Anyone else here signing up for the B.E.T.A.?
VATS is still present but no longer slows down or freezes time.
I wonder if there will be some sort of "pop-up wheel" that will allow you to select the body part you want to shoot, then every shot will attempt to hit that body part, maybe giving you bonus percentage if you're actively aiming at it.
For example, you're shooting at a dude. You hit the VATS key and the VATS Wheel pops up. You pull the selection down to "legs" and release. Shooting at his body will give you a 40% chance to hit his legs, but ADSing and aiming at his legs pumps that up to 80%.
VATS definitely worked best in the turn-based combat of FO1 and FO2.
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VATS definitely worked best in the turn-based combat of FO1 and FO2.
With apologies for "well actually"ing...
The targeting system in Fallout 1 & 2 was just that... an unnamed targeting system that, in the fully turn based system, used more AP to use in hopes of achieving a better result or specific sort of crippling effect.
VATS was a Bethesda invention that was meant as a concession to the fans of the old Fallout's system. Originally it was a way to both reference the old targeting system as well as provide a sort of "turn based" (more RT with pause) combat mode who didn't like the shooter/"Oblivion with guns" feel FO3 otherwise established.
Of course the truly diehard fans weren't going to be mollified by anything and wrote off VATS as a totally newfangled thing unworthy of regard, even though it was an effort to combine the old game's targeting system with the new combat mechanics.
So then Bethesda tweaked it in FO4 to work more fluidly with the shooter system while still giving the player a little time to think.
Sounds like now they're just abandoning the old concession altogether and focusing on what may work better for this game--and moreover a slowdown/pause system isn't gonna work anyway in an online RT game with PvP combat options.
With apologies for "well actually"ing...
The targeting system in Fallout 1 & 2 was just that... an unnamed targeting system that, in the fully turn based system, used more AP to use in hopes of achieving a better result or specific sort of crippling effect.
No yeah, thanks for the clarification. I haven't played FO1 and 2 in a while. I forgot it didn't actually have a name, I just knew the mechanic was the same/similar.
If they do away with it, I'm fine if it leads to a better full multiplayer experience.
A friend and I were just talking about this last night. That would be great, and pretty much the only way I would give this a try.is it MMO multi player
It's online-only, but not an MMO. MMOs have hundreds or thousands of players per server, FALLOUT 76 will only have about 24 on a huge map.
Apparently, at some point after launch the publishers will allow custom servers, so you could just play it completely single-player at that point. However, from the sound of it there will vastly less content than any single-player FALLOUT game, so there's not much point to that other than just exploring the landscape.
At that point, at least I could play only with my friends instead of with random strangers.
You could do, and there will still be monsters and environmental dangers, but a big feature of the game is the human characters forming groups and gangs to fight one another. Without that, a lot of tension is gone from the game. From what they are saying, there won't even be any computer-controlled Raiders in the game, the only human characters you'll encounter will be real, actual humans.
The big question mark is how involved the questing will be. Terminals, robots and the off-screen Vault 76 Overseer will give you missions, but I've got a feeling from the tone they're taking that these will be very much like the procedurally-generated settlement missions from FALLOUT 4, not long, involving narrative missions.
Don't forget about the Scorched, the half-feral ghouls that aren't so far gone yet they can't use weapons anymore. They've said that those are intended to be a substitute for traditional raiders. Being a class of feral ghouls, they're filling that automatically hostile gunplay enemies along with, presumably, robots.
Pete Hines has said he prefers playing the game without a team, so presumably there's enough non-pvp content to be worthwhile. They've also said that while they want there to be tension involved with coming across another player in the world, pvp is not the main focus of the game, and they're taking steps to ensure that the whole thing doesn't devolve into a death match free-for-all the whole time.
New info here
Hard pass for me for a Fallout MMO-lite, but "turning a*~!#$+$s into content" is genius.
Theres a name I haven't seen in a long time.
What's up man?
Theres a name I haven't seen in a long time.
What's up man?
Bought a house on the island. I'll be visiting your area Friday, if you are up for coffee or something.
Oh man, I am just seeing this now!
I have to work tonight so it wouldnt have worked anyway. But still I'm glad to hear you are doing well!
Sales of FALLOUT 76 are running at around 18% of FALLOUT 4 in its first week on sale, which means around 3 million copies have been sold. For the new game with a large budget by a AAA publisher launching not long before Christmas, that's an unmitigated disaster.
Bethesda need to rush out more content and stability patches for the game ASAP to try to shore up the damage, but the double-hit of poor first week sales and the critical savaging the game has received by publications normally firmly in Bethesda's pocket is unprecedented. I suspect ZeniMax will be leaning on Bethesda Game Studios to get STARFIELD out ASAP in 2019 to make good the losses so they can explain this as a bump in the road, not evidence of a more serious problem (STARFIELD being a brand-new ISP will have its own challenges, of course).
I'm still bewildered why Bethesda didn't either make this a full and standard single-player FALLOUT game, perhaps with some kind of optional co-op element, or custom-developed an online shooter (with its own engine) spin-off set in the FALLOUT universe designed for a heavy combat focus and with an engine that would handle that well. In the words of Ron Swanson, they've half-assed two things together rather than full-assed one thing.
I hope that Bethesda does NOT rush Starfield. I want it to be good(ish).
I don't think they realized how few people have PlayStation plus.
Just gonna toss this out there:
Story has never been Bethesda's strong suit, so I can see the MMO thing having an appeal... except that Fallout IS a story-driven franchise.
So they fumbled that.
I might have picked this up had it been possible to play it solo, offline.
By requiring multiplayer (and online) to be a thing (plus I friggin' HATE that stupid John Denver song they opened the ad campaign with...), they basically cut people like me out of the loop entirely.
Having a co-op option is an awesome and wonderful thing. Forcing everyone to bop around in multiplayer servers is not.
Moreover... the internet is frequently dodgy where I am. IFR to pay for a game I might not be able to play a decent chunk of the time.
What I would like is a game where me and a group of Real friends share a small bit of cyberspace and can come and go as we please. I might pop in and see Friend-2 built a bar while I was away or something.
I'm not interested in "turning a$#^%&^*s into content" I would rather not have to deal with a-holes at all.
I hope Starfield turns out to be cool. Cause the wait for the next elder scrolls looks long
Assuming FO76 really was primarily developed by their new multiplayer team, we might get STARFIELD next year (on the admittedly-not-watertight basis of 4 years from SKYRIM to FO4, and four years from FO4 to next November). Then we'd get ELDER SCROLLS VI around 2023 and maybe FALLOUT 5 in 2027 (!).
Bethesda really need to get another studio on making other games for them, as that's crazy long times to wait for the next games in killer franchises. SKYRIM was one of the biggest video games of all time and we're almost certainly not going to get the sequel until 12 years after release? Bananas.
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Even though I was not ever going to get it, I am sad it is doing so poorly, because I want Fallout as a franchise to succeed. And trying to reach out to a different audience is risky, but I don't blame them for trying something different. I do blame them for doing it badly--and am especially saddened at the reports of very poor quality control. Bethesda is becoming more and more known for what it's bad at than what it is good at. (Jim Sterling did a scathing overview of Bethesda's increasing nonsense that, even bearing in mind his tendency to bring the rage-hype, was sadly pretty accurate.)
I feel like this is deep indication Bethesda Softworks needs new leadership. When things are done RIGHT in a Bethesda game, they're wonderful--great design, great branching of activities, great immersion. When they're done wrong, it's almost always because of bugs or because they ran out of time to develop their plans properly, which points to not enough time spent in QA testing and poor development scheduling--and moreover, trying to assign too much project to too few programmers. THAT falls to management. I think the leadership is obsessed with bigger-better-more-more-more leaving what they actually create as too broad and no depth (let alone with bugs on top). While Bethesda is considered a AAA studio, especially with how well Elder Scrolls and Fallout has sold, my understanding is their own studios and the couple of others they own are actually very small, and they try to do too much with too few resources (where their profit is going must be to CEO paychecks and not new developments).
What I fear is that Zenimax Entertainment will look at this and rather than replace the leadership, will throw out the baby (the excellent actual developers responsible for the stuff we all love Bethesda for) with the bathwater.
Back to Fallout 76... I've watched some Let's Plays, and the irony to me is that it is in some ways SOME of the playerbase have said they wanted: basically an open, empty world where they feel like one of very few people in it--truly post-apocalyptic where they are struggling to survive, rather than the more crowded Commonwealth or Capital Wasteland. Sometimes delivering what the players think they want is the wrong way to go, unfortunately. The other issue I see is how increasingly aged that engine they are using is (and its flaws are highlighted in trying to shoehorn it to work as a multiplayer system). They really need to develop a new one, and I'd be willing to wait awhile for a new single player game if it meant they built a new and better engine for it.
Back to Fallout 76... I've watched some Let's Plays, and the irony to me is that it is in some ways SOME of the playerbase have said they wanted: basically an open, empty world where they feel like one of very few people in it--truly post-apocalyptic where they are struggling to survive, rather than the more crowded Commonwealth or Capital Wasteland.
Which always struck me funny- from the very first iteration of the game, post-apocalyptic societies have been present (The Hub, Shady Sands, Crimson Caravan, Junktown), and when the series DOES give us mostly-empty places to pick through (Lonesome Road), it's often not everyone's cuppa.
Methinks the empty world survival game isn't really what Fallout is meant to be...
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Right. I never even got much of a sense of "wandering" in Fallout 1 and 2 because you overland-map travel through the wastey bits, only seeing them upclose when you are in an encounter. The places you spend most of your time in are in settlements, or ruins nearby that you go to in order to report back. Sometimes I think the Fallouts people remember and the games they actually were are very different things.
That said, Lonesome Road got a LOT of praise. I personally hated it, as the worst of all the New Vegas DLC, but lots of people said it was the best.
The PROBLEM I think is that the kind of people who liked Lonesome Road indeed liked it for its "Lonesomeness"--the very people who aren't interested in playing a multiplayer game of any kind.
(I am also not interested AT ALL in multiplayer, but I enjoy NPC interaction and stories, and I can tell Fallout 76 has nothing to offer me. While I also enjoy open world exploration, the limitations of being in an online-only game would take away what I like even about that.)
There is some gold in them thair hills.
This version of "Survival Mode" feels better polished.
The crafting system is expanded upon. Tiered-by-level gear allows gear to incrementally improve along with the characters.
The "no one else is around" vibe works well for me. What doesn't are mutant mosquitoes - they have no place in Appalachia IMO. If there are super-mutants than those should be excised as well.
I do wander around in Fallout, especially in 4. Especially when you throw in a few choice mods. 1500+ hours and I am still discovering things.
What I am very disappointed in with 76 is just how buggy it is. 3 years of development with most of the assets already in place from Fallout 4 should have resulted in a much more polished game. Couple that with no modding support, online-only and multiplayer/PvP-whether-you-want-it-or-not in the current state ... meh.
Here's my "tweak the baseline concept in ten minutes or less" idea: You're not all from one Vault. You're from one of three Vaults (one of them is NPC-only and probably kinda jerks- some Vault-Tech experiment that produced a bunch of tyrannical scuzzbags, but they're not ALL bad), competing for the resources to build your post-apocalyptic society. Call it the Ultimate experiment: Two control Vaults, one weird one, but then they all open at about the same time.
That both jives with how the Vaults have been presented (even the ones that wiped themselves out were fairly... cohesive about it), makes room for some NPCs to bounce off of, and allows for the cutthroat bastardry that MMOs seem to run on.
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I love exploration and wandering, but with the limitations created by having a multiplayer server and the like (especially if the server cuts out just as you're getting into things), it doesn't seem worth it. The Mad Comrade, I hear you on Fallout 4. The game had many imperfections, but I've also put in an insane number of hours (though not as many as you) and I am still also finding things I never found before (and I have very few mods installed, mainly QOL improvements).
The MadComrade--having been assaulted by mosquitoes on the Appalachian Trail in Maryland not far from the West Virginia border (which involves a hilarious tale of me breaking my glasses trying to swat at them), I'm pretty sure their presence is more than appropriate. I'm pretty sure the ones I encountered were roughly the same size as well.
The thing about having the game take place in West Virginia is there was plenty of room to put human NPCs--there are coal mines and caves in the mountains (not to mention the mountains would have shielded folk from some of the fallout, possibly). Have a group of people hide in the mines and develop into "Tribals" (those humans who didn't survive in a vault and developed their own society over time).
I also understand they totally borked the lore. E.g., there are Brotherhood of Steel there for some reason? But in such short time after the bombs, the Brotherhood only have just formed and would barely have left their bunker in Mariposa, California. I've often come to Bethesda's defense when it comes to how they've used Fallout lore when it's annoyed other longtime players--I feel like much of what they've worked in is at least plausible with existing lore. But sounds like what they've done in Fallout 76 just undoes everything.
I'm glad some stuff works well, but it's sad it's going down as such a bad rep. Of course Fallout New Vegas had a hideous rep at launch for being buggy and now people talk about it like it was the best thing ever, so who knows. (It was always my favorite Fallout, but I bought it well after launch.)
Since FO76 sounded like it was going to be disastrous, I re-purchased and installed FALLOUT 3 from GoG and then set about modding it up. Much to my surprise, this didn't take too long and when I fired up the game it looked stupendous. Not quite like a brand-new game, but more like a six-year-old game rather than a 10-year-old one. The modded textures and lighting in particular are a huge improvement and the stripping of the faint green tinge from the outdoor environment (although it's still present in a more limited way in some indoor environments).
Still a very solid game. The problems with Bethesda's weak writing are not as noticeable because I'd forgotten how little time you spend talking to anyone (like, maybe 25 minutes of dialogue in the 35 hours I've put in so far?). There's a real feeling of sparseness to the game that it does better than any of the other Fallouts (even New Vegas, although NV has by far the better story, characters and DLC), and the soundtrack may be the best in the series to date.
That said, the relatively small number of quests (with all 5 DLCs installed, there's less than half the number of just the New Vegas base game, and of course no radiant quests means it can't even start to compare with FO4) mean you run out of meaningful content pretty quickly. The DLCs are short and slightly pointless (apart from Broken Steel) as well, only really good for picking up loot. I did Operation Anchorage at around Level 8, which turned out to be a mistake as I then curb-stomped everything else in the game with the winter power armour (which doesn't need power armour training). At least the level limitation means that it does make you do some hard choices in what perks to pick.
Still, a solid game much-improved by mods. I'll probably take a break to catch up on the BattleTech DLC before moving on to New Vegas.
Fallout 3 was on sale recently and I purchased it too (I never got the DLC the first time around, and it was far more expedient and cheaper now just to buy the GOTY edition). Haven't loaded it up yet. What mods do you recommend (I remember Fellout does a good job of removing the green)?
More on Fallout '76 fiascos I heard that Bethesda has also pissed people off by swapping a canvas tote for a flimsy nylon carrying case in their (200-freakin'-dollar) special edition, but never informed purchasers ahead of time and stores still have the description of the item as a nice canvas bag. They've refused refunds, only "compensated" with a paltry amount of in-game currency (nowhere near equal to the value of the bag, let alone the SE).
This is seriously shady, if not actually illegal (on the product descriptions I've seen I don't even see a "product may not be as appears in catalog" sort of disclaimer). They are advertising one product and recipients are receiving another. Affected customers should report them to the FTC, to the BBB, to whatever, and hold them accountable.
Bethesda, what the hell happened to you?
ZeniMax happened to them.
Fallout 3 was on sale recently and I purchased it too (I never got the DLC the first time around, and it was far more expedient and cheaper now just to buy the GOTY edition). Haven't loaded it up yet. What mods do you recommend (I remember Fellout does a good job of removing the green)?
More on Fallout '76 fiascos I heard that Bethesda has also pissed people off by swapping a canvas tote for a flimsy nylon carrying case in their (200-freakin'-dollar) special edition, but never informed purchasers ahead of time and stores still have the description of the item as a nice canvas bag. They've refused refunds, only "compensated" with a paltry amount of in-game currency (nowhere near equal to the value of the bag, let alone the SE).
This is seriously shady, if not actually illegal (on the product descriptions I've seen I don't even see a "product may not be as appears in catalog" sort of disclaimer). They are advertising one product and recipients are receiving another. Affected customers should report them to the FTC, to the BBB, to whatever, and hold them accountable.
Bethesda, what the hell happened to you?
considering the fanaticism of fallout fans with respect to swag, this could truly be Bethesda's death knell.
Not to mention the flaw in their website that exposed personal information to everyone else trying to get a refund on the tote bag.
ZeniMax happened to them.
They've been a subsidiary of ZeniMax since 1999, not to mention ZeniMax sort of formed out of Bethesda (even if it then became a subsidiary). Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3 and 4, etc. all happened under their watch.
While I am *sure* corporate executive shenanigans are a part of the downslide, and moreover shareholder pressure, there's a deeper shift going on than just normal nonsense on the administrative level.
I am too lazy to check the numbers, but I believe to date Skyrim is still their most successful product, and that involved no shady advertisement, microtransactions, etc. etc. (The one s*!*ty thing they tried was paid mods and they had to revoke that nearly as soon as it launched due to player backlash.) It's bizarre to see them take all that's made them successful, and dump that for gimmicks that for other game companies has mainly only earned them infamy.
Not to mention the flaw in their website that exposed personal information to everyone else trying to get a refund on the tote bag.
Seriously? Wow.
Not to mention the flaw in their website that exposed personal information to everyone else trying to get a refund on the tote bag.
you gotta be kidding me.
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Nope. Meanwhile, Obsidian's new announcement trailer is full of little snarky jabs...
Bethesda have agreed to replace the nylon bags with canvas ones but, Jesus, it was by far the worst launch of a video game in modern history (which is really saying something).
Obsidian driving past with two fingers up was just the icing on the cake.
Nope. Meanwhile, Obsidian's new announcement trailer is full of little snarky jabs...
what trailer is this?
Nope. Meanwhile, Obsidian's new announcement trailer is full of little snarky jabs...what trailer is this?
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Honestly, while I can clearly see that Obsidian is taking probably some retrofuture ideas and ambience from things they brainstormed for Fallout, I think fans are reading a lot into the "shade" perceived as being thrown. (The one exception is the allusion that choices in their game are not binary, but that could also be shade thrown at any number of developers, like say, the s#$+ty binary choices that littered Wasteland 2.) The game after all would have been in development well before Bethesda even announced Fallout 76. I have a feeling the "from the original creators of Fallout" would have been in the trailer no matter the success of Fallout 76 (indeed, perhaps even moreso if it was good).
Outer Worlds looks amazing, but I can't play first person games without feeling sick (I play all the Bethesda games in 3rd person; no adjusting FOV doesn't help, no I can't just get used to it or get over it as it's getting worse as I'm getting older, no I can't use that other solution you suggested, shut up), so I'll have to skip it. :(
Bethesda have agreed to replace the nylon bags with canvas ones but, Jesus, it was by far the worst launch of a video game in modern history (which is really saying something).
The issue is they only agreed to do that well after people started complaining. There was no warning to pre-orderers the product had changed, and no change in the product description after it changed. It's blatant false advertising. I didn't even buy this game and I'm pissed off about it, just on the principal that they seemed to have thought they could just skip past a few major sales ethics violations without anybody noticing.
Well, I guess they ARE a real AAA publisher now.
Whoops, "principle."
Not to mention the flaw in their website that exposed personal information to everyone else trying to get a refund on the tote bag.you gotta be kidding me.
Vany linked it to FaWtL the other day, basically if you entered in your information to their customer service website to redeem the code for the 5 dollars off or new bag or whatever then you could see the information EVERYONE else put in to get the refund or whatever, addresses and birthdates mostly.
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Fallout 3 was on sale recently and I purchased it too (I never got the DLC the first time around, and it was far more expedient and cheaper now just to buy the GOTY edition). Haven't loaded it up yet. What mods do you recommend (I remember Fellout does a good job of removing the green)?
Sorry, I completely missed the point about mods.
I basically used this video and included all the mods in it, although I found out afterwards that GoG have in fact pre-installed the LAA (large address aware, to remove the ridiculous 2GB memory limitation from the game) patch and, of course, yanked out Games for Windows Live (urgh) already, so those aren't needed. I also didn't use the Small UI mod, because I was outputting the game to my big TV downstairs (via Steamlink) to play on the couch, so I actually needed the original UI size.
Everything else I loaded in. Stuff like the bottles, medkit and ammo crate texture update sounds silly, but it really helps make the modded-up version of the game look much more cohesive. Base textures, weapons and character models are the really important ones though.
I didn't load in any mods that change the design of the game. There's some which attempt to remove the roadblocks in DC and turn the city into one big open map like Boston but as far as I can tell they don't work properly (it simply wasn't designed that way). There's others which add lots more shops to DC, which I think goes against the spirit of the game (DC is supposed to be an outright warzone, not a functioning city). With everything from that YouTube video loaded in, the game is very stable and looks magnificent compared to the 2008 version (occasionally FO3 maxes out the memory and closes itself, but it takes seconds to reload and it's never corrupted a save; I kept multiple saves going though, just to be on the safe side).
The ENB I used was Realism. I tried a couple of other ones but that was the one that I settled on.
Thanks, Werthead.