Thank you very much for the objective assessement of the game in its current state.

 

Character Builder:

https://nukesdragons.com/fallout76/perks?v=1&s=1111111&d=&n=

 

NP sorry its not better news. I will report back after todays 9 hours later I just want to explore the map now without bothering with the fetch quests & boring forced combat missions.

Xbox1 BETA codes are now only £0.79 as well due to how low the demand is yet still Bethesda are going ahead with the planned release in 13 days

 

In the current BETA you do not need to spend any time on this as you can change the character at any time from the main menu anyway.

 

I hope it forces Bethesda to improve the game. At around £50 this seems not that cheap either.

 

£31.99 on cdkeys right now £1.49 for the BETA key on its own. Its not even worth that in the current state sadly!

 

They never sent me the the beta key I bought before and are ignoring my queries to CS. So I won't be using cdkeys anytime soon again.

 

I purchased my F4 GOTY version(£14.99) to upgrade my old F4 game from them two days ago, had no issues, received GOTY Steam key within minutes and working fine.

 

Well they never sent anything,so now after a few days of not replying to my query of where the key was,I am telling the merchant I used to deal with it. I bought the key 3 weeks ago.

I thought it was weird I hadn't got the e-mail with the key,but thought its not out for a few weeks,thats why.

Even on Twitter loads of unhappy people,and they have the audacity to sprout this crap:

ALL the people having issues are having them with newer titles,so that tells me they lied through their teeth and sold stock they didn't have. There is a heavy influx since loads of people have not received what they paid for.

This shows when there is a problem they CBA to solve it,and that is the mettle of any company,ie,how they deal with issues.

 

Send that to Vettel he needs a Character Builder

Runs away........

 

lol good one

 

Watched Jack frags and TAG play some of this, and he was not very impressed with it so far. And i have to say what i have seen of it is not making me want to rush out and get it.

 

Played a couple of hours, honestly I cannot be bothered with these damn menus - why does Bethesda insist on such garbage menus!

 

Going to have to shift the rest of my fallout beer bottles before this crashes then :/

For a company that specialises in single player versions of this franchise, it's beyond me why they've stripped out all the things that people love about it just to make it multiplayer.

The fallout/Skyrim games are my go-to specifically for NOT playing with other people and having great lore and stories

 

They obviously haven't spent more than a few quid on development, so I suppose even if they only make a small amount from it they're in profit from it.

 

Well this is a weird duck of a game. I want to enjoy it more than I am but it's peculiar rendition of a multiplayer experience is really putting me off.

This is the first (and hopefully the last time) I have ever launched a game to find a random Spanish woman prattling to herself IN THE CHARACTER CREATION SCREEN! Was this part of the game? A radio? Oh wait no, the chat was set to Auto...

 

The multiplayer part doesn't really make sense, I met several players wandering around who clearly didn't know that they had open mics on the go. One was talking to his wife about their son and the other was watching a movie from what I could tell.

Gun play is great.. it has potential but the pvp system, voice, menus etc all need work. Not sure I can justify going in for this to be honest.

 

It makes sense probably for a controller??

 

Played another 7 hours this evening had more than enough now even though it still has just under an hour left to go it has broken my motivation to continue any longer today

CONS:
1: Its an MMO & clearly built around MMO gameplay mechanics. Solo is possible but tedious & a massive time sink to get basic items.
2: The ONLY way to earn XP in a reasonable amount of time is to surprise surprise Cilla play the MMO forced to team up with others missions all the time.
3: Solo play takes forever to earn any meaningful XP. After almost 11 hours I have only reached 11 (you reach lvl 5 within the first hour normally!). Players who started same time as me have almost reached lvl30 by playing it like an MMO.
4: Solo is really slow going & almost every location of interest is locked behind a lvl barrier so you encounter enemies which require lvl 30 or higher guarding the entrance. I reached this interesting looking hospital building complex. Only way to even enter it was to team up with 3 other players to try & take down the lvl34 Sentry Bot with insta kill mega death lasers which literally atomise you as soon as they fire them! The respawn point was about 3 mins walk away so we tried & tried for ages gave up in the end its way overpowered.
5: Weapons are horrible. Takes a very long time to get a decent weapon the degradation is also severe & really annoying just as you get something decent it breaks! They are all locked into the MMO aspect again. You will need to play as an MMO for a very long time to get anything decent.
6: Most areas outside the initial spawning point when you first play require such a high level even if you just want to explore & see what is out there that is not even possible without spending a very long time reaching a high enough level. No wonder they did the open BETA no way anyone can visit even a fraction of the locations in the BETA. I am up to about 30% after 11 hours. I cannot even travel across certain parts of the map to reach the points of interest to me as once again I would need to play for many hours as an MMO to reach the required lvl & get the stronger gear & perks cards.
7: No VATS makes combat a very tedious process. Once again its built around an MMO on Solo you need to sneak fire run away sneak back & rinse & repeat. Some environments prevent this though they have poison gasses, poison plants, radiation ditches & or other snags all designed around it being an MMO & 4 players firing at once from different directions or helping each other if you get downed or trapped.
8: The map screen is no longer even accessible UNLESS you first select a current mission. No other way to pull it up right now. Game also does not pause either like any MMO you are vulnerable when you view the map or check your inventory.
9: There are so many severe bugs on the most basic gameplay elements it will take months to even patch into a basic playable state. This is pre-alpha right now it will take months to be anything more than that.
10: Weather system is broken & bugged beyond belief does not cycle properly either.
11: Basic graphics are not even working properly. The gamma is badly broken building interiors all look the same anyway but especially lighting FX wise. Exteriors look ok until you go near mist, fog or smoke then the screen gets murky.
12: Graphics are still poor. You have to leave the starting point spawning area & travel for about 2 hours before you can start to see different landscapes.
13: Max graphics preset is High only right now so it looks way worse than Fallout as no HD textures or models they are all High only with Ultra for Shadows. You have zero menu control over AA or Vsync either just basic settings now.
14: No fast way to earn XP its a very well thought out system to make you play for 100s of hours to make any real progress. Quite literally everything needed to progress is locked behind the need to play as an MMO or spend 10 times as long on Solo!
15: Its an MMO pure & simple Solo is possible but so time consuming you will be spending 100s of hours on it before you can even start to enjoy the higher lvl missions & locations.

PROS:
1: Its Fallout in some ways but only barely & only because it reuses about 95% of the exact same graphics from Fallout4!
2: With a lot of time & effort it could be patched into something better for Solo players. Some of the locations are epic in scale & demand exploring but you need to be a very high lvl player to even see them from more than an extreme distance!

OVERALL:
Its pure & simple an MMO through & through & very strongly built around those gameplay mechanics.
Solo is possible but only in the sense that yes you can actually play Solo & explore until you reach the many lvl barrier constraints which will not be easily breached unless you play as an MMO due to how long it would take any other way to get the required XP.

I think the Solo play was a last minute decision so was the no pay to win microtransactions (Atoms currency are earned by MMO gameplay or doing constant challenges no need to ever buy they are cosmetic items only & the included selection are very poor looking anyway).
For sure I will not be buying the full game I think Starfield will come out (in 3-5 years time no less!!) before its anywhere near worth paying for Fallout 76

 

Brilliant write up dude, thanks for information. You have pretty much confirmed every concern I had and I'll be giving it a miss.

The XP grind, the lack of single player ability and some of the staple Fallout mechanics that are missing make this one an Indiana Jones 4 to me, in that I'll just pretend it doesnt exist.