Fallout 76

[LowPolyOWG]

Oh Ubisoft Bugthesda



Stay away from this game.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I watched a live stream last night. I joined late and the guy was still downloading the game, not sure if he hit the bug that deleted what he already had and he had to start over or not, but he got on eventually. the issues with the graphics looking dated doesn't concern me as much as the guy above, and the things with the lack of options for widescreen, different resolutions, OK, as long as that's a beta thing and isn't in the final game, that won't be an issue. But if it is in the final game, then watch out. Again, not that it concerns me too much, as I don't have a non-standard monitor setup, so I personally don't care but a lot of people do. The thing with the framerate being locked at 60fps is a known "feature" of the engine, that shouldn't surprise anyone who's played a Fallout game for the last 10 years, don't know why he went on about it so much. Mention it and move on.

So Bethesda came out with their own platform, sure, I'd rather have a Steam version, but I can see why they would do that, to control their own releases and not depend on someone else's utility. People seem to forget what a hot mess Steam was when it launched, I mean you'd rather not have that sort of thing, but it's going to happen. The deal with the time zone though, that was just funny.

So as I was watching the stream last night I saw the same stuff we've already seen, low level game play with very little of the PvP system because there's not enough time during the test to get anyone up to the level where they would start any PvP. Though I didn't watch the whole thing, I had to sleep, so maybe they got into it later.

I did see someone in the chat mention they were downloading the beta to try to get on, but it wasn't going to complete in the time allowed for the beta, so they were pretty much giving up. Bethesda needs to run a more extensive beta that lasts at least 12 or even better 24 hours to get an idea of how it's going to w0#k.

As far as the game itself, there might be enough there for me to be interested, but again, it all boils down to how the PvP will pan out. From the other videos I've seen, if that's how it's handled, then I can maybe get on board. But not for at least 6 months.

[KingRat]

The Sunday 2 hrs went fine, and according to my xbox x & tv settings I'm running 4k, 60 hz, low latency, VRR and Freesync Ultimate. Have no idea what the frame rates were, but it seemed smooth.........Tuesday was a different story, logged in at 3:55 pst and was told the xbox needed a 45 Gb update Of course the DL didn't finish till several hrs after the beta ended. Will try again tomorrow for 9 hrs since it did get extended.

[fragger]

45 Gb update!? Ouch.

[Art Blade]

"45 GB for an update, yeah, yeah, we know.. well, a few of those bugs needed fixing right away and we didn't have time to clean up the inserted code but I'm sure you'll manage."

[Dweller_Benthos]

"plus, doesn't everyone have gigabit broadband internet now?"

[PZ]

Everyone except me 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Exactly, PZ. I know your pain, as it seemed companies just assumed everyone had access to super high speed broadband with all the stuff they expected you to download and were mystified when you complained about it (I'm looking right at you, Steam/Valve).

[PZ]

Yeah, when I install a game I always get physical media, and even then it typically takes hours to get the game up to current specifications. I got lucky with Odyssey and RDR2 because both together were only about 5 gb, and I just downloaded in the background while I watched TV.  The next day the updates were all done. RDR2 was 3.5 gb of the 5 gb, and I have not started the game yet.

[KingRat]

Kinda went from bad to worse because Xbox Live Core Services decided to puke thursday morning....beta started at 11 am pst and I finally got signed in at 11:45, then around 2:45 my connection to xbl dropped and it wasn't till after 5 I got signed back in. Still managed to make lvl 8 despite the lost time.

[PZ]

Well at least you got back in.  One of these days I'm sure I'll be locked out of some of these games that will require digital download due to my slow connection.

[LowPolyOWG]

Another thing, unlocking the game's frame rate is literally a speed hack.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah like I said earlier when the guy in the video was complaining about frame rate, the game's physics engine is tied to the frame rate, if you increase it the physics go into hyperdrive and freak out. The mod I have that unlocks the frame rate in FO4 does so only in loading screens so that the game loads faster, it drops back to 60 once it's loaded to make the game run correctly.

[LowPolyOWG]

Well, looks like there is no security measures to prevent people from injecting scripts into the networking packets  Some companies that didn't cared about this, are Rockstar and Ubisoft GTA Online is relatively easy to hack and The Division was a cheater's wet dream on launch.

[Dweller_Benthos]

So, I've watched a few hours of real game play over the last week, from three different streams. Each had a different style of play, and I'll mention some of each.

One guy just played the game and was just doing things as he found them, upgrading weapons & armor and generally it looked like a normal Fallout game. He'd see another player once in a while and pretty much there was no interaction between them.

The second guy was doing an active role play and seeking out other players to try to engage them in the role play at least somewhat. Most of the other players he encountered ignored him and went about what they were doing, and I think most everyone has their voice comms turned off. So if they were talking to anyone, it was probably friends using steam or discord chat. So that guy got little reaction from most of the people he encountered so his role play fell a little flat.

Neither of them did any PvP either intentionally or accidentally, everyone they encountered just went about what they were doing and pretty much ignored all the other players.

The third person had a couple friends online with him, so there must be some way to join a friend's game/server. They teamed up for a lot of the action and were the only ones I saw do PvP. Someone else had become wanted so they went over to try to battle with them. There were two people in power armor against three or four lower level players. It was pretty stupid and they said as much. Any PvP battle essentially boils down to how many stimpacks each player has and how long they are willing to use them before giving up. Respawning is done so you can get back to a PvP battle fast and if you're with friends, you can respawn on their location and be back at it in seconds. So they left after battling for a good 10 minutes and not getting anywhere except to use up ammo and stimpacks. It was pretty pointless and they said it needs a major fix.

As for other things to do, it's much like GTAV, where someone can claim a factory type place and it goes out to all the other players as a quest to take it back from them. Much like a business battle in GTAV, if you're not interested in it, you just ignore it and continue with what you were doing.

Normal quests you are given from the overseer of the vault, or you find holotapes. There are a lot of holotapes to find, and stories to follow. This is the part that most appeals to me, and I wouldn't mind that type of game at all, just wandering around finding tapes and seeing where they lead to. The thing is, if you go inside a building for example, and kill all the enemies there, they will respawn after a certain time, so you could be reading a terminal or listening to a holotape and all of a sudden you have six super mutants on top of you. That was another complaint. Enemy respawns should be changed somehow.

Then there's the enemies themselves, especially in quest areas, or "dungeons" as they are called. They are pretty tough and going it solo is difficult, they are meant to be done with a couple of people. Doing it alone might mean getting swarmed and you just can't do enough damage fast enough to take out all the enemies by yourself.

So, I'm still interested in the game, and it seems that public servers aren't too bad for interactions with other players, as for the most part, it seemed that everyone just ignored anyone else and went about their business. I guess it's easy enough to join a different server if someone does bother you, so that's not too big an issue. But the game being geared towards coop play at least means you'd have to have some friends with you. At least to make it a fun time, though some people might like the challenge of doing it all solo, and I'm there are plenty of people doing that.

I'm still going to wait at least a month or two, see how things pan out and settle in. Right now there aren't any game breaking bugs that I've seen mentioned, so that's a thing. Still just a wait and see game at this point.