Fallout 76

[fragger]

eh, it's not that bad, and the whole thing about being able to store infinite amounts of anything in any container was a bit weird in the previous Fallout games if you think about it.

That's true. Being able to store 100 Combat Rifles in a little red toolbox is slightly unrealistic

Looks like there are some really nice structure building options (once you unlock them, I guess?) That house is impressive I reckon I could have a lot of fun with the building side of things.

Can you still buy or barter for things like junk items to scrap for materials/components, and shipments? Or does vending not w0#k that way in 76?

[Dweller_Benthos]

There are a few vendors you can buy things from, didn't really notice if they have junk stuff and materials as I was always looking for ammo, but they might. Most building parts you need to find or buy plans for, I think you also get them from completing quests. Other players who have set up vending machines sometimes have plans as well.

I saw on reddit that the next patch is supposed to change how hunger and thirst works as apparently there's a bug in it. Seems they are going to remove any negative effects from not having food & water. I know without the perks that go along with it, it took a lot of water and food to fill them up and they drained pretty fast it seemed.

[fragger]

Okay, cheers

[Dweller_Benthos]

Quick shot of the camp, a few upgrades. Built a couple more generators, now have my own water purifier so I don't worry about water anymore, just gotta remember to drink it! The little vault boy icon pops up when you get thirsty so that's not a huge deal.

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Also built a vending machine to get rid of junk I don't want, like legendary stuff that you can't scrap, so I sold them cheap only to find there's a special machine at the train stations where you can trade in legendary stuff for scrap or something? Not sure what you win, but it's like a slot machine or gambling option or something. Also got an "ally" you can see is the person on the porch, you meet these people out in the world and if you want them to be at your camp, you ask them to join you and build whatever they are looking for, this woman wanted a guitar to play. So she wanders around playing the guitar and humming tunes all day. Kind of annoying, but you can get quests from allies, the usual things like settler quests in FO4, go rescue somebody, find something, etc.

Eating food I've also dispensed with cooking anything I find from killed animals, it spoils too fast unless you've got the perk to stop that, I just eat any pre-packaged food I find when I'm out exploring, and pick up any I find in containers. I'm living on Mac & cheese, sugar bombs, instamash, that sort of thing. If I do find some post war food, I eat it right away so it doesn't spoil.

I've been following the main overseer quest line again finally. Probably should have done that earlier, but the hourly events were keeping me distracted, now that those are over, I'm back on the main quest, which isn't extensive, more of a tutorial sort of thing, and then I'll get back to more of the new wasteland quest line and I guess there's an option to side with the raiders or something called the foundation? Probably in usual Fallout fashion, those are the "good" and "bad" choices though the kharma system doesn't really come into play in this game.

For the most part, I wander around and into areas to explore and kill what needs to be killed there, and join a random event now and then.

[fragger]

Cooked food is evidently a bit of a different affair to how it is FO4, where you can store cooked meat in a cupboard and it stays viable forever

Didn't the devs originally say there were no NPCs in 76? Your "ally" appears to be one such. Maybe it's something they've added since release, or maybe they meant no "storyline" NPCs, as in specific or unique characters, since there isn't a storyline in the FO4 sense.

Can you tell an ally to go away at some point? That guitar lady sounds like she'd get to be a pain after a while. Maybe you could arrange a little "accident"

[Art Blade]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

I don't know how much of the NPCs were in the original game and what was added by the recent wastelanders update. I know the woman in the bar is part of that, I haven't followed her quest line yet, and I think the overseer quest line was originally just finding holotapes and things she left behind but now there is an actual NPC you meet and talk to for that.

The allies you can make go away by dismantling their special item, in the case of the one I have, it's a chair with a guitar. If that's not there, she will leave, and then you can build a different one or have none at all. The other person I met was a tweaked out guy who wanted to start a radio station but I left him where he was. You also meet random settlers and scavengers who are usually mostly friendly and you have a reputation with them, I'm currently considered "cautious" as they don't trust me quite yet. I think they are part of the raiders/foundation quest line that I haven't really looked into yet. I have really only explored a very small portion of the world and not thoroughly either. I had a quest to go request a supply drop from what's left of the government (this Fallout takes place only a few years after the war, so the government still exists in some fashion I guess?) and after finding the radio tower to upload the request, I fought off a few low level robots only to be jumped by an assaultron, the female ones with the laser who completely baked me. That was a tough battle as it was a good ten levels above me. That is the thing, if you wander into an area that's a higher level than you are, the enemies you meet will be much tougher. I had followed a side quest into a town and got jumped by a radscorpion hunter who was at the time 20 levels above me. That didn't go well and luckily I got my stuff back and ran away with a sliver of health.

Oh yeah, when you die, you can respawn at any place on the map you've discovered, which can also be used for fast travel points, for a fee in caps, or back at your camp for free. You keep everything except your scrap, so you don't lose weapons, ammo or armor. So if the scrap and junk you've collected is not worth the effort, you can just leave it there and forget about it.

Another system that seems to take effect is your own level effects what level enemies spawn. I know one time I went through an area the enemies were about on my level more or less and fairly easy to deal with. Next time I went through there, I passed a higher level player who waved at me and went on their way but I think because we were both in the area, the enemies that spawned were on the other player's level and not mine, as they were all level 50 and above as I was still under level 10, so I left them alone and snuck past.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Had a pretty cool encounter last night with another player. I had a few quests I could do but opted to just wander around and see what I found. It was doing that when I saw my first scorch beast, large mutated bats big as a deathclaw or bigger, that emit toxic gas and shoot radiation at you like a gamma gun. The first one I saw was just as I was approaching a super mutant base and either it was helping them or attacking them, but it flew off before I could get a good look at it, so I took care of the super mutants and went on exploring.

A bit later, I noticed I was close to the site to start a new quest and figured I might as well get that going and headed there. As I got closer, I saw another (or the same?) scorch beast flying around and I took a couple shots at it. That was a mistake. It was level 50 and I'm just over level 22, I didn't die but had to perform the patented "run away" strategy while spamming stim packs and anti-radiation meds. I got out of it's line of sight and it went back to whatever it was doing. So, I proceeded more carefully to the place I needed to start the quest, only to find the beast flying back and forth in that area. Looking on the map, it seemed it was circling the place I needed to go. I thought about just skipping that quest for now until I saw another player's icon on the map in that same area and heard gun shots. So I carefully snuck around a hill so I could get a look at the area and sure enough, another player was fighting the scorch beast. They were at least level 100 as they were running around in X01 power armor but I didn't see the beast's health meter going down too much so either they were toying with it or didn't have heavy weapons with them.

I used the distraction to sneak into the building to get some cover and stoked up on psycho and med-x and put on my gas mask and went to town. I used up all the 10mm ammo I had for my machine gun as the other player was also pummeling it with some kind of automatic weapon fire, then I switched to my 44 magnum which does more damage per bullet but fires at a much slower rate of course. We finally whittled it down and defeated it, an exciting battle and a cool example of cooperation that was just spontaneous.

Once it was dead, the other player hopped down off the roof and jumped out of their power armor and gave me the high five emote salute, grabbed the loot off the beast and ran off. I grabbed my loot, which wasn't great (legendary grenade launcher which is almost useless except to turn it in for scrap) and found the start of the quest I was looking for to begin with, and headed home.

It was a really fun time, glad I got this game.

[Art Blade]

nice. As long as you enjoy it, who cares what everyone else says about the game

[fragger]

Thanks for keeping us abreast, D_B

I have to say that going by what you've told us so far, the game doesn't sound at all half bad, and after looking at some of the screenies you've posted of what other players have built, that aspect of it really interests me as a "Bob the Builder" The game is what you make it, I guess. The Fallout series has long had a large and devoted following and many of those folks rubbished FO4, but that game has become one of my most favourite titles ever.

So I suppose the moral of the story is: Ignore the hype and try it for yourself.

Even though online MP games don't usually interest me (unless maybe there is allowance for private co-op sessions) it sounds like at least this one isn't full of immature griefers trying to make your life a misery. I find the idea of joining a public online free-for-all about as appealing as taking a midnight stroll through a gang-ridden favela. From what I have also gathered, the devs have borne in mind that not everyone is a fan of gunning up everybody else and so PvP isn't a thing unless you agree to it. Is that the case?

[Dweller_Benthos]

I think a lot of the bad press the game got early on was because it wasn't exactly what some people wanted in an online Fallout game and they got butthurt about it and bad mouthed it. So instead of taking it on what the game was and enjoying that, they bitched about what the game wasn't and threw their lollypop in the dirt and pouted about it. When it first came out, I looked at what it was about and thought to myself, well, I don't think that's worth $60 but for $25 or $30, I'd get it. So they added content and dropped the price (don't know if it's still on sale though) and that made it worth my while. I'd think of it along the lines of a really extensive DLC for FO4, the map is huge, and honestly there are sections that are a bit on the empty side, I'll be the first to admit. But again, I have only explored maybe 10% of the map and that only in the "safe" areas for low level players. The few times I wandered into the higher level areas I barely escaped or didn't as the case may be, lol.

I was watching a live stream and the usual comments popped up like "Is the game worth getting?" and so on, and the answer was, "It's pretty much Fallout 4 only you don't have to find Shaun" and that's a pretty good description. Sure, there is no long term, story-driven quest to follow for hours. The quests that are there are shorter, and more in the vein of a side quest you'd find in FO4. So if that was someone's bread and butter in FO4, there's probably not much in 76 to hold their attention.

As for it being online with other players, I don't see other players for the most part unless I go looking for them. The times I do see other players it's usually in passing, and we wave at each other and go on our separate ways. You can turn on defensive mode or whatever it's called and are essentially invulnerable to other players' attacks and the same if you attack someone else, you do no damage to them. That comes in handy when doing community events where you have to fight off NPCs and there's a real possibility of accidental friendly fire happening. I guess PvP was what Bethesda thought everyone wanted, but it turned out pretty much no one wanted it so it's been downplayed in the main game for the most part. For the PvP players, there's nuclear winter mode, which I haven't tried yet, but from what I hear is a battle royale type game mode, and is completely separate from the main game.

The only thing I've heard of on reddit is camp traps, where you might encounter a player who's not quite friendly. The way they w0#k normally and how I've seen it so far is you go to someone's camp, see if they have anything for sale you want, maybe use the stash to store some stuff and be on your way. A trapped camp is one that looks enticing on the map, listing a lot of good stuff for sale, but when you get there, it's essentially a trap where you get killed trying to get in. So the easy way to avoid that is to not go there, simple. Look over any camp you visit for suspicious things like the vendor stations well inside the camp with a long cramped corridor leading to them, stuff like that. If the vendors aren't clearly visible on the outside edge of the camp, I don't go in. I've never actually seen a trap camp but it's good to know these things in advance to watch out for. I was a bit cautious first time I saw a camp with a bunch of machine gun turrets placed around until I realized that active defenses like that don't target other players, just NPC enemies like ghouls and such that might wander by. It's only passive traps like the punji stake boards you can make that will harm another player if they walk over them.

I've also seen on reddit players who are very high level and don't have much to do anymore but the daily quests, who hang out at the vault exit and greet new players and help them out by guiding them or giving them gear to get them going, which I doubt you'd see in most any other online game ever. I knew when I left the vault where the first weapons were so I went right to them and picked them up. The other two people who left right around the same time seemed to be unsure where to go and what to do and were having a hard time of it. Luckily for them I took care of the couple very low level enemies you see right outside the vault, and we went our separate ways. So that is something, there is less and less to do once you get at a very high level and the game gets, well, boring. But then that's pretty much any game. I've already reached that point in Red Dead Redemption, so there you go.

As for the camp building aspect, it is slow going, at least for me, as I haven't specifically looked for all the plans and upgrades you need to build everything. And sure, there is a bit of a money grab there if you want to accelerate it, you can buy stuff in the atom shop, where you can spend real money to get stuff to build with. So that might put people off, and could be a justifiable complaint. There isn't the extensive building area you have in FO4 of course, but you can build almost anywhere, or at least a very large area of the map is available. I've seen camps in some pretty cool places, and specific, too. My camp can fit almost anywhere, but the ones I've seen are specific to an exact spot and could never be moved. So when you run the game, you may get a message that your camp can't be placed because someone else's on that server is in the way. You can either join anyway and place your camp somewhere else or keep trying other servers until you find one that can place your camp.

I would say to anyone wondering what it's about to watch some live streams or videos from a person they trust to give an honest opinion. As always, the game isn't for everyone, like any game, but the reviews and bad press it got weren't deserved, I don't think.

Wow what a wall of text, lol

[Art Blade]

TLDR

Spoiler

Too Long, Didn't Read



Well, I did read it. Nice detailed report.

And.. what a wall of text

[Dweller_Benthos]

Cheers!   

[fragger]

Thanks for the detailed rundown, Dweller You covered everything I wanted to know about interacting with other players in the game, and more. Sounds pretty benign compared to most MP offerings, and that's a good thing. There's enough toxicity in the world without it infecting games too.

I think that's the wordiest I've ever seen you be I's much appreciated though.

For a while I've been kind of suspecting that maybe all the negativity surrounding the game was misplaced to some degree. I've seen other people online talking about how much they enjoy the game, saying that it's not the steaming hot mess that some have said it is, and so on. As I said in my last post, many long-time FO fanboys rubbished (and still rubbish) FO4 because it wasn't RPGey enough for them and they got stroppy about the game deviating from the beaten FO path. Heaven forbid a games company should try innovating...

[Art Blade]

To me it sounds as if now, kind of "years later," memory may have faded a bit regarding what it was like in the beginning and everything around it. People don't simply diss a game without any reason. And to turn a SP game into MP is not exactly progress, it's just another trend and a way of making more money. Speaking of which, remember the outcry when the promised canvas duffel bag for some expensive special edition turned out to be a cheap nylon bag?

"that nylon bag looks like an actual garbage bag" was a line that cracked me up but it was pretty serious.