Fallout 76

[Dweller_Benthos]

"might have mislead consumers"

yep.

[Art Blade]

I thought I better put the link here so we can read that stuff ourselves I removed the vid because that guy.. can't even read properly.

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/zenimax-to-refund-consumers-for-the-fallout-76-game

[LowPolyOWG]

A redditor that developed a webpage map for FO76 and decided to "debug" the game got banned. He didn't want to do any cheating, just wanted to see if there are some vulnerabilities within the code. There is an exploit that let's you change the talents on legendary gear through memory editing/faction swapping and Bethetic has done nothing about it yet

Most companies rewards people that find vulnerabilities/exploits in their IT systems.

Reddit thread

[Art Blade]

I read that article. I do understand his motives but at the time I also understand Bethesda. Imagine someone was standing at your front door because he had heard rumours that your lock wasn't safe, and kept trying to figure out how to open it without keys.. a whole day long with hundreds of attempts.. I bet you'd rather he told you about those rumours than trying to verify them first by actually opening the door without key, let alone asking your permission to open it. In such a case, I'd call the police regardless his intentions.

[LowPolyOWG]

Yeah, looking at it that way, I agree.

[LowPolyOWG]

Hackers are now spawning FO4 items/going rampant on their FO76 servers

[Dweller_Benthos]

The hacking doesn't surprise me, it will happen in any game. What was interesting in that article was that an upcoming update will add NPCs to what was supposed to be a players-only online game.

[Art Blade]

does that mean they admit that the world was a tad too barren? That's not a bad sign albeit, it's sad in a way. Sounds more like, "we finally managed to fill all those empty pages of the book with some letters."

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I've seen some other videos where people have looked at the code and assets in the game and have found exact copies of stuff from other games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim. So essentially, they did a copy-paste from their older games and bolted a multiplayer skin over the top. People aren't happy.

[Art Blade]

a proper rip-off.

[LowPolyOWG]

Fallout 76 in 2020

[Dweller_Benthos]

uh-yup! I still think about it, and if it goes on sale for say $30 I'd probably go ahead and get it.

[Dweller_Benthos]

See above, it did and I did. Some of you know as you've seen the Steam notice of me playing it. I had watched a lot of live streams from players I follow and usually agree with their opinions on games and what I saw was enough to keep me interested. When it dropped in price to $30 I bought it. Here we go.

The usual intro stuff in the vault, select your character, etc, pick up some gear and walk out.

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In my own story in my head she's the younger sister of the character I had in Fallout 4. Same eyes, don't ya know?

Leaving the vault I rummaged around in a corpse and picked up a pistol and looked around. Two other players who seemed like they were together left the vault at about the same time I did. After killing a few small robots and talking to a couple NPCs nearby, I wandered down the hill to the first mission marker, looking into some places along the way. Got to the first mission spot and after talking to more NPCs left and got the tutorial on how to craft, set up a camp, etc. Nothing too surprising to anyone who's played a Fallout game before.

Set up a rudimentary camp and headed off to the first mission marker. The world is really well done, the usual Fallout stuff and toilet humor like:

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Hmmm they have more TP in the post apocalypse than we do (well did, it's coming back now lol)

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First off I notice about the game is, it's hard. Seems it's much more difficult than Fallout 4 was, as far as enemies and how much damage you do. I met some mole rats and mongrel dogs on the way and had a tough time getting rid of them, the mole rats especially. The weapons you get early on are pretty low powered, even against low level enemies.

The first few missions are essentially getting a new player up to speed on crafting, getting water and food, etc. Anyone who's played Fallout before knows about that, and we come to something I don't really care for in the game, hunger and thirst. I never played Fallout 4 with those on because I find them a bit tedious and take too much time away from the other more fun stuff. But they can't be avoided here, so you have to keep up on them and when all of a sudden your action point bar is half empty you remember you need to drink water. So until I get a water purifier at my camp, I have to collect dirty water, collect wood, boil it and still take radiation because of that.

Building stuff is much the same as in Fallout 4, just not nearly as extensive, as you only have a fairly small area to build your camp in, and there is no settlement management or anything like that. So if building stuff was the fun part of Fallout 4 for you, there's not much in 76 for you to do.

Combat is mostly the same, VATS is just a button press and fire the weapon, as long as you're in range and mostly pointing at the target, you'll hit it at least for some damage. I don't use it that often. The big thing is the complete scarcity of ammo, especially at the beginning. Once you've collected enough stuff you can make it, but you can't scrap any ammo you don't need to convert it to ammo you do need. You also can't sell it, but you can buy it, something that players have complained about since release as I've seen in various posts. Seems they wanted to get rid of the idea of using ammo for money as that's what a lot of people did in the previous games, and wanted a more player driven economy with players trading and selling stuff to each other. Well, that doesn't happen really. So they are "thinking about" being able to at least scrap ammo to convert it to a type you can use.

As for other players, my involvement with them has been minimal. Aside from the couple people I saw as I left the vault, I didn't see anyone else for the first few hours I played. There were a couple around the first mission area but that's to be expected. We pretty much ignored each other. Later on, I played a daily mission, which 76 has like GTAV or RDO, several missions that you can participate in, with other players. So far none of them have been PvP that I've seen, mostly the type where you have to defeat an enemy or defend an area against an NPC attack, that sort of thing. In those there are several other players, some of them hundreds of levels above me, in full power armor and toting laser gatling guns. It seems player damage is off or so minimal you don't notice it as they were firing lasers and grenades around willy nilly without concern for hitting other players and I never took any damage from that. Made the mission pretty easy actually as they took out all the enemies before I could even do anything, not that shooting a super mutant with a 10mm pistol is going to do much, but if you at least do some damage in those cases, you get loot off them. You don't get any loot off an enemy someone else killed that you had no part in the fight against them.

The biggest gripe I have against the game aside from the scarcity of ammo and hunger & thirst (I'm building up scavenger and food perks to help with those) is the controls. In usual Bethesda fashion, they don't seem to understand a keyboard has 101 keys and you don't have to put three functions on one button. Also, there are people who like to remap controls because of what they are used to or heaven forbid, use a non-English keyboard. Well, those people don't count, apparently, because the year old posts about remapping keys show that it's been an ongoing issue. Heck, even Fallout 4 had the same problem and I had to make my own mods to fix it. But it's the same deal, I can remap the controls and they w0#k fine in the main part of the game, but then make the build menus impossible to use. So, the way my keys are, I can't walk backwards or strafe left while in build mode. And to even get build mode to w0#k, I have to remap the interact button off what I have it on and back to default before building or I can't build anything. I did try an auto hot key script and got them all working that way, but it messed up a couple other things especially the on screen prompts in the pip boy and other menus, as it would give the default key for something and I'd have to remember what I'd mapped that to in auto hot key. As it was, I guessed wrong one time and dismantled my camp. Luckily it remembers everything you've built so I just had to place it back down again, but you get where I'm coming from. Someone who doesn't remap keys and leaves everything default won't have an issue though.

So, bottom line is I'm liking the game for the most part. The exploration is great, the map is large and well done, at least what I've seen of it, but combat is a bit tough and ammo is scarce. Not to mention hunger & thirst. Interaction with other players is minimal or non-existent, unless you intentionally join a mission with other players. Base building is also minimal though there are a lot of things to unlock.

Oh yeah unlocks. The first menu you get when you run the game is the "Atom Shop" where you can buy stuff with atoms, the in game currency. You get it from completing missions and doing daily tasks, etc. Or, of course, you can buy them with real money so you can use it to get that power armor paint job you've always wanted. So I ignore all that of course, just like shark cards and gold bars in GTAV and RDO. At least in Fallout 76 pretty much everything you can buy that way is purely cosmetic unlike the other two games where you can use that to buy high powered weapons.

[Art Blade]

interesting read, boring game.

[LowPolyOWG]

Watching videos about the scandals surrounding FO76 is probably better than playing FO76