Who is FO76's Target Audience?

[Mudran]

If they would say what it is directly, but why they try to half say it is RPG just to attack RPG players for complaining? And their explanations for PvP only...

[AlarictheVisgoth]

 

TL;DR Children as young as 8th grade. And the achievement oriented, casual but competitive gaming crowd (99.999 % PvP oriented)

 

Long version:

...

Excellent comment. You'd think Beth has chosen to throw their OLD loyal player-base under a bus, and initiated a future where these people are to be the new Beth customers. Oh wait, that's exactly what Todd announced at E3, as he put on his 'O' face while talking about the size of the playerbase for Fallout Shelter.

 

Now he assumes he gets the old 'suckers' that bought Skyrim and Fallout 3/4 'for free', the standard corporate cynicism when an old customer base has nowhere else to go.

 

But it's worse than this- far worse. OUR outlets will see corporate moderation killing OUR response to Fallout:76 when it betas then releases. I notice my F2P thread got locked- such comments hit far too close to home, and I guess the mighty Zenimax doesn't like that. We all have to pretend Zenimax is honest, and if it makes a 'mistake'- well then it was an 'honest' mistake.

 

One can now see Zenimax money BUYING the 'new' Youtube 'influencers', as clickbait after clickbait channel with astonishing viewer figures sing the praises of Fallout:76, and 'explain' how Todd has successfully put all the fears to bed.

 

Like how the recent FLOP movie, Gotti, got glowing visitor (not pro) reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. Money talks- and few outlets that will talk about (or host mods) Fallout:76 will dare to allow Beth to be seriously dissed, no matter what happens.

 

And this Orwellian rewriting of history, as the original fans discover that Fallout:76 is far worse than they feared, will turn the original fans off Beth even more. Beth has to stomp us into silence- and no that never mean 'NO' voice (not in the internet age)- just a voice that no-one hears, cos the sponsored voices are a million times louder.

 

Does anyone here state that Beth has no right to enter whatever area of gaming they so wish? Of course not. The rightful claim is that Beth had no right to make Fallout 5 this griefer infested nonsense named as Fallout:76. Rage would have been the perfect IP for this experiment (and allowed vehicles- the lack of which makes FO:76 even more of a nonsense). Or a BRAND NEW IP- you know like how most griefer based PvP games are initiated.

 

Rage or a new IP would have allowed Beth to go wild on the promotion of chaotic griefing. To have whipped up a frenzy of excitement amongst the crowd you so perfectly describe, since griefer based games are almost never AAA developments, without offending a single existing Beth fan.

 

And I'll remind us all again of the GREAT BETH LIE. That existing fans of Fallout and Skyrim had asked for this form of online play. Todd has repeated this LIE over and over, and has his Youtube influencers use this lie to bash us. Each of us here know that what fans asked for was the ability to CO-OP play the oldschool games AS-IS, with one or two friends.

 

Todd's very need to stand behind his horrific management choices (with have culminated with all THREE Beth locations forced now to work on Fallout:76) means that he considers himself at war with the original fans, just as Disney placed itself at war with the original fans of Star Wars (and then paid online PR activities to demonise said fans). And Todd has not stated, over and over, that GRIEFING is the spice that adds DRAMA to his game for no reason. The no-clip doc showed that the F2P team considered 12 vs 12 deathmatch to be their best idea for Fallout:76. Todd has purposely made ZERO mention of such game modes- he obviously nixxed such basic competitive play.

 

However, I still don't get who Fallout:76 will really appeal too. Todd's own words prove he is an OLD MAN 'hipster' who thinks he is "down with the kids", but is so out-of-touch with actual young players attitudes it is hilarious. But this gives Todd an excuse to fallback on the addiction gaming expert advise from the most cancerous voices in this industry. I don't think the griefing in Fallout:76 will be 'fun' to the smallest degree- that post you quoted about JUMPING to irritate grief another player is about it- bored griefing rather than 'constructive' griefing.

 

Beth will, I assume, allow 'private' servers fairly soon (UNLESS all serving is done SERVER side, in which case private servers would add too much expense, due to serious underutilisation most of the day). But this will be 'small potatoes' since by 'private' server, Beth simply means a server where you KNOW who is also on it (rather than the current "fill an instance with 24 randos"). If the game is as lame as it seems, the enthusiasm for arranging significant action of 'private' servers will be low.

 

If Todd thought a decent LOBBY service would boost the game (currently Todd boasts there is NO lobby, and you are immediately thrown into a random game instance with 23 randos- unheard of with this genre), he would have had a lobby system created. It speaks volumes he did not.

 

So again, I don't think this game is for anyone, but is the great experiment to get addiction gaming mechanisms perfected for the always online Starfield. Starfield has now been clearly delayed until AFTER the new 7nm based consoles arrive, and Beth can take the time to work out all the online systems they need.

 

 

Fears of who BGS will transform into the leading RPG dev in the industry. LegacyKillaHD nails is at 5:10

 

 

ZoS buying indulgences on the PC roid rage that is now Google's Youtube. Several videos on line of "new BGS interviews with Howard/Hines & Co indicate F76 doesn't seem that bad" are on youtube. So seems this has somewhat already begun........

 

This vlogger did a nice summary on the latest info BGS revealed to date:

 

[Mudran]

I missed this post (too long :p) - very interesting analysys. But sadly, it didn't start with Bethesda. it is 4 years already with different AAA games, which left RPG and turned into dungeon crowlers with texts instead of NPCs. Then there was that hateful trend of hard mobs everywhere, so most of the players couldn't even play those games. Then they added (compulsory?) gambling annoying everyone in that game. Only that PvP part is new.

 

Several people have problems in their RL and they want games to relax in a different world, but you have to deal with even bigger crap :(.

[sopmac45]

Yes, indeed, it is a very interesting analysis but if we know that Beth is tweaking the media to stuck in our hearts that Fallout 76 is the next step for all of us, then we know in advance this is not what we want and we should not fall in the trap. Obviously they want to be successful with that game and I do not know if they will.

 

One thing I know, that all of the players who have enjoyed the relaxing pace under which we play Skyrim and Fallout4 ( not to mention other fallouts out there ), games that are fully modded and by the way, the only two games people play the most in the world, are not going to jump to an online game because we love the contrary : offline, games that can be modded, open world, play solo at your own pace, relax, building whatever you want for you or the minuteman, they way you want it, where you want it, not to deal with servers, online connection and completely loose your independence.

 

If Beth believe that will take us away from these two games, especially Fallout4, that by the way, everyday is filled with new and excellent mods worth to play with in your load order, they do not really know what is it that we want. Obviously, they are ignoring us and that is a terrible mistake.

[Fkemman11]

From what I heard, it is an experiment for Beth since the acquisition of a studio based in Austin that had much more experience with online games. They have said that they would like to diversify more than once and that this should not be viewed by fans as a departure from their single player franchises at all.

[sopmac45]

From what I heard, it is an experiment for Beth since the acquisition of a studio based in Austin that had much more experience with online games. They have said that they would like to diversify more than once and that this should not be viewed by fans as a departure from their single player franchises at all.

 

 

Changes does not happen from one day to another and I do believe this is more than an "experiment"; it is the first step to jump to an online games. Step by step, they will be moving off single player franchise and it won't happen as soon as Fallout76 is out but later down the road.

[hlp]

So they were point blank asked about that and went on record to the contrary, all future plans for Fallout, TES and Starfield are for Single player games. And yet everybody who demanded they answer that exact question are now dismissing the answer pretending it is only "damage control".

[Mavkiel]

From what I heard, it is an experiment for Beth since the acquisition of a studio based in Austin that had much more experience with online games. They have said that they would like to diversify more than once and that this should not be viewed by fans as a departure from their single player franchises at all.

 

Sure they say that now. I am sure folks that liked grand theft auto games thought the same thing. Oh they are just tacking on online stuff, they will still make single player dlc! -- By no means am I trying to sound snarky, just giving a real example of a game known for single player, "experimenting" with an online component.

 

We can just hope the game flops and flops hard otherwise they might just get rid of single player components altogether. Lets face it, Beths story telling abilities has been going steadily downhill, while cash spent on it keep rising. (Just think of the amount of cash spent on voice actors from morrowind to skyrim. Or compare fallout 3 to fallout 4. The older games had greater depth*, and each game that followed it had more bells and whistles while getting shallower.

 

*Easy way of comparing depth is the dialogue trees. There were meaningful options in the older games, rather then the later game options of "yes, no, go to hell" options in later titles.

[Mudran]

What is the worst is that they could do pve multiplayer option, right? But a lot of RPG players would actually be OK with that. No, they had to make it PvP only with "play with friends", so it would be clear that RPG players wouldn't be able to play it solo. Those fans of Fallout will loose that part of lore. Also PvP players are known for their aggressivity to others, because they are in direct opposition to others fun, they are very demanding of their type of content. There are many features from many groups, which can be put together, but not PvP really. That means that RPG fans will be constantly attacked for their dislike of this change. And nobody still mentioned price 60 dollars for an empty game... There was so many youtubers raging against EA for their mobile CC game, but tell me how this is different? And everything what you write here will be attacked by Bethesda PR, Bethesda paid modders - where is a question if it wasn't made for situations like this - modders to be on the side of Bethesda or divided.

I'm not saying anything about the game itself, only questioning their reasons, which sounded very much like lies - like it couldn't be PVE, because it felt boring, so we had to add PvP and so on... Man is this what Bethesda decided to be? and for what reason?

And another thing is - it is done by Bethesda home studio - will they have the time for another game really? If they promised long time content with updates? Or how long it will take if usually it was 4 years? what will be their focus if they do this to Fallout fans?

And I get it - they have all the rights for it, but for me it means so many negative things - first of all - when Zenimax started to be greedy the first thought was how it will influence Bethesda, so this is not about them making PVP openworld, but more about what is behind it.

[HadToRegister]

COD players and people who keep requesting Multiplayer mods for Bethesda games as far back as Morrowind.