As a Fallout apologist, 76 hurts my soul

Look, I love the Fallout games...like, a LOT, even though they play like raw sewage and have more bugs than Lindsay Lohan's crotch. I will call myself an apologist of Bethesda's take on the series because I love their atmosphere, exploration, and environmental storytelling that much that I will overlook, but still admit to, their countless technical shortcomings. I felt the same way about Fallout 76 based on what I'd seen pre-release. Surely everyone was just being overly harsh on the game because it wasn't what they thought it would be. And to be fair, yeah, a ton of these people haven't actually played it and hate it for the wrong reasons. It's not as if this is a replacement of the traditional entries, it's just something different. But after spending a good 15 or so hours with 76, I don't think I've ever turned faster on a game.

I gave Fallout 76 a pretty fair shake. This might be kind of long but bare with me. Or don't. I just want to vent. The first 10 hours or so were actually really fun for the most part. A buddy and I played together the whole time. It wasn't too challenging and the game was giving me the materials I needed to get by, so I started to think "hey, this ain't so bad. I could probably spend awhile with the game if it continues like this." While the world itself is merely a shell of the other mainline Fallouts, with some rather bland and uninvolved quests, I do still really like what I've seen of the map and the exploration aspect is still there. And you know what? There is still some really cool stuff to find in there. Unfortunately, the structure of the game is not actually conducive to co-op unless you feel like holding up your crew while you read the game's endless amount of notes and computer logs. Whatever, I can deal with that.

But after those initial hours, the game takes a sharp turn around the time the "story" takes you to the second area on the map. Suddenly specific crucial crafting materials, namely aluminum and adhesive, become super scarce. You really need those for everything and being forced to use the few you do find to constantly repair your weapons is tiresome. Also, supplies necessary to survival like water and stimpaks, stop dropping on a regular basis. My current character has none of either and there's no truly reliable way to stock back up. Considering how few caps you get in the game, the cost of these items from vendors is fucking staggeringly stupid. So my dude is basically fucked.

The nature of the game becomes increasingly aggravating as it wears on. The game is obviously designed to be a very slow trickle of progress compared to regular Fallout games. If it was fair in any way, I could deal with that, but there is nothing fun or fair about the endless tedium of trying to maintain all of these statuses while also trying to explore this massive map. And if all that wasn't bad enough, this is far and away THE buggiest game Bethesda have ever released. Broken AI and animations, bugged quests that don't finish and require a restart, incorrect quest markers...it's all the usual suspects, just a lot more frequent. But all the stuff I built for my CAMP decided to just disappear rather than get stored when I relocated. Do I have enough materials to rebuild everything from scratch? Absolutely not! So my dude is double fucked.

After failing the Runner's High quest, which is part of the main story, for the FOURTH time because the in-world directions are too hard to see in time, I'm done. Everything wrong with the game just converged in one spectacular fuckfest that completely broke me. I simply cannot contend with this game's level of bullshit any longer. I feel bad because my buddy gave up even earlier and sold back his physical copy, but he bought it for me digitally knowing I couldn't afford it at the moment because he wanted to play with me. So I guess I'm stuck with it and he's out like $95 on this dogshit.

At the very least, because of the game's overwhelmingly negative response, I'm interested to see how Bethesda support the game, and if they try to make any drastic changes to the structure. If they can somehow make it palatable to someone like me, let alone the general gaming public, I'll be impressed, but right now I do not have any faith in their ability to do so.

Bethesda needs to fix their engines. The excuse of "but the game is so big we can't fix it all" doesn't work anymore because other games have done it bigger and better since with smaller budgets and dev teams. I think it really is just laziness on their part, either that or refusal to acknowledge there is a problem.

Bugs aside, the decisions they've made making this game are baffling. I think an online Fallout would be cool if done correctly but this... I just don't understand how someone could sign off on this and think it's a good idea.

I don't want to go as far to say that they are killing Fallout or any nonsense like that but maaaaaaaan they need figure this stuff out. It seems like every game since 3 has been a little worse and a little worse still but I just can't see how fans are going to stick around if the quality keeps degrading like this. It's honestly making me scared for Elder Scrolls 6 too as well. I mean what the fuck is THAT game going to be?

@stonyman65: I'm starting to think they will never use a new engine. They keep trying to quell the general notion that this engine is ancient even though it is increasingly obvious as the years go on. Fallout 76 seems like it's barely holding together. The engine simply is not capable of supporting a game like this, or really supporting any game that would meet the standards of a modern release. They can keep modifying it all they want, it doesn't change the fact that it still runs like shit.

I do like the idea of a multiplayer Fallout, though. Why couldn't they just make a regular Fallout game adapted for 4-player co-op or something? Or hey, they have this template for an MMO that is already pretty successful...why not just make Fallout Online modeled after TES Online? Instead, 76 is this bizarre middle ground that satisfies no one, and actually actively pushes the player away because of their insanely constricting mechanics.

@killem_dafoe: The idea of a constantly evolving engine isn't wrong though, just look at something like Unreal. This whole conversation about Bethesdas engine is sorta misguided imo. The problem isn't that it's fundamentally the same, it's that they're not doing enough work to keep it up to date and functional. They have an engine that works for what they do, and unless they have some great ideas on how to change how it operates any new engine they were to build from the ground up would most likely be very similar. It would just be a lot of extra work to accomplish something they could simply accomplish by changing what they already have.

If you look at the evolution of the engine from game to game (and how the games become more stable over time) it's clear that they've put in a lot of work and effort and it has absolutely improved over time. However they're always three steps behind and refuse stop to spend the time and money to catch up. You can see this again with 76. They've made a bunch of improvements to the engine, but due to the game getting rushed out they're all so poorly optimized that instead of appreciating the improvements people can't ignore the problems they cause. By the time these new problems have been fixed the game will actually be a noticeable improvement on Fallout 4, but that's probably 2-3 years down the line. At which point the cycle begins all over again.

Everyone has opinions on previous games and where things went wrong but so far this is Fallouts worst critical failure and that's including the likes of Brotherhood of Steel.

So if this does not prompt a serious revisit of how they make these games then it's likely nothing ever will.

@ares42: Yes, the current engine does work for what they do, but only at a bare minimum. And yes, it would require a lot of work to use something new, but I don't call that "extra," I call it "necessary." The engine has evolved a lot over the last decade, but their games have been having the same kind of issues since Oblivion (or Morrowind, even). A decade ago, when those games were coming out, it was easier to look past because no one else was doing stuff on that scale with that level of detail. But here we are, ten, eleven, twelve years later and their games face the exact same issues. The difference is that now we have a ton of massive open-world games that look, perform, and play magnitudes better. There just is no excuse anymore.

There was a recent article about all of Bethesda's upcoming projects using the Creation engine, and there was a quote in there about about how they kept using it because it was easy and efficient in order to build these big worlds. Yeah, that's all well and good, but when your games suffer this much because of complacency, then it's time to re-evaluate a few things. Maybe don't release anything for couple extra years while you learn some new tech or adapt the engine so it meets modern standards. Imagine a Fallout game running on id Tech 6 or whatever they're at now. That would be killer. I'm not sure there is any evidence that the current engine is truly a good fit for the kind of games they make, but if they can get it there, then so be it.

In any case, my problem with 76 is far less the engine and more with the half-assed nature of every component of its gameplay.

As a fellow Fallout Fan from the Interplay days, you don’t have to apologize for liking both old and new. There were moments in FO4 where you were underground in an old haunted vault that genuinely gave me the same vibe as the end of the original Fallout.

76 seems like a game that would have spent another 3 or 4 years in the oven if Blizzard or someone with higher quality standards were developing it. It makes me think we are half a decade away from another Bethesda rpg and they needed to get something out as a stopgap.

Even at E3 it looked like Fallout 76 was not for me. Multiplayer just isn't what I'm looking for in these kinds of open world rpg games. To be honest I didn't really care for Fallout 4 which didn't grab me the way 3 and New Vegas did.

I get the feeling this is going to be one of those games that sours a lot of people immediately but will eventually be fixed to the point where it is decent but by then most of the audience will have moved on to something else.

I think people are just burned out on Fallout 4, the problems that game had become glaring when 3 years have passed and the next game is basically more of the same. Everytime I go back to Fallout 4 i'm just immediately burned out on picking up junk or reading terminals or the endless combat or hassling over inventory weight because that's what you did in that game 90% of the time, the story was very light.

why couldnt they just make an elder scrolls online version of fallout?

Probably because they didn't have another full company of people to develop, maintain and release expansions. Why not do a little work(in comparison) and sell several million copies and leave a skeleton crew behind all so you can bankroll the next game?

I'm really glad they didn't. As much as the game frustrates me, for many of the things that have been expressed by others, I'm still glad they were able to make the game feel like Fallout (since 3... in combat at least... sans vats) while having online. I gave Elder Scrolls Online a fair shake after hearing Jeff say something about how the game has made it to the point where you can play it solo and it feels like a single player game. After I got through all the tutorial shit and went to the first dungeon you're required to go to, I realized the enemies respawn every couple of minutes or so. While you're already inside the dungeon. It reminded me of Runescape or something, (the only MMO I really played) and also why I never play MMOs. That completely breaks any sense of progression - and also immersion - for me, especially in a game of the Bethesda mold.

Speaking for just 76, I'm someone who played way too much of Fallout 4 because I got so invested in the base building stuff. I hate the limits of the system and all the stupid improperly surfaced information (like the settler happiness, ugh), but I still enjoy being able to explore and loot everything I see and have somewhere to build something out of that afterwards. So I like being able to build a camp virtually at any unmarked location, but I hate their claiming workshop system which should just save everything you've already built at a location. But hey, if you don't care for the building stuff at all, I completely understand why you'd loathe this game.

@killem_dafoe: It bothers me that a decade after WOW, people still consider MMOs games. I'm gonna list some errors.

1. Believing that a franchise name implies anything about quality or preference, Example: "I like Star Wars, therefore I'll like the Prequels" 2. Not intervene and stop your friend from buying an MMO. 3. Spending money on trash, that will be free-to-play in a year or two. 4. Believing that MMOs will get better over time, they don't, the "people" who play them get considerably more miserable. 5. Giving a fair-shake, to an exploitative and unfair game. Example: "Let's give these dudes with the rape-van and the roofies the benefit of the doubt."

6. Believing that bugs and lack of content is the main issue with these games, it's not! The main issue is the design around the trickle and grind of resources, gambling and artificial scarcity, monetization, collecting and fake progression. MMOs make people miserable by design. MMOs aren't multiplayer and aren't social, they are ethically criminal and they use peer pressure to make fools spend money.

The best thing about MMOs is the hilariously dumb rationalizations and excuses, MMO fiends come up with. Example: "I've spent the last 9 months sitting in my filth playing this game for 20 hours a day. - Surely, this has to be the cheapest entertainment per hour I received, ever!"

It's not. An MMO is like a really shitty entry level job, that forces you to sit still for a long time. Sitting still and sleep deprivation btw is basically "legal" torture, that's how they get information out of people today. The intelligence community also uses sensory deprivation, but games are the opposite of sensory deprivation, which makes sitting still and not sleeping at all bearable, though still extremely detrimental to health and a healthy lifestyle.

@eurobum: Holy crap which MMO left you with the rawest nerve I've ever seen.

It's not just a personal issue, but against better judgement I've tried a couple even recently (Destiny 2, Trove both absolute trash btw). More games incorporate increasingly hostile MMO mechanics, like "encouraging" people to play or log in on certain days or hours. And although after reading up on Gaming Disorder, seeing critical developer talks (by the likes of Jonathan Blow) and navel gazing and soul searching, I'm still completely susceptible to what the Activision Blizzard Investor Report calls "Engagement"; the writing equivalent would be suspense.

The more engaged people are, the more can they be monetized. For some folks this seems like a win-win. Unfortunately people mistake being engaged for "being fun". I'm not sure if most people understand that a suspenseful book or story, doesn't actually a good story make! Even then understanding, that you are being strung along, still can't completely void this curiosity, especially because of the interactivity of it all. Consequently frustration appears to be the only possible outcome from being strung along.

My education has been affected, frequently and permanently by the time and opportunity wasted. Also in two separate cases I've been completely unable to reach two kids I tutored, as they had become absorbed, deceitful, disinterested and unable to commit anything to memory. So my personal and professional failure is exacerbated by the success of criminal conspiracies like Activision Blizzard, who now draw 1/3 of their revenue from in game monetization.

@eurobum: I'm not really sure the point you're trying to make or how it even relates to my post. Fallout 76 is not an MMO. It has a few trappings of MMOs, but it is a far cry from something like WoW. It is a Bethesda RPG that is heavily diluted due to poorly-implemented survival and multiplayer mechanics. Your deep-seated issues with the genre don't really apply to the game or the conversation I wanted to start. I'm not gonna say I disagree with you on everything, but that is for an entirely different topic all together.

@eurobum: 1. You keep saying "stung along", and I can only assume you mean "strung along".

2. It sounds like you are conflating your own lack of self control and temperance with MMO's being some abhorrent blight on society. There are tens of millions of people playing MMO's, and a small percentage of those people fall in as deep as you have. You have an irrationally severe disdain for an entire genre of an entire medium, based entirely upon your own very narrow experience with them. I understand if you yourself feel that they are an unhealthy pastime for you, but the average consumer will not have that same problem. Hell, I think our very own Matthew Rorie is a testament to how one can spend a significant amount of one's time immersed in an MMO for years, and still be able to have healthy relationships, a fulfilling job, a physically active and healthy commute to work, and love and adore puppies, all without succumbing to the "legal torture", as you describe it.

And as killem_Dafoe said, I really don't see how this forum thread has anything to do with the excesses of MMO's. Take a chill pill, man.

@killem_dafoe: The company that made Skyrim, went on to make ESO, then after Fallout 4 they made Fallout 76. Don't see a pattern, yet? A multiplayer game with RPG mechanics, what else could it be. There is some validity to the notion of wanting to play a giant Bathesda RPG cooperatively, but it turns out that everything breaks when you introduce a second player, nothing makes any sense, really.

Can you save the same damsel twice? Can you save her again if someone else already saved her? Will her distress keep resetting continuously? That is exactly the problem: The world is never saved, evil never defeated, the story/nightmare never ends. There are narrative workarounds, but these games are no longer immersive they boil down to mechanics, repetition, progression and grind.

I played 50 hours of this game ( i wanted to see where the story went). Let just say the most interesting part is at the end of the game but it not worth all the slog you need to plow through to get there. Also i have to a agree that putting 7 people in a world doesn't make your game a MMO, i wouldn't consider Warframe or Destiny to be a MMO.

Extra note: this might be the first game where i had to patch it for 35 gig's a week after release, i heard the console patch was even worse.

@soulcake: Not to say it's ok, but the patch was basically just the (now industry standard) day 1 patch. It just got delayed a few days. Black Ops 4 came out recently and had a 50GB day 1 patch as well.

@eurobum: For what it's worth this is largely not true with most modern MMOs now, story content is phased and unique in the same way any other single player game might be. Sure the "hero" is thousands of individual players but that's no different than any other game when you boil it down.

Your argument feels like a kindly phrased personal attack and shift blame, so thanks for at least being polite and fixing that typo. Being in suspense, suspended on a string, string along, you actually catch my meaning. Suspense is a much more descriptive and familiar term than the PR-euphemism "engagement".

Fundamentally I don't think that people who after being engaged by/to an MMO for very long then end up actually married to it are any better off. I still think they are being taken advantage of. Giant Bomb viewed as a public focus group, has mustered up some resistance, against some of the worst and most exploitative practices, in things like Clash Royale and EA Battlefront, but I'm rather disappointed with their inability to identify, articulate and draw a line. They like to play the sucker and the mark and call their own judgment and unease into question, lately the sentiment actually shifted towards making apologies for the industry and against the angry mob of players. Even though their popularity, lead them to intimacy, maybe their example should be viewed as a cautionary tale, rather than that of role models.

It's important to understand that there needs to be a line and there needs to be push back. If you sell something at a 30% mark-up, it's business, if you sell something at twice its price it's a rip-off. If you sell something at 10 times the price, it's fraud. There has to be a line somewhere. Megacorps will chase that famous billion dollars a month in subs, they won't save the whales, they'll fuck em over, and over again. In 2006 the Hotspot crew laughed at the infamous Elder Scrolls "Horse Armor" DLC, in 2016(ish) they made videos opening Dota boxes for an hour. They have kind-of embraced the "Horse Armor" dystopia.

Still, Giant Bomb taught me the latest "Gateway" exploit, releasing a game to critical acclaim, then introducing the bad stuff quietly later on. The problem is, it wasn't front page news in giant letters saying. CONSUMERS BEWARE!

@eurobum: huh, when done right MMOs are my favorite genre. My favorite video game of all time is an MMO.

I think this was a fair assessment.

Maybe this topic needs closing as it's gone WAY OFF the original subject.

Speaking of which, I like the original poster's take on Fallout 76 and it's made my decision for me. A lot of the hate I'd seen was kind of 'troll-y', people only seem to complain because it's not Fallout 4.

Your views come from that of a Fallout fan that gave it a real shot.

This game plays a lot like FO4's hardcore mode, which was my preferred way to play that game. So maybe because of my personal preference, my experience has been that the progression is solid in FO76 and it's a lot of fun despite the issues it does have. It's grindy and difficult at times, but I love that shit. Once I get 'that weapon' and start to feel the effect of the skills and perks begin to really make a difference, it's very rewarding. Resources are not laying around everywhere, thank god, you have to be diligent looking high and low(many rewards from quests give the essential stuff, aluminum, clean water, stimps, glue etc. that are more rare)and you have to find the benches in the world(claim those areas!)so you keep up with breaking down said resources, all of which is manageable. Encumberance is a pain if you allow it to be, just don't pick up everything, in fact only pick up the rare resources and eating, drinking, and healing items and stuff you can break down and store. I like that the game is telling you to stop picking up every piece of junk. The stash box though needs to be doubled in size at least for those who really wanna build huge installations or support bigger teams especially.

Doing all this with the help of a group is even more fun......most of the time. Coordination and team play is it's own beast though in that some do not really want to consider others and wander off at the worst time, lol. As far as building goes you have to save the blueprint of your building, all it's parts individually must be highlighted, so it works.....mostly. Blueprints are fussy and a hassle though if you try to drop it on an unlevel or crowded spot. Building is not my thing per se, but my buddy drops his home base every time we play with little to no trouble.

So overall, I'm having fun with the game despite it's bugs, glitches, and server instability(which is the biggest problem imo). Does it need a ton of tlc?, absolutely. The question for myself and my friends who are enjoying it is will Bethesda hold up to their promise of sticking with this game for years? We'll have to wait and see, but I genuinely hope so. TBH, I bet I'll have had my fill by the time they get things actually sorted. It is a game you can go back to later and start over though, RP-ing differently and trying out completely different builds.

I'm not apologizing for shit. I enjoy Fallout 76 and I could care less what anybody thinks.

I think this is much of the reason why I was also totally ok with what 76 had to offer. I played both this and Fallout 4 in third person with VATS only. This makes the combat feel very much like your standard tab-targetting MMO combat, which I enjoy to a certain extent, rather than a below average shooter. So the fact that this game is combat focused doesn't feel like it's showing it's bad side over it's good side. Playing this game started to remind me of playing Star Wars Galaxies eventually, with the crafting and resource gathering, dynamic building anywhere and (for me) MMO-style combat, which is one of my favorite games of all time.

(it also shares some of the similar flaws, like a horribly lacking end-game.)

I'm interested in people that are super into the game, what is your goal? Cause if it was just building up a base, you could already do that in another fallout game.

I love nier. Automata as well, extremely so, but I'm not talking about the sequel; I love the original Nier. It's absolutely not even close to perfect and I get why a lot of people didn't like it/play it. I know what my reasons are and it's fine if someone disagrees. So back to fallout 76, is there a reason besides "I wanna see my numbers go up"? I'm generally curious because this could've been called "Survival game for Steam" with some pip boy and bobbleheads taken out and probably would've sold way worse.

@vortextk: The thing that kept me going is the same thing that's kept me going through all Bethesda titles, exploration. Admittedly this game didn't exactly deliver as well, but it still kept me going until there was nothing left to explore. Unlike any other generic survival game Fallout 76 still has unique and interesting locations, not just yet another cave or cabin (although this game has it's fair share of that as well). There's a theme park, a water park, a crashed space station, a big golf resort, a civil war fort, a lovecraftian cultist cave etc etc etc all with relevant events, quests and/or lore. There might not be some great overall story to the game, and the side missions aren't as fleshed out as they were in earlier titles, but there's still a bunch to see and explore.

And with the added crafting and combat on top there's a nice loop of going out on adventure, running out of resources and carrying space, going back home to repair, re-supply and upgrade and then heading back out again. I find that having that "breather" and shift of focus for 10-15 minutes help a lot with not just churning on and burning out.

I feel like this concept gets lost on a lot of people. Bethesda games never had some grand amazing story to me. The good stuff was always the things inside the cracks. I remember after I finally got heads deep into Skyrim I realized my favorite part by far was the Daedra stuff. And none of that is some vast involving stuff, just small fun story-lines here and there.

This, 100%, is my feelings, Also for what its worth the game play loop speaks to me and my gaming group in a deep way. We are Minecraft\ark\survival builder players but not PVPers. and fallout strikes the correct balance for us and has been a blast, that is not to excuse the bugs or game engine, but every game I've played this years has had bugs even hitman 2 or red dead, it sucks and we all hate it but don't take a stance on Bethesda and not on the others. Most of the "critical" reviews out there seem to be people who hit a single bug or ran into a survival element they didn't want to deal with and they quit. now that said if your not a survival base building kind of gamer steer clear. because I don't think this fallout is for you. for me its like game 4 in my top ten list.

That's hardly a quirk of your individuality, or a controversial statement. These games are made to be liked, so much so that many genres copied the same methods as MMOs to endear themselves to people. My argument is based on the fundamental insight, that not everything you like is also good for you or for society at large.

When I describe how MMOs (like Fallout 76) tend to string people along and that the only possible outcome is frustration, it doesn't ring true to you?

Another thing that is typical MMO behavior is that every player feels at least ambivalent about them, a kind of love-hate. Wouldn't you agree?

Finally, just like the self-deception and excuses about the great Value/hour MMOs provide, players tend to publically overstate their appreciation for them to justify the time/money spent. So when someone says I friggin' adore MMOs, that's what I hear. Not also saying, "but I sometimes hate them", is a lie of omission. Possibly the worst lie of all, when you are lying to yourself.

@vortextk: For me it was exploration and quests. Don't really care about building stuff.

@eurobum: It really cannot be stressed enough that Fallout 76 is not an MMO.

I feel like you got something of a 'Haha that's quite a take' response before but now you are really getting tiresome with this whole authoritatively trying to tell players of a whole genre what is good and bad for them, and that they probably don't know any better.

@eurobum:Who says they have to be good for you or society at large to be, in your eyes apparently, "legitimately" enjoyable? Basically you're calling everyone who likes MMOs gullible chumps that need to "wake up" and stop lying to themselves because they're not really having a good time, just the illusion of one. No way could someone actually find them fun, right? I'm not even an MMO fan in any capacity, but give me a break with that shit. Furthermore, what difference does it make to you? If your irrational cynicism and conspiracy theorist approach wasn't ridiculous enough, this still has nothing to do with the topic. Fallout 76 still is not an MMO and only functions like one in the most tangential of ways. If you've played it, you would know that. Now please stop hijacking the thread with your inanity.

@pweidman: The difference between 76 and the Fallout 4 Survival mode is that combat in 4 is much faster due to the more realistic damage modeling. I actually gave up pretty early on with that mode because I was tired of getting one-shotted in early-game firefights and being sent back to a save that was 30 minutes previous. The hunger/thirst meters and equipment degradation also worked a bit slower if I recall. I like those concepts on a fundamental level, they just have yet to implement them in a way I find enjoyable.

I just had a very different experience from yours. My problem is that I DID try to engage with the mechanics in the way the game wanted me to and I still got punished for it. Ending up with no health items or proper crafting materials that far into the game is such a turn-off, when the game puts you in a hole and you don't see a way out. Maybe I should start a new dude and try to be even more careful the second time around, I dunno...

So I just wanted to say that Todd Howard mentioned at E3 that they were going to use the Creation Engine (a branch off of the original Gamebryo engine) to make Elder Scrolls 6.

Just remember that when everyone is excited about the prospect of another Elder Scrolls title being the next Skyrim.

To people replying, that's basically what I would expect. You like how it looks or survival/building. How much of that is because it says fallout with the general theme I wonder? I'm not against the game altogether, just against how they decided to make it. Honestly you add some actual life out there in the world and I'd be atleast agreeing it's interesting. To Mr. MMO's are THE DEVIL!(insert momma from waterboy here)..

@eurobum: Uh, stop. Seriously. Forever.

That's literally not what anyone said. Exploration isn't about liking the aesthetics, it's about having unique and varied content. Compare it to an open-world game like AC Odyssey. Once you've spent about 15 hours in that you know what every camp and fort and cave looks like. There's nothing new or interesting to discover, it's just another place to loot the five lootables and kill 10 enemies. In Bethesdas games on the other hand a vast amount of the locations are hand built and injected with small unique stories. Even after a hundred hours in their games you will consistently stumble over cool new stuff that you had no idea was in the game.

Even if it were about looks there isn't really a consistent aesthetic to Fallout games. That's sorta what makes them even more interesting. As I said earlier, this game has anything from a crashed space station to a civil war fort to an amusement park. If you were talking about an Elder Scrolls game it would at least make some sense, as it's got a more coherent aesthetic, but much of the draw of Fallout is that you can find anything and everything. It's a game where your weapons range from alien blasters and gamma rifles to revolutionary swords and black powder muskets.

@eurobum: what are you even talking about my guy? Like, are you for real? Are you reading what you're writting?

My favorite game is an MMO and I love it completely. I do not hate it in any way and I certainly ain't have you telling me otherwise.

@killem_dafoe: Why the random dig at Lindsay Lohan? Yikes.

That joke is over a decade out of date. Got any Brittany Spears jokes to dust off?

@killem_dafoe said:

"Who says?" - A critic should.

When it comes to food most adults are aware that there is a layer of knowledge and understanding, above the "but does it taste good?". Same is true for games asking "is it fun", or for movies asking "can it hold my attention". The industries have figured out these recipes long time ago, so exploring this question is trivial and perhaps should be a paragraph at best. For some phone games of the tap screen - hear chime variety, even a lab rat can answer, if it is fun. Just prototyping a game with stand-in stick figures, can be used to determine that. Is it important for food to be tasty? - But should this be the sole determining question in your choice of nutrition?

It is also completely inconsequential to others if a person finds something fun, because it might just be a matter of taste. Whereas issues of context, intent, behavior, psychology actually affect and are relevant to everybody not just the chumps. If you for instance explored the question if FO76 is an MMO or how it isn't, that would be relevant and informative.

Developer resources have shifted toward creating infinite treadmills and "services" and traps, instead of unique 60$ experiences, and they mostly are of the multiplayer ilk. The strongest weapon of the industry is actually other people (sort of like them ganging up on me in this very topic). Peer pressure and every other social dynamic imaginable, like at an MLM sales pitch is used, people who don't like to brag are then exposed, of having found that one rare thing.

There are many influences that dictate what games people play. It might appear that you just select what you like, but actually you can't really choose what your friends are playing, thus you have limited choices of what you are playing with them. Not just MMOs all multiplayer games are affected by exploitative practices, and it affects everybody. Including issues nobody ever thinks of, like signing away your privacy and being monitored at all times.

The reason I attacked MMOs (assuming their evil nature is already well established) it is a rhetorical strategy, I didn't want to just attack your own story directly but kind of deflect the bullet, letting you and other readers infer the criticism instead. I shouldn't cast aspersions, my intention was to show how games can and do string people along way past the point at which a game is worthy of anyone's time. And how the measure of your own engagement shouldn't be the sole measure of quality, or be called "fun" for that matter. There are many things in games from loading screens, to set backs, to repetition and mindless busywork that simply don't fit that description.

Slut-shaming Lindsay Lohan was an interesting way for this thread to end

@eurobum: This is really just a whole lot saying very little.

Dude! Really?

I've re-read your replies, and you seem to resort to formal rebuttals, that don't quite disprove much. Are you saying that if you defeat a boss in WoW it stays dead? - I don't know if it is true, but I know it can't be true for all bosses. It's an impossible problem to solve, showing different phases to different players, hardly makes the entire thing more coherent. It's a workaround, just like treating your campaign like a story, that your hero can re-live or replay. This is the narrative equivalent of, "It was all a dream".

We've seen many games become the Everygame, so insisting on arbitrary definitions of genre is absurd. You may see WoW becoming more like single player game as an improvement, I'm bothered by essentially single player campaigns becoming more like WoW, with stuff like Destiny. Then these games don't call themselves an MMOs either.

Thinking about what makes a great movie, a great story or a great game, I came to the realization that inevitably a great story has to end even though nobody wants them to. A major characteristic that makes games bad by design and definition is that they don't end. This insisting on the fun never ending may be the very key, that leads to behavior that is pathological, overindulgent and addictive.

Pretty much all forms of media are psychological manipulation in some way. It's whether or not that manipulation is good or healthy leaves room for debate.

Anyway, Fallout 76 is what I expected it to be. I like the idea of a true open world online shooter and there are surprisingly a lack of them. Destiny isn't open world and the Division is solo unless you invite friends or are in a safe area. Oddly enough, the closest thing to it that I can think of that still exists is Defiance, which is even more buggy and laggy than 76.

@eurobum: I'm saying that many MMOs now have fairly set stories, with a solid starts and finishes and one off cinematic moments, as you would expect from any game.

I play FF14 now and yes that has an extensive and very grindy end game to be sure but it also has very defined story beats that conclude as well as, and often better of late, than many others.

And I also don't secretly actually hate playing it, lest you wonder.

@eurobum: firstly, most MMOs do have an end. A point where your character has finished the story quests or has advanced to the maximum level or have achieved the best gear possible. There are often expansions to them that give more content to play. Secondly, you seem to be implying that a great story makes a great game. What about the other aspects of the game? I have played a number of MMOs and never once have o been heavily invested in the story, the actual mechanics was always the draw so for me at least, this isn't true.

I feel like a Borderlands with a higher player count seems like no-brainer idea, and it's the direction I would assume that series will eventually go in. I know the world is technically divided into zones you need to load into, but it still feels like more of a cohesive singular world than Destiny does. I would like to see it take on a bigger overworld in the next game. But yeah, there really isn't anything else like Fallout 76 out on the market, and the core idea of it is something I've always been really into, it's just a shame that it turned out the way it did.