**** Official Fallout 76 Thread ****

[Angilion]

I've now watched about 15 hours of solo play and I'm a bit less unimpressed by it. How's that for damned by faint praise?

There's some Fallout in Fallout 76. I think that if they make a PC version (and I mean a PC version, not a badly ported Xbox version that will work OK on a PC as long as you're using a console controller) and the price drops a lot and they allow some configuration of the UI (e.g. fixing the pointlessly broken pipboy screen) and the controls (e.g. the same button does a melee attack and throws a thrown weapon and you can't seperate the two - how did anyone conclude that was a good idea?) and they don't take the **** with macrotransactions I might buy it at some point in the future. I would sort of like to play it, to some extent.

I dont't care about the graphics - I consider them more than adequate apart from the quite bizarre pop-in. It's the gameplay I'm interested in and I'm thinking that the bad doesn't outweigh the good by as much as I thought it might. It might become tolerable under some circumstances.

 

[AWPC]

The 30GB patch only really fixed some minor things like indoors the gamma is now correct you can actually see what's going on! (very little). Still finding so many bugs animation cycles especially.

I wonder if its possible to copy the data files over to a Fallout 4 installation & just add them to play within the Fallout 4 environment?

 

[Narj]

Looks like I won't be buying this then. What were they thinking?

The whole idea of Fallout is SP immersion. I wouldn't have minded being able to team up with a friend occasionally but looks like they've ruined the fundamental appeal of the game.

 

[pooley]

Looks like I won't be buying this then. What were they thinking?

The whole idea of Fallout is SP immersion. I wouldn't have minded being able to team up with a friend occasionally but looks like they've ruined the fundamental appeal of the game.

MONEY plain and simple!

 

[Panos]

Seems cheating on PC going to be common.
A dozen mods were banned at Nexus after Bethesda demanded it. However that doesn't mean nobody can use them, as the issue is the game engine designed for SP not MP, feeding data to the server not the other way around.

 

[Narj]

Seems cheating on PC going to be common.
A dozen mods were banned at Nexus after Bethesda demanded it. However that doesn't mean nobody can use them, as the issue is the game engine designed for SP not MP, feeding data to the server not the other way around.

Knowing Bethesda's reputation for game-breaking bugs, it's likely that these will be exploited by griefers to make life generally unpleasant for others.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I nearly did buy this,but in hindsite CDKeys saved me! Its fun and does have some good points,but I think I will see how this is a year's time and move on from there. I just hope CB2077 isn't out by then.

I can always play ARK if I want to run a survival game.

 

[Mercutio]

I've now watched about 15 hours of solo play and I'm a bit less unimpressed by it. How's that for damned by faint praise?

There's some Fallout in Fallout 76. I think that if they make a PC version (and I mean a PC version, not a badly ported Xbox version that will work OK on a PC as long as you're using a console controller) and the price drops a lot and they allow some configuration of the UI (e.g. fixing the pointlessly broken pipboy screen) and the controls (e.g. the same button does a melee attack and throws a thrown weapon and you can't seperate the two - how did anyone conclude that was a good idea?) and they don't take the **** with macrotransactions I might buy it at some point in the future. I would sort of like to play it, to some extent.

I dont't care about the graphics - I consider them more than adequate apart from the quite bizarre pop-in. It's the gameplay I'm interested in and I'm thinking that the bad doesn't outweigh the good by as much as I thought it might. It might become tolerable under some circumstances.

SPOT THE SHILL! (I kid ofc )

 

[AWPC]

7PM-1AM this evening is the final Beta session according to Bethedsa. So I will be logging on again. I have seen all the map now (its about the same size content wise as Far Harbour DLC just takes way longer to travel anywhere as they have extended the distances a lot to pad it all out). The interiors are fixed I shall spend that time exploring interiors of buildings which previously were broken due to the indoor gamma bug they now patched.

Clearly there is some Fallout here in places but not really much for a Solo player this is more of a shared with 3 friends type of experience so not something I will be buying unless its really cheap around the £5-10 range! It may very well end up really cheap the extra 2 betas this week show how few people have pre-ordered.

 

[Haggisman]

I don't know if I can even be bothered to give this another shot tonight to be honest, will maybe see if my mates are playing it, but I've already cancelled my pre-order and I'm really struggling to muster up any kind of enthusiasm for it!

 

[SB118]

I've played a couple of the beta sessions and it pushed me to splash out £32 on the basic pc version.

I'm looking forward to the free DLC at some point and for how much free time i get to game, FO76 is going to be big enough for me to wander around and look at all the pretty things (although i would like a hires texture pack to make it modern pretty obviously).

I've solo'd it most of the time but spent half an hour paired up with a random and it made Grafton much easier to work through at lower levels.

I think this is going to hold my attention better than Forza H4, which i bored of before my Xbox gamepass trial ran out.

Biggest pain is not being able to fiddle with any settings until the beta servers are up.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

7PM-1AM this evening is the final Beta session according to Bethedsa. So I will be logging on again. I have seen all the map now (its about the same size content wise as Far Harbour DLC just takes way longer to travel anywhere as they have extended the distances a lot to pad it all out). The interiors are fixed I shall spend that time exploring interiors of buildings which previously were broken due to the indoor gamma bug they now patched.

Clearly there is some Fallout here in places but not really much for a Solo player this is more of a shared with 3 friends type of experience so not something I will be buying unless its really cheap around the £5-10 range! It may very well end up really cheap the extra 2 betas this week show how few people have pre-ordered.

If this was like £20 I might give it a go then,but at £40 to £50 no way. The only way I can see myself paying more if there is much more content and they actually bother to put in proper NPCs. I honestly can see why the CBA,as they only needed some NPCs in certain locations,and with 32 players like even a few dozen NPCs,is hardly going to break the engine!

 

[SB118]

If this was like £20 I might give it a go then,but at £40 to £50 no way.

CDkeys are knocking it out for £32 if that helps.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

CDkeys are knocking it out for £32 if that helps.

Thanks,I had to force a PayPal refund with them last time I used them and that was recently so deffo not using them again anytime soon. It can be had for £30 to £40 elsewhere but when it hits £20 or less seems about right.

None of my mates are really into Fallout,the one person I know who might play it won't be getting it anytime soon,and survival games I can only play for a while and I get bored at the grind if on public servers. The one I did play for a bit was ARK only because we had a private server and a few mates played it.

If this had some NPCs and a point to the story where NPCs existed it might have been justifiable at £30+ but all I will be doing is playing a Fallout based Rust with some holotapes. It seems to be another game from Bethesda modders need to save.

Edit!!

TBH,to be fair to Betheda I will keep a watch out for updates,etc. So we will see - its early days.

Still a fun games though despite my criticisms.

 

[Angilion]

Another deal-breaking issue some people might not be aware of:

Your camp can only hold 400 weight units of stuff. That's the absolute limit with no workaround. If you craft additional storage containers, they're completely useless. They're just a visual extension of your stash, with shared contents. Just your stash - 400 limit. An extra container, 10 extra containers, 1,000,000 extra containers - still 400 limit and every one contains the same contents as your stash.

You can fill that limit very easily within a couple of hours and it will be a constant problem. Found some weapons and armour with a relatively high level requirement? Well, if you want to keep them you'll have to throw away lots of other stuff. Found a new weapon you like? Shame you had to throw away all the ammo for it in order to save a few pounds of space in your stash. Etc, etc. Maybe the game was meant to be called Fallout 7.6 because testing showed that the average player will spend 7.6% of their entire play time trying to decide what useful things they have to throw away.

 

[Narj]

No they will just charge you real money to expand your capacity. It'll come and the mugs will pay...

 

[AWPC]

If this was like £20 I might give it a go then,but at £40 to £50 no way. The only way I can see myself paying more if there is much more content and they actually bother to put in proper NPCs. I honestly can see why the CBA,as they only needed some NPCs in certain locations,and with 32 players like even a few dozen NPCs,is hardly going to break the engine!

I would only go so far as £5-10 perhaps £15. I have fully explored the entire map in my 35 hours or so. Its about the same content size as Far Harbour or Nuka World DLCs just a much larger map size with locations spread out thinly to pad it out. Game world feels so empty right now.

Bethesda did an ok job on the streaming landscape & making it look a little different that & the atmospheric lighting are passable (albeit still dated gfx). Lack of content is the biggest issue & being clearly an MMO which has been changed into also catering to Solo players. Most of the other players I have seen on these betas are just doing things solo few are bothering with the MMO designed challenges.

Still think the game will launch next week as planned then perhaps Bethesda will listen to feedback & actually take notice

Indoor building raining bug is still there its been there since Fallout 4!

Bobbleheads for instance why on earth make those time limited perks then also give you perk cards which can extend them for a lot longer! Such an odd design choice along with all the other perks.

The lack of any resource is ridiculous you have to constantly struggle with thirst, hunger & weapon degradation. Pointless grief for the player who just wants to enjoy the exploration.

 

[Proto]

Had the last session now, and the game felt slightly better than before the patch - could be newer drivers etc.

The playing aspect, well, it's the same thing just without any NPCs. So, if you're willing to look past that, and realise that all interaction will be purely human only, it isn't that bad. Must be what Bethesda wanted for the game, so perhaps they will use it as a basis to get players in and then make changes based on how it all pans out, lucky they can get away with it, I suppose. With that said, still not sure if it's for me though, can see myself getting bored very quicky if interested in playing solo and keep getting holotape run arounds.

Also, seeing the playing cards when you receive perks instantly reminded me of the way loot boxes work in ESO, which is slightly off putting.

 

[Angilion]

I've just seen another "innovative feature" of FO76 in one of Oxhorn's streams. It turns out that holotapes have two seperate sound files and the audio is classed as background music. No, seriously, that's not a joke. So if you have background music set to zero volume all you will hear as a holotape plays is the quiet hissing that's the other sound file and so it seems that the holotape is blank, erased or damaged because, of course, there's no clue that holotape audio is classed as background music and no rational reason for it to be.

That's a worse design decision than using the same button to do a melee attack and throw a grenade.

I want to like the game despite it being a mess of different games and not working well as any of them, but it's that mess on top of bugs on top of deliberately dissuading PC players from playing on top of multiple bad gameplay design decisions on top of the annoyance of other people being in the way of playing the game on top of the lack of configuration options (either from Bethesda or made possible by mods). I don't think the good points are worth putting up with the bad points, even ignoring the cost and the unwelcome precedent of preventing modding and embedding macrotransactions even further into the game and being dependent on Bethesda allowing you to play even after you've paid for the game and having to install yet another launcher (and one that's notoriously bad at the moment).

 

[Proto]

I've just seen another "innovative feature" of FO76 in one of Oxhorn's streams. It turns out that holotapes have two seperate sound files and the audio is classed as background music. No, seriously, that's not a joke. So if you have background music set to zero volume all you will hear as a holotape plays is the quiet hissing that's the other sound file and so it seems that the holotape is blank, erased or damaged because, of course, there's no clue that holotape audio is classed as background music and no rational reason for it to be.

That's a worse design decision than using the same button to do a melee attack and throw a grenade.

I want to like the game despite it being a mess of different games and not working well as any of them, but it's that mess on top of bugs on top of deliberately dissuading PC players from playing on top of multiple bad gameplay design decisions on top of the annoyance of other people being in the way of playing the game on top of the lack of configuration options (either from Bethesda or made possible by mods). I don't think the good points are worth putting up with the bad points, even ignoring the cost and the unwelcome precedent of preventing modding and embedding macrotransactions even further into the game and being dependent on Bethesda allowing you to play even after you've paid for the game and having to install yet another launcher (and one that's notoriously bad at the moment).

Interestingly, ESO through Steam has been having some serious logging in issues. Such as not being able to play the game for the whole day after scheduled Monday maintanance over the last couple of weeks.

So, the seperate laucher might not be such a bad idea.

Edit:

Video of final session for anyone who didn't actually play the beta - added analytics overlay due to intermittent performance drops that I can't tell if are due to cpu resource usage or perhaps the way textures are streamed. Recording probably doesn't help either, but I did put Afterburner on eight threads.