta usually means last-call preorder campaign, rather than anything to do with testing

[Ailurus]

Remember that Beta usually means last-call preorder campaign, rather than anything to do with testing

Release date is supposed to be Nov 14th. So they're only doing large-scale public testing for a month. Even if all their code is fine (doubtful for Bethesda even though it is a different dev team) connectivity, server issues, testing their supposed solutions to griefing mechanics, any type of balance issues are all things that need public testing not just internal testing. So unless they've got secret closed beta tests going now (and not just a bunch of devs hopping on internally to muck about) this is almost certainly going to end badly.

[Starbuck_II]

Bethesda twitter just posted a bit of information about when the Beta starts: https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/...6057989]Linky! Apparently, the BETA will be stating in October, although we don't have an exact date.

Gotta say, I kind of expected it to be out much earlier than that. An October Beta means they have barely a month to find, fix, and test any problems that characters find. I'll toss it onto the small hill of other red flags.

And yet, there's still a part of me that's considering whether I want to try to party up for launch day, get some Youtube exposure for my channel.

Yeah, they are likely assuming there will be just a few bugs and mishaps to fix. They are really confident about something they haven't done before.

[Brookshw]

Yeah, they are likely assuming there will be just a few bugs and mishaps to fix. They are really confident about something they haven't done before.

I'll give them some credit as they worked a lot out in F4, but yeah, certainly seems prime for lots of bugs.

[Rodin]

Do we know how level grouping on a server is handled? For example, am I likely to be running around in my first hour with my Vault suit and a Varmint Rifle and run into a guy with a T-51 suit and a minigun?

Because it seems like it would be difficult to control that, unless everybody starts out at a high power level and it's purely a fight over resources.

[Erloas]

I'm pretty sure I said when they first announced it that the window they gave for the BETA meant they weren't actually considering any changes based on player feedback from it. About the only thing that will tell them or let them fix is basic log-in and account issues.

[Balmas]

Well, for those of you who haven't heard the news: Bethesda has confirmed that both the F76 BETA and the game itself will be Bethesda.net exclusives. It will not be on Steam. You know, that combination gaming and social platform that most PC gamers use for almost all their games?

It's funny. Normally, I'd be excited for every bit of new information. But with Fallout 76, every new bit of information just has me going "nobody could be this bad at their job" and wondering if it's not just a bit of pre-emptive bit of butt covering. The reason Fallout 76 fails isn't because of microtransactions and poorly implemented monetization, but because of the lack of NPCs, or the lack of modding, or the always-online component, or lack of the options that come with private servers, or because it's not on Steam. No, whichever brainchild of executive meddling is being defended is clearly not to blame, but everything else is at fault.

[snowblizz]

Well, for those of you who haven't heard the news: Bethesda has confirmed that both the F76 BETA and the game itself will be Bethesda.net exclusives. It will not be on Steam. You know, that combination gaming and social platform that most PC gamers use for almost all their games?

Never even heard of such a place.
I resisted Steam for so long. Now I probably couldn't do without. It's even a great relief that UBIsoft got AC games on there (so don't have ot bother with a separate ubi launcher). At least I don't have to worry about how messy this "it's PvP but totally won't have any of the issues because..erm, fairies?" will be because they don't want people to be able to access it.

[Rodin]

It seems like a bizarre decision - and not just because they're putting Fallout 76 on there when every other Fallout game is on Steam.

No, I mean - why have your own platform at all?

The older Elder Scrolls games are already on Steam and GOG. Ditto for Fallout. That leaves the other sub-companies....which doesn't amount to a great deal, if Wikipedia is accurate.

They have:

Zenimax - Solely responsible for Elder Scrolls Online
id Software - Doom, Quake, and Rage, with a handful of really old games in other IPs that would be better off on GOG.
Arkane Studios - Prey, Dishonored, and again a handful of older games from about a decade ago.
MachineGames - Wolfenstein.
Tango - The Evil Within
Bethesda Austin - Fallout 76, with a side order of continuing support for the newest Doom. Oh, and that Battlecry game that is effectively canceled.

----

I mean, I suppose they could manage it? Blizzard gets by with less and has staunchly resisted the allure of Steam. Having a Scrooge McDuck sized vault of money from WoW will do that.

It just seems like the advertising campaign for this game is non-existent. We normally hear about new games a couple years out, and start getting real substantive updates with a year to go followed by a media blitz starting from a few months away from release.

We've gotten the initial "no gameplay exists but here's a cool CGI trailer" video a mere 5 months from release. There is now about 10-15 minutes of video of gameplay a mere 3 months from release. Normally by this point in development I'm dodging streamers who have gotten early access to test the game.

What the heck is going on?

[GloatingSwine]

It seems like a bizarre decision - and not just because they're putting Fallout 76 on there when every other Fallout game is on Steam.

No, I mean - why have your own platform at all?

So you don't have to pay Valve 30% of everything?

The real question is why not have your own platform. Steam is "that platform full of asset flips and crypto-miners" now.

[Rodin]

So you don't have to pay Valve 30% of everything?

The real question is why not have your own platform. Steam is "that platform full of asset flips and crypto-miners" now.

...which is still utterly dominant as a centralized platform for game shopping.

I'm not about to try and defend Steam as a service. Lord knows I've been dismayed at the direction things have gone. But writing it off is still like deciding you don't want to sell your product on Amazon.

It's the same trouble that plagues streaming services, or cable channels, or even things like video game consoles. The further away you get from the big dogs, the less people are inclined to do the research to find your product. Nobody wants to have a separate login for Bethesda, Steam, GOG, Origin, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony, et al. And the more of those there are, the harder it gets.

I regularly check Steam for new games, in case there's anything I missed. I do the same for GOG less often, and very occasionally I'll search Nintendo's e-Shop - mainly when I'm looking for something specifically for mobile gaming that I can't do on the PC.

I can't remember the last time I have done that for Origin. I assume Ubisoft has a store, but I don't think I've ever been in there when I'm not forced to as secondary authorization to get through their anti-piracy. And I'm sure there are other publishers that have their own store that I don't even know exists.

So launching a game that will be in a new genre for the franchise, a game which has already hit a hype backlash (justified or not), onto a storefront that most gamers haven't heard of? That's risky as hell. Doing so with apparently minimal advertising doubly so.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

...which is still utterly dominant as a centralized platform for game shopping.

I'm not about to try and defend Steam as a service. Lord knows I've been dismayed at the direction things have gone. But writing it off is still like deciding you don't want to sell your product on Amazon.

It's the same trouble that plagues streaming services, or cable channels, or even things like video game consoles. The further away you get from the big dogs, the less people are inclined to do the research to find your product. Nobody wants to have a separate login for Bethesda, Steam, GOG, Origin, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony, et al. And the more of those there are, the harder it gets.

I regularly check Steam for new games, in case there's anything I missed. I do the same for GOG less often, and very occasionally I'll search Nintendo's e-Shop - mainly when I'm looking for something specifically for mobile gaming that I can't do on the PC.

I can't remember the last time I have done that for Origin. I assume Ubisoft has a store, but I don't think I've ever been in there when I'm not forced to as secondary authorization to get through their anti-piracy. And I'm sure there are other publishers that have their own store that I don't even know exists.

So launching a game that will be in a new genre for the franchise, a game which has already hit a hype backlash (justified or not), onto a storefront that most gamers haven't heard of? That's risky as hell. Doing so with apparently minimal advertising doubly so.

Considering how many viewers they had on their troll twitch stream, they may feel they don't *need* to advertise, as the Hype Train has already got a full head of steam. I don't happen to agree, but there you go. And I'm also betting that the B.E.T.A.'s true purpose is to basically BE their advertising campaign. Give the early access guys a month to stream and drive hype up so that they get massive payday on launch day. I also believe they are riding on the Fallout franchise's coattails. As has been said, with at least a grain of truth, they could've packed a literal turd in FO4 wrapping and it would've sold over a million copies, just because it was Fallout 4.

Unfortunately, I also believe it's going to backfire enormously, and I feel that this is going to damage the Fallout franchise even more than FO4 did. When people see the streaming, and realize exactly what sort of game it really is, all the Grognards are going to go 'nope, not buying'. When all the people who say 'what is a Fallout' see gameplay and basically see a massively toxic FFA FPS with the few teams which exist completely dominating their respective servers... they're also going to nope right on out. The only people who would be attracted to this game are those already enjoy those sorts of games, and in turn will be alienating a large percentage of their player base.

The problem is the playerbase for a game like F76 and a game like FO3/NV/4 doesn't have much in the way of overlap. While there may be enough new players attracted by the genre shift to offset the abandonment of the old base, it will destroy any chance of a Fallout 5 ever being successful, because those who might have been interested in it once upon a time will have moved on to other franchises.

[Brookshw]

Well, for those of you who haven't heard the news: Bethesda has confirmed that both the F76 BETA and the game itself will be Bethesda.net exclusives. It will not be on Steam. You know, that combination gaming and social platform that most PC gamers use for almost all their games?

Something seems off about this. Previously Amazon confirmed to me that a purchase of the digital F76 could be downloaded through steam.