buzzbomb

I've been thinking and I'm not "Doom and Gloom." From what I've been reading in all the "Fallout 76" threads, most are thinking "End of an era, our way of gaming is dead." Some are thinking "I like the idea, gonna give it a whirl." Others are thinking "Hmmm, not sure about this one, gonna wait and see." There are other points of view, but those three seem to be the most prevalent. I'd like to present my point of view, seen in an earlier thread I started, but reinstated here with some new insight: Why can't Beth have the best of both worlds? The single-player, moddable, PC game is their bread and butter. They've got an inhouse employee base of designers who have done nothing but this for years. They know the lore, they know how to make these games (bugs, glitches and poor design decisions and all). These are the games that Beth makes and what we keep coming back for. They know this. I read a post where the poster mentioned that people are sill playing Morrowind. It's a pretty good guess that most of those people also bought the further titles in the game. They just like Morrowind. Beth knows this. That's a playerbase that not only isn't going away, it's only going to grow as the first-gen console gamers mature and find their gaming niche. Trust me, you love that PVP until you can't "twitch shoot" anymore. I "Doomed" my buddy on dialup so many times. Ahh, fond memories. Anyway... No company worth it's salt throws out a growing customer base in favor of another. What they'd do is attempt to cater to both. I watched the No-clip docu. Beth acquired a studio just to do "Fallout 76." It's not even taking developer time from the core Beth games. "Starfield?" It might be an actual game? It's been rumored for so long, I can't imagine who's been working on that one. It totally came out of left field. An online Fallout game, however...not so much. TLDR: I don't think FO76 changes anything significant in the next FO or ES games. I just think Beth is spreading it's wings.

Once again, to my Dear Zanity, this will the be my third posting of the paragraph below: "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." I'm not going to link this time. Just check any thread concerning Fallout 76. I will however share this observation here, that I have not shared elsewhere, and I'll put it in current vernacular, it's the part in the quotations: The people who might be swayed by that stuff? "Bruh, TLDR." Oh, the irony!

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.

Fallout 76 ***is*** Fallout 5, with the hideous perversion of the IP designed to serve the advice of the gaming/gambling psychologists now employed by Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar, Zenimax etc. "Gaming as a service" is the code phrase for gaming perverted to follow the models created by these psychology experts to maximise continuous cashflow thru ADDICTIVE mechanisms, especially those known to work with children and males of low self-esteem. There is a lot of Beth/Zenimax activity in key gaming forums, like this one, to 'control' the message and propagandise the unacceptable. Sadly there are certain people here who have also sold their souls to the Creation Club, and paid modding, and will defend their 'bosses' come what may. These people will troll where they can claiming the core playerbase of Fallout3/4 are a "tiny vocal minority" when they express doubts and fears about Fallout:76. Never forget, for little more than 20 million dollars, Todd Howard could have funded an external dev to make a traditional Fallout game using the current toolset used for Skyrim remastered, and 18 months later there would have been a perfect new Fallout game that would easily have made Beth 500 million dollars + in sales. And odd could have done this at the SAME time as building the 'experimental' Fallout:76. But Todd is not a nice person. He literally considers himself 'god' of the Fallout/Elder Scrolls IP, and couldn't give a damn about what fans think or want. To Todd, 'fans' must be strapped to a chair, have their mouths forced open, and made to swallow whatever he cooks up- and this is the issue every reasonable decent fan of Skyrim and Fallout 4 has. Like I said, at ZERO financial risk to Beth, the fans could have had multiple traditional follow-ups to Fallout (once a year even, like COD or Battlefield) while Todd was free to cook up whatever he liked at the same time. But under Todd, freedom of choice and respect of the loyal fan count for literally nothing. Now sadly we are going to have a propaganda war for the months until the 'game' releases, where certain people on behalf of Beth will actively demonise anyone who questions the choices that lie behind Fallout:76. And the ONLY crime of the fans that made the somewhat mediocre Fallout 4 a massive success will be that their gaming taste lies in the form of game Fallout3/4 and Skyrim delivered. Of course other gaming types exist- but that's why you have multiple gaming IPs. To STEAL our IP, and give it to a different gaming sector is selfish, spiteful and frankly hateful. As I said, the Rust experiment could have been forgiveable if at the same time Beth commited itself to regular entries in the Elder Scrolls/Fallout franchises, using external devs and current toolsets. But Todd is giving us Fallout:Rust as the literal Fallout 5 and that is just terrible. PS in every forum I now see griefers dribbling in delight as they witness the 'tears' of the original Fallout player base. These griefers are the 99% of all those congratulating Todd for stealing away the Fallout IP from the single player RPG fans (who the griefers call "anti-social billy-no-mates"). And in every interview, Todd says "griefing = drama" and he wants "drama" to be the driving force of Fallout:76. PPS All Fallout fans ever asked for was limited co-op to allow them to play the game with a few friends/partner/family, but otherwise experience the SAME game as any single-player. This is the one thing Fallout:76 does not provide. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 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 for the above Zanity quote.

I can't speak to what is "actually" going to happen. But in my experience Nexus doesn't open a forum for a game until after the game is released. We speculated about FO4 in the FO3 forum, we speculated about Skyrim in the Oblivion forum. (That one was good fun. People were going nuts.) I'm guessing that just because a game is announced, doesn't mean it's gonna happen, and opening a forum and mod pages beforehand could really just be a waste of time and resources. Even with a supposed release date, I suspect we'll be speculating here for the time being. Besides, we all came here to speculate, didn't we? We knew where to go.

I like that attitude. Looked at that way, it'd be fun just to poke around and appreciate the virtual world. Unfortunately for me it's just not enough to put up with what's been added and everything that's missing. Nah, the game's not for me. I am a little envious that you (and presumably) a whole lot of other people will be able to enjoy it. I'll have to cross my fingers and wait for the next Beth, single-player, PC experience.

So, I originated the thread with hope and some guesses. I was wrong about the name (beer). I just watched Tod Howard's reveal at E3 and I was wrong about it being a MMOG. It's actually a MOG. Drop the "Massively." Just watching the reveal vids it seems to me it's just another online shooter with Fallout-style tweaks introduced. I've got lots of questions about how it all works and the dynamics of it and such. I even have lots of comments and ideas about what I saw. But I really don't care. That game is not for me. That's actually OK. My premise was that maybe "Fallout 76" was outside of the core "Fallout" franchise. We don't know for sure, but I can still hope for an FO5 that I would want to play.

OK. My bad. "Fallout 76." Still the idea that it's outside of the single-player franchise is, I think still valid. Why kill what's already making them money, if they can simply branch off and make new money? I think it makes perfect sense.

OK. Here goes... What if Vault 76 is a MMOG where all mods are either banned or bought. What if it is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game where Beth makes money from micro transactions. What if that's why it's named "Vault 76." It's not named FO5. It's a wholly different game. If you think about it, it wasn't named by accident. It wasn't even named as Fallout. Maybe we're all over reacting to what to us is an insignificant release of a Fallout MMOG that has no impact whatsoever on either TES or FO. They've got Elder Scrolls Online. Kinda makes sense they've have a Fallout online, when you think about it.

First sentence is completely true. There's more of everybody than there are modders. I disagree with the rest. I do, however, think many modders will stop making mods if it's monetized. I also think a whole lot of others will just keep doing what they do, and now they're getting paid for it. I don't think mods will simply die because they're forced onto CC. I do think I'll no longer be playing a Bethesda game though, if all this is as bad as it looks in this forum. The modders who joined CC? They're not to blame. No one is to blame. We've enjoyed a sandbox, freely modded game for a long time, and now the company that's put out those games needs more money. It's not the modders to blame. There's no one to blame. A corporation has to make money or it dies. They just can't make money. They've got to make MORE money, every single yearly quarter. If all the speculation is true, then it's an end to an era. An end to gaming, for me personally. Sad, but I'm not blaming anybody. Bad stuff happens and money is king. It was good while it lasted, though. For me, all the way back to Morrowind and Oblivion. I've had so much enjoyment over the years, from Beth games. 11/11/11? Was I stoked and did I wait in line at the midnight release? Heck yeah, I did! End of an era. Let's hope we're all wrong.

Wow. I was so excited for another Beth single player sandbox. All I play is whatever the latest FO and ES are. I was stoked for a new one. Now, I'm worried. My two cents is that I hope everyone here is wrong, wrong, WRONG! I can hope, right?

I had a thought on the way to work: What if John Denver's belting out "West Virginiaaa" was purposely misleading and the game actually takes place in "Denver," Colorado? Wouldn't that be a hoot!

Regardless, take off or put on your tin foil hats, as it pleases you. There's another Beth game coming out!!! WhoooHooo!

I completely agree with you, but just to play devil's advocate and support the tin foil industry, some content cut from Fallout 2: "The U.S. government's real plan to survive a nuclear war was simply to find another planet to live on after having helped to destroy the Earth. A spacecraft designed to ferry the human race to another planet was either under construction or ready to go before the Great War broke out." Yep. This is just a guess, but from what little I've been able to find on the net about "Starfield", it exists in the "Fallout" universe and does indeed take place on other planets. I also think that the color in the "Please Stand By" graphic is unusual. That graphic has always been shown as though it was on a black and white television. The whole "Fallout" world has always been about retro-futurism. The video I've seen from people who claim it's from "Starfield" does not look retro at all. Check it out at- You don't have to skip to the end like he says, that's bull. I also think everything else in the video is either gameplay from a modded "Fallout 4" or from another game. Until June 10th, we've got nothing that Beth doesn't let us know.

Hmmm. Beth specifically chose a song, that was not 1940's sounding, in which John Denver nearly yells "West Virginia!!". I'm thinking it 'might' be a clue... Edited for further content. "Fallout" wouldn't work on a new world. The whole premise is surviving in a fallen world where everything is destroyed. Yeah, they could stretch the idea into a ship landing on a different, fallen world, but it wouldn't work. Everything would be alien and then it wouldn't be a "Fallout" game. I don't know if you've got bum info or just making it up, but dude, get a clue.