Who is FO76's Target Audience?

[zanity]

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

What on Earth has COD to do with Fallout:rust? And the people who asked for multi-player in older Beth games wanted small scale CO-OP in standard single-player type adventures, not PvP.

 

Beth PR types keep repeating the lie that anyone wanted Skyrim turned into some multi-player battlefield. NO! It comes as no suprise that peeps who like Skyrim understand that when they have a taste for multi-player mayhem, there are plenty of titles designed just for this form of play. No-one ever asked Beth to turn Fallout/Skyrim into something it never was.

 

Todd Howard lies when he claims otherwise, and the lie is not only stupid but puzzling. Was there never a proper promotion campaign created for Fallout:76?

 

But the answer is ignored by most. Beth had bought a F2P dev team, which proved so awful Zenimax was on the verge of sacking the lot of them. Then Todd gave them a project to bang multi-player into a fallout world that there is every reason to suppose was originally intended to be f2p.

 

At some point the project changed course, and became a AAA priced full-blown Fallout 5, but without any of the content people enjoyed in Fallout 3/4 (hence the name change). I assume the Starfield disaster left a giant gap in Beth's major title release schedule that Todd was forced to fill to satisfy Zenimax.

 

Today Fallout:76 lacks any new gameplay video reveals since E3. No defined gameplay content according to any interview by either Beth boss. Just generalities, most of which make zero sense. And a 'beta' pushed as late as humanly possible (like a bad movie where the critics cannot review the film til the day it releases to a general audience).

 

Not only is Beth clueless about anything that could make this game fun to play with others, it still sticks to the lobby-free, you only play with 100% randos, matchmaking- on a game instance always different from the one you last logged out of.

 

Who is this game aimed at? No-one. Todd Howard is literally proud that he is so powerful he doesn't have to follow any sane gaming dev procedure. He assumes, like the producers of that last Transformers movie, that he has a captive market regardless. And sadly, as with the Transformers movie, the rollover biz from Fallout 4 will prove him correct.

 

Anyway the most important statement from Todd Howard is when he repeated that he will NEVER allow any outside dev produce another Fallout:NV like work. Think about this. For PENNIES (relatively speaking) Beth could have had an outside team produce a fan pleasing rapid follow up to Fallout 4, releasing alongside the 'experimental' Fallout:76. But the bosses of Beth would rather turn down hundreds of millions of dollars of pure profit in order to keep 'control' of the IP. This isn't anything to do with commerce. This is to do with a 'sense of self-importance' of Beth's bosses.

 

Myself, I wonder when Zenimax bosses will understand just how mad Beth has gone, and act to move the key IPs to yearly releases like COD/Battlefileld/Assassin's Creed etc. Hopefully Fallout:rust will be the final straw that gets Zenimax to act.

Edited July 28, 2018 by zanity

[AGreatWeight]

 

Anyway the most important statement from Todd Howard is when he repeated that he will NEVER allow any outside dev produce another Fallout:NV like work.

 

Every time you chime in...

What you've said above, is factually incorrect and a blatant & intentional misrepresentation to provide some sort of credence to your continuous arguments about bad Bethesda.

Todd Howard actually said "I wouldn’t say never, but now that our company is so big, it’s always better to keep stuff internal ... it becomes less likely, but I could never say never. I thought the Obsidian guys did a fabulous job."

Link to the interview here for those interested

If you're gonna continue to rant and rave and hate on Bethesda, at the very least pull your finger out, get your facts straight, and provide evidence to back up your claims.

[Reneer]

 

Anyway the most important statement from Todd Howard is when he repeated that he will NEVER allow any outside dev produce another Fallout:NV like work.

Every time you chime in...

What you've said above, is factually incorrect and a blatant & intentional misrepresentation to provide some sort of credence to your continuous arguments about bad Bethesda.

Todd Howard actually said "I wouldn’t say never, but now that our company is so big, it’s always better to keep stuff internal ... it becomes less likely, but I could never say never. I thought the Obsidian guys did a fabulous job."

Link to the interview here for those interested

If you're gonna continue to rant and rave and hate on Bethesda, at the very least pull your finger out, get your facts straight, and provide evidence to back up your claims.

Evidence? Facts? On the Internet? Surely you jest, sir. :tongue:

Edited July 28, 2018 by Reneer

[blitzen]

lol. zanity is still ranting. That's impressive. It takes a lot of focus and energy to rant for weeks.

Edited July 28, 2018 by blitzen

[zanity]

 

 

Anyway the most important statement from Todd Howard is when he repeated that he will NEVER allow any outside dev produce another Fallout:NV like work.

Every time you chime in...

What you've said above, is factually incorrect and a blatant & intentional misrepresentation to provide some sort of credence to your continuous arguments about bad Bethesda.

Todd Howard actually said "I wouldn’t say never, but now that our company is so big, it’s always better to keep stuff internal ... it becomes less likely, but I could never say never. I thought the Obsidian guys did a fabulous job."

Link to the interview here for those interested

If you're gonna continue to rant and rave and hate on Bethesda, at the very least pull your finger out, get your facts straight, and provide evidence to back up your claims.

Evidence? Facts? On the Internet? Surely you jest, sir. :tongue:

 

Why would anyone seek to defend Beth at this stage? The weird nature of 'fanboys' is that they literally act like 'senior managers' (or football hooligans) where logic and facts are completely IRRELEVANT.

 

How many NV like projects has Todd allowed since NV (the same NV where Todd sabotaged the reviews to ensure the metacritic score stayed low enough to deny Obsidian their bonus)? Oh, that's right- exactly NONE. That's a FACT. A fact that all the fanboys strangely ignore. And Howard has given dozens of interviews since NV making it clearly Beth will never ever allow another NV like external dev. How many years ago was NV? And even if a hundred years pass with no externally developed major entries in Beth's key 'elder scrolls' franchises, fanboys will still claim it is Beth's policy to allow such development "at some point".

 

We know that many modders who promoted "mods will always be free" now work on paid mods (for pennies) for Beth, and this explains the Beth cheerleaders. I just wish these modders had actually got proper well paid jobs in the gaming industry- there's a million better graphic jobs than working on Beth's paid mods in the CC.

 

But I post because of one simple FACT. Zenimax could trivially be producing entries in the 'skyrim' and 'fallout' IPs on a yearly basis, and making a whopping profit from each release. This would please the fans. This would please Zenimax shareholders. This would hurt NO-ONE. So why are opinions like this one attacked?

 

EA, Activision, Ubisoft etc are also ruthless corporations, but where they can (and where there is profit) they make their IPs YEARLY. This certainly involves multiple overlapping teams of devs, so even if dev time = three years, releases are annual. This is how grown ups do business - they do not allow egomaniacs to gain key management positions.

 

Lego games appear maybe three times a year. Those popular 'comic' book games like 'the walking dead' have many releases per year.

 

90% of the players of skyrim and fallout play for the story, which is perfect since Beth couldn't even find one new game play mechanism for Fallout 4. In other words, making new traditional 'elder scrolls' and 'fallout' titles is about as easy as it gets in this business (with a built in audience other franchises would die to own).

 

Yet the fanboys never explain why Beth would forego the mega profits Beth would earn even if Beth simply gave any of the dozens of external devs who would jump at the chance to work on one of these titles. Never explain. NEVER EXPLAIN. Except to attack those of us that point this out as 'ranting'.

 

I know this business. I know why US Gold, er Eidos, er Square Enix struggles to match the three big boys (clue- another egotist). But (now) Square Enix at least has the excuse of 'difficult' IPs (even Tomb Raider suffers from horrible narrative limitation).

 

The fantastic thing about Beth's core IPs is that new stories are utterly trivial- not least cos the gameplay is location based not character based - move them to new locations and you instantly have the inspiration for new narratives and NPCs. But Beth doesn't exploit this to even the tiniest degree.

 

Fallout:Rust, that now employs the entire combined resources of THREE Beth locations, is not a narrative game- and thus technically isn't even a true part of the IP- yet is serves to replace a new entry in either IP. This is literal corporate insanity- and it bothers me not one whit that most who comment just don't understand how the major gaming industry works- such comments cannot change reality.

 

It gets worse. Successful LEGAL ACTION over World of Warcraft mods led to legal precedent making all unauthorised MULTI-PLAYER mods illegal. Yet people posting here are posing on a site that entirely exists because single player mods do not need to be 'authorised'. Cheerleading Beth and Fallout:76 is essentially cheering for the end of the purpose of this site.

 

On the other hand people like myself, suggesting MORE and more frequent single-player 'skyim' and fallout games, are actually trying to support the future of the Nexus. But like I said, an awful lot of pro-Beth comment now comes from people making pennies from creating paid Beth mods- simple cheerleaders for a team regardless of how bad that team is managed. To such people a 'rant' is anything said against their 'bosses'.

[blitzen]

 

Why would anyone seek to defend Beth at this stage?

 

You know this is going to happen regardless of what BGS does. It raises the question: What is the purpose of your stream of comments? Do you have an actual goal? Some form of insurrection against the studio? It doesn't matter. Only sales will matter.

 

As to the question posed in the topic, I don't know who the target audience is. I wonder if BGS has a coherent answer to that question. I can only say that, from the information currently available about FO76, I'm not a member of the target demographic.

[AGreatWeight]

Correcting someone who distorts the truth makes me a fanboy? Riiiiiiight, gotcha. Congrats for using that within the first sixteen words of your response, you don't waste any time do ya?

Keep on keeping on with the hate Zanity, it's what makes you S.P.E.C.I.A.L. TM

 

@Reneer :laugh:

 

 

[blitzen]

There should be a new topic just for people to argue about whether BGS sucks or not, and whether or not Todd Howard is a tool, so that the other topics can actually stay on topic.

[jjb54]

I was " lost " as a fan with FO 4. as I know a number of others.

 

1st - They obviously just wanted to put a game out w/the Fallout Name.

... What they should have called FO 4 - was FALLOUT SIM CITY. < - Truth in advertising.

... But likely it would not have sold, if they had been more honest and straight forward. I know I was really glad that I bought it well after the Market Release and on a good sale, otherwise I would have been annoyed in no small way.

 

2nd - I lost track on how many times I've had to start over, because of Beth's annoying " UPDATES ", a several mods, because of FOSE had to be updated, thus the mods and some saves would no longer work and thus you had to start over. :P

 

I basically QUIT the game .... and went back to FO 3 & NV & Skyrim. Oh, I will likely give it another " go " when I see the updates are not as frequent, time will tell.

 

How often will they need to update FO 76????? I do not feel " warm and fuzzy " on that issue, 2/b honest.

 

Plus other thing, like with FO 4 and the fact that they did NOT give us that more of the game is just building and protecting settlements ..... how much are we NOT being told of this FO 76? How much more have they taken OUT OF THE GAME ...and put SIM CITY and the such?

 

I for one like the single player game ..... and will NOT be getting the next FO game.

[taryl80]

The settlement mode was something a lot of people had hope for and still like, like me. Fallout 4 has its list of faults, but that we are be aible to build our own playerhomes and fortresses is not one of them imo.

Edited July 30, 2018 by taryl80