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"What if" disussion about Fallout 76, the franchise in general and Bethesda's future


ThatMrSmile

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It's pretty much been confirmed that 76 was the multiplayer prototype for Fallout 4 that got set aside, then picked back up when Bethesda realized they had enough manpower, and even another studio to help make it a reality. It's an experiment. Will this lead to more online experiences in the future? Maybe. Will they completely abandon the single player, rpg focus of the past? Unlikely. This is not Fallout 5. Think of it more like Redguard or Battlespire, a project to see what they are capable of.

 

It's important to stay, not positive, but rational. The best thing we can do, at this moment is sit back and see what comes of it in the next year or so. The game is coming out whether you like it or not, and probably won't change too much before that date. For now, make your voice heard, in an adult manner, about mods, private servers, and micro-transactions. If mods turn out to be CC only, or private servers have to be rented, then we can riot. A year or two later, if Starfield is not a return to at least Fallout 4 levels of single player RPG, then we can start boycotting and whatnot, but do not do these things before you know what you are opposing, and do not do them in the voice of a child.

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The thing is, everything you listed, except the settlement existed since fallout 3. Sure, those have dated graphics, but it wasn't so bad back then. As for settlement mode, whats the point of having an epic city if its populated with cardboard cutouts? None of the npcs have personality. Before anyone suggests that's why they cut them out of 76, consider the interesting npc mod. It adds in slews of unique voiced npcs that are actually fun to encounter.

 

So trying to look at it objectively as to what was gained.

 

Better shooting mechanics,

pretty graphics,

more stable engine.

 

Do any of those sound critical to a rpg? Sure they can help, but it's not a deal breaker to most players. *shrugs* It just seems like they are throwing their core audience away to compete with the latest co-op loot and shoot. After typing all this out, I realized my same points on contention with fallout 4 also hold true with 76.

I made a post today about why I stayed in Skyrim even I experienced supposedly better games in the same league (maybe not one game better than Skyrim in all aspects). Games like Mirror's Edge Catalyst (love the action, the fluid motions, the world, the graphics), Watch Dog 2, AC:O, Mass Effects, etc... and etc.... But I went back to Skyrim even with the 3 big things Skyrim falls short: better combat mechanics, better graphics, more stable engine. FO4 has 1 thing better than Skyrim, the VATS. I know some people hate it, they don't have to use it. But I feel it is huge in an RPG like Skyrim and FO4. Players shouldn't have to be an expert FPS to play RPG. In Skyrim, when enemies attack a populated area, I run. My arrows, melee, or magic are bound to hit someone and suddenly an entire town is out to get me. In FO4, VATS remedies that.

 

All these 3: good game mechanics, good graphics, stable engines do not mean a thing if you do not like the game genre. I was sucked into Origin club and get to play tons of games for free, like some great sport games, racing games. I tried them, they are fun, and great. But I played for 2-3 hours, and game over for me. I can drive, I understand the line, corner entering and exiting, but ... zero interest in racing to shave 2 seconds off my previous lap time.

 

You mentioned cardboard cutout. I agree completely. But give Bethesda more credit. It's their first time designing The Sims, and on top of an RPG with heavy focus on shooting and killing things. In fact, I am so glad I did not have an urge to go back to Sims 3 thanks to FO4. The Sims 3 was fun, with mods. It lacked the actions (no fighting). But it was literately the ONLY game in the market that offers settlement building feature. Does Second Life count as one? I never found out. But unlike Bethesda games, The Sims entire franchise was built on wet rags for engines. If you think FO4 and Skyrim are unstable, The Sims 2 and 3 feel like toothpick framework: you breath harder and everything collapses. This is an understatement. But unlike Bethesda, the Sims' dev and owners HATE their modding community and do whatever it takes to coerc people to never download anything outside of their pricey and underwhelmed store. Like Creation Club, x10 more expensive. The Sims modding community feels like hackers and outlaws, and proud of it. A few fun facts about The Sims 3: it is common to take 15-20 minutes from starting to play. Some I heard even have to wait 45 minutes. Each save game can range from 500Mb to 2Gb. They get away with it because they monopolize, no competition.

 

Therefore, Settlement Building alone in FO4 opens up so much opportunities for FO series. I am hoping the next TES games would have an active settlement building feature (maybe city/castle building).

 

But you should remember why the modding community exists at the first place? It exists not to compensate for Bethesda's lacking (like the unofficial patch and tons of mods adding features sorely lacking in vanilla game), but so the players get a much better gaming experience than the vanilla game can ever provide. FO4 is done for me, I did the quests, played twice. But FO4 with mods and ENB .... that sim settlement mod .... like Sim City within FO4 ... and all the followers' mods ... I haven't scratched much of the surface of FO4's content.

 

The only thing Bethesda should do better is to have a more stable engine. It is NOT that hard. I have never worked on a project this size. But I know safe practices when it comes to validations, garbage collecting, etc... I should NOT CTD if an .esp is missing a master. I should NOT CTD if the skeleton file is missing a node. I should get a message stating the errors. No, it is not easy to create a stable engine. But Bethesda has more than 1 person as programmer. And their budget is in the millions.

Edited by tomomi1922
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I agree with the OP. FO4 is mediocre at best. Without mods I think the player base would be 1/4 of what it is now and the game with all DLC's would be on steam for $5.99

 

As with almost anything else, the more popular something gets the worse it becomes. Laziness creeps in. The reliance on a formula for success replaces ingenuity and imagination. Fallout would be better served in the hands of a smaller company like Obsidian. Sadly I doubt this would happen, and Bleh-thesda would probably sell it to another large studio like EA before a smaller company would get their hands on it.

 

What a shame.

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I agree with the OP. FO4 is mediocre at best. Without mods I think the player base would be 1/4 of what it is now and the game with all DLC's would be on steam for $5.99

 

As with almost anything else, the more popular something gets the worse it becomes. Laziness creeps in. The reliance on a formula for success replaces ingenuity and imagination. Fallout would be better served in the hands of a smaller company like Obsidian. Sadly I doubt this would happen, and Bleh-thesda would probably sell it to another large studio like EA before a smaller company would get their hands on it.

 

What a shame.

EA would destroy the franchise, they can't help it. It is their track record.

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In another video, Todd discusses they have been kicking this idea for the Starfall(?) for many, many years. Just because he said it is an "original" IP doesn't mean the idea is new. But to my knowledge this is a Beth dream.

That's exactly what I've posted. They've been dreaming of making a Sci-fi game at least since 1997. In fact, they almost made it.

 

http://i.giphy.com/APdR2OW6QhDNe.gif

 

We need more of these imo. Too many games with a primitive theme.

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How much nonsense is going to be put out by defenders of the indefensible.

 

Starfield is at least THREE YEARS away. The next Elder Scrolls even longer. Fallout:76 ***is*** Fallout 5.

 

Terrible leaks have happened across the last two years, as depraved speeches by industry psychologists and addiction experts given at highly secret industry events attended by the likes of Valve, EA and Zenimax have hit the internet. These leaked speeches and reports EXACTLY match the direction taken by Fallout:76.

 

Children and males of low self-esteem are the targets of the GAMBLING and continuous microtransaction methods of the new 'games'. "Gaming as a service" is code for "customers as an addicted zombie cash cow".

 

Yet Fallout 4 made ONE BILLION+ dollars for Zenimax- you innocent fans of decent single player fun did NOT rob anyone. A 20 million dollar investment at an external dev using current Skyrim remastered toolsets would generate a new Fallout game on the scale of Fallout 4 within 18 months, and Zenimax would make more than 500 million dollars from the title (probably much more).

 

At least EA and Activision and Ubisoft do not allow Petty little tin-pot 'gods' like Todd to hold hostage their key IPs. Indeed these publishers fire any manager who claims ownership of an IP to the clear detriment of that IP. That's why you get a COD or Battlefront or Assassin's Creed every year (whether or not you enjoy these IPs or even think they are 'good' games).

 

Fallout:76 cannot be forgiven for at Beth, it's a major open world entry every 4 or 5 or even SIX years now. If one of these entries deviates from the formula beloved by fans, it represents a wait extended by another ton of years.

 

PS Avalanche- a company many of you Beth fans are only now hearing about (via the reskinned Mad Max 2 being sold as Rage 2)- was once in a similar position. It's Just Cause 2 had been an astonishing fan success, backed by a truly brilliant opne world team. But Avalanche too had the curse of a Todd manager- a fool who rather than making Just Cause 3 a GTA V level success, instead wasted FOUR YEARS making his devs work on a microtransaction riddled nonsense based in the Just Cause world that never got released. The Avalanche 'Todd' also tried to cash-in on a "gaming as a service" trend that seemed trendy at the time.

 

In desperation at the failure, Avalanche accepted an awful contract from WB to bang out a Mad Max game, while a hopeless studio is NY was tasked to do a quick re-skin of Just Cause 2 (literally) that ended up being sold as the flop (and horribly reviewed) Just Cause 3.

 

After Just Cause 2, Avalanche could easily have become the next Rockstar (GTA devs) but their own attempt to do Just Cause:Rust (never released in the end) wasted 6+ years. Only now has Avalanche started to recover.

 

In an ideal world, Zenimax would fire Todd and all his cronies, and set the new management to a "once a year" schedule, as I said. But Zenimax's owners are rotten and even more into this 'gaming as a service for addicts' than Todd is.

 

PS I see the ill-informed still talking about 'settlements' in Fallout:76. There are NO SETTLEMENTS in Fallout:76. There are CAMPS, which bind to a player and are literally the possesion of a player, vanishing when a player logs out, and reappearing when a player logs in. The camps are only as 'complex' as those shown in the promotional video at E3. This is NOT my opinion. This is the detailed and specifc clarification from Todd's own mouth from multiple interviews.

 

Only a fool PROJECTS their own imagined version of a thing, when the facts are available. Everything I read 'optimists' claiming Fallout:76 has are FAKE FACTS- fantasy projections based on what the foolish person imagines Fallout:76 would have if they had designed it. Todd and the very poor F2P team (so bad Zenimax alomst sacked the lot of them) have explicitly stated on multiple videos what Fallout:76 is, and how it works. Just because their vision for the game is uniquely foolish, half-baked and against every reason people liked Skyrim/Fallout 3/4 is no reason to IGNORE the people who designed and coded this game.

 

My jaw has dropped every time Todd opens his mouth. He is so clueless about online games, Rust games, and why and how such games work when they are successes, my mind is blown. Todd is the worst kind of blind amateur who has never gamed himself in these game world he THINKS he is emulating. No- Todd thinks he can invent from scartch everything off the top of his head, and still be successful. That level of arrogance is astonishing.

 

And while modders COULD save Fallout:Rust, Zenimax can never allow this, for a fully moddable Fallout:76 would compete directly with Beth future product. Online games that make their money from addiction can NEVER allow real free modding.

 

Today, Todd will say ANYTHING about the fantasy "jam tomorrow" 'future' of Fallout:76 to sell the game today. It isn't even 'lying' to say "we expect Fallout:76 to have 'modding' and 'private servers' at some point" even if Todd knows they will NEVER allow this to happen. What each of you should pay attention to is what Todd and the devs state are FACTS about the coming release version of the game- the only reality that matters.

 

-No settlements, only tiny camps.

-No persistance from the players's POV (each time you log in, it's a new game instance)

-No story, no cut-scenes with task giving NPC's. Only radiant style 'treasure hunts' and holotape messages/notes/terminals.

-Always on PvP, as the ONLY form of real gameplay.

-all the other 23 slots of a game instance filled with randos

-NO VEHICLES (cos, you know, 'Rage')

-Netcode from the 1990s that cannot handle > 24 players.

-imprecise online shooty mechanisms as bad as PUBG (online realtime shooting code is HARD), which is why VATS is still a thing.

-no proper cover system, no proper base-building/fort system,

-Zombies as the single actual faction threat, like every other zombie game (wow, you think Todd was copying something?)

 

Dying Light 2 is a million times more sophisticated than Fallout:76 and yet is a direct competitor. On the other hand the new Metro open world game (early 2019) is the Fallout 5 we are not getting from Beth. Todd thinks you are so blindly loyal, you do not notice the far better devs who are providing the games Todd refuses to.

 

What game got the MOST attention at E3- that's right, CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077- like the Witcher 3 a natural successor to Skyrim and Fallout. Yet with Nexus mods, most of us will play the older Beth games for far longer than our time in the (effectively unmoddable) Witcher 3.

 

Beth isn't going to change course. Even Doom has Doom:Eternal, NOT Doom II:Hell on Earth - because the follow-up to Doom is also a tedious game as a service product, like the rogue-lite moonbase DLC for Prey. Conventional single player at Beth is dead. Monetised online for addicts is the new 'black' at Beth.

 

And what finally converted Todd- sadly the astonishing player-base for Fallout-shelter. And the money that POS made from loot chests.

 

It sickens me to know that Zenimax is so rich and powerful, it could have sunk billions into the new cynical online games and still kept a single-player division going churning out highly profitable single-player games. It never had to be either/or. But once Todd looked at the numbers playing Shelter, and the revenues pouring in from the addicts, it was "GAME OVER" for us original fans.

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How much nonsense is going to be put out by defenders of the indefensible.

Starfield is at least THREE YEARS away. The next Elder Scrolls even longer. Fallout:76 ***is*** Fallout 5.

Terrible leaks have happened across the last two years, as depraved speeches by industry psychologists and addiction experts given at highly secret industry events attended by the likes of Valve, EA and Zenimax have hit the internet. These leaked speeches and reports EXACTLY match the direction taken by Fallout:76.

Children and males of low self-esteem are the targets of the GAMBLING and continuous microtransaction methods of the new 'games'. "Gaming as a service" is code for "customers as an addicted zombie cash cow".

Yet Fallout 4 made ONE BILLION+ dollars for Zenimax- you innocent fans of decent single player fun did NOT rob anyone. A 20 million dollar investment at an external dev using current Skyrim remastered toolsets would generate a new Fallout game on the scale of Fallout 4 within 18 months, and Zenimax would make more than 500 million dollars from the title (probably much more).

At least EA and Activision and Ubisoft do not allow Petty little tin-pot 'gods' like Todd to hold hostage their key IPs. Indeed these publishers fire any manager who claims ownership of an IP to the clear detriment of that IP. That's why you get a COD or Battlefront or Assassin's Creed every year (whether or not you enjoy these IPs or even think they are 'good' games).

Fallout:76 cannot be forgiven for at Beth, it's a major open world entry every 4 or 5 or even SIX years now. If one of these entries deviates from the formula beloved by fans, it represents a wait extended by another ton of years.

PS Avalanche- a company many of you Beth fans are only now hearing about (via the reskinned Mad Max 2 being sold as Rage 2)- was once in a similar position. It's Just Cause 2 had been an astonishing fan success, backed by a truly brilliant opne world team. But Avalanche too had the curse of a Todd manager- a fool who rather than making Just Cause 3 a GTA V level success, instead wasted FOUR YEARS making his devs work on a microtransaction riddled nonsense based in the Just Cause world that never got released. The Avalanche 'Todd' also tried to cash-in on a "gaming as a service" trend that seemed trendy at the time.

In desperation at the failure, Avalanche accepted an awful contract from WB to bang out a Mad Max game, while a hopeless studio is NY was tasked to do a quick re-skin of Just Cause 2 (literally) that ended up being sold as the flop (and horribly reviewed) Just Cause 3.

After Just Cause 2, Avalanche could easily have become the next Rockstar (GTA devs) but their own attempt to do Just Cause:Rust (never released in the end) wasted 6+ years. Only now has Avalanche started to recover.

In an ideal world, Zenimax would fire Todd and all his cronies, and set the new management to a "once a year" schedule, as I said. But Zenimax's owners are rotten and even more into this 'gaming as a service for addicts' than Todd is.

PS I see the ill-informed still talking about 'settlements' in Fallout:76. There are NO SETTLEMENTS in Fallout:76. There are CAMPS, which bind to a player and are literally the possesion of a player, vanishing when a player logs out, and reappearing when a player logs in. The camps are only as 'complex' as those shown in the promotional video at E3. This is NOT my opinion. This is the detailed and specifc clarification from Todd's own mouth from multiple interviews.

Only a fool PROJECTS their own imagined version of a thing, when the facts are available. Everything I read 'optimists' claiming Fallout:76 has are FAKE FACTS- fantasy projections based on what the foolish person imagines Fallout:76 would have if they had designed it. Todd and the very poor F2P team (so bad Zenimax alomst sacked the lot of them) have explicitly stated on multiple videos what Fallout:76 is, and how it works. Just because their vision for the game is uniquely foolish, half-baked and against every reason people liked Skyrim/Fallout 3/4 is no reason to IGNORE the people who designed and coded this game.

My jaw has dropped every time Todd opens his mouth. He is so clueless about online games, Rust games, and why and how such games work when they are successes, my mind is blown. Todd is the worst kind of blind amateur who has never gamed himself in these game world he THINKS he is emulating. No- Todd thinks he can invent from scartch everything off the top of his head, and still be successful. That level of arrogance is astonishing.

And while modders COULD save Fallout:Rust, Zenimax can never allow this, for a fully moddable Fallout:76 would compete directly with Beth future product. Online games that make their money from addiction can NEVER allow real free modding.

Today, Todd will say ANYTHING about the fantasy "jam tomorrow" 'future' of Fallout:76 to sell the game today. It isn't even 'lying' to say "we expect Fallout:76 to have 'modding' and 'private servers' at some point" even if Todd knows they will NEVER allow this to happen. What each of you should pay attention to is what Todd and the devs state are FACTS about the coming release version of the game- the only reality that matters.

-No settlements, only tiny camps.

-No persistance from the players's POV (each time you log in, it's a new game instance)

-No story, no cut-scenes with task giving NPC's. Only radiant style 'treasure hunts' and holotape messages/notes/terminals.

-Always on PvP, as the ONLY form of real gameplay.

-all the other 23 slots of a game instance filled with randos

-NO VEHICLES (cos, you know, 'Rage')

-Netcode from the 1990s that cannot handle > 24 players.

-imprecise online shooty mechanisms as bad as PUBG (online realtime shooting code is HARD), which is why VATS is still a thing.

-no proper cover system, no proper base-building/fort system,

-Zombies as the single actual faction threat, like every other zombie game (wow, you think Todd was copying something?)

Dying Light 2 is a million times more sophisticated than Fallout:76 and yet is a direct competitor. On the other hand the new Metro open world game (early 2019) is the Fallout 5 we are not getting from Beth. Todd thinks you are so blindly loyal, you do not notice the far better devs who are providing the games Todd refuses to.

What game got the MOST attention at E3- that's right, CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077- like the Witcher 3 a natural successor to Skyrim and Fallout. Yet with Nexus mods, most of us will play the older Beth games for far longer than our time in the (effectively unmoddable) Witcher 3.

Beth isn't going to change course. Even Doom has Doom:Eternal, NOT Doom II:Hell on Earth - because the follow-up to Doom is also a tedious game as a service product, like the rogue-lite moonbase DLC for Prey. Conventional single player at Beth is dead. Monetised online for addicts is the new 'black' at Beth.

And what finally converted Todd- sadly the astonishing player-base for Fallout-shelter. And the money that POS made from loot chests.

It sickens me to know that Zenimax is so rich and powerful, it could have sunk billions into the new cynical online games and still kept a single-player division going churning out highly profitable single-player games. It never had to be either/or. But once Todd looked at the numbers playing Shelter, and the revenues pouring in from the addicts, it was "GAME OVER" for us original fans.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

To my Dear Zanity, I'm just copying and pasting my post from here, and added the quotation marks:

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6730807-we-need-a-separate-fo76-forum-for-all-these-discussions/

 

"Zanity, I love you man. I can't even tell if you're doing it on purpose, but you have the most thought-out and imaginative troll rants I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I tip my tinfoil hat to you."

Edited to add the Zanity quote.

Edited by buzzbomb
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Good diatribe, and if you actually know how to make more money from an IP franchise, step up and do it. Everything is for sale at the right price as our economic model gets on with the business of maximising return on capital.

 

But, annuity subscriptions and micro transactions are the new new industry growth model and vulnerable consumer addiction is a real problem (Psychology of Loot Boxes and Microtransactions). It will need consumer activism and legislation to protect folks from buying stuff they don't need with money they don't have.

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If there is a success with FO4, it is only because the community could mod this game. Personally, I have enjoyed the game and I am still playing it and I will continue playing it as long as there are more mods to add that are related to what I want to play with and I think there will be.

 

One thing that I would do if I was Bethesda, is to either add more DLC to the actual FO4 ( with the intention to expand the area to other US regions ) so I will profit and at the same time make the community happy about it. IMHO, online games are not the best option because they denied your independency to create or do whatever you want. For example, in FO4, I can build my own home as I want to, have as many followers as I want to, etc, etc, etc ....

 

... offline games allow us to have mods and do whatever we want with the game and that freedom is what makes offline games much better than online ones.

 

Again, If I was Bethesda, I would have add more DLC ( let's say one every 6 months ) to the game and I am very sure that everybody would buy them out and continue playing. Everybody have been asking Bethesda to create another Elder Scroll game and we have been asking to extend it to the entire Tamriel which would be very nice and will re-boost Skyrim to a different dimension.

 

Back to FO4, the fallout was in the entire world so why, instead making an online game they did not make another DLC that extend the play to let' say, New York, Chicago, etc, etc. ? I bet my head that if they would have done that, everybody would be very happy. They will make a lot of money ( and more money I can bet that they can make with the online game ) and we, the community will continue playing this game forever. Regardless of how buggy those two games have been ( Skyrim and FO4 ), they are the two games people plays the most. We love them because we can mod them and the only thing we are missing is more DLC's. But seems to me that Bethesda is not listening to us and opted to go with an online game that probably will not better than we already have.

 

Talking hypothetically, if right now Bethesda adds a new DLC to the current FO4 game ( let' say to New York ), I can bet that they will sell thousands of it and make more money that they can imagine. I would do that if I was Bethesda's owner. Open FO4 frontiers to adjacent areas would be the key to enhance the players' experience.

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I don't really buy it. I can get behind the idea that this is a cash-grab exploiting the Fallout brand. But your claim is more than that. It's also that (I) they are shelving the Fallout brand as a single-player game and (II) they are doing so because "They are perfectly aware of all the problems Fallout 4 has, and they are perfectly aware of the state of Fallout as a franchise... they sure as hell know the limits, of what they actually CAN do with Fallout."

 

Starting with (II): none of the problems with Fallout 4 were because it was a Fallout game. The problems, imo, were that there were very few meaningful choices either on a grand scale or on a conversation-by-conversation basis, that almost every quest was solvable only by violence, and that the major factions tied directly into the main quest and thus deprived us of fun side quests after we finished the MQ. None of that owes to it being a fallout game. It's the result of bad design decisions, but decisions that they could have made for TES or Starfield.

 

Second, I don't see them stashing it as a single player game. It's just leaving money on the table. By the time they're working on FO5, FO76 will have been running for years, and they won't be draining it by releasing a single-player focused Fallout. Even if they don't want to put the work into making a single player focused Fallout, they could just license the franchise out a la New Vegas. The fact that they haven't done that tells me they still care about the franchise, even if they're willing to experiment with it more than TES.

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