Fallout 76

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I'll be the first to admit that Blahthesda mis-stepped greatly with the launch of the game, it looked like for all intents and purposes a blatant money grab. In some respects, it still is. The biggest complaint I have is the amount of stuff you can stash in your, well, stash. 800 weight units. It looked like a lot when I first started, but it didn't take long to fill up with my normal "pick up everything" habit. So now I'm being much more selective as right now I don't have room on my character or in my stash to hold a new weapon if I find it. So, the solution to limited storage space? Buy the Fallout first subscription, so you get unlimited storage. Complete BS, and the one thing that really annoys me. There's talk that maybe they will expand the storage in a future patch, but I really doubt it. Hopefully, but yeah, don't hold your breath.

Another thing that's a bit annoying is that the higher tier weapons and armor can't be used by a lower level player. I suppose this is so a newbie who has a friend with high level gear can't use it and be OP to other low levels just because their friend gave them high level stuff. I think this is a hold over from the "everything PvP" mentality they had at the beginning of the game. So, I have half a set of T45 and half a set of T51 power armor I can't wear yet. That stuff is heavy and takes up a bunch of space in my stash. The last T51 set I found I didn't even pick up, no place to store it. I have a sniper combat rifle that I can't use yet either. I mean, it's not terrible, just annoying. But in the spirit of full disclosure I figured I'd mention it.

There is also a Facebook group (or something, I know nothing of Facebook) called "War on Bethesda" that is apparently full of asshats who want full on PvP in the game and go about basically ruining it for everyone else who just wants to play. I've only seen mention of it on Reddit, never actually ran into any of these jerks. But I thought I'd mention it as well so there's no surprises. Here's a reddit post about it and the updates they are going to do:

from r/fo76

Still, maybe it's because I'm still low level or I've just been on servers where people mind their own business, but I haven't ever been attacked in any way by another player. Like I said, if I see one, I wave and go on my way, and they usually do the same. Maybe I've just been lucky, I don't know. But it looks like the changes they are making involve teams which I don't take part in, so it doesn't mean much to me. It still looks like if someone does attack you, you have to accept their invite to PvP, and then you can damage each other, if not, they can't damage you much or at all. Again, I don't know first hand because I rarely ever see another player. That person I fought the scorch beast with was the first one outside a scheduled event that I had any close contact with.

So, sure there are caveats to the game, there is to every game. So far they haven't really impacted my enjoyment of it much at all.

There you go, another text wall.

[Art Blade]

 

[LowPolyOWG]

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.

Unfortunately, with the AAA industry deciding to push for the "live service" model, this is the typical cycle. Release something broken, fix later. Sure, the complainers are usually a minority, compared to the silent majority who "enjoy" the game (they just hope that the game will be fixed). I would call myself a part of the silent majority, that enjoy the product I buy. Although, I do watch and read opinions on reddit (most of them are just *bleep*) and the youtubers that usually build their audience around a title that I play or have interest in.

It's often better to wait, say a year or two before buying a new game, as it could have been updated to the point of being enjoyable. As I said earlier, some people found the Wastelander update a game changer. Others, probably not

[fragger]

I agree, LP. I jumped into No Man's Sky on release day, which was the first time I'd ever done that, and although I got hooked on it for a couple of weeks, I abruptly stopped playing once the novelty wore off and because I simply ran out of things to do in it. A few years later and it's almost like a different game, with plenty that you can do (compared to how it was originally) and had I waited, I would have found it a lot more absorbing and wouldn't have gotten bored with it so quickly.

So much has been added in fact that I'm reluctant to pick it up again because of the time I'd have to put in relearning everything and building myself back up

After that experience, I decided I would never rush into a brand-new game again. Especially in this "sell now, fix later" climate.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Had another nice encounter with other players yesterday. There are several events you can attend that usually require you to either collect some materials or fight off some NPCs and then you get rewards in loot and sometimes legendary items. So this one event I went to mostly to get a free fast travel to that area of the map, was an easy one, and there were several high level players there which was strange as it was a low level event. I essentially had to do nothing, which was good as I'd never done that event before and didn't know what to do, and when it was over, got a decent piece of armor. The rest of the people were all in voice chat and discussing stuff going on and what loot they got. The one person said something like "Yeah the drops you get at this event are mostly low level and the only player here that can really use this stuff is Dweller, so here you go if you want it" and they dropped a bunch of stuff and they all wandered off. One was a legendary melee weapon that did a ton more damage than the one I had but was extremely heavy, so I traded it in for scrip at the legendary trade station. Thanks, stranger!

So, I've found what to do with legendary stuff you don't want. I had sold a bunch of them for 1 cap each just to get rid of them and the person who bought them got on voice chat and made sure I really wanted to sell them at that price, and seemed astonished. I was a bit mystified at the time but I had to get rid of all that weight. Anyway, you can trade them in for this scrip stuff which is another type of money (No Man's Sky has three types of money, I think Fallout 76 has four or five lol) which you can use at a special vendor to buy higher level legendary gear. So, like in Fallout 4, you get a low level legendary gun, which is great until you find something better, what do you do with the low level one? Give it to a companion or settler or toss it into a crate somewhere and forget about it. But in 76 you can trade it in and save your scrip and get a better item. Nice system actually, wish I'd known about it before selling all those legendaries for one cap each! But that's what the person was asking me about, they just didn't mention specifically you could recycle them like that, ah well, my loss!

I'm trying to do the quest now that gets you a backpack to be able to carry more stuff. I'm chronically short on storage space as I've mentioned. But it looks like the backpack has several upgrades, and from what I can tell there are two types of "money" you use to buy these upgrades from special vendors. Not sure how you get the money yet, still doing the quest and I keep getting distracted by other things along the way!

[Art Blade]

 

nice to get free stuff and good on you that now you've learned about scrip. Makes me wonder why you didn't know that. Isn't there any kind of "help" menu or perhaps tutorial telling you that?

[Dweller_Benthos]

No help menu that's for sure, and yeah some of it was probably my fault for not following the main quest line right at the start. I was doing some of that over the weekend and one of the quests was to build a generator at your camp. Well, I already had three lol, so I went and scrapped one and rebuilt it, quest done!

I think there is a quest that brings you to the legendary vendor, and there might be one of those scrapping machines at his shop, but I don't think you get that quest until about level 20 or something, I don't know, I had a bunch piled up I didn't do yet so I'm not sure when I got that one. The part of the map he's in is suggested for level 25 players I think, but really, you can get quite a stockpile of legendary stuff you have no use for well before that.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I know I said I'd stop posting pictures of other people's camps, but this one was pretty cool, they had a nice museum upstairs of most of the various "junk" items you can collect:

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login


That's a lot of display cases. Looked like all the teddy bears, beer steins, bunch of other things. Probably took a good while to collect all that stuff.

[Art Blade]

nice

[fragger]

I wonder if junk items can fall out of those cases, like they are prone to do in FO4. I guess that player wouldn't have gone to so much trouble if they do. It's a good-looking museum

[Art Blade]

it's on steam summer sale

-50%

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I saw it was on sale but didn't check the price. I paid $30 for it so I guess that's the same.

As for the display cases, no, junk items (shouldn't) fall out of them, it's not done like it was in FO4. Anything you have in a display of any type is considered to be part of your main stash inventory, it's just in a different container. So those display cases are accessed like your stash, and you can pick from your list of inventory items of what to store in that container. They can't be moved after that unless you go back into the inventory screen. You can't pick up items manually like you could in FO4, you can only store things in your player inventory, then put them in the stash inventory and decide where to display them. The good thing about it is, stuff doesn't fly around, the bad thing is you can't get really creative on where and how things are shown, no stacking mini-nukes into a pyramid or anything like that. The other good thing is if you access, say, a magazine rack, it will only show you the magazines you have in the main inventory, so you don't have to sift through a list of 100's of items to find the couple that can actually go in that container. Display cases though can display almost anything as far as I know, I haven't built one, so you'd still have to find what you want in the main list I think.

[Dweller_Benthos]

The new "seasons" update dropped over last week when my internet was out, so I missed the first few days. Not that it's a big deal, the seasons stuff is really just a new progression system, there's a new "money" to get called S.C.O.R.E. (no idea what that stands for) that you get by completing daily and weekly challenges, much like the ones in any other online game like No Man's Sky, GTA or RDR. It uses a board game analogy for the reward system, which is pretty cool really. So for instance, today's daily quests are things like get one XP level up, which I did, collect 20 wood scraps, which I did, and kill a legendary enemy, which I did. That gave me a total of 1000 S.C.O.R.E. points which moved me onto the first square of the game board and got me a minor reward, a new player icon. OK, not bad, the only one of those I did extra was collecting wood which I already have enough of, and that I did just by walking around from one place to the next doing the quest I was on.

The other daily quests are a little more complicated and I'll probably not do any of them, unless the opportunity presents itself. The weekly quests are things like level up three times, which I might do, but I only have two days left in this week as I started late. Other ones are building stuff in your camp, killing a certain number of each type of robot, etc. If one of those also presents itself in the natural flow of the game as I'm playing, I might do that too. The rewards moving along the board are mostly things like atoms for the shop, perk cards, scrap and repair boxes, etc. But one is the one I really want, the new ammo conversion machine. You can use it to turn in the ammo you don't use and then buy the ammo you do use, which will be great, I have so much stuff just taking up space that it will be great to get rid of it. It's a reward for reaching the fourth space on the game board so I think I'll be able to do that pretty easily. Finishing the game board I might not do, but if I don't there's no penalty, so I'll take what I can get.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I had some atoms burning a hole in my pocket, so I spent them on some camp upgrades, the "modern house" pack or something it's called. Nicer stuff to build with, so I swapped out the scrap lumber look for something more refined:

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login


Also redid the inside with nice flooring, which looks almost too nice, and "wallpaper" that looks like stone:

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login


I'm still pants at interior decorating though, I just plop my w0#k benches and machines down wherever. Not sure what to do with the second floor yet. So that's why there's no proper roof and there's just generators up there now.

The system to upgrade is nicely done, you don't have to tear down what you had for the most part, if you just want to swap out the wall type like I did, you just select the part, hit replace and then a menu pops up of all the parts you can build that will replace that part, and it just pops in the place of the old one. So no tearing down and rebuilding just to change from one wood type to another. You do need to move stuff that's attached to a piece though, if you want to rotate it or something like that.

I progressed a ways in the new season update, got the ammo recycler which is nice but a pain to use, I think they did that intentionally. But you have to turn in ammo you don't want for credits, then buy ammo you do want, and the functions are all done on a Fallout style analog terminal, and you have to go through a few menus each time, and you can only do a certain amount of ammo each time, so it's a bit fiddly. Be nice if they could make it so you could just select all the ammo you have of a certain type, turn it in, then buy what you want. But at least it's a way to get rid of all the .38 ammo everyone has because no one uses it.

[fragger]

Nice Now it's looking more like a house and less like a wooden box. I'm liking a lot of the new building options I'm seeing in the screenies you've been posting. Is that a map of 76-World on the wall?

Same Armor and Weapons Workbenches as in 4, I see.

I like the idea of just swapping out your old walls and stuff for new ones, as opposed to tearing down and rebuilding. Do you still get XPs for building things?

I sell all my .38 ammo in 4 as well. It's pretty well useless after the very early stages of the game, especially once enemies begin to level up. Which is kind of odd, because you really wouldn't want to get hit with a .38 slug in the real world Buying/selling ammo in 76 sounds a bit more fiddly, as you said, D_B. I'd probably miss the old vendor/bartering interface, where you can sell as much of just about anything as you like in one go.