As a Fallout apologist, 76 hurts my soul

@frodobaggins:

I was thinking of games. not game stories. Things like Rock, Paper, Scissors: We know how it can be ruined by that one guy who keeps losing saying "OK, best two out of three! three out of five!", best 4 out of 7 ...

This idea that games must have an end, single-handedly explains why the concept of DLC is crap. And the more savvy devs have created DLC, that simply has a new story and a new protagonist; instead of breaking everything and inflating the numbers.

Now loot and gear are their own huge ball of wax (since it is gambling and so forth), but it absolutely applies to item systems. Meaning that a player has to be able to finish a collection. This is one huge blunder the hires at Blizzard have made with Diablo III and later had to correct, by creating a loot lottery with extremely rare drops, where basically nobody ever wins. (Source: Wikipedia) And it was likely motivated by the sick intent of getting a cut of the sales in the real money auction house.

The temptation of creating unobtainable stuff, as an easy means to keep people coming back, is just too great. Hiding it behind a pay-wall in a blind box, is how the more putrid free-to-play schemes bring home the bacon.

It's a really simple and powerful idea, the difference between a story arc, and frustrating crap. Even low-budget mid-day television programming realized, that it can improve quality by creating telenovelas rather than neverending soaps.

An Ever-quest was a bad idea from the get-go. Of course there is a complexity and difference, when people made friends and then they don't want these relationships to end just as the game ends. I'm not going to unpack that.

@eurobum: I understand how MMOs work and how they play to try to keep a player base. I have stopped playing 6 MMOs and not once did I finish any of them.... but at this point you are so far from your original hate train on MMOs and anybody that plays them.

@eurobum: I appreciate the very vague opinionated point that is Sourced: Wikipedia.

I really want to like 76. I only play with friends (I'm attempting an entirely Pacifist character which is real weird in a Bethesda Fallout game, so I kinda need them if I want to explore much), but just about every second of that game makes me want to go back to Fallout 4. Sometimes it feels like Fallout, but then some little thing happens and I realize how it's just so off. Like there's a bunch of random crap you can't pick up to dismantle. You can't pick up and move things around (like bodies, vases, etc). The thought that no matter where you go, you're not going to stumble upon some little settlement or farm with people, just enemies and maybe some robots.

I loved Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4. I played the crap out of all of them and enjoyed every minute of it. But even though I know 76 is a different beast, it's just way too similar for me to break that connection.

Also this side conversation MMO Hate-on is... interesting, to say the least. Guild Wars 2 is one of my all-time favorite games.