Fallout 76 - Bethesda's new car crash of an online game

[QualityChimp]

Blasting people in an immersion-breaking trollathon isn't what attracts me to this series.

I really enjoyed the base building in Fallout 4, so much that I want to play something with just that (like State of Decay).

However, the real joy, for me, is discovering the new locations and learning about what happened there, and dealing with whatever is there now, be it with guns or words.

[Digfox]

Just taken some time to look at a couple of the previews. And I like the look of it, or at least parts of it really appeal. The complete lack of true PVE is still the killer though. Particularly where you lose all your stuff.

Also it really does look like Fallout 4, which is no surprise given this started out as the Fallout 4 Multiplayer mode.

[MENTION=42]MartyG[/MENTION] - like the decision tree. Arguably Path of Exile would be a 'Free experience' and Warframe would be 'Pay-to-win' which most would lambast.

[MartyG]

Fallout 76 beta starts at midnight tonight on Xbox One, but for some ridiculous reason Bethesda are only running it for fours hours at a time, so unless you're planning to stop up until 4am in the UK, you're not going to be getting that pre-order bonus.

Fallout 76 beta start times on Xbox One (first test phase):

UK: 12 midnight - 4am (BST), Wednesday 24th October
Europe: 1am - 5am (CEST), Wednesday 24th October
East Coast US: 7pm - 11pm (ET), Tuesday 23rd October
West Coast US: 4pm - 8pm (PDT), Tuesday 23rd October

I've got beta access, but I can't be bothered stopping up till the early hours.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Kotaku don't seem very impressed by this game...

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2018/10/24/fallout-76-feels-like-two-different-games

[MartyG]

The beta was open in the UK at a not ridiculous time last night (10-12) so I had a play. It's not a complete mess, but it's not something I'd pay £50 for. The main thing that strikes you is that the game has massive performance issues, even on the Xbox One X, there are times where it stutters drag the frame rate down to 2-3 FPS.

VATS, one of the main aspects of Fallout, is a complete waste of time; it simple doesn't work in real time and the gun play really isn't very satisfying (it's never been great in Fallout). The world feels pretty empty too and the main quest line is almost non-existent.

Other players are annoying too - even in the short time I was playing some other players where trying to engage combat and they get in your way (quest giver items like terminals are player blocked rather than instanced - in a 2018 game!!). There doesn't seem to be anyway of avoiding other people given people are following POIs, so you end up in the same places meaning sometimes you'll turn up to a location and everything has been wiped out already, making the world feel empty, even compared to FO4.

It seems to be running on the same engine as FO4, so it doesn't look completely dreadful (on X at least); I do quite like the environment they've created, but again it doesn't really feel that much like Fallout as it's bright and colourful, nothing like the devastated landscape post nuclear attacks.

You can't spend real money in the beta, but you can see the hooks there and it's clear already that players with better kit will have a massive advantage over noobs, so that's something else that'll make PvP (along with the pretty poor gunplay) really annoying, so you're left with PvE. I can see that those that liked the exploration and base building might get more out of the game, the level of decay on water, food and weapons isn't too annoying but they still have to be serviced, which is always an annoying mechanic - busy work to force you into scavenging and crafting as you'll need clean water and clean food (there's not a lot of Radaway about).

Overall first impressions then: No I wouldn't touch this, not in its current form and not at £50. Performance issues aside (which I'm sure will get sorted), this is Fallout Survival and a weak weak Fallout out game at that. I might be tempted to pick it up when it falls below £20 if the performance issues are sorted, mostly for the exploration side, but I don't feel there's much of a triple A game there to warrant full price.

[Brad]

I don’t trust Bethesda to make what it is they’re trying to make really. Their other games are janky enough without them having to deal with multiple players and networking!

[Cassius_Smoke]

I think the Fallout franchise is dead to me now. Fallout4 was pretty meh and this doesn't sound great.

[MartyG]

I did put a couple more hours into this yesterday afternoon between 4-6PM. There seemed to be less people in the game which made it better rather than constantly tripping over other players.

The constant thirst and food management is a chore though and I was at a point where I didn't have the water to deal with it yesterday, nor anyway to create completely clean water. You can boil dirty water and turn it into boiled water, but you then take rad hits from hit (and as previously mentioned, finding radaway is hit or miss with random loot drops). So you're forced into a fetch and craft cycle just so you can continue exploring.

I also got a side mission that was impossible to complete. The mission was given in a low level creature area (lvl 3-5) but the target area of that mission have lvl 20+ creatures in it leading to one hit deaths without anyway to sneak in given they were sat at the only entrance. I'm not sure what they've done in this game to the creatures, but they all seem to run at you at ridiculously accelerated speeds, so half the time you get hit and killed in the high level environments without even knowing where it came from and they do it in horde mode.

So, exploring an old Nuka-Cola was quite interesting, the rest meh.

This is what makes Fallout 76 so frustrating. There are some cool areas to explore and discover, but the rest of the game works against you.

[MartyG]

So Fallout 76 is modable on the PC.

Not in a good way though: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/commen...ess_fun_on_pc/

[Neon Ignition]

Hopefully someone can mod it into something workable and fun.

[QualityChimp]

Hopefully someone can mod it into something workable and fun.

MEEEEEOWWW! Saucer of milk, table three!

[MartyG]

Hopefully someone can mod it into something workable and fun.

If they can make the update less than 38GB that'd be grand. Last update I got was this size and made the framerate worse. Last night on "The Top of the World" the combat was consistently under 10 FPS on the Xbox One X.

Bethesda have a week to fix it before the full release.

[Lebowski]

They should just call this fallout queue simulator and be done with it, the opening area shows you how to use tool benches, how to cook and how to pick up missions but their is a bit of an issue, only one person can use an item at a time so twice in my opening 30 minutes i was left waiting to use things. With this being story based, it pushes everyone to the same areas so is a problem thats not going to go away.


forcing a fallout linear story into a multiplayer game makes things pretty absurd too, that poor dead woman down by the river that is part of the water purification quest, must of had her pockets riffled through more times than a confused looking tourist on the Paris underground! it was ridiculous the amount of people hovering around her it makes the game more like a multiplayer fallout scavenger hunt, with a crowd of players all walking past the same carefully laid out clues looking for the next breadcrumb. and thats the main problem framing the player as a lone hero here following the trail of some unforeseen character is quite frankly absurd when there are 10 other players all bunny hoping round the map following the exact same path as you.


It really doesn't suit online play with bigger groups. I was in a chat with 8 others all chatting away and unless you have subtitles on your gonna miss 90% of the story, I'm pretty sure i missed 90% of it before i did turn on subtitles. Another multiplayer issue they haven't sorted out is this is a massive campaign and unless you are only ever playing with the same people at exactly the same time your gonna end up in one of two scenarios left behind and playing solo or having to help redo story bits to get everyone on the same page.

[MartyG]

They should just call this fallout queue simulator and be done with it, the opening area shows you how to use tool benches, how to cook and how to pick up missions but their is a bit of an issue, only one person can use an item at a time so twice in my opening 30 minutes i was left waiting to use things. With this being story based, it pushes everyone to the same areas so is a problem thats not going to go away.

Yup, I noted this in post #50 after my first experience with the beta. To not instance the quest givers is ridiculous.

Make no mistake, this game is proper broken and no one should be buying it in its current state.

[Lebowski]

Yup, I noted this in post #50 after my first experience with the beta. To not instance the quest givers is ridiculous.

Make no mistake, this game is proper broken and no one should be buying it in its current state.

lol my experiences pretty much echo yours, good to know I'm not alone. We've been discussing it at work and we all seem to agree it feels like a stripped down fallout 4 with a multiplayer mod tacked on, the lack of consideration to even the most basic of things from a multiplayer perspective is baffling, and this whole no NPC thing makes towns feel very empty.

Players must of been getting bored with this already my friend ran into a large toxic group of player hanging about mission areas just picking off lone players again and again, you can block people if they do this but you have to do it on an individual by individual basis you cant block groups so your gonna be in that block menu a lot.