Fallout 76 - online Fallout spinoff from Bethesda - now on Steam with Wastelanders NPC expansion

[Myobi]

Dear lord Rusty, can't believe you actually made 6,564 posts on some shitty alt account to try to make this shit look legit.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

To be fair, my expectations were super low and I was expecting an absolute mess of a game with even more dumbed down mechanics than Fallout 4 and an obnoxious story.
Seeing food and drink mechanics and an actual set of dialogue options were a nice surprise and the story is...serviceable. Still better than F4's clusterfuck of a "story" so far.

All it does is take the core Bethesda gameplay loop (explore, loot, repeat) and added some survival and crafting mechanics. Which is what Beth is good at really.
Is it worth the price tag? For a multiplayer game that requries access to Beth's servers? Fuck no. Is it improved over Fallout 4? Yeah I guess. It's more "honest" I suppose; it doesn't pretend to be a Fallout RPG and throw a half-baked convoluted story at you. Just says "hey, see those assholes over there? Shoot them". So basically your typical looter shooter, really, but with some more survival stuff.

Which for an online game is pretty typical. Just look at pretty much every MMO type out there.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The alien attack public event with the big number of enemies could be fun but the amount of level 5000 players in meme power armor who spin in place with a gatling laser killing everything on a 1km rape rave radius make them into a matter of being able to tag the commanders with a 1 damage shot so you are entitled to the loot it drops. I can't even take out the camera to get photos for the side mission, wtf.

 

[Irata]

I have a free code for this from Amazon Prime. It's for Microsoft's Store/Xbox program. Pretend I activate the Fallout 76 account with Microsoft through a browser. I then run Fallout 76 (free week) on Steam. Can I transfer the Microsoft account to Steam? Will the Steam account stop running after the free week is over since I didn't buy it on Steam?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Yeah, the steam version will stop running after the free trial is over. However your characters are shared between the steam and microsoft store versions so no transfer is needed (or possible). The atomic points (cash shop money) aren't shared, but the stuff you buy with them is.

 

[Irata]

Yeah, the steam version will stop running after the free trial is over.

Hey man, thanks for this. I meant to thank you earlier, but I forgot.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So the free week is over. Managed to do that questline with the gold and got up to level 51. Didn't finish the other questlines or go to the pit, but oh well.
Whilst the game isn't quite as infamously broken now as reputed, it does have a lot of issues and questionable design choices.

- Perception doesn't reveal nearby enemies unless they are aware and hostile to your location. This of course is absolutely useless because the point of perception in the other beth games is to allow you to avoid enemies or get the drop on them. Only showing them when they are already attacking me is pointless because most enemies are melee based and programmed to rush you in a group.

- Everything has level scaling, up to 50 (apparently. You can go past level 50 but weapons stay at 50 and you get no special stats). Whilst I do understand the idea is to give the player a challenge, it also takes away the power curve, a feeling of progression and makes it a lot harder than it should be to farm and acquire resources. Before level 35 I had a lot of ammunition and resources, and then after 35 I was constantly low on healing and ammo because it's such a bastard to get more since you have to spend so much to get more.

- Enemies can get stupidly tanky. Anglers have way too much health and high level mutants are a chore to fight. Robots are annoying too at close range, but at long range you can snipe off limbs and make them self-destruct. Too bad they are programmed like most other enemies to just rush you.

- Enemy AI can be stupid. Sometimes they would just stand there and let me shoot them with a pistol. I did it to a death claw and a bear.

- You cannot detach weapon mods. This means that modding a weapon that's not level 45 or 50 (I have no idea why they just didn't make everything have a max level of 50. Odd decision) is a waste of resources. But you kind of have to mod them because enemies get stupidly tanky at higher levels. You can get by with looting but it's a bit of of a chore as they will be in poor condition and not well modded.

- Similarly, legendary weapons are pointless unless they are high enough level, because you're just going to throw it away anyway. Borderlands has a similar problem with it's burn and churn loot system, but that game doesn't have resource and survival mechanics.

- Despite having a large map, the server is capped at 24 players. You could play for hours without seeing another player after you leave the forest. Kind of weak for a "MMO"

- Servers are still sort of unstable. I lost connection to a world several times.

- Workshop PvP is not well designed. There is nothing stopping a level 600 player from stealing a workshop from a level 25 player and just one shotting him with superior stats and equipment. Most MMOs have some sort of balancing mechanic to ensure a fair matchup, but not 76 for some silly reason.

-Whilst you can get a lot of resources from workshops, having to defend them can be quite a chore and expense of materials due to repairs, heals and ammunition. It doesn't help that the workshop doesn't actually give you enough materials to freely build all extractors, turrets and generators. At most you can build one extractor, the generators for it (you need 2 mediums) and some turrets. The best you can hope for is find a workshop that someone left that all equipment already there, but it's not likely. Also, if you go offline you lose the workshop. Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the aforementioned disconnects.

- The workshop defense missions are bugged and unbalanced. I've seen a 3 wave hoard of anglers that are way too hard to kill, especially at level 25. I've seen a wolf get stuck underground and can't be killed, making the mission impossible. I've seen mole rats refuse to surface, making the mission take longer than it should be. It's just not well designed.

- Some workshops are stupidly huge. The airforce base is just massive. Have fun running around it for 5 minutes trying to find and kill dogs during a defense mission.

- Extractors seem to have a very low capacity. Despite yielding 20 scrap an hour, the lead extractor seems to have a max capacity of 14 scrap. You'd think it can store more. It basically means that you have to drop everything you're doing every 40 minutes or so to empty it, else you'll "lose" resources. Too bad if you're trying to finish a quest or explore I guess.

- The main questlines are terrible. They go on for way too long and are either a fetch quest or overly long gauntlet against bullet sponges. Fun and Games is absolute shit, and if it were a proper fallout game you would have the option of just shooting the little shit instead of having to fight 2 assaultrons, a fuck load of protectrons and gutsys and a final encounter with a sentry bot where the little brat throws you supplies, except sometimes the supplies are worthless junk.

- The "lore" takes a shit on the old fallout story. Oh, you thought the Super Mutants were the Master's creation? Nah mate, they were already in Appalachia for some reason. Oh, you thought the NCR was the first to create a national currency and restore the government? Nah, some gits from a vault did it after the secret service let them have the gold. Never mind that we hear literally nothing about this supposed appalachian government 200 years later. Even within Bethesda's continuity it makes no sense.

Is it worth 40 bucks? Fuck no. Is it worth 10? Well, for 10 you can get Fallout 4, which is what 76 is derived from. Except you can mod most of the mechanical stupidity out of 4 and you don't need to be connected to Bethesda's servers.
76 should really either be free to play or a single player spin off like NV, without any of the MMO sillyness to distract from making a more developed world and mechanics.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I got this free through Amazon prime videos, to which I subscribe to support Jeff financially after his costly divorce. Seems he reciprocated in kind.

The real question is, should I install it?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I got this free through Amazon prime videos, to which I subscribe to support Jeff financially after his costly divorce. Seems he reciprocated in kind.

The real question is, should I install it?

Depends. How do you feel about Microsoft Store?

 

[Kev Inkline]

I got this free through Amazon prime videos, to which I subscribe to support Jeff financially after his costly divorce. Seems he reciprocated in kind.

The real question is, should I install it?

Depends. How do you feel about Microsoft Store?

I've already got the Xbox-launcher app so that kids can play Java Minecraft (yes, they require that for any version), that is also used for installing FO76 I think, at least I redeemed the code there. So I can live with it, although personally not a huge fan.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Then go for it. You have it, might as well try it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

- The "lore" takes a shit on the old fallout story. Oh, you thought the Super Mutants were the Master's creation? Nah mate, they were already in Appalachia for some reason.

"The first Super Mutants in Appalachia were created right before the Great War, when West Tek poisoned the drinking water of Huntersville with the FEV Virus, in a sinister, secret experiment gone horribly wrong."

- The workshop defense missions are bugged and unbalanced. I've seen a 3 wave hoard of anglers that are way too hard to kill, especially at level 25. I've seen a wolf get stuck underground and can't be killed, making the mission impossible. I've seen mole rats refuse to surface, making the mission take longer than it should be. It's just not well designed.

They seem to be balanced for a group. I tried setting up a few extractors and had four waves of 8 supermutants spawn one after the other, and they all made a point of destroying them and the generators immediately. They're pretty cheap to make but I noticed why everyone not in a group just claims the workshops for the instant reward and then leaves. Contesting ownership seems to be a thing of the past, though I've not played in the "high stakes" servers to be sure.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

- Everything has level scaling, up to 50 (apparently. You can go past level 50 but weapons stay at 50 and you get no special stats). Whilst I do understand the idea is to give the player a challenge, it also takes away the power curve, a feeling of progression and makes it a lot harder than it should be to farm and acquire resources.

it's worse.
every time you swap your weapon with a better one it gets progressively weaker as you level up. against the exactly same enemies. the worst is with big single shot weapons, which once did their job and now, few levels later, are very inefficient.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

- Everything has level scaling, up to 50 (apparently. You can go past level 50 but weapons stay at 50 and you get no special stats). Whilst I do understand the idea is to give the player a challenge, it also takes away the power curve, a feeling of progression and makes it a lot harder than it should be to farm and acquire resources.

it's worse.
every time you swap your weapon with a better one it gets progressively weaker as you level up. against the exactly same enemies. the worst is with big single shot weapons, which once did their job and now, few levels later, are very inefficient.

That's what I meant, you have no power curve. It actually has an inverse power curve, because early game you actually deal decent damage, and then you get weaker later on, even with higher level gear. It's just not a good feeling system.

It's like the borderlands system, except shit (or shittier, depending on how you feel about Borderlands).

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

borderlands is still "diablo-like", monster levels are tied to the zone. in this game the monsters are all the same, always leveling up with you. it can happen during a fight that you headshot a bunch of enemies, level up, and suddenly you can't headshot them anymore. and die.
i can't even.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

borderlands is still "diablo-like", monster levels are tied to the zone. in this game the monsters are all the same, always leveling up with you. it can happen during a fight that you headshot a bunch of enemies, level up, and suddenly you can't headshot them anymore. and die.
i can't even.

That is true, unlike most MMOs or games like that enemies scale with the player, not the area.
Which is a really questionable design choice that just doesn't work, because you need lower level areas to go back to for farming.
The balance is just all sorts of fucked. It's as if the devs never played a MMO.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i think they did, but being bethestard, their solution is worse than the problem.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There never was a problem, I never once saw a single person say "darn, I wish this game had level scaling"

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Why, was level scaling something they added in?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Why, was level scaling something they added in?

Level scaling was added in a patch after I stopped playing, it wasn't there originally.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Why, was level scaling something they added in?

Level scaling was added in a patch after I stopped playing, it wasn't there originally.

That's a pity. That was a change for the worst then.

 

[PanteraNera]

I got it "free" with amazon prime.
I actually made it to level 297 and finished all the main and side quests.
I used a bloody build (full unyielding set and bloodied Fixer) with that build I could solo pretty much anything, I farmed for XP at Westtek because there would be Supermutants at lvl 100 which I could three shot.
I did the Pitt, the daily Ops and the events daily.
The grind is just to stupid. I was doing the event (treasure hunters) and the drop chances for the stuff you want is just to insane.
I spend so much ingame resources and gained so little for it.
Also pretty much everything is capped. You can only trade for 1400 caps with NPC vendors. If you buy stuff from them just a third gets added back to them (so if you spend 1000 caps the vendor will have 333 caps). You can trade only 300 scrips for legendary modules a day, while you can do events to get some more. You can only trade 400 gold a day (plus 600 once a week).
After a couple of days it feels like a chore/job. And yeah, at that point I was slowly unlocking parts and mods for the Secret Service armor (which is the best non powered armor armor) rerolling the legendary effects, to just get a tad bit more deadly. But actually I was able to already solo most things.
And I will not talk about the lore. Fallout 1 was one of the first games I played on PC (was a day one purchase) and this shit has only little to do with Fallout.
Oh and it crashed, a lot! There was quite some graphical glitches and FPS drops. And I do have a decent rig (i7-11700, RTX 3070).
I just uninstalled it this morning and boy am I happy.

 

[soulburner]

I got it "free" with amazon prime (...)

I got it this way too. So, do you recommend it? :D

 

[PanteraNera]

I got it "free" with amazon prime (...)

I got it this way too. So, do you recommend it? :D

If you are an hardcore Fallout 1 & 2 fan, no.
If you are into the post-apocalyptic setting, maybe.
It is goofy, in line with Fallout 3 & 4 and it doesn't give a fuck about the original tone of Fallout 1 & 2.
There is no real "end-game" or "end-game content" and basically it becomes boring very quickly.
Hope that helps ^^.

 

[baud]

All the (open) world’s a stage: how the video game Fallout became a backdrop for live Shakespeare shows​

Free to roam through the post-apocalyptic game, one intrepid group has taken to performing the Bard. They have found an intent new audience, as well as the odd mutant scorpion

A most rare vision … Bottom and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, as performed in Fallout 76 Photograph: Bethesda/Wasteland Theatre Company

Alysia Judge
Wed 25 Jan 2023 10.00 GMT

One crisp spring evening, the Wasteland Theatre Company gathered to rehearse Romeo and Juliet. Jonathan “Bram” Thomas was playing Romeo. A self-confessed Shakespeare geek, he’d graduated with a BA in theatre, and this wasn’t his first time playing one half of the star-crossed lovers. But it was the first time a mutant scorpion the size of a Jeep had rampaged on to his stage.
Panicking, the show’s crew rained bullets down on its blackened shell, but not before Juliet fell to its sting. A poison death, certainly – just not one the Bard ever dreamed of writing.

“It’s just one of those things,” Bram shrugs, with the breezy nonchalance of an actor who is now used to these kinds of hiccups. You come to expect them when you’re performing inside a video game.
The Wasteland Theatre Company is not your average band of thespians. Dotted all across the world, they meet behind their keyboards to perform inside Fallout 76, a video game set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic America. The Fallout series is one of gaming’s most popular, famous for encouraging players to role-play survivors within the oddly beautiful ruins of alternate-history Earth. As you explore the crumbling husks of towns hollowed out by an atomic bomb, tumbleweed scuffs scorched sand, rusted signs advertising Nuka-Cola creak in the breeze, and you’re constantly on the lookout for irradiated things that want to maul you.
Fallout 76 is an online open world; players travel wherever they wish and can bump into real-life strangers. With “area chat” enabled they can even talk to each other through microphones, calling out to a passer-by on the dusty road. This opens up endless opportunities for user-generated serendipity, and the Wasteland Theatre Company is one such experience: a delightfully unexpected thing for players to stumble upon in the devastation.

A security guard at a Romeo and Juliet performance inside Fallout 76 Photograph: Bethesda/Wasteland Theatre Company

“Imagine a wandering theatre troupe in the 17th century going from town to town doing little performances,” says the company’s director, Northern_Harvest, who goes by his gamertag or just ‘North’, and works in communications in real life. “It’s not a new idea; we’re just doing it within the brand new medium of a video game.”
The company was formed almost by chance, when North befriended a group of players in the wasteland. As they adventured together, they noticed that the Fallout games are peppered with references to Shakespeare’s works. A yellowing sign in a school corridor advertises auditions for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Characters cry “once more into the breach, dear friends!” before venturing from the safety of home. In one quest, you meet a survivor who tries to turn super mutants away from their path of violence by bombarding them with Shakespearean recitations.
“The Fallout universe lends itself really well to Shakespeare. It’s very desolate, very grotesque, very tragic, really,” says North. In this world, Shakespeare existed before the bombs fell, so it seemed logical that North and his friends could role-play a company keeping culture alive in the ruins of civilisation – like the troupe of actors in Emily St John Mandel’s post-apocalyptic dystopia, Station Eleven.

A Fallout audience watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream Photograph: Bethesda/Wasteland Theatre Company

It takes months to pull a show together. First, North picks the play and adapts it. Hundreds of pages of script are shared with the crew, so set design and rehearsals can commence. “It’s just like a real theatre company, where you start with an idea and a few folks sitting together and figuring out what our season is going to look like,” he says.
Between shows, actors scour Fallout’s wasteland for costume parts. “We have this crafting table where you can build your gear,” says North. “So during rehearsals you’ll often hear off-stage the ‘Kaching! Kaching! Kaching!’ of a hammer as an actor quickly hashes together the piece of clothing they forgot that day.” And having learned from the scorpion incident, North now hires guards to protect the production. “I tell the cast, ‘please don’t whip out your mini-guns on stage. We’ve got security on-site to take care of it.’” Occasionally, someone threatens to blow the stage up with a rocket launcher mid-performance, but most times, they end up watching half of Midsummer instead. (Think about what that means for the play’s Mechanicals subplot: the audience settled in front of a computer screen, watching the cast being players, playing players, playing players, in a play.)
There are no ticketed seats, and the company makes no money. The majority of audiences stumble across the performances accidentally in the wasteland, and sit to watch the show for free – or tune in on Twitch, where the company broadcasts every performance live. Characters stride across stages that are cantilevered together from in-game objects. Lighting cues provide atmosphere. Soliloquies are passionately delivered. “Before the show, you’re nervous,” says North. “You get the jitters just like you would in real theatre. The emotions are very real, which makes the whole thing very real.”
In 2022 Fallout 76 claimed to have over 13.5 million players, some of whom North believes “may never have seen a Shakespeare play. Ninety-nine per cent of those who find us sit down and quietly watch the show … It’s really quite moving, performing for people who might not go to the theatre in their own communities or haven’t thought about Shakespeare since high school. We are tickled silly knowing that we are potentially reaching new, untapped audiences and (re)introducing Shakespeare to so many. I hope Shakespeare academics who study comparative drama will take note of our use of this new medium to reach new audiences. I know some high-school English teachers have used us as an example for their students of how Shakespeare can be, and should be, performed in new spaces.”

Sound and fury … Macbeth v Macduff within Fallout 76 Photograph: Bethesda/Wasteland Theatre Company

North is emphatic that his company’s plays are never meant to replace the magic of real-world productions. Instead, they’re what Bram terms “a gateway drug” to stage storytelling; a player might seek out a play at The Globe or support their local theatre after enjoying Macbeth in the wasteland. Their video game performances could be a way to drive support towards a creative industry that’s been decimated by a pandemic and now a cost of living crisis.
“What we’re doing is really new, and expands the potential of using video games as digital performance spaces … It reminds us that Shakespeare constantly finds new places to be performed and loved. There are Shakespeare troupes that help folks in the criminal justice system explore the arts, Shakespeare audio podcasts, and we’re here bringing Shakespeare into the huge world of gaming.”
North says he has found the whole experience of putting on these shows life-changing. He now spends almost every night in Fallout, and is working on the troupe’s next play – this time a performance of Alice in Wonderland. “There’s always the annual article asking ‘do video games make people more violent?’” he says. “I think we’re a perfect example of how video games inspire creativity, and celebrate theatre and culture and the arts. I hope that other gamers out there know that there’s so much potential for you to be able to express what you’re passionate about in video games.”