Fallout 76

[fragger]

Have any of you guys heard about this? I've been watching a few vids about it on You Tube, and there was an E3 reveal recently. Unfortunately, for those of us who love the highly-immersive SP experience of FO4, the news is ominous.

It seems pretty certain that the game will be online only. The devs say that there will be a "solo mode", but are emphatic that that does not mean "single player". You'll still have to be online to play. It also means that the game world will only be populated by actual players, no NPCs other than monsters, perhaps. Which in turn sounds to me like no story to speak of, and little immersion - just a group of people running around in a big game world (4 times the size of FO4's world) doing I don't know what, apart from shooting at other groups of people. Just another online shooter basically (as if there weren't enough of those already) only with base-building.

This probably won't sit well with the modding community as online-only will probably mean either no modding, or mods that will only w0#k if everyone playing has the same ones installed. Presumably.

There are a lot of videos and trailers on YT at present, here's a recent short one:

I won't be up for this one, I don't think. I've come to love the SP immersion of FO4. This sounds like the kind of thing I'd hate. I don't want to play with other people whether I'm in a team or in "solo" mode (which means, I imagine, that you can still run afoul of online twits). I like my FO experience straight, undiluted by crowing, camped-out gutless wonders with mini-nukes.

We'll see what develops, I guess, but at this stage I'm not holding out much hope for a whole new FO experience unless they do a FO5 for SP some time in the future.

[Art Blade]

instead, you could buy FO3. It was essentially the same as FO4, regarding how it felt when playing it.

[LowPolyOWG]

I think I already mentioned the game here

FO haven't been a game I have shown any interest in.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, it's looking more and more like I won't be playing this one. Unless there are servers with very specific rules, like no PVP AT ALL - I have no interest in that. If you can team up with someone to go fight a super mutant boss or raid a large AI controlled base, that might be OK, but not if there's any chance some jerk is going to shoot me in the back and take my stuff.

[LowPolyOWG]

Just walk around with *bleep* gear 

[fragger]

Ah yes, we did discuss it. My short-term memory must be on the way out...

[LowPolyOWG]

However, this isn't FO4, so, better have a separate topic anyway

[Art Blade]

I checked both topics (FO4/76) to see whether I could split and merge them easily but nope. I'll leave everything as is and simply suggest to stay on topic either regarding FO76 (here) or navigate to FO4 and post there.

[fragger]

Maybe if any of us do happen to try out the game, we can use this topic to report in. In the meantime, I still have plenty to occupy myself with in FO4.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah there is a hint that there may be single player, but not anytime soon. I'll watch some videos and see how it works, if it looks like you can ignore other players for the most part, and not get griefed too badly, I may try it, otherwise, no, and wait for the mythical single player mode if it ever happens.

[LowPolyOWG]

Looks like it was based upon a scrapped FO4 MP mode

[mandru]

I'll be giving this one a pass but I have been following some of the news releases that have trickled out.

From what I've come across there will be no human NPCs only monsters (as previously stated above) and the only humans in the game will be other players.  I don't know how accurate the report is but there will be a max of four players (yourself and three others) in any game session.  As to whether you can hook up with friends and play cooperative remains unconfirmed.

It is still unclear whether or not each player will be able to see the position of the other three player on the game map.

The things, buildings, etc... that you build in game are directly linked to your account and will only be present In-Game while you are logged in.  That means that Griefers can't loot or bust up your stuff while you are not in game.

When (in game) you've wandered away from your basses or the things that you have built and they are damaged by monsters or other players the ruined items are not completely destroyed as you will be able to repair instead of putting out the material cost of replacing them.

So far the word is "If you are killed by another player you do not lose any of your carry inventory".  The PKer will simply receive some XPs and a small cash reward based on how hard it was to take you down as/per your character's levels.  Though this could be easily altered if the potential PKers (in their normal and highly predictable behavioral pattern) scream incessantly at the developers enough about this limitation and how unfair it is to them.

The word is that the game mechanics will limit the effect from or reward for griefers.  To this claim I suspect that the game developers vastly underestimate or purposely overlook the ingenuity, persistence, and perversity of griefers. 

The official position is that there will be free updates and upgrades with some micro-transactions available to accelerate acquisition of better weapons, armor, graphical skins, and gear but the same perks can be earned through (so to speak) sweat labor (sounds like resource grinding to me) so that a player doesn't have to lay out pocket cash to get the same swag. 

[LowPolyOWG]

They could create separate servers for them. A lot of survival games have separate PvE/PvP/PvPvE environments

[BinnZ]

It sounds a lot like GTA Online. In which case I think 4 players is a ridiculously small max player setting. If they want to cash on micro transactions there's gotta be more player encounters involved. And indeed they should make them less risky, and have only little effort to player killers. More like XP bonuses and ranking abilities.
I've also herd that this vault 76 is something that is known and bespoken on during the entire game. Some sort of legendary vault, the master treasure. That would likely implicate a more single player based environment. Like sticking to the original concept as much as possible and make it fun to play on your own, something extraordinary to explore.
We'll just have to wait and see I guess. But it certainly triggers my interest

[fragger]

"Griefers" - I love that term

I'm also wondering about story, i.e. will there actually be one. If there are no human NPCs, except perhaps for some disembodied "overseer" in the Vault, then the answer would appear to be no, or at most just a skeleton of one. In FO4, you have the sense that you are working towards a final goal (to find your kidnapped son) and there are all sorts of engaging side stories along the way, some tangentially relevant to the main story and some that are completely separate. Some sides cross-reference each other and may be pertinent to specific characters/locations that you encounter elsewhere. There's a sense that you're caught up in events and are an integral part of an overarching story, not just a casual interloper flitting through it all.

I like FO4's overall story with its multiple arcs and faction relations, even if sometimes it may get itself a little out of whack depending in what order you do things, but never in a major or story-breaking way. Overall, I think the devs did a pretty good job of knitting all the threads together considering the myriad different ways players can go about things.

So a single-player - sorry, "solo" - experience in FO76 wouldn't be a terribly great heap of fun if all it consists of is building a base, exploring and doing a relative handful of quests for a character that you never actually see while fighting off bizarre monsters. Sounds kind of pointless in that respect. I think it's pretty clear that the game is firmly MP-focussed, just as the devs are saying, and solo mode is more of a bone thrown to SPs in an attempt to placate them.

Should be interesting anyway to see how things develop.