Fallout 76. Worried? Excited? Both?

[Rodin]

But they're not. That's not what they intended, it's not what they want. They're making a multiplayer Fallout. Not a deathmatch, a full game. Why is this so hard to follow? It's been explicitly stated that this evolved from a desire to figure out how to add multiplayer to FO4, and ultimately deciding that it needed to be its own thing to do right.

Fallout has always been about freedom. Freedom to do bad as well as good, in a setting where morality is so grey it's hard to tell one from the other. So, of course there's going to be PvP. It has to be there or the freedom is crippled out the gate. The game doesn't have to reward PKs, though, and Bethesda doesn't want to encourage it. It still has to be there.

I can understand people having doubts about the chances Bethesda can limit PvP, never underestimate the drive of a troll, but to claim they're building anything but a Bethesda game where you can be whatever you want (as they always try to do) is just willful at this point.

This isn't a deathmatch game.

It's a Bethesda game with no main quest, no NPCs, filled with other players trying to do base-building with always-on PvP.

It's Fallout Deathmatch. Or maybe Fallout Ark Survival.

Whatever you want to call it, it is NOT a PvE game. Because without PvP, there is LITERALLY nothing to do.

[Brookshw]

It's a Bethesda game with no main quest, no NPCs, filled with other players trying to do base-building with always-on PvP.

Well, we know there are quests, and there may very well be a main quests since the nukes are supposed to be part of the end part of it (something to do with sealing the scortchbeasts lairs). Beyond that I'm guessing govt remnant robot/server. I'm also curious about the scorched. No raiders? Yeah, right. Ghouls w/ guns shooting you, what's the difference.

[Calemyr]

It's a Bethesda game with no main quest, no NPCs, filled with other players trying to do base-building with always-on PvP.

It's Fallout Deathmatch. Or maybe Fallout Ark Survival.

Whatever you want to call it, it is NOT a PvE game. Because without PvP, there is LITERALLY nothing to do.

There is an established main quest, one started by the Overseer that at one point requires you to collect the "real nuclear secrets" that are hidden in West Virginia and ultimately requires you to use nukes to combat the Scorch Beast, presented to be the game's most powerful foe.

They also are doubling down on the "found footage" side quests that Bethesda, quite frankly, do infinitely better than any other form of story-telling. We won't have human quest-givers, but lots of robots, computers, holotapes, and presumably ghouls that will be happy to provide you with something to do.

Plus, has Fallout ever been about the main quest? Has any Bethesda game ever been about the main quest? I would venture to say the exploration and sidequests have always been the dominant trait, with the main quest there to pursue if you feel like it. Fallout 76 is putting 24-32 people into a map four times the size of FO4. There's going to be a hell of a lot of exploring and "found footage" questing to do.

I'm still betting that the Overseer is a ZAX, by the way. Her speech to the player has a strong tone of separating her from the other vault dwellers, focusing on "you" and "me" rather than "us". And how can a game have no human NPCs if the Overseer exists. There's also the fact that you're greeted by a number of robots on the way out, something we've rarely seen in a vault other than Vault 1 from Fallout Tactics and Vault 112 from Fallout 3. FO4 even explicitly has the rep say Codworth wouldn't be allowed into the vault. This makes sense, given the nature of Vault 111, but given the rep's ignorance of the vault, this is likely an official stance of Vault-Tec with exceptions made for exceptional cases.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Whatever you want to call it, it is NOT a PvE game. Because without PvP, there is LITERALLY nothing to do.

I think by now the amount of salt I've been hauling for this game is pretty self-evident, however even I find this to be more than a little disingenuous.

[Stuebi]

I've seen the "People have been asking for MP for a while now." thing thrown around a lot in other discussions. And I dunno if I've just been entirely disconnected from the alrger community on Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but far as I know, people were asking more for the cooperative kind. Being able to play stuff like Skyrim together with friends and such. But in the current state of the industry, I'd forgive Bethesda for just assuming either MMORPG or the Rust/Ark Style. So there's that.

As far as "Rampant negativity" goes, In my opinion this is a hole that Developers and Publishers dug themselves. I have an EA-Bingocard for everyone of their releases, with things like Microtransactions, Lootboxes, terrible multiplayer, not working servers and finally of course, wether the base game lands on a line of "You might as well burn your money" to "a slightly more enjoyable experience than banging two bricks together".

And this isnt just me being spiteful, Trailers, announcements and Interviews rampantly lie or show blatant misinformation that will seize to be true the moment the game comes out. Graphics are polished, situations and gamefeel engineered to look good, because they are basically advertisements. You can get a rough feel, and hope that they deliver. But it's been the exact opposite too often for me to have any sort of faith at all. At this point I'd trust bethesda more if they released Trailers where NPC's glitched trough walls or Quests didnt work, because then at least you know they are being honest.


And as far as PK'ing or griefing is concerned, until they specifically announce a button on my HUD that says "PvP off", or ANY form of being able to avoid it completely, I'm gonna call that the game will be an absolute murderfest on release. Any game where you can't just turn that stuff off, being "griefed" becomes a central part of the game. I've played Darkfall, EVE and a bunch of other games that had completely open PVP, and that fantasy that Dev's are still clinging too, the idea that players will not just abuse it for blowing people apart for giggles, is ludicrous. You might have that one tense moment of crossing somebody in the wasteland and wondering "Okay, friend or foe?" But that will be once out of twenty times where you are shot before you even knew what was going on, or camped, or hunted down, or just have to stop playing altogether because there's a party of 5 dudes sitting at the spot you wanted to go to, that will kill you everytime you walk there. And then you have people grouping up for safety or more efficient player hunting, and a game series once about being a lone person exploring the wasteland, will become a game about being murdered until you just start to murder yourself. Blimey, this got dark quick.

The problem here is not that they are doing it at all. Open PvP can be fun, exciting and adds extra reward. If you push trough the above, you get that extra feel of satisfaction every time you get something done. But that requires the mechanics to be done well, good balance and keeping in mind that not everybody is into PvP. And I actually, truly just dont think Bethesda has the required experience or skill to pull it off that way.

[Calemyr]

I still don't get it. If griefing is such a sin, why go to a thread talking about an upcoming game, and drop a load of closed-minded, uninformed opinions against it? What's the benefit for you? You're not looking for a discussion, you're not looking to be informed, you're not willing to change your mind, what is the point of it? I'd really like to know.

[Mando Knight]

And I actually, truly just dont think Bethesda has the required experience or skill to pull it off that way.

That's why a lot of the development was handed off to their Austin studio, which is made of people with multiplayer experience.

[Balmas]

I actually think that there's going to be very limited griefing in this game. From what I can tell, there's almost no consequences to griefing. You can't destroy other players' settlements. You can't steal their weapons or gear. Killing them just has them instantly respawn somewhere else. While betesda is presenting the tools to do so, killing other players just doesn't seem very productive.

[Erloas]

I actually think that there's going to be very limited griefing in this game. From what I can tell, there's almost no consequences to griefing. You can't destroy other players' settlements. You can't steal their weapons or gear. Killing them just has them instantly respawn somewhere else. While betesda is presenting the tools to do so, killing other players just doesn't seem very productive.

Which runs into the other side of it. If PvP is easy to avoid, or you only really have to deal with it for 60 seconds out of an hour+ long gaming session, and it doesn't give the winning player anything all that useful/rare... then why? Why have it at all? Is it just going to make fighting PvE enemies more of a pain because of friendly fire?

At some point it isn't really a mechanic, it is then just a marketing claim. "We can put PvP in our marketing." Granted anyone that actually cares about PvP is going to find it stupid and pointless.

The balance between having a PvP based game, and a Co-Op PvE based game is going to be very hard. Is it two half-baked games rolled together, or is it just one or the other with the other side being little more than a marketing gimmick?

[Brookshw]

Which runs into the other side of it. If PvP is easy to avoid, or you only really have to deal with it for 60 seconds out of an hour+ long gaming session, and it doesn't give the winning player anything all that useful/rare... then why? Why have it at all? Is it just going to make fighting PvE enemies more of a pain because of friendly fire?

Meanwhile, in his secret lair....
Todd Howard: "They like the other Fallouts, the non-Bethesda Fallout. More freedom of choice they said. Better writing they said. Well I'll show them, I'll show them all. I'll give them freedom, the freedom to kill each other and write themselves into an early grave!!! Mwahahahahaha!!! Laugh with me Hines! I said laugh!"

[Stuebi]

I actually think that there's going to be very limited griefing in this game. From what I can tell, there's almost no consequences to griefing. You can't destroy other players' settlements. You can't steal their weapons or gear. Killing them just has them instantly respawn somewhere else. While betesda is presenting the tools to do so, killing other players just doesn't seem very productive.

It might decrease the overall amount of people dedicated to it all day. But a lot of people don't actually need any sort of motivation for this sort of thing. The feelings of shooting and killing a player by itself are enough. I remember back when I was still on the lower Tiers of Darkfall, where I would wear bad gear and such on purpose so you could tell I wasnt worth anything. I'm sure that it saved me the odd encounter where people didnt consider it worth their time, but I was killed often enough either way. You can't even blame people all that much. If every PC has the power to down you, some might just go for aggression right away simply because it gives you the advantage of the first shot.

I still don't get it. If griefing is such a sin, why go to a thread talking about an upcoming game, and drop a load of closed-minded, uninformed opinions against it? What's the benefit for you? You're not looking for a discussion, you're not looking to be informed, you're not willing to change your mind, what is the point of it? I'd really like to know.

That's a lot of assumptions based on me not hollering the games praises off every rooftop in the neighbourhood, even tough it isnt actually, you know, out yet. And as I said above, Trailers, Interviews and everything else "Preview" always just shows the good stuff. Often in fact specifically engineered to appear as such, even tough it might not ever happen that way in the game. See "No Man's Sky" for a dedicated Tutorial on that sort of thing. This means, to me, any post that strings the lute more along the lines of "Let's stay positive folks!" is not actually any more informed than mine. Open-Minded sure, but again, you assume I am not just because I'm not willing to gush at a product where we have zero evidence that there IS actually something to gush about. I'm completely willing to admit that I was utterly wrong if the game turns out to be great after release, or even during the Beta.

Without wanting to come off as hostile, what exactly constitutes a good discussion for you then? Is there a baseline amount of people chaning their opinion for it to be valuable? Do Posters need to maintain a balance between negative and positive comments? I'm genuinely curious. To me it was always a given that you have basically everybody along a spectrum from "Yay" to "Nay", and neither side is right. This actually remains true even after the game comes out. I might still think it's terrible, you might hold it's pretty good. I dont think that detracts from either of our opinions being valid. Game quality and enjoyment is completely relative for most people.

[Starbuck_II]

I am still going to role play regardless.
Think I'll start Doki Doki Adventuring Club (make an avatar like Monica), do the whole tips thing she did. Still training my stats for fighting because you got to kill the critters and fellow players that start something.

Maybe even start own radio show if they have that allowed. I'd be No Dog because three dogs is a crowd, two is a still too much, and one is too lonely. Awoo. Reporting the news no matter how bad it hurts. If there is a bunch of PKers I'll tell the world about them. If someone found a vault, Ill steer others near there.
(remember this is years before Three Dog was born)

[Balmas]

I am still going to role play regardless.

I'm going to see just how close I can get to the Monongahela National Forest. I wanna be Duck Newton.

[PopeLinus1]

Regardless of the direction Fallout is going, is anyone really uninterested in exploring a world 4x the size of fallout 4?

[Triaxx]

Exploring the world is what really interests me. Doing it with friends would be nice, but without all the other people trying to murder me for the lulz is what will keep me away until private servers become a thing.

[Erloas]

So at the risk of running into the No True Scotsman Fallacy...

Having had a bit of time to find and watch the other video with the other developer, he pretty much said "it isn't actually going to have PvP." It is essentially an MMORG without the first M. They've just ran the ideas through a marketing team rather than... well... gamers. There are a lot of successful PvP games, with huge numbers of players, and they want to appeal to them, but they don't want to make a match style game because it doesn't really fit with their style or the franchise's style. And of course people have their own views of MMOs, and since WoW's peak there really hasn't been anything big, the MMO fad has passed it seems. But they wanted to make clear that this isn't a team based co-op game, ala Borderlands and Diablo.

What they *really* meant by "PvP" is that it isn't Co-Op. You'll be competing with them for resources, and you can "duel" them if you choose, but that is about it. I can already see people figuring out how to exploit the PvP system to farm each other or a bot, and why not, no consequence for dying.

I don't see the trader idea actually panning out because it seem the items/currency is going to go the way it always does in a one-way system, resources enter but they don't leave, making them worthless, or alternatively inflation is so high that only people that live on the game can afford the big things.

And the whole "you can play alone" will be like every other MMO, you can do a lot on your own, but once it gets to high end content you will have to team up.

[Rodin]

Regardless of the direction Fallout is going, is anyone really uninterested in exploring a world 4x the size of fallout 4?

*raises hand*

The problem for me with Bethesda games has never been a lack of places to explore. There are areas of Fallout 4 that I have never entered.

The trouble has always been a lack of engaging reasons to explore those regions. Oblivion was probably the worst hit by this, but Fallout 4 is very much hit by it as well. There's too much dungeon, with not enough quest.

Fallout 76 has said that they're getting rid of human NPCs, and moving to a quest system where you're getting your quests from terminals and post-apocalyptic logs and such. That limits the options for what a quest can be greatly, and also limits what the story can be pretty heavily too.

So even if the PvP is like they're now saying, I still have to pass. It sounds like they've taken the areas I've complained vociferously about from the past games, expanded upon those, and then added another feature I don't want with always-on Multiplayer. All while removing the stuff I did like. It's the "soulless Skyrim" effect being discussed in the other thread, cranked to 11.

[GloatingSwine]

World size is not particularly relevant or interesting compared to the quality and density of content in that world.

You can walk across Kamurocho in two minutes, but there's more to do there than in any Bethesda game.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

So at the risk of running into the No True Scotsman Fallacy...

Having had a bit of time to find and watch the other video with the other developer, he pretty much said "it isn't actually going to have PvP." It is essentially an MMORG without the first M. They've just ran the ideas through a marketing team rather than... well... gamers. There are a lot of successful PvP games, with huge numbers of players, and they want to appeal to them, but they don't want to make a match style game because it doesn't really fit with their style or the franchise's style. And of course people have their own views of MMOs, and since WoW's peak there really hasn't been anything big, the MMO fad has passed it seems. But they wanted to make clear that this isn't a team based co-op game, ala Borderlands and Diablo.

What they *really* meant by "PvP" is that it isn't Co-Op. You'll be competing with them for resources, and you can "duel" them if you choose, but that is about it. I can already see people figuring out how to exploit the PvP system to farm each other or a bot, and why not, no consequence for dying.

I don't see the trader idea actually panning out because it seem the items/currency is going to go the way it always does in a one-way system, resources enter but they don't leave, making them worthless, or alternatively inflation is so high that only people that live on the game can afford the big things.

And the whole "you can play alone" will be like every other MMO, you can do a lot on your own, but once it gets to high end content you will have to team up.

[Citation Needed]

[Erloas]

[Citation Needed]

We really only have a couple interviews/videos to go off of. I listened again to what they said, and equally importantly, what they didn't say. That is what we're left with.
It isn't PvP based. It isn't Co-Op PvE or PvP based. A "large" RPG still tends to be a lot smaller than an MMORPG. They've given us a world size that would be about right for a sparsely populated MMORPG. While there are NPCs in MMORPGs they are essentially little more than a "job board" like you could easily do with a computer terminal. MMORPGs have also had open world quests and exploration (some more than others for sure, but WAR for instance was full of open world set piece encounters, as well as small hidden things all over). The game can't really dynamically scale enemies to each individual player because you aren't guaranteed to be working with anyone else so it can't really scale up or down, but of course the population size is small enough that instancing isn't going to be needed. Every MMO since WoW has touted "you can play solo if you want to." (which is true, until end game) But you can't have an enemy that is a challenge to one person or 8 people at the same time unless you scale, which you can't really do if you aren't required to work together. Not scaling, or selective scaling is possible but *very* easy to exploit, which leads me to believe that you really will have to work with others if you want to do all of the "end game" content. And there is no fully story line because no one can "win" the game, just like an MMO.

Of course they aren't going to say MMO because MMOs are so 2005. All of the supposed "WoW killers" have all failed under their own hype (not necessarily bad, but expectations were astronomical and when they didn't get millions of players in a couple months people said "this must not be any good"). So they're going to stay away from that connotation. While MMOs traditionally have class based systems, there are some that don't, that isn't a requirement.
But they going to say "PvP" and use a medium size player count because that is what all of the biggest games going lately have. That's what is getting all of the attention. Probably also significantly more practical from a server/service side too because you don't really have to worry about high end servers, you don't have to worry about server populations, and the sizes are small enough queueing should be minimal.

[DigoDragon]

Regardless of the direction Fallout is going, is anyone really uninterested in exploring a world 4x the size of fallout 4?

Depends if it's full of interesting buildings and bunkers to poke around in or just empty wilderness. FO3 had a pretty decent world to explore, full of neat places to poke around in. Sometimes you'd find old recordings from survivors of the bomb with their last words in a self-made bunker or cries of help written in a journal in a utility room under the subway. As long as Fallout76 has a lot of places to explore, I would be up for a huge world map.

[LibraryOgre]

Regardless of the direction Fallout is going, is anyone really uninterested in exploring a world 4x the size of fallout 4?

Can I open every door and look inside every building? Because the "perfectly sealed pseudo-buildings" of other Fallouts drove me nuts.

[Triaxx]

I know those annoy some people, but to me it's the equivalent of the DAM saying: A vigorous and thorough search turns up nothing of use.

[Starbuck_II]

Can I open every door and look inside every building? Because the "perfectly sealed pseudo-buildings" of other Fallouts drove me nuts.

That is why I always get the Interiors mod that makes most buildings have entrances. Even if nothing special, better than locked doors.

[Calemyr]

I missed this, so I wanted to address it.

That's a lot of assumptions based on me not hollering the games praises off every rooftop in the neighbourhood, even tough it isnt actually, you know, out yet. And as I said above, Trailers, Interviews and everything else "Preview" always just shows the good stuff. Often in fact specifically engineered to appear as such, even tough it might not ever happen that way in the game. See "No Man's Sky" for a dedicated Tutorial on that sort of thing. This means, to me, any post that strings the lute more along the lines of "Let's stay positive folks!" is not actually any more informed than mine. Open-Minded sure, but again, you assume I am not just because I'm not willing to gush at a product where we have zero evidence that there IS actually something to gush about. I'm completely willing to admit that I was utterly wrong if the game turns out to be great after release, or even during the Beta.

Without wanting to come off as hostile, what exactly constitutes a good discussion for you then? Is there a baseline amount of people chaning their opinion for it to be valuable? Do Posters need to maintain a balance between negative and positive comments? I'm genuinely curious. To me it was always a given that you have basically everybody along a spectrum from "Yay" to "Nay", and neither side is right. This actually remains true even after the game comes out. I might still think it's terrible, you might hold it's pretty good. I dont think that detracts from either of our opinions being valid. Game quality and enjoyment is completely relative for most people.

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.

[DigoDragon]

That is why I always get the Interiors mod that makes most buildings have entrances. Even if nothing special, better than locked doors.

The one little issue I have with that mod is that it throws a lot of useless clutter inside those new areas. A room with 50 stray mugs lying on the floor can be potentially lethal when the physics engine notices you walking through it.

[Balmas]

A question that comes to mind is what the CAMP system will let us do. Can I plop it down anywhere? Once private servers become a thing, could a group of people effectively make a city by plotting together on where to put each camp? Can I harvest resources from wherever I put it down? There's a greedy part of me that wants to go to a forest, plop down a camp, and systematically deforest it.

Then you get into what you'll be able to build. What we saw in the trailers looked like it was mostly using the Barn buildset from Fallout 4. Will that be the default? Will most of the things that were available in Fallout 4 be able to be built? The part of me that really enjoyed settlement building is actually getting kind of excited about this.

[Calemyr]

This is just from what I've been able to piece together, mind.

CAMP can be placed "anywhere". There will obviously be caveats to this, but the idea is to set up wherever you think is a good place. Whether you can use internal cells or not is unclear - it would make internal cells very popular as they aren't targetable by nukes, but monster spawns could be an issue.

It costs caps to place the CAMP, but you can place any structure you've stored after that point, so it's just a matter of packing up and setting up shop where you want. The initial CAMP cost is supposedly trivial, but enough to keep it from being abused too strongly.

If you change servers (say, fleeing from a PK), CAMP automatically makes the journey and tries to set up shop at the same location on the new server. If it can't (because someone else thought the donut shop was a good headquarters), then everything you had get stored in CAMP and you're set it up later.

Structures placed by CAMP can be damaged, but not destroyed. If you're ground zero for a nuke, your town will be left standing but you'll have to go around repairing things.

The question of ownership remains an unexplored issue. Having half a trading hub vanish because a PK killed a pacifist could be a problem, especially if it's the lower half.

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

[Erloas]

If you change servers (say, fleeing from a PK), CAMP automatically makes the journey and tries to set up shop at the same location on the new server. If it can't (because someone else thought the donut shop was a good headquarters), then everything you had get stored in CAMP and you're set it up later.

I would have to question this, and really any sort of dedicated server for any individual player. Between alts, people buying the game and not playing much, to simply having people in completely different time zones*, it would be very easy to see a server of 36 people be 4-8 in a week. Especially the first week when everyone is playing as much as they can and when it settles down to more regular hours you would have many essentially empty servers.
I could see them trying to set up in the same place every time you log in, but I really couldn't see any practical way to do it short of a dynamic queue and server (and the queue could be almost completely transparent to the user).
You also run into an issue of playing with your actual friends if the server population can't be easily and dynamically changed.

If other players are supposed to be a "part of the content" of the game" then playing without many other players is an issue.

*Such as those that take a "sick day" on release and get dropped in a server with other people, but they normally play in the evening, not at 9am on a Tuesday like they logged in the first time so they're on the same server with other people that just happened to be logging in at the same time on that first day.

[Mando Knight]

I would have to question this, and really any sort of dedicated server for any individual player. Between alts, people buying the game and not playing much, to simply having people in completely different time zones*, it would be very easy to see a server of 36 people be 4-8 in a week. Especially the first week when everyone is playing as much as they can and when it settles down to more regular hours you would have many essentially empty servers.
I could see them trying to set up in the same place every time you log in, but I really couldn't see any practical way to do it short of a dynamic queue and server (and the queue could be almost completely transparent to the user).
You also run into an issue of playing with your actual friends if the server population can't be easily and dynamically changed.

There's supposed to not be server lobby (at least at launch, since there won't be private servers either), so it probably functions like single-shard MMOs (or any other auto-matchmaking system) in that regard, where you'll connect with Bethesda's login server and it'll automatically sort you into the best available server instance (based on population, relative levels, how many friends it can connect you with, etc.)--you won't have to worry about a full array of a hundred thousand 25-person servers at launch dwindling down to a thousand 1-man servers (and 99 thousand empties) four months later, it'll instead group everyone up into forty 25-person instances.

Transferring the C.A.M.P. is easy if it's player data, not server data. The game will likely store the layout of your C.A.M.P. as positions relative to the center of the work space (i.e. "Place 'Rustic Table' 1.02 units south, 2.01 units east of C.A.M.P. center. Place 'Sweetroll' on top of table"), and then the position of your C.A.M.P. as coordinates on the map (i.e. "Center C.A.M.P. at [7205.3, 3052.6, 43.0]"). When you log in, the server then tries to deploy your C.A.M.P. data, and if it fails you get a packed-up C.A.M.P. with all your components stored inside (they said "as a blueprint", which implies that you'll be able to rapidly redeploy your little house in a manner not too dissimilar from Fallout 4's Transfer Settlements mod).