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Returning to Fallout 76, a discussion

gaijinkaiju

Lord Inquisitor
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612
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I used to play Fallout 76 pretty frequently, but for one reason or the other I started playing less and then eventually stopped altogether, so I've missed pretty much all the new content (re: wild appalachia) released but with the announcement of a new story-line, npcs and new content in general coming to 76, I thought I'd return to it and just see how much (if anything) has changed and work through the new content I've missed.

TL;DR: It's still bad. Slightly less bad, but still bad regardless.

That sounds harsh, but a lot of the issues (or at-least my issues) with it are still present. In no particular order here they are..

Server Issues. This isn't a single issue, so much as it is many issues.
  • The game can and will just suddenly disconnect you from the server with no warning or reason. I've had it happen mid quest, meaning I've had to replay entire sections ( I'll get to that later), After fast travelling, Mid combat, etc. I'd consider this probably one of the most frustrating issues frankly. If you're going to make an always online game, make you servers stable.
  • Lag. Its far to common to kill an enemy only for the game to not register the fatal hits and the enemy to remain standing, only for it realize a few seconds later that it should be dead. This also applies to you. You can suddenly take a bunch of damage because enemies will just spawn in-front of you, or for a fight to be over but the game didn't realize you took damage so you'll take a bunch afterwards. It's not just combat though, sometimes you'll go to use a terminal only for it to play the animation then a few seconds later replay the animation; Sometimes you AP bar won't appear to drain when sprinting, only for it to suddenly deplete; Sometimes you'll get teleport-ed back a few feet.
  • The sever can suddenly stop responding, disabling your controls and freezing in you place for a few seconds. If it happens mid-combat, you'll still take damage and it'll all be applied once it returns control often resulting in your death. Sometimes it'll team up with lag or disconnections making those issues even more frustrating.

Enemy Leveling.
This is based of my assumption of how it works, so I could be wrong. I believe enemy leveling takes two things in the consideration when spawning them in; A) Level limits of the region; and B) Levels of the nearest player. For example, The forest should only ever generate low level enemies since that's the starting region, whilst somewhere like the Ash Heap could generate enemies ranging from single digits to Mid 30's, depending on the levels of the players in a specific cell. The issues arise when the main quest (or any quest really) sends you somewhere where high level players have recently been through, and you're now stuck facing enemies much higher than you. The problem with that, is that higher levels are bullet sponges. At one point the main story sent me to a mine close to the whitesprings
bunker ( a high level haven) The enemies (mole miners) should've been roughly around the lvl 20 mark, instead they were mid 30's to mid 40's. I physically could not get past them. It was costing so much ammo and aid, not to mention gear quality, that even trying to force my way through became impracticable. This was one of only many times this situation happened and it is incredibly frustrating.

Questlines.
Sure the game has a main quest, a handful of side quests and a number of events, but none of them are that interesting. Sure the main quest helps move you through the map and gives you certain recipes and plans (though most are available elsewhere) but its story is just kinda uninteresting, and its premise falls apart quickly. The main quest implies that you're the first vault dweller to do certain things, which would be fine if it were single player, But its not.
You're not the first to fix X device, You're not the first to find out what happened to X person. You're one of many doing the same thing.
The side quests are, for the most part, forgettable and uninteresting, with The Order of Mysteries quest chain being the most interesting (and tying nicely into fallout 4) and the longest. Even the worst quests in previous fallout's are more interesting. There is a number of repeatable quests and events but there's only so many times you can go to x location and kill x thing or find x thing, before you loose interest

Factions.
There are factions, or at-least the remnants of them. The lore behind each one is pretty interesting, but the fact that you're just reading notes or listening to holotapes, really takes the potential away from them. The story behind the raiders is interesting and I'd love to have meet some of the characters, but you don't. The same goes for the Free states. There was a lot of missed opportunities, sadly.

Other minor issues.
  • Gear quality, especially armor, degrades faster than paper does in water. Oops, you stood on a stone, there goes your leg armor. Oops, its slightly windy, there goes your body armor. Weapons don't degrade nearly as fast, but some (shotguns) are flimsy. Its more efficient to just craft new armor rather than repair it.
  • Not an issue, but i'm going to address it anyway here. No, repair kits are not pay to win. Buying them doesn't give you an advantage, they won't make the game easier, and they certainly won't let you win. All they do is let you keep a piece of gear for just a little longer, mostly armor because as I said above they its esier to just build new armor than repair it.

I'm sure there are more issues i'm forgetting but I could probably be here for hours just complaining about its flaws. So with all that being said, despite my issues with the game, it has features I do like, even if some weren't implemented correctly. So here they are..
  • They introduce a number of new weapons that i don't think have appeared in previous games. Civil war era gatling guns, crossbows, one handed grenade launchers, chainsaws, protest signs and tomahawks to name a few. Some are more fun than others and some can be difficult to justify using, but I really like the new weapon choices.
  • Its the first (and only) time its actually worth taking the cannibal perk. Now that you need to eat food (which takes up inventory weight) and they removed the karma system, there's no reason to not take it. Eatable corpses are plentiful and, aside from a few rads, there's no negative consequences.
  • Gear degrades. Whilst I don't like how fast things degrade, I like that everything has the potential to break. I think it was implemted poorly, and its got a long way to go before I fully like it, but i'm glad its back.

I feel like I forgot what i was initially trying to say, but I feel i needed to put some of my thoughts out there. I know that there's plenty of things I'm missing but frankly I can't be bothered writing more, because I could be here for hours and I have other things I'd rather do
 

Battousai

Brother Sharp
Sanctuary legend
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I read all that and honestly man to abbreviate all you wrote there: its still not worth getting that game, and whatever they may have put in its too little too late; the potential was wasted. So if you like it despite its flaws, go ahead and play it, but its still a mess.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
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5,285
Rags did a super good in-depth review of Fallout 76. It's a very long one but it's very entertaining and informative. It's probably a little bit outdated, but from what I'm seeing of the current state of FO76, not really that much at all. lol

 

Willtwofour

Outlander
Messages
1
Personally I've never had any interest in an online game from Bethesda. I have single player games that I like and I have multiplayer games that I like. I don't really want to mix the two, if that makes any sense. Maybe I'm just not as big a fan of Fallout as I thought or I'd be more interested? I don't think that's the case but who knows.
 

Signa

Libertarian Contrarian
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764
Things were even worse than I knew about FO76. I'm glad you got any entertainment out of it at all, but I've never seen such a triple A dumpster fire.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,285
Personally I've never had any interest in an online game from Bethesda. I have single player games that I like and I have multiplayer games that I like. I don't really want to mix the two, if that makes any sense. Maybe I'm just not as big a fan of Fallout as I thought or I'd be more interested? I don't think that's the case but who knows.
By the way, welcome to the forums and our small ass clan! Post a thread if you have any questions or PM me. :)
 
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