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  1. - Top - End - #181
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Brookshw View Post
    So are people seeing those methods of griefing frequently? Or is is fairly rare?
    Griefing really isn't all that common, mostly because the game isn't stable enough for any real griefing to take place. Disconnecting every fifteen minutes because the server crashed means everyone keeps getting jumbled up.
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  2. - Top - End - #182
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    In the month and a half I played, I only got griefed once. A four-stack of people rolled up to my base and started destroying my base. When I saw the Wanted icon over my base, I just logged off and back in again, and problem solved.
    I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
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  3. - Top - End - #183
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by ShneekeyTheLost View Post
    Griefing really isn't all that common, mostly because the game isn't stable enough for any real griefing to take place. Disconnecting every fifteen minutes because the server crashed means everyone keeps getting jumbled up.
    I dunno what server you're playing on, because *I* didn't have stability issues like that.

    But I'm a heretic who actually *enjoys* the game, so what do I know?

  4. - Top - End - #184
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Alex Knight View Post
    I dunno what server you're playing on, because *I* didn't have stability issues like that.

    But I'm a heretic who actually *enjoys* the game, so what do I know?
    To each their own, I suppose. Then again, I was one of *those* who felt FO4 was going in the wrong direction, so I suppose it was inevitable that F76 wouldn't be my cuppa tea. But the buggy mess they delivered, which continues to be a buggy mess to this day, is nigh unplayable. To the point that even people who were genuinely excited about it like CohhCarnage, had to give it up because it was just too... unplayable, from a buggy glitchy perspective not from a storyline perspective. There are still massive exploits, dupe bugs, the ability to clip out and get to the Dev Room to get pretty much whatever you want... these wouldn't be so bad in a single player game, because you could get fan patches for the bugs, and the rest could simply be easter eggs. But in a multiplayer game? Yea, that just isn't going to fly.

    For myself? I didn't like the fact that FO4 gave you precisely four options to respond to a given NPC: Yes, Sarcastic Yes, Greedy Yes (with RNG check), and Maybe Later. I didn't like the dumbing down of many of the mechanics. I didn't care that it improved the shooter aspects, because I was looking for an open world RPG, not an open world FPS.

    F76 started at FO4... and went many, many leagues beyond it. It is little more than an FPS with the vestigial trappings of an RPG. The perk cards are a blatantly exploitable problem, from a business perspective, and makes it impossible to actually make a character that YOU want to play instead of whatever character the cards force you into playing. I wanted an RPG, not a Roguelite in character design and creation.

    And then there's the bugs. The glitches. The crashes. It is the single most unstable piece of software Bethesda has ever launched, and THAT'S a monumental statement in and of itself. I don't know what divinely blessed server you play on that you haven't encountered it, but ultimately it wasn't the horrible 'plot' (or what excuse the game has for one) that drove me away, it was this. The game was, literally, unplayable. As in I couldn't play more than ten or fifteen minutes before something would crash, or freeze, or catch on geometry and accuse me of trying to hack, or catch on geometry and suddenly warp to me, or just flat fall through the world and not let me loot it, or SOMETHING.

    Then there's the fact that Bethesda has consistently and regularly done exactly the wrong thing every time they open their mouth. First it was the bags. Then 'we aren't planning on doing anything about this', then the customer support page giving people everyone else's information, then the damn plastic rum bottles... and all throughout Bethesda's stance has been 'we don't feel that this is wrong, but here you go anyway, because we're generous like that'.

    That's what is going to harm Bethesda the worst. We could forgive a buggy mess. We are less forgiving of the clear message that Bethesda is simply resorting to cash grabs now, sees their own actions as nothing more than cash grabs, and is unwilling to put more than minimal effort into doing anything other than cash grabs, resents the players for insisting on more than cash grabs, and sees this as business as normal.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Underlord View Post
    All hail great Shneekeythulhu! Ia Ia Shneeky fthagn
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    Quite possibly, the best rebuttal I have ever witnessed.
    Joker Bard - the DM's solution to the Batman Wizard.
    Takahashi no Onisan - The scariest Samurai alive
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    My homebrew world in progress: Falcora

  5. - Top - End - #185
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    If you haven't watched this yet, you're really doing yourself a disservice.



    In this video essay, Jon of Many a True Nerd goes through Fallout 76 and dissects what went wrong with Fallout 76, and more importantly, how it might be fixed.

    Spoiler: Too Long, Didn't Watch
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    Go watch it, you jerk. He put a lot of effort into making this video, and any and all ideas in this post are taken pretty much directly from his video. He deserves all the views, likes, and comments this video generates.

    Spoiler: Read this after you watch
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    A comparison Jon uses extensively in Fallout 76 is that of three interlocked cogs. You have all these systems that are working at cross purposes, or that are being hamstrung by a desire to avoid alienating anybody. Any one by themself could have been successful, but as is you're left with grinding gears that don't go anywhere.

    Cog 1:For the first time in the series, the strength calculation has been lowered relative to the previous game. This, paired with the greatly increased weight of healing items, speaks to a much more hardcore survival-oriented experience, where taking even one stimpack represents a significant portion of your resources being depleted.
    Cog 2: However, in order to avoid alienating any of the players from Fallout 4 who are used to carrying around half an arsenal and a hospital's worth of stimpaks, Bethesda introduced the weight-reducing perks, and made it so that when you're over-encumbered the only real consequence is that you use action points to run around.
    Cog 3: Players must schlep weapons back to their base in order to break them down for recipes.
    Result: Inventory management becomes a game of accounting. People who enjoyed Fallout 4 Survival Mode don't get the experience they're looking for, and people who just want to run around without worrying about their action points have to dedicate roughly a third of their perks into reducing the weights of items.

    Cog 1: Fallout 76 wants to include survival elements in its gameplay, and for the first time in Fallout history, they're not something the player can just opt out of and ignore. Where there have been survival modes in previous games, they've been mostly busywork due to a lack of scarcity (Unmodded New Vegas) or a secondary mode patched in months after released as an optional difficulty mode (Fallout 4).
    Cog 2: In order to avoid alienating the portion of their playerbase that doesn't like survival elements, Bethesda made their game have absolutely no scarcity when it comes to survival elements, and lack of food/water/sleep has no effect until they're in the last 20% of their respective bars. Purified Water spontaneously generates ex nihilo at the end of most quests. Fast travel is instantaneous and available from anywhere if you're not fighting someone, so if you're really stuck, you can warp back to Vault 76 for free and be at free food and water within twenty seconds.
    Cog 3: The CAMP system means that your stash--with all its food, ammo, and resources--is only ever a few button presses away.
    Result: Fallout 76's survival elements are entirely busywork. The player is never in any danger of starving. Hardcore survival fans aren't happy, and neither are the people who now have to stop and fiddle with their inventory every five minutes. With no risk of dying and no consequence for it, there's no tension to whether or not you can survive, and therefore no resultant fear or excitement.

    Cog 1: Fallout 76 wants multiplayer interaction, and has an entire perk tree dedicated to sharing benefits with others. Much of its marketing built hype on the idea that when you met a player in the world, you didn't know what was going to happen--friendly player? Trader? Raider coming for your things?
    Cog 2: In order to avoid the majority of its player base that wants a single-player experience, Bethesda made it possible for anyone to be self-sufficient. From level 2 onwards, every player can build a camp with nearly all of the necesary amenities. Vendor requirements are filled entirely by robots, which are everywhere on the map.
    Result: There's no reason to interact with other players beyond a friendly wave in passing. They have nothing you want, and you have nothing they want, because both of you are generalists and both of you have camps that fulfill all your needs. Instead of working together to rebuild America, a server becomes a pack of 24 hermits working alone.

    PROPOSED SOLUTION: Double down on the hardcore survival elements. Remove weight-reduction perks, and maybe lower carry capacity even further. Make resources scarce enough to actually be valuable. In this way, player communication and coordination become not just useful, but nearly essential if a player wants to advance in the world. Player specialization within a party becomes valuable; one player is the dedicated medic who heals the entire team to full health with one stimpack, while another may specialize in becoming a master chef, while one just wanders around in power armor and delivers the heavy firepower.

    He also goes in depth about various problems with the plot--how lack of engagement with NPCs means it's hard to care about them when they die, and it'd be better if there was a single-player campaign that ends in "dragons fall, everyone's zombies." It'd give people a chance to identify with these people, to choose sides, to make meaningful decisions, to get attached, to care.

    Then you have problems with the world itself. There are so many locations that are entirely empty when an event isn't associated with it, which means that for the average person exploring, they just see a disappointingly empty ruin. There are plot threads that go nowhere, like the misbehaving robots of Berkeley Springs, again frustrating the dedicated explorer and lore-finder. Cryptid clues don't lead to cryptids. Locations with content actively hurl them at the player in the Misc. quest tab; instead of being rewarded for your exploration with a secret syringer that makes animals talks, you're directed "look in the basement of this one house" by your quest log the instant you step into town. The combined total of these means that exploring is singularly unrewarding and unfulfilling, and doesn't take any advantage of the dual layers--prewar and immediately preceding your arrival--inherently possible with a post apocalyptic scenario.

    Problems with quest structure. There are at least four events in the world that are the same quest--defend these three objectives from waves of enemies--but with a different coat of paint slapped on top. Quests like the Order of Mysteries--with detailed lore and backstory, which draw you into the world, which require the player to explore, and which provide unique items as their reward--are the exception, rather than the rule.

    The biggest problem, though, is the lack of permanence in anything that happens in the world.
    Cog 1: Fallout has always been a series that lives or dies on its ability to make changes in the world, on meaningful consequences to your actions, on difficult choices, on factions. Junktown has Killian vs. Gizmo. House, Caesar, NCR, Yes Man. Railroad, Minutemen, Institute, Brotherhood. All of these choices have knock-on consequences down the line, and lock you out of participating with the other factions, and those choices and consequences are at the heart of Fallout.
    Cog 2: As a multiplayer game, quests must alwasy be available for new players. If Poseidon power is restored to working condition, it needs to break down so that another player can fix it. The Robots in flatwood always go haywire. Nothing can be allowed to change.
    Cog 3: Because of Cog 2, nobody can build near structures. After all, it might ruin the experience for new players if someone were to build a house in the flower bed of the Whitesprings, or in the ruins of Charleston, or in an interesting location like the monorail elevator or in the monstrous sattelite dish near Sugar Grove. This, despite building cities built in interesting structures that aren't traditionally cities being an honored part of the Fallout tradition (EG, Rivet City, Megaton, Diamond City, Tenpenny Tower). Players are also not allowed to build too close to another camp.
    Cog 4: Even if rebuilding were permanent in the server it's built on, it wouldn't matter because that progress disappears the second the player logs out and back in.
    Cog 5: Nukes have no permanence, and no reason not to be used.. They stick around for a few hours, and then life moves on as normal. No consequence nukes are really tone-deaf with the rest of the series, which emphasizes NUKES BAD, DON'T USE THEM.

    PROPOSED SOLUTION: Dedicated servers need to be a thing. When you log on, it's with the same people, on the same server, with the same progress. Let them build wherever they want. Let them build close together. Give people a reason to live together--trading, amenities. Let them build towns. Let the towns grow organically. Let there be raiders who attack the town when it gets large and prosperous enough. Give players options to play as raiders, perpetually wanted and attacked on sight by town defenses. Give players alternative, slower ways to obtain flux, and then make nukes be devastating things that ravage the land for weeks after being used but generate flux quickly; this allows players to actually have reasons to use nukes, and reasons not to use them, and generates conflict about whether they want the server to be nuked or not, which means actual PVP content.
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  6. - Top - End - #186
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    If you haven't watched this yet, you're really doing yourself a disservice.



    In this video essay, Jon of Many a True Nerd goes through Fallout 76 and dissects what went wrong with Fallout 76, and more importantly, how it might be fixed.

    [spoiler=Too Long, Didn't Watch]Go watch it, you jerk. He put a lot of effort into making this video, and any and all ideas in this post are taken pretty much directly from his video. He deserves all the views, likes, and comments this video generates.
    Sorry, it should not take 2 hours and 32 minutes to go over what's wrong with Fallout 76. It's been self-evident from the first looks at 76 that it was an unfinished, bug-ridden mess. While that's always been a hallmark of Bethsoft's single-player titles, modding made that a forgivable sin, multiplayer makes modding a TOS violation, and therefore impossible.

    I've always been fairly lenient with Bethesda because they've been among the most player-friendly operations in the industry, focusing exclusively on single-player titles and supporting their community with modding tools, but since the launch of the Creation Club, they've evidently gone whole hog into the usual slog of slinging microtransaction-laden BS that the rest of the industry is vomiting up.

    Now you can certainly argue, and I would agree, that we're also blighted by a cowardly copy-cat regime in triple-A gaming which results in too many games all struggling over the same market, while perfectly good and fun concepts that have evidently passed us by lie fallow. Don't get me wrong, I liked Fallout 4, but I think the last thing Bethesda should have followed it up with is yet another Fallout game, regardless of whether it's multiplayer, single-player, buggy or stable.

  7. - Top - End - #187
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    "The more words it takes you to explain something, the less you understand it." -Someone, somewhere

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Yeah, I watched it all.

    He takes too long and his idea of 'constructive discussion' is just him soap boxing his version of the game.

    Imma not funding his idea of Fallout. Are you? Is anyone?

    Because as much as he all but called 76 out as a grindy cash grab (we already knew that) he also is clearly advertising his idea of what it should have been/could be. Why? Does his video have the ear of the devs? Doubtful.

    More likely he's using his platform to advertise his Better IdeaTM. At least that's the only reason I could come up with for going on and on, at length about his fan fiction idea of the game for hours.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by unseenmage View Post
    Yeah, I watched it all.
    I didn't.

    some characters
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by NeoVid View Post
    Fairly rare from the sound of it. Most of the stories I hear about the rare encounters with other players tend to be along the lines of "A guy in full power armor ran by, and stopped for a moment to point me to where he'd dropped a pile of items that were worthless for him but 20 levels higher than anything I had." And if you do have annoying players around, all you need to do is log out and back in and you'll almost certainly end up in a different instance.
    That sounds like something directly out of STALKER (which is single player).
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  11. - Top - End - #191
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by The_Jackal View Post
    Sorry, it should not take 2 hours and 32 minutes to go over what's wrong with Fallout 76. It's been self-evident from the first looks at 76 that it was an unfinished, bug-ridden mess. While that's always been a hallmark of Bethsoft's single-player titles, modding made that a forgivable sin, multiplayer makes modding a TOS violation, and therefore impossible.
    Let me make a counterpoint: bugs and glitches aren't the biggest issue with Fallout 76, simply the most glaringly obvious ones. Imagine, for the sake of argument, a hypothetical bugless Fallout 76. There are no glitches, no lag, no hacking. Let's imagine, also, that basic features like push to talk and widescreen support were present at the lauch of our hypothetical Fallout 76. There's no duping. Mods aren't needed to fix basic errors in Bethesda's code.

    That hypothetical Fallout 76 would still be a bad game. It would still be torn between the different systems that counteract each others efforts, still plagued by a lack of end-game, still sit in a wishy-washy valley with survival that's just in your face enough to be annoying but not difficult enough to actually be entertaining.

    Those are the issues that Jon addresses. Not the bugs, but the fundamental contradictory design decisions that plague this game.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    "The more words it takes you to explain something, the less you understand it." -Someone, somewhere
    Glad to see that writing a dissertation or a textbook is a waste of time.

    Quote Originally Posted by unseenmage View Post
    Yeah, I watched it all.

    He takes too long and his idea of 'constructive discussion' is just him soap boxing his version of the game.

    Imma not funding his idea of Fallout. Are you? Is anyone?

    Because as much as he all but called 76 out as a grindy cash grab (we already knew that) he also is clearly advertising his idea of what it should have been/could be. Why? Does his video have the ear of the devs? Doubtful.

    More likely he's using his platform to advertise his Better IdeaTM. At least that's the only reason I could come up with for going on and on, at length about his fan fiction idea of the game for hours.
    I agree that he could tighten up his ideas a bit, but he raises legitimate points for discussion. You know, points besides "bugs bad" and "Macrotransactions bad," points that I've not seen anywhere else on the internet.
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    ...
    I agree that he could tighten up his ideas a bit, but he raises legitimate points for discussion. You know, points besides "bugs bad" and "Macrotransactions bad," points that I've not seen anywhere else on the internet.
    Too bad he buried that in his rambling then. There is merit in saying what needs saying simply and clearly when possible.

    Bugs bad, microtransactions bad didn't need that much more added to it to just say design decisions also bad.

    Still I can appreciate his simple analogy. Too bad he over designed his speech about it.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    Glad to see that writing a dissertation or a textbook is a waste of time.
    Unless his two and a half hour video needs to pass scientific rigor, the equivalence isn't there.

    It's 2.5 hours long for the same reason Youtubers' apologies are 10 minutes, not because it needs to be.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    I really don't get all the complaining about bugs to be honest. It's a Bethesda game. What did people expect? It's like sticking your hand in a campfire and complaining you got burnt.

    Note that I'm not defending 76 here. It's still an awful cash-grabby mess that deserves almost all of the criticism it gets.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Yeah, nothing new being said. Any player with experience online knew what they said wasn't going to work. They tried to do everything, even many things which are mutually exclusive. So they ended up "we've got all these features that don't actually do anything."
    Of course at this point what it needs to fix it is a very thorough rework of core ideas of the game. Which will inevitably drive off a good portion of the players that are still there, but likely too late to bring new players in.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    Glad to see that writing a dissertation or a textbook is a waste of time.
    If all you do is fill up pages then yes, yes it is.

    Neither activity make length into a virtue. I'm thinking you've not writen either and had an supervior or editor chastise you for just padding it out.
    Both activities need to pass external muster, and be read. Being long for the sake of long helps neither.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Eh, I can't complain about it, It's matn, his Sexy British voice could make me listen too 2 hours and 32 minutes hours of anything.
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    I really don't get all the complaining about bugs to be honest. It's a Bethesda game. What did people expect? It's like sticking your hand in a campfire and complaining you got burnt.

    Note that I'm not defending 76 here. It's still an awful cash-grabby mess that deserves almost all of the criticism it gets.
    While I haven't played the game, the understanding I got was that it was a bug-ridden mess even by Bethesda standards. Basic stuff like enemies popping into existence and screwed up level geometry an light sources that Bethesda have traditionally gotten right for the most part. The audience is the same, so when people who are used to the bugs start complaining I pay attention.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Rodin View Post
    While I haven't played the game, the understanding I got was that it was a bug-ridden mess even by Bethesda standards. Basic stuff like enemies popping into existence and screwed up level geometry an light sources that Bethesda have traditionally gotten right for the most part. The audience is the same, so when people who are used to the bugs start complaining I pay attention.
    Angry Joe, in a recent rant about Anthem, introduced me to the industry term "MVP" - Minimum Viable Product. Ship a game the second it hits the bare minimum needed to resemble the game that was promised, with the assumption that everything can be fixed and/or fleshed out later and the customers can be charged more for it. The term applies very well to both Anthem and Fallout 76, and is a large part of why both are so poorly received.

    That is primarily where Fallout 76 fails, I think. It has a number of good ideas that are poorly implemented, combined with a system that is an awkward hodgepodge of old engine mechanics and with kit-bashed improvisations to make up for the fact that the engine was never intended to keep the whole world rendered at the same time. It is (or at least was) comically buggy, not engaging in a gameplay or narrative sense, and sports an absurdly overpriced microtransaction shop that has danced on the border of Pay To Win (the instance in question was a very brief time where a particular set of costumes costumes granted +15 HP to the whole party for a week or so).

    There's very little in 76 that doesn't almost literally scream "minimum possible effort", be it in bug fixing, story design, world design, multiplayer design and balancing. Hell, even the graphic fidelity (while not being as outright bad as sometimes accused of) is painfully sub-par. It had a lot of interesting ideas that it implemented beyond poorly, and is so bipolar about the "casual friendly"/"harsh survival" dichotomy it has going that nobody is happy with the outcome.

    The problem is MVP doesn't work. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, and by the time you've patched the game to anything vaguely resembling the quality it should have had on day one, the audience has finished laughing at your joke of a game and moved on to other diversions.

    I live in hope that 76 and Anthem do get the "top-to-bottom, 100 point restoration", as Tony Stark put it. It has happened. Final Fantasy XIV is an example of a game that resurrected itself from the ashes of a cataclysmic disaster into a Realm Reborn. Even No Man's Sky was rebuilt into something I hear is now passable, near onto actually good. But the problem is MVP is still MVP, and that stigma sticks. Even though I own No Man's Sky and have heard good things about its reincarnation, I simply haven't garnered the interest to go back and even log into the game. I fear 76 and Anthem will also end up in that dust heap, even if they are resurrected - which seems unlikely with either given EA's track record and Bethesda's painfully tone-deaf reaction to 76.
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Calemyr View Post
    The problem is MVP doesn't work. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, and by the time you've patched the game to anything vaguely resembling the quality it should have had on day one, the audience has finished laughing at your joke of a game and moved on to other diversions.
    Problem is, people have been giving Bethesda a free pass for releasing bug-ridden games forever, simply because the content in the game is usually good enough that you can overlook the bugginess. Fallout 76's problem is that its content was not compelling enough for people to ignore the bugs, and it being a multiplayer game means it'll only get fixed when Bethesda themselves do it--and considering they released Skyrim Special Edition with most of the same bugs the original game from five years earlier had, we all know how long it's likely to take for that to happen!

    I can only imagine how happy the world would be where Bethesda were told by their playerbase 15 years ago to stop releasing buggy games and actually put some effort in. Skyrim would have been an exceptional game in that world, rather than the merely very good one we got in this.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Well, maybe you'll all get lucky and this'll be the deathblow that puts Bethesda out of business.
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Triaxx View Post
    Well, maybe you'll all get lucky and this'll be the deathblow that puts Bethesda out of business.
    As long as another, more competent, company picks up the incredibly lucrative Fallout IP, I would not be opposed to that.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by SZbNAhL View Post
    As long as another, more competent, company picks up the incredibly lucrative Fallout IP, I would not be opposed to that.
    I mean yeah, basically this.

    Much as I've enjoyed some of the content they've made I am definitely aware of how much of that content I put up with rather than enjoyed.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by SZbNAhL View Post
    As long as another, more competent, company picks up the incredibly lucrative Fallout IP, I would not be opposed to that.
    I really think you're overstating the inherent value of the Fallout franchise. It's just one in a giant morass of generic post-apocalyptic settings. I could easily see an equally viable game being set in the Mad Max universe, the Nausicaa universe, Night of the Comet, The Postman, Waterworld, the Terminator, Omega Man, need I go on?

    There's nothing special about Fallout apart from name recognition, and I doubt very much that a well-executed post-apocalypse roleplaying game with a new IP would struggle to gain momentum. I mean, Overwatch turned from a glint in Blizzard's eye to a giant phenomenon in a matter of months.

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    I mean, heck, "Fallout" is originally itself a unauthorized sequel/spiritual successor to the original Wasteland. Some days, I scratch my Fallout itch by playing Borderlands, which is more shooty, less role-play-y, but still does the job, and with fewer bugs (it always feels like I'm playing an MMO on an empty server, but that's beside the point).

    If I wrote a game called "After the End", that posited people hid in "Shelters" to avoid a nuclear explosion that happened in an alternate late 60s, with a kickin' disco soundtrack and a bunch of things that look like late-60s sci-fi... I mean, really, where's it gonna go wrong? I don't have Super Mutants, I have mutant apes that escaped research facilities world-wide, maybe building their own society a la Planet of the Apes (1968). There aren't any ghouls, of course, but what if I steal liberally from 1964's "Last Man On Earth", and we have photophobic mutant humans, which are kinda gonna look like The Family, but there's a lot of other sources for such people.

    There's a WEALTH of material and tropes that Fallout draws from that you could use. Hey, maybe After the End 2 won't be a sequel, but it will be a similar game, but steeped in late 70s sci-fi. And After then End 3 will be late 80s sci-fi. Not telling a story between incarnations, just keeping some elements (maybe there's one quest that always starts the same but goes weird in different, thematically appropriate, ways), and making bank looking kinda like Fallout, but not.
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    I mean, heck, "Fallout" is originally itself a unauthorized sequel/spiritual successor to the original Wasteland. Some days, I scratch my Fallout itch by playing Borderlands, which is more shooty, less role-play-y, but still does the job, and with fewer bugs (it always feels like I'm playing an MMO on an empty server, but that's beside the point).
    Exactly. Heck, if Epic hadn't sabotaged themselves by locking their game off of Steam, I would have been playing that for my post-apocalyptic fix right now. There's no shortage of good ideas out there. Just a shortage of financiers with the courage to fund them.

  27. - Top - End - #207
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    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by Triaxx View Post
    Well, maybe you'll all get lucky and this'll be the deathblow that puts Bethesda out of business.
    And this is exactly the attitude that allows Bethesda to release garbage and get away with it. Wanting Bethesda to do better is not the same as wanting them to go out of business!

  28. - Top - End - #208
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    No, it's an attitude frustrated with the Bethesda hate train that absolutely everyone seems to be on lately. Okay you want them to do better and you're frustrated with the quality of their games? Fine. Vote with your wallet and don't buy their new games. Simple as that. You don't buy their games and they wonder why? Then you can tell them and have them listen. You buy their game then tell them I don't like it, all they hear is the sound of you giving them money.

    Do I think they're on the wrong track at the moment? Yes. Do I think they can do better? Yes. So did I buy 76? No. There, I made my vote. It is of course lost in the sea of people who did buy it and then won't shut up about it, but I did vote.

    But heaven forbid I should mention even the things I liked because then it seems to be a free opening for everyone to go into a rant that lasts anywhere from hours to weeks about how horrible and awful Bethesda is, and all the things they did wrong. Fine, you don't like them? Walk away. Go play whatever garbage EA regurgitates on you, or Ubisoft. Or go stare longingly at an early access that'll die quietly because the company behind it folded in the night. But enough trying to tear down other people enjoying things because you have a beef.

    Me? I'll be over there, waiting to see how the next game turns out and whether or not I want to buy it because Loyalty isn't slavishly buying each game, but making sure that each game I buy is worth the investment.
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  29. - Top - End - #209
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    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    And I agree with everything you just said there. I didn't buy Fallout 76 because I don't play multiplayer games anyway, but I certainly wouldn't have bought it after the reviews it's had even if I liked this type of game. If reviews are similarly bad for ES6 I won't be getting that either. But I'm not going to stay silent about the things Bethesda gets wrong, or the things they do right--for example, I think Far Harbor was easily the best piece of DLC for Fallout 4, because, unlike the main game and most of the other DLC, it gave you actual substantive choices that felt important.

    If anything, that's what annoys me most--because Bethesda shows time and again that they *can* produce awesome stuff when they put their mind to it, it's just they don't do that as often as I'd like!

  30. - Top - End - #210
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    Default Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    And this is exactly the attitude that allows Bethesda to release garbage and get away with it. Wanting Bethesda to do better is not the same as wanting them to go out of business!
    Eh, I think their solvency is not directly correlated with any one person's desires. Honestly, a game developer is only as good as they people they employ, and if they got belly-up, those people will wind up working somewhere else. Emil Pagliarulo isn't going to be unable to find work in the event Bethsoft implodes, he'll wind up making terrible stories for some other game company.

    But also, I'm not going to peg the regular developers of Fallout with this mess. This was a terrible decision by leadership, to box and ship a product which was clearly not fit for sale yet, if it would ever be. Without being in the room, I doubt any of us can really know who was advocating for what, and why. Hopefully Zenimax realizes that the value of their good name and brand is more important than a quick injection of cash at the expense of that brand. We'll see.

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