Fallout 76

[nex]

I'm not one for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, whether it's movies or games.
At the time when this bug bit movie producers the SA movie houses and TV
broadcasting was flooded with them.
Like the Mad Max series, good acting but for me, the story line sucked 

[fragger]

Neither am I as a general rule, nex. The concept has been done to death in the entertainment media, especially film.

In fact, one of the things that originally put me off a little when I first started playing FO4 was the ruined look of everything - I though it was a tad depressing at first. Until I found out just how fun and immersive the game is. But I agree, it's not to everyone's taste. I didn't even think it was to mine to start with, but it roped me in and now I love it - mainly for its open-ended nature and its wide variety of characters and missions.

The extra appeal for me is the settlement building and management, as I've always enjoyed games where I can build and run things, but such games are very rare outside of the strategy genre. A game where I can do that AND run around shooting things, all in first-person, is like the best of both my gaming worlds

Which is why I'm not keen on what I've learned so far about FO76. Without a good story and characters, it seems like it would lose a lot of its luster for me. Add the possibility of online griefing from immature jerks and - well.

[Art Blade]

the easiest thing to do is wait and see.

[nex]

Thanks fragger, I will take another look at it 
I have to look at other games because I don't want the same thing to happen
as with FC2, I did so many play through's that I lost interest in it     

[fragger]

True, Art

nex, I think FO4 is what you make it. If you were to just plow through it concentrating solely on the story missions, it could be over relatively quickly (although you'd have a pretty tough time of it without skilling up a bit first, even on Easy mode, especially towards the end). But if you take your time and explore everything the game has to offer, a single playthrough could easily last several months. I'm on my third go-around and it's my longest one yet, getting close to about four months, and I'm nowhere near getting through the story yet - not even close. It's not that the story is so long, but that I've been taking my time building up my skills ("Perks"), exploring and doing side missions, and establishing elaborate settlements. If you play strictly "by the numbers", you'll get to the first story mission with only one or two level-ups. This time around, I stayed away from the main story until I was at Level 70 and packing some serious firepower and armor.

Apparently it's possible to get up to around Level 310, but as with all such skill systems, each successive Level requires more XPs to attain than the one before. So you would have to play for a considerable amount of time to get to anything like that level. The highest Level I have ever reached is around 120.

If you're not keen on building and managing things (settlements) you probably won't enjoy that aspect of it. Settlement building is not hugely necessary (although it is to an extent), but the more effort you put into it, the better off you'll be overall. You do need to establish at least eight of them if you want to achieve the best possible story conclusion, what we call the "Minutemen ending" (there can be a number of different outcomes to the story depending on what you do throughout the game, especially towards the end where the mission arcs get like spaghetti - hence the guide I linked to above). But how you go about building settlements is up to you. You can go all-out and plan everything to the last detail, or you can just throw together the bare minimum of what's required, then move on to other things (once you do get a settlement up and running, it will generally look after itself - it's not like you have to constantly nursemaid it. I go to a lot of time and trouble to build settlements, but that's just me )

With the Nuka-World and Far Harbor expansion packs added (and recommended), apart from the main story missions there are about 70 named side quests, and many more that aren't named, such as on-the-spot mini-missions similar to those found in FC3-4. Altogether, there would have to be well over a hundred missions, and some of those are infinitely repeatable (the so-called "radiant" quests, where the respective mission objectives are always the same but the locations are different. How many of those you do is entirely up to you, they're not essential to the story). Some side missions are quick and short, while some are quite involved and have multiple stages. Once again, you can ignore almost all of them all if you really want to, but generally they're worth doing for the rewards and/or XPs.

The main vanilla map (without the Nuka-World and Far Harbor DLC expansions) is not huge either, about half the size of a Far Cry map, but there is so much tucked away in it that even after about nine months of play, I'm still finding places and things that I hadn't come across before. It's a great exploration game

But anyway, we have a topic for all things FO4. This isn't it

[Art Blade]

indeed

I'd say FO4 is a game for people who have got time to play and it's perfect for explorers. Also, the creative part regarding building settlements is enormous. And there's a lot of respawning enemies to kill in numerous ways. The weapons are fun to meddle with as there are lots of useful upgrades you may get if/once you've got the right perks for that. The worst/best part is collectible stuff because if you tend to pick up stuff for later use, you're going to be in an elite collector's heaven. And you can switch between first and third person view at any time.

[nex]

You're right fragger, the original topic was sidetracked by me, sorry about that.
Just one last thing, I looked at two walkthroughs and the lady ran into a number of ugly
overgrown bugs on steroids, if there too many of those then I doubt if I would like the game.

[Art Blade]

you'll see a lot of that.

[fragger]

No, I don't think there's too many of them. If you ask me, Far Cry 4 was far worse for frequent wildlife attacks. I'll often go for long trips on foot in FO4 without seeing any nasty bugs or animals at all, whereas in FC4 I seemed to get attacked by animals on a regular basis. On one memorable occasion in FC4, I got attacked by a wolf, a bear and an eagle all at the same time

[Art Blade]

haha, crazy

I said you'd see a lot of that to sum up that actually there are a whole bunch of animals and insects that "mutated" into monstrous forms and sizes and that includes cockroaches, mosquitoes, scorpions, ants, dogs, bears, crabs... the list goes on. As opposed to human enemies such as raiders and perhaps super mutants. So it's not comparable to Wildlands, for instance.

[PZ]

... On one memorable occasion in FC4, I got attacked by a wolf, a bear and an eagle all at the same time

That's just plain stupid to have in a game 

I was thinking of picking up FC4 because it is in the bargain basement. Now I think not.

[LowPolyOWG]

Pretty sure you experienced FC4 on the PS4?

[PZ]

I wanted it for the PC so I could mod it - I like to do that when the game is good

Never did finish it on the console

[LowPolyOWG]

Ah. I ditched FC4 as soon FC5 arrived. OH UBI*bleep**BLEEP*

[PZ]

I enjoyed FC5 except for the dumb stuff I've already complained about, but I felt it was too short - kind of like Assassin's Creed Unity in which I couldn't believe the game was so short in duration.