FO 76 / BGS Debate Topic

[blitzen]

This is a topic for arguing debating about the merits/demerits of FO76 and BGS's game evolution with respect to FO (and even TES indirectly I suppose). Personally, I think BGS is a mediocre studio and, based on what I know so far (which isn't that much tbh), FO 76 sounds like it could be a poorly-planned blunder. Fight me.

 

 

P.S. This is a more open-ended topic to keep the debates out of the other topics. As always, trading insults does not count as debate, so ad hominem argument tactics would be considered off-topic. Someone else can make an insult-trading topic for that.

 

P.S.S. If you take criticisms of BGS and/or their products personally and can't control yourself, it's best to stay out of here. I'd rather not see anyone banned. We will see how this goes.

[jjb54]

Here is the thing I have against this:

 

1. From FO 3 - NV - and especially FO 4 ... BUGS are a to big a problem!

... How many times has FO 4 been " updated ", just in the past 4 months, let alone since its release?

 

2. If this is online, Lord Help BGS ... if they cannot get a Single Player FO version to work, how is ON-LINE going to work?

 

I have never been a fan of on-line, because the few times that I was told, " there can be no cheating " - the first thing I fidn is people that found the " work around " with cheating. Thus you are ' dead ' or cannot move forward, because you may not have the cheat codes to make it happen. ( Plus, it's not a whole lot of fun anyways. )

 

I just wished they would keep Fallout single player .... and return it to more the RPG choices/consequences that it once was ..... Oh well ....

 

That is my 0.000001 cents worth. :)

[zanity]

Go to Youtube, and search for Fallout:76. There are a ton of popular 'clickbait' gaming channels that literally post (largely favourable) Fallout:76 videos every few days (or daily if a new Hines or Howard interview has happened in any media form).

 

Now look at the comments (Dr Who fashion, you may wish to do this while partially hiding behind a 'settee').

 

BGS studio has created the most toxic pro-Beth fanboy army imaginable - and the vileness these people throw at every argued criticism is just breathtakingly sad. This from a community that only a year back was one of the very best.

 

Anyhoo the number one tactic used by the Howard Army is to say critics are "no friends losers" cos Fallout:76 at last allows you to play Fallout "with you friends".

 

Wait a moment. The ONE THING you cannot do with Fallout:76 is "play with your friends".

 

1) Fallout:76 is LOBBYLESS (a major feature according to Howard).

 

2) Anyone who plays Fallout:76 is automatically logged in to a RANDOM instance of the game with a RANDOM collection of people already on that server. There is literally no mechanism to play with any other NAMED gamer.

 

3) A new player will either be logged into a slot that has just become free on an existing instance of the game, or will be added to the roster of a NEW instance created to handle the current load.

 

But Todd's Toxic Army, screaming the house down on every comment section outside of the Nexus, all 'think' that the commonsense 'obvious' 'play with you friends' feature must be in Fallout:76, despite what Todd Howard has stated again and again and again.

 

Forget what YOU think about the idea of Fallout:76 and just think about this one point. Fallout:76 is so badly conceived, it needs its supporters to be certain about a feature that the game actually does not contain. I have never witnessed a situation like this in the gaming industry, and I've seen it inside and out since the time you had to build your own computer from individual components you soldered to a PCB. Indeed the first games I coded were in MACHINE CODE (not even assembler), and hand entered into a computer with no external storage device.

 

I understand the tech reasons why Beth dropped NPCs. I understand the tech reasons why Beth went for a lobby free system. But both are poor excuses from a company without the tech expertise to do online properly.

 

There has always been a demand to play adventures like Fallout and The Witcher co-op with a few friends. And in truth, co-op with a few friends is finally DOABLE thanks to large RAM assets, good CPUs and good internet upload speeds. But the commercial pluses to such a project are simply not there. A LOT of tech effort with essentially no financial return.

 

There is, however, very different kinds of online play that have proven highly profitable. ESO (elder scrolls online)- a game Beth could NEVER have done themselves- shows this. But Fallout:76 has zero conceptual simularity to ESO.

 

Fallout:76 exists cos Battlecry Studios, the g-awful F2P company Howard bought, needed a project to avoid being closed by Zenimax. And once the experiment began to put mutliplayer in a 'new' Fallout engine, everything started to spiral out of control. Starfield was going nowhere. Zenimax needed placating. The light bulb lit and the idea of making the experiment the next MAJOR ES/Fallout release became reality.

 

In the noclip doc, the actual devs of Fallout:76 stated that they thought 16 vs 16 deathmatch was the best idea they had for Fallout:76 gameplay. This is how wrong the whole project had gone.

 

Today only Howard and Hines are allowed to officially talk about Fallout:76. Few notice how insane this is. But Howard, a STUDIO HEAD, has the last word hands-on control of Fallout:76 gameplay. Do you know how awful it is when a film producer takes creative control of a movie? Howard should be the last person at Beth with control of gameplay, but in the case of Fallout:76 it is clear that only his vision directs this title.

 

The real kicker is the refusal at this very very very late stage to show new gameplay video. Clearly Howard thinks (correctly) that any material would allow us to actually perceive the current state of the game- and this must be prevented at all costs.

 

In contrast I recall the promotion for Fallout 3. How the astonishing quality of that game screamed out from every video. Personally I've always found the potential of unreleased games remarkably easy to judge from the promotion of the 6 months before release. When I've felt a game looks like a stinker it always has been. And this is not surprising, since the confidence a team will have in a 'winner' will shine thru. A 'loser' title always has the same psycholgy of 'excuses' - cos when a software project goes wrong, it is a very bad time for all involved.

 

A 'movie' can sometimes be salvaged in the 'final cut'. A game can never be.

 

But here's the thing. We all make mistakes. The best game publishers sometimes make stinkers. But Beth has a terrible problem beyond this.

 

Fallout:76 should have been Rage:online. A far better IP for the experiment- with far less to lose and the massive advantage of VEHICLES ALLOWED (Todd bans vehicles in the Fallout IP). Fallout 5 (and Skyrim 2) should have been trad titles out sourced, using the current new Skyrim engine. Zenimax should have forced Beth to release one main ES/Fallout title a year- trivial when one considers such titles are simply a matter of resourses = money = something Zenimax has tons of.

 

Everything 'hard' in a trad ES/Fallout game is actually a simple matter of having the funds to employ the writers and asset designers. Proper publishers have multiple overlapping teams working on their key IPs. So if a title takes 3 years, but you have three sets of teams, you get an entry each year.

 

But under Howard, it is a bit of a puzzle exactly what BGS is good for. The industry has moved on a LOT since the current gen of consoles (and their refreshes). BGS has not. BGS has no chance of meeting the tech needs of next year's new consoles from Sony and MS, even as Howard uses the excuse of this coming hardware to delay once again Starfield, and the next ES even more.

 

Howard has stated he has moved Beth's three location resources behind Fallout:76 (a great excuse to Zenimax why Starfield is 'frozen'). Knowing how the industry works, I know Howard's motivation- he's literally playing the 'Cyberpunk' card when CDPR froze Cyberpunk dev to work fully on Witcher 3- but there is no valid comparison between CDPR (at the time) and BGS now. If Zenimax management buy this excuse they are complete fools.

 

The actual logic of Howard's move should be that Fallout:76 is delayed between 8-12 months (as happened with GTA V, RDR2, Witcher 3 etc etc etc), so the game can be 'fixed'. But Howard seems stuck with his promise to Zenimax of a major release this Xmas. Pure madness.

 

To be honest, I would like to see Howard and Hines crash and burn, get sacked at last, and BGS turned over to management who know how to work their key IPs. We here are gamers who loved Skyrim and Fallout. Is that a crime? (according to Todd's Toxic Army the answer is "yes").

 

We want more Fallout and more Skyrim- each new title of which is likely to earn Zenimax another BILLION dollars. Is this a crime?

 

More importantly, is this doable in industry terms? Of course it is. It is no coincidence that when Rocksteady were struggling with what became Batman:Arkham Knight, a Canadian team with no prior connection to Batman:Arkham Asylum and Batman:Arkham City took the engine from city and in no time flat banged out the wonderful Batman:Origins. THIS is how this industry works. Making engines is HARD. Using engines and engine tools is EASY.

 

Howard is the ONLY reason a quick sequel to Skyrim and Fallout 4 never appeared. Will NEVER appear. And remember, this sequels would have not prevented BGS from working on Fallout:76 or any other experiment.

 

Howard is the dictator of BGS, and a boss should never be a dictator.

So, no matter how bizzare it is to say, Fallout 76 = Todd Howard, and Todd Howard = fallout:76. Nothing good could ever come from this, given the tech issues that are inherent in such a project.

 

The strangest aspect of Todd's Toxic Army is now how they chant that it is a 'good thing' more trad Skyrim and Fallout never appeared. Supposed gamers who are now actually against the consistent production of more games they claim to enjoy.

 

Finally. Howard knows, via legal precedent (see World of Warcraft and others), that unauthorised mods to mutliplayer services are ILLEGAL. People like me warned you that Howard's next game would have its mods ONLY on the CC. And Todd's Toxic Army are now screaming that 'free' modders are 'thieves' and/or useless amateurs peddling junk.

[sopmac45]

We want more Fallout and more Skyrim- each new title of which is likely to earn Zenimax another BILLION dollars. Is this a crime?

More importantly, is this doable in industry terms? Of course it is. It is no coincidence that when Rocksteady were struggling with what became Batman:Arkham Knight, a Canadian team with no prior connection to Batman:Arkham Asylum and Batman:Arkham City took the engine from city and in no time flat banged out the wonderful Batman:Origins. THIS is how this industry works. Making engines is HARD. Using engines and engine tools is EASY.

>> You certainly know what you are saying sanity, and I agree with you 100% that billions would have been made by BGS or Zenimax, the addition of more DLC's or a sequence game to Skyrim and Fallout4.

I just imagine if we would have : Fallout4 : New York, Fallout4 : Chicago, Fallout4 : WashingtonDC ... and all those DLC ( for just mentioning some ... ) would be inter-connected with the original game and each one of them, capable to be modded. Can we just imagine, from dollars standpoint and Zenimax/BGS standpoint, how much money they would have made with those DLC's ? How many players would have bought those games without any hesitation to continue playing the main game ? We could just fast travel ( like Witcher 3 ) to those places and continue playing with different factions, enemies, weapons, armors, combat scenarios, landscaping, etc. It is just blows my mind thinking about how good would have been having something like that.

And for Skyrim ? There is an entire region called Tamriel with a lot of landscaping surrounding Skyrim. Just let ourselves fly our mind away and think how many DLC's / addition to the main game we could have had and without any doubt, everyone playing Skyrim would have jumped to buy those additions. Millions of dollars if that is what they are looking for and having a community-base-customers-stable spending money on them and at the same time, happier to continue playing their games.

Instead, we have this FO76 with too many things that we do not like at all and the first obstacle is to play online which is not what we want. Well, I guess that they are trying to buy us out but I do not think they will succeed.

[blitzen]

I've never understood why Bethesda doesn't farm out DLC development to other developers after BGS has finished with their own official DLCs. The TES and FO games have such demand for new content that this would make money for Bethesda and the other devs. It seems like a missed opportunity to make the fans happy and generate revenue for the companies involved. I think they lack vision in this respect. What's the downside? Everyone wins.

Edited July 31, 2018 by blitzen

[blitzen]

 

I just imagine if we would have : Fallout4 : New York, Fallout4 : Chicago, Fallout4 : WashingtonDC ... and all those DLC

 

We have to realy on modders for that:

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-new-york-mod-shares-progress-with-lovely-new-screens/

[TheSpaceShuttleChallenger]

I too am baffled that Bethesda doesn't focus more on DLC production, and in particular, DLC that adds new worlds and quests. I mean. They sell. They're what fans want. And in terms of game developement, they're relatively easy to make--they already have the engine, the ck, most of the assets, etc on hand.
I can understand why Bethesda has chosen to focus on selling those pointless little workshop DLCs and whatever minimalist garbage they've been putting through Creation Club. It's astonishingly low-effort (I mean, literally, some of the CC offerings are a fifteen minute project) so that even if their sales are awful they still turn a profit.

But Fallout 76? That wasn't easy to make like the workshop DLCs are. It doesn't have nearly as much of a guaranteed audience as the quest DLCs do.
I mean, probably the money guys (let's be real: The money guys make the decisions for Bethesda) are banking on the online community potentially generating a lot of money for microtransactions. But they're still gambling on people a) wanting to play this game, b) being willing to play $60 to play it and c) enjoying it enough to want to throw even more money at microtransactions. That's a lot of gambling.

If Fallout 76 is just a money-grab, it's a very ill-advised, inefficient money-grab from a company that has a track record of being very good at taking our money. Which is weird. Not impossible, but weird. So I'm sort of halfway willing to believe Todd Howard when he says that the developers actually wanted to have a go at making an online multiplayer set in their universe. I mean. If we look at Bethesda's strengths from a design standpoint: Worldbuilding. Their failings: Storytelling, dialogue. So: They've made a game that preserves this magnificent world they've built but instead of having Bethesda in charge of crafting NPCs and telling stories (which they're bad at) they've given us this online system where players are the NPCs and their actions are the story. Which sounds really good. In practise it's probably going to be an awful, toxic, frustrating mess. But it sounds good.
And Bethesda's got a stupid amount of money to spend on stupid things if they want to. It's not how I would spend that money. I would want them to stick to their tried-and-true formula and keep giving us more of what we want (that is, worlds and quests in a open world, singleplayer RPG format.) But I think the pressure these days is for super big, successful, iconic franchises is to expand *outward* and cover a lot of different platforms and formats--especially since at this point it's apparent that people are buying Fallout and TES games as much for the IP as they are for the gameplay.


Anyway, to answer OP:

Pros:
-- It's something different.
-- It isn't impacting the release of single-player TES, Fallout, and Starfield games.

Cons

-- Probably trash.
-- If it isn't trash, its success may impact the release of single-player TES, Fallout, and Starfield games.

[sopmac45]

In my opinion, BGS created the Creation Club to attract modders, pay them out to create mods and if you want them, you must join that Club and pay the fee. On the other side, mod authors in Nexus does not get paid at all, and that is why Nexus created the Donation program to keep those mod authors within the community creating more mods. No mods, no community playing games. To counteract the Creation Club, Nexus had to do that.

 

With the Creation Club from BGS, they are letting us know in advance what their move will be in a short and long term. What I think they are doing is to tell us : you want to continue playing offline games ? Join our Creation Club, get the mods we offer and play your game safely. > By doing that, they are not just making money by selling their games, but making money thru the fee they are charging to join the Club and who knows, if in the future they will charge also to buy mods. They are trying to monopolize everything around the games they already have and most important than that is : they will probably come up with the new Elder Scroll VI in 2019-2020, and probably this game will offline .. but I will seriously doubt if they permit this game to be modded as Skyrim V and Fallout4 were.

 

I think that they will use a better engine but they will not allow anybody to mod their games. On the contrary, they will mod those new games by using their own programmers and luring out other programmers from Nexus by paying them to create mods ( that is why Nexus came up with the Donation Program to avoid that ... ) so if we want to play those games with mods, we would have to pay a fee to join their Creation Club ( more money for them ) and who knows, if they will also charge a fee ( like a premium member or so ) to buy mods.

 

I also believe that in a long term, their vision is to only go with online games. They will keep ( probably ) some offline games in the market but as I said, under their own rules and terms. Put yourself in their shoes and try to become Howard and tell me what would you do if you were in his shoes. You probably will try to make more money, not the contrary, because that is the purpose of any business. If I was him, I will create offline games but I will not allow anybody to mod my game unless you ( the modder ) join me, so I can pay you to create good and reliable mods and I will keep the ownership of that mod and whoever want to play my game, would have to pay a fee to join the Creation Club and buy those mods. Period.

 

It does sound terrible but this is the way business perform. They want to be number one, have an extensive base of customers ( loyal and under their grasp ) and make them to leave under their roof and under their own rules and terms.

 

I do not really think that the new Elder Scroll VI will be like Skyrim and Fallout4 for everybody capable to mod it, to do whatever they want as they did. I honestly think that will not happen if they ever come up with another offline game wide open as those previous games.

 

What I want is to play offline games with mods but I am not BGS' owner, nor a programmer to create a new DLC for those games. Unfortunately, always the big fish will eat the smaller one, that is the way life is in reality and that is the way business perform. I may be wrong and I would love to be wrong about what I think but the Creation Club, the mods they are making, the modders they are attracting ( they are being paid for their work ) and other signals we have been talking about, are not good indications that they will continue creating offline games and let everybody to mod them out.

[sopmac45]

"""I too am baffled that Bethesda doesn't focus more on DLC production, and in particular, DLC that adds new worlds and quests. I mean. They sell. They're what fans want. And in terms of game developement, they're relatively easy to make--they already have the engine, the ck, most of the assets, etc on hand. """

 

>>> I completely agree with you but for some unknown reasons to us, they have gone the other way. That is why a couple of weeks ago I was wondering in one of this thread, how many people already are playing Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 ( these are the 3 games people plays the most in the world ... ) ? Can you imagine if BGS would have come up with more DLC's for at least Skyrim and Fallout4 ? They would have made millions !

[dikr]

My hunch is that it will fall flat. Not twitchy enough for the FPS / BG crowd (you need a much more fleshed out combat system for that), not laid-back, rpg'ish and persistent enough for the long time single player fans.

 

It could however be a fun game catering for its own crowd and maybe even better; a prequel to further developments where a vast and persistent FO or TES world can both be multiplayer and RPG friendly, with dedicated RP servers, crews fighting over resources, PVE instances, base building, etc. i.e. a full fledged mmorpg like EVE online. That would be a positive future in my book. As roleplaying in single player games means we are always dependent on Bethesda writers for immersion, which can't compare with the amount of roleplaying potential and player created 'content' brought by a like minded crowd of players. (I wish they hired the FONV writers on FO4 tbh).

 

However ... I don't have Bethesda high in my book in regards to decision making. A game like that would require careful balancing between PVP and PVE minded people, a balance which few companies ever pulled off.

 

So far it seems they are throwing the biggest USP's of the franchise out with the bath water (open modding and a vast, persistent gameworld), and that can't end well for us, I expect.

 

/skeptical