Who is FO76's Target Audience?

[mrmini]

Funnily enough I play 4 more than any other Beth game right now. Though I didn't like NV's story, and I enjoy a good survival game so I'm interested.

[sopmac45]

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. :tongue:

 

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.

 

 

I do believe that those FO4 updates are thrown to us with the intention to make us feel tired about the game as a whole. We know that those updates are not to improve the game itself but with two other purposes : update their Creation Club and annoying the rest of us who are not using that Club so we feel like, tired, upset and with the feel to discontinue playing a game that is interrupted every month and is screwing with our saves and stuff, so we quit as you did.

 

I do believe they want us to give up on FO4 and the only way to force us to do so, is to annoying us with those programmed updates. They want us to jump to their next project : FO76 and forget about Skyrim and FO4. That is the way I feel about this whole thing, otherwise, if that was not their intention, why they had to integrate the Creation Club updates within the game ? Somehow, they could have done it in a different way but they did not. Obviously, there is something behind the curtain that of course they will not accept to admit publicly but the fact is that those updates are bothering us.

 

From customer standpoint, this is not right so I do not feel they care about how we feel or how we do react about it, they just simply want us to quit playing and jump to their new toy : FO76. They need people hooked to that game, a solid customer base so they can profit, justify it and move on to the future projects and the best way to get a lot of customers is to make those who still play FO4, to jump to this new game.

[Mudran]

RPG players as target audience in Fallout 76 :)

 

[Moksha8088]

BETHESDA - The answer regarding Fallout 76's target audience is not at all cut and dried. Scientists at the Bethesda Laboratories have a plan to release the Lemming Metamorphosis Virus (LMV) at two initial target destinations. Both the Nexus Forum and Walmart will help disperse the LMV sometime in late October 2018.

 

Bethesda Laboratories predict that readers and customers who would never succumb to an online game designed to sell them an endless supply of upgrades will suddenly purchase Fallout 76 and large amounts of digital bottlecaps that can be redeemed when Bethesda's famed Creation Club releases its initial Fallout 78 offerings.

[metaphorset]

Well, these are all very elaborate answers... ;-) And many of them contain parts of the truth.

 

To put it simple, the "target audience" is everyone who buys the game. It doesn't matter if you think it's good or bad beforehand or afterwards - if you buy it, you are part of the target audience.
I can'T count how many times I read a customer review and stumbled over lines like "I knew it was bad but I bought it anyway and hoped it wouldn't be that bad..."

 

Of course Companies will put popular stuff into games to make them more popular. Of course they follow trends and of course they keep dumbing down the game experience because it means more customers.
That's why F4 got "Survival Mode" with "Bonfires" in the form of beds.

Games aren't made for gamers (or, as Sony puts it "for the players") anymore, they are made to make money. The same goes for every other kind of entertainment media, as well as for many other products. Everyone especially in the entertainment industry does it - even JK Rowling, when she decided that "Harry Potter and the effed up Butterfly Effect" is a good idea.

Regarding F4's updates: Do you really think BGS or more correctly Zenimax care about the PC players? Do you really think they care about mod creators who want to create stuff that goes way beyond what BGS has thought of, when they gave us the Creation Kit? No. No, they don't. The only customers they care about are the console players, because they are the ones that bring in the big money. The updates are necessary to circumvent the biggest flaw of consoles. Especially Sony has limited the amount of additional content per game. Once they call it quits, it's over. The only exception to this rule are patches.

I still have F4 installed and I still fire it up occasionally. By this time, I must have missed three or four updates, because I just ignore Steam's nagging messages about updates and that's that. It's not pretty but it works well enough for me.

The sad truth is that it actually doesn't matter anymore if upset customers don't buy bad cashcow games because they deviate too much from what they actually want to play. Companies (and not only game companies) have trained and tamed the customers for years. For every one of us who doesn't buy their products anymore, there are at least two new customers who will buy them until maybe they get fed up some years down the road.

 

It must be now well over 10 years that I decided to stop buying games from EA and Ubisoft, because I was fed up with their whole attire of delivering bat s#*&#33; broken games and I know that I am not the only one out there. I still feel good about that decision but besides that it didn't change anything.

[blitzen]

Well, these are all very elaborate answers... ;-) And many of them contain parts of the truth.

 

To put it simple, the "target audience" is everyone who buys the game. It doesn't matter if you think it's good or bad beforehand or afterwards - if you buy it, you are part of the target audience.

 

 

Not a great answer. A target is something at which you aim with the intention of hitting. If you are making a product, there is presumably some market research that identifies a demographic that is likely to purchase the product. If you make a product with no target defined, you are not likely to be successful. So "target audience" is something that is defined *before* the product is created, not after it is sold.

[zanity]

Now we know Fallout 76 ain't on Steam- wow, big surprise, not!

 

Todd wants your Credit Card number, and to FORCE you to create a financial account when you buy the game. Why? So the REAL reason Fallout:76 exists, the paid micro transactions, are active for EVERY PC gamer.

 

Yeah, Fallout:76 is a direct example of all those notorious phone games where buying the game associates with your financial account, so kids, effort free, end up running massive bills on their parent's account.

 

I'm not saying Todd wants unauthorised kiddy billing, but the thought that kids will have a monthly allowance to spend on junk in this game makes Todd very happy indeed (and please, no rubbish about the 'rating' of this game- at home kids watch r-rated movies and play 'adult' rated games - indeed it is a significant joke about game ratings that content that would only make a movie PG-13 will get a game an 'adult only' tag- don't believe me, go and look at the super sadistic violence in many of the Bond and Mission Impossible movies, each rated PG-13).

 

The other half of the Fallout:76 audience is young adults who will certainly hit that "buy" button for 'cosmetic' junk if the same action that purchased the game activates the micro transaction account.

 

The very act of having to set up a micro transaction account AFTER you buy the game reduces micro transaction sales by 90%+. But Todd designed Fallout:76 AFTER taking advice from the best addiction gaming experts in the biz.

 

Now Todd's Toxic Army will no doubt blitz this comment with the 'fact' that companies, including Beth, have released on their own store first, and then made it to Steam later. True, but false in the sense they mean. Games late to Steam are from publishers who track the sales, and hit Steam cynically because they would lose a ton of sales if they did not.

 

But each publisher late to Steam would rather NEVER have to use Steam. They hope that now, or later, their attempt to be off Steam can be finally permanent. In the case of Fallout:76 (and similar cynical FULL PRICE games riddled with addiction gaming designed paid micro transactions), the idea is that the post initial game purchase income overwhelms the profits lost by ignoring Steam.

 

So now we know Fallout:76 is aimed at fools who think it fine the act of buying the game, and the act of setting up a micro transaction account are one and the SAME. The very people the addiction gaming specialists who lectured the senior managers of all the major publishers identified. It's the TOBACCO INDUSTRY all over again.

 

Smokers always said "I can stop any time I want" in blisssful unawareness of the addiction manipulation methods of big Tobacco. Likewise Todd knows his Toxic Army will claim Fallout:76 gamers are all 'bright' 'mature' people who will not hit that 'buy' button without havng a rational adult reason for doing so. Well the psychologists who spoke with the senior managers at Beth and Zenimax claim otherwise, and they are the 'experts'.

 

Fortnite is a good example of how this works, tho Fortnite is truly FREE, and requires no account linked to your bank to play (at least on the PC - the platform that made the game so successful in the first instance - Battle Royale mode of course, not the flop PvE non-free). In Fortnite you can look like a 'plain jane' loser, even if you win each round. Or you can pay real dough, and look boss to most of the other 99 on your current instance.

 

Yet Fortnite:BR is a great game that any mature gamer can focus on playing well above the cosmetic issue (and maybe take pleasure knocking out players who have paid to look boss). Fallout:Rust is NOT a great game, being vastly more similar to the earlier PAID Fortnite PvE 'save the world' co-op mode - a meaningless 'sandbox' where spending money on paid micro transactions is the only real MEANINGFUL thing to do.

 

Like Todd, Epic originally hoped the same model as Fallout:76 (pointless AAA priced sandbox title with online and paid MT) would make them rich. Actually Epic lost a fortune on Fortnite until the free BR version was released, and there was an actual reason to play the game.

 

But then Fornite was a NEW IP. Todd knows the foolish roll over biz from Fallout 4 (where 80% of Fallout:76 customers sincerely think they are getting a game just like Fallout 4) will make him an initial fortune regardless of critical reception. Most punters like the idea of trusted brands, for they think it makes their future purchasing decisions 'safer'. And how many times have members of Todd's Toxic Army told doubters to 'TRUST' Bethesda in this instance?

 

Fallout:76 is not a 'gamers' game'. It is not even the 'cracked' vision of a good game designer gone eccentric (like a once wonderful film director who has now lost the plot). No- Fallout:76 is the work of a supremely cynical and merciless owner/producer with dollar signs in his eyes after contemplating all the ADDICTION theory 'gaming as a service' lectures given by addiction gaming experts (who are the self same people as addiction GAMBLING experts).

 

PS can we please stop with the cheering that 'DLC' is 'free' for Fallout:76. For this kind of gaming service, DLC does NOT mean what it once meant. DLC simply refers to UPDATES to the core gaming service that it is essential everyone using the service receives. PAID micro transactions must have the same meaning for everyone who 'owns' Fallout:76, so of course the service update are free- MUST be free.

 

PPS if Fallout:76 was F2P (as was originally intended when it was the project first given to Beth's F2P team, Battlecry) I wouldn't have posted a negative word about the project. Like all sane gamers, I consider F2P a seperate world to AAA priced, with its own rules and audience. Free, with paid MT, lays down a clear and obvious model of potential exploitation that even a child should be able to understand. But a AAA priced game with loot boxes, pay-to-win or paid MT is a clear obscenity, hardly excusable if a small pub tries it but absolutely inexcusable when done by a big publisher with well established streams of honest income.

 

Sadly history proves that without clear regulation and new laws from government, successful industries become laws unto themselves, capable of inflicting any evil in the name of boosting profits. The concept of 'self-regulation' has always been a total joke. And the LIE that customer 'outrage' moderates their behaviour is the most pathetic false 'hope'. How many modders who wore tee-shirts proclaiming "mods must always remain free" when the CC was first introduced now work on PAID mods for the CC. Big biz money always wins out, but actual laws work in holding most biz activity to account.

 

No reasonable law would stop Fallout:76 DIRECTLY, of course. But gaming falling under the same forms of law that control and restrict GAMBLING would make projects like Fallout:76 feel far less desirable to big publishers. But today, gaming is in the 'lawless Wild West' where anything goes.

[blitzen]

I think the ratings are more strict for games because you are directly participating in the violence, rather than simply observing it. I'm just guessing though, since I haven't paid much attention to the ratings on either.

[zanity]

I think the ratings are more strict for games because you are directly participating in the violence, rather than simply observing it. I'm just guessing though, since I haven't paid much attention to the ratings on either.

NOTHING could be further from the truth. The disgusting ratings of games, that commonly turn MILD PG-13 content into 'adult only', comes directly from the idea that non-gamers have a right to moral panic over games, which they describe as "childish nonsense" for working class children and wastrel males. We saw the exact same thing with the comic code from the 1950's, and the cinema code of the 1940s that killed all adult content in movies.

 

Today, after many many decades of TOTAL censorship, comics and movies have (mostly) grown up. But games are still in the cultural 'ghetto' so all gamers (being "mentally deficient"- see that recent UN ruling about "gaming addiction") must be protected from themselves.

 

Hence most literate well-educated parents have ZERO issue allowing their children to play carefuly examined games whose supposed ratings put the games out of their reach. But alongside these totally moral choices comes the general disrespect of the game rating system that can allow some parents to allow far too young children to play some of the actually inappropriate titles. A CORRUPT rating system, like that which currently exists for games, is worse than no rating system at all.

[soupdragon1234]

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

 

Precisely. FPS shooters (COD, Gears of War etc) are very popular with gamers. They rarely have mods however so they rarely get talked about in this Bethesda-centric site. Bethesda probably wants a slice of that lucrative pie.

 

Todd saying they will allow mods is surprising as online shooters rarely permit them as they potentially give an unfair advantage to those that use them, unofficial ones will get you a VAC ban on Steam's servers for that reason. At a guess I'd say those'd be on private servers only.

 

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

 

He reminds me of a crazy guy who used to stand in the corner of the local park on top of a soapbox and rant all day long, every day. No-one took any of notice of him either.